Jazz, Monster Collector in: Down with the Clowns (Season 1, Episode 15) Read online

shoved the business end of his club in my face. “I’ve had enough of you, Monster Collector,” he said, sneering. He reeked of that nasty cigar. “I’ve got a mind to believe it’s you that’s been organizing these hits on the non-humans, and I think it’s time you tell me the truth.” He lowered the club so he could get his ugly, painted mug right in my face. “And I’m going to enjoy making you tell me. You however, aren’t going to like it a bit.”

  Boss Clown straightened up and stuck the stub of cigar back in his mouth, then regarded me with a satisfied smile while his rabble enjoyed a good chuckle.

  While they enjoyed themselves I met eyes with DJ; she shot me a terrified glare. I gave her a smile and a confidant wink, letting her know I had a plan in hand. It was a lie. I was spent, weary, exhausted, and the ribs I’d broken the day before were hurting terribly. Spitting out the Not Now Stone always left me feeling drained, plus I’d been going at top speed for the last twenty four hours. I was not combat ready. I needed a ruse that would gain me control without requiring a lot of physical effort.

  “First mistake,” I said as soon as the chortling had settled down, “was assuming you have a mind to believe with.”

  The boss Clown glared at me. I winced and grunted with pain as his big galloot gave me a good squeeze.

  “What’s my second mistake then, girlie?” Boss Clown asked releasing a plume of smoke.

  I nodded toward DJ. “Hurting my friends.”

  Boss Clown regarded DJ while he rotated the cigar in his mouth. Then he huffed out smoke and looked at me with casual disinterest. “Don’t see how that matters to me any at all.”

  I spread a smirk on my face designed to infer confidence. “You hear Boss Geeter’s paralyzed, and about the attack that closed down his weapons distribution operation?”

  Boss Clown smiled like he was really pleased. “Yeah, I heard about that. Didn’t like that dwarf troll a bit.” He pointed at me with the cigar. “I heard you did that.”

  “Your information is correct,” I said. “But did you hear about the attack on the forest elves, the one that ended their line and returned their impenetrable city back to the wilds?”

  “Yeah,” Boss Clown said and laughed. “Serves them pompous assholes right. They never let our kind in their special little club so good riddance to the lot of them.” Then he looked at me and his big brow drooped a little. “I heard you did that too.”

  “Right again,” I said. “Well did you hear that the Toerang and the blight of his Kriskrossa have been wiped from the sky?”

  “Yeah,” Boss Clown said and the cigar dropped from his mouth as his lower lip was hanging open. “You, right?”

  “Right. Now all those creepos had one thing in common, they’d hurt my friends. And DJ there, she’s my very special, very best friend in the whole wide worlds.”

  DJ’s brown eyes opened wide and a smile lit up her face. “Wow, you mean that, Jazz?”

  Silly girl, I meant it but I ignored her and just stared as blankly as I was able at the big painted goblin.

  “Bahh,” he said and waved a hand in the air. “Let them go. I was only kidding anyway.”

  I shrugged out of the bvorc’s grip and brushed off the sleeves of my battle jacket. “For now I’m going to choose to believe you. Now I have questions. But first, where’s my jar?”

  Boss Clown waved a hand. A little goblin, looking like he’d had his lower legs hacked off, hobbled up on two metal covers that capped his stubby legs just above where his knees should have been. One of the lieutenant bvorks picked him up. The sawed-off goblin stuck a fresh cigar in his leader’s mouth and lit it with a wooden match. Wonder where he’d gotten a match from? Boss Clown took a number of rapid draws on the cigar until he got the end cherry red, then he waved his hand again. A bvork ran up, my pickle jar was cradled in the split-hoofs he called hands, and he snorted as he breathed.

  “The jar goes in my saddlebags,” I said.

  The bvork holding the jar snorted angrily, drool ran off his lips where his tusks pushed them out.

  Boss Clown, enjoying his fresh cigar, tipped his head in my street cycle’s direction. The bvork hustled over and stuffed the jar in my custom made bvork skin saddlebag. He sniffed hard, then glared at me and snorted again. Maybe he’d recognized my bag’s donor. Not that I cared.

  I turned my attention back to the Clown’s leader. “Any doubt now that Nervock there,” I said pointing to the head laying in the gutter, “was part of a raid on my office?”

  Boss Clown looked at the top of the jar protruding from my saddlebag. “Alright, so Nervock and some other idiots raided your office—he was a superior idiot, but he acted on his own. I had nothing to do with it. Why would I? I’d paid you.”

  I thought about it as well as I could despite a ringing in my ears, a pounding headache, and throbbing ribs. My legs muscles felt like they were turning to jelly, but I didn’t dare let the Clowns see. So I took a subtle, deep breath and willed strength into my legs. “I believe you had nothing to do with it. But I don’t believe Nervock acted on his own.”

  Boss Clown jammed a thumb hard into his chest. “Nervock answered to me, I was his boss, no other!”

  I could have contested the issue, but I needed to show him the truth. This guy might just have been the smartest goblin I’d ever met, but that still left him somewhere just above idiot on the intelligence scale. “Did you see who were making the hits on your kind?”

  “Never,” Boss Clown grumbled. “The crums nearly never left any witnesses. Them who did survive said the attack came from out of nowhere, like shadows or ghosts. They must be using magic.”

  I thought a moment as DJ snatched her gun and my shotgun back from the bvorc holding them. The bvorc sneered. DJ sneered back.

  “Did any one of your…‘men’ see all of the attacks?”

  The entire lot of them stared blankly. Bvorcs and goblins were about as dumb as paint. Their leader’s lumpy brow wrinkled with the strain, and then anger wrinkled it even more. “You heard her,” he shouted and dope smacked the goblin to his immediate right, knocking his helmet off. “Try to think, you idiots, and answer her!”

  All the goblin faces creased with the strain of a Herculean labor. Knobby green fingers were set to bulbous lips, chins were rested atop fists, and a goblin in the back kept smacking himself on the back of his head.

  The quizzical look on DJ’s face let me know she doubted my plan, only I didn’t have one. Frankly I’d expected to be dead by now. DJ was only along so she could bring my bike back.

  “I got it!” someone yelled in goblin and began shoving through the crowd. A tall, bowlegged goblin in rusted plate armor that was missing a couple pieces pushed his way through the ranks. “Pete, sir,” he said to his leader. “Pete was at every attack, I think.”

  Boss Clown straightened up. “Stinky Pete?”

  I felt my head slide back in surprise. “There’s a goblin named, Pete?”

  “Yeah, yeah, I think Vlacjk is right,” another goblin said. “Stinky Pete was there at every attack.”

  “Send him up,” I said.

  “Pete!” Boss Clown shouted so loudly my headache flared and I saw spots.

  There was a lot of calling, shoving, and rattling from the ranks of rabble. After several minutes, a tall, bent, and very old looking goblin half marched and was half shoved into the open space around us. He was wearing armor that looked like it had been cobbled from old soup cans and garbage bins. He saluted with his hand bent around so far that his palm was facing up. “Stinky Pete, reporting as ordered, sir,” he said in common tongue, which sort of surprised me. This goblin was not just hideously ugly, he reeked something fierce. He’d been well named.

  “Foul and ruin, Pete,” Boss Clown said fanning a hand by his nose. “You stink worse than usual.”

  Pete looked down at his feet. “Sorry, sir.”

  “Do what you will with him, Monster Collector, sos we can be rid of him,” Boss Clown said.

  DJ pulled the coll
ar of her undershirt over her nose and I was on the fringe of vomiting again. I pinched my nose closed. “Take off your helmet,” I said in a nasally voice.

  Pete’s eyes opened wide and his mouth flapped mutely, then he stuttered. “Off? Why off?”

  Boss Clown knocked the old colander Pete wore as a helmet off with a rap to the back of Pete’s head. “Because she told you to!” Then, when Pete bent over to retrieve the helmet, Boss Clown kicked him hard in the ass. “You pathetic moron!”

  Pete cried out and went down hard on the crumbling asphalt and I caught a glimmer of something shiny on the back of Pete’s filthy head.

  As Pete began to rise, I shoved him down with my foot and kept him down. I drew the dagger from my boot sheath.

  “No! No, please, don’t” Pete wailed and cried.

  “Just hold still you worm,” I said and, using the pointy end of my knife, pried a postage stamp sized silver wafer from the back of Pete’s neck.

  “Oww!” Pete cried out and his comrades laughed.

  I stepped away and looked at the trinket in my hand.

  “Hey,” Boss Clown grumbled. “What is that? Is that magic?”

  I shook my head. “No, it’s the exact opposite of magic, its technology.”

  One of Boss Clown’s lieutenants took a long look over his leader’s shoulder. Boss Clown knocked him in the face with a fist. “Spread out, dolt!” Then he glared at me. “What is it?”

  DJ stared into my hand. “It’s just like that thing you showed to Mananama. You said it was a