Trickster Noir (Pixie for Hire Book 2)

by Cedar Sanderson

  “There is that.” Bella agreed.

  Their last stop was a welding shop. She secured a bottle of acetylene to add to their improvised havoc, and they headed for the meet-up point. She had used her little laptop to look at google maps and find a likely spot, an abandoned warehouse, and when they pulled up, she signaled to Dean to follow them around to the back, into the weedy parking lot out of sight of the main road.

  “I’ve got two bottles, forty-pounders.” He greeted her with a subtle nod, and she knew he was going to respect her leadership. She hadn’t even been sure he would be here, and now she relaxed a little.

  “I’m going to take us in close, and we will finish prepping out there, where we can’t be seen easily. Everybody grab your gear.”

  A moment later, they were all holding gas tanks and huddled around her. Dan and Tex wore their rifles slung in safe carry positions. Bella pulled the bubble around, and they were gone. Anyone watching would only have seen a soap bubble of mammoth proportions appear, and then pop again, the people disappearing along with it.

  In the Pacific Rainforest, where it rains something like three hundred days out of the year, the undergrowth is largely choked out by the huge trees, most of those the shaggy-barked Western Red Cedar. The forest floor is cushioned by inches if not feet of moss, soggy with rain and emerald green. They sank into this when the transport bubble popped again.

  Bella pulled a booted foot out of the mud and moss with difficulty. “Well, so much for not getting wet.”

  She spun a message spell off her fingertips, and then turned to the guys. “Let’s put the bottles aside, and can you spread out that tarp? I’d like to keep the weaponry as dry as possible.”

  Tex and Dan each grabbed a corner and spread out the twelve-foot tarp she’d insisted on buying. As soon as that was done, Bella closed her eyes and focused her mind. Her weapon was easy, and came first, the familiar weight and clank of the grenade launcher falling into her hands. She put it on the tarp hastily.

  “They’re really cold when they arrive,” she warned the guys. They nodded, wide eyed. Tex didn’t even have a wisecrack to make.

  The next two she wanted were trickier, as she didn’t have “come here” spells on them. She had seen them in Lom’s armory, and knew right where they were. And she really wanted them. That shouldn’t have made a difference, but she was learning that some of her magic was about how much will she put behind it. She had found some limits, but she had also learned that she could do much more than it was assumed she could.

  Bella reached out, and the gorgeous rifle fell into her hands. The weight of it staggered her a bit. “Oof, Dan, I think you may want to look at this once it warms up a bit. I don’t know how it will kick, but...”

  She put it down and he stepped closer. The “big gun” was a double-barreled rifle with ornate engraving vining along both barrels, and an ivory-inlaid stock further embellished with gold leaf. What had impressed her when she first saw it wasn’t just the beautiful elephants depicted in the artwork, but the evidence of wear on the stock and barrels. This gun had been used.

  Bella closed her eyes again and held her hands out, slightly apart, over the trap, she didn’t expect to catch all of the next load. Cartridges, each fully as long as her hand and as thick as her finger, showered down.

  “The only drawback to the big gun...”

  “It’s a .600 Nitro Express,” Dean broke in with the widest smile she had ever seen on his face.

  “The drawback to the Nitro,” Bella repeated patiently, “Is that you will only have six shots. That’s all the ammo I know is the location of. But it looked like it would put down an ogre.”

  “If you got that where I think you got that, my hat is off to you.” Dean swept her a low Court bow, incongruous in his battered leather jacket and jeans, up to his ankles in moss.

  “I figure he’ll forgive me.” She was counting on it, actually. This would be a big test of Lom’s trust, pulling items out of his armory.

  She had one last trick up her sleeve. She was fairly sure this weapon was a result of his having to do so much on his own. Bella closed her eyes and bent her knees slightly, this was going to be heavy.

  It was, and she had miscalculated. The belt-fed grenade launcher, her, and the box of ammo all went down in a heap. Dan and Fred were both laughing as they lifted everything off her. Bella felt like she had been swimming on the backside, and half-frozen on the front.

  “Ouch.” She accepted Fred’s hand to help her up, rubbing her chest with the other hand. “I had no idea how heavy that was going to be.”

  “Now, who gets that monstrosity?” Dean was helping Tex put it upright.

  “I figured I’d have Tex man it. If he knows what to do with it... Dean, you and I will be in the cave. The guys, with these...” She pointed at the heap on the tarp now, “Will watch our back and take out any stragglers.”

  “Ah figger ah can pass muster, Ma’am.” Tex was grinning like a mad man and accentuating his drawl.

  “Fred, I need you to talk to... our friend.”

  He nodded. “I figure he’s out there having a good chuckle about now.”

  “I hope so. We’ve been making enough noise for a small army.” Bella watched him walk into the deep woods and vanish behind a tree.

  “What next then?”

  “I get us in place and we make things go Boom!” She threw her arms up in the air.

  “Aren’t you a little cocky, girl?” Dan put a hand on her shoulder.

  Bella shrugged. “Most likely, but better to face it with a smile than let myself shake in my boots. It has to be done, and I’d rather get it over with. We didn’t have time to plan, so let’s use surprise.”

  “I know why you are putting us up on the hill. I’m not best pleased with you putting yourself right in the heart of it.”

  She put her hand over his. “Dan, I have strength in ways I never dreamed possible. I don’t think I’m invincible, but I am not afraid of this. I’m more worried one of you will get hurt.”

  Bella tipped her head back and looked up at him. “Please don’t get hurt. I don’t want to have to explain it to Aunt Mya, she scares me when she’s mad.”

  He laughed. “Mom has that effect, yes. I’ll be good.”

  “Once you’re in place,” Bella moved so they could all see her, even Fred, who had come back into the circle. “You’ll need to be quiet. I know that legend has it they hunt more by smell and sound than sight, being poor-sighted, as one book puts it. But I don’t know that from experience, so take that for what it is worth.”

  They were all serious now, nodding in agreement. “I’ll be using magic, as will Dean, so we’ll be moving oddly, and not always visibly. Please don’t shoot at anything until you are sure of it. You have a fairly clear field of fire, but it’s not a perfectly level, mowed field, sorry.”

  That got them to smile. Bella looked at Fred. “Update?”

  “They have not left the cave since sun-up. He says this is a normal thing, they rarely venture out in the day. Also, he says to tell you six males, three females, observed.”

  “Then let’s do this. Hold onto your weapons, please...”

  Bella sent them all to their positions and pulled a protein bar out of her bag, hurriedly eating and washing it down with more Gatorade. She was burning through a huge amount of energy, and even with the big breakfast she had made them all eat, she needed this.

  She triggered a message spell for the sprites, and a moment later one of them appeared and snapped a salute.

  “Callum, right?”

  He nodded, hovering at an arm’s length from her face, his wings an iridescent blur.

  “Your brothers with Gary?” Bella asked.

  He nodded again, and she smiled, thinking that she had never heard a word out of him. “You guys are my eyes in the air with this, and message carriers for the humans, please, they can’t use spells.”

  “Aye, ma’am.” He broke his silence, and whizzed out of sight again. She
sighed. It was time.

  The Mouth of Hell

  Dean joined her in standing on the tarp, and she pulled a bubble around them, carefully including the tarp and all its gaseous cargo. She wasn’t going straight to the destination. They would have to take this slowly, or risk debarking right in front of a startled ogre. Bella mused that Lom would likely have tackled this all on his own, and done it with panache, but she was glad to have help.

  Now, she could acknowledge that she was afraid. She kept seeing the ogre she had killed, running down the highway, gaining on Lom. Bella remembered the first grenade hitting it in the chest, blowing a freaking crater in flesh and it still kept coming. She reached behind her and felt the stock of the MGL. It was a heavy damn thing, but she didn’t mind. Each and every one of the grenades had been magically enhanced, this time. Last time she’d been learning as she went.

  Bella was still learning as she did it, she reflected bitterly. Only this time there were more people depending on her. She dropped the bubble and gasped involuntarily. Reeling, her eyes watering, she nodded at Dean, who wiped his own eyes and stepped off the tarp, disappearing. Bella closed her eyes and opened her Sight. The smell was a physical presence, hammering at her sinuses and burning her eyes even when they were closed.

  The Sight revealed Dean’s faint aura, moving away from her, and further, the olive-green glow of the ogres. There were three separate, lying down, she thought, and a lump of them, she decided, since that was too large a signature for just one. Dean stopped and came back toward her.

  She bubbled them when he came back, so they could talk.

  “There’s a rockfall up there they seem to be using as their front door. It partly blocks the cave, and likely it’s warmer behind it.”

  “Can we set it off there, or is that too close?”

  “If we’re real quiet, and use the don’t-see.” He blew his nose on a handkerchief. “At least they won’t smell the propane. It will blend right in with odor of ogre.”

  Bella nodded. “It was the one thing all the books agreed on. Ogre nests stink. Let’s do this before one wakes up.”

  She dropped the bubble and used a spell to lift the tarp and slide it through the air to where she wanted it. Working quickly, they canted the bottles toward the rear of the cave and opened them wide. He pointed at the opening, and she nodded. The air was getting even worse than it had been. Time to go.

  She popped back out on the hill with Tex, who jumped in surprise at her sudden appearance. Bella bent over and vomited.

  “Sorry... sorry.” She gasped when she could speak.

  “Jeeze! You ok?” He had her shoulders, and she brushed him off.

  “Man your weapon. It just smelled really bad, and the only way I could keep from throwing up in there was to promise my body I could do it out here.” She gasped for the fresh air.

  “Yes ma’am. When are the fireworks?” He was looking toward the cave, and it still looked the same. A break in the forest floor, black and craggy against the soft greens.

  “I wanted to give a minute or so for maximum fuel release.”

  Bella closed her eyes and made a gesture to send the spells she had left in the cave into action. “Now.”

  She opened her eyes to see the cave mouth breathe. At least, that was what it looked like. The entrance, fringed with ferns and mosses dangling over the rocks, suddenly inhaled. The ferns fluttered violently inward, some torn from their roots by the force of the inhalation.

  “What the hell?” Tex, shocked past his usual self-control on not swearing in the presence of a lady.

  “A thermobaric blast is also called a vacuum bomb. It literally sucks all the air into the blast, burning the oxygen out of the air.”

  Bella was still talking when the second part of the blast occurred. The ground shook under them as the cave vomited a tongue of fire that extended almost to the foot of the hill they were on, blackening leaves and sending a burst of steam into the air from the wet vegetation.

  “Shit.” Bella hadn’t figured on that. “Keep your eyes on the area where the cave mouth is.”

  She closed her eyes. The fire, it turned out, interfered with that, as well. She couldn’t tell if there was anything coming. Opening her eyes again just reminded her of the headache from her earlier use of the Sight. But with her eyes...

  “Incoming!” She screamed, a hand holding a spell to her mouth to amplify her voice for Dean and Dan. Where was Fred?

  That mental question was answered as the man knelt next to Tex, and Tex started firing with Fred making sure the belt stayed flat and fed properly. They must have practiced that while she was in the cave.

  The two ogres that staggered out of the cave through the flames and steam were screaming, their skin blackened, and even, Bella saw, on fire in places. They didn’t know yet where their enemy was, but as one ripped a sapling out by the roots in passing and flailed with the root ball like a knobbed club, they knew they had been attacked, she was sure. He was blindly enraged, probably couldn’t see, but he was still a threat.

  Tex’s first shots fell behind the ogres, splashing up mud and moss. Bella heard Dan’s Nitro fire, a deep boom that echoed oddly. She put a hand to her head and wondered why the scene below was pulsing. The far Ogre put a hand to his chest and whipped around to face the little ridge Dan was firing from with a snarl. The second charge slammed his head back, the back of his skull missing in a gout of red and green and white. Christmasy, Bella mused from the fog bank that had suddenly rolled in.

  Tex was walking his fire onto the other ogre who was charging them. Bella wondered why he wasn’t affected by the fog. She could barely see, and then all she could see were tree tops and grey clouds. What the hell?

  Trying Too Hard Again

  Dean’s face appeared in her vision, and the fog was gone again. Bella realized she was lying on her back in the moss again. This time it was not only wet, but her MGL was under her. Ouch on top of ouches. She was bruised all over.

  “What happened?” She asked him, wondering how he’d gotten over to their hilltop.

  “You passed out. How much of a drain were you having with your magic use?”

  He was holding her wrist, and gesturing in a way she recognized from Melcar’s use of it.

  “I don’t really know, I just was trying to get the job done. Can you help me up please?” she asked irritably. Something was really digging into her spine.

  “Are the ogres?” she looked around, sitting down she couldn’t see down into the hollow where the cave was. Dan was there, cradling the big gun and looking worried. Tex was still scanning for movement, but listening to them, she saw.

  “Do you have more of those protein bars?” Dean ignored her question.

  “I have moose jerky,” Dan offered.

  “In my backpack, and yes please, Dan.” Bella responded to both of them. She was feeling rather woozy.

  “The ogres,” Dean said, after getting her eating, “are dead, but we are watching just in case there are more survivors. You do not need to do anything more. Yes, you’re strong, but dammit...” He ran out of words. Bella glared at him.

  “I’m not a child.” His tone had been rather paternal and exasperated there at the end.

  “You’re not, but you might as well be.” He huffed in exasperation, still kneeling and holding her shoulder so she didn’t go over on her back again. “You could have killed yourself with those spells. They are supposed to be tied to an individual, not all pulling from one person.”

  “What did she do?” Fred asked. He’d been watching with intense curiosity. Bella wondered what he was thinking of all this.

  “She was running personal protection spells for all the humans. You can think of them as force fields. Normally, they are tied to a Folke for battle, and only a limited time, because they take so much energy to run.”

  “Bella!” Dan protested. “What were you thinking?”

  “You don’t have magic. I do.” She didn’t say that she’d been feeling guilty a
bout dragging them into this.

  “We volunteered, knowing what we were getting into.” Dan knelt and pulled on the MGL sling. Bella let him get it off her. She was feeling wet, cold, and tired. “We came Underhill, remember? Yes, you attract weirdness. But this was a good fight, for a good reason.”

  “We’re not done yet.” She said grimly, taking a deep breath. She wasn’t looking forward to standing up, but that was next.

  “What now?” Fred asked, glancing behind him at the blackened hollow. The ogres were still, and the cave mouth yawned black and empty.

  “Clean-up. We can’t have park rangers coming to investigate and finding... anything. This is something Dean and I need to manage.”

  Dan made a frustrated noise. She raised an eyebrow at him. “What are you going to do with ogre bones? Or worse, gnawed human ones?”

  Tex spoke up for the first time. “Could make a necklace from teeth.”

  Bella giggled semi-hysterically. “Ew, and no.”

  “Aw.” Tex turned around and winked at her. “I think they’re all dead, or so bad off they’re not moving, any rate.”

  Dean stood up. “Reluctantly, she is right. To clean up we need to use magic. But Bella, don’t overdo it. I’d just as soon not find out how nasty a death Lom can manage even when he’s not well, ok?”

  Bella took Fred’s offered hands to get up, Dan having turned back to scanning the woods while Tex watched the cave. Standing made her wish she were sitting again, but she stayed up. Surveying the scene below made her gape, though.

  “What happened?”

  The ground was cratered and pocked, each gash on the green moss vivid brown. The dead ogres, covered in soot, mud, and blood, sprawled large on this verdant carpet. The cave mouth itself was as she expected, the foliage burned away and gaping black. Flames still flickered feebly in a few places, but the wetness of the forest was not encouraging them to spread.

  “Um... If you ever give Tex this weapon again, make sure you stand behind him?” Fred chuckled sheepishly.

  “Oh. A bit of overkill, then?”