Bitterroot gave him a wounded look. “Everything I say is true. You have my solemn oath on that.”
“Unless you’re lying about that.”
The fairy polished off the last off the apple with a disgusted grunt. Then he shook his head and spat a single word. “Mortals.”
Bruce didn’t bother with the obviously response of “Fairies.” Instead, he closed his eyes and tried to remember the details of the images he’d seen of Laddin. What did the environment look like? Were there any trees, buildings, clues, anything?
“You’re not going to find him that way.”
Bruce opened his eyes and glared at the fairy. The prince was gone, but the apple was hanging from a branch in an oak tree just this side of the field. Bruce resolutely turned away from it. Or he started to, when he saw something far in the distance. A flash of light? A trick of the apple? Hell, he didn’t know. Maybe his eyes were screwing with him and he’d have to use his other senses, but….
Smell. He had a keen sense of smell, but not as a human. Which meant, hell, he had to shift to a wolf, and he didn’t know how.
His gaze slid back to the apple. Last time he’d eaten the cherry and bam, five minutes later, he’d been a wolf. The apple would likely do the same thing. But no, no, no! God, the temptation was killing him. He had to close his eyes, smell as a human, and pick a direction. If he was wrong….
His gut clenched in fear. What if he was too late? What if he chose wrong? What if someone died because he wasn’t enough again?
He couldn’t think like that. Indecision was definitely the wrong choice, so he had to pick. He’d seen something beyond the apple, so he’d go in that direction. He hoped it wasn’t a distraction set up by Bitterroot. If it was, that meant he ought to go in the opposite direction.
But he’d already started jogging, zipping around the apple that was so close he could easily grab it. He didn’t. He kicked it up from a jog to a run, and if this was the wrong direction, then so be it. Rather than let his stomach clench tighter in fear, he pushed himself to run faster while his eyes burned from the wind. Pretty soon his breath was sawing in hard gasps and his side was killing him. But the fear for Laddin grew exponentially stronger the farther he went. He still didn’t see anything, but he heard… was that screaming? Did someone call for help? Damn it, he couldn’t hear over his own breath.
It didn’t matter. He would run until he dropped. He focused on the ground, the way they’d taught him in firefighter school. The flashing something or other had been near another tree, far across the field. He’d head there. He put everything he had into setting one foot in front of the other. That was his destination. He kept his senses alert for anything else, but he was going there.
Heran. And he was going faster than he’d ever thought he could before. Plus the smells were sharper, and he could even taste the air. It wasn’t until he could smell something awful that he realized he was running on all fours.
He was a wolf. He’d done it! He’d shifted, and the joy of that gave him an extra spurt of energy. Unfortunately, it also had him inhaling deeply of something that smelled like moldy cheese. Moldy, fermenting, back-of-his-garage, something-died-in-it cheese.
He blinked as his eyes watered, and he breathed through his mouth rather than his nose. Then he saw bright things bouncing up and down, while white rope stretched along behind the bouncing things. Except it looked more like string cheese than rope. And Laddin was batting the things away as he fought from his knees.
Laddin! I’m coming!
He thought the words but had no breath to voice them. Meanwhile, tiny wedges with legs were swarming all over Laddin, who grabbed a rolled-up orange thing with his fist and squeezed. Unfortunately, the orange stuff oozed out through is fingers and apparently sealed his hands shut. Laddin was now swinging big orange-covered fists and batting things away with his forehead.
“Stop it!” Laddin boomed. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
But it sure looked like they wanted to hurt him. They were swarming him, and wherever they touched him, they flattened out and hardened. Whole areas of Laddin were covered in that stuff and seemed completely stiff. Pretty soon the guy wouldn’t be able to move. And if one of the flat squares covered his nose and mouth, Laddin would suffocate.
Bruce rushed into the mix. He didn’t have hands, but he had his body, his mouth, and even his tail. It took a frustrating amount of time to figure that out. His back end was definitely a hindrance, but it didn’t matter. He needed to bat the things away from Laddin. It was a losing game because every… were they really tiny cheeses? Whatever. Every cheese that he batted away came back again, and he couldn’t knock them all aside. He had to figure out something else.
Then he realized he’d made a mistake. Oh hell. He’d been snapping at the things with his jaws. And rather than have them seal his mouth shut, he’d swallowed what was definitely cheese.
He tasted American cheese, which was the most recognizable to his palate. Blue cheese, brie, cheddar. Those filtered across his taste buds as well. The other ones—the harder, almost crunchy bits—were simply weird. But if they flattened on Laddin like concrete, what the hell were they going to do to Bruce’s insides?
Then another thought ripped through his mind, mostly because his belly was beginning to rebel. It was stupid and not something he thought about often. But sometimes his body reminded him that it was real.
He was lactose intolerant. He’d never admit to his fellow firefighters that pizza gave him gas, but this was different. He’d swallowed a ton of magical cheese, and his gut wanted to toss it back out. Fine with him. He’d love to vomit the crap out, but it wasn’t going that direction.
And all the while, things were going worse for Laddin. He’d been on his knees because his ankles were wrapped together. Now his arms were trapped because the string cheese had bound his wrists like handcuffs. Laddin was making furious sounds as he toppled over. Why the hell didn’t he shift to wolf? Then they could both run away.
Meanwhile, Bruce’s gut wasn’t handling the cheese well. He knew the feeling of bloating, but this was like a bomb was building inside, and he was going to let it loose like a flame thrower. There was no choice. It was the only way to get it out.
So he did. He lifted his tail high and let it rip. Gas burst from him like a valve release, and good God, the smell was enough to make him gasp. A loud bell-like tinkling filled the air, and part of him realized it was laughter. The cheese was laughing at him. If he hadn’t been in the middle of magical fairy gas, he would have smashed the cheddar bits with rocks.
But he didn’t have the strength or the coordination. In fact, thanks to his burning ass and the roiling in his gut, he lost his footing, tripping and falling face-first into a pile of sticks and rocks. Ow. Ow. Ow! One of the sticks poked straight into his gums, and another caught his snout. He flinched away, but that only made it worse… which was hard, given his general state of misery.
But he couldn’t stop fighting. He had to keep the things off himself and Laddin. He struggled to his feet. If nothing else, he could body-block the things from attacking Laddin. Except as he searched for a target, he realized that all the cheese had fallen back. And when he really looked hard, he saw that they seemed to be cheering.
Cheering?
