“Ow!” he yelled, hopping to his feet. I was on him as soon as he was upright, pounding him with everything I had. I laid in heavy punches on his chest, stomach, and face, but he didn’t go down. He didn’t try to fight back, either, just staggered back more and more with a puzzled look on his face. After eight or ten of my best shots still didn’t knock him down again, he reached up and slapped me with the back of his hand.
The little bastard just flicked his hand at me like a normal person would swat at a fly, and when he tagged me on the cheek, I thought my orbital socket might explode. It felt like getting hit in the face with a twenty-pound carp, and you really don’t want to know what that feels like. I spun around and dropped to one knee, but didn’t go completely down. Then I came back up and swung into him with everything I had, coming up from the ground with an uppercut that should have turned his jaw into shards of broken glass.
He grunted and took a step back. “Those are good gloves. That actually hurt. But this is becoming boring.” He punched me in the chest, and I saw stars. I didn’t just see stars, I saw the entire end sequence of 2001: A Space Odyssey, complete with turtles all the way down. This time I went down, all the air gone from my lungs and maybe with a cracked sternum to boot.
“That’s better,” Taryllan said, walking forward to stand by my head. “I like you better down there. I think you should stay down permanently.” He raised one foot to smear my head across the floor like joint compound but fell back on his ass when a blond missile slammed into his chest in a tackle that would make Reggie White come back from the grave to applaud.
Apparently, when he focused his time on kicking my ass, he lost his hold on Amy. And being the badass that she is, when she saw him about to rearrange the glory that is my face, she took him down with extreme prejudice. They went tumbling ass over teakettle all the way across the floor while I rolled over and struggled to my feet. I found my breath after a few seconds and probed my chest with a tentative finger. Nothing seemed broken, but it was going to be a couple weeks before I was back in any kind of shape to do the breast stroke. I got to my feet, shrugging out of my caestae and casting them aside. Not like they did any damage to the little bastard, anyway. I was almost upright, leaning on a chair to support myself, when the crack of breaking bone rang through the room, and I heard Amy scream in pain.
I spun around to see her writhing on the ground, clutching her shoulder. Her left arm hung limp against her side, and she clutched it with her right. Her face contorted with agony, and I saw nothing but red as I drew Great-Grandpappy Beauregard’s sword and charged the son of a bitch that hurt my fiancée. As I ran at him, sword raised over my head, he looked at me and smiled. The scrawny bastard smiled at me while Amy lay there in pain.
“Well, then. Let’s end this.” He was surrounded by a glowing aura of red light that flared brighter and brighter until it blinded me, and when it faded, a red dragon the size of a bus with a head like a VW Beetle stood before me. “How do you feel now, human?” the dragon said, its voice loud enough to make the plates on the table rattle.
“I feel like turning your hide into a new pair of boots, asshole,” I said, sprinting the last twenty feet to him. I was now officially fighting a dragon in a cave in Fairyland with a magical sword. It was like a bad game of Dungeons & Dragons, but if I died, I wouldn’t be able to roll up a new Bubba.
Chapter 14
So there I stood, sword in hand, in front of a no-shit dragon. The thing was big enough to snap me up in one bite like Jonah, then belch me out and flash-fry my ass before I hit the ground. Amy lay on the ground with either a broken collarbone, dislocated arm, or maybe something even worse. I couldn’t even take the time to check on her because of the whole getting eaten by a dragon thing. Taryllan, now in his true form of Xythigax, looked down at me from his place near the roof of the cave, and if I knew anything about dragon facial expressions, he smiled at me.
So, new thing to note—dragons are assholes.
The asshole dragon in question lifted up one giant clawed foot and swiped at me. It wasn’t much of an attempt, just a lazy slash through the air at about head height. I don’t think he actually wanted to hit me; I think he just wanted me to get a look at the length of his claws. Well, I got a good look as I ducked under them. His foot had three front claws and one on the back and they were all longer than my hand. It would only take one shot to open me up from my navel to nostrils. I just had to make sure he didn’t get that shot.
“Shield,” Amy croaked from behind me.
I didn’t turn around to look at her. “Yeah, babe. I’m gonna shield you from this assclown as long as I can. But after he guts me, you’re probably on your own.”
“No, you idiot, grab my shield!”
This time, I turned around, and Amy slid the shield Oberon gave her across the floor to me. She looked a little better, some of the color back in her face and her eyes clear. She still wasn’t moving her left arm, but she was up on one knee now. I picked up the shield, remembering what Obie said about it protecting her from dragon breath. I saw Amy’s eyes go wide and turned back to see Xythigax rear his head back, then thrust it forward in my direction. A gout of flame bigger around than my thigh shot toward me, and I brought the shield up just in the nick of time.
I don’t know what I expected from Oberon’s gift, but it performed past any expectations, especially for a gift given by my asshole grandfather who just learned I was his blood relation a few days before. But whatever his other flaws, the shield he bestowed upon my girl saved my bacon. Or really, it saved me from becoming bacon. I held the shield up right in the stream of fire, and it just disappeared. No heat, no little tendrils of flame licking over the edges to set my beard on fire, nothing. The fire was just gone.
Xythigax looked down at me, its eyes going wide. “Well, well, well,” it said, its voice still perfectly understandable despite the redesigned face and jaw. “It seems my prey has a few advantages it didn’t tell me about. Why did Oberon gift you with protection, when the rest of his hunters he merely sent in here to be slaughtered?”
“Maybe the rest of the hunters didn’t have near my talents,” I said, moving sideways to put myself, and the shield, between the dragon and Amy. She was way more mobile, now all the way up to standing, but she still didn’t look like she had enough in the tank to dodge fireballs.
“No, that can’t be it,” Xythigax said without a second thought. I’ll admit, I was a little pissed. I mean, I might not be some kind of faerie knight or magical critter, but I do all right for myself. I didn’t have long to be offended, as the dragon refocused on me and shot out a string of a dozen little fireballs, no bigger than a volleyball. But they came fast, and they came at me high, low, and in between, so I had to duck, hop, and eventually crouch behind my shield to keep from getting roasted. When I dropped to one knee, Xythigax switched to a steady stream of flame, much longer and much wider this time. He poured on the flame for almost a solid minute, and by the time he had to stop to breathe, the shield’s metal was glowing red from the heat. It still didn’t pass any heat through to me, but it definitely didn’t dissipate as much heat as the first time.
I ran to the side, thinking frantically. How do you kill a dragon? I didn’t have a bow and arrow, and after shrugging off four rounds from Bertha, I didn’t think I was gonna be shooting Smaug like the end of The Hobbit any time soon. I’ve played my fair share of video games, but almost always with Skeeter, so whenever we get to boss fights, I just do what he tells me to while he figures this kind of crap out. I mean, I guess it doesn’t get any more “monster” than a dragon, but this thing was a couple light years outside of my wheelhouse. I skidded to a halt as Xythigax slammed a huge foot down in front of me, then I turned just in time to see its huge head swooping down on me. I flashed back to that damn Dragon’s Lair video game from when I was a kid and remembered getting burned to a crisp more times than I could count. I slashed out blindly with Great-Grandpappy’s sword and was stunned to feel it hit fl
esh and, after a second’s resistance, cut right through it.
Xythigax was shocked, too, by the howl that came from his mouth. I stared at the blade, red dragon’s blood hissing steam from the tip of the dark gray steel. “Holy shit, you can bleed?”
“What blade is that?” Xythigax said. “I have not seen it, and I know all the named blades of Faerie.”
“Named blade? You mean like Sting?” This fight was getting more Tolkien by the minute. Next thing I knew, this scaly bastard was gonna ask me what was in my pockets. “You want to know this sword’s name?” I flung Amy’s shield to one side and gripped the hilt of Great-Grandpappy’s sword with both hands. “This is Beauregard, and it’s been in my family for more than a hundred years. And Beauregard here is gonna whoop your lizard ass!”
I sprinted toward the dragon, running like I was back at UGA chasing quarterbacks. He swiped at me with a clawed foot, but I met his stroke with the edge of my sword, and one fist-sized claw fell to the ground. Xythigax jerked his paw back, but I was on him now. I ran to the other leg, and instead of slashing at it, trying to bring him down, I just ran up his front leg, digging in with my sword any time my feet slipped. I got all the way up to his knee joint, then I planted my feet and jumped forward for all I was worth. I brought the sword down just behind his foreleg, stabbing the three feet of steel into his armored hide all the way up to the cross guard.
The dragon shrieked and thrashed his head, spewing fire all around the cave. I spared a fleeting thought for Amy, hoping she had time to get under a table or something, then it took all I had just to hang on. I sawed back and forth on the dragon’s torso, right behind his shoulder, digging for where I hoped the heart was pumping away. He thrashed, jumped, and finally just flopped down on that side in an attempt to squish me like some stinging insect. That got me to let go, and I hit the stone floor hard and rolled away from the screaming dragon, who learned the hard way that when you put your whole weight on the thing that’s stabbing you, all it does is drive it farther into you.
But it wasn’t dead. It was hurt, but alive, and I didn’t have a sword anymore. So when the dragon struggled to his feet, just the last couple of inches of Great-Grandpappy’s sword protruding from its side, I stood there bristling with weapons, but unarmed. I had Bertha, but she wouldn’t pierce his thick hide. I had a pair of silver-edged kukri, but they couldn’t cut dragon scales. I had my Judge revolver, but a .45 long cartridge was no good against a lizard the size of an airplane. In essence, I was back where I started: staring up at a pissed-off dragon with nothing between me and certain death but my good looks and charm.
I was screwed. Again.
“You hurt me, human. That hasn’t happened in centuries.”
“It don’t have to happen again. You just let me pull my sword out of your belly there, and I bet you’ll bleed out pretty quick. Then nobody needs to get hurt anymore.” Somehow my voice was steady. I don’t have any idea how. I’d been in worse spots and come out of them somehow, but I had no damn idea how I was getting out of this one.
“Or I could smear your brains across my floor and use your carcass to staunch my bleeding. I think I prefer that solution.” He reared his head back again, and I closed my eyes, thinking I’d probably drank my last beer, cleaned my last fish, and kissed Amy for the last time. Well, at least I’ll die with her knowing how I feel.
“Bubba!” My eyes snapped open, and I turned to see Amy’s shield flying at my face. I snatched it out of the air and dropped to one knee. I got the enchanted disk up just in time to block most of the flaming breath, although my eyebrows definitely got a good singe to them. Xythigax poured it on, hotter and wider than either of the other attacks. The shield started to heat up after about a minute, and soon I could feel the hairs on my arm start to singe.
I drew Bertha and reached around the shield, emptying the last few rounds in the general direction of its face. I knew they wouldn’t do any good, but if I could distract it for a second, maybe I could get Amy and me back down the corridor and get a few seconds to rest. The bullets had no effect, and my sleeve started to smoke as the shield’s magic finally gave up the ghost. The whole disk warped under the heat, and it started to fold over at the edges. I closed my eyes against the stinging smoke, then snapped them open again at a scream from behind me.
“Screw you, Xythigax! You leave my fiancé alone, you cheap Godzilla knockoff!” I looked to Amy and saw her standing with Joe’s spear in her hand. She grimaced with every step, but she ran forward, planted her feet, and flung that magic spear right into the stream of fire. I watched the tip glow red, then white, then the spear flew straight into the dragon’s mouth like a damn magical Sidewinder missile.
The fire cut off in an instant as the dragon shook its head and fought to dislodge the spear from its mouth. I flung the warped disk of metal that used to be a shield aside and shot Amy a grateful glance. The dragon still struggled with the spear, now rolling onto its side to try and reach the haft with its forelegs. That was the opening I needed because it wasn’t looking at me for a few seconds. I patted out my smoldering left arm as I ran back to the dragon and dashed up its side to the wound I’d made in its shoulder. I shoved my hands down into the hole and grabbed Great-Grandpappy’s sword, pulling it free of the dragon’s side with a crimson squelch.
At the same time I got the sword out of its side, Xythigax finally dislodged the spear from the roof of its mouth and turned to face me. I was still standing on its broad side, with nothing to hold me on if it stood up. But instead of standing up and dumping me to the floor, the pain-addled beast snapped at me with its huge jaws. That was all the mistake I needed. I sidestepped the giant head, reversed grip on my sword, and jabbed the newly-named Beauregard The Enchanted Blade right into the dragon’s dinner plate-sized left eye.
I leaned in, driving the blade through the monster’s amber eye and into its brain. The last thing Xythigax the dragon ever did was turn its head skyward and belch out one last blast of fire. Then it convulsed one time, snatching the sword from my hands, and died. I fell to my knees in the dragon’s death throes, then just went all the way down to my butt and slid off the huge beast’s side to the ground.
I made it all the way to where Amy sat on the floor holding her arm before my legs gave out. I plopped down right beside her. “We just killed a dragon,” I said.
“Yeah.”
“We ain’t dead.”
“No. Being dead probably wouldn’t hurt this bad.”
“Probably not,” I agreed.
“Now what?”
“I reckon we get my sword, cut off its head, and go back to get Mama to heal you up. Then we find Oberon and get him to give us my sister.”
“Well, there’s only one problem with that,” came a familiar voice from behind us.
I turned around to see Oberon standing in the cave, fresh as a daisy because he hadn’t just fought a damn dragon. “What’s the problem, Oberon? We killed the dragon. Now hold up your end of the deal and give me Nitalia.”
“That’s the crux of the problem. I don’t have her,” Oberon said. “But I know where she is,” he added quickly when I drew Bertha and aimed it at his junk. He didn’t need to know that she was empty, and I was aiming at his nuts because I was too exhausted to lift the gun any higher.
“Well, get to talking, Obie. Because if I’m not gonna shoot your dick off in a dragon cave, I’m gonna need a real good reason.” I got all that out without slurring or stammering. Then I fell forward across Amy’s legs and passed right the hell out.
Chapter 15
I came to staring up at a cloudless blue sky, with Amy’s face in the periphery of my vision. I’d woken up in worse places. Hell, most days I woke up in Fairyland seemed to be in a dungeon, so I really couldn’t complain about lying on grass with birds chirping and a beautiful woman by my side. Except I knew I was still in Fairyland and had passed out inside a cave. I struggled to sit up, and Amy reached down to help me.
“You’re heavy,” sh
e grunted.
“It’s all muscle,” I said, panting more than a little bit by the time we finally got me at least up sitting cross-legged on the grass.
“Your muscle jiggles a hell of a lot.” Skeeter’s voice came from my left, and I turned to see Mama and my other friends standing around. I reached upward, and Joe and Skeeter helped haul me to my feet. All the hurts and burns from my fight with the dragon were healed, and as I turned to Amy, I saw that she was using both arms. Either I’d been out for a couple months, or somebody had mojo’d up some healing magic on us. I raised an eyebrow at Mama, and she nodded.
“Yes, Robbie. When Oberon brought you back to me, there was some need for my healing abilities. Between my magic and his, we patched you up,” Mama said with a smile.
“But your shield is a goner,” Joe said.
“Yeah, that thing was pretty much melted to goo,” Amy agreed.
“Did anybody get my sword?” I asked.
“I have it here,” Oberon’s voice came from behind me. I tried to spin around, but I was still pretty lightheaded, so after the ground stopped rolling around under my feet, I turned slowly to look at the Faerie Consort. He sat on a stump about ten feet away, a mug in his hand. He looked less regal than I’d ever seen him in his real skin, but a lot more comfortable. Maybe being the queen’s boy toy wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.
“Thanks for healing me,” I said. “And Amy.”
“It was the least I could do,” he replied. “After all, you destroyed the Scourge of the Eastlands, Xythigax the Terrible.”
“Yeah, well, I was pretty motivated. Now let’s talk about finding my sister.” I reached under my arm for Bertha, but the holster wasn’t in its usual place. A quick pat to the small of my back showed that my Judge was missing, and I realized that I was completely unarmed. Not a problem. I rolled my head from side to side and loosened up as best I could. If I was going to have to beat the information out of him, so be it.
Hot Blooded - A Bubba the Monster Hunter Novella Page 9