Were-Geeks Save Lake Wacka Wacka

by Kathy Lyons

He needed to take pictures. No way could he explain this to Nero without evidence. He silently pulled out his cell phone as he tried to make sense of what they were doing.

  Simply put, they were playing Angry Birds. The pixies were loading a slingshot full of cheddar cheese bombs and launching it at a knee-high structure made of rocks and sticks. In the game, there would be a pig in the makeshift structure, and he could see something inside it, but he couldn’t tell what. And now he knew what those puffs of orange were. They came from little cheddar cheese bombs exploding against the stick structure.

  Totally precious! He was so captivated that he forgot that the air smelled incredibly foul, especially after one of those cheese bombs exploded. He made the mistake of inhaling.

  Oh hell. There was no way to stop the sneeze. He tried, but everything he did just made more noise before a truly loud, from-the-gut sneeze ripped through his nostrils.

  When his watering eyes finally cleared, he saw that every single cheese was staring at him. And pointing. And screaming one word in unison.

  “Attack!”

  Chapter 8

  BRUCE DISCOVERS FAIRY CHEESE

  BRUCE FELT safe, which was weird because nothing in his life was safe. Not his job, not his parents, not even his little brother. The only one he felt reasonably confident about was his little sister, Ivy, but that was because she’d finished her deployment and was home. No suicide bombers likely to get her in Indiana.

  And yet life had never felt more relaxed than it did when he stretched out on a bench with Laddin. Normally hyperactive guys like Laddin drove him nuts. Squirrels were less animated than his trainer. And yet the man made him laugh. Even better, he respected Laddin’s intelligence, which made him feel like he wasn’t alone against a whole lot of crazy. Apparently that relaxed him enough to fall asleep right there on the bench when he really ought to be finding out what it meant to be a werewolf.

  He knew he should force himself to wake up, but every firefighter knew the value of a good nap. He’d doze for five more minutes, then start asking questions.

  It went exactly as he planned. Five minutes into sleep, he started asking questions. Only he just wasn’t talking to Laddin. No, Mr. Salad Elf appeared right in front of him, his tomato hat slipping to the left so that a tomato seed dangled from his ear like an earring.

  “Really?” Bitterroot said, gesturing at his outfit. “Can’t you think of something else? My clothing comes from your memoires.”

  “Nope,” Bruce answered, happy to torture the fairy any way possible, if only in this dream.

  The dream prince snorted in disgust, then spent a long minute studying him. Finally Bruce gave up waiting.

  “What do you want?”

  “It’s not about me, Bruce. What do you want?”

  “I don’t want anything from you.”

  “Are you sure?” He held up the glowing apple, his expression making him look like the snake in the Garden of Eden. Bruce didn’t have to look twice to recognize it as the same apple he’d been offered before. The one that would give him more, whatever that meant. As far as he was concerned, it was all bullshit.

  Bruce waved his hand, knocking the thing aside. But of course, this was a dream—that was the only way to explain the fact that he was sitting on a bench made of celery—so the apple stayed right where it was, pulsing with temptation.

  “Things didn’t go so well with Josh, did they?”

  “What do you care?”

  “Well, think about it. You want to protect your baby brother, right?”

  Bruce grunted his agreement. He didn’t mean to, but the sound reverberated through the dreamscape anyway.

  “That cherry you ate made you his equal,” Bitterroot continued. “He’s got just as much magic as you do. So you can’t protect him from anything he can’t handle himself. What kind of a big brother is that?”

  “It’s the kind he’s got. Besides,” Bruce drawled, “it’s not the size of the wand that matters—”

  “But the magic within it,” Bitterroot finished for him. “And you have a cherry’s worth of magic. I’d say that’s small potatoes, but what you ate was tinier than even that.”

  Bruce winced but didn’t push. Yeah, the apple was all bright and beautiful. He knew it would taste like the best apple ever made. Hell, his taste buds were still yearning for another cherry, but he knew this apple would be even better.

  But he didn’t move. His issues with Josh wouldn’t be solved by a bigger magical dick, so he looked away. Except… he couldn’t look away, so he forced his eyes shut. Only they were already shut, because this was a dream.

  In the end, he fuzzed out his thoughts. “If that’s all you’ve got,” he murmured, “I was taking a nap.”

  “Are you so sure about that?” the fairy taunted. “I think your partner might prefer you to be awake.”

  At first his mind flashed to his partner at the firehouse, but Joey was doing fine. Last he’d heard, the fireman was on a Disney vacation with his sister’s kids and probably rocking it out with Mickey. Meanwhile, Mr. Salad Elf huffed out a crouton and threw it at Bruce’s head.

  “Not that partner, idiot. That one.” The landscape around them zeroed in on Laddin screaming as he flailed at… at… flying Cheetos? Bruce couldn’t see clearly, and the more he blinked and focused, the less he could make out.

  Then he saw Laddin’s face. He’d gone pale, and his skin showed sweat. He was flailing at something and maybe screaming. Bruce couldn’t hear, but the panic was clear—Laddin’s and his own. His heart had started racing, and he lurched forward to try to get to the guy.

  Then everything disappeared. The whole landscape was replaced by the obnoxious fairy and his damned glowing apple.

  “Where is he? Where’s Laddin?”

  Bitterroot held up the apple. “Care to make a purchase? It won’t cost much,” he offered. “I swear.”

  “Fuck you,” Bruce snapped. Then he focused as hard as he could on waking up.

  He jolted awake, gasping as he half rolled off the bench. His arms got tangled in a heavy blanket, and he threw it off him with a curse. Then he searched around frantically for Laddin, but he couldn’t see him. Just an endless landscape of newly turned field. Hell, he could be anywhere!

  Bruce did a slow circle, searching for a clue. All he saw was the fairy leaning against a tree while eating an apple. For a split second Bruce had a moment of panic. Was that his apple? Had he taken too long to decide? Was the bastard even now eating—?

  No. It wasn’t his apple, and the fairy wanted him to say yes. Plus, he didn’t intend to eat the inventory anyway. This was a ruse to get him to panic and say yes in desperation. But it wasn’t going to happen. He had to think of a better way of finding Laddin.

  “You’d find him immediately if you took me up on my offer.”

  “I don’t even know that what you showed me is real.”

  Bitterroot gave him a wounded look. “Everything I say is true. You have my solemn oath on that.”

  “Unless you’re lying about that.”

  The fairy polished off the last off the apple with a disgusted grunt. Then he shook his head and spat a single word. “Mortals.”

  Bruce didn’t bother with the obviously response of “Fairies.” Instead, he closed his eyes and tried to remember the details of the images he’d seen of Laddin. What did the environment look like? Were there any trees, buildings, clues, anything?

  “You’re not going to find him that way.”

  Bruce opened his eyes and glared at the fairy. The prince was gone, but the apple was hanging from a branch in an oak tree just this side of the field. Bruce resolutely turned away from it. Or he started to, when he saw something far in the distance. A flash of light? A trick of the apple? Hell, he didn’t know. Maybe his eyes were screwing with him and he’d have to use his other senses, but….

  Smell. He had a keen sense of smell, but not as a human. Which meant, hell, he had to shift to a wolf, and he didn’t know how.

/>   His gaze slid back to the apple. Last time he’d eaten the cherry and bam, five minutes later, he’d been a wolf. The apple would likely do the same thing. But no, no, no! God, the temptation was killing him. He had to close his eyes, smell as a human, and pick a direction. If he was wrong….

  His gut clenched in fear. What if he was too late? What if he chose wrong? What if someone died because he wasn’t enough again?

  He couldn’t think like that. Indecision was definitely the wrong choice, so he had to pick. He’d seen something beyond the apple, so he’d go in that direction. He hoped it wasn’t a distraction set up by Bitterroot. If it was, that meant he ought to go in the opposite direction.

  But he’d already started jogging, zipping around the apple that was so close he could easily grab it. He didn’t. He kicked it up from a jog to a run, and if this was the wrong direction, then so be it. Rather than let his stomach clench tighter in fear, he pushed himself to run faster while his eyes burned from the wind. Pretty soon his breath was sawing in hard gasps and his side was killing him. But the fear for Laddin grew exponentially stronger the farther he went. He still didn’t see anything, but he heard… was that screaming? Did someone call for help? Damn it, he couldn’t hear over his own breath.

  It didn’t matter. He would run until he dropped. He focused on the ground, the way they’d taught him in firefighter school. The flashing something or other had been near another tree, far across the field. He’d head there. He put everything he had into setting one foot in front of the other. That was his destination. He kept his senses alert for anything else, but he was going there.

  He ran. And he was going faster than he’d ever thought he could before. Plus the smells were sharper, and he could even taste the air. It wasn’t until he could smell something awful that he realized he was running on all fours.

  He was a wolf. He’d done it! He’d shifted, and the joy of that gave him an extra spurt of energy. Unfortunately, it also had him inhaling deeply of something that smelled like moldy cheese. Moldy, fermenting, back-of-his-garage, something-died-in-it cheese.

  He blinked as his eyes watered, and he breathed through his mouth rather than his nose. Then he saw bright things bouncing up and down, while white rope stretched along behind the bouncing things. Except it looked more like string cheese than rope. And Laddin was batting the things away as he fought from his knees.

  Laddin! I’m coming!

  He thought the words but had no breath to voice them. Meanwhile, tiny wedges with legs were swarming all over Laddin, who grabbed a rolled-up orange thing with his fist and squeezed. Unfortunately, the orange stuff oozed out through is fingers and apparently sealed his hands shut. Laddin was now swinging big orange-covered fists and batting things away with his forehead.

  “Stop it!” Laddin boomed. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

  But it sure looked like they wanted to hurt him. They were swarming him, and wherever they touched him, they flattened out and hardened. Whole areas of Laddin were covered in that stuff and seemed completely stiff. Pretty soon the guy wouldn’t be able to move. And if one of the flat squares covered his nose and mouth, Laddin would suffocate.

  Bruce rushed into the mix. He didn’t have hands, but he had his body, his mouth, and even his tail. It took a frustrating amount of time to figure that out. His back end was definitely a hindrance, but it didn’t matter. He needed to bat the things away from Laddin. It was a losing game because every… were they really tiny cheeses? Whatever. Every cheese that he batted away came back again, and he couldn’t knock them all aside. He had to figure out something else.

  Then he realized he’d made a mistake. Oh hell. He’d been snapping at the things with his jaws. And rather than have them seal his mouth shut, he’d swallowed what was definitely cheese.

  He tasted American cheese, which was the most recognizable to his palate. Blue cheese, brie, cheddar. Those filtered across his taste buds as well. The other ones—the harder, almost crunchy bits—were simply weird. But if they flattened on Laddin like concrete, what the hell were they going to do to Bruce’s insides?

  Then another thought ripped through his mind, mostly because his belly was beginning to rebel. It was stupid and not something he thought about often. But sometimes his body reminded him that it was real.

  He was lactose intolerant. He’d never admit to his fellow firefighters that pizza gave him gas, but this was different. He’d swallowed a ton of magical cheese, and his gut wanted to toss it back out. Fine with him. He’d love to vomit the crap out, but it wasn’t going that direction.

  And all the while, things were going worse for Laddin. He’d been on his knees because his ankles were wrapped together. Now his arms were trapped because the string cheese had bound his wrists like handcuffs. Laddin was making furious sounds as he toppled over. Why the hell didn’t he shift to wolf? Then they could both run away.

  Meanwhile, Bruce’s gut wasn’t handling the cheese well. He knew the feeling of bloating, but this was like a bomb was building inside, and he was going to let it loose like a flame thrower. There was no choice. It was the only way to get it out.

  So he did. He lifted his tail high and let it rip. Gas burst from him like a valve release, and good God, the smell was enough to make him gasp. A loud bell-like tinkling filled the air, and part of him realized it was laughter. The cheese was laughing at him. If he hadn’t been in the middle of magical fairy gas, he would have smashed the cheddar bits with rocks.

  But he didn’t have the strength or the coordination. In fact, thanks to his burning ass and the roiling in his gut, he lost his footing, tripping and falling face-first into a pile of sticks and rocks. Ow. Ow. Ow! One of the sticks poked straight into his gums, and another caught his snout. He flinched away, but that only made it worse… which was hard, given his general state of misery.

  But he couldn’t stop fighting. He had to keep the things off himself and Laddin. He struggled to his feet. If nothing else, he could body-block the things from attacking Laddin. Except as he searched for a target, he realized that all the cheese had fallen back. And when he really looked hard, he saw that they seemed to be cheering.

  Cheering?

  He turned to try to help Laddin, who had fallen onto his side in the fetal position. But while Bruce stared, the cheese manacles on his wrists popped open and their tiny hands were clapping together. The squeezed American cheese between Laddin’s fingers solidified back into squares and hopped up and down in celebration. His ankles released too, and all the string cheeses around his torso and legs were doing backflips of joy.

  WTF?

  Bruce started to yip a question, but another disaster was building in his gut. He was back on his feet, and he danced around, crashing into the stick construction again. The pieces went everywhere as he accidentally destroyed whatever the structure had been, and the bell-like cheers got even louder.

  He would have stopped to wonder, but he didn’t have time. Tail-up time.

  He released another long, loud fart of magical gas, and this time Laddin made a sound—a snort mixed with a chuckle that quickly turned to laughter that blended in with the high-pitched cheering from the fairies.

  Hell. Bruce was never, ever going to eat cheese again.

  Chapter 9

  PROMISES, PROMISES

  OF ALL the memorable sights in Laddin’s life, nothing topped the sight of Bruce shooting fairy cheeses out of his lupine ass. And even funnier? The pixies seemed to love it. After tumbling, rolling, and flailing through the air from the explosive release, they gathered together and dashed back at Bruce’s mouth, obviously hoping he’d eat them again.

  He didn’t.

  He growled and backed up. And though he looked like he was going to explode—again—he didn’t chomp down on a single fairy. What he did do was glower in frustration at Laddin, who couldn’t stop his hysterical laughter—“hysterical” being the key word, because he was losing it big-time.

  The past two minutes had been the most t
errifying experience of his life. He’d been slowly encased in cheese that hardened into something like concrete. First a knee, then his chest. Next his hands had become boulders of rock. As soon as he understood what was happening, he realized he had to duck down to protect his nose and mouth. He needed to breathe, but that didn’t stop him from feeling like he was being encased in stone.

  He’d kicked, he’d rolled, and he’d hyperventilated with horror, but nothing stopped the steady assault of the cheese. He was going to die, and nothing could stop that.

  Until it did all stop. Suddenly he could move again. His lungs dragged in air, his hands opened, and his ankles released. He didn’t know why, and he didn’t care. He could breathe easily again! He could move! And for long moments, that was all he focused on. But eventually he looked up, and what he saw was so ridiculous that hysteria bubbled up and came out as side-splitting laughs that had everything to do with the joy of being alive.

  He was alive, and Bruce was shooting fairy farts.

  Eventually Bruce lost patience. It couldn’t be comfortable pushing out those explosive little fae. And though he couldn’t speak as a wolf, he could get into Laddin’s face and growl with menace. He had a good growl, one that made the hairs on Laddin’s neck leap to attention, and it was enough to ground Laddin back into the present and calm the hysteria that still careened around inside him.

  He held up his hands in surrender. “I don’t know, Bruce. Truly, I’ve got no idea.”

  Then a tiny voice cleared his throat. It was hard to tell what got their attention first, the sound or the abruptly rank air. But either way, both man and wolf turned to look at a tiny clump of white lumps that smelled like dairy gone very, very bad.

  “We greet you, friend of the True Cheeses,” it said with a very deep bow.

  Laddin narrowed his gaze until he could make out a face with dark eyes that looked like mold on the cheese body.

  “I am Grand Master Cheesy, the great Fetid Feta. We ask you, Hero of the Bottom Air, is this human friend or foe? If friend, we will cheer his place as your second. If foe, we will destroy him with fermentation bombs and diabolical string mozzarella. What say you, Sir Bottom Air?”