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Category:
Fantasy
Publisher: Wings ePress
ISBN-10: 1613096534
Type: Fiction
Pages: 413
Copyright: May 1, 2018
ISBN-13: 9781613096536
Price: $3.99 (eBook)
Nothing is set in stone.
Posing as a papal nuncio, the troll Vilius “The Vile” Vilutis haunts the Cumbrian hills in search of the secret onyx with the potential to revolutionize smartphones worldwide, and put his sworn enemy, Silicon Valley gazillionaire Zingy Splitz, out of business forever. Suspicious, Zingy contacts Pope Benny in Rome, where rumour has it Vilius once worked, thus discovering the troll’s current whereabouts.
Meanwhile, in their bucolic farmstead in Cumbria, the elves Mordy and Hazchem team up with PAX (Pagans Against Xmas) to ensure the safety of the onyx’s ancient magic. The action gains momentum as two ghastly hangings disrupt the peace of the yuletide Lake District. The Vatican, it turns out, is implicated in the crimes, but its motives are darker than Vilius’s vindictive greed. And the troll is not, after all, as vile as he might at first have appeared. Reconciliation and harmony may still, despite everything, win the day.
Excerpt
History would show the chance encounter of Zingy Splitz and Rodney Snipes on the A5074 overlooking Lake Windermere as dusk was falling to have been propitious, but that wasn’t how Zingy and Rodney felt about it at the moment Rodney braked to avoid a wandering sheep and Zingy’s Mercedes M Class skidded into the back of his white Range Rover Sport.
“Wanker,” said Rodney, for example.
For his part, Zingy said, “Asshole. Goddamn Brit drivers. Je-sus H. Christ...on...a...bike.”
Why were both cars on the same road? Because, as we already know, Rodney had chosen the scenic route for Thérèse’s benefit, while Pete “The Pilot” was just lost having relied too heavily on Google maps. Coincidence can work that way. One moment, albeit a mere ten miles apart on the M6, Zingy and Rodney hadn’t known each other from Adam, the next they were right in each other’s faces. Poof, just like that, as Mordy might have said. And very unpropitiously, as Zingy leapt from his seat in the Merc and stomped up the road to protest at Rodney’s “crap” driving. Just as well Pete “The Pilot” had forewarned him the Second Amendment didn’t apply in the U.K. or Zingy might have shot the guy. A lot of American drivers die that way.
“Whadda fuck?” he expostulated instead, while hammering on Rodney’s window. “Plus, hey, you try an’ pin any of this on me’n Pete here, you gonna need the best lawyer this side of stateside.”
Which terrified Rodney. Not the words. Unable to penetrate the Plexiglass, they came across as no more than a muffled mélange of phonemes. It was the face squished up against the window that did the terrifying—a distorted mask of fury with bloated lips. That and Rodney having been pinioned in his seat by an overexcited airbag, which did little to assuage his feelings of fear and helplessness.
Thérèse, similarly terrified and airbag-pinioned, had begun blubbing gallically. “M-m-mon D-d-dieu,” she was saying as a frustrated Zingy climbed onto the running board and took to beating seven bells out of the Range Rover Sport’s roof instead.
It was Pete “The Pilot” who came to the rescue.
“Boss,” he told Zingy, who was hopping up and down on his pink and purple hi-tops (one pink, the other purple, as is the fashion for teenage gazillionaires), “you care to step aside and lemme handle this?”
“Whadda fuck,” Zingy re-expostulated.
But nonetheless he did Pete’s bidding, climbed back down, shuffled off sideways, and took to staring out over shadowy Lake Windermere, while Pete, using sign language, indicated to Rodney to switch off his engine and release the door snibs.
“No hurry, bub. Everything nice and slow,” Pete mouthed at a pale Rodney from the other side of the driver’s window. Knowing the guy wouldn’t hear because Pete knew all about Plexiglass, but hoping the smiles, the raised eyebrows, and the twisty fingers pointing to the ignition might get his message across.
Which, gratifyingly for history’s propitious view of events, they did.
Seeing a potential friend as opposed to a rabid maniac, Rodney followed Pete’s advice. Reached forward against the pressure of the puffed-up airbag and managed to twist the ignition as instructed, so allowing Pete to crawl into the Range Rover Sport through the rear hatch, puncture both airbags, assure the car’s passengers they were “A-okay,” and suggest they might like to step out onto the road to take deep breaths. Pete knew exactly the kinds of deep breaths to take because of his Iraq and Afghanistan invasion experiences.
“Look, I’m sorry, okay?” said Rodney when the deep breathing was over.
“Shit happens,” said Pete. “No problem. Plus it was me who hit you, right?”
“Only there was this sheep dead in front of me, see?” Rodney offered in further apology. “Six of one, half a dozen of the other, eh?”
“Mebbe,” said Pete, uncertain what the guy was saying. Sixes an’ half dozens? What was that all about?
“Listen, whyntcha go tell it to the boss?” he added, smiling and leading Rodney over to Zingy, who’d calmed as he gazed out across Windermere.
“Nice lake,” he was saying as Pete and Rodney approached.
“Boss, the guy has sumptn to tell you,” said Pete, nudging Zingy from his reverie.
“Like I said, I’m sorry,” Rodney started. “Only there was this sheep dead in front of me, and...”
“A dead sheep?” said Zingy, thinking roadkill of the kind that happened all the time in Des Moines, Iowa—only back there it was mainly deer, moose and such, which folks took home, butchered, and refrigerated in their cellars for winter.
“No, I saved it from bein’ dead. It was straight in front of us. That’s why...”
“The guy slammed on his brakes,” Pete interpreted. “Boss, this was our fault much as it was his. Plus the sheep got saved.”
“Glad to hear about that, Pete,” Zingy was saying as Thérèse staggered to Rodney’s side and grabbed his hand.
“You okay, chéri?” she said.
“Ish,” said Rodney.
“Ish?”
“I’m a little bit okay. How’re you doin’, darlin’? Sorry about the crash, but there was this sheep ahead of us, and...”
“Is okay? Ze pauvre ship!”
Rodney frowned.
“Ship?” he said, joining Zingy in gazing out across Lake Windermere.
“Non, non, ze sheeeep,” said Thérèse, battling with the hardest English phoneme for speakers of Romance languages.
“Ah, the sheep! Yeah, it’s okay. Went wandering off. Ewe, I reckon.”
“Me?” said Thérèse.
Tranquillized by Windermere’s gently lapping, dusky waters, Zingy turned and smiled, recalling the initial communication problems he’d had with Pope Benny.
“Guess it was nobody to blame,” he said, taking Rodney’s chubby hand and shaking it. “Sorry I got a little antsy back there. Lot on my mind. Ya know how it can be. Nice lake though, huh?”
Rodney agreed it was a nice lake and suggested, seeing as both cars were still roadworthy, that their passengers should let bygones be bygones and head to the nearest hostelry, where he would be happy to make amends for the sheep incident by offering everybody a drink.
“No need for the cops to be involved though, eh? Last thing we need around here is cops for only a little minor incident.”
Fat chance of a “Mystery Papal Nuncio Hanging” scoop for The Globe with the filth crawling all over the place, Rodney reckoned. And, for reasons into which Rodney as yet had no insight, he was glad to hear Zingy agree.
“Very last thing we need around here is blue boys,” he said.
“Great. So...” said Rodney.
Which was how it came to pass, only thirty minutes later, that Pete “The Pilot” Peterson, Zingy Splitz, Rodney Snipes, and Thérèse Raquin found themselves in the lounge of The Bella Vista five-star hotel exchanging life anecdotes and sucking at the “Martini Blaster” apéritifs which would persuade them they were hungry enough for the chef’s “haute cuisine,” a (locally caught and grown) cod ’n’ chip supper with all the trimmings (peas) accompanied by four bottles of Veuve Clicquot de Windermere. After which, as The Bella Vista’s crafty manager Monroe d’Arcy had craftily calculated, his much-needed new clients were so tired (and pissed) it made sense for them to book hyper-expensive suites for the night.
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