Fairest

Peter ignored Constantine and walked over to Mina. “Are you sure that this is going to help?” he asked, his eyes filled with hope and pain.

She shook her head. “Not really, but this is only the first part of my plan; the second will come later. Are you in? Right now, I need you to be as loud as you can. I need all of the attention on you guys, so I can sneak in. Will you do this for Nan?” Mina pleaded.

Magnus began to set up his drums; Naga was pulling out extension cords, and Constantine walked over with a large black guitar case. Peter unzipped the case and pulled out the very large red guitar he had used at his last concert. Chills raced up Mina’s arms as Peter pulled the strap over his head. He took a cord from a stagehand and plugged it into his guitar.

More stage crew appeared and began to set up the portable sound system and lights. Brody jumped right in and began to help organize the equipment.

Quickly the band began to tune their instruments. Cords and wires run from the busses to various transformer boxes in the bushes of the hospital. A few hospital security guards came to see what was going on, but so far none of them approached the band. Mina looked up and saw the curtain in Nan’s room move slightly. Someone was in there already. She hoped it wasn’t the Reaper.

“Please, hurry!” Mina pleaded; sweat broke out on her forehead as she checked her watch again. It was 11:45 p.m. Fifteen minutes to midnight.

Brody ran a microphone and a stand out and placed it in front of Peter. They both glared at each other angrily.

“We don’t have time,” Mina pointed out.

Peter closed his eyes for a moment and took a deep shuddering breath. He opened them and pasted on a wide fake smile, transforming instantly into Valdemar, the lead singer. “One concert to wake the dead coming up.” He opened up his mouth and began to sing.

***

It was working. People began to rush to the windows, hallways, and down to the first floor to see what all of the commotion was. Mina was surprised to see how many of the hospital staff were excited for the concert. To them it was an unexpected treat. And because the band was in the parking lot, they didn’t really try to stop it. But eventually someone would. Someone would call the cops, and then the hospital would be swarming with police. The more police there were, the more likely the Reaper would give up and run away. Who was going to try and kill a girl if the hospital was surrounded by police? No one. Or at least Mina hoped that no one would. But then if the Reaper was a nurse, she could slip Nan any kind of drugs and no one would be the wiser.

She used the Dead Prince Society as a distraction and rushed through the emergency entrance doors. Since most of the hospital staff had gone to take pictures at the front of the hospital, she found it a fairly easy route to take. She bypassed the elevator and took the stairs two at a time to Nan’s floor. Mina opened the stairwell door and listened for sounds of hospital staff. There were none. She slipped onto the floor and tiptoed down the hall, pausing when she had to cross the waiting room.

As she expected, most of the night staff was at the window looking out onto the scene below. She could hear them whispering furiously deciding how they were going to take turns and go down to get autographs. Nurse Diedre and Dr. Martin were nowhere to be seen among the window gawkers.

Mina was just going to have to take a chance that they weren’t about. As she moved silently toward Nan’s room, Mina began to doubt herself and her plan. Maybe she should have just called the police and told them someone was going to try and kill her best friend. But then, what if they didn’t believe her? She shook her head in frustration. She would have been taken in for questioning and asked how she knew all of this. What was she going to tell them? That a boy in a mirror told her a Grimm Reaper was going to kill Nan at midnight? It wasn’t happening.

“I knew you would try and sneak back in,” A gravelly voice spoke close to Mina’s ear. “You shouldn’t be here.”

She turned to see that Nurse Diedre had come up behind her. Her grey hair was still pulled into a tight knot. Her plump arms reached out to grab her, but Mina ran forward. She ran down the hall away from Nan’s room, hoping to lead the Fae away. The nurse was right on her tail. Mina turned down a flight of stairs and through another hallway, ignoring yellow signs and construction tape. She ducked through a set of double doors and ran through two sheets of plastic and froze. The smell of sheetrock, dust, and paint assailed her nose. She had unintentionally run into an unfinished wing of the hospital.

It was a long wing, with tall metal beams, half-finished walls, and supplies stacked randomly around the room. Looking around for cover, she saw a large pallet of sheetrock. Mina ducked behind it and tried to make her breathing softer. A few seconds later, she heard the same double doors open with a creak followed by the swishing sound of plastic slowly being moved to the side.

She could hear Diedre looking for her, her feet slowly moving across the cement floor. But then something changed; the sound became louder, and the floor vibrated with each step. She could hear breathing, and it was loud. Mina peeked around the corner of her hiding place and could see billows of dust floating up on the other side of the room where Diedre was. No, wait. It wasn’t dust; it was smoke.

Mina heard a gurgling sound as if something was snuffing and breathing loudly. She froze in extreme terror, her mind trying to put together what she saw with the laser pointer with what she was hearing. It wasn’t good. A metal clang rang out, and Mina looked across the room toward where the sound originated. She could barely see the crowbar that had fallen to the floor. Her heart raced and thudded loudly in her chest.

She didn’t need to see what was hunting her to know that Diedre had transformed into her Fae form, and she was coming closer to Mina’s hiding spot. Mina crawled on her hands and knees and moved over to a large pile of wood beams seconds before Diedre came around the corner.

From her new hiding spot, she could see the Fae, and it terrified Mina. She was a dragon. Not the pretty fairy tale kind, but more of a shorter, stockier version. It walked and slithered on four legs and moved very much like a lizard. It was silver and black, and it coughed puffs of smoke. The dragon leaned down and sniffed the area that Mina had moments ago vacated.

She was doomed; there was no way that Mina could kill the dragon, especially when she didn’t have the Grimoire. At most, she could maybe harm it or distract it while she got Nan out of the hospital. But she was running out of time and out of hiding places. The dragon was beginning to pick up speed in its search. As if it was the one becoming more desperate.

Her hands were clammy with nervousness, and it finally dawned on Mina what she had going for her. As she watched the dragon maneuver the large room, she found its weakness. The dragon wasn’t very fast. The ceilings were too low to use its wings and so it was forced to amble around on its four legs. If she ran, she could outrun it.

She ducked on the ground and began to crawl across the room to where she had seen the crowbar fall. Mina’s hand reached out to grab it, and she saw the tool belt next to it, left by a construction worker. Grabbing a hammer, Mina counted to three and tossed it as far as she could in the corner away from the double doors. It clanged loudly, and she heard the dragon roar in excitement and rush to the corner.

Mina was finding it very hard to breathe as the room was becoming dense with smoke. But she took a deep breath, and as soon as the dragon passed her, she took off running toward the double doors.