There were plenty of presents under the pitiful little twig, though. I might hate Christmas, but I like presents. I like giving them, and I like getting them. I’d already shaken mine until it sounded like I broke one, and I knew Skeeter had run a portable X-Ray machine over his. That’s why I always used lead-lined aluminum foil when I wrapped his presents. That and it made it funnier when he inevitably dropped one on his foot.
“Well, I get what you mean about Jason, but the rest of it sounds like just a great big pile of humbug to me. I love Christmas, and I don’t have any more family than you. Less, in fact, and mine have all been gone for as long as I can remember.” She looked down into her cider, then took a long drink. “That’s really good, Skeeter, what did you put in there?”
“I put in a little splash of Captain Morgan Dark to give it some kick. How do you like it?”
“It’s good, makes me warm all the way down to my toes.” She looked over at me with her hair falling down over one eye and gave me a little smile. “Can I crash here on the couch tonight? I probably shouldn’t drive.”
I smiled back at her. “Nope.”
She sat up a little straighter and frowned. “No?”
I grinned at her. “Nope, the way Skeeter pours Knob Creek into his eggnog, he’ll be out on the couch before these goofballs get around to singing ‘Silent Night.’ You’ll just have to find someplace else here to crash.”
Agent Amy unfolded herself from the couch and walked slowly over to my recliner, then curled up in my lap like a Siamese cat, all slinky purr and bad intentions. “Well, where might I find a place to sleep?”
“I think I can come up with something,” I replied, then leaned down and kissed her. I went for a short kiss, the little “I like you but there are people in the room” kiss that we usually trotted out for polite company. Either there was a lot of rum in that cider, or she decided Skeeter was family, because she slid her arm around behind my head and held me tight, kissing me like she knew what she wanted.
I kissed her back, reaching around behind her back to pull her close, then froze as I heard running footsteps on my porch. I stood up, knocking over a TV tray and tossing Amy onto the couch. I put myself between the front door and Amy and Skeeter, hearing the click of Skeeter opening the hidden gun safe in the back of the couch. Bertha was hanging in her holster on the back of a dining room chair, but that was a good ten feet away. I’d have to make do with what I had on me. I drew my Judge revolver from the back of my jeans and flipped open my pocketknife left-handed.
“Got you covered,” Amy said from behind me, and I knew she either had her Smith & Wesson .40 or her Glock backing me up.
The door burst open, and Uncle Father Joe ran in, immediately throwing up his hands at the site of the small army he was facing. “Don’t shoot!” he shouted.
We all lowered our weapons, and I said, “Damn, Joe, you scared the crap out of us. What’s going on?”
“Scared the crap out of you? I run in here and think I’ve stumbled into a war zone. What’s with all the firepower?”
I looked around. I had a pistol and my pocketknife, a Buck 110 folder. Agent Amy was still in a perfect isosceles stance with a Smith & Wesson M&P40 pointed at the floor, and Skeeter had my trusty Mossberg 12-gauge slung over his shoulder. Seemed like an ordinary Saturday night to me, but my definition of normal might be a little skewed.
“There have been a few break-ins in the neighborhood, Padre. You might remember one of them, involved my brother?” I prodded.
“I remember. It’s why I don’t go anywhere without this—” Joe lifted his pants leg to reveal a Ruger LCP strapped to his right leg. “But I still didn’t expect y’all to draw down on me.”
“Sorry, we had the TV on so we couldn’t see you on the monitors,” Skeeter explained. “Bubba rigged the remote so it doesn’t flip over when the motion sensors trip anymore.”
“Too many interruptions when I’m watching football,” I grumbled.
“So Saturday afternoon in the fall is the time to mount a surprise attack on the Bubba compound. I’ll keep that in mind,” Joe remarked. “Is that cider? It smells great. I’ll help myself, it’s cold out there.”
Joe walked over to the stove and ladled out a coffee cup full of Skeeter’s spiked cider. I didn’t say nothing. I figured I’d let him figure it out on his own. He took a big sip and smiled. “Perfect.”
Joe looked at me, then at Skeeter, and said, “What? The rum? It makes it warm you up all the way down to the toes. What are y’all looking at? I’m Catholic, not Baptist. We invented Irish coffee.”
“I just figured y’all couldn’t . . .” I couldn’t figure out exactly how to say it, so I shut up.
“We can’t have sex, Bubba, if the Lord wanted to take drinking away from us too, nobody would ever enter the priesthood!” Joe laughed and knocked back the last of his cider. “Now, gear up, but keep everything concealable. We’ve got a problem downtown.”
“Yeah, they call it a parade, Padre. It happens every year.” I finished off my beer in one long pull, then started back toward the kitchen for a replacement.
“There’s an elf tearing through the town square, Bubba. It’s wreaking havoc with the celebrations, and I’m afraid somebody’s going to get hurt if it isn’t stopped.”
“An elf?” I asked.
“An elf,” Joe confirmed.
“Like little Keebler elf?” Amy asked.
“More like a really pissed off Legolas, with a bastard sword and a bad attitude,” Joe corrected.
“I always wondered why they called it that,” Amy mused as she turned and started poking around in the gifts under the Christmas tree.
“They call it that because it’s a bastardized long sword, with a handle just a little . . .” My voice trailed off as I got distracted by the view of Agent Amy down on her knees, buried up to her shoulders in presents. The view from my angle was truly spectacular, and I turned to Joe.
“Padre, this had better be a real serious crisis downtown because that is a seriously fine-looking woman, and I am now going to wreak some serious havoc of my own with whatever is taking her off my lap this afternoon.”
“I understand, Bubba. I’m celibate, not dead,” Joe replied.
“You’re gonna have to pray about that later,” Skeeter said, heading for the door.
“Where you going?” I asked the little tech wizard.
“I’m going home where I can monitor things, research things, make smarts comments over comm to y’all while you try not to get yourselves killed.” He didn’t even break stride as he walked out the front door, down the porch steps and out to his little Blue Volkswagen Beetle. He kicked up gravel all across the yard as he hauled ass home.
I turned back to Agent Amy, a little disappointed that she was on her feet. The view from the front was impressive, too, but my eyes dropped to the package in her hand. “What’s this?” I asked.
“It was going to be your Christmas present, but I think we might end up needing it tonight. She handed me a box wrapped in red snowman gift-wrap. I set it on the table beside my recliner and went over to the tree.
“What are you doing?” Amy asked me.
“We do have a crazy elf running loose that we need to stop, remember?” Joe said. “I’m as much a proponent of togetherness and exchanging gifts as the next guy, but can we prioritize?”
“I am prioritized, and from the weight of that box, so is Amy. Here you go, doll. Merry Christmas.” I pulled a big box out from under the tree and handed it to Amy.
“You might want to sit down first?” I said, not quite fast enough to keep her from collapsing under the weight of the box. Sometimes I forget that normal people can’t just hold a hundred pounds of high explosive ordinance without being prepared for it.
Amy tore through the blue and gold menorah wrapping paper in seconds, making a blizzard of paper and ribbon all over the floor. She let out a little squeal when she saw the U.S. ARMY stencil on the green metal box, but she got a confus
ed look on her face when she opened up a crate of 40mm grenades.
“Um, Bubba?” She looked up at me, holding one of the grenades. “These are amazing, but there’s something—”
“I know.” I cut her off by holding out a long package in matching paper. This one wasn’t wrapped nearly as well, and its shape was pretty distinctive, so there wasn’t a whole lot of surprise when she tore off the paper and saw a Heckler & Koch HK69A1 grenade launcher, complete with shoulder strap and bandolier for grenades.
She jumped up and gave me one of those full-body hugs that women can do if they’re small enough, where they jump on you and wrap arms and legs all around you. She kissed me all over my big fuzzy beard, and we would have progressed to more serious kissing if Joe hadn’t been tapping his foot and making sure we didn’t forget that we had a can of whoop-ass to go open on Captain Keebler.
“There’s a bunch of different grenades in there—frags, smoke, flash-bangs, flares—whatever you need,” I said, putting her down. Amy immediately started loading a selection of grenades into her bandolier.
“Well yours is a little more designed for close work, since you’ve got Bertha for anything at a distance. And you’ve got this bad habit of punching things meaner than you, so I went old-school.” I opened the box to find out that she wasn’t joking about going old school. She had a pair of ceastus made for me. I could tell they were custom because they fit; nothing store-bought ever fits when you’re six and a half feet tall and over three-fifty.
These were basically juiced up mechanic’s gloves with the fingertips cut off past the first knuckle. There were steel bands running along the long bones of the hand, with screw holes for different types of studs and enough padding backing the metal strips that I could punch through solid steel and not hurt my hands. I looked through the box and selected a set of screw-in knuckle-dusters, thinking I’d start out with the less-lethal option and upgrade to spikes if I needed to. This basically just gave me a set of flexible brass knuckles screwed into my reinforced gloves, adding weight and strength to my punch without taking away the use of my fingers for my gun or knife.
“They’re beautiful. I’ll treasure them and get them bloody right away,” I said, slipping the gloves on my hands and clapping them together. “Let’s go downtown and beat some elf ass.”
*****
The elf was easy enough to find. He was the seven-foot tall male model in plate armor swinging a sword through the Christmas floats and generally making a spectacle of himself. We pulled my F-250 as close as we could, which was still several blocks away ‘cause of traffic and the pieces of floats, which were basically now overturned flatbed trailers with a bunch of wrecked paper máché.
“Our first task is to get him out of the public view. If we can contain this quickly, we can get a story spread of an escaped mental patient,” Amy said. She was in full Secret Agent of DEMON mode now, in all black tactical gear with a flak jacket, ballistic helmet, shooter’s glasses with infrared coating to let her track heat signatures, black combat boots, hard rubber knee and shin guards, elbow pads, black shooter gloves and her hair pulled back in a tight ponytail. Her Glock was on one hip, a collapsible baton on the other, a Taser in a Velcro holster at her waist, and an MP-5 slung across her chest.
I looked like Grizzly Adams just stepped out of a mosh pit, in blue jeans, old Doc Martens, a Dimebag Darrell Lives! T-shirt, a CM Punk hoodie over that to hide Bertha, my Desert Eagle pistol in a shoulder holster. My Judge revolver was at the small of my back, and a silvered kukri hung off my belt. I was wearing my new ceastus on my hands and a black University of Georgia baseball cap on my head. Father Joe was wearing the same thing he always wore—black dress shirt, black jeans, black harness boots, priest’s collar and a motorcycle jacket. He might have been a priest, but he was a pretty badass priest. He had a Colt 1911 on his hip and a crucifix around his neck. I wasn’t sure which one was going to get more work tonight.
People were running every which way but toward the elf, which made our approach not only difficult, but pretty obvious. It’s hard to hide in the masses when you’re the only salmon swimming upstream. The elf turned to face us when we were still fifty feet away.
“Who dares approach Rec’teer, Prince of Flowers?” he bellowed, bringing his sword around into a guard position.
“I’m Bubba, Guardian of, um, these rednecks!” I hollered back, trying to give as much challenge as he did. I think I fell short by a few miles.
“Do you come to challenge me, Bub-ba?” the elf said with a sneer. He was a pretty bastard, I had to give him that much. He had long blond hair flowing in the light breeze, gold plate and chain mail with a white tabard, and features that looked like they’d been chiseled out of marble. There was an otherworldly grace that would have given away his supernatural nature even if he hadn’t been sporting three-inch pointy tips on the tops of his ears. He had tuners that made Spock look human, for crying out loud.
“That depends, Keebler. Can I get you to put the sword down and stop crapping all over the Christmas parade any other way?” I drew my kukri ‘cause I assumed the answer was gonna be no. The answer is always no, by the way. It don’t matter what I’m asking, the damn critters I hunt are always disagreeable.
“I know not of this Christ-mass you speak of, but these humans are defiling the holy Solstice. They must perish for their insolence!” He turned and sliced the roof off a Subaru parked beside him. The super-sized can opener he was swinging didn’t even hiccup as it cut through steel and glass. I was starting to really miss Great-Grandpappy’s sword, and reminded myself not for the first time to beat Jason’s ass for stealing it from me. That was in addition to the ass whooping he was going to get for stabbing me with it.
“Hold on here, Legolas, let’s put a kibosh on the perishing for a second.” I stepped forward, hoping I could get the elf to talking and give Amy and Skeeter enough time to come up with a plan. I had a Plan B, but it was “hit the elf in the fist with your face until his arms get tired,” so I wasn’t in a real hurry to put that one into motion.
Rec’teer didn’t seem very interested in parlaying, as he flicked out that big sword toward my head almost faster than I could see. I got my kukri up in the nick of time, and a shower of sparks flew off our blades. He bore down on me as our blades slid off each other, and followed up his sword slash with a backhanded shot to my face that left me spitting blood. I staggered back a couple of steps, then dropped to one knee as he went for another big swing with the sword. I exploded up off my knee and planted my shoulder right in his gut under the ribs. In football, that gets you under the pads and you can fold a quarterback up like origami. In armor, it works about the same way. I came in under the breastplate and picked the elf up off the ground as I charged. I carried him about ten feet, just enough room to get up a good head of steam, then I rammed him into a parked Suburban. His head cracked the window and his ass left a pair of dents in the rear door, but he was still relatively un-squished.
I went back down to my knees as the elf laid a double axe-handle blow between my shoulder blades. He slid out of my grasp, and I figured I was about to get introduced to the edge of that big stupid sword when I heard a uuhhh from above me. I felt something like pop rocks pouring down on me, and looked up to see what looked like an elf with a sparkler erupting in his chest.
I spun away just as the flare went off, blowing the elf six feet back and setting his big blond ass on fire. I looked around, and Agent Amy was standing back by her Suburban, her new grenade launcher aimed at the sword-wielding psycho. I gave her a grin and a thumbs-up, and got a big grin back, then saw her grin fade and her eyes go wide. That’s never good, I thought, and turned to see what kind of terrible thing was coming my way now.
At least it was the same terrible thing and not something new to deal with, that was the bright side. The less than bright side was there was a seven-foot-tall elf stomping back in my direction with a sword the length of my legs and no more damage than a couple scorch marks on
his armor. I decided that it was time to screw fighting fair and drew Bertha. I came up to one knee and sighted on the chain mail piece right between his plated shoulder pads and squeezed off seven fifty-caliber rounds. Rec’teer stopped in his tracks and jerked like he was getting hit by a sledgehammer, which was probably what it felt like.
Unfortunately for me, sledgehammers don’t do shit to elves. All seven rounds hit him square in the center mass, and all seven rounds fell to the ground a couple feet to either side of him, all their energy spent trying to punch through his chain mail. I holstered Bertha and drew my Judge, spinning the cylinder until a .410 shotgun shell was next to fire. I pulled the trigger and sent a shell full of silvered birdshot into the elf’s face from eight feet away. Then I did it again for good measure.
Silver works wonders on a lot of supernatural creatures. Elves are not on the list. He wiped the shot away like it was dirt I’d thrown in his face and knocked the gun out of my hand with an easy slap.
He laid his sword against the side of my neck and said in a low voice, “Do not move, mortal. I would rather not kill you while your woman watches.”
“I’d rather you not kill me no matter who’s looking, Elrond,” I growled right back in his face and popped him on the point of his jaw with a sharp uppercut. His head snapped back and he staggered back a step or two. I felt a little better seeing that he could be hurt, then my vision exploded into stars and everything went black.
Grits, Guns & Glory - Bubba the Monster Hunter Season 2 Page 19
