Key the Steampunk Vampire Girl and the Dungeon of Despair (9780989878531) by Becket Read Free Book Online Page A

slowly melted from delight (that Mr. Fuddlebee had gone) to utter disgust (that he had left Key “the troll” behind). With an impatient tone, Old Queen Crinkle snapped a command to her court of vampires. “Throw this troll in the dungeon!”
    Now, the instant before Key heard those horrid words, when she realized that Mr. Fuddlebee was most definitely not returning, she tried to prepare herself for anything bad that might happen – anything at all. But upon hearing the word “dungeon,” Key’s heart sank because no matter how many bad things she imagined, she never guessed that she would be thrown into the dungeon of a castle in the City of the Dead.
    Raithe’s face twisted into a mixed expression of happiness and hate as she heard the Queen’s order. Then she repeated it with even more vigor. “Throw the Troll in the dungeon!”
    The other vampires moved at her command and the whole vampire court instantly became festive again. Cheering began all around. Crudgel raised his fists over his head like an ape as he shouted, “Let’s get on with the Queen’s birth-night party!” Then his whole gang of vampires cheered with him, “Happy four hundred twenty seven crinkly years!”
    Several red ribbons swooped down from the wrought iron chandeliers and bound Key’s hands in doubled knots. Enchanted tapestries began moving as if dancing for joy. The minstrel ghosts started playing an ironically lively funeral dirge on Key’s behalf.
    Crudgel and his vampire gang swarmed past Raithe and surrounded Key like bees. They grabbed her, picked her up off the ground, and held her up high in the air. While they carried her around the court, they pulled her long red hair, struck her, called her horrible names, and laughed in her face.
    As if things could not get any worse for Key, now several Snooty Suits of Armor returned to the court, followed by some of the Living Gargoyles that Key had met on the drawbridge. The two groups joined the vampire gang and together the whole malicious party carried Key to the dungeon – despite the fact that she was the smallest vampire in the castle.
    Raithe led the vampire gang from the Royal Court down a long hallway. To Key’s amazement, she was not walking on the floor, but on the ceiling with her arms folded feistily and her lips coiled in a cunning smirk.
    The gang carried Key past several rooms. She could not keep them all straight. There was the Curious Common Room, the Demented Dining Room, and the Black Magic Billiard Room. There were also several more rooms for practicing swimming in blood, fencing with bones, and name-calling. And still some more rooms seemed to be alive with monstrous arms and legs coming up from the floor, great eyes blinking beside couches, and large mouths yawning beneath coffee tables. As Key was carried past one room in particular, a wide mouth in the carpet greeted her in a deep voice, “Well, hello there, Miss Frumpydoo.”  
    The gang carried Key along several twisting and turning hallways, and down numerous flights of winding stairs. Key tried to remember the way they were going in case she could figure out a way of escape – one left, two rights, three lefts, one upside down, one one-and-a-half right side ups – but in the end, the Necropolis Castle was too much like a maze, and she felt utterly lost.
    When things seemed to be at their lowest, the Living Gargoyles, the Snooty Suits of Armor, and the vampire gang began chanting a cruel song, as if they had been oddly prepared to torture Key.

    Toss the Troll away
    before the break of day.
    She’s wrecked our birth-night bash.
    Let’s burn her into ash!
    Let’s eat this wrecking Troll!
    Let’s toss her in a hole!
    Let’s keep our birth-nights safe
    from this Trollish waif,
    this ragamuffin,
    this urchin we’ll roughen
    in the dungeon, in the deep
    in the darkest hole we keep.
    Let the dungeon be her grave,
    till she’s eaten by the Knave
    or by Toags with purple beaks
    or by great big Crunkle