“Who is we, Bubba?” she purred into my ear. When did she get that close to me? I never even saw her move. And how come she was holding my shoulder holster? “What is this?” she asked, turning the pistol over in her hands.
“That’s Bertha,” I said. “She’s one badass Israeli fifty-caliber bitch, and if she decides to holler, it’s a bad day for everybody.” I puffed out my chest. That had to impress her, right? I mean, fifty caliber is a big…um…a big something, anyway.
“Well, we don’t want any bad days, do we, Bubba?” She breathed into my other ear, and all the hair on my arms stood up at once. That’s a lot of hair.
“No, I reckon we don’t want bad days.” I giggled when I said it. From somewhere deep in the back of my head, I heard a howl of righteous anger at the mere concept of me giggling, but it happened. God help us all, it happened.
“Good, then we’ll just send your badass Israeli bitch on her way, won’t we?” She flung Bertha and her shoulder holster off into the trees. Her other arm snaked around my waist, then stopped when she found the Judge. “What’s this, Bubba?”
Her voice was sad, kinda disappointed, and I felt just awful for making her feel bad. I didn’t want her to be disappointed, so I just reached around behind my back and flung that nasty old pistol off into the woods. Who needs a gun anyway? As long as I was with Vlanriel, everything would be fine, right?
“That’s good, Bubba, that’s very good. Whatever that thing was, it felt dirty. It felt dirty, and cold, and hurtful. We don’t need anything like that here, do we?”
“No, we don’t need nothing like that,” I agreed.
“Are you tired, Bubba?” I hadn’t been, not too bad, but as soon as she asked, I did feel a heaviness in my legs.
“Yeah, I kinda am.”
“You look tired. Why don’t you come over here and lie down?” She led me to the center of the ring of toadstools, to right where the little glowing ball floated, and gestured for me to lay down on the carpet of moss.
I looked at the orb of yellow light. “Hey,” I said to it, barely recognizing my own voice for the dreamy quality. “You ain’t a lantern. You ain’t Mama at all.”
“Mama?” Vlanriel asked, her voice a lot less dreamy and sweet all of a sudden. “You aren’t here alone?”
“Nah,” I said, waving a hand at the floating ball of light. “Mama and me came out into the woods so she could cast a spell to find my sister. I saw your little glowing buddy here and thought it was her. But it ain’t. Hey little buddy,” I said, reaching out to try and pet the thing, but my hand passed right through it. My fingers tingled, like when I put my tongue on a nine-volt battery, but I couldn’t pet the thing.
“Who is your mother, Bubba?” Vlanriel was real concerned about Mama all of a sudden, and when I turned to look at her, she wasn’t smiling at all.
“Well, she’s Mama,” I said. “You know, Princess Ygraine, daughter of Oberon and Queen Mab, so step-daughter of Titania, I reckon.”
“Are you saying that you…you are Titania’s grandson?” She floated back from me, and that was the first time I noticed how her feet never touched the ground. That explained how she was able to look right in my face. Most of the folks I’d run into in Fairyland were short, but Vlanriel was right there at my eye level. Except now she floated away and looked all worried.
“Well, I reckon I’m her step-grandson, if we wanted to get all technical. But I don’t think she likes me very much. Not as much as Mab does, anyhow.”
“M-m-Mab? The Queen of Winter?”
“Yeah, but I call her Granny. Only if she ain’t around to hear me though. I don’t think she likes it much.”
“You are the grandchild of both houses of the Fae?” She was flitting around the clearing now like a pinball on cocaine, and her little glowy ball was doing the same thing. I was starting to think they didn’t like Granny Mab or Oberon, but that was silly. Vlanriel was a nice person. I reckoned she liked everybody.
“We have to flee,” she said to the glow-ball.
“Where we going?” I asked. “I got a couple wagons back at the road with the rest of the gang. It’ll be kinda crowded, but I’m sure we can make room for you. And your little glow-buddy can just float along with us. Ain’t that right, Lightnin’? I’m gonna call you Lightnin’, on account of you look just like a firefly’s butt, and we call fireflies lightning bugs. But I don’t mean to say you look like a butt, that ain’t nice. I just mean that you light up just like a firefly’s butt does, so I oughta call you Lightnin’.”
“Shut up, you imbecile!” Vlanriel snapped, wheeling on me with her eyes aflame. She was a lot less pretty than she was a few minutes ago. “We are leaving. You are staying, right here in this mushroom ring, where you won’t be able to tell Mab or Titania that I’ve been hunting in the Summer Forest again. Neither one of them would like that.”
“No, they wouldn’t, Vlanriel. They banished you to the Lands Without Season many years ago. They would be very displeased to hear of your return.” I turned, and Mama stood just on the other side of the ring of toadstools. Her hands were glowing with amber light, and her hair kinda floated all around her head, yellow and red light crackling on the ends. She didn’t look happy to see Vlanriel.
“Hey Mama!” I waved and shouted. “This is my new friend Vlanriel, and her little buddy Lightnin’. We’re going on a trip, but I don’t know where.”
“No, Robbie, I don’t think so.” Mama waved her hand, and an orb of mixed green and amber light flew out from her fingers to smack into my face. Vlanriel flew to the center of the circle, but not before some of Mama’s magic splashed all over her.
As the magic exploded around me, everything changed. The clearing didn’t look beautiful anymore; it looked dead. All the trees were gnarled and twisted, and the ground was nothing but churned earth. The toadstools were black and green-speckled things, huge, horrible fungi that pulsed with a wicked green light. And Vlanriel? Well, let’s just say that she was what ugly witch stories sprang from, and the stories didn’t do her level of ugly justice.
I looked at her, then looked over at Mama standing outside the ring of toadstools. “My guns are all outside the circle, ain’t they?”
“Yes, they are, Robbie.”
“And you can’t do much more than blow up a glamour when you’re outside the circle and we’re inside, can you?”
“No, that is about the limit of my abilities.”
“Well then, I reckon we’re going old-school,” I said. I reached over my shoulder and drew Great-Grandpappy Beauregard’s sword from its scabbard with a steely hiss.
“Vlanriel,” I said, giving her one last chance to run like hell. “You can drop this circle right now, and I won’t chop you into sushi.”
“Or I can destroy Mab’s daughter, trap you in the mushroom ring for all time, and no one will ever learn of my transgressions.”
“Yeah, I figured you’d say something like that.” I put both hands on the hilt of my sword, and charged.
It was on.
Chapter 8
I ran at the hunched, twisted image of what seconds before was possibly the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen. Vlanriel dove to one side, and I slammed into the boundary of the circle at full speed. Rather than bursting through the magical barrier in a blaze of glory, like happened in the action movie in my head, I slammed into something that felt like a cross between a cinderblock wall and an electric fence. I smacked into the circle, and everything locked up. I twitched in some kind of super-sized St. Vitus Dance while the magic coursed through my body. I might have drooled just a tiny bit.
After several excruciating seconds, I forced enough strength into my arms to peel myself off the barrier and slump to the ground. Lightnin’, no longer looking like a firefly but in his full will-o’-the-wisp visage, leaned over me. “Did that hurt?” the disembodied head asked. “It really looked like it hurt.”
I struggled to my feet and glared at the floating skull, glowing with a sickly green light. He looked like a
cross between Ghost Rider and one of those fish you see pictures of at the bottom of the ocean. Lightnin’ was now just a head floating over an emaciated body wrapped in a grave shroud. I liked him a lot better when he looked like a firefly’s ass.
He reached out a hand to steady me, but Mama yelled, “Don’t let it touch you!”
I dodged to the left, not exactly smoothly, but just enough not to let the wisp get his fingers on me. “Why not?” I hollered.
“Wisps lure unsuspecting travelers deep into the woods and drain their life essence. If it touches you, it can siphon your life force!”
“Shit,” I muttered. “Like a vampire.”
“Without the biting, but yes.”
“I hate vampires,” I said, bringing my sword up. The tip wobbled thanks to the aftershocks running down all my muscles. The aftershocks of that circle felt a lot like the time I peed on an electric fence back in ninth grade. I had weird boners for a month after that, just popping up out of nowhere. Or maybe that was just from being fourteen. Hard to tell.
“I’m not a vampire, Bubba,” the wisp said, sliding forward. I couldn’t get a good handle on how it was moving. Its feet didn’t really touch the ground, and I started to wonder if its body was just for show. Everything I’d ever read about will-o’-the-wisps said they were just disembodied lights, but this one seemed real attached to his body. I slashed with my sword, and it ducked backward, just like a real boy. I advanced on the thing, slashing with the blade right around the creature’s middle.
“Come on, Bubba,” it whined, ducking and dodging and slip-sliding backward every time I took a shot. “I don’t want to hurt you. You’re my friend, remember? That’s why I brought you out here into this awesome wilderness, because that’s what friends do. They take friends to cool places.”
“So they can suck their life out of them and leave them stranded in a magic circle? I don’t think so. You can only run so far, Lightnin’. You’re stuck in here with me.”
“And with me,” Vlanriel snarled, coming at me from my left side. She would have buried her little dagger into my side if I hadn’t been watching out for her. But I used to play hide and seek with my brother Jason, who was a sneaky bastard even before he got turned into an evil werewolf and tried to take over the world. So Vlanriel didn’t have a single chance of sneaking up on me. I just stuck out my fist, and she obligingly ran her face into it. Then she fell down into a heap of ill-fitting, dirty rags with a bloodied nose.
With the hag out of the fray for a few seconds, I turned all my attention to Lightnin’. “What the hell are you doing with that chick, anyway? Can’t you get your fill of souls or whatever on your own?”
“I was banished to the Lands Without Season, trapped with no ready food supply. Titania and Mab conspired to starve me. When Vlanriel offered me the opportunity to come back here and feast, I took it.”
“How did you get back?” Mama asked from outside the circle. “A banishment decree is usually more difficult to circumvent, particularly if levied by both monarchs.”
“Let me live and I’ll tell you,” the wisp said, diving to the ground to avoid my blade.
“Deal,” Mama said.
“Hey!” I protested. “I’m the one doing the killing or not killing here. I get to decide if I’m going to perforate this assclown. And I’m still leaning toward perforating.” The assclown in question was backed up almost to the edge of the circle, its orb-head swinging from side to side as it looked for somewhere to run. I had it pretty well hemmed in and was just about ready to skewer me some lightning bug when Mama’s next words stopped me cold.
“Please, Robbie. I need him.”
Well, shit. Even as pissed as I still was at her, she was still my mama. I couldn’t very well just say no. But I didn’t want to say yes, either. “Fine. I won’t kill him until he gives us everything he knows. But if it’s bullshit, I’m going to split his nonexistent head with this sword and use his glowing blood to make flashlights.”
“I don’t have blood,” the orb said.
“I can make light any time, Bubba. We don’t need flashlights,” Mama chimed in.
“I was just making a poetic-type threat, like you’re supposed to do in a damn sword fight. I mean, shit, ain’t neither one of y’all seen A Knight’s Tale? It’s all about the patter. Chaucer taught us that!”
“What’s a Chaucer?” Lightnin’ asked.
“I was trapped in Faerie for twenty years, Robbie. I missed a lot. Apparently, A Knight’s Tale was on the list.”
Well, double shit. I sheathed my blade. “Well, we gotta put that shit on the ‘Must Watch’ list. We can make it a whole family thing. Amy loves that movie.” Heh heh. Amy hates that movie, but it’ll be hilarious anyway.
“Does this mean you aren’t going to kill me?” the wisp asked.
“As long as your information doesn’t suck, and you don’t attack me, I won’t kill you,” I said.
“Good,” the wisp replied. “We were able to get back into the Summerlands with—” The orb exploded, showering me with yellow luminescent glitter. It reminded me of the time I got drunk on cheap tequila and ended up at Glow Jell-O Wrestling Night at Boob-a-palooza in Tampa. That shit took weeks to wear off. I think parts of my beard still glow in the dark.
“Silence is golden,” Vlanriel said, her hands pulsing with an ominous red light.
“Well, now everything is golden, since you just painted the inside of the circle with will-o’-the-wisp guts!” I hollered, trying to wipe Lightnin’ out of my eyes.
“Don’t worry, half-breed. Soon everything will be red. That’s the color you humans bleed, isn’t it?” She let fly a bolt of crimson light, and I dove to one side as it scorched the earth I stood on. I belly-flopped onto the turf, skidding a little and getting grass buried in places I really didn’t want grass.
“Ow, shit!” I hollered, scrambling to my feet and drawing my sword.
Vlanriel didn’t say a word, just flung another bolt of red lightning at me almost before I had my blade out. But then something weird happened. Yeah, something weirder than me standing in the middle of a mushroom ring in Fairyland fighting a wicked witch while covered in will-o’-the-wisp guts. My bar for “weird” is pretty high, after all.
As the bolt of power streaked right toward Bubba Jr., I swung Great-Grandpappy Beauregard’s sword down to block, hoping to deflect the power enough to keep me from getting completely nut-cut by the witch’s magic. But it didn’t deflect anything; it absorbed it. The blade glowed crimson for a second, I felt the hilt get warm, and then it was just like nothing ever happened.
I’m not sure who was the most surprised between Vlanriel, me, and Mama, but I was sure as hell the one best suited to take advantage of it. Vlanriel stared down at her fingers like they’d malfunctioned or something, and I let out my very best barbaric yawp and charged her. This time I completely intended to run smack into the boundary of her magical circle, but I wanted to have her between me and it when I did.
So I buried my shoulder in her gut, right under the ribs, and I just kept on trucking. I lifted up a hair, and the psychotic witch’s feet popped up off the ground. Her added weight was less than carrying a passed-out Skeeter, and I’ve done that more times than I can count. I picked up speed, hitting maximum Bubba velocity just before I ran into the circle’s walls, thinking I’d smear her all over the magical barricade like a roach on a bathroom tile.
Except it didn’t work anything like that. When I rammed Vlanriel into the circle, it popped out of existence without so much as a token resistance. One second it was there, glowing faintly in my peripheral vision, then the next second, it blew up like a piece of Bubble Yum stretched past its outer limits. I stomped on a couple of the toadstools as I went over but didn’t break stride. I veered to the left a little and drew a bead on my new target. Half a dozen steps later, I rammed the wicked witch’s spine into the trunk of a giant oak tree so hard I knocked down a shitload of leaves, three dozen acorns, and one pissed-off squirrel
.
Vlanriel’s ribcage made noises like a bowl of Rice Krispies, and she screamed like a Clemson sorority girl finding out the keg was empty. My head slammed into the trunk of the tree, too, and I flopped back onto the turf, my bell well and truly rung. I thought for a second about getting up and trying to finish the fight, but I rolled over and puked instead. Concussions suck.
I dragged my dizzy ass over to lean up against another tree, and through the stars and tweety birds filling my vision, I saw Mama coming across the clearing like a lion after a wounded gazelle. Her hands glowed yellow, and the same golden light streaked from her eyes. Her strides were measured and slow, and she never took her eyes off the fallen Vlanriel. The broken witch writhed on the carpet of moss, trying to drag herself into the cover of the forest, but Mama would not be denied.
My mother held out one hand, wiggled her fingers at the fleeing witch. A vine split the moss and twined itself around Vlanriel’s foot, holding her fast. When the witch rolled over to try and fight her way free, Mama gestured again, and another vine popped out of the ground and held her other leg fast. “Don’t leave so soon, Vlanriel. We’re just getting started.” We might have been in the Summer Court, but Mama’s voice sure had one hell of a chill to it.
Vlanriel looked up at Mama’s face, and she started to scream, then cry, then beg, alternating between English and two or three other languages that I didn’t recognize. Mama just scowled at her and brought her other hand up. A few curt gestures, and vines snaked out of the ground and pulled the shrieking witch down flat on her back. Vlanriel struggled, but no amount of thrashing would free her from the plants Mama called to do her bidding. A few more steps, and Mama stood over the fallen woman. I couldn’t see her face anymore, but her hair was floating in the air like in the movies when somebody does a shit-ton of magic, and there were gold and green and orange sparks flitting around her head. Whatever Mama had planned for her fallen foe, it wasn’t going to be nice.
“Vlanriel, witch of the bogs, you were banished to the Lands Without Season, never to return to the Winter or Summer Courts. As a child of both Courts, I hereby find you guilty of breaking your banishment. There is only one punishment for this crime, not to mention the crime of attempting to harm one of royal blood. For those crimes, I sentence you to death.”
Hot Blooded - A Bubba the Monster Hunter Novella Page 5