After a good fifteen minutes of bumping along the half-maintained road that looked and felt more and more like a deer track with every turn, we pulled into a clearing about thirty yards across. In the middle of the clearing was a small frame house with a wraparound porch, a nice little hunting cabin, or maybe the kind of place that a rich city moron would buy for “getaway.” It backed up onto a good-sized pond with a dock stretching out into it. I didn’t see any kind of boat, so I figured whoever lived there just walked out on the dock to fish or whatever.
A battered old GMC pickup sat next to the house, as much rust as green paint showing on the hood and a long crack running sideways across the windshield. The only thing that looked real out of place was the satellite dish off to the right of the house, on the other side of a tiny garden that consisted of a dozen head of cabbage and six tomato plants. There was a row of what might have been beans planted, too, but I couldn’t tell from the truck. This wasn’t some kind of DISH network satellite—this was a big-ass, old-school dish, the kind people used to have back in the 80s. There was a generator tucked up beside the house, too, one big enough to power a building for several days. There was definitely more going on with this dude than you’d think from his choice of homesteads.
I put the truck in park and got out, leaving Bertha and her shoulder holster hanging on the back of the driver’s seat. If anything went sideways, all I had was a little Judge revolver at the small of my back and a Buck hunting knife on my belt. Well, and a federal agent, a priest, a tech wizard, and my fairy mother. On further analysis, I decided I’d probably be okay.
Mama and Amy got out of the truck, and we all instinctively spread out, so no one shot could take out too many of us. Joe and Skeeter did the same thing when they got out of the Groover, and Joe stepped forward, his hands held high.
“Roy!” he called out. “It’s Joe! Remember me? I work with Bubba, the Hunter from Georgia. We need your help.”
“Piss off!” The voice was sandpapery and sharp, and I couldn’t quite tell where it came from.
“We can’t, Roy. We need to get to Faerie. I know you can send us there,” Joe called.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the voice replied. “But I know you got five seconds to get your ass back in that ugly car before I put a bullet in your leg.”
“Hey!” Skeeter protested. “What the hell is wrong with my car?”
“Stow it Skeeter,” I said. “Mr. McEvoy,” I called. “My name is Robert Brabham. People call me Bubba. We have to get to Faerie, and you’re the best chance we have to do that. Could you please come out and talk to us?”
“I reckon we can talk, but it ain’t gonna do no good. Especially not if you got him or any of his ilk with you.” A man stepped out from the woods to the left of the house, a shotgun in his hand. He spat in Joe’s general direction, then lowered the weapon when he got a good look at us.
“I’m sorry, folks,” Roy said. “But I can’t open the door to Faerie no more. If the queen finds us, she’ll kill me.”
“Holy crap, you got beef with Mab, too?” I asked. I turned to Mama. “Does my dear sweet granny just murder everybody she runs into?”
“I ain’t worried about Mab,” Roy said, and I’m pretty sure that’s the first time anybody’s ever uttered those words in that order, if Mab is anything like Mama described her. “It’s that crazy Summer bitch that I’m afraid of. She gets hold of me, she’ll yank my arms and legs off like a snotty kid playing with a fly.”
“You exaggerate, husband,” came a voice from the house. We all looked up as one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever seen came down the steps to stand next to Roy. Her hair was golden blonde, and she wore a tan of rich gold. Her eyes were a sparkling green so rich I could tell their color from a dozen yards away, and when she smiled, it seemed like the air became warmer.
“Titania would not kill you, my love,” the woman said. “My mother is harsh, but not cruel.”
“Wait a second,” Amy said. “You mean to tell me that you’re…”
“Yes,” she said. “I am Tanara, Daughter of Titania, Heir to the Throne of Summer.”
“Or you were until you came to hide here in the world of man,” Mama said, stepping forward. She stood straighter than usual, and her black hair whipped around her in a perpetual chill wind. Her blue eyes glinted like ice in her pale skin, and the tips of her pointed ears poked out from her blowing ebon locks. She looked like Tanara’s polar opposite, which I reckon she was in a lot of ways.
“Ygraine?” the blonde woman said, puzzlement etched in her furrowed brow. “What are you doing here?”
“I have to go home, Tanny,” Mama said. “Puck has my daughter, and I have to get her back.”
The two women stared at each other across the expanse of grass and dirt. Then after a long moment, Tanara nodded and said, “Well, I suppose if we aren’t going to murder each other on sight like we’re supposed to, we may as well go inside and have some tea.”
8
“So does this mean that you’re my aunt?” I asked the curvy blonde once we were all settled Roy’s living room. Roy’s place was even more rustic-looking than mine on the outside, but the inside was really swanky. There were two sofas, a big flat-screen TV, a couple of movie theatre recliners with cup-holders in the arms and a bunch of buttons on the side, and a glass-topped coffee table with fish swimming around inside it. I wanted to ask Roy how he fed the fish but decided we had more important stuff to deal with.
“What’s wrong, Bubba? Having some impure thoughts about your fairy godmother?” Amy asked with a grin. I blushed a little because she wasn’t too far off. Tamara was a good-looking woman, soft in all the right places with a hint of sharp edges. I wasn’t sure I’d want to try to pick her up even if I wasn’t dating a woman who carried a gun, but it would probably be worth the scars.
“Ygraine and I are half-sisters, both of us daughters of Oberon, so yes, human, I suppose I am your aunt. I would appreciate it if you never mentioned that fact again, in this world or any other.” She looked at me with undisguised disdain, taking in my hair, my beard, and my tattoos with one sweeping glance. I guess the biker chic/heavy metal redneck look I cultivate just ain’t for everybody. Her loss.
“My name’s Bubba, Aunt Tanny,” I said, holding out my hand with a huge grin. I’ve always had a talent for making uncomfortable people feel way more uncomfortable, and I was milking that for all it was worth with my newfound snotty-ass aunt.
She shook my hand, managing to only look mildly horrified. “This…behemoth is your son, Ygraine? What kind of beast was his father?”
“Werewolf,” I said, my voice grim. “My father was a Hunter, then he got turned into a werewolf by my psycho brother. Then I killed him. A year or so after that, I killed my brother. I don’t have the greatest track record with family members,” I said. The Summer Princess turned a little pale, and I let a little grin escape as I turned around and walked back to the couch. Mama shot me a dirty look, but I just shrugged. Everything I said was true, and if she wanted me to play nice, maybe Auntie shouldn’t have been an asshole.
“Why does Puck have your daughter, Ygraine? What could the Goodfellow possibly want with the child?” Tanara asked once I was seated.
“I have no idea,” Mama said. “I just know that he took her, and I intend to return her to safety before she is harmed.”
“You’re kidding, right?” Skeeter asked.
Every head in the room spun around to stare at my friend. “What?” he said. “You really don’t see it? It’s a power play. It’s the most obvious thing in the world. This is Puck, right? Like A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Puck? He’s a trickster. A con artist, a sham, and an angle-shooter. This gives him leverage against both Courts because your daughter is royalty of Winter and Summer.”
“Because Oberon left Mab and is now with Titania,” Joe said.
“Exactly,” Skeeter agreed. “That means that Ygraine and her daughter…”
“
Nitalia,” Mama supplied.
“Nitalia,” Skeeter continued. “You two are the only people with a halfway legitimate claim to either throne.”
“Or both,” I said. “That makes sense. As the granddaughter of Mab and Oberon, Nitalia has a legitimate claim to the Court of Winter and Summer. That’s got to be why Puck was interested in her. But what is he going to get out of it? I met that little bastard, and he doesn’t do shit without some way for it to benefit him.”
“Power?” Joe asked. “Does he get some kind of authority by taking Nitalia to Mab? Or Titania?”
“The queens of the Fae do not let go of their authority easily,” Tanara said. “I doubt that Goodfellow is so naive as to think that he would be seen with favor after such a trick.”
“From the way he was acting when I left him, he just wanted to be left alone to canoodle with that cute Alethea chick,” I said.
“The Princess Alethea?” Tamara asked. Her eyes were big. “Robin Goodfellow was romantic with the Princess Alethea?” The way she said it, you’d have thought I said that Neil Patrick Harris was sleeping with Lady Gaga.
“Yeah,” I said. “Last time I saw them, they were romantic-ing all over the grass. I was a little scared she was romantic-ing the breath out of the poor little feller.”
“Well,” Tanara said, with a look at Mama. “That explains quite a bit.”
“Indeed, it does,” Mama said, a thoughtful look on her face.
“Maybe it explains a lot for the ones who grew up in a world of magic and munchkins, but it doesn’t really do a thing for the rest of us,” Amy said.
“Munchkins aren’t real, dear,” Mama said absently. “But Princess Alethea certainly is, and her father Alfont is very, very real. And very powerful.”
“Lemme guess,” I said. “He doesn’t like Puck?”
Tanara laughed. “Your son has a gift of understatement, Ygraine!” She turned to me. “Aloft doesn’t like anyone, and he despises anyone who can grant him no power or wealth. Goodfellow has unparalleled access to the kings and queens of Faerie and is allowed to pass freely between the courts, but he has no wealth to speak of. Or possessions, honestly. The Puck’s trade has always been in secrets kept and given, and in power. He would never be able to pay a dowry of the type Alethea is sure to command.”
“Unless he got a shitload of money in a hurry,” I said.
“Like the kind of money a king or queen has access to,” Skeeter added.
“Like the kind of money a king or queen would pay to get back their kidnapped daughter,” Amy concluded.
“That’s why she’s the detective, ladies and gents,” I said, bowing in my girlfriend’s general direction.
“So, you think Puck took my daughter to be able to afford Princess Alethea’s dowry?” Mama mused. “It makes sense, in a way. He has no conventional method of earning money, certainly not a sum so significant as to make Alfont consider him a worthy suitor for his daughter.”
“So now we don’t just need to find my sister, we need to find Puck a job so he can buy his wife, too? Is that what I’m hearing?” I asked. “This shit gets more difficult by the minute.”
“Just wait until you have children, dear. Then you’ll understand,” Mama said, smiling at Amy. Amy blushed and looked at her feet, and I just shook my head. Babies weren’t something we’d talked about, and I sure didn’t want to have that conversation in the middle of a stranger’s living room with Mama, Skeeter, and Father Joe taking part.
“Moving right along,” I said to a collection of grins from my mother and my friends. “So we think we know why Puck took Nitalia, but we don’t have any idea where he took her. Unless somebody’s got an address for the wormy little bastard?”
“No one knows where Goodfellow keeps his residence. He lays his head wherever it is convenient, but he keeps his domicile very well-hidden,” Tanara said.
“Okay, well, if we know anything, we know it’s somewhere in Faerie,” Skeeter said. “So that gives us our first step.”
“Yeah,” Amy agreed. “We need to get to Faerie.”
“That’s why we’re here, right Joe?” I asked. “You said Roy had some kind of connections that could get us through to Fairyland.”
“You did what, boy?” Roy popped up out of his recliner like his butt was spring-loaded, and he stomped across the room to stand over Joe. He had both hands clenched into fists at his sides, and I thought he was about to throw down with the much larger, and much younger, priest. I hopped up to try to get between them, but Amy put a hand on my belt and held me back. I reckon she figured that me stomping a muddle into our host would put a damper on our negotiations.
“I told them that you may know of a path to Faerie,” Joe said. “And I think that secret was no longer very well-kept once we met your Fairy Princess wife.” He pointed to Tanara for emphasis, and Roy looked a little embarrassed.
“Okay, I reckon that might be right. But you didn’t know nothing about Tanny, so it still won’t give you any kind of excuse for bringing strangers to my door. I told you when those sumbitches threw me out that I didn’t want to ever see none of you collared assholes again.” Roy seemed a little bit like the kind of guy who sometimes just wanted to pick a fight to get somebody to say he was right, and I didn’t have time for that.
I stood up, my bulk displacing a lot of the air in the room. “Do we have a problem, Roy?” I asked. I intentionally kept my tone light, but there was no question that I wasn’t in a mood to play. “Because we need to get passage to Faerie, and I don’t really care how we do it. The fairy ring Mama came through the first time is under a movie theatre now, and the video game that sucked me in the last time got taken off the market on account of it being a tool Puck used to kidnap human kids.”
“And I have no return trip in the charm I used to pass through the veil between worlds this time,” Mama chimed in.
“So, if you’ve got a doorway to Fairyland sitting around here somewhere, I’d be much obliged if you’d put whatever shit you’ve got going with Joe and the Church aside long enough to open it.”
“It’s not Fairyland,” Mama and Tanara said in unison.
“I guess they are sisters after all,” Skeeter said, not near as quiet as he probably thought he did.
Roy glared at me, then back at Joe. “What do you think, honey?” he asked Tanara.
“We should help them,” the woman said simply. “Children are rare among our kind, so every one is precious. Even a child of Winter.”
“Thank you,” Mama said.
“Don’t thank us yet,” Roy said. “It still ain’t gonna be easy. There’s two ways I know to get to Faerie around here. One is through the trunk of a giant live oak deep in the woods a day’s hike from here. It’s closer, and faster, but there’s been reports of some kinda monster living in the woods near the tree.”
“Monsters ain’t usually much of a problem,” I said. “In fact, monsters are kinda our thing.”
“Alright,” Roy said. “If you want to try to fight your way through to the tree, that’s fine. The other way is a little farther away, but safer. At least, usually.”
“What’s that path?” Amy asked.
“Well, you go up on Lookout Mountain outside Chattanooga, and you go up to the caves at Ruby Falls. There’s a troll in there, and under the floor of his lair is a passage to Faerie. He’s usually pretty reasonable, but if you catch him in a bad mood, or you’re rude to him…” He looked at me when he said that. I didn’t understand why, so I just stared back. After a minute, he went on. “If you’re rude to him, you’ll probably have to fight him. If you do, bring fire. Trolls regenerate, and fire is one of the things that can stop them.”
“So we traipse around in the woods around here looking for a mysterious monster to kill, or we go see Rock City and kill a troll in the caves outside Chattanooga. Is that about it?” I asked.
“Pretty much,” Roy agreed.
“Sometimes I feel like my life is nothing more than a series of bad cho
ices made between terrible options,” I grumbled. I turned to the crew and asked, “What do y’all want to do?”
9
Everybody pretty much wanted to try the closer option first, and I didn’t blame them. It made the most sense, trying to get through to Faerie by the nearest route would be faster, and we didn’t exactly have a surplus of time to work with.
We all went out to gear up while Mama got a map and some rough directions from Roy. I still didn’t like the dude, but he seemed pretty trustworthy. At least as long as we did what we said we’d do and got the hell off his property soon.
“What did this guy do to get thrown out of the Church, anyway?” Skeeter asked as he opened the back hatch on the Groover and started putting on body armor. Skeeter ain’t much good in a fight, but he’s made a lot of money selling collectibles on eBay and doing freelance IT work, so he can afford the best gear money can buy. He thinks it makes him look tougher, and I never have had the heart to tell him it makes it look like he’s armor-plating a toothpick. Sure, he’s a bigger badass than he used to be, but he still ain’t putting any fear into the hearts of men. Or women. Or housecoats. Or schnauzers.
“It’s a long story,” Joe replied, strapping down a Colt 1911 pistol in a holster on his leg. Joe carried a Buck hunting knife and a Winchester 700 rifle with a scope and bipod, too. He wasn’t the best of us close in, but the preacher could shoot Washington’s eye out of a quarter from a hundred yards.
“We got time,” I said. I had Bertha in a shoulder rig, a couple extra magazines under my right arm, and my caestus on my hands. The metal-clad spiked gloves made me feel even more badass than they looked. I didn’t go in much for long guns. Bertha was usually all the firearm I needed. I slung Grandpappy’s sword over my head in a scabbard that left the handle sticking up over my left shoulder and practiced drawing it a couple of times. I’d gotten better with the sword as time went by, but I was always going to be more of a punch and shoot things kinda guy.
Into the Mystic - A Bubba the Monster Hunter Novella Page 5
