The Grimm Chronicles, Vol. 2 by Ken Brosky, Isabella Fontaine, Dagny Holt, Chris Smith, Lioudmila Perry Page B

breathing hard as he closed the gap between us. I brought my sword up over my head and swung downward. He brought his bass up to deflect the blow with the neck. The gladius cut through the steel strings, bouncing off the hard wood. Before he could counter-attack, I swung the gladius around and swung quickly at his exposed torso.
    “Urp,” he said, watching the burning cut expand and consume him. Black ashes fell to the ground.
    I looked at my sword for a moment. How had I pulled that off?
    “Wake up!” the drummer yelled again, kicking the fiddler harder. “She killed Gustav! We’re next, you bloody fool!”
    I quickly closed the gap between us, fully intending to get rid of the drummer before he had any chance of attacking. If the bassist was going to swing his instrument around, I could only imagine the drummer had every intention of throwing his drums at me, and I wasn’t interested in seeing what kinds of bruises those might cause.
    But then I stopped. The fiddler’s eyes had opened. He was looking at me, his face sweaty and his breathing raspy. Something cold and unfamiliar slipped around my right ankle. I looked down: the smoke was crawling over the sticky wooden floor, licking at my legs like a hesitant python ready to coil around its victim. In the red light, it looked as if it was breathing as it slipped out of the fiddler’s mouth.
    I stepped back.
    “All the music,” the fiddler said in a slurred voice. “I’ll steal all of it. Until my princess comes back to me.”
    The drummer cackled. His face looked older now. Decayed, even, as if he’d been wearing makeup and now it was flaking off, exposing him for what he truly was. He reminded me of Edward on that last night we’d been together, only the drummer looked even more decayed, his flesh more rotten and scarred, as if all the years of drinking had sped up the aging process.
    Well. If the Corrupted could age, I guess.
    “You’re doomed now, little girl,” said the drummer. The dark smoke put pressure on my leg and I fell over, landing hard on the floor. The drummer laughed harder. “After we steal your music, I’m going to roast you over an open flame.”
    “Rabbit,” I said, pulling myself to my feet.
    The drummer cocked his head. “What’s that now?”
    “Rabbit,” I said simply.
    The drummer frowned, a little fleck of skin falling off his forehead. “I don’t …”
    And then the dark shadow hopped out from behind the old cigarette machine, closing the distance so quick that I second-guessed whether it was Briar at all. Before the drummer could even turn his head at the sound, Briar was already airborne, twisting in the air so that his powerful feet were aimed right at the drummer’s body. When they connected, the drummer went flying across the room, landing in one of the booths and collapsing the table.
    “What do we do now?!” Briar shouted, hopping away from the black smoke near his feet. It was pouring out of the fiddler’s mouth now, and as he brought himself to his knees, I saw an opening and jumped forward to deliver a killing blow.
    The smoke pushed me back. I swung my gladius at it, succeeding only in dispersing it. The sound of a thousand songs seemed to fill the bar. There was no joy in any of them, even the songs I recognized. It was as if all the songs were flat, out of key; there was a sadness in each of them. They grew louder as more smoke poured from the fiddler’s mouth. He coughed once, then stood up, ignoring Briar and stepping off the stage. Briar gave him a kick for good measure, but it only succeeded in pushing him even closer to me.
    “All the music,” the fiddler said. He lost his footing for a moment. “But first … a drink, perhaps.”
    The smoke pushed me aside. He walked past me, toward the bar.
    “Just a drink … for strength.”
    “Alice!” Briar shouted. I turned. The rabbit was on the ground, grappling with the drummer. “Catch!” he said, kicking with both of his feet. The drummer went