J. Nelson - Free Agent

See, wolves had a nasty habit of collecting kids. Stupid kids, slow kids, confused kids, kids who made bad decisions. Most weeks we could bargain for them. It was the power of bacon, which was also near magical. Some weeks the wolves were extra hungry, or had extra kids, and we did extended negotiations, the kind with bullets or buckshot. I actually hoped for those.

As the minutes passed, the wolves got closer and closer to the trailer. The pigs might stink, but they weren’t stupid—they knew what surrounded them and were about to stampede inside the trailer.

About the time I figured Billy would be coming out with the trade tickets, he came out all right, blood on his shirt, running at top speed for the van. We’d gone into sudden-death negotiations. I came prepared. In my view, “talk first” meant the sound of my voice needed to get there ahead of the first bullet.

The head wolf was about four steps behind Billy, and I dropped him with a nice clean shot, but the noise brought growls from a dozen points around the village beyond the square. I followed up by shooting anything and everything between Billy and me. The wolves that had been sniffing the trailer retreated to a respectable distance.

Billy slid into the van. “They ain’t in the mood to bargain.”

“Hungry?”

He took a handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed at his chest where bloodstains spread. “I’d say scared if I knew anything that scared a wolf.”

Nothing scared wolves that I knew of. They’d run at you knowing they were going to get shot if it had been more than a minute since you last reminded them. The door to one low cinderblock building caught my eye. It had a wire gate, and through the gate I saw a tiny hand wave. I threw the door open and jumped out, grabbing the shotgun from behind the seat as I went.

“Now is not the time, Miss Locks.”

I waved the shotgun at the wolves nearest to me. “We aren’t leaving without them, deal or not.”

Billy revved the engine, pulling a few feet forward. “Get back in. We’ll come back next week and rescue some others. This is not how we do things, young lady.”

“It is now.” I ran back to the trailer.

Wolves stood in a circle all the way around us. The leader ran toward me at a trot. He still bled from where I’d blasted him. His voice came out like coarse gravel. “Are you an enchanter?”

I saw the look in his wide eyes, and his face was pale for a wolf. Something had them frightened all right. I held up the shotgun like a wand. “Yeah, I’m an enchanter. Back off or I’ll turn you all into sausage.”

He leaped six feet back in one smooth, graceful motion. With a single swing of his arm he smashed the wolf next to him in the head and tossed him toward me. “Enchant him. It was his idea.”

I wasn’t going to bring up little details, like the fact that I had no magic ability, at the moment. We stood as tense seconds rolled by, then the leader growled. “You’ve got to the count of twenty. Either we eat him or you.” The wolves began to change. Arms grew shorter, mouths longer, and their smell—well, their smell stayed about the same. Wolves smelled like nursing homes and the entrails bucket at a slaughterhouse combined with cheap cologne.

I tried to think of things I’d heard the help say, or the little rhymes they used to transform terrorists into toads and such, but I hadn’t paid that much attention. Fifth or sixth time you see someone turned into a toad it gets old. What came out would have made me the laughingstock of enchanters everywhere. In the trailer, pigs squealed and screamed in terror as wolf howls filled the air. I swept my arm back and forth and chanted.

“This little piggy made pork chops.

This little piggy made ham.

This little piggy made bacon.

This little piggy made spam.

This little piggy cried wee wee wee and got cut up for dog food.”

With that, I threw the trailer gate open and let loose a blast with the shotgun. Pigs went everywhere.

The wolves were mostly animal by now and reacted on pure instinct, chasing the pigs through the square. A wolf leaped on the first one and tore into it. The scent of blood drove them into a frenzy.

I made a run for the building where I’d seen the hands. It isn’t hard to shoot off a lock, but there’s hardly ever reason to. This wasn’t designed to keep people from getting in. It was meant to keep them from going out. I pried open the rusty latch using the shotgun as a lever, opened the gate, and let a flock of kids gush out. Must have been eight of them in that tiny shed, the youngest maybe six, the oldest eleven.

“Run for the van,” I said, and they did. I glanced inside and saw him. A child, a child who glowed in the darkness, and not with light. Magic. The tattoos on his face marked him as a fae child. The moment I saw him, I felt something snap into place between us, a feeling so powerful I dropped to one knee. I shivered as his fear washed through me. I couldn’t leave him.

The screams of pigs filled the country air, and if we didn’t hurry we’d be adding ours to it. I kicked the door to get his attention. “Come on.”

He looked at me and then back down. There’s this thing about the fae. You don’t ever touch them. For one, their touch can be deadly, or so I was told. The other problem of course was they considered us diseased and filthy.

I stepped into the larder, ducking my head to fit, and approached him. I took a deep breath and put my hand on his back. It tingled like an electric fence, but my heart didn’t stop, so I took his hand and led him out, one step at a time.

At the entrance I met a wolf and gave him my last shotgun shell. I knew I’d told everyone in the wolf village where I was. The fae child didn’t flinch at the gunshot. He looked at the gun as if it were curious and then looked up at me with those gray and white eyes. I tossed it on the ground and ran for the van.

Billy had the good sense to open the van door, and most of the kids were in. A howl went up from one end of the village. The wolves had noticed my pantry raid. “Run,” I yelled to the child, but he continued his plod toward the van like he was sleepwalking.

My gun carried the same wolf ammo we’d always used: silver, garlic, and holy water. Silver hurt them in a way that didn’t instantly heal, garlic messed with their allergies, and the holy water was just to piss them off because they couldn’t stand being mistaken for vampires.

I dropped one wolf with a couple of rounds from the nine millimeter, and now I had the attention of a bunch more, which was exactly the way I wanted it. The longer they kept looking at me, the better, so I pulled on my hood and began shooting as they came. I’d learned a little bit of history from Grimm, and the Riding Hood incident was still a sore spot with wolves.

According to Grimm’s history books, “Red” was the name the wolves gave her after she dyed her cloak in the blood of an entire wolf clan. Depending which side of the Kingdom Channel you believed, either the wolves were innocent victims who barely even nibbled on Red’s family, or horrible monsters who had it coming. The genocide that followed left the wolves scattered loners at the outside of society. Wearing a red hood was a good way to tick off every wolf in the village.

It worked better than I could ever have wanted—they ignored the kid and came for me with howls of rage, barely giving me enough time to change clips. Billy revved the van engine. The fae child stopped at the door, simply staring at the van.

“Get in !” I yelled. I ran toward the van, shooting wolves as I went, and lifted him under the arms, tossing him into the seat. My arms burned from the sheer amount of power he contained. I threw the van door shut, and in that instant my months and years of training saved my life. I can’t say why I ducked, just that I did. A huge, hairy claw smashed the van window, causing the kids to scream. The van started to roll away and I realized Billy would leave me there in the middle of a pack of wolves.