Monsters Under Mistletoe

Chapter 1

Chapter 1

U nfortunately, the best seat in the tavern for Nettlewisp was in the dusty rafters. There, at least, she didn’t have to worry about the drunken patrons pulling out the chair she was occupying and nearly sitting on her again. Up here, she only had to fend off the occasional rat crawling across the beams.

Someone had hung a bundle of half-dried mistletoe above the main door. It kept drawing her eye.

She watched as the door pushed open for perhaps the hundredth time that evening–another stranger dusted with snow. The wind slammed it shut behind him, announcing his presence.

The stranger pulled back his cloak cowl, the rain-damp fabric falling aside to reveal the shaved sides of his head, the scalp filled in with orcish tattoos, piercings lined up and down his green pointed ears. For a moment, the crowded floor of patrons gathered around tables quieted.

Her heart beat a little faster.

It was him. The orcish bounty hunter. He paid the other patrons no mind, instead crossed to the bar with a single-minded intent.

His shoulders were staggering to behold from even across the tavern as he hefted a full burlap sack over his shoulder. Murmurs crept up around the edges of the room.

Without a word, he tossed it onto the counter, likely containing some rare bird, if the iridescent feathers poking out between tears suggested anything. Within moments, the sack started oozing something black and viscous onto the counter.

The pubkeeper lifted the mouth of the sack a moment, eyeing the creature, then its deliverer.

Nettlewisp had heard of his prolific accomplishments in the field, but more importantly, she had heard he would take on any job for gold.

Still, she was unprepared to see him in person, larger than life, thick muscled arms perfectly complementing his broad shoulders.

The stubs of a few snapped arrows were still embedded in his singular left pauldron, giving him the air of a grizzled, hunted beast. He was the scariest being in a tavern packed full of knives and sharp teeth, patrons ranging from thieves to murderers, hobgoblins and humans.

The bounty hunter undid the leather tie on one of his belt pouches, pulling out a folded piece of parchment and handing it off to the pubkeeper.

The pubkeeper nodded to the orc, reaching below the counter to produce a pouch of gold, which jingled as it landed on the counter. Another quest finished.

No sooner than had he plucked up the gold and given it a couple shakes in his palm to feel its weight, he turned and headed towards the notice board.

Many other scrolls of paper and scraped lambskin sheets were pinned to the wall, scrawled and smeared with inky details, curling where they weren’t skewered by plain daggers and pins. There were even occasional press-printed wanted posters, from more official decrees.

She watched a moment, transfixed, as he extended one green hand, uncurling a roll of parchment to read it better. One didn’t acquire a reputation such as his by resting on one’s laurels.

Now was her moment.

Nettle couldn’t just sit and wait until he had picked some other job. She’d been in here the other night, and her hesitation had cost her time. Thankfully, his last job hadn’t taken him long to complete, but as the pubkeeper had informed her the other night, sometimes the orc bounty hunter wasn’t seen for weeks at a time.

She couldn’t risk waiting that long.

She flitted over to the orc, carving through the chains of hanging lamps— a path of glimmering sparks left in her wake.

Over the last couple of days, Nettle had learned that it was rude to just drop down in front of someone’s face, so she settled for hovering just behind him.

“Excuse me–”

He, of course, didn’t hear her. Even she knew that she spoke quietly for a fey.

Face heating with the effort, she repeated herself, louder, more than she was ever comfortable with, “I said, sir, excuse me, SIR–”

He turned his head, meeting her eyes through dark lashes and the snapped arrows on his shoulder armor. “Is there a knight among us?”

The mere act of meeting his eyes seemed to pierce right through her.

No, she wouldn’t be frightened. She had come too far for that.

Nettle steeled herself, crossing her arms over her chest. “I have a job for you, bounty hunter.”

He had a wolfish smile, his lower tusks looking terribly sharp within it. “Do you, little flea?”

Nettle frowned.

She swallowed down her offense, not just at being called a bug, but that he felt the need to throw ‘little’ on there. ‘Flea’ already implied as much. It was not the sort of quality she cared for in a companion. Besides, she was much larger than a flea.

Nettle eyed the rest of the pub. Rowdy as it was, it still did not feel wise to discuss her plans out in the middle of the floor.

“Join me for a drink, and we’ll talk,” she said, lifting her chin towards the far end of the bar.

Perhaps it was too forward, too assuming, too bold of her. But she held his gaze, and after a moment, he nodded.

“I suppose one drink is enough for the size of you,” he said, and the corners of his mouth twitched around his tusks. “Do they charge by the thimble?”

Nettle pressed her lips together, and flitted down to an emptier, quieter end of the bar, taking one of the empty bar stools for herself. “Unfortunately for me, they don't. Besides, I don't know that I trust them to wash the thimbles.”

She watched as he swung a leg over one of the empty wooden stools, a dusting of snow trickling down the folds of his cloak from the mountains of his shoulders.

Then the orc hooked the toe of his worn leather boot under the rung of her barstool. Her seat nearly jolted out from under her as he tugged her closer to him. He settled an elbow against the bar, looming over her and taking up her entire field of vision.

Nettle felt utterly insignificant as his eyes drifted over her, assessing her. She watched a line between his nose and the corner of his mouth deepen as he frowned at her.

“What’s this job, then?” the bounty hunter asked, only to be interrupted by the pubkeeper approaching them on the other side of the counter. The bounty hunter rolled his eyes, waving to the man, “Bring me a flagon, and…“

“A sparkling pollen wine?” Nettle asked, her voice losing whatever edge it had. She had heard another patron ask for it the other night, and thought it sounded delicious.

“A sparkling pollen wine,” the orc repeated, like he’d never used that combination of words before.

Suddenly, Nettle was all too aware that it wasn’t something a little tougher, like the hops-bitter brews all the brutish adventurers tended to.

“It was on the menu,” she muttered, more to herself than to him. Her cheeks and the tips of her wings flushed bronze.

“Is this your racket? You trick patrons into buying your drink for the night?”

Nettle did not dignify that question with an answer. Even if she did, it wasn’t any of his business.

Shortly after, the pubkeeper brought over a flagon of ale in one hand, and in the other, her glass of wine.

Nettle was honestly a little surprised that an establishment with as many rough edges as this one could manage to produce a perfectly normal wine glass. But the man seemed a little proud, even, that he did.

She wasn't sure how to go about drinking from this. The long-stemmed glass was just a bit taller than she was. Flitting up over the edge to lean down over was no way to drink, and if she choked or gave herself the hiccups trying to sip her oddly dainty drink, she wouldn’t be able to maintain her mysterious air in front of the big, tough bounty hunter.

She needed him to take her at least a little seriously.

Nettle glanced from her glass of wine to him.

“So, mosquito. Tell me the job before you bleed me dry.”

Nettle huffed a breath, and tried not to put her hands on her hips like she meant to lecture him. She needed to get along with him until the job was done, at least.

Of course, her self restraint did not keep her from asking, “Do you have to make the same joke over and over? It gets terribly boring.”

The orc lifted his ale to his mouth. “I’m not here to entertain you.”

“Good, because I'm not paying for all these second-hand quips.”

Her wings buzzed, bringing her to hover over the delicate rim of her glass. She placed her hands on the rim, chewing her lip. Perhaps she could scoop up handfuls of it, no, that wouldn’t work.

After a moment of being unable to figure it out, she simply folded her legs under her, sitting down on the rim of her wine glass like some kind of elaborate garnish. It was a precarious balance, but her wings continued to flutter, adjusting as needed.

The orc was watching her closely, she realized when she looked back up at him, probably just as curious as she was on what the best method was for a fey to drink out of full sized stemware.

Not for the first time that night, she felt out of place.

Nettle fumbled for words at first, staring up at the grizzled orc. She thought the hard part would be getting his attention or convincing him to take on her job over others.

“... There’s an underground gauntlet nearby, only the elders of my Fey Court know its secrets. I’ve been there before, I’ve seen the treasure that it holds,” she said, finding it much easier to divulge Fey secrets than what she needed him to do. “I’ve made it through the passage safely before, but the final stone door is … well, I’m supposed to, well, you see— it’s um, it’s too heavy for me to move.”

“And what makes you so sure I’ll be able to move it?”

She did not answer out loud, rather glanced over the top of her drink. He followed her gaze, brows furrowing, to his tensed bicep, his arm braced on the bar. It was, easily, more muscle than she had in her entire body.

He straightened in his seat, meeting her eyes again.

Nettlewisp raised her brows at him and gave her head a little shake. “Perhaps for you it is simply a regular door. But it manages to keep all little winged things, like myself, out.”

He seemed to take the hint, at least, from her sour expression. He took another long draw from his flagon, and then set it down with an empty-sounding thunk. “And how do you propose to pay me? It doesn’t look like you carry coin.”

Nettle shook her head and waved a hand. “You’re a treasure hunter, there’s plenty of treasure in the gauntlet’s end. You can have what you can carry. There's only one thing I want from it.”

The orc raised a brow at that, but made no comment.

A noise almost like a chicken clucking started from the sack he'd left further down the bar. The pubkeeper pulled back the fabric, obviously trying not to touch it too much as he dealt with it. Nettle frowned at the noise as she watched.

There was barely a heartbeat between the burlap falling away to reveal the creature and it lurching down the counter, flinging drops of inky black ichor with every slapping movement.

The instant Nettle realized its yellow eyes were on her was the same second her balance slipped.

For the first time that night she tasted the burn of the alcohol, but up her nose. All the fruity and floral flavors were rather unwelcome as she coughed them out.

Nettle sat up in the glass, the wine coming up to her shoulders while she gasped for air. She had not swallowed too much, but as she looked up again, Nettle realized she had bigger problems.

The toadbird had flapped its way down the counter, leaving an oily path behind. A couple of patrons tried to grab it with their hands, only for it to slip out, one after another.

Nettle threw out a hand, reaching for her magic, what little of it she had left, but the bundle of dried mistletoe over the door stayed dull and brittle. The pull of magic felt dim within her hands.

The toadbird crouched its legs, readying to pounce, its teeth-lined gullet opening for her, then leapt–only for an ax to slam down on it. Its middle was pinned to the bar, the blade buried deep in its iridescent feathers.

The toadbird croaked, life oozing out of it.

Nettle gasped, almost slipping back under the wine again. She looked up at the bounty hunter again, standing, his fist still curled around the handle. The little bubbles in the wine ran up her skin.

Whether it was the glint in his eyes, the point of his teeth as he smiled a wicked grin, or his callused fingertips as he plucked her up out of the glass by her wings, a jolt of sensation went right to her nethers.

He set her down on the counter. The living flower petals of her dress were almost translucent, dripping with wine.

“That one you can have for free, firebug,” he said, voice low and gravelly, eyes lingering over her.

Nettle watched him lick his lips, and wondered if he was contemplating cleaning every drop of wine off her with his tongue. Then she felt that jolt of need throb between her legs again.

Oh, no.