by Ben Zackheim
“No, there was a service going on.” His voice trailed off as he realized what I’d done.
“Shit,” he and I said together.
“You sent a vampire to Iceland and the portal swapped me here?” Rebel flinched as a bullet slithered out from a shoulder wound and dropped to the carpet.
“That’s the way it works.”
“And you didn’t think about the people on the other side? They’re stuck with your vampire now.”
“He’s not a vampire. I don’t think he is, at least. He’s some kind of hired hand.”
“Who hired him?”
I shrugged. “Vampires,” I said. “Probably,” I added. “Don’t worry about it. He’s after us and the shield. He won’t hurt anyone unless they try to get in his way.”
“One look at that armor of his and no one will try that,” Rebel said.
“Shield? What shield?” Coleslaw asked.
“Fox is gone,” Rebel broke in.
“Yeah, he’ll be okay.”
“He stole the photo of your dad,” she said.
“What? Are you sure?” I looked around for it. “Why the hell would he do that?”
“What shield?” Coleslaw repeated, taking a look around for the first time. “Where are we?”
“How about you heal us for some answers?” I asked. He frowned at me and I put on my best charming smile.
After a couple of minutes and several inappropriate touches, Coleslaw had us as good as new. He wasn’t as good as Scarlett, our go-to healer, but I wasn’t going to complain.
“Limp with us,” I said. I put my hand on his shoulder and used him for support as I guided him out the door.
“Where are we going?” Rebel called out from behind us.
“We need to get back to Iceland,” I said.
“You don’t have a jet last I checked.”
“I know someone who does.”
Rebel drove the Jeep while Coleslaw sat on my lap, slouched down as far as he could as he peeked out the window at Manhattan. From the looks of it he’d never been to a big city before. That made sense. He was an Icelandic supernatural after all.
I opened my Vault Portal and searched for something I could use as enticement. Dino, my friend with the jet, had expensive tastes. Well, exotic tastes would be more accurate. I thought I knew just what would get his good side to shine. If I could just find it.
The portal floated in front of me, its purple hue casting the interior of the car in an eerie glow. It caught the attention of some New Yorkers, which is a hard thing to do. But they just hooted and gave the thumbs-up. They probably thought we were on our way to a rave with our trippy, flashing thingies.
“What are you looking for in there?” Rebel asked.
“Something for Dino.”
“An exploding cigar would be cool,” she said. “But one that like actually explodes and blows his brains all over the leather walls. That would be funny.”
“You don’t like any of my friends, do you?”
“No.”
“He has a jet. He owes me a dozen favors. He’s a good person to know.”
“That’s the first time the word good has ever been used to describe Dino.”
“He’s not that bad.”
“He held you ransom when you were ten.”
“Those were different times.”
“Yeah, kidnapping was okay in 2002.”
“He was in the Troll Guild. That’s just the kind of shit they do. He quit in 2010.”
“No one quits the guild. And he’s still a troll. He’ll screw you again the first chance he gets.”
“Not if I screw him first,” I said. She saw my smile.
“What are you planning?”
I told her.
Chapter 30
“Dino!”
“Kane!”
Dino liked big greetings. He was a big guy. Most Trolls are.
He gave me a Troll hug, which is like a bear hug without the love. It was a tradition. If you were going to be a friend to a Troll you had to tolerate the greeting. He stuck a dulled fingernail in my ear and licked it.
“Oh, fuck,” Rebel said, gagging.
“Rebel!” I yelled. She knew the rules. There was one more step to the traditional Troll greeting.
Dino spread his legs wide. I crouched low, shifted my weight and kicked Dino as hard as I could in the Troll nuts. He reeled back in pain, roaring and laughing. He fell into his plus-sized La-Z Boy and cupped his Trollhood, writhing.
“HAHAHAHAHAHA I PEED!” he yelled in delight.
“I like that tradition,” Rebel mumbled loud enough for me to hear. “Coleslaw, you can come in now.”
The Travelers’ Friend peeked around the front door to the huge, lavish apartment and saw that the Troll was incapacitated for the moment. He also scoped it out for ways to escape.
We had to wait a minute for Dino to gather himself. Nothing like the image of a Troll curled up in a big ball, muttering and chuckling to himself.
“You guys want to grab a bite?” he asked, pushing himself up from the chair and looming over us. I’d known him for a long time but it was still an impressive, frightening sight. Nothing is as ugly as a Troll, not even the ugliest demons. But Dino had a human or two somewhere in his bloodline because he could pass for a big ugly man with the right makeup in the right places. He spent two hours in the beauty chair every morning so he could go outside without terrifying people too much.
“No thanks,” I said. “We’re in a hurry.”
“How about a drink?”
“A plane would do,” I said.
“Ah, I see. On one of your adventures, then. Which plane?” He glanced at me sideways, suspicious about where this conversation was going.
“You still have the Gulfstream V?”
His eyes lit up. Trolls love planes. It’s the primary reason they came out of hiding back in the early 20th century. They saw flying machines and that was all they needed to shed their wet holes in the ground and start making fortunes.
“Ah, so you want top speed for low distance,” he said. “California?”
“Iceland. You have it?”
“Nah. I got rid of it when the new Boeing Business Jet rev came out. You want that?”
“Sounds good. We’ll need the pilot too.”
“That would be me then,” he said, beaming. His large flat teeth emerged behind lips the size of my arm. Rebel made a disgusted sound and I elbowed her.
“What happened to Bob?” I asked. His old pilot was a maestro. He’d saved us from certain death half a dozen times.
Dino’s eyes lit red and his brow folded over them. “I ate him.”
The room was silent. Except for Coleslaw’s whimper from somewhere near the kitchen.
Dino started laughing. The sound shook the whole room. A vase dropped off its stand and shattered on the marble floor.
“Shit, I loved that vase. Bob retired last year,” the Troll said, sticking a cigar between his teeth and lighting up with a lighter that was big enough to blow the place up. “You want the plane? You get the Troll.”
Rebel and I glanced at each other.
“All of me if you’re in the mood, darlin’,” he added for Rebel’s benefit. His eyebrows jerked up and down. He was impressed with himself. Another Troll trait.
“What do you mean?” Rebel asked, playing dumb.
The question threw Dino off. He was used to women blushing or getting the hell out of there.
“What?” he asked.
“I don’t know what you mean, Dino. Just now, you said something about giving all of you and then you moved your eyebrows around. They were all like…” She moved her fingers around spastically. “Is that supposed to mean something?”
“Well, yeah…” He stopped there. She kept staring, waiting. “It means… you know… I’m a big guy.” She shifted her weight, letting her hips relax. “So you can have it if you’re in the mood for… all the bigness.”
“Rebel…” I said.
“No, no, I’m just trying to understand what he’s saying,” she said. “Because I think we came in here as a couple of pros who have killed about a hundred Trolls in our career and I’m wondering what he can do for us that we can’t do for ourselves.”
“Hey, if you don’t know what I’m talking about then you can take it up with your partner,” Dino said. He was getting defensive. Defensive Trolls are not friendly to anyone. Even a friend.
“Don’t pull me into this,” I said.
“I want to know what he meant!”
“I am 100% walking manhood, woman! My prick has killed Dragons!” Dino yelled, shattering another vase.
“Ah, I see,” she said.
“I could pull down my pants right now and get you off!”
“Excellent,” she said. “Let’s go then. Kane, Coleslaw, will you give us a minute?”
“No,” I said.
Dino’s eyes were wide. I couldn’t tell if he was happy or stunned.
“Go!” Dino and Rebel yelled at the same time.
“We’ve got a mission here!” I yelled back. “Saving the world is more important than whatever the hell this is you two have going on!”
Rebel crossed her arms. Dino, standing behind her, waved me away with his fingers.
I walked down the hall and took my pick of rooms to enter. Coleslaw followed me.
My memory had served me right.
We were in his study.
A door led to the next room which was a hobby room.
It’s where Dino showed off his favorite finds. He’d made his fortune pillaging artifacts from ancient civilizations.
It sounded like someone was taking a sledgehammer to the apartment down the hall. Rebel screamed. Dino grunted. This went on for way too long. There was a loud crack, a searing screech and then silence.
“Is that it?” Coleslaw asked.
I held a finger up and listened. There was the whimper I was waiting for.
When we got back to the living room, Rebel was sitting in a chair, fully clothed, filing her nails.
Dino was bent over his coffee table, his butt in the air. He was covered in slashes and bleeding yellow blood all over his Persian rug.
“Hey guys,” Rebel said.
“Hey,” I said back. “You okay Dino?”
“I think I love her, Kane,” the Troll said, sobbing.
“That’s great, buddy. Can we go now?”
“He’s going to need a minute, I think,” Rebel said, slipping her file back into its scabbard on her belt. She hopped up and led us down the hall to a bedroom.
“He needs to get something out of him before he’s going to fly us anywhere.”
“I don’t need to know anything else, thanks.”
“What does…” Coleslaw started to ask.
“Stop, Slaw,” I said. “Just stop. Trust me.”
“Did you get it?” Rebel asked.
I smiled and held it up. The Troll’s Cross.
I knew Dino would have one. All Trolls do. The Vikings and Norse gods used the symbol to ward off evil magic. But it could also call forth a Troll army of immense power.
We’d need that perk in the battles ahead.
Did I feel guilty that I was using a friend for more than a plane ride? Kind of. But we were on a mission.
And our plan to distract Dino so we could get the Troll’s Cross had worked.
Chapter 31
Coleslaw went ahead of us with the Trolls Cross and stashed it in the Jeep while we waited for Dino to get himself together. It took an hour. Rebel made a mess of him. I warned her it could mean he’d stick to her like a lovesick puppy and now it looked like that would happen. She shrugged it off.
Would I do the same thing if it had been a female troll? Sure, but I would have whined about it more than she did.
The doorman rolled out the Troll Trailer from the building’s private parking garage. He hitched it to the back of our car and Dino stepped on. He was having a hard time fitting but he squeezed in, held the sides with his massive hands and called out, “Okay, go! Just hurry, please.”
It was a 30 minute ride to the airstrip. Once we got on the plane the troll was all-pro. The cockpit was customized to hold just him. The pilot and co-pilot chair ran on a rail and slipped into each other to make one large seat. He flicked a button and the lights on the dashboard adjusted to, I assumed, a single pilot mode.
He even secured a stewardess to take care of us. She arrived on the plane at 4am and she clearly had a thing for her boss. She was all smiles every time he talked. But Dino had his eyes on only one woman. Rebel. Or, as he called her, “Ma’am.”
The troll had us in the air in record time. We did a couple of barrel rolls somewhere over the Atlantic which had Coleslaw banging on the cockpit door in anger. We could hear Dino chuckling from behind the bullet-proof door.
The rest of the flight was quiet until Rebel looked out the window and said, “You have got to be shitting me.”
“What?” I asked going to her side.
“What the hell is Fox doing out there?”
She was right. Fox was sitting on the plane wing, covered in freezing cold water. He sat cross-legged, his eyes closed. The wind didn’t seem to have an effect on him, but my guess was that it took everything he had to stay on the wing.
“Should we land?” Rebel asked.
“We’re over the Atlantic. There’s nowhere to land.”
“What a moron,” she whispered, but I could tell that she was concerned. We knew he’d be okay after the fight in the vampire HQ but sitting on a plane wing for three hours wasn’t a good way to recover from being shot, vampire or otherwise.
“No more barrel rolls!” I yelled to Dino.
“Okay, okay.”
We arrived in Iceland two hours later. It was a fast jet and we were surfing a strong wind. Fox had hopped off the wing when everyone was sleeping. I was sure he’d pop back into the picture at the most obtuse time possible, as was his way.
Dino had a friend who lived in a mountain nearby. The Troll brought his cell phone with him and said he’d be ready to fly anywhere we wanted whenever we wanted. I’d never heard him so accommodating. Love could even turn a troll into a blubbering idiot.
We decided to get a few more hours sleep and then head out to the museum at noon. It would take a couple of hours to drive there so the plan was to arrive just before it closed. Our hope was that we could avoid tourists and have a talk with the curator about his dick collection.
I checked the news while we rode the elevator up to our rooms. The top Icelandic news item for the morning was a mysterious, armored man appearing out of nowhere in the middle of the church. Bonehead didn’t make a scene. He just walked out through the front door. But the Prime Minister of Iceland happened to be in the church at the time so it was newsworthy.
I couldn't wait to get to a bed. But when I got to my room I could feel that something was off. Someone was in my room. Someone was going to try and keep me from getting shut-eye. I don’t respond well to that.
“You feel that?” I whispered to Rebel.
“Yeah. Whoever it is, he’s sloppy.”
I pulled out a Glock. She nodded. I pushed the door open.
Skyler was sitting by the window, feet up on my bed. He was drinking a wine glass of blood and reading an anatomy book.
“That’s anti-climactic,” I said. “Why are you in my room?”
“Hey Skyler,” Rebel said, pushing past me.
“Hi sweetheart.”
“Can I have a moment’s peace, please?” I said. Okay whined. “Just an hour without whatever bullshit he’s about to throw at us.”
“You’re looking for a god’s cock,” Skyler said, dabbing the blood trickling down his chin. He took another sip and looked at me as if he’d just asked about the temperature outside.
“See?” I said, pointing at him. “Just one hour!”
“How do you know it’s a god’s cock?” Rebel asked him, ignoring me.
“Demons lie,” I said. “That’s their thing.”
“Not this one. Not to me,” Skyler said. “You two don’t seem as surprised as I thought you’d be.”
“Harry told us about the member,” I said.
“Harry! How is that old son of a bitch?”
“He’s a son of a bitch,” Rebel said. “Which god?”
“No idea.”
“What’s a god’s dick look like?” I asked, trying to make a joke of it.
“Big is my guess,” Skyler said.
“Small is my guess,” Rebel said.
“Get out of my room and let me sleep, is my guess.”
“Come on, sweety,” Skyler said, gently gripping Rebel’s elbow. “Let’s let grouchy pants get his beauty rest.”
Chapter 32
The phallus museum was pretty low key for a phallus museum.
The block building lay low on the horizon which made me feel like I was walking into a 1980s porn hut in a strip mall parking lot.
The inside didn't fill me with the warm and fuzzies either. Dicks stuck out of the wall, framed in wood plates.
“It's like a wall of Glory Holes!” Rebel said, too loudly. “We should get Coleslaw out of the car and make him see this.”
"Can I help you?" An elderly man in a beige suit and gold-rimmed glasses shuffled up. His cane was, of course, topped off with his particular area of expertise. He didn’t have to say a word and I knew that this was not a man who would tolerate dick jokes.
“We're looking for a phallus," Rebel said, stepping in front of me. If she wanted to take point, fine. “We're not sure what it looks like but we think it may be human-ish and it may have a history that's...” She paused, not sure how to phrase it.
“Mysterious," I said. He looked at me like he just noticed I was there.
“Yeah,” she said. "Mysterious. You have anything like that?”
Finally, after way too long, he said, “Perhaps.”
I nodded. Rebel waited. He stared like it was our turn to speak. Just as I was about to break the silence with the more direct approach, he turned on his heels and limped off to a door in the back. He glanced over his shoulder and frowned.