The mercenary, who couldn’t have been much more than twenty-five, nodded, his face almost as white as the snow he knelt in.I stared at Geri, realizing that her homicidal tendencies might not have been buried as deeply as I’d thought before we stepped through the portal.
11
What the hell do we do now?”Jarvis asked as we gathered in the largest tent, set up as some kind of command post, to go over what Geri had gotten out of the Pest Control leader in her interrogation.“We can’t take on an army!”
We’d kinda already done just that, since we stormed their little camp after taking out most of their team.It only took a quick glance at the bodies of their teammates draped across the backs of our horses before the guys that stayed behind decided they weren’t getting paid enough to deal with Geri.I couldn’t fault them for that.We’d tied them all up in one tent for warmth, and now we were hunting for clues in their main command post after Geri spent half an hour alone with their leader making sure she got every bit of information out of him.I hadn’t asked for any details on her interrogation, being pretty sure I didn’t want to know.
“They didn’t send an army,” Geri replied, sitting behind a desk and rifling through some papers.“Looks like there’s a strike team and a dozen or so support staff.The support staff here are sorted, so now we can expect to find another crew manning a gate on the way to Winter, and a strike team farther in.That’s probably who set loose whatever biological weapon they’re using.”
“How did they get all this shit here?”I asked.“Do they have some kind of transporter thingy that’ll open up a portal whenever they want?”
“Basically,” Geri replied, holding up a strange device.“From what our seven-toed friend told me, he uses it to open the portal once a week for shift change and resupply.”
“That dude only has seven toes?”Jarvis asked.“How would you even know that?”
“He only has seven toes now,” Geri replied without elaboration.Jarvis turned a little pale but didn’t ask any follow up questions.
“So we’ve got a team of Pest Control roaming through Fairyland spreading disease everywhere they go.How do we find them, and what do we do about it when we do?Is there a cure?There’s no cure, is there?They just want to wipe out everyone with a drop of fae blood, including me.Shit, can I catch this thing?”I heard my voice speed up with my anxiety, but I couldn’t help myself.I don’t do so good with enemies I can’t punch or shoot, and without Amy here to talk me down, I could feel myself slipping into a shoot anything that moves headspace.Not exactly conducive to clear thinking.
“No, you can’t,” Ash said.“If you could, you would have caught it from Titania.Come to think of it, Oberon wasn’t sick, either.Did we seeanysick male faeries?”
We all thought for a long moment before Geri said, “No.It seems like only women are affected.”
“Makes sense,” Jarvis said.
Every head turned in his direction, and he raised his hands in surrender.“I mean, fae society is a matriarchy, right?So if you want to destabilize that society, you attack the women.”
“That’s…surprisingly astute,” Ash said.
“I majored in sociology,” Jarvis replied.
“I thought you were a finance guy,” I said.
“I…had a lot of majors.Took me a while to nail down a course of study.”
“You mean you were a fifth-year senior before Daddy cut off the money?”Ash asked.
“Well, if you want to be mean about it…”
I turned to Geri.“Anything on that desk about where the strike team was headed?”
“Yeah,” she said.“Big surprise, their primary targets are the two queens.Looks like the plan was to hit Winter first with whatever weapon they have, then let the disease spread to Summer and follow up with a direct strike on Titania’s palace if they needed it.”
“And if they didn’t need it?Because it looked an awful lot like their mission was pretty damn well accomplished without another attack,” I asked.
“If a secondary attack on Summer wasn’t required, they were to return here and wait for orders and…holy shit.”
“And holy shit what?”I asked.
“And an occupation force to come through the portal.”She looked up at me, her face pale.“Bubba, they aren’t just trying to kill people, they’re trying to take over all of Faerie.”
“I bet they’re gonna make it into an amusement park for the mega-rich,” Jarvis said.
“Nah, they’re gonna mine the natural resources,” Ash opined.
“I don’t give a shit what they think they’regonnado, what they’ve done is pissed me off.I might not like Granny Mab any more than whoever’s running Pest Control does, but I do like the idea of being married, and Amy likes the idea of a wedding, and these assholes done screwed that up.I don’t like it when people screw up my fiancée’s plans, and Ireallydon’t like it when she gets kidnapped because of it.So if these dickheads are supposed to be on the way back here, I reckon we’ll be here waiting on ‘em when the get here.”
“I don’t think we can do that, Bubba,” Geri said, putting down a sheaf of papers.
