Dragon Keepers #2: The Dragon in the Driveway by Chris Bunch

Author:Chris Bunch [Bunch, Chris]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House, Inc.
Published: 2009-09-04T06:00:00+00:00

A light woke up Jesse, flickering on the insides of his eyelids, pink as the first blush of dawn. He opened his eyes and blinked while beside him, Daisy also began to stir.

A band of hobgoblins with torches stood around them in a circle, staring at them with eyes that were without pupils or irises, red-rimmed and milky white.

Daisy squeezed Jesse’s wrist. A noise rose up from the hobgoblins, a dark, moist, grunting and snuffling through their snouts. It was a very underground sound.

Jesse counted seven of them. Three had bamboo torches, the kind you buy in a garden store. Tiki torches. The other four had sharp pickaxes hoisted over their shoulders. The cuffs of their orange jumpsuits dragged in the dirt. One of them had rolled up the cuffs of his pants, and Daisy nearly cried out when she saw his feet. His feet were bare and he had no toes! Where his toes were supposed to be was just a grayish wedge.

“Let’s see who we’ve got here,” said Jesse. “Sleepy, Dopey, Dumpy, Grubby …”

“Jess, this isn’t funny!” Daisy whispered. “It’s—it’s—” She fumbled for the right word. “Hideous!”

But Jesse couldn’t help himself. Now he understood why heroes in action movies made dumb jokes when they were in trouble. They did it to keep from screaming their heads off. “What do you want?” Jesse asked the hobgoblins, in what he hoped was a stern, steady he-man voice.

He got more snuffling in reply. Daisy said, “Jess, they might not use words, like us.”

One of them sidled over on his bandy legs and pulled Jesse to his feet. Daisy, hanging on to Jesse’s belt loop, came up with him. The hobgoblins crowded in closer and stared. One of them thrust out his mittenlike hand to Daisy. He was holding her purple bandanna.

“I think he wants you to take it,” said Jesse.

Daisy shot out a trembling hand and snatched the bandanna away from the hobgoblin. “Thanks,” she said, forcing a polite smile and hastily tying the bandanna around her head.

Another hobgoblin offered Jesse the lost flashlight, and still another of the odd creatures held out the ball of string.

“Thanks, guys,” Jesse said as he took the flashlight from the one hobgoblin and the ball of string from the other. He moved in slow motion as he bent down and unzipped the backpack, put the stuff away, zipped up the backpack, straightened, and slipped the backpack straps around his shoulders. The hobgoblins’ eyes followed his every move with utter fascination.

“Do you think we look as weird and scary to them as they do to us?” Jesse wondered aloud.

“If you ask me, they look even scarier up close,” said Daisy warily.

“I don’t know,” Jesse said thoughtfully, “I was just thinking that they seem a little less scary now. See how they’re looking at us? They don’t look mean at all. In fact—”

Daisy cried out, “Look! They’re crying! Ohmygosh, Jess! The hobgoblins are crying.”

“Their tears … they’re actually muddy,” Jesse said. Although pretty much everything about

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