“I get the internet, human. I read The Bloggess. I’m cultured. Unlike some people.” I was pretty sure I wanted to punch him in the nuts again, but it seemed like a poor choice.
“That’s neither here nor there,” Amy said. “What do you mean, Roy and his wife destroyed the portal?”
“The last time they passed from Faerie into this world, they were being pursued. I was part of that pursuit, and as they entered this world, they triggered a spell on the tree that closed the portal and destroyed any link between this place and Faerie, cutting off pursuit and trapping me here, away from my family and all that I have known.”
“Why were you chasing them?” I asked.
“Excuse me?”
“You said you were part of the pursuit, so why were you chasing them? If you’re such an injured party here, why were you chasing Roy and Tanara in the first place?” I holstered my pistol and crossed my arms in front of my chest. He seemed like he didn’t want to throw down, and I felt like even if he did, the pile of us could take him, so the odds of me having to shoot him in the junk were pretty low.
“Roy stole something from my father. I was trying to get it back.”
“What did he steal?” Skeeter asked. I looked over at him and could almost see the glint of fairy gold in my best friend’s eyes. He was a huge fantasy literature nerd, so in his head there was no chance that Roy didn’t have a magic ring tucked away somewhere, or at least a goose that shit gold bricks or something like that.
“Pumpkin seeds,” the ogre said.
“What?” Skeeter asked, his voice going up a full octave from his normal irritating high-pitched tone. “You mean, like magical fairy pumpkin seeds that grow pumpkin stalks up into the clouds where giants have gold-pooping geese or something like that, right?”
The ogre looked at him, and for somebody with a face like the University of Georgia mascot, only with a worse underbite, he managed to convey a whole lot of “you’re a dumbass” with one look. “No. They are just pumpkin seeds. They are of Faerie, so they would grow larger than normal in mundane soil, at least for one generation.”
“If all they stole were pumpkin seeds, why even chase them?” Joe asked. “The last time I checked, seeds were something pumpkins produced in abundance.” He wasn’t wrong, either. We all got drunk one Halloween carving pumpkins on my back deck and throwing the seeds over the rail down the side of the mountain. The next time I turned around, the hillside below my house was full of damn wild pumpkins.
“My father’s pumpkins were widely regarded as the best-tasting in all of the Summer Court. He held the seeds of the best fruit from each harvest back for planting the next season. Those are the seeds that Roy and Tanara stole.”
“Why?” Amy asked.
“Because were gonna use them to make a new portal back to Faerie,” came a grouchy voice from the woods. “And we would have had it, too.”
“If it hadn’t been for you meddling kids,” Me, Skeeter, and Joe all said in unison as Roy stepped into the clearing holding a shotgun, followed by Tanara carrying a lever-action .30-.30 Winchester.
11
“Put down your weapons,” Roy said. “And Greg, go get them damn seeds.” He and Tanara spread out so that one shot from my Judge couldn’t take them both out, not that I thought too seriously about that. Much. Okay, maybe for a few seconds, but not more than ten.
“What the hell are you doing, Roy?” Joe asked, stepping forward. Roy and his wife both trained their weapons on him, and Joe froze in place. I could feel my face getting a little red. I really don’t like people pointing guns at my friends. Especially Joe, who’s one of the kindest people who’s ever been willing to put up with me.
“You need to put those peashooters down before somebody gets hurt. Somebody that looks a lot like you,” I said, my voice a low growl.
“You think I’m scared of you and your big pistol, boy? I know better. I’ll cut you in half with a load of double-ought buck before you can say boo. Then me and Tanny will take care of your friends and this dumb gray bastard, and I’ll finally get my hands on them seeds.”
“Seriously?” Amy asked, stepping forward a little. “This is about pumpkin seeds? What the ever-loving hell is so special about these seeds?”
“The pumpkins are really big,” Greg said. “That’s all.”
“That ain’t all, you jackass,” Roy almost yelled at the ogre. “Those seeds don’t just make big-ass pumpkins, although they do that, too. They take root here and in Faerie at the same time.”
“So they make magical big-ass pumpkins. Big deal,” I said, taking a step forward to make a solid line beside Amy and Joe, blocking Skeeter from the gun-toting redneck’s view. I didn’t know what he was going to do, but I figured if Joe and Amy both wanted him to be able to do it without being seen, it was probably a good idea.
“It ain’t just the pumpkins, you stupid hick,” Roy said, his shotgun pointing at the ground as he smacked himself in the forehead at my stupidity. “The vines can be used to weave a doorway to Faerie along the root system of the pumpkins. As long as the fruits exist in both realms at the same time, we can use them to travel between this pit of idiocy and Faerie whenever we choose.”
“Don’t call my boy stupid, human,” Mama said, taking a step toward him. Roy and Tanara both leveled their guns at her, and I saw a little smile flicker across her face.
“Now!” she yelled, and clapped her hands over her ears. I caught on right away, and I dropped to one knee, closing my eyes tight and covering my ears. Amy and Joe did the same thing as Skeeter tossed a flash-bang right in front of Roy and his fairy wife.
The stun grenade went off with a thunderous boom and a flash of light that made spots in my vision through closed eyelids. I heard a second boom go off right behind it and opened my eyes to see Roy spinning around, his shotgun waving wildly through the air, smoke pouring out of the barrel. I stood up and yanked the gun out of his hands, then clubbed him to the ground with a big right cross.
I turned to Tanara, but she was already on the ground at Amy’s feet, her gun lying in the dirt beside her and blood streaming from between her fingertips as she clutched her face.
“By dose!” she said, her speech distorted by her fingers and her broken nose. “Doo bitch, too boke by dose!”
“Shut up, Tanny,” Mama said, stepping forward. Her shirt had a bunch of new holes in it, and she looked pissed. “I liked this shirt, and your jackass husband had to go shoot it. Now quit your sniveling and be glad we’re letting you keep breathing.”
“I haven’t decided on that yet,” I said, shaking my head to cut the ringing in my ears a little. “I just got back on speaking terms with my mother, and I don’t take kindly to assholes shooting her. Now what about this portal you sent us here to find? Is that all bullshit?”
Roy looked like he was about to pee himself, and I’m not completely sure he could hear everything I was saying, so I prodded him in the side, not exactly gently, with one foot and yelled, “WHERE’S THE PORTAL, DICKHEAD?”
“WHAT?” he hollered back.
“POR-TAL?”
“Oh,” he looked even more scared. “I mighta lied.” He was still talking loud, but he wasn’t yelling anymore at least.
“What are you saying, asshole?” I poked him in the side with my foot again, if we’re being real generous with the definition of “poke.” He rolled around for a second or two, but stopped and waved his hands to stop me when I drew back for another kick.
“There’s no portal here! Just don’t kick me again, dammit!”
“Sonofabitch!” I turned and stomped off to keep myself from putting my foot through Roy’s lying-ass face.
Joe knelt next to the man and said, “What are you saying, Roy?”
“The ogre’s telling you the truth. We closed the portal behind us when we came through. He squeezed through just before it shut, and we ain’t been able to open it since. Tanny was hell-bent on her old nurse delivering her baby, so we had to get them seeds,
get them planted, and get the portal set up before we could get to the business of procreating,” Roy said.
I stopped pacing as the pieces all fell into place like a Tetris game. I turned around and looked at Roy, knowing full well my eyes were big as damn dinner plates. “You mean this whole thing was on account of you wanting to get laid?”
He didn’t speak for a second, then he looked over at Tanara, then back at me, and said, “Well, can you blame me?”
I thought for a second, took a look at Tanara, or at least as much of her as I could see since she still had both hands clapped over her face and a little bit of blood on her chin. She was a damn good-looking woman, what I would typically say was way out of Roy’s league, him being a skinny bandy-legged dude of around fifty, and her looking like a twenty-something supermodel. But then I glanced over at Amy’s smoking hot body and realized that there truly is absolutely no accounting for taste.
“Nah, I reckon I can’t blame you on that one, son,” I said. “But it don’t forgive you trying to rob us or you shooting my mama. I’m still pissed about that one.”
“Well, what are we gonna do?” Skeeter asked. “We still need to get through to Faerie, and now we’ve wasted a whole day on this asshole’s lies.”
“He ain’t wrong. I reckon the best thing for us to do is get out of here and head to Chattanooga, unless that was all bullshit, too.” I looked down at Roy and used my pistol to make it real clear how happy I was going to be if he was lying about the Ruby Falls portal.
“There is a portal in Chattanooga,” Greg said. “It is reportedly somewhere in the caves at Ruby Falls.”
“Sounds good,” I said. “Let’s go.” I turned to go, then thought better of it. I picked up Roy and Tanara’s guns and handed them to the ogre. “I reckon you can do something with these?”
He grinned a husky grin and nodded. “Indeed I can.” The jolly gray giant put one hand on the end of the barrel of each gun, one hand on the stock, and flexed his shoulders. The guns twisted together with a loud screeeeech, and in a few seconds, Greg was holding a nice steel pretzel with engraved wooden stocks. He dropped the mangled guns in the dirt at Roy’s feet and snarled down at the man.
“Stay out of my woods, and stay away from my pumpkin seeds,” the ogre said. “I have resigned myself to never seeing my family again, but if you continue to attempt to use my father’s legacy for your personal gains, I will not even shed a tear over your graves as I dig them.”
Roy looked scared, but Tanara just looked pissed. I wasn’t sure what was up with her running from Fairyland, but I didn’t believe she was just gonna live and let live with Greg after a stern talking-to.
I sighed. “I can’t believe I’m saying this…”
“Oh, tell me you ain’t gonna say what I think you’re gonna say,” Skeeter said.
“I completely agree,” Joe said quickly. “Anything else would be unacceptable.”
“What are you talking about?” Greg asked.
“You should come to Chattanooga with us,” I said. “We gotta get to Fairyland anyway, and it sounds like you don’t really want to stick around here.”
“Not to mention that we don’t trust these two assclowns not to keep bothering you for your seed,” Amy said.
I laughed out loud. I didn’t even try to hold it back. She glared at me. “Sorry, but that one caught me as funny.”
“We’ll see how funny it is when you room with the ogre tonight,” she shot back. I closed my mouth with a snap.
“Anyway,” I said, turning back to Greg. “For all those reasons, and the fact that we might need a little more muscle than we have with us right now, if you want to come with us to find this cave portal and go back home, I reckon we could make room in the truck for you. In the back, I mean. There ain’t no way you’re fitting inside.” He was damn near eight feet tall, and even with a full-size truck, I barely fit in it. An ogre was just stretching Ford engineering a little bit too far.
Greg scrunched up his face like he was thinking real hard, then finally, he nodded his head. “I will accompany you to the portal in the caves. As much as I dislike caverns, it is the best chance I have at returning home. It will also keep my father’s seeds from falling into the hands of thieves such as these.” He glared at Roy and Tanara, who both scooted backward a little on their butts in the dirt.
“It’s settled, then,” I said. “Let’s get marching back to Roy’s house, then we can get on the road to Chattanooga.” I turned and started packing up camp.
“What about these two?” Joe asked, standing over Roy. “We can’t take them with us, but I don’t feel right just leaving them out here with no consequences for their actions.”
“Kill ‘em,” I said. “I don’t care what you do with ‘em.” I walked off and started loading my pack, leaving a couple of shit-scared asshats sitting in the dirt with my family and best friends, who would no more likely kill two unarmed people than I would buy Duran Duran’s Greatest Hits album. About fifteen seconds later, I saw Roy and Tanara haul ass through our campsite back toward their house like their asses were on fire.
Everybody else came back to the camp and started packing their shit. Mama looked over at me. “That wasn’t very nice, Robbie.”
“I didn’t mean to be nice, Mama. I meant to scare the shit out of them. Did it work?”
“It did, indeed,” she replied. “We should leave as soon as Greg returns. It will take us several hours to hike back to Roy’s house, and there is no telling what he will have done to our vehicles by then.”
“I’m pretty sure he won’t do anything to our cars, especially since he thinks Bubba might kill him and eat him if he does,” Skeeter said.
“Please do not try to eat Roy,” Greg said, stepping out of the woods with a small pack over one shoulder. “Human is disgusting enough when fresh, and I am certain that any dish made with Roy would be starting from rotted stock.”
“Good to know,” I said. “Don’t eat rotten humans. Words to live by. Let’s get you back to Fairyland before I have to ask why you know this.”
12
As predicted, our vehicles were untouched when we got back to them. In the case of my truck, I would believe it was fear. In the case of Skeeter’s Groover, it might also have something to do with the high-voltage car alarm he wired to it. Anybody touching his wheels without his permission was in for a nasty, nasty shock.
“Let’s roll,” I said, opening the back door of the truck and throwing my pack inside.
“Slow down, Bubba,” Amy said. “I’ve got to use the bathroom, and we might take advantage of Roy’s absence to get a quick shower in. Chattanooga’s only a couple hours away; we can get there before they close with no problem.”
“She’s got a point,” Mama said. “Bad enough we wasted a day and night while Nitalia is still trapped in Faerie, but I could live without riding in an enclosed space with ripe Hunter for several hours.”
“Yeah, I reckon I’m probably a little ripe. But you don’t think Roy left his door unlocked, do you?” I asked.
“He lied to us, ambushed us, and probably would have killed us. I don’t really care if his door is locked or not,” Amy said. She drew her pistol and shot out the deadbolt in Roy’s door, then planted a kick right above the knob. The doorjamb splintered, and she stepped across the threshold as we watched. “Dibs on the shower!” she called over her shoulder.
“You know there ain’t gonna be a drop of hot water after that, right?” I asked.
“I’m made of magic,” Mama said. “I can heat my own water.”
I grumbled, resigning myself to a cold shower and a long car ride with a wet ponytail. I walked around to the back of the truck and dropped the tailgate, sitting down and motioning Greg over to sit next to me. The shocks on the truck protested a little at having both me and an ogre all on one axle, but I didn’t listen. I knew from experience that DEMON could reimburse me for trucks I destroyed in the line of duty, even if the Church had gotten a little stingy with the
ir vehicle allowances.
“So, you’re raring to get back to Fairyland?” I asked.
“Yes, I am very much desiring to return home,” the ogre said.
“You got a lady ogre back there you wanting to get back to?”
He blushed a little bit. The big gray bastard actually turned a little bit pink around the edges. “Yes, I do have an ogress I am very fond of and would very much like to see again.”
“What’s her name?”
“It is largely unpronounceable to humans, but you would probably call her Kate.”
“That’s a good name.” We sat there in silence for a few minutes, then Joe came over.
“How’s it going, Bubba?” he asked.
“I’m making it. How about you?” I replied.
“I’m fine. But I’m not the one dealing with finding out that his long-lost mother isn’t just back in the picture, but she’s also a fairy princess. That’s a lot to process at one time.”
“That’s true,” I allowed. “But it don’t really matter how much it is to process, it ain’t on the list of stuff I can deal with right now.”
“So you’re just going to ignore it, pretend it’s not really a thing?” Joe asked. “I can’t think that’s healthy, Bubba.”
“Is it more or less healthy than ignoring the fact that I’ve sworn a vow of celibacy and still reconnected with an old girlfriend on a case and now have to re-evaluate the last couple decades of my life?” I fired back. Joe didn’t say a word, just turned around and walked off to sit on the porch steps next to Skeeter.
“You have sworn an oath of celibacy?” Greg asked. “But you and the blonde woman seem very close.”
“Not me, dude,” I said. “I’ve sworn a lot in my life, and even sworn a couple oaths, but none of them involved celibacy. No, I was talking like I was Joe, on account of he just did all that.”
Into the Mystic - A Bubba the Monster Hunter Novella Page 7