I fled.
When I’d arrived at the gym, I was already covered in flop sweat and wishing I could go back to bed. Ovid handed me the jump rope, and I got my rhythm on until he took it from my hands and whipped me hard with it, the wooden handle smacking into the back of my thighs.
“Hey! What the hell?” I ran from the wild man while he swung the jump rope around his head and lashed out at me, cracking the handle into my shoulder.
“Run, Jess! Don’t sit there! Run and disarm me!” Ovid was in full fighting mood and put on the speed. I raced ahead, fetched a baseball from a bin near the supply closet, and chucked it at him. I hit him smack on his right hand, and he dropped the rope. Softball had been my game, and I had awesome aim.
“Son of a bitch!” he yelled, holding his injured hand with the other. I cleared my throat, gave him a thumbs up, and waltzed into the trainer’s office, grabbing an ice pack for him.
“A jump rope is not the greatest offensive weapon,” I said. He shook his head.
“I disagree. The wooden handle is quite painful when it hits you, and it makes a garrote if you use it right. I want you to practice with it.”
I acquiesced and spent the next thirty minutes figuring out how to use the jump rope as a type of bullwhip without the loud snapping sound. It worked better at close range to simply beat on someone, but as Ovid said, it was a handy garrote if you had the upper body strength and some leverage.
A flurry of piskies surrounded my head, chattering over top one another until Lowena let out a sharp whistle any referee would envy.
“What has your team learned?” I asked Lowena.
“Enemies on the hill,” Lowena replied. “Coming in fast.”
“Who are they?”
“Vampires, but that’s all our scouts could tell.”
“Well, isn’t that precious.”
Lowena screwed up her tiny face. “No, it’s not precious at all. Vampires are dangerous.”
“How many of them?”
“Two that we could see, but there was a shadow in the woods that tracked their path. It smelled bad.”
“Can’t you provide any details? Be more specific? Anything else you can tell me?”
“There are also two demonettes.”
I stopped cold. “Demonettes?”
“Little female imps, red, with horns. They held hands and skipped along. They looked happy.”
I was impatient. “Lowena, is there anything else you need to tell me? Where’s Gothskie?
“Who?”
“The General?”
“Oh, she stayed outside of the border.”
“Why on earth did she do that?”
Lowena shrugged. “That’s her way.”
“Would you please go see what you can do to help Rocko and Shura?”
“Sure!”
I wasn’t too worried about the vampires, bad-smelling thing, or demonettes getting into the house because we had the magical barrier up, and if they meant us harm, which was a safe assumption, they wouldn’t be able to get through. I did a thorough sweep of the insides of the house, making sure windows and doors were locked, kids asleep, and Buddha on alert. I checked that my Last Will and Testament was where I’d placed it, in our locked safe, and stepped outdoors. Whatever was going to happen would happen outside.
I stopped to pray a moment, not asking for success or victory, but praying for strength to protect my family, the other children, and the innocents who had gotten in the way. Whatever caused this bounty to be on my head, it was none of their doing, and they shouldn’t have to pay for it.
I was surprisingly calm now that a fight was on the way. I hoped this I’d meet the originator of the bounty, not another flunky, because I was sick of this and wanted it over. Despite the chaos usually surrounding me, current conditions as a prime example, I was a Monster Hunter, and I meant to kill some monsters this night.
The thunk on the roof of the house next to us caught my attention, and I peered into the darkness to see what was up there, hoping they didn’t wake the neighbors. Gothskie flew past me yelling, “Incoming!” and before I knew it, I was hit by a red cannonball. The red cannonball sprung to her feet and shook her little fingers at me. I stared open-mouthed and got sideswiped by another red cannonball, who also jumped to her feet and wiped her hands on her cheerleader skirt.
“Who the hell are you?” I asked, looking down. They were about three-feet tall and looked familiar. They looked like Tic and Tac, imps, minor demons, who I had met in a flurry of activity in a department store while I was trying to find a crystal ball and battle mannequin zombies. It was a long day, but didn’t I remember Tic and Tac mentioning something about sisters?
“You’re Tic and Tac’s sisters, aren’t you, which means you are also Zric’s sisters. How many of you are there?”
“One hundred and fifty-three,” replied Demonette Number One, jumping up in the air to land in a perfect split on the ground, she too wearing a cheerleader skirt.
“But we are closest in age to Tic and Tac.” Demonette Number Two twirled in a perfect pirouette.
I inhaled a deep breath and exhaled long and slow. “Why…why…why are you here?” I asked.
“Oh, said Demonette Number One. “We’re here to cheer for the home team.” From out of nowhere, both demonettes produced pom-poms in each hand.
“You can do it, yes you can.
You can kill the Monster Man.
We believe you’ll carry through,
And chop and chip her into two!
Yay!”
“That’s the dumbest cheer I have ever heard. I’m not a man, and I’m not a monster. I’m a monster hunter, and I’m a woman.”
“Yeah, but we had trouble with the rhyme. We’ll work on another one and see if we can do better. You deserve a good cheer for your death. Maybe something in iambic pentameter.” The two demonettes ran off, shaking their pom-poms in the air.
I yelled after them. “You’ve got it backward! This is my home field. The bad guys are the visiting team.”
Gothskie was pinching the bridge of her nose.
“Are all of your enemies this entertaining?” she asked.
“No,” I replied. “But those two aren’t important. What’s important is understanding how they catapulted in here, and who exactly is on the visiting team?”
That’s when a black elf, one of the ugliest I had ever seen, charged me from my neighbor’s yard, throwing her full body into it, running for the end zone in a championship game. Until she splattered on an invisible wall and slid down like a Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoon.
I couldn’t help it. I laughed. Black elves are awful things, this one smaller than the last but equally smelly. Her tail lay limp on the ground, and one of her sharp teeth lay on the grass in a pool of her green, sizzling blood.
“Blaze!” I yelled, and the bird galloped up from wherever he’d been. I heard crashing along the perimeter of the house and another yell of, “Gorillas! They’re everywhere! This place is infested with them.”
“Blaze, can you get me that gallon of bleach I brought home the other day?”
Blaze studied the downed black elf and then gave me a salute. “Right-o.”
I couldn’t go outside of the spell wall because I’d be vulnerable, and I suspected that would bring the wall down.
“General!”
Gothskie stood at attention.
“Do you think, if all the piskies worked together, that you could hold something heavy?”
“Of course, human. We move boulders.”
Blaze returned with the bleach.
“I’d like you to pour this all over the big, bad black elf out there. It will put a crimp in her style. If you can call the rest of the chorus…”
Gothskie hoisted the gallon bottle of bleach in one hand and flew through the spell wall. She twisted the cap with the other hand, dropped the cap on the grass, and tilted the bottle, aiming for the black elf’s head.
That’s when a clawed hand rose a
nd snatched her out of the air, the bottle of bleach plunging to the ground, spilling harmlessly on the lawn.
Chapter Nine
The black elf cracked her neck, rolled her shoulders, and stood, holding Gothskie in her hand so that I could just see Gothskie’s head. Gothskie struggled against the black elf’s grip, but it was useless. Even a mighty mite like Gothskie couldn’t wrestle out of the grasp of an enemy as large as the elf.
“Let her go,” I said, dead calm, dead quiet.
“No,” rasped the injured elf, sounding convincingly scary. Her tooth was gone, just gone, and the bruising made her look like a boxer after a welter weight title match.
“You killed my sister.” There, she said it plainly, laid it on the table. I killed one of hers and now she wanted to kill me and take out a few allies in the meantime. It was obviously sibling night.
“I killed an elf that stole a child out of his bed in the middle of the night.”
The black elf seemed perplexed, using her other clawed hand to scratch at her chin as she asked, “Why? What’s wrong with that?”
I shook my head in disbelief. “Are you kidding me, Darth Elf on the Shelf? You think snatching kids out of their homes at night is acceptable?”
The big, ugly shoulders shrugged. “I don’t know. I know a lot of my kind do that kind of thing. Is it wrong?”
“It’s not okay. Where are your parents?”
“They aren’t around much. It was my sister and me, surviving in dark elf land together, which is why I’m going to kill the mosquito here and then you.”
Darth Elf held Gothskie high in the air, dangling her by one leg, and opened her giant maw. Gothskie struggled against her grip. My heart leaped into my throat. This tiny creature shouldn’t suffer for what I had done.
I reached out one hand, crying, “No!”
Darth Elf stopped, still holding Gothskie like a gummy worm she’d wanted to swallow whole.
“Stop. Let her go, and I’ll come out.”
“No. I’ll hold her here until you come out, then I’ll eat her anyway and kill you.”
“I don’t think you get how this works. Why would I come out there if I knew you are going to kill her anyway?”
Once again, Darth Elf used a claw to scratch her chin. Not the sharpest knife in the drawer, this one, or maybe she was simply young.
She nodded. “Oh, I see. That makes sense. You come out only if I let her go?”
I ground my teeth. “Yes, that’s called negotiation.”
Darth Elf shrugged again. “I skipped that class, hated school. We were always bullied.”
“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that.”
Still holding Gothskie by the leg, Darth Elf said, “It was a difficult time for us, me and my sister. Demons are hell.”
“You went to school with demons?”
“Exchange program. My parents thought it would be good for us.”
“That sounds hard.” I couldn’t believe I felt sorry for this monster.
“It was. It was my sister who kept me sane.” Her eyes popped open wide, as if she just remembered why she was there. “That’s why I’m going to kill the insect and then you!”
“You’ve already forgotten what we talked about. If you kill her, I’m not coming out there.”
“Oh, right. Negotiation. Got it. Okay, you come out, and I’ll let her go.”
“Now you’ve gotten the idea. Good work!”
“I did get it, didn’t I? See, that was the thing in school, I always doubted myself. My teachers said I needed to work harder.”
“I’m sure you worked as hard as you could,” I responded, noticing a cloud of sparkling dots approaching from behind. “You seem very smart.”
“You have no idea how much that means to me, to hear you say that,” gibbered the elf. “No one encouraged me.” She leaned in close. “I can’t even read.”
“That’s not fair. All children learn in their own ways. They should have accommodated you.”
Darth Elf wiped away a green tear. “The only person who understood was my sister.”
A stone dropped to the pit of my stomach. I had had no choice but to kill that other elf, but I sorta felt guilty now.
“Tell you what, if you want to come by some evening, I’ll teach you to read, English, not Demon.”
“Really? You would? That would help a lot with road signs. I’m constantly getting lost.” It was interesting how Darth Elf didn’t seem so evil when she was smiling, even though the pointy, serrated extra rows of teeth were a little off-putting.
“You’ll have to swear not to hurt me or my friends.”
“Yes, no problem. You can teach me at night? Are you sure? Humans tend to sleep as soon as the sun goes down.”
I thought about it for a minute. “Yes, I can, but I may have another person that can help.” I considered my idea silently, musing over it in my mind. It might work. I tossed the idea into the “think about this later” bin and paid attention to the situation at hand.
The black elf, who I now realized was no more than an adolescent, hopped up and down, shifting from foot to foot in excitement. “That’s super-dooper! Totally rad! Completely awesome!”
At that precise moment, the buzzing miasma of sparkly piskies arrived, swords drawn, vibrating with anger. Before I could stop them, they surrounded Darth Elf’s head, ready to prick, slice, and dice. One piskie had her sword to the elf’s neck.
“Stop!” commanded Gothskie. “Hey, elf, could you let me go, please?”
“Oh, yeah, sorry.” Darth Elf released Gothskie, who flew in front of the elf’s face. “If you swear not to harm me or mine, blood oath, we’ll teach you about gardening. It’s quite relaxing. It might release some of your tension.”
The other piskies stopped buzzing their wings and floated in the air, not understanding what Gothskie was saying.
“I’d like that,” said Darth Elf. “But I can’t garden during the day. I have sensitive skin.”
“Don’t worry. Plants need attention at night, too.”
Darth Elf clapped her hands. “That’s amazing! Cool! Thanks, piskies! Thanks, Mrs. Friedman. Can I come back tomorrow night?”
“Sure, Darth. Look both ways before you cross the street.”
“Will do! See ya!” The dark elf bounded across the street, not looking both ways, with a spring in her step.
We all stood stock still, each in our own way trying to absorb what had happened.
I was wrapping my head around it when I was thrown to the ground by a gorilla.
Chapter Ten
I hit the ground with an “oomph.”
“Rocko! What are you…?”
Peals of laughter hit my ears, and the pressure on my body increased as one mixed-up couple danced over Rocko’s body, using his bulk as a launching pad for a complicated lift and twirl that would have won the mirror ball trophy. I watched this upside down from my prone position under Rocko’s body. Rocko, luckily, was supporting himself on his elbows or I would have been squashed to death.
Nathaniel leaped over us like a running back on a mission, holding a nerf arrow in his hand like a track baton, trying to hit them with the arrow without using the bow. I tried to tell him that wouldn’t work, but he was gone before I could get a word out.
I poked Rocko to indicate he should get off me, and he complied. While sitting up, I got a good look at him, which caused me to clap a hand to my mouth.
“Lowena? Elowen?” I ventured.
Rocko was decked out in bows from head to toe, with multi-colored ribbons woven into his fur in an intricate pattern. Rocko pranced in a little cat-walk shimmy to show off his new look. Truly, his fur never looked so luxurious.
“You look magnificent,” I said, whacking my gorilla friend on the shoulder. “Unbelievable.”
Rocko grunted in agreement and pounded his chest. “Yes,” I nodded. “Quite manly.”
Then I hit the ground, again. Not voluntarily, again.
The suffocating weight of anoth
er person on me was a shock, so it took me a moment to react. Reacting mostly consisted of screaming for help since my arms and legs were pinned. Rocko grabbed at the figure on top of me and hauled the creature to its feet. I rolled to a stand, tomahawk out and ready.
Shura appeared, silent as a shadow, poised behind my attacker and let out a warning growl. I was glad to see her but wisely did not comment on the garland adorning her head or the streamers flowing from her tail. Those piskies had done a heck of a job.
My assailant was a woman, about five feet tall, with shorn hair and old-fashioned, lace-up boots.
Wearing a nun’s habit.
Screaming obscenities in French.
She was also a vampire.
And butt ugly.
She attacked again, scraping at me with fingernails sharpened to points. I splashed my little Tupperware of Manischewitz at her and caught her arm. The habit’s fabric protected her from the holy wine’s worst effects, but she hissed all the same. I threw my ‘hawk straight at her, and my aim was true, but Shura dove in at the same time and knocked Frenchie down. My ‘hawk flew harmlessly by, burying itself in a tree, but it didn’t matter because Shura had the French nun vampire pinned to the ground.
Which is when Rocko realized what was going on and roared a challenge, startling Shura, as well as everyone within hearing distance. Shura lost her balance, and the nun used the moment to scramble to her feet, snap something at me in French, and back way, disappearing in the darkness.
“Who the hell is she? Where’d she go?” I exclaimed, hands on my hips. This was ridiculous.
Nathaniel circled up on us again, out of breath and beaten. “I’m done,” he said. “They can do whatever they want. I can’t undo this. We need that jerk cupid to pull his weight.”
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