“The dude from Night Court? The old guy on The Librarians?”
“What can I say? I dig the distinguished look.”
As they walked down the hall in search of Princes Nitalia’s room and a librarian, Skeeter idly mused, “I wonder how Bubba’s doing?”
12
I stood there trying to decide whether to cuss, puke, or just bleed. My right forearm felt like I’d shoved it into a running garbage disposal, and there was so much red dripping down my face it looked more like I was an old-school pro wrestler than the grandson of a Faerie Queen trying to win his mother’s honor and freedom back. Admittedly, at that point, I was mostly trying to win my life, but the skinny bastard across the floor from me was trying to win an opportunity to find out if Georgia Bulldog was dish best served raw.
The fight started off pretty simple. I even went into this one with a plan, before it all went to shit. The little dude didn’t look like much standing still. He was pretty much humanoid, except he had gray skin and huge black eyes. Like, no pupil, black. I didn’t notice anything different about his mouth until he opened it to smile at me when I stepped up to start the fight; then I remembered the triple row of pointed teeth. He rocked his head from side to side, loosening up, then opened his mouth in a huge yawn. I swear, the little bugger either could unhinge his jaw like a boa constrictor.
Either way, I wasn’t too worried about it. I saw his first couple of matches, and while he was a legit badass, I figured I knew his tricks by now. He’d wait until I threw the first haymaker, then use his speed and those gangly arms to swarm me and try to rip out my carotid. I knew how to deal with that—cheat. So I waited until he thought I was overextended, and when he went to clamber up me and take a bite out of my throat, I dropped down to one knee and slammed my arm into the stone floor, hoping to smear the little dude across the marble like a cockroach.
Except he was even faster than I thought, so all I ended up doing was punching the shit out of the floor while he wrapped his arms and legs around my neck and middle and reared back to chomp me like Pac-Man. I figured that no matter how tough I am, getting half my throat chewed out in the middle of the floor was going to be more than Granny could fix, even if she wasn’t a psychopath. Which she was. So no guarantees she’d even try. So I spun around and slammed my back into the floor, aiming to pin the squirrelly little bugger between me and the stone.
I said he was fast, right? Good, because that whole reverse belly-flop thing didn’t work out so good, either. I mean, it was okay for the skinny asshole, who just swung himself around me so he was sitting on my chest while I slammed into the floor. All the breath went out of me in a whoosh and a “Dammit!” and the gray-skinned buttmunch kept on riding me like an over-furred bronco. At one point, he even used my damn beard for a handhold and bucked like we was either in a rodeo or dating. I wasn’t much interested in either one.
I laid on the floor, all my breath spent and new bruises growing on top of old ones, and I looked up at the little guy riding me like an afternoon shift lap dancer, and I began to seriously reconsider my career choices. I mean, seriously, what did I really care if my mama married a garden gnome or a bridge troll, or maybe even a faerie prince? She ran out on me two decades ago. I didn’t owe her shit. It ain’t like the rest of my family interactions ever made the pages of Southern Living, or even Garden & Gun. I killed my daddy and my brother, and now I was stuck in Fairyland with a psychotic gremlin on my chest trying to rip my guts out. Maybe I’d be better off just surrendering, letting Mama marry whoever won this damn tournament, and hauling my fat ass back to the land of cold beer and hot fried pickles.
I looked over at Mama, sitting next to Mab in all their finery, and that sealed the deal right there. Not Mama. No, she sat there grinning like an idiot at the spectacle we put on thanks to the spell Mab put on her. No, it was the look on my granny’s face that sealed the deal. That bitch sat up at the head table smiling like the cat with a belly full of canary, and I knew right then I wasn’t gonna just beat this red-hatted little shitbird, I was gonna whoop the ass of every faerie in the Great Hall.
Laying there and seeing that look on Granny’s face, that cruel self-satisfied smirk took me back to high school when I got shot down by every cheerleader for a Homecoming date because they didn’t date fat football players. It was that kind of superior, smug look that all the smart kids in class wore whenever I got up to stumble through some kind of presentation in English. It was the sneer that my college conditioning coach wore when he told me I’d wash out of UGA before the first semester was over. It was the look that was supposed to put me in my place, remind me of my station, and send me back to the mountain to plow a rocky field every day and make cheap moonshine at night. It was the look that said, “You ain’t good enough to be here, so go the hell home.”
It pissed me off.
The skinny dude reared his head back to bite my throat out and came down at me with every pointy tooth in his damn head gleaming. So I did exactly what any sane man would do when confronted by a mouth full of razor-sharp faerie teeth: I stuck my fist in it. I shoved my hand straight in the little bastard’s mouth, trying to play Mike Tyson on his epiglottis. I got my whole hand in his mouth, and his eyes bugged out as his jaws slammed shut by reflex. That hurt. A lot. But he loosened his grip on my tunic, and I was able to roll over and push myself up to my knees.
The toothy little bastard with a mouthful of redneck fist just went with it, not thinking to open his mouth enough to let my hand out. No, he just chomped down hard, again and again, tearing my forearm and wrist to shreds with them teeth, but I figured that was better than him chewing on my neck. I dragged my beaten carcass to my feet, still hauling five and a half feet of faerie on the end of my right arm.
“Let go of me, you little shithead,” I grumbled. He shook his head, ripping even further into the meat of my arm, and I opened my hand inside his mouth. I twisted my arm around, cutting myself even more in the process. I twisted around enough to reach his tongue, and I wrapped my fingers around the thick, wet muscle and pulled.
Flashbacks of a naked sasquatch duel shot through my head, and I decided it was just way better not to ever think about where my hands have been. I twined my fingers around the faerie’s tongue and yanked it up, doing my level best to rip it out by the roots. The little dude opened his mouth to scream, and I jerked my hand free, shaking about a pint of blood and spit to the floor. My opponent stood there glaring at me for a split second; then he flung himself at me again. I was ready for him this time, though, and I caught him by the throat and slammed him to the floor like an Undertaker choke slam.
Then a wave of dizziness and pain hit me, and I struggled to my feet. I looked down at my mangled right arm, covered in my blood, shredded tattoos, slobber, and a little bit of yellow stuff that I couldn’t identify, and the pain got the better of me. I puked up fruit juice and faerie feast right on the little dude’s face.
“Damn,” I muttered. “That’s nasty. Even for me. Sorry little guy,” I mumbled as I staggered back to the edge of the clear space, looking for Joe.
I found him holding out a cloth to me. It looked like it used to be one of Granny’s tablecloths, but I didn’t care. I tore it into strips and told Joe, “Keep an eye on him while I sit here for a second and try not to pass out.” I dropped to one knee and wiped my hand and arm off the best I could, then bound it up in tablecloth scraps. It looked pretty bad, and I couldn’t move two fingers, but I was still alive, and that’s what mattered.
“Here he comes,” Joe said, and I dragged myself to my feet.
“Any idea what this bastard is?” I asked.
“I think he’s a redcap.”
“I can see he’s got a red cap, jackass. I don’t need no master’s degree for that.”
“No, he is a redcap. He’s basically a faerie version of Jeffrey Dahmer. They exist only to kill, usually in the most painful ways possible. The nobility of Faerie uses them as assassins when they want to send a message.�
�
“Well, message received,” I said, turning back to face the little gray asshole. So I stood there trying to decide whether to cuss, puke, or just bleed. Of course, there wasn’t anything left to puke up, and if I bled too much more, I was going to pass out, so I went with Option A.
“Come get some, you son of a bitch!” I hollered, and charged at the redcap.
That was obviously about the last damn thing he expected because he just stood there as I barreled into him like he was a Vanderbilt quarterback and I was back in the SEC. I heaved him up on my shoulder and never slowed down. I just kept on charging, and the circle of spectators opened to let me through. I carried the redcap with my shoulder buried in his gut all the way to the wall of the overgrown dining room and slammed him into the unforgiving stones. He hit the wall like a June bug on a windshield, and I heard his ribs crack of the scream of pain echoing through my ear.
I backed up, and the redcap slumped against the wall. He held up a hand. “Mercy,” the little dude croaked.
“Do you yield?” I asked, loud enough for the whole room to hear. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Mab stand up and fold her arms across her chest.
The faerie assassin cut a glance over to my granny, then back to me. “I cannot yield. You must fall.”
“Not gonna happen,” I growled. I reached out and palmed his forehead like it was a basketball. I slammed his head into the stone wall, then let go to check his eyes. He was still conscious, so I did it again. And again. And again. I beat his skull into that stone wall until his eyes rolled back in his head and he slumped to the ground. My opponent unconscious, I turned to Mab and started walking toward her table, ready to declare myself the victor.
It was the smile that gave it away. If Mab was as slick as she thought she was, I’da been dead on the floor. But the second I saw the corner of her mouth twitch up, I knew there was trouble coming. I spun around, dropping to one knee as I turned to see the redcap coming at me with razor-sharp blades in both hands. I stood as he got to me, wrapping my arms around him and slamming the faerie to the ground in a thunderous crash. One blade went spinning off to the side, disappearing into the crowd. He buried the other one in my thigh, still valiantly fighting for Mama’s hand. I snatched the knife out of my leg and flung it aside, then struggled to my feet, one arm still wrapped around the redcap. I hefted him into the air, then brought him back down to the floor with my full weight atop him. His ribcage sounded like breakfast cereal with all the snapping and crackling coming from it, and when he tried to scream, it just came out a spatter of spit and frothy lung blood.
I stood up, leaving the broken redcap on the floor, and glared at Mab. “You told him he had to kill me or die, didn’t you?”
The corner of her mouth twitched again. “I did. You are not worthy to bear my blood, mongrel.”
“Well, here you go, Granny. Here’s some pure faerie blood for you.” I picked up the redcap’s body, still barely breathing, and slammed it onto the table right in front of her. Then I snatched up a gleaming knife from beside my plate and shoved it into the dying faerie’s chest. A little spurt of blood shot from the redcap’s mouth, leaving a line of crimson across Mab’s glorious blue dress.
I turned to look at the stunned spectators, covered in a mix of blood from me and the redcap, looking like something out of a damn Francis Bacon painting. I looked around the gathered throng and gave them my best psychotic grin. “Okay, bitches, who’s next?”
13
Amy rounded a corner, putting them right back along the same corridor where they first exited the Great Hall to go snoop around and look for Bubba’s sister. The second she spotted the two royal guards standing at attention beside the door, she spun and quick-walked back the way she came, pushing Skeeter ahead of her. “Not that way.”
Skeeter craned his neck to see past her, moving backward with her assistance. “What? What is it?”
“We’re right back where we started. That asshole Falarun gave us a load of crap about a secret door. We’re no closer to finding Bubba’s sister than we were when we left him there to handle the tournament all alone. And I’m stuck with a magic book that I can’t put down. Dammit!” She kicked nearby door, frustration boiling over. Then she leaned against the wall, rubbing her bruised toes.
“You have definitely been hanging around Bubba too long.”
“Or not long enough. He only kicks doors when he’s wearing steel toes,” Amy said with a rueful grin. “At least I managed to get the book to let me tuck it into the belt of the gown instead of carrying it everywhere.”
“Yeah, that’s something, I reckon. Alright, let’s figure out a plan. We’ve poked around in every secret room we could find, and none of them had a tower attached to them.”
Amy’s eyes widened at his words. “Except the one we never went back to.”
Skeeter gave her a puzzled look. “What are you talking about? And before you go any further, let me be real damn clear here—I am not going back into that dungeon. Bubba’s sister can rot before I poop in a bucket again.”
“Could have gone my whole life without that visual, thanks,” Amy replied. “But that wasn’t what I meant. Bubba’s mother was in a tower, wasn’t she?”
“Yeah, what about it?” His eyes widened, and he smacked himself on the forehead. “Dammit!”
“Yeah, exactly. If you have two members of the royal family that you wanted to keep prisoner, but you had to keep them in gilded cages, wouldn’t you put the cages right next to each other?”
“You think his sister’s in the same tower as his mama?”
“We never searched it. We just took his mother at her word that the entire tower was hers.”
“I didn’t think faeries could tell a lie? Pretty sure I read that somewhere.”
“I don’t remember her ever telling us directly that it was only her apartments, just that there wasn’t anyone else there. Holding back information isn’t the same thing as telling a lie, and the Fae have had centuries to learn how to parse the truth and split hairs.”
“Now I know you’ve been around Bubba too long. Your moral compass is starting to point a lot more south than it used to.”
“Skeeter, I work for the federal government. Moral compass-ectomy is a minor surgery that all recruits undergo their first week on the job. Let’s go.” She stepped past Skeeter and started back down the hall, running her fingers along the outer wall, looking for the secret entrance to the tower.
The search went quicker the second time, even without guards posted at the entrance. Five minutes later, the pair of them slipped through the illusory wall and ascended the spiral staircase to Ygraine’s rooms and hopefully to some clue about where Nitalia was, or at least where she might have been. Skeeter’s eyes were fixed on his feet as he walked up the narrow passageway, so when Amy stopped short in front of him, he ran headfirst into her, his forehead slamming into her butt as she stood on the stairs.
“What the hell?” she hissed at him.
“Sorry. Why’d you stop?” he replied, lowering his voice to match her whisper.
“Guard,” she whispered, then her tone brightened as she spoke to someone out of sight around the curve of the tower steps. “Oh, hello there. The Lady Ygraine sent us to fetch her daughter for the final rounds of the tournament.”
A gruff voice drifted down past her to Skeeter’s ears. “Huh? Princess Nitalia isn’t up here anymore. Everybody knows that…shit, you’re with that ugly human grandson of the queen, aren’t you? Hey!” Skeeter heard the thunk of unprotected flesh meeting armor.
“Dammit!” Amy’s voice came down in a muttered murmur, followed by the clatter of more armor banging against wood and stone. “Out of the way, Skeeter!”
Skeeter pressed himself flat against the wall as a guard in full armor tumbled down the steps in front of him, rolling all the way down and through the fake stoned wall in a thunderous clatter of metal and profanity. “Um…Amy? Everything okay up there?”
“Yeah, come on
,” came the growled reply.
Skeeter followed her up the stairs at an increased distance, both to keep his nose out of her butt cheeks and to avoid being brained with falling faeries. Seconds later, they stepped together into the parlor of Ygraine’s tower apartment. Amy limped back to the door and dropped a heavy wooden bar into brackets on either side of it. Then she turned and limped over to sit on an overstuffed chair and started to rub her right foot, wincing at the touch.
“You wanna tell me what happened?” Skeeter asked.
“Not really.” Amy glowered at him.
“I don’t think I care.”
“I kicked the guard. It didn’t go as planned.”
“Want to elaborate?”
“Is saying no an option?”
“Not really, no.”
“He got suspicious, so I kicked him in the balls. Except plate armor includes a plate codpiece to protect against just that kind of attack. Kicking a man in armor in the balls is not a good idea when you’re wearing these stupid slippers they forced me into.”
“I thought you would have learned not to kick things after your little argument with the door.”
“Well, like you keep saying, I’ve spent way too much time with Bubba lately.”
“He’s been my best friend for decades, but he is not what I would ever call a good influence,” Skeeter said with a nod. He looked around the room. “We know Bubba’s mama’s room is over there,” he said, pointing off to the right. “But I reckon we’ve got no clue what’s through that door.” He pointed to a door opposite the one they assumed was Princess Nitalia’s bedchamber.
“Then that’s probably where we want to start looking,” Amy said, not moving from her chair.
“That your way of saying ‘get on that, Skeeter’?”
“I’m injured.”
Skeeter glared at her without saying a word, then turned and walked over to the door. He put a hand on it, feeling the surface for heat, or traps, or anything else that he wouldn’t like. Feeling nothing, he turned the knob and pushed the door open. “Umm, Amy? I think you want to come over here and look at this,” he said, not stepping across the threshold.
Monsters, Magic, & Mayhem: Bubba the Monster Hunter Season 4 Page 17