Great-Grandpappy’s sword had an overlong hilt, kinda like Null’s, but his was shaped a lot like a big femur. I never knew Great-Grandpappy, but from the stories I heard, he was a tough old sumbitch. Wouldn’t surprise me a bit if he killed a damn grizzly bear with his bare hands and built the sword out of its leg bone. I didn’t take too much time thinking about my sword’s provenance since I needed to get it up and in the way of Null swinging for my neck. The blades met with a clang and shower of blue-white sparks, and I felt myself driven back from his power.
“Damn,” I growled. “You’re a strong little bastard.”
“And you are unworthy of the royal blood that courses through your veins, you mongrel dog.”
“You know that’s redundant, right? I mean, I ain’t the most educated man in the room, and I know that’s redundant.” I parried his next stroke and slashed out with a low slice aimed at his knees. Of course, the nimble shit just jumped straight up and over my blade, so I didn’t just miss, I looked stupid doing it. That was fine. I let go of the sword with my right hand, letting it carry over past my body with my left. Then I balled up my big right fist and nailed him on the point of his helmeted chin with a huge uppercut.
Right on his steel-clad chin. I rang his bell pretty good, and he staggered back, shaking his head like he saw a whole bunch of tweety birds flying around, but I let out a scream fit to rattle the windows as I felt two knuckles shatter on his helmet. I looked down at my fist, which was already starting to swell, and let out a string of profanity that impressed even me. I’m pretty sure I didn’t even know what all those words meant, and Joe turned downright pale at the cussing.
I sheathed my sword, ripping the caestae off my belt. If I had any chance of using my right hand again, I had to get it bound up before it swelled to the size of a basketball. I jammed the leather-and-metal glove down over my broken fist, letting out another scream of agony as I forced my fingers into the confines of the glove. I let out a long breath as the support of the caestus muffled the pain a little bit and slipped the other glove on. I looked up to see where my opponent was, and of course, he recovered faster from getting punched in his armor than I did from punching said armor, and he was charging back at me, swinging his razor-sharp blade down at my head.
I crossed my wrists together over my head, trapping his blade in the steel-wrapped gauntlets. I slid to the right and twisted my hands around, getting a good grip on his blade with my gloves and yanking forward. He didn’t let go of his sword, and his momentum pulled him right into my knee strike. Which again slammed into his damn full plate armor. I saw what was happening and pulled my strike at the last second, so I just banged my knee instead of shattering my patella, but it still didn’t tickle. I let go of his sword and slammed both fists into the back of his head in a big hammer blow. My knuckles howled at the treatment, but the caestae kept me from further injuring myself.
Null didn’t fare so well this time, as the heavy gloves did way more damage than just my bare hand. I saw a couple of serious dents appear in his helm and figured he was probably at least concussed. My thoughts were confirmed when he dropped his sword, yanked off his helmet, and threw up all over the white marble. Good, now we were both hurting. I took one step forward and slammed my steel-toe boot into his gut, for once managing to not injure myself when I landed a decent shot. Null rolled over onto his back, and I bent down beside him, grabbed his helmet in my left hand, and cracked it across his face. His nose pulped and blood streamed down his face. He got his hands up to block the next blow, and I pitched the helmet off into the crowd. The last thing I needed was for him to get his noggin’ wrapped in steel again just when I finally managed to hurt his sorry ass.
I yanked him to his feet and pulled back my fist, ready to knock him into the middle of next week. Then I felt a burning in my gut and looked down. The son of a bitch had his hand pressed against my belly, with the hilt of a knife barely showing. The sneaky little shit stabbed me!
I staggered back, letting go of the knight and yanking the blade out of my gut. It hurt a lot more coming out than it had going in, and I dropped to one knee. Sir Null, asshole sneaky stabber that he was, didn’t give me even a second to recover, stepping up and planting one armored foot right in my newly-perforated gut. It wasn’t the worst pain I’d ever felt, that was a cross between having my brother run me through with Great-Grandpappy’s sword and having an Auburn right tackle step on my balls in a football game, but it was sure as hell on the Top Ten list. I didn’t even have the power to roll over and do anything cool—I just flopped down on my belly and bled on the floor for a second or two.
Null pressed his advantage, stomping a mudhole in my ass and trying his level best to walk it dry. He put one heel in my kidney and his other foot on my shoulders and stood on me, presumably proclaiming his triumph to the room. I couldn’t hear what he was saying over the sound of my blood rushing out of my body. I didn’t bother trying to push myself up onto my feet; I just rolled over enough to topple Sir Dickhead to the floor in a clatter of armor and very un-knightlike swearing. I dragged myself over to his side and started to rain blows down on his unprotected head with my caestus. I didn’t get much leverage and hardly any real strength behind my punches, but the cold iron studs I screwed into my gloves before leaving home did some damage regardless.
My chickenshit opponent pulled away from me, scrambling to his feet and raising his sword high overhead. I managed to get all the way back up to my knees, just high enough to look up into his bloodied face as he prepared to bring that gleaming hunk of steel down on my face and end me once and for all.
“You simpering fool,” he snarled at me. I have to say, with all that blood pouring out of his nose and that real nasty grimace on his face, he didn’t look like much of a knight. Even if I wasn’t opposed to Mama remarrying on principle, I don’t think I would have approved of this douchenozzle being my father-in-law. Good thing it would only happen over my dead body. Too bad that was looking like more and more of a literal statement.
“This should have been so simple. I win this idiotic contest, take the Princess Ygraine back to my Queen Titania, and cast her down at the feet of her father, Oberon. Then we would have Mad Queen Mab’s daughter and her granddaughter, enough leverage to send her completely over the edge when we forced her to watch their execution. But you had to interfere, and now I am revealed as a knight of Summer in the very heart of mine enemies.”
I looked around, and it did seem that people were pointing at him and scowling a lot more than they had any of the other fights. I reckoned it was just because I had the fans on my side, but him being the sworn enemy of everything in the Winter Court did make a lot more sense. I spit a big blood-loogie on the floor and grinned up at him. “So you’re saying you would have gotten away with it, if it hadn’t been for those meddling kids?” I laughed, which turned into a bloody coughing fit, and that sent me off into a cussing fit, which led to more coughing. This was going nowhere fast. “What are you gonna do, now that your plan’s screwed, Summer’s Eve?”
I didn’t expect him to recognize the brand name of a feminine hygiene product, but I knew I’d just called him a douche, and that was enough for me. When you’re bleeding out from a punctured something really important on your grandmother’s marble floor in Fairyland, you take what little victories you can get.
“I plan to carry your head back to my queen as a soup tureen, then ship your sister’s corpse to her mother one piece at a time.” He raised the sword over his head, and I slumped to my side on the floor. I couldn’t hold myself upright with just the one hand, and I needed my right to reach around behind my back and draw my little Judge revolver from the paddle holster at the small of my back. I squeezed the trigger on the pistol three times and emptied three .410 shells of double-ought buckshot right into Sir Dickweasel’s chest and face. The pellets bounced off his armor, and only a couple of them actually hit flesh, but the cold iron loads I’d put in the little gun before leaving home did the work
of ten bullets, tearing through Sir Null’s face and skull.
He screamed in agony and dropped his sword, falling to his knees and clawing at the bloody holes in his head. The little pellets didn’t make it through his skull, so I hadn’t landed a killing shot, but it looked like it hurt. A lot. He writhed in pain while I crawled over to him, leaving a smear of blood across the white stone floor behind me. I pulled myself up to his side, wrapping my iron-clad caestus around his throat. “You ready to die, shithead?” I gasped into his ear.
“Your puny weapon cannot even penetrate my armor, fool,” he said, spitting blood out of his mouth.
“Yeah, that’s something you oughta know about the Judge,” I said, cocking the hammer back on the little pistol. “It shoots shotgun shells, which is what put all those pellets in your ugly face. But it also shoots a forty-five-caliber bullet, same as the Colt Peacemaker, the most famous damn pistol in the world. It’ll punch through that tin can you’re wrapped in like it’s tissue paper. I just wanted you to know that before I shot your arrogant ass.” I pulled the trigger on the pistol, sending a round through his breastplate and right into his black little heart. Then I pressed the gun to his temple and put the last shot in his head, just for good measure.
I rolled over, looking up at the ceiling as my toes started to get cold from blood loss. “Hey Granny, I won. Can I borrow that healer again?” I croaked, then my vision went dark.
Epilogue
I woke up in a bed. Not my bed, but a bed, which was a hell of an improvement over every other time I’d woken up in Fairyland. There were pillows and a blanket, and I was even clean. I could get used to this was my first thought.
My second thought was, Shit. Am I dead?
Then I moved, and I heard Amy’s voice, and I figured if I was dead, then I made it to Heaven, so it’s fine. But Skeeter spoke next, so I knew I wasn’t dead. I love the boy, but my Heaven does not involve him anywhere where I’m lying in a bed with my girlfriend.
“He’s awake,” Amy said, relief in her voice.
“Bubba?” Skeeter said. “You really ain’t dead! Good.” That’s my best friend. Grasp of the obvious like nobody’s business.
“I ain’t dead,” I agreed. I opened my eyes and looked around. I was still somewhere in the Winter Court Palace, but I was in a room I’d never seen before. It was full of damn flowers, all kinds of roses and lilies and other crap I couldn’t name if you put a gun to my head. “Where the hell am I?”
“You’re in your sister’s room,” Mama said. I pushed myself up in bed and took a good look around. Mama was sitting in an armchair in one corner of the room, just watching me. Skeeter and Joe were in chairs pulled up next to the big four-poster bed, and Amy was sitting on the foot of the bed beside my legs. She looked worried. I reached out and patted her foot.
“I’m fine,” I said. Then I took a quick mental inventory to make sure I wasn’t lying. I felt okay, and I couldn’t see no blood on the bed, so I musta been fine. “Did Granny send the healer?” I asked.
“No, Robert, I healed you myself after I disposed of Sir Null’s remains,” Mab said from behind me. I turned, and she was in a chair in the opposite corner from Mama. The two faerie women glared at each other like a pair of pissed-off old tomcats, and I figured Mama’s spell either got broke or wore off. She looked pissed as hell at Granny. I remembered what Mama looked like when she was that kind of pissed, usually at me for whooping Jason’s ass over something when we was kids. Granny didn’t seem fazed by it, but she was about as far from Mama as she could get and still be in the same room.
“I appreciate that, Grann-o. Now if you’ll excuse us, we’ve got to get to the Summer Court and whoop somebody’s ass.” I swung my legs over to the side of the bed and froze. “Ummm…where’s my clothes?” I ain’t usually the most bashful type, but walking around in front of everybody wearing nothing but tattoos and butt hair was a little much, even for me.
“We’ll wait in the sitting room while you get dressed,” Mama said, standing up and walking to the door. Joe and Skeeter followed, with Granny waiting until they’d cleared the door to stand up.
“I’ll wait here to make sure he doesn’t fall over,” Amy said. I raised an eyebrow at her, and she gave me an “I’ll explain in a minute” look.
When the door closed behind Granny, I stood up and walked over to the wash stand with my clothes on it and started to get dressed. I noticed as I pulled my t-shirt on that Mab had not only cleaned the blood out of my shirt, but she’d fixed the hole Sir Douche had left in it when he stabbed me. Maybe Granny wasn’t a complete psycho after all.
Nah, she’s a total psycho.
“So what’s the deal?” I asked Amy.
“Mab released the spell on your mother as soon as you killed Null, who was actually Sir Kairn, a high-ranking knight in Titania’s court. He was sent here to win your mother’s hand, giving Titania control of Mab’s daughter and granddaughter. If he could make sure you didn’t live through the tournament, all the better.”
“How did they come up with that? I wasn’t even supposed to be in the tournament!”
“Apparently Titania knows you, or at least knows of you. She knew you wouldn’t be able to resist sticking your nose in.”
“Yeah, we met the last time I was here. I broke out of her dungeon, too.”
“You know, if you stop getting thrown in dungeons, you don’t have to break out of them.”
I didn’t dignify that with a response, just moved on. “So Mama’s not head-screwed by Granny anymore, and now she’s pissed.”
“Yeah, pretty much.”
“And we’ve got to invade a hostile chunk of Fairyland to go rescue my sister.”
“Yep.”
“And they’ve already sent assassins to kill me.”
“You nailed it.”
“Must be Tuesday,” I said, lacing up my last boot and walking to the door. I slipped into Bertha’s shoulder rig, then stepped out into the sitting room. “Alright,” I said. “What’s the deal? Why is everybody so damn interested in my sister? There’s something y’all ain’t telling me, and it almost got me killed once. I ain’t doing another damn thing until somebody tells me what’s really going on.”
Mab and Mama looked at each other, then Mama spoke. “You know that it is very rare for the Fae to have children.”
“I’ve heard something like that.” I moved to sit in an armchair opposite the couch Mama was on. Skeeter was sitting next to her, and Mab was in an armchair beside the one I was in. Joe stood behind Mama, and Amy perched on the arm of my chair. I wasn’t too keen on sitting next to my murderous grandmother, but I was a little weak on my feet from the fighting, the almost dying, and the healing, so I had to sit somewhere.
“It is even more rare for one of the royal family to have more than one child. In fact, it hasn’t happened for five thousand years,” Mama said.
“Wow. So sis is some kinda miracle baby?”
“You both are,” Mab chimed in. “Many among us believe that you are the fulfillment of an ancient prophesy, one which foretells a ruler that will emerge, one of a pair of siblings of royal blood that will unite Winter and Summer in eons of harmony, bringing peace to the land and shattering the enmity of millennia.”
I thought about that for a second. “So you’re saying that me and my sister are supposed to bring the Winter and Summer Courts of Faerie together and make y’all not hate each other anymore?”
“That is what the prophecy says.” Mab nodded.
“That is why I strove for so long to keep Nitalia’s existence a secret, and to keep you from having anything to do with the Fae, or the supernatural at all,” Mama said. I remembered her not liking Pop being a Hunter, and not wanting me and Jase to follow in his footsteps. But then her magic made her come back home, and all bets were off as far as that went.
“So, if we’re supposed to end all this fighting and hating, why are people trying to kidnap Sis and kill me?” I asked.
“For the pe
ace to come about, the current power must shift,” Mab said simply.
“She means that if this happens, her and Titania won’t be queens anymore,” Skeeter chimed in, earning himself a glare from my grandmother. He ignored it. He knew Mama loved his ass and wouldn’t let psycho Granny eat him.
“Your rude friend is correct,” Mab said. “And the lure of power is strong, the desire to keep power even more so. There are many within the Courts who would not like to see a shift in the balance of power.”
“Like you and Titania,” I said.
“Among many others, yes.”
“Well…shit,” I said. “So we’ve got to go into a magic kingdom where everybody there wants to kill me, rescue my sister that I’ve never seen before, and probably fight a faerie queen with incredible power, all because I’m supposed to be some kind of redneck Harry Potter and overthrow the friggin’ universe?”
“I think it’s more a Luke and Leia thing,” Amy said. “Since there are two of you, and you’re brother and sister.”
“Not twins, though,” Joe pointed out.
“And none of the creepy incest stuff that always squicks me out when I watch the first movie now,” I said.
“Does this mean I get to be Han Solo?” Joe asked.
“Oh yeah, because Skeeter’s totally C-3PO,” I replied. I glanced up at Amy, who held up both hands.
“Don’t even look at me like that! I am not wearing a slave Leia costume.”
“You’re all insane,” Mama said. She turned to Mab. “Insane, I tell you. Can we please go rescue my daughter now?”
I stood up and took Amy’s hand, then looked at Mama and the rest of my band of merry idiots. “Yes, Mommy-wan-kenobi. Let’s go kick some summer sausage.”
To Be Continued
Part III
Hot Blooded
Monsters, Magic, & Mayhem: Bubba the Monster Hunter Season 4 Page 19
