Monsters, Magic, & Mayhem: Bubba the Monster Hunter Season 4

by John G. Hartness

“Hey, what’s a boyfriend for if not to hold his beautiful fiancée when she gets scared?”

  She spun around, her hand on the butt of her pistol. “What. Did. You. Say?”

  I took a step back, not that it would matter if she decided to shoot me, but more to get distance to do it right. I dropped to one knee and dug a thin silver band out of my pocket. The stone in it wasn’t a diamond. In fact, I didn’t know exactly what it was, and Mama wouldn’t tell me, just smiled when she gave it to me. I held the ring up to her. “Amy Hall, I know this might be a stupid time to throw this out there, being as how we’re in the wrong dimension about to go into a cave hunting a dragon that might very well burn us both to brisket and eat us, but I’ve never been known for my good timing. Amy, I love you. I know I should have come up with some kind of flowery shit to wrap around it, but that ain’t who I am. I’m just big dumb redneck with more guns than some small countries and more beer than Milwaukee, but I love you. I promise, if we get out of this stupid Fairyland, that I will love, honor, cherish, and respect you for the rest of my life.”

  A tear rolled down her cheek, but by the smile that stretched across her face, I thought it might be a happy one, so I went ahead with it. “Amy, will you marry me?”

  She didn’t speak. She stood there beside her horse in the middle of Fairyland, with an enchanted shield in one hand and her service weapon in the other, tears rolling down her face as she nodded. Then she dropped her shit and tackled me, knocking me flat on my back in the dirt right outside a dragon’s cave. She kissed me all over my face, then sat up with her knees on either side of my chest.

  “Robert Brabham, you might have the worst timing in the history of marriage proposals, but yes, I will marry your big silly ass. I love you, you stupid lunk.” Then she fell on top of me and started kissing me again. I just lay there enjoying the moment until she got all the kissing out of her system. After a few minutes she got up, then held out her left hand. I slipped the ring on her hand and she looked at it.

  “It’s a little—oh!” Her eyes widened as the ring flashed with blue light, then shrank down to fit her finger perfectly. “Wow. Um…did you just give me a magical engagement ring?”

  I looked at her hand, where the strange white stone now pulsed with a warm yellow light. “I reckon I did. I didn’t know it was magic, I promise.”

  Amy raised an eyebrow at me. “You didn’t steal this from Mab, did you?”

  “No!” I protested. “I wouldn’t trust anything from that crazy woman’s palace any farther than Skeeter can throw me!”

  “And it isn’t Titania’s, either?”

  “Amy, I did not steal your engagement ring. Mama gave it to me.”

  Her eyes got full again. “Your mother gave this to you?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “We were in the truck coming back from Muscle Shoals, and she took it off her hand and passed it over to me. She said Pop gave it to her, that it had been passed down all the way from Great-Grandpappy Beauregard and his sister Tavvy. They were the first Hunters in our family, and I reckon he had it made for Great-Granny Ruth. But Mama didn’t say nothing about it being magic. I hope it ain’t stuck or nothing.”

  “Don’t you worry about that, Bubba. It’s never coming off, magic or no. Now let’s go kill a dragon. We need to find your sister more than ever, now.” She picked up her weapons and started toward the mouth of the cave.

  “Why now?” I asked, following her.

  She didn’t even look back, just turned her head to the side to call over her shoulder, “Well, I’m going to have to have a maid of honor, silly! Now let’s go kill a dragon and rescue your sister, because when we get home, we’ve got a wedding to plan!”

  I was suddenly scared of a lot more than just the dragon waiting for me in the cave.

  Half an hour later, I wasn’t any less scared of what would be waiting for me on the other side of the dimensional portal home, but I was starting to feel really creeped out by the environment I was in. The entrance to the cave was little more than a narrow slab in the rocks, a crack barely big enough for me to squeeze through, even with sucking in my gut to the farthest point. I didn’t quite get stuck going in, but I sure as hell hoped there was a back door, or a garage exit, or something. I let Amy take the lead, not just because I could shoot over her, but also because she had the shield. I didn’t trust Oberon and his magic trinkets, but I wasn’t going to just ignore the fact that we had a supposedly magical shield to protect us from dragon’s breath. I had Skeeter’s spear held out in front of me, but I couldn’t figure out a good way to carry Bertha and the spear at the same time without having either the long pointy thing or the pistol in my left hand, and that seemed like a good way to either poke or shoot the wrong person, so my second-favorite girl nestled under my left arm, her weight a comfort against my side.

  It was darker than the inside of an elephant’s butthole, and the only light we had was Amy’s cell phone. I was impressed by its ability to hold a charge the whole time we were in Fairyland until she told me that she turned it off as soon as we got here. Silly me, I killed the battery on mine the first couple of days playing Plants v. Zombies. But even Amy’s good fortune had its limits, and within fifteen minutes of the entrance, her light went out, leaving us fumbling around in the pitch dark. I took advantage of the momentary disorientation to grab my girlfriend—fiancée’s ass a couple times, but calmed down after she elbowed me. The third time. There would be plenty of time to fool around after we killed the dragon.

  It took a few minutes of stumbling and fumbling around in the dark before my eyes began to adjust, or maybe it was just that some light was coming in from somewhere ahead of us. The floor of the cave was smooth, almost like it was manufactured, with no pebbles or stones scattered around. I ran my hand along the left-hand wall, and Amy kept a hand on the right, with her left on the haft of my spear in case the whole tunnel got wider suddenly. It didn’t, just stayed a little wider than I could reach with my arms extended.

  I suppose we walked for about ten or fifteen minutes before I noticed the tunnel becoming noticeably brighter. I whispered “stop” to Amy, and she came closer.

  “What is it”

  “I can see a little better. What about you?”

  “Yeah, a little bit.”

  “It looks like it gets wider up ahead. Maybe we’re coming up on an opening or the main body the lair. I should go on ahead.”

  “Are you on drugs, Bubba? You’re as quiet as an avalanche and subtle as a hand grenade. Plus, I have the shield. Hold my rifle, I’m going to reconnoiter.” She unslung the shield from across her shoulders, then handed me Joe’s rifle. “Stay here, you big oaf,” she whispered, then kissed me. She slipped away into the darkness, her form outlined against the obvious light coming from the far end of the tunnel. I put my back against the wall and slid down to sit and wait.

  And wait. And wait.

  I don’t do so good with the waiting. I’m much better at the kicking doors in and beating the shit out of things part of the job. So after what felt like about a year and a half of waiting, but was probably something south of five minutes, I gave up. I got to my feet, picked up my spear, and started down the tunnel after Amy. The tunnel grew steadily brighter as I moved along until I could actually see where I was putting my feet, a welcome change.

  That’s when I realized why the floor was so smooth. This wasn’t a natural cave. The tunnel I walked along had been carved out of the mountain, leaving a perfectly smooth and level floor. Hell, I lived in a house built with modern technology, and I didn’t have a level floor! Whatever made this tunnel, and by extension the cave I walked toward, had some serious tech or some serious magical power. Neither of those things seemed good for me. But I still saw nothing of Amy, so I kept going.

  I walked for a good fifteen minutes (a real fifteen minutes this time, not a sitting in the dark multiplying time by five because I was bored fifteen minutes) before I came to the mouth of the tunnel. There was absolutely nothing resembling c
over at the cave end. No rocks, no stalagmites, not even any handy corpses of giant animals to duck behind. But the one thing I did find as I got to the end of the tunnel was unexpected: voices. I recognized Amy’s immediately, and the other voice sounded familiar, but I couldn’t place it.

  I stepped into the cave, expecting to face a vicious dragon breathing fire. What I saw was even more outrageous than that.

  “What the ever-loving shit are you doing in here?” I asked, completely baffled at the sight before me.

  13

  Sitting at a table serving Amy tea was Taryllan, the little old man who broke into our camp the night before, then mysteriously vanished before daybreak. He smiled when he caught sight of me, a grin splitting his face from ear to ear. “Oh, Bubba! I am so glad that you decided to join us. Your fiancée here was certain that you’d come looking for her, and I am thrilled to find that her faith in you was not misplaced. Congratulations, by the way, on your engagement. I think it was a lovely gesture to make your commitment to each other official before you dove into a potentially lethal situation. Well done.”

  I stood at the mouth of the tunnel, staring across at a room the size of a football field, or maybe a basketball arena. Either way, it was damn big, and damn tall, and there was gold, and jewels, and shining weapons, and armor scattered all around the corners. This was a dragon’s lair straight out of a Peter Jackson movie. Except there was no dragon. There was a five-foot-tall faerie man with a skullett tied back into a long ponytail serving tea from a golden pot into a ceramic cup in front of my fiancée.

  “What the ever-loving hell is going on here?” I asked, moving forward. They were sitting at a table smack dab in the center of the room, so I had a ways to go before I got to them. Even so, I moved the spear over to my left hand and popped the snap on Bertha’s holster in case my girl needed to come out and play. I’d loaded her with cold iron rounds before we broke camp that morning, so any Fae I shot were in for a real bad day.

  “We are having tea,” Taryllan said. “I was under the impression that you had tea in your world as well. I’ll admit that it is a little early by your standards, but I have a fondness for cucumber sandwiches, and it is never too early for cucumber sandwiches. Wouldn’t you agree, Agent Hall?”

  Amy didn’t say anything, just sat there motionless. Her eyes were the only thing that moved, and they kept flicking back and forth, up and down, like she was trying to tell me something. There was a lot more going on with this little dude than I saw at first glance, and I proceeded with caution. “So, why didn’t Amy come back looking for me?” I called out, still moving forward, but looking all around the lair for the dragon while I did. There wasn’t another entrance, and I was pretty damn sure I hadn’t passed a dragon in the narrow hallway coming in, so it had to still be in here somewhere. Maybe it teleported out for a snack or something?

  “She said she would rather wait here for you. Now come along, the tea is getting cold. And if you walk any slower, the cucumber sandwiches will get soggy. I hate soggy cucumber sandwiches.” The little man’s voice grew sharp, and I could tell that he was used to having his orders obeyed. Seemed like everybody I’d met in Fairyland felt justified in telling me what to do, and it was getting old.

  “Well, I ain’t much of a fan of cucumber,” I said. “Gives me the farts. So I reckon me and Amy will just be heading out. But I appreciate the offer of tea.”

  “Sit.” He didn’t raise his voice, didn’t make any kind of threatening moves, but something in his voice told me that if I didn’t sit down, right that second, that some shit was going to go down. I crossed the last few feet to the table and sat down beside Amy. I leaned my spear on the table, but Taryllan flicked his hand, and it flew across the room, clattering on the stone floor as it landed thirty yards away.

  “No polearms at the table. You may keep your guns because it would take you longer to disarm than it will take us to enjoy a nice tea.” For the first time, I noticed that a cup sat on the table in front of me. There was no cup there when I sat down. Whatever the hell this little dude was, he had some serious juice.

  “Cucumber sandwich?” He held out a little plate with tiny finger sandwiches on it. The crusts were cut off, even. I’m not what you would call a fan of cucumber, I wasn’t BSing him there, but since I was now sitting across from a telekinetic midget faerie who could made teacups appear out of thin air, I thought it would be less than prudent to refuse.

  “Thanks,” I said, and put a couple of sandwiches on the plate that miraculously appeared in front of me when I wasn’t looking. I held the plate out to Amy. “You want any?”

  She shook her head again, but Taryllan spoke again. “You may speak now, dear. I just didn’t want you shouting at your beau and spoiling my surprise. You will find that you now have control of your limbs.”

  Amy glared at the little man and reached for the plate. “Thanks, Bubba. Sorry about this. He’s got a lot more mojo than I expected.”

  “You’d be amazed how often that happens,” the little wizard said, taking the plate, which still had the same number of sandwiches on it as it ever had, despite me taking half a dozen of the little white triangles for me and Amy. I didn’t think I’d be surprised at all. It looked an awful lot like this little bastard worked real hard at being underestimated.

  “So what’s the deal, Taryllan?” I asked around a mouthful of cucumber. I had to admit, the sandwiches were pretty good. It had been a couple hours since breakfast, and there hadn’t been a real good chance for lunch, what with the whole dragon burning down Hamittown thing.

  “I’m not sure I understand the question,” he replied, his voice mild but his eyes sharp.

  “You wander into our camp in the middle of the night, making like you’re some helpless traveler, but you get outta Mama’s wards without waking anybody up, then you show up in a dragon’s lair, acting for all the world like you…oh, shit.”

  Taryllan laughed, a sound much deeper than I expected given his slight frame. Or, I guess I should say, given the slight frame he currently wore. “By Mab, I think he’s figured it out! My dear girl, he is much, much brighter than he seems to be. You may not have made a disastrous choice in a mate after all! It won’t matter, since neither of you will ever leave this cave, but you can die knowing that your affianced is not a complete moron.”

  I jumped to my feet, yanking Bertha free of her shoulder holster, and squeezed off four quick shots. At that range, there was no chance I was going to miss, no matter how little the dude was. And I didn’t miss.

  He just didn’t care. All four of the fifty-caliber rounds hit him right in the center of his chest, and they all just dropped to the ground, all their force expended. Taryllan gave me a little sideways cock of the head, as if to say, “What are you gonna do, I’m awesome,” and smiled at me.

  Smiled at me. The cocky little shit took four rounds from the world’s most badass handgun, and he smiled at me. This was going to be harder than troll-wrestling.

  “Now that we have that out of the way, which of you should I kill first?” Taryllan mused, waking around the table. Amy made as if to stand, but a twitch of the little wizard’s fingers and she was frozen to her seat. I holstered Bertha and slid my hands into the caestae hanging from my belt. If I was going out, I was gonna go out fighting.

  “Why are you even bothering, human?” he sneered. “You just watched your silly bullets bounce off my chest. You saw me immobilize your fiancée without breaking a sweat. And now you think you’re going to punch me to death? Be reasonable, you idiot. Just sit down and accept your fate. If you behave, I’ll kill you both quickly. If you make me work for it, I’ll show you what happens to fools who accept Oberon’s stupid quests. Then I’ll go to Tisa’ron and bring it down around his pointy ears just to show that stupid git what happens when you try to rob an elder dragon.”

  He held up a hand to me, then waved it downward. “I said, sit.”

  I stood there. Nothing happened. I expected some huge force to slam m
e into my chair, or to just squish me into redneck jelly right there, but all I felt was a little breeze, like an air conditioner kicked on over my head. Taryllan looked at his hand, like it was defective or something, and I decided it didn’t matter what was going on, I needed to take advantage of it. I shot forward around the table and nailed the wizard with a running uppercut that looked straight out of a WWE ring. My iron-clad fist caught the diminutive spell-slinger right on the point of his chin, and he flew back about three feet before landing on his ass and sliding another foot or so backward.

  “Ow!” he yelled, hopping to his feet. I was on him as soon as he was upright, pounding him with everything I had. I laid in heavy punches on his chest, stomach, and face, but he didn’t go down. He didn’t try to fight back, either, just staggered back more and more with a puzzled look on his face. After eight or ten of my best shots still didn’t knock him down again, he reached up and slapped me with the back of his hand.

  The little bastard just flicked his hand at me like a normal person would swat at a fly, and when he tagged me on the cheek, I thought my orbital socket might explode. It felt like getting hit in the face with a twenty-pound carp, and you really don’t want to know what that feels like. I spun around and dropped to one knee, but didn’t go completely down. Then I came back up and swung into him with everything I had, coming up from the ground with an uppercut that should have turned his jaw into shards of broken glass.

  He grunted and took a step back. “Those are good gloves. That actually hurt. But this is becoming boring.” He punched me in the chest, and I saw stars. I didn’t just see stars, I saw the entire end sequence of 2001: A Space Odyssey, complete with turtles all the way down. This time I went down, all the air gone from my lungs and maybe with a cracked sternum to boot.

  “That’s better,” Taryllan said, walking forward to stand by my head. “I like you better down there. I think you should stay down permanently.” He raised one foot to smear my head across the floor like joint compound but fell back on his ass when a blond missile slammed into his chest in a tackle that would make Reggie White come back from the grave to applaud.