We walked through the gate, eyes glued to our phones, and shut the gate behind us. Looking through the screen, the stockade was transformed into a magical land full of trees and sunshine, with a stream running right through it, and tons of fairies running around, almost begging to be caught. I stood by the gate, turning in almost a full circle looking through my phone, and finally caught a glimpse of a dark figure darting between two small cottages off to my left.
“I think I saw the Puck,” I said to Amy, pointing in the general direction of the sprite. She nodded, and I headed off in that direction. She walked the opposite way, tapping her screen in rhythm and cursing when one of her fairies busted loose.
I walked around to the side of an old stockade building, which was new and built of glittering marble in the game, not an old wooden replica of a wartime prison. The light from the street lights dimmed, and soon it seemed as though the only light around came from my phone. Then he was there—right in front of me stood the rarest of the Fae—a black-clad, rapier-wielding fairy with blue- and green-spattered black wings jutting out from his back. He was tall for a fairy, nearly five feet, but had the slender build, narrow chin, and pointed ears that all the fairies in the game had.
“Gotcha!” I said, readying a spell. I tapped the screen ten times in rapid succession, making the spell coalesce into a star and shine like a miniature sun. I swiped my finger sideways across the screen, spinning the spell towards the Puck dancing on my screen, and grinned as it hit him square in the chest.
“Gotcha, indeed!” The voice came from right behind me, a high, reedy voice, shrill in my ear but still oddly alluring.
I spun around and there stood the Puck, grinning at me in real life, not through the augmented reality of my phone.
“Aw, shit,” I said.
“Indeed,” the Puck replied. Then he snapped his fingers, and everything disappeared in a flash of intense white light.
*****
I came to lying on the grass in sunlight. The temperature was perfect, the grass was soft, and my head was absolutely damn killing me. I sat up, then lay back down thinking better of it for a minute or two. Then I sat up again, this time taking it more slowly. I managed to get to my feet and looked around. The Puck was sitting on a thick stump a few feet away, watching me with a sideways grin on his face.
“Well, I must admit, this is unexpected,” said the slender fairy. He sat with his legs folded beneath him and his elbows on his knees, bent over at odd angles, all pointy elbows and knees. His features seemed to be drawn with razors, sharp edges everywhere and points on his chin and ears. Those ears. They weren’t the gently swooping elfin points of a Peter Jackson film. No, these were great, savage-looking pointed things, more like bat ears than anything beautiful. His hair was an unruly shock of black and blue and purple and blood red all sticking out every which way, but it was his eyes that commanded my attention.
He stared at me with eyes of wall-to-wall black. No pupil, no iris, no sclera (shut up, I went to college!), just unrelenting black staring back at me from that angular face with the over-chiseled jaw and cheekbones just a little too sharp to be attractive.
“You’re telling me,” I said, sitting up on the grass. “I thought I was trying to catch a Puck, but...”
“It seems the Puck caught you,” he replied.
“Yeah.”
“And now you want to know what I plan to do with you.”
“Yeah.”
“Do you think I’m going to eat you?” He opened his grinning mouth to show off a double row of pointed teeth.
“Nah, too much fat and gristle,” I said. “Besides, if you wanted to eat me, you wouldn’t let me wake up. You’d just bring me here and start carving off chunks.”
“I have to admit, you’re not wrong. Who are you, human?”
“They call me Bubba. I hunt monsters.”
“And what do you do with them when you find them, Bubba?”
I got the distinct impression that life could get very uncomfortable for me if I answered wrong, but I also didn’t know if he could tell when I was lying or not. Screw it, I decided. I told the truth.
“Sometimes I shoot them. Sometimes I throw them off tall places. Sometimes I stab them. Sometimes I set them on fire. Sometimes I shoot them, stab them, set them on fire, and THEN throw them off tall places. And every once in a while, I talk to them, figure out why they’re doing things they shouldn’t be doing, and send them on their merry way. That last bit doesn’t happen very often. Usually I end up killing something.”
“An honest human?” Puck mused. “Will wonders never cease?”
“And who are you, fairy?” I tossed his question back at him.
“I am just who you called me,” he tossed back. He stood up on his stump, and it looked more like a spider unfolding itself than anyone standing up. “I am Robin Goodfellow, at your service. But you, dear Bubba, may call me Puck.”
“Puck,” I repeated.
“Puck.”
“Like Shakespeare, Puck?”
“One and the same.”
“Like Titania and Oberon, Puck?”
A shadow flickered across his face. “I would prefer you not mention those names again. Names have power, Bubba. Names draw attention. If you say the Summer Queen’s name too often, she may notice you. And you don’t want to be noticed by the Summer Queen.”
“And the Summer Queen is—” I caught myself. “The person I named?”
“Very good!” He clapped his hands, his overlong fingers flapping like he was double-jointed. “You catch on fast, Bubba”
“I’m not just a pretty face,” I replied. “So what are you doing bringing me over here? And more importantly, did you bring anyone over here last night?”
“Oh. We don’t exactly measure time the same way you do on the other side, so I’m not sure.” He looked sad, like he really wanted a little nighttime. “But I did acquire a new gift for my queen recently. A human girl, about this tall.” He held his hand out about the right height above ground for it to be Tamara Sanders.
“Do you remember her name? Was it Tamara?” I got up and realized that he wasn’t a very big fairy. I looked him in the eye, even with him standing on a stump.
“Humans have names?” he asked, a confused look on his face. “Who knew? I don’t know what she called herself. I simply delivered her to my queen. But it wasn’t enough to buy back my lady love. And now I’ve caught you, and you’re no good to me. I suppose I’ll have to send you back.” He started waving his arms in midair, and sparkles flew from his fingertips.
“Wait!” I shouted. “You can’t send me back. I have to find the girl and take her with me. Her parents are worried about her. And you can’t just steal children.”
“Why not? You humans make so many of them. It’s not like you’ll miss one or two. Now go away, and let me find another girl-child, one that will please Her Majesty.”
He started waving his arms around again, and a portal spun open in the air behind me. I felt it start to suck me in, but I knew I had to stay. This might be my only chance to find Tamara and bring her home, not to mention any other kids this freak had taken. The pull of the portal grew stronger, and I couldn’t move forward against its draw. I strained against the force, switching very quickly to Plan B.
Plan B looks a lot like the rest of my Plans A-Z, only I use a different tool. This time I drew my second favorite tool from her holster under my left arm. I leaned forward against the magical portal’s draw and put three rounds from Bertha in the center of Puck’s chest.
The portal winked out of existence, and I staggered forward, all force behind me suddenly gone. When I looked up, Puck was off the stump, the force of three fifty-caliber rounds sending him sprawling in the grass a good four feet away. I watched with my mouth hanging open as he sat up, reached into his chest to remove the bullets, and tossed them aside with a sneer.
“That was my favorite shirt,” the angry fairy said, getting to his feet with three brand-new h
oles in his favorite shirt and murder in his eyes.
Oh, shit.
Chapter 4
Oh, shit.
That’s all I had time to think before I was covered up in pissed-off fairy. He was all sharp elbows and pointy fists, and the little bastard was strong out of all proportion to his size. He hopped to his feet, then jumped onto the stump a few feet away, using that as a launching point to clear the ten feet between us without any apparent effort. He leapt from the stump to my shoulders, raining blows down on my head with his little fists that felt more like somebody pelting me with rocks than flesh.
I reached up behind my head and got a good double handful of his abused shirt, yanking him over my head and slamming him to the ground. I raised a foot to stomp a muddle in his ass, but he blinked out of existence right before my oversized hiking boot slammed into the turf. That left me off-balance, which is my excuse for falling down like a felled redwood when he appeared behind me and kicked me right in the ass.
I planted my face in the green, green grass of Fairyland and quickly learned that getting slammed to the ground hurts just as much in a magical friggin’ wonderland as it does everywhere else. Bertha went flying, which was fine, since obviously fairies were immune to my preferred method of inducing lead poisoning. I pushed myself up to my hands and knees, then went straight back down on my belly, curling up into a fetal position as a pointy little fairy foot launched my nuts up into my ribcage. I swear I felt my left testicle bounce around between my spine and ribs like a goddamn pinball while I writhed in breathless pain.
My vision cleared just enough to see Puck standing beside my face, bent at the waist so far that his head almost touched the ground.
“You had enough, human?” he asked, a smug grin plastered across his pointy face.
“Screw you, fairy,” I growled. Okay, it was more like I squeaked, but if I hadn’t been an unnatural soprano, I would have growled. I wrapped my big right paw around the little bastard’s neck and started to squeeze.
“Let’s see you vanish out of that, asshole.”
“Okay,” he croaked. He couldn’t get much air, but he sure as hell could vanish right out of my fingertips. I kinda felt the air move on the other side of my head, then definitely felt my brain slosh around in my skull when he kicked me right in the temple. My vision went all sparkly, then the grey tunnel started to close in on me. I rolled over a couple times, came up on my knees, and shook my head, fighting off the symptoms of the concussion I was pretty sure I had.
Puck popped into view right in front of me, and this time I nailed him on the chin with an uppercut. He sprawled straight back, his bell rung for a change, and I made my wobbly way to my feet. He clambered to an upright position and looked at me with a little respect for the first time.
“You’re not like most humans. You can fight.”
“I’ve stood toe-to-toe with a troll, been gutted by a damn werewolf, and gone three rounds with a buck-naked sasquatch. You ain’t got shit, fairy. I would say you hit like a girl, but you don’t. Girls know how to lay a hit on somebody. You hit like a damn quarterback.” I didn’t want to be insulting. I coulda said he hit like a placekicker.
He looked confused. “I don’t know what that is, but it doesn’t seem like a nice thing to say.” He waved his hand in the air, and a sword appeared.
Well, shit. Good job, Bubba, you pissed off the armed magical creature.
“Bring it, little dude.” I held out both hands and made a “come at me” gesture. He did. He ran at me, his sword coming in low to sweep up and disembowel me. But I learned a long time ago that if you’ve got to fight somebody who has a sword, and all you’ve got is fists, there’s only one safe place to be—in real close.
As he started his swing, I didn’t take up the defensive posture he expected. Nah, I stepped inside his sword stroke, using my big body to get in the way of his arms and foul his killing stroke. Then I put my hands on either side of his head and slammed my forehead down into his face, shattering his nose and blinding him for a moment.
The sword fell to the grass and winked out of existence. Puck staggered back, blood pouring from his nose and tears streaming from his eyes. I followed him, raining punches that he couldn’t see to block. Jab, jab, jab, hook, jab, hook, uppercut—I hit the little bastard ten or twelve times, big, solid punches that made a good connection with a fist the size of a small Honeybaked ham, and he still didn’t go down. Finally, I reared back for a haymaker that was either going to mash his face pancake flat or leave me so open to a retaliation that he’d just conjure up a sword and gut me like a catfish.
To my surprise, neither one happened. The little dude’s eyes cleared enough for him to see the fist coming for him, and he blinked out of existence. I did exactly what I knew I’d do if I missed and overbalanced flat onto my belly in the grass. I lay there for a couple of seconds, waiting for the feeling of a blade running through my body. Again.
When it didn’t come, I got to all fours and pulled myself to my feet. I looked around and saw Puck sitting on the stump again, his head down between his pointy knees and a fancy handkerchief pressed to his nose. He saw me looking at him and waved the hanky at me.
“I surrender, human. Just stop hitting me.”
“You know you’re supposed to wave a white flag for surrender, right?”
“It was white before I bled all over it, is that good enough?”
“Depends. You gonna try to send me back?”
“Are you going to shoot me again if I do?”
“Probably not. Didn’t seem to do much good the first time. But I will beat the shit out of you again.”
“Then do you mind terribly if we avoid that particular course of action?”
“Nah, I think I can do without another concussion or having you wear my nuts on your toes for jingle bells.”
“Truce, then?”
“Yeah, I’m okay with that.” I lowered myself back to the ground and sat. My balls hurt like a sonofabitch, and my ears still rang from the punched I took to the head, but my vision was clear, so I probably wasn’t really concussed. I still had to find Tamara Sanders, though. I suppose the only good news was that I didn’t have to sweat the whole forty-eight-hour thing anymore. That was only the rule of thumb with human abductors. Fairies and other supernatural critters ran by their own set of rules.
“Are you starting to feel better?” Puck asked after a minute or so.
“Yeah, I am, actually. What’s that about?”
“We’re in the Summer Lands, human. Injuries heal very quickly here. You’ll be right as rain in no time; then you can leave.”
“Not without Tamara,” I said, my voice flat.
“Oh yes, the new girl. I forget you name yourselves. I’m just so used to calling you ‘boy’ or ‘girl.’ Well, she’s well out of reach. I sent her to the queen. I’m sure she’s a kitchen drudge by now, or maybe a scullion.”
“What do you mean, you sent her to the queen?”
“I sent her to the queen to serve her in the castle. She did just what you did—she tried to catch a Puck, and the Puck caught her.” He grinned like he was the cleverest asshole in the forest. Which he probably was, but I still didn’t like him pointing it out.
“So the whole game is a trap?” I asked.
“You are very bright, for a human,” he said in a tone that made it clear that “for a human” meant about the same thing as “for a houseplant.” “The game leads human children on a merry chase looking for rarest of fairies—the Puck. Whenever they think they’ve caught a Puck, I’ve caught them instead! And I bring them here and give them to my queen.”
His face fell, and some of his obnoxious pride fell off. “But it’s not enough. It’s never enough.”
“What’s not enough?” I asked, even when the little voice in my head screamed DON’T ASK. But if I listened to that little voice, I never would have done half the cool things I’ve done in my life. I also would have avoided a couple of nasty rashes and at least thr
ee courses of penicillin, but that’s beside the point.
“Nothing I do is enough,” the now-mopey Puck replied. “I bring her human children, and it’s not enough. I design an addictive game to suck the creativity and desire out of thousands of human children and bring more human children, and it’s not enough. Nothing I do will ever get her to free my Silvara.”
“What’s a Silvara?” Again, the little voice in my head doing cartwheels and telling me not to ask. Again, me ignoring the little voice. If I were my little voice, I’d be really irritated with me most of the time.
“Silvara is the fairest of fairy maidens. She is the sunlight on my face in springtime, the honey in my tea, the wind in my willows. She is the most lovely, delicate, enchanting creature I’ve ever seen. And Titania keeps her locked away in a dungeon just to torment me.”
“So she’s your girlfriend.”
“She is the love of my infinitely long life, you mortal imbecile. Titania has sworn that if I make a significant enough offering, she will release Silvara to me. And the Fae cannot lie, so she is bound to do as she promised.”
“Let me guess,” I said. “She hasn’t bothered to tell you exactly what constitutes a significant enough offering.”
He looked up at me, a heartbroken little fairy with a now-crooked pointy nose. “Exactly.”
“I had a boss like that once. It sucks.”
“What did you do?”
“I probably wouldn’t follow my example on this one.”
“Why not? What did you do to solve your problem with your heartless ruler?”
“I broke a beer bottle over his head, shoved another one up his ass, and left him doing a handstand in the shitter of the strip club I was bouncing at. Like I said, I don’t think you want to try that with a magical fairy queen.”
Midsummer - A Bubba the Monster Hunter Novella Page 3
