“I can’t disagree with you, Skeet. I just couldn’t help myself. There’s been so many times over the years that I wanted to say something to her, to ask her why, to tell her about something cool in my life, to have her hold my hand through some of the shit we’ve walked through…I just couldn’t keep from being a dick. ‘Cause I thought if I was enough of a dick, I wouldn’t have to be so damn scared.”
“Scared of what, Bubba? What the hell do you have to be scared of now?”
“Scared she’ll leave again,” I said, and I felt one big tear roll down my own face and get lost in my beard along with more than a little bit of beer and maybe a morsel or two of last night’s dinner.
“You can’t be scared of that, brother. You just got to take the time you got and cherish it. Everybody leaves one way or another, Bubba. Or we leave them. Shit, in our line of work it’s way more likely that we’ll be the ones leaving somebody behind. But if we focus on that, then we don’t get to do no living. And that ain’t nothing but dying while walking around.”
“Shit, Skeeter, when did you get so smart?”
“I’ve always been the smart one. And the pretty one. You’re just here to shoot shit and deal with the grateful women.”
“I reckon I can handle that.”
“Then let’s get back inside and see what we’re gonna do to save your sister.” He turned and walked back into the house, leaving me outside with the stars, my thoughts, and one horny-assed hoot owl making a shitload of noise trying to get laid.
I took a deep breath and walked back inside. Skeeter was back on the couch, and Amy was sitting next to him now. I heard noise from the kitchen, so I figured Joe was putting coffee on. “There’s bacon in the fridge,” I hollered. I heard the refrigerator door open, then close, and a few seconds later, Joe’s head popped into the living room holding a yellow Styrofoam tray from the grocery store.
“Bubba, are you alright?” he asked, and the look on his face was full of concern.
“Yeah, I reckon I’m fine. Why?”
“This is…turkey bacon.”
“Oh, that’s on me,” Amy said. “Somebody’s cholesterol was creeping up at his last checkup, so we’ve been making some changes to his diet.” She gave me a sideways look. I kept my mouth shut for once.
Joe looked like somebody had just hit him in the head with something heavy. And given some of the spots me and Joe have been in, I know exactly what he looks like when somebody whops him upside the head. “Okay…I’m just going to go cook up this…turkey bacon and scramble half a dozen eggs. Coffee oughta be ready in a few minutes, then we can continue this conversation over some breakfast.”
“I’ll make the toast and grits,” Amy said, getting up from her spot on the couch. “You three figure out the plan and fill us in over food.” She walked into the kitchen with Joe, leaving me and Skeeter alone in the den with Mama.
“My two sweet boys,” Mama said. “Look how you’ve grown. Even you, Skeeter. You’re not so little and frail anymore, are you?”
“No, ma’am, I reckon not,” he said.
“I’m sorry about your mama. She was a fine woman. I know you miss her.”
“Every day,” Skeeter said. “But that ain’t what we’re here for right now.”
“He’s right. So how about you tell me about this sister?”
“When I returned to Faerie, I couldn’t go back to the lands of Mab. The second I stepped across the boundaries into the Winter Kingdom, she would know, and the punishment for my escape would be severe. I couldn’t go to the Summer Court because even though my father now sat at the side of Titania, my status as Daughter of Mab and Heir of Winter would make me a bargaining chip at best, and a hostage at worst. So, I went into hiding.”
“Are there places you can hide in Fairyland?” I asked.
“Not every acre of Faerie is aligned with Summer or Winter, my son,” Mama said. “There are places, like the Western Wood, that stand independent of the Courts. These places are remote and rare. The Wood is allowed to be unaffiliated because of the strength of the Witch, and her alarming tendency to turn people into frogs. Not to mention her appetite for frog legs.”
I might have grinned a little at that idea. Skeeter shuddered, but I’ve had to deal with a few people who would be better off deep-fried.
“The mountains of Finalor are such a place. I returned to the Western Wood, then used another spell from the Witch to travel unseen to the foothills of Finalor. There is a small town there, nestled up against the mountains along a river that brings runoff down from the melting snow high above it. The town is called Hannes, and that is where I hid for most of the next twenty years.”
“Not really explaining the whole sister thing yet,” I prodded.
“Don’t push, Robbie. It’s unseemly,” she scolded.
“Unseemly is kinda right in my wheelhouse,” I said. Skeeter kicked me, one bony foot thrusting out from under the blanket he had across his lap. “Fine,” I said. “I’ll keep quiet.”
“That’d be a first,” Skeeter said.
“I met a blacksmith there, and over time, we began to speak socially. I mourned the loss of your father, and my family, for I knew it was unlikely that I would be able to return to you. But with the passage of years, the pain of losing you lessened, and I began to see the blacksmith. After a number of years, we wed. Some years after that, a daughter was born to us. She was a beautiful child, and we raised her in that little town with no knowledge of her lineage, or of her mother’s travels to your world. I had put all that behind me.”
“Until Jason,” I said.
“Until Jason,” she agreed. “I don’t know how he managed the feat, but he sent a redcap to the village hunting me. It slaughtered my husband and brought me through a mushroom ring to the bonfire that Jason had planned for me.”
“Wait,” I said. “Jason knew who you were? What you were?”
“Not at all,” Mama said. “He had one of his sorcerers cast a spell to find me, and they located me in Faerie. I disguised myself immediately when the redcap arrived, and Jason had no idea that I was anything other than his human mother, hiding from him in Faerie.”
“Well, he was kinda right. You were his fairy mother, hiding from him there,” I said. “Sorry,” I added quickly, seeing the pain that flashed across her face. “I know it wasn’t by choice. But how much time had passed for you?”
“Time moves differently in Faerie than here, so while over twenty years had passed here, it had been over a century for me.”
I stared at her. “A century? You remember that in this world that a hundred years, right?”
“It is the same everywhere, Robbie. A century is one hundred years.”
“So, to you, it was over a hundred years ago the last time we saw each other?”
“One hundred fourteen years, eight months, and three days between the time I walked out the door of our home and the time you rescued me from Jason,” she replied. Her face was tight, like it was taking a huge effort to hold herself together, and now I was starting to understand why. Not only had she carried a torch for my dad for over a hundred years, she’d kept her memories of me and Jase for that long. All the anger kinda flooded out of me right then, and I realized how much she’d been hurting, and for how long.
“Wow,” I said in a small voice. It was all I could say.
“When you told me, in no uncertain terms, that you were not interested in seeing me again, I returned to Faerie, determined to put my life there back together, to finish raising my daughter as the brilliant, fierce, strong young woman she is, and to never again attempt to contact you.”
“So, what brought you here?” I asked. I held up a hand. “Don’t get me wrong, after a lot of thinking about it, I’m really glad you’re here. But I don’t understand why.”
“The Puck has taken my daughter, Robbie. When you encountered him last year and thwarted his games, he became angry with you. The woman he thought he loved turned out to be completely uninterested
in a life outside of the Courts and left him. He blames you for his pain, and when he met you, he could sense me as a part of you.”
“When you left, he came to the village and kidnapped your sister. He took my daughter and fled with her. Only you can help me get my daughter back. Only you can save your sister, Robbie.”
“Not only him, ma’am,” Amy said, leaning against the doorjamb. “Bubba doesn’t travel alone. He’s got friends.”
“Good friends,” Joe added from beside her.
“And family,” Skeeter said, holding out a fist to me.
I pounded fists with my best friend, nodded to Joe and Amy, and stood up. I held out a hand to Mama, pulling her to her feet. “Let’s go eat some breakfast, then go to Fairyland, beat the shit out of Puck, and save my sister.”
7
I pushed back from the table, a ton of turkey bacon and a three-egg omelet with pepper jack cheese and Texas Pete tucked safely away in my belly. “Okay, when do we leave?” I asked, looking at Mama.
“Leave for where?” she asked.
“Well, we gotta go to Fairyland to kick Puck’s ass and get back…what did you say my sister’s name was?” I asked.
“I didn’t. Her name is Nitalia. And how do you plan to get to Faerie? It’s not called Fairyland, by the way.”
“I know,” I said with a grin. “I’m screwing with you a little. I don’t know, I figured we’d go to that patch of woods you came out of back when you first got here.”
“That won’t work,” Mama said. “It’s a movie theatre now.”
“Oh. That sucks. Well, how did you get here?” Skeeter asked.
“I crossed over using a spell and cashing in the last of the favors I had built up with a pixie wizard over the years. The way I came to this world was a one-way trip, unfortunately.”
“Well, shit,” I said.
“How about the game?” Amy asked. We all turned to her. “You know, the game that sucked you into Faerie the first time?”
“Oh yeah,” Skeeter said. “That Pokémon rip-off that Puck made.”
“He took the app down and closed all the portals after I freed his girlfriend. We got him what he wanted, so he didn’t need to steal any more human children,” I said.
“No, now he has graduated to stealing Fae children,” Mama grumbled.
“I’ve heard of some folks in the hills of Tennessee that are descended from the Fae. Their magic is centered in their music. Maybe they can create a portal,” Joe chimed in from the sink where he was washing the breakfast dishes. Sometimes it’s real good to have somebody around whose job title includes “servant.” Even if it says “servant of God” and you ain’t anywhere close to holy, usually you can get them to pick up the place a little bit if they get bored. Idle hands and all that jazz.
“I know those folk,” Amy said, polishing off her orange juice. “They’re under constant DEMON surveillance. They have no connection to Faerie anymore and no idea how to make contact. They’ve been on this side of the veil for too long. They have magic, but they’re so many generations removed from Faerie that they don’t even have lore on crossing over.”
“You know a bunch about that bunch,” Skeeter said.
“I spent three months trekking around Appalachia researching them when I first joined DEMON,” Amy said. Her gig with the Department of Extra-dimensional, Mystical, and Occult Nuisances was the way I stayed out of jail a lot of the time, and every once in a while got to ride in a black helicopter. “They’re harmless and very insular. Even if they had the ability to cross over, the odds of them using their magic for an outsider are extremely low.”
“I might have an answer,” Joe said. “It won’t be easy to find him, and it will likely be even more difficult to convince him to render aid to a representative of the Church, but I would expect him to have some knowledge in this area.”
I cocked an eyebrow at Joe. “Who are we talking about, buddy?”
“His name is Roy McEvoy, and he used to be a liaison between the Church and a Hunter in New Orleans. He retired when he met someone and wanted to get married.”
“Why do I get the feeling that there’s a lot more you’re not telling us?” I asked.
“Because there’s a lot more I’m not telling you,” Joe said. “It might be better if we just went to see Roy instead of discussing it too much. Let it suffice to say that he used to be a priest, he isn’t anymore, and he has a few issues with the Church and her leadership.”
“Well, shit, Uncle Joe, who doesn’t have a few issues with the Church?” Skeeter asked.
“Most people haven’t been excommunicated,” Joe replied.
Amy let out a low whistle. The nuclear option of disobedience to the Church, excommunication was the kind of thing usually reserved for politicians, murderers, and fantasy writers. I didn’t know what a priest could do to get the axe, but if he could get us to Fairyland, it sounded like we were going to go meet an ex-priest.
“Well, if he’s our best option, I reckon he’s what we got,” I said. “Where is he?”
“He left Louisiana when he left the church. The last I heard, he had a place in the woods outside Shelbyville.”
“That’s a couple hours from here,” Skeeter said. “Let’s load up. We could be there by lunch.”
“Everybody grab your gear and meet here in half an hour,” I said. “Me, Amy, and Mama will ride in the truck. Skeeter, you and Joe take your car. Not the Beetle. The other car.”
“You want me to bring the Groover?” Skeeter asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “I think we’re gonna need the cargo room.”
Twenty-five minutes later, Skeeter rolls up my driveway in a jacked-up PT Cruiser tricked out like an old rat rod, complete with jet black paint and flames going down the side of it. It looked tough as hell, until Skeeter got close enough to hear and your ears started bleeding from the show tunes he was blasting from the radio.
Joe turned to me, fear in his eyes. “Come on, Bubba. You know I love my nephew, but three hours in a car with just him and the Broadway channel on XM is enough to kill a man. Please let me ride in the truck. I’ll ride in the back with the guns, just don’t make ride with the entire cast of Wicked. The last time I took a road trip with Skeeter, I knew every word to the RENT soundtrack within the first two hundred miles.”
“Coulda been worse,” I said. “He was on a Gilbert and Sullivan kick in high school. I still sometimes wake up in a cold sweat hearing Pirates of Penzance in my sleep.”
We piled into the cars and rolled north to Shelbyville, a little town surrounded by a lot of trees. A lot of trees. Joe directed Skeeter to a driveway almost invisible in a patch of woods to the west of town, and we turned off somewhere long past where civilization ended. The gravel track was no problem for my big pickup, but Skeeter’s little Cruiser bottomed out on the ruts more than once.
“Why did you tell him to bring that thing, Bubba?” Amy asked. “You know it’s not worth a damn in any kind of rough terrain. He could have driven my Suburban if you wanted me to ride with you to keep you on your best behavior.”
“I don’t think I need anyone to keep Robbie on his best behavior, sweetie,” Mama said from the back seat. “And I expect his desire for Skeeter to bring his own car has more to do with some customization that’s been done to the vehicle than to the seating capacity.”
Amy looked at me, and I shrugged. “She ain’t wrong. Skeeter’s got the Groover tricked out. There’s a serious computer hooked to a sat phone wired up as an internet tether in the back, and he’s lined the body panels with armor plate. All the glass is bulletproof, and those tires are run-flats. There’s a button for nitrous in the gear shift, and in a pinch, that little car can hit one-twenty in a straightaway. I didn’t know what we were going to run into here, so I wanted to make sure him and Mama were as safe as they could be when we went in.”
“While I appreciate the sentiment with regard to Skeeter, I don’t know why you’re worried about me,” Mama said. “I won’t be
staying with the car, and I can certainly take care of myself.”
“I know you think that, Mama, but we don’t know what we’re getting into here. I want to know that everybody with me can take care of themselves if I get hurt.”
“Are the rest of your companions impervious to harm from most non-magical means?” Mama asked. “Because I am. Remember, Robbie, I am not just your mother, and I never was. While I played the dutiful housewife to keep my secret safe from your father, I am still a Princess of the Fae, of the Royal House of Winter, and I am magic incarnate.”
I felt a chill through the air as her temper flared. The windows fogged up, and all of a sudden, I could see my breath in the cab of the truck. I looked at her in the rearview mirror, and all the soft edges of her face had melted away with the last vestiges of her illusion. She looked back at me with ice-blue eyes, pale skin, and black hair shot through with icy white.
“Well, then,” I said. “I reckon you’re coming with us.”
“Damn straight,” she muttered, and sank back into the seat.
“Just once I’d like to meet one of these shy, retiring women I hear tell of. I ain’t never known one my whole life. I don’t want to go out with her or anything, I just want to see her. Like Nessie, or a UFO.”
“Not Bigfoot?” Amy asked with a smirk.
“Hell no! I have seen more damn sasquatches, and more of those sasquatches, than I ever want to see in my life. I had anxiety about measuring up to that furry jackass for months.”
“Well, I for one am glad you got over that,” Amy said, giving me a naughty grin.
“Children,” Mama said in a warning tone. Dammit, now my monster hunts were starting to feel like a middle school dance, complete with chaperone. I needed to get her to Fairyland, and soon, so I could go back to pretending to be an adult.
Into the Mystic - A Bubba the Monster Hunter Novella Page 4