“Can’t have you getting killed because you can’t take your eyes off my boobs, Bubba.”
“Oh, but what a way to go,” I replied, then returned my gaze to the castle that awaited us atop the hill. I looked around to either side of the road, but it looked like the road was the only way in. It was a narrow ribbon of dirt and gravel, falling off to a steep canyon on either side. The kind of stuff you find deep in the European mountains, not on the formerly mild countryside we’d been riding through. Damn magical worlds, changing the geography right in front of my eyes.
Once Amy came back in her much more sensible and less distracting clothes, I pointed up the road. “We could leave the wagon, but it’s not going to give us any better cover than just riding up there, and then we have to walk. I vote we ride.”
“May as well. If anything is watching for us, it’s already seen us,” Amy agreed.
I clicked my tongue at the horses, flapped the reins, and finally leaned over to poke the right-hand one in the butt with the whip I found under the driver’s seat. I wasn’t going to whip an animal for not wanting to pull a heavy cart with my big ass on it, I totally got that concept. But I did need for the horsey to do its job, so I could get on with doing my job, namely saving my sister and shooting Puck right in his little asshole face. The horse looked back at me, and I swear I saw it trying to figure out how to flip the wagon over, but after one more poke in the butt, it started walking, and its buddy went along.
The road was steep and narrow, with treacherous switchbacks and steep drop-offs on either side. I decided not whipping the horse into a run had been a good idea since I had no real idea how to steer and didn’t feel like trying to learn to fly when it really mattered. It took a solid couple hours of plodding up the hard-packed dirt road, but eventually we made it to the front of the castle. I climbed down, unhitched the horses, and set them loose. A smack on the butt, and each one turned and started to amble back down the road to freedom.
“What did you do that for, Bubba? How are we going to get back to everybody else now?” Amy asked.
I looked at her, puzzled. “Is this your first fantasy movie? That’s not how this works. This is our point of no return moment, where I look grimly off into the clouds and mutter some whiny shit about there being no going back now, and we forge bravely on to fight the evil sorcerer. Then when we win, a magic portal appears to take us home, and all our hearty companions are returned with us. Or some other MacGuffin bullshit. Or we win, and the deus ex machina comes down to right all the wrongs perpetrated by the dastardly villain. We’re not going to need those horses again, because I’m going to kick Puck in the balls so hard he wears his testicles for earrings, then he’s going to let Nitalia loose and teleport us all back home.”
She gave me a look that said she thought I was being stupid again, then sighed. “In other words, we’re probably going to die in the next two hours, and it would be rude to leave the horses out here to starve.”
“That is the other option, but I wasn’t going to mention it.”
“Let’s just get this done. I really miss cable TV and toilet paper.” She turned to the castle and gestured toward the door. “I think this one’s all you, sweetheart.”
She was right. If ever a door had “Bubba” written all over it, the ones at Puck’s castle did. They were huge, big enough to ride an elephant through, with two sets of handles. One set was down where a normal human could reach them, and another, much larger, set was about twelve feet off the ground. I really didn’t want to see what came through here that needed those doorknobs. The doors were made of wood and bound with thick iron straps. The whole place looked an awful lot like it could withstand a tank. I just hoped it wasn’t designed to withstand a hillbilly.
I walked up to the door, looking around to see if there was a smaller servants’ entrance off to the side or something, but there wasn’t. I squared my shoulders, gripped the human-sized knob, and turned. The door swung open like it was on glass, with no more effort than opening my refrigerator. The twenty-foot door swung open, and the darkness that was the Shadow Castle gaped before me.
“Well, that went better than expected,” I said, then stepped over the threshold.
Immediately things stopped going better than expected as a seven-foot asshole in a suit of armor charged me out of the blackness. Fortunately, even in Fairyland, armored assholes are not also stealthy assholes, so I had some warning. But he was fast for a dick with a giant sword and a full plate armor, so I still barely had time to get out of the way before he was right on me, slicing down where my head was half a second before.
The six-foot blade sparked against the stone floor, and he slashed upward and sideways as he withdrew the sword, setting me to dance back out of range while I struggled to draw Bertha. I got the pistol clear of the holster, but he slapped me on the wrist with the flat of his blade, and my Desert Eagle went spinning across the floor. It was way too much to hope for that the gun would go off when it hit the deck and kill the rat bastard.
I ducked under his next big looping cut and charged the metal-clad dickhead. He was solidly built inside that tin can and almost held his ground against me, but I learned to shove, grab, wrestle, and generally beat the hell out of a man who was bigger, stronger, and a better athlete than me between the hedges at the University of Georgia, fighting for playing time behind an All-American defensive lineman. No way was some faerie in Ren Faire cosplay gonna keep his feet once I got hold of him. I shoved him back a few steps, then planted my right foot, shifted all my weight in that direction, and body-slammed the bastard to the floor in a thunderous clatter of metal and Bubba.
Of course, he didn’t stay down. No, it can’t be that easy. He couldn’t just lie there and take a second to gather himself after getting flung to the ground while wearing full armor. No, he rolled over, scissored his feet around my knees, and dropped me like a bad habit. I went down in a heap and heard him clattering to his feet as I rolled over and scrambled back up, trying to keep an eye on my foe while looking around to see why Amy wasn’t jumping in with at least some helpful advice, if not a couple of bullets to this asshole’s head.
I didn’t see Amy right away and decided she must have stayed outside where there weren’t any animated metal-wrapped buttmonkeys running around. She’s smart like that. I didn’t have more than a second to think about it, though, because my cut-rate Colossus was swinging that giant damn pigsticker through the air again, trying to turn my innards into outards all over the nice clean, well, only moderately dusty, stone floor. I ducked and rolled forward, coming up a foot or so away from Bertha and scooping her up in a move that looked way more graceful in my head than I’m sure it did in real life, but I didn’t die, so that was good.
I spun around and fired three rounds into the onrushing warrior’s chest. He staggered back, but didn’t go down, so I put two more into his face. That dropped him, but when he fell, the helmet split open down the middle to reveal…nothing. The damn suit of armor was completely empty, and it broke apart into pieces and rattled around on the stone floor like it wasn’t trying to cut me into sushi seconds before. I kicked the breastplate, and it split apart from the backplate and clattered to the floor. Whatever was animating the armor, two fifty-caliber bullets to the face took care of it.
“Hey, babe, it’s safe to come in,” I called to Amy. No response. I turned to the door, but she wasn’t there. That was odd. I walked over and stuck my head out the door, but there was no sign of her. I stepped back into the entryway and looked around the gloomy vestibule. She was nowhere to be seen, but something shiny glittered at me over by the right-hand wall. I walked over and knelt down, picking up a gold cross from the floor. I recognized it at once as Amy’s and knew something was seriously wrong. She only ever took that necklace off to shower or sleep. I’d not seen her without it the whole time we’d been in Fairyland. If it was laying here in the dust, then it meant something was terribly wrong. No question about it, she dropped it here on purpose, hopin
g I’d find it.
I stood up and turned around, Amy’s necklace dangling between my fingers. I spun around in a circle, looking up at the gothic architecture around me. The big chandeliers, the flying buttresses, the stained glass, all of it faded as a haze of red came across my vision. “PUCK!” I bellowed. “I’m coming for you, you pointy-eared son of a bitch! I’m coming, and I’m coming heavy. You’ve messed with my fiancée, you little shit, and I’m going to get her back, then I’m going to put a bullet right between your beady eyes!”
I jammed Bertha into the holster and headed down the hallway off the right side of the room, my fists now wrapped in the cold iron caestae and my blood full of an anger I hadn’t felt in years. Somewhere in that castle was a demented faerie with my fiancée, and he was about to find out why you do not mess with Bubba.
9
“Amy!” I bellowed. There was no response, of course, but I had to try. I yelled myself hoarse, and the only answer I got was my own echo. The vestibule looked like something out of a gothic horror movie, with doors on three sides in the room leading deeper into the castle and twin staircases curving up in the middle of the room. The upper floors were shrouded in shadow, so I stuck to the door on the right side of the room, nearest where I found Amy’s necklace.
The door was your basic medieval movie castle door, some rough-hewn timbers held together with metal bands and big triangular hinges set into one edge. I tried the knob, and it swung open into a large dining room, maybe thirty feet by twenty feet. A rectangular table dominated the room, looking like something out of the first Batman movie where Bruce Wayne has to walk the salt shaker all the way down to the other end to Kim Basinger. There were a dozen or more place settings, all empty, like the room was just waiting for the party to start, but judging by the dust on the silverware, it had been waiting a long time. Candles rested in holders down the center of the table, fused to the runner by mounds of wax from the long-burned tapers.
There was an air of sadness in the room, pervasive through the gloom, like something awesome was supposed to happen here, but the whole place was frozen in time before it could take place. I walked around the table, running my finger though the dust and examining everything. The sideboard was laid out with warming stones, just waiting for someone to bring out a multi-course meal and begin the feast.
Something flickered out of the corner of my eye, and I spun around, my fists clenching as I drew back my right. There was nothing there, just a tapestry twitching on the wall. I stepped up to it and took a good look at it, marveling at the detail they wove into the fabric. It was as gorgeous as any painting I’d ever seen, and my mouth fell open as I saw the images start to move.
It was a depiction of Puck and Princess Alethea, their meeting, their courtship, her capture at the hands of Oberon (depicted as a grossly obese troll-looking dude with a giant hooked nose), her rescue by me (depicted as a grossly obese ogre-looking dude with wild Hagrid hair), and their wedding. As I watched the scene play out before me, I saw Puck go to Oberon and plead with him to release her from her bond to Summer. Then I saw him go to Mab and beg for her to take Alethea into the Winter Court, so she could release her and save her life. I watched as both of the Faerie rulers (definitely some artistic license going on with their images) cruelly rejected Puck, and I watched him sit by her bedside as the lovely Princess Alethea withered and died.
I found my eyes strangely damp and shook myself to get my focus back. What Mab and Oberon did to Puck and his lady was shitty, but that didn’t give him an excuse to take Nitalia, and it sure as hell didn’t let him off the hook for laying hands on Amy. I was going to show him what this giant redneck could do when I found his ass.
Another flicker out of the corner of my eye, and this time when I turned, the door on the far wall was moving on its hinges, as if something had just gone through. I charged after it, not even thinking that it might be better to look before I leapt, and busted through the door into…a completely deserted parlor. Don’t get me wrong, it was a very nice parlor, but I was still pretty pissed that whatever made the door move was either way too fast, or invisible.
The parlor was set up with several couches, an arrangement of chairs that looked like they were for an impromptu concert, and a huge grand piano. I walked over to the piano and plinked on a couple of keys, just like everyone who can’t play piano does whenever they walk into a room with a piano. A rat the size of a chihuahua sprang out of the raised lid and launched itself at my chest, latching onto my shirt and beard with its surprisingly sharp claws and scrabbling up to my face, presumably to take a bite out of me.
I let out a yell that was way less manly than I wanted it to be and staggered back, swatting at my chest and the rat with my iron-wrapped hands. After several seconds of getting the shit clawed out of me, I got fed up with this bullshit and just belly-flopped onto the floor, crushing the rat beneath me. I cracked my chin a good one on the marble tile, but when I stood up, there was nothing left of Mr. Rat but a lifeless ball of fur and a whole lot of rat blood on my shirt and beard.
My shirt was in tatters, so I pulled it off and wiped as much blood off me as I could. Bertha’s holster chafed a little without a shirt on, but shirtless I didn’t smell quite as much like rat poop. It’s remarkable how much crap can squeeze out of one rat, but the evidence was right there on what used to be my shirt. I looked around, but nothing in the parlor stood out as a viable clothing alternative, so I figured I’d just be showing off my tattoos and pelt of chest hair to the world until I killed Puck and got back to where we’d left all our spare clothes and gear with Joe and Skeeter.
This time, I didn’t see any phantom movement, but I heard a door slam on the other side of the room. I looked toward the corner where the sound came from and saw a door painted to match the mural on that wall sticking slightly ajar. I hustled to it, tossing my shirt to the floor as I went.
On the other side of the door was a deserted kitchen, big enough to service a mansion that size. There was an island the size of an autopsy table in the middle of the room, with a rack over it holding pots that I swear you could cook an entire pit bull in. A rack of vicious-looking knives and cleavers sat in the center of the island, and I swear I saw the handle of one of the knives quivering as I walked in, as if someone had just slid it home. I made a quick lap around the kitchen, touching the cold stove, opening cabinet doors, peeking under the island, but there was no one there. I pulled open one small door that led to a pantry, then checked the door at the other end of the room. This one led to a long hallway, with several doors interspersed along its length. Figuring that led to the living quarters, I stepped into the hall, still desperately looking for someone to punch.
The hallway was deserted, with torches glowing from rings on the wall. I walked over to one of them to check it out and saw it was lit with a glowing yellow magical orb, not fire. That explained how they kept burning in a place where apparently no one lived, despite the fact that I kept hearing shit every time I turned my back.
About ten feet down the hall, I opened a door on the left into a guest bedroom. I didn’t see anything, but when I stepped all the way into the room, something slammed the door shut, and a shadowy form rushed me. The shadow was thin, almost emaciated, and as it latched on to my upper arms with its smoky hands, I felt a chill go all the way to my bones. It felt almost like grappling with a ghost, only more substantial. I took advantage of the corporeality and slammed my fist into the shadow creature’s gut. The second the cold iron hit the magical creature, it vanished in a puff of smoke and ash, leaving me rubbing flakes of ice off my arms and really hating that my shirt didn’t survive the first room.
I sifted through the pile of ash the shadow monster left behind but found nothing to help me fight them or find Amy. Then I rummaged through the wardrobe in the guest room, but apparently Puck either didn’t get many guests, or none of them left clothes behind. I hadn’t held out much hope for finding anything that fit, since I was one of the largest people I’d r
un into in Fairyland, but it was worth a try. Stepping back into the hall, I caught sight of a shadow turning the corner some thirty feet ahead of me, and I took off in hot pursuit.
When I rounded the corner, four more shadows pounced on me, wrapping their frigid limbs around my arms and neck, slowing me down and making my fists go numb with the cold. I managed to dust two of them pretty quickly, but one got a grip on my weakened leg, and that sent the bad knee I thought Mama had healed into full lockdown. Apparently something in the Shadow Court screwed with magically repaired knee joints. I stumbled, clutching the frozen joint with both hands, then flailed at the shadow until I caught the corner of its head with one of the cold iron studs on my caestus and it vanished into a pile of ash. The last shadow went for my eyes, but I punched it into oblivion and dropped to the stone floor, trying to rub some feeling back into my bad knee. It only locks up when it gets really cold, and that’s not much of a problem living in Georgia. Apparently, going to Fairyland and being attacked by heat-sucking shadow monsters is not good for old football injuries.
After a few minutes of massaging my leg, the knee unlocked with a loud pop, and I could bend my leg again. The pop came along with a knife of pain that blinded me for a few seconds, but when I could breathe and see again, I was able to stand up and continue my hunt.
The next several rooms turned out to be just more guest rooms, each as empty as the first, without even the lone shadow creature for me to kill. I did manage to find a robe in one of the wardrobes that I slipped over my arms and belted around my waist, looking more like Luke Skywalker’s shirt or the top half of a karate outfit than a robe, but that’s what you get when you’re a good foot taller than most of the people who live in a dimension. It did provide some cushion from Bertha’s holster rubbing under my arm and might help me not freeze to death if more of the shades got hold of me.
Monsters, Magic, & Mayhem: Bubba the Monster Hunter Season 4 Page 34
