the venti-sized elf sitting in the throne grown from a single tree, grown solely for the purpose of supporting his great elfin ass; the fat jerk.
I didn’t get within a dozen steps of their chief before two guards leapt out and crossed spears in front of me—sometimes things did go my way.
I grabbed the spear shafts at the point where they crossed and pushed forward. In reaction the guards pushed back, so I helped them out. I rolled onto my back, jammed the spear tips into the ground above my shoulders and levered the shafts back tossing the guards off their feet and slamming them onto the ground. I rolled once more, landing on a knee and a foot, raised the spears, points down, above the rising guards, and stabbed them to the ground through their silken shirts. They were lucky I’d intentionally avoided their bodies.
A half-dozen arrows and a few swords had been drawn and pointed at my precious body parts. I stood and crossed my arms. “How do you want to play this Manamana?”
I heard bow-stings tighten and DJ gulp. Then the great elf leader began to laugh, one of those loud, belly-jiggling laughs of the truly obese.
Bows and swords were lowered, but nothing was sheathed. Smart elves—I was at temper’s end.
Manamana, dressed only in silk shorts, waved me over with a waggle of arm fat. “Stop this nonsense, Monster Collector and come over here. We have to talk to you.”
“I’d rather be on my way.” As I approached the throne DJ fell in behind me, but Truvinn set a hand to her chest and stopped her.
“Hey, lay off!” she shouted and pushed uselessly at his strong arm.
“It’s alright, DJ, wait there.” I stepped to the throne and had to crane my neck quite a bit as the living chair held the chief elf a couple of meters above the ground. “Make this short, will you? I’m late.”
Manamana took a drink from a cup made from a long, spiraled shell, and then he set the cup against a branch that immediately curled around it like a wooden hand. He leaned his weight on the apparently strong arms of the throne. “Short it is then. We want to know who’s hitt’n the deferred species? Who’s do’n us?” His tone told me that he expected the correct answer fast. I winced from the stink of rotten fruit, and I mean rotten, not fermented. I had no idea what he was drinking and I doubted that I wanted to. Interesting that he hadn’t yet accused me.
I groaned and gave my short, spiky hair a good scratch. “And I’d like to know why everybody keeps asking me.”
Manamana’s head snapped up in surprise. He thought for several minutes. “Who else’s been ask’n?”
I began counting on my fingers. “The clowns, the enforcer corps, Boss Geeter, everyone except the GD cranks and they want to kill me just because.”
Manamana leaned back in his chair, stroked at one of his many chins and stared blankly at the ceiling of twisted rose vines. Mostly elves were as thin as pins, in fact every elf I’d ever seen except for Manamana and his first wife seemed to have around two percent body fat. He was disturbingly vast. Apparently he was really, really old—like somehow his age was supposed to explain his idleness and glutinous indulgences.
He contemplated for a long time, building on the room’s ever-present tension. “No matter,” he said at last, but more to himself as his dark eyes were still unfocused. Then, with a whip of his head, he turned his gaze on me, setting his neck flesh into a series of repeating waves. “You’re going to find the ones responsible and bring them, or their heads, to us.”
I laughed, I hadn’t meant to, but it felt good. They’d used some of their elfin magic on me, and magic had a way of making me a little giddy. Besides, if I hadn’t laughed, I’d have probably killed him. “No,” I said when I got the giggles under control. “I’m already overbooked. Besides, I don’t work for elves. Nothing personal, I just can’t stand the smell.”
Manamana made the slightest eye contact with Truvinn, but I didn’t have a chance to wonder why.
“Jazz!” DJ shouted.
I spun, but a bevy of spear points dropped to my heart height and formed a circle around me. Two guards had grabbed DJ by her arms and were dragging her across the room. As they approached what appeared to be a prickly thicket, it swung open exposing a hallway formed of tightly entwined holly trees.
“Hey! Put me down!” DJ kicked at her captors and tried to wrench herself free. Good girl, though she’d never break the warrior elves’ grips. Two guards wielding heavy broadswords fell in line behind them and marched her out of the room.
“Jazz!”
I spun on the elf king, scratching my forearm on a spear point in the process; my hands were clenched in fists. “Manamana, let her go.”
“Mind your place, human.” One of the guards reached, intending to shove me back. I punched him in the eye so hard he fell onto his back, gripped his face and cried out.
At least a half-dozen of the spear points poked into my flesh, just enough to pin me in place, but I was beyond caring about dying just then.
“Desist!” the elf king bellowed in a voice so loud that it temporarily jarred my hearing. I shook my head to clear my ears. By the time I’d finished, the elves surrounding me had all taken a step back.
Manamana’s normally cedar face was scarlet red. For a moment I though he might leap down and consume me, but he sat back, took a deep breath, and the tension left his face. “This is how it is, Monster Collector. You can stand and fight for your friend, very admirable it is, but you’ll die very quickly, and then she will too. Or you can find out who’s hitting my kind and bring them to me. You do and I’ll allow you and your special friend there to fly out of here—your choice.”
I only thought about it for a couple of seconds. “I’ll do it, in part because it suits me, but the moment you let me walk out of this forest without DJ, you and me are enemies, you want to risk that?”
“Like you, I have no other choice.”
Not exactly the response I had expected. In fact I detected a trace of fear in him, but not from my threat, there was something else going on here, something that had Manamana rattled. I was getting the sinking feeling that this whole problem was getting too big for me. All I wanted to do was kill monsters, not work for them.
“I have to call my ship.”
“No!” he snapped with a vehemence than slid my head back. “We will not have that abomination in our realm.
I didn’t blame him, I should never have bound that demon’s soul to a flycraft, but I was a pleased that its existence upset the fat elf.
“Your ship is very near an eddy,” he said at last. “We will transport you there over the lea-lines.”
“Forget it, I’ll walk.” I looked around at the elves still surrounding me. “But I want my stuff back, all of it.”
He nodded at a guard by the entrance who opened a tree trunk, drew my belongings out of it, and then carried them over to me. As he did the circle of guards split and set the blunt end of their spears on the ground.
As I set my helmet on Manamana said, “We have no interest in your bobbles. We wonder though, why you don’t let us magic you to your craft, it would save a day’s walk.”
I quickly donned my armored battle jacket, slid on my rucksack, and began the long process of arming myself. Normally this routine brought me great pleasure, but my blood was burning and my face was clenched up tight with anger. I absolutely hated the idea of leaving one of mine behind, especially DJ. “I prefer to walk; otherwise I’d end up as engorged as your vastness.”
Several of the guards growled, but Manamana just smiled. He knew something about me, something about what was inside me, or of my past—maybe both. But I couldn’t worry about that just then. I set my helmet on my head and, now fully armed and armored, stood and faced the elf king. “I need that paleobear’s head.”
“No,” he said in a no-uncertain tone.
“I earned it. I risked life and limb to kill the beast that was killing yours. Besides, I need it.”
“Not gonna happen, girl. We didn’t mind you clearing up a mess that
was beyond our reach, but we can’t let anyone know that we let you kill one of ours and walk out of here.”
“Of course not,” I said, showed his royal hiney-ness the back of my first two fingers, then turned and walked to the door. But I stopped as I exited and glared back. “Nothing happens to her,” I said in a tone that conveyed threat.
“That is not our way, human,” Manamana said. “She is safer with us than she’d be with you.”
I left and began making my way through the forest. I couldn’t see them, but my gut told me that there were dozens of elves watching my every step back to Ship. This was a mess. Without proof of kill, I’d never collect my fee and I really needed that money. Hopefully Parry had used the money I collected from the clowns to get my motorcycle out of impound, but, now that I’d spent their money, I’d have to report something back to those painted orcs.
I hated my life, even more than usual, just then. Elves and clowns were my enemies, not my clientele. Even still, I had to admit that I was growing very curious about these hits, especially if they had the monster community so rattled.
But now I was rattled too. Not for me, I could take whatever came my way. But DJ hadn’t yet been so hardened by life…and by death.
Manamana’s word was good, elves were famous for their treatment of prisoners; DJ was safe enough. But he knew I’d make good on my threat. As soon as DJ was free, and this monster serial killer thing was in a