Robots versus Slime Monsters Read online

  He was human again.

  “Thank you,” he said to the ghost.

  She was nowhere to be seen, but he thought she must surely still be around.

  He wandered around the woods aimlessly for a few minutes until stumbling onto Duke and the vampire again. The vampire’s wounds were mostly healed though he limped on shaky legs and his head was cocked a bit off center. The werewolf carried a corpse over his shoulder.

  “Cathy found me,” Clinton said. “If not for her . . . .”

  He didn’t finish the thought, not wanting to dwell upon it.

  The vampire and the werewolf exchanged a glance.

  “You want to tell him or should I do it?” asked the vampire.

  Duke grunted.

  “Tell me what?” Clinton asked. “They aren’t coming back for me, are they? Oh Jesus, tell me you can protect me.”

  “They aren’t coming back,” replied the vampire. “They don’t want you anymore.”

  He nodded to Duke, who dropped the corpse in front of Clinton.

  It was him. The torso itself was a ragged mess, and one of the arms was missing. There was a hell of a lot of blood, and the face was a twisted mask of pain and terror.

  But it was him, all right.

  “’Fraid we got some bad news for you, friend,” said the vampire.

  “I don’t understand.”

  But Clinton understood. Even before the vampire explained.

  “Should’ve suspected as much by your scent,” said Duke, “but thought it was just the stink of the other bigfoots on you.”

  “I’m not me,” said Clinton coldly. “I’m the thing that killed me.”

  “Looks like it. Guess you got that transformation you were looking for. Maybe more of a transformation than you expected.”

  Clinton thought about his life. He remembered his wife, his two children. His dog. His house with the leaky water heater. His dead end job that he hated. It was all there, but it was all a lie. Memories stolen from a dead man.

  “The other bigfoots weren’t trying to change me into one of them,” he said. “They were trying to change me back.”

  “Yep, guess the right thing to do would’ve been to let ‘em,” said Earl. “Little too late for that now.”

  The ghost said something. Clinton could almost hear it, but the rustling of the leaves was just loud enough to bury it.

  “Hell, honey, I wasn’t saying you did anything wrong. Just suggesting that running off into the spirit realm without thinking about it isn’t something you want to make a habit of.”

  “I’m a monster.” Clinton sat on the cool earth. He dug his fingers in the dirt. It felt all so real but hollow too. Like half a world. What mysteries had he traded away for this place? “You should kill me know.”

  Duke was there beside Clinton in an instant. The werewolf pressed his muzzle into Clinton’s neck and sniffed his head for several long seconds.

  “No squatch scent,” said Duke. “No point in it now.”

  “But after what I did . . . .”

  Duke snorted and turned away. “What you did made you human. I don’t kill people. Not ones that don’t deserve it anyway.”

  The vampire said, “The way Duke and I got it figured, you’re not a bigfoot anymore. You’re a man. That man.” He pointed to the corpse. “And seeing as how that man has already had a pretty fucked up night, it’d seem especially fucked up to have to die twice in an hour.”

  Clinton laughed mirthlessly. “But I’m not him.”

  “Says who?” asked the vampire. “You got his body. You got his mind.”

  “But it’s not real.”

  “Real as you let it be. Let me ask you, do you feel like you?”

  Clinton nodded.

  “Do you remember what it was like to be a bigfoot?”

  “No, but—”

  “Listen, I’m not gonna get into a whole metaphysical discussion on identity and the nature of the self. Philosophy isn’t my strongest suit. But near as I can figure, if you think like him and you act like him and you look like him—”

  “Down to the scent,” added Duke.

  “Right down to the scent,” continued the vampire, “then you’re him. Or close enough to him that neither Duke or I would feel comfortable finishing you off. Especially since one of us went to enough trouble to risk her ectoplasmic ass chasing you into other dimensions.”

  He held up his hands.

  “Hey, don’t get mad at me for being worried about you. You’re my goddamn girlfriend, after all.”

  “What am I supposed to do?” asked Clinton.

  “Go home,” said Duke. “Live your life.”

  “We could go ‘round and ‘round all night on this,” said the vampire. “Way I see it, you’ve got two choices. You can keep sittin’ here, feelin’ sorry for yourself. Or you can live with what you’ve done, and try to make amends. Go home. Be a good husband and father. Do your job. You wanted this life. Shit, you killed this poor son of a bitch for it. Least you can do is take it now that you got it.”

  The werewolf grabbed the corpse and vanished in a blur. The vampire was less flashy. He stuck his hands in his pockets and sauntered away.

  “We’ll take care of your body for you,” said the vampire. “You can probably get away with explaining the other two as a bear attack.

  “Oh, and one more thing,” he added. “Underneath it all, somewhere, you still have some bigfoot in you. It’ll whisper to you now and then, and maybe one day, you’ll get the urge to come back to the forest, to go home. That’ll be up to you, I s’pose, if it’s even possible, but at least have the decency to fake your own death or sumthin’ before you do. Don’t make this bastard look like some asshole who just abandoned his family.” He smiled and nodded. “Best of luck to you.”

  He strolled out of view though Clinton could still hear the vampire arguing with his ghostly girlfriend.

  “Damnit, Cath, I’m not going to apologize for calling you out on doing something stupid . . . .”

  Clinton sat there in the forest, so familiar, so alien. He ran his fingers over his borrowed flesh, and thought about his failing marriage, his two ungrateful kids, his goddamn leaky water heater. He was a creature who had broken sacred laws as old as time to steal a life that the previous owner hadn’t much cared for.

  But he could make it work. He would make it work. He’d be a better person now. He’d be the person Clinton had never been. It might not make amends for his crime, but it was the best he could do.

  The creature that was Clinton walked out of the forest, cautiously optimistic about his future.

  He never set foot in the woods again.

  ###

  WIZARD BAIT

  In the Company of Ogres

  The basic premise of In the Company of Ogres was always about regular people just trying to make a living. That is a theme that pops up quite a lot in my books, and a lot of those regular people also tend to be monsters. It was In the Company of Ogres where I really had my chance to first explore the topic. This is just a tale of working stiffs who happen to be goblins, ogres, and orcs, and the trials and tribulations that come with the job. Also, it stars Ace, that most fearless goblin roc pilot, a character I’ve always been fond of.

  In a forsaken desert, atop a lonely mountain, a dragon’s lair waited, and the mercenaries of Ogre Company rode a centurypede for one week to get there.

  “I still don’t know why we couldn’t have flown,” said Glunkins the orc.

  Ace, their goblin driver, ignored him. He cracked the reins of the massive bug. Not because it noticed but because he liked the sound it made. The only way to steer the centurypede properly was to jam a pointy rod under its armored plates until it picked a random direction that coincided with where he wanted it to go.

  He was sick of Glunkins complaining. No one liked riding a centurypede. They moved with undulating waves that made everyone a little queasy, and they smelled bad too. The heat wasn’t helping. But soldiers went where the
work was, and the centurypede was a one-beast caravan stretching nearly half-a-mile with unflagging endurance.

  “Hey, it beats marching,” said Martin, one head of a two-headed ogre.

  “Indeed, it does, dear brother,” agreed Lewis. “And a roc couldn’t have carried us all.”

  “Could’ve carried me,” mumbled Glunkins.

  He hadn’t stopped complaining since this trip had started, and Ace wished Glunkins would sit in the back. Way in the back, but Glunkins didn’t like mingling with the other soldiers. Most of the bookkeepers in the Legion, contrary to expectation, were pretty fun guys. Glunkins was the exception.

  Ace puffed on his pipe and stared straight ahead. Glunkins coughed pointedly. Ace ignored it, pointedly.

  The mountain, a foreboding monolith of ebony stone, appeared on the horizon. Ace poked the centurypede. It grunted and slowed down. He poked it again, and it turned to the left a bit. A third poke got it to speed up and correct course.

  The other hundred or so soldiers on the centurypede’s back amused themselves with drink and games of chance. A week of burning sun had taken its toll on the soldiers’ attitudes, but there were worse ways to get paid.

  “Oh, we aren’t going to have to climb that, are we?” asked Glunkins.

  “We can always tie you to Lewis and Martin’s back,” suggested Sally.

  She turned a bright, amused purple. The salamander was one of the few to enjoy this trip. She’d spent the majority of it sprawled across the centurypede’s back, soaking in the heat and radiating it outward. Ace could feel her from here.

  They reached the mountain a little after noon. Ace poked the centurypede to a stop, but it didn’t really stop until it bumped into the tower of obsidian.

  The great and terrible resident shrieked and launched itself from the cavern located at the peak. With great red wings and a howl that struck peasants dead, the creature landed with a crash beside the centurypede. The shockwaves rippled through the centurypede’s body, and by the time they reached the farther end, several trolls and an ogre sitting too close to the edge were whipped into the air.

  The red dragon glared at Ace with its gleaming black eyes. Ace looked back with the courageous indifference of a goblin who made his living staring into the maws of many, many things that could eat him.

  “Is this all of you?” asked the dragon, her voice smooth and scratchy at the same time, like silk running across broken glass.

  Ace stood in his saddle, which did not make him noticeably taller. “It’s what you paid for.”

  The dragon balked, spitting a puff of fire as most dragons did when they balked. “I was told Brute’s Legion was a professional organization. This is most unsatisfying.”

  “Yeah, things are tough all over,” said Ace. “As it happens, there’s an army of zillards amassing on the southern border of some country I’ve never heard of, but is willing to pay a hell of a lot of coin to have most Legion soldiers stationed there as a deterrent. Command has done some last minute reassignments. We’re what they can spare, so you can take it or leave it. Or you can up your payment. Glunkins is the guy you want to renegotiate with.”

  Glunkins stepped forward and consulted a parchment full of tedious legal details. The dragon recoiled from the threat of paperwork.

  “Very well. Though I thought you might not even make it. You really should make an effort to be more punctual.”

  “Take it up with customer service,” said Ace. “We’re here. Do you want us or not?”

  “Yes, yes, you’ll have to do. Have you been briefed?”

  Ace nodded. “Standard treasure hoard guard detail while you’re off at your big dragon orgy party thing.”

  The dragon frowned. “You make it sound so unseemly. The brood calling is a sacred ritual for the continuation of my glorious species.”

  “No judgment.” The goblin grinned. “Do what you gotta do. But maybe if all you dragons didn’t do this at the same time, we wouldn’t be stretched so thin when the cycle rolls around.”

  “We do only as instinct commands. Believe me. We’re no happier about it than you are. I assume you’ll want to take a look around.”

  Ace called over Glunkins and Ulga, the chubby elf conjurer. They climbed onto the dragon’s back, and she flew them up to her cavern while the other soldiers debated among themselves who would stay camped at the bottom of the mountain and who would have to scale to the top to guard the cavern entrance.

  The dragon led Ace, Glunkins, and Ulga inside. She pointed to the glowing orbs fixed along the walls. “I’ve taken the liberty of installing a few lightstones. I don’t need them myself, but I assumed you would.” Mountains of coins and jewels sparkled beneath the twinkling golden stones. The hoard filled the cavern, and some of the valuables had even spilled out onto the ledge.

  Ace whistled. “Is this all?”

  “Oh, no. This is just the stuff I haven’t gotten around to sorting through yet. The really valuable items I keep in the back.”

  “I don’t suppose you have an itemized list?” asked Glunkins.

  She tapped her temple with a long, black claw. “It’s all in here.”

  It wasn’t enough for the accountant, who walked among the treasures, scribbling estimates for his own records. Ulga picked up a handful of coins. She ran them between her fingers, bit them, dropped them in a special elixir and watched as the potion changed color.

  “What’s she doing?” asked the dragon.

  “Just ensuring this is real treasure, not conjured fool’s gold,” replied Ace.

  The dragon snorted. “It’s all genuine, I can assure you.”

  “Assurances are great, but we need to protect ourselves. Had a wizard try to pull a conjuration scam. Hire us to guard a pile of phantom riches, disappear it in the middle of the night when nobody’s looking then claim we need to pay for his losses.”

  “What can you expect from wizards?” she said. “Untrustworthy profession, I say. At the very least, it bestows upon them an unpleasant aftertaste.”

  “Eat a lot of wizards?” Ace asked, not because he was interested but just to make conversation.

  “The occasional ambitious apprentice who comes seeking power. There’s this rumor about dragon blood bestowing tremendous power to those who drink even a single drop of it. It’s not true, of course, but still, they come, and they say eating a wizard now and then is good for maintaining the luster of one’s scales.”

  Ulga tested a few more random samples of treasure while Glunkins took his cursory inventory. The accountant handed his estimate to the dragon, who signed the final bit of paperwork.

  “Shouldn’t be gone more than a week. Two, at the outside,” she said.

  “Take your time,” said Ace. “We get paid by the day. Have fun at the orgy.”

  “It’s not an orgy.” The dragon spread her crimson wings and sighed. “Oh, never mind.”

  She soared off into the horizon.

  ***

  Guarding a treasure hoard in the middle of a forsaken desert was every bit as interesting as Ace expected. The soldiers amused themselves by gambling or sleeping. The ogres in the assignment found some boulders to throw around in the traditional ogre game of throw the boulder. Ace didn’t understand the rules, but there was a lot of hurling of giant rocks back and forth. Occasionally, someone would cheer, though he could never figure out why.

  But on the third day, something finally happened.

  “Do you see that?” asked Glunkins.

  It was impossible not to see it. A great army marched toward the black mountain, kicking up clouds of dust. The force outnumbered the guard assignment by at least three to one. Ace poked the centurypede until it raised its head a hundred feet in the air, spilling soldiers off its back in the process. They groaned and grumbled from below.

  “Sorry!” he shouted down as he used a spyglass to get a closer look at the approaching force.

  “Skeletons,” he said.

  Glunkins groaned. “I hate necromancers.”<
br />
  “Don’t we get paid extra for fighting necromancers?” asked Ace.

  “I’m not sure.”

  Ace smiled. Glunkins knew pay standards to the last regulation. He only didn’t know something when he wasn’t happy with the answer, and he was only unhappy with the answer when it cut into the profit margins.

  The army of the dead marched closer at a steady, slow pace, and the guards played cards, slept, and tossed boulders while they waited. Eventually, under the fading light of the setting sun, the undead horde reached the mountain.

  The army was a motley collection of bones, clearly culled from a hundred different armies, judging by their assortment of equipment and tattered standards. The legion stood silently, ready for battle.

  A giant’s corpse with some moldering flesh still clinging to it stood at the forefront of the army. The titan fell to its hands and knees, shaking the ground. Several skeletons of descending size lined up beside the carriage mounted on the giant’s back, and the necromancer used them as a staircase.

  The gaunt, pale figure in flowing black and white robes held his twisted staff, and with the voice carrying the chill of the grave, he spoke.

  “Surrender unto me that which is mine or join my legion.”

  “Uh huh,” said Ace as he studied his hand of cards. “We’ll be right with you.”

  “How dare you speak to me in such a manner? I am the Lich Lord Zarazath, and I have come—”

  “You’re undead, right?” asked Ace.

  “I am beyond life and death, yes.”

  “Then one more minute isn’t going to kill you. I’ve got a winning hand here.”

  Ace took two cards and ended up folding, after all. The goblin hopped off the centurypede and stood before the necromancer.

  “What do you want?” he asked.