Dirty Deeds

by D V Wolfe

  “Ready?” Joel asked, fixing his hair in the rearview mirror before looking back at us.

  “Yes,” Nya snapped. “Let’s get this embarrassment on the road.”

  Joel scowled at her but turned the engine over. Jack Johnson blared over the speakers and I lost it. I was laughing so hard that the cake slid, swiping the front of my shirt with the red frosting.

  “Perfect,” Nya said. “Couldn’t have picked a better soundtrack for this ridiculous mission.” She looked over at me. “Do you want me to hold the cake, Bane, so you can have your hysterics?”

  I looked down at the cake. I’d only messed up the bottom line of the decorative frosting. I could probably cheat that side away from the bugbears and they wouldn’t see. Joel turned off the radio and cruised forward. We passed the school and rounded the corner.

  “So far, so good,” Noah said. Ten seconds later, there were flashing lights behind us. We all turned to glare at Noah.

  “You know you should knock on wood when you say something like that,” Joel said. “Or you know, just don’t jinx us, at all.” He pulled over to the curb and we held our collective breaths as we waited for the cop to climb out of his squad car and approach the driver’s side window.

  “Where y’all headed?” he asked, suspicion clear as he shined his flashlight in at all of us.

  “We’re on our way to a birthday party,” I said, bringing as much of Rosetta and Nya’s tone as I could into my voice. “We’re already late, and this is going to make it so much worse!” I started acting like I was hyperventilating.

  “Deep breaths,” Nya said, reaching over and putting a hand on my back. She turned to look up at the officer. “Please, she’s been planning this party for months. She’s had to be hospitalized twice because of panic attacks.”

  I looked up at the officer, giving him my best impression of ‘woman-on-the-edge’ and I saw him visibly take a step back.

  “You’ve probably heard about the attacks on children in this area,” he said and I nodded.

  “Jeffy was so scared he wouldn’t get to have any kind of a party because those older kids were killed. He cried and cried for days. And he wouldn’t eat. He wouldn’t eat anything but…”I searched around in my mind and said the first thing I could think of. “Peeps. Those sugary, tasty,” I saw Nya cut her eyes to me and I got on with it. “marshmallow chicks. The only way we could get him to stop crying and to eat five carrots at a time to get his strength back was to promise him this party,” I did my best to squeeze out a fake tear. “And now, we’re late!” I put my head down and pretended to sob.

  “Well, I…” the cop continued. I held the cake up for him to see.

  “I slaved over this cake for days, because if the fire truck wasn’t the right shade of red, Jeffy won’t eat it! We’re desperate to get him to eat again!”

  Now the cop was looking really uncomfortable. “I...I’m sorry, I’ll let you go. Please...please tell Jeffy to have a happy birthday from all of us on the force and uh, tell him to eat some...carrots because I said so.”

  I squinched my eyes up to make them look puffy from crying and I gave him my best genuine smile. “I will. It’ll mean so much to him!”

  The cop gave me a frightened smile and hot-footed it back to his car.

  “Good,” I said, watching him leave. “Let’s get on with this.” Joel started the engine and headed back down the dead-end block. He flipped a u-turn and parked in front of a two-story Tudor tucked back from the road. I got out holding the cake just as the cop rolled back around the corner and out of sight.

  “That was some display,” Joel said.

  “Poor Jeffy,” Nya said, looking down at the cake. “He’ll never get this cake since we’re giving it to some bloodthirsty faerie bears.”

  “Poor Jeffy,” Joel, Noah, and I said.

  We decided to take the circle stuff first and then come back for the weapons. Noah had a headlamp on that Joel had given him, Nya and Joel had mag lights and I had the penlight. Joel led us to the biggest area of trees that were marked with the fae territory symbols.

  “I don’t see a ‘den’,” I said. “It’s just trees.”

  “It says here that the den will be hidden from humans until it opens and the faes emerge,” Noah said. He was holding his head at an awkward angle so that his headlamp shined on the page of Kess’ book.

  Joel and Nya set down supplies and went back to get the weapons. Noah stayed with me to mock my efforts while I attempted to draw the circle on the ground between the marked trees. Then, he fussed over my attempt at recreating the symbols around the circle until I finally gave him the stick and told him to do it. We placed the birthday cake on the platter in the middle and then arranged the plates of cookies around it at three points. I carefully stepped out of the circle and we looked at our work.

  Noah glanced from the book to the circle. “Well, it matches what’s in the book.”

  I brushed the dirt off my hands. “Well, we’ve set the table for dinner. Let’s see who wanders out.” Noah read the incantation from the book and we waited, standing as still as possible, listening. Nothing happened.

  We were still waiting when Nya and Joel got back with the weapons.

  “Nothing yet?” Joel asked.

  I shook my head. “Not even a wood sprite.”

  “Well I can smell that cake from all the way back at the car so unless the bugbears are nose-deaf, they should come running,” Joel said.

  “Wait a second,” Noah said, looking down at himself and then at me. “Bane, we need to leave.”

  I raised an eyebrow at him. “We do?”

  He nodded. “Remember, they don’t like messes. That’s why you have us turn our shirts inside out when we’re around Vix and Sprig, right? They don’t like anything dirty or messy.”

  I looked down at myself. Dirty jeans and sneakers and an a-shirt that was clean a day ago but now had dirt and a stripe of red frosting from the cake running across it. I looked back up at him. “So what, you and I need to hide?”

  Noah nodded. “Yes, but the book says that the circle must be overseen by the humans calling the faeries and it must be a male and female.” As one, Noah and I shifted our gazes to Joel and Nya. Nya wore clean black cargo pants and a fitted blue button-down that looked like it was just pressed. Her hair was perfectly braided without any flyaways and I knew she always polished her boots. Joel was wearing a clean pair of windbreaker pants with his pristine jacket. The only thing ever untidy about Joel was his hair, but it was intentional, so I wasn’t sure if his hair would be the deciding difference between bugbears or no bugbears.

  “You two are up,” I said to Joel and Nya. They looked at each other and Joel grinned. Nya rolled her eyes and moved towards me.

  “Let’s get this over with,” she said. “Where do I have to stand?” I glanced back at Joel to see him following after her, looking annoyed. He approached Noah and took the book from him. Noah and I hiked over to the cache of weapons they’d dropped behind a tree. Nya and Joel had already taken their picks and what was left was Joel’s crossbow and my iron knife.

  I looked back up at Joel and Nya. “What are you two armed with?”

  “Mr. Blasty,” Nya said, patting the small of her back with one hand.

  “I’ve got my .45,” Joel said, before going back to looking at the book.

  “I’ll take the crossbow,” Noah said.

  “Like hell you will,” I said.

  “But I’ll have to get really close with the knife,” Noah said. “It could be dangerous.”

  “And you could accidentally kill one of us with the crossbow,” I said.

  “So could you,” Noah countered. We played rock, paper, scissor and I ended up with the crossbow.

  I pointed him to a hiding place behind a tree on one side of the circle and I headed to the other side. There was another tree closer that was blocking my view of Joel, but I didn’t want the frosting on my shirt to be the difference between us catching these assholes and th
em standing us up, so I stayed back. I was still in range for the crossbow.

  “Ready?” Joel asked.

  “I don’t know,” I called back. “The last time you asked that I was blasted by Jack Johnson.”

  There was silence.

  “Nya, is he giving me the finger.”

  “Yep,” Nya said.

  Joel cleared his throat and I raised the crossbow. He read the incantation again and I held my breath.

  There was a sound coming from the trees in front of us as if we’d just woken a village of angry squirrels. A second later, a roar echoed through the wood and I put the crossbow to my shoulder. Out of thin air, the hulking forms of bears with huge, glowing green eyes and short snouts wandered from between two trees. Six of them in all. Their eyes were on the cake first. They huddled into the circle, reaching down with bear claws to pick up cookies. They seemed not sure what to do about the cake and I leaned my forehead against the tree trunk next to me and closed my eyes for a second. We’d forgotten to cut the damn thing up. They hated mess. They wouldn’t eat it without it being sliced for them.

  “Answer me,” Nya said. “Why do you attack the humans?” The bugbears seemed to notice Nya for the first time and at the sound of her voice they bared their fangs and their eyes burned gold. “Why?” Nya asked again. “I command you to answer.”

  For half a heartbeat, I thought they might actually speak. Five of the bugbears were smaller and they had paused, rocking back on their hind legs, watching Nya. They growled low in their throats but they hadn’t moved, and behind them, a larger bugbear stood, green eyes glowing in the low light. He opened his mouth and a low rumbling sound filled the woods. The growl was getting louder and I could feel the twigs and rocks on the ground around me vibrating with the sound. The low rumble was beginning to turn into a growl, matching the other five. They weren’t feeling chatty. We were probably going to have to kill them. I tried to bite back the annoyance and disappointment. All that work for nothing. I wasn’t sorry we forgot to cut up their stupid cake.

  A loud roar and a shout of surprise echoed off the trees around me as one of the smaller bugbears lunged at Nya. I fired the crossbow. The iron bolt hit it in the neck and it stumbled back. I reloaded as quickly as I could. Luckily, Joel and Nya had been able to draw their weapons and were ready when the next one charged at them. I yelled at Noah to stay back and he seemed to have actually listened to me. I was able to shoot one more, and between Nya and Joel, they were able to put three of the other four down. Only the largest bugbear remained. It was bleeding and I could see that either Nya, or Joel, or both of them, had gotten off at least one shot to the bugbear’s side. Its face was twisted in rage as it lunged at Nya. I only had one bolt left. It was crooked and I couldn’t get it loaded in the grooves on the bow. I grabbed the bolt and crashed through the undergrowth towards them.

  It knocked Nya back and she hit a tree trunk and fell to the ground. I heard a yell and I looked over to see Noah running at the bugbear with the iron dagger over his head. He stabbed it from the other side and the bear swatted him away like he was a fly. “No!” I yelled as I reached the bugbear, stabbing it with the bolt. I’d stabbed it in the shoulder and it turned, green eyes fixed on me. It roared in my face and then it charged. I stumbled back from it and fell. It was inches from me when Joel’s gunfire rang out, hitting the bugbear in the side and gut. It changed directions and raged at Joel. I heard the last shot and then the click of an empty clip from Joel’s gun. He looked at me, his expression was one of sheer panic. I searched the ground around me and found Nya’s Glock. I ran after the bear. It had paused to roar at Joel and I ran into it and bounced back. The bear had cornered Joel as he backed away, next to the trunk fallen tree. I jumped onto the fallen tree trunk and threw myself at the bugbear, grabbing the fur at its neck with one hand, trying to get a leg over its back. It roared and jerked, trying to throw me off. I grabbed it by the ear and emptied the rest of the clip into its temple. It struggled, still trying to throw me off. It wasn’t dead yet and we were out of ammo. It took off, back towards the marked trees it had emerged from, me still on its back, holding on for dear life. It crashed headfirst into one of the trees and then it reared on its hind legs, scraping at the tree’s trunk, trying to climb it.

  Then the bugbear went slack, mid-climb, as it finally succumbed to all the holes we’d poked, stabbed, and shot into it. I started to breathe again. Then I realized the bugbear was teetering backward on its feet.

  We were going down, me on my back, and the bugbear on top of me. I closed my eyes waiting for the impact and I felt something squish under my ass, then my back. Something hard and curved was digging into me from beneath and then the full weight of the bugbear’s carcass hit me, knocking the air out of me, and I felt like I was being suffocated under a roll of brown, shag carpet. My vision was fogged black around the edges but I was still alive. I tried to look around me, struggling to get air into my lungs.

  “Get it off her,” I heard Nya shout, and then I saw her limping into the dim vision I had left. Joel appeared somewhere down by the bugbear’s feet and Noah came up to grab onto the carcass next to Nya. After four tries, they were able to roll the bugbear over and off my chest and legs.

  Nya looked down at me and shook her head, crossing her arms. “Bane, I hate to tell you this, but that outfit is toast.”

  I moved my legs around, trying to get my footing, and Noah and Nya each grabbed me by a hand, helping me to my feet. When I was standing, I turned to look at what I’d fallen on and I heard Nya, Joel, and Noah try to suppress snorts of laughter behind me. The splattered mess on the ground told me why. The cake. I’d landed on the fucking cake. The cake was red velvet, which combined with the blood-red frosting made it look like a massacre had taken place. The flying plane under the cake was still smiling, so I guess that was something.

  “I hate faeries,” I groaned and I limped forward to pull my iron dagger out of the bugbear’s side.

  “Apparently they aren’t too fond of you either,” Nya said. Her voice had an edge of worry and I looked up at her. She shook her head. “The thing went for you. It pushed me aside and then it flicked Noah away like he’d tickled it. It went straight for you.”

  I shook my head. “Then it changed course and went for Joel.”

  “Yeah,” Nya said. “After Joel emptied half a clip into it.”

  We were all quiet for a moment. “Sorry the circle thing didn’t work,” Joel said.

  I shrugged, “It worked. The voice of a human turned them into raging killing machines so that was something.”

  Nya turned to look at Joel. “Regardless, the job’s done. They won’t be killing kids here anymore.”

  Noah went to collect the crossbow and Nya walked up the path ahead of us carrying the box of Kess’ stuff.

  “Thanks,” Joel said, quietly next to me. I stumbled on a rock under the leaves and winced as my ass spasmed. I felt his warm hand under my right arm, steadying me.

  “No big deal,” I said. “You’d have done the same. I just had the advantage of Nya’s gun being near enough to grab.”

  Joel shook his head. “I mean, definitely a huge thank you for that, but,” I looked up at him and he smiled. “Thanks for still being yourself with me.” I didn’t know how to react to that. “I mean,” Joel continued. “You could have not answered when I called.” I decided not to tell him that I usually forgot to check the caller ID before I answered. “You could have ignored me or been really mean when you came because I know I sort of didn’t wait long to start seeing other people after we…”