Chapter Thirty-five
~Nikolai~
Nikolai was really not having a good time.
The woods were dark and they got progressively weirder the further he got.
Trees got up and skittered away from him once he’d lost sight of the moon and was on a scent-by-scent basis.
Returning to Bobby’s house, he followed the blood trail once more.
While it was old, it was still pungent. Likely The Fridge already went that way, and if Frankie turned up with hands empty, Nikolai didn’t feel much more confident.
However, unlike Frankie who was just in it for a paycheck, Nikolai had to find Bobby.
The Executive threatened everyone he loved. The kid. Katarina. Jessie. And he wasn’t about to lose it after finally getting a family of his own.
So, after the blood dried up and he was deep in the belly of the beast, he went to the next best thing—pretending to be Bobby.
The gnomish car salesman, for as long as Nikolai knew him, was lazy and predictable.
He worked on a schedule and tended to take the easy way out.
Probably how he ended up in this mess. Which meant, if Nikolai was Bobby—bleeding, panicked, needing a safe place to lay low—he needed to find easy but protected.
Nikolai found the first hollow tree that didn’t move around the was deep enough to hide a gnome away.
He bent over at the waist, looking into the cage like roots that covered the opening.
Curled up in the dark shadows of the tree, was a person.
Nikolai reached in and yanked roughly, “You little shit.”
Bobby gasped, tumbling out of the knotted roots onto the moist dirt by Nikolai’s feet. Before Bobby could bolt, the exhausted mechanic pressed a boot to his back and kept him planted. The car salesman squealed, “Please, Nikolai, we can talk about this.”
“How the fuck did you avoid The Fridge?” He rolled Bobby like a pig on a stick roast. Bobby put his hands up in defeat, face covered with scabbed over marks and his nose was still broken, but otherwise alive.
Which shouldn’t be the case. Nikolai was really not having a good time.
Cause you weren’t supposed to be alive, motherfucker!
Bobby laughed sheepishly, “I took a bath in the river a mile to the east. Washed off all the blood, ate a bunch of the river kelp stuff, you know the real briny stuff, that covers up any stench. Then found a good place to hide. You’d be surprised what stuff just ends up out here. I’ve been camping out here for days!”
“Yeah,” Nik snapped with a sharp click of his teeth. “I know!”
“Look, I know Jessie’s probably still pissed about me, but I swear I didn’t know what The Executive wanted when he met me at the casino. He sent these goons after me, see he—”
“I know you have the prototype, Bobby.” Nikolai lifted his boot and grabbed the small, trembling man by the front of the shirt. “Give it to me and you can go back to trembling in your tree hole for all I care.”
“What! No! You don’t know what he’s going to do with it, man!” Bobby squealed, thrashing back and forth.
“You do?” Nik raised his brow.
Bobby stilled, eyes wide. Nikolai’s jaw locked up tight as he dropped Bobby.
The gnome hit the ground like a heavy sack of bricks.
Reaching into the hollow that Bobby stay in, he rummaged around quickly.
His fingers met a hard steel product. Nikolai plucked the prototype out of the darkness and held it up in front of him.
It was hard to see in just the hazy ghost light of the woods, but he could see the runes that were etched into the metal glow softly in reaction to his touch.
“Whoa! No! You can’t give it to him!” Bobby climbed to his feet, swiping at Nikolai’s leg.
The bugbear bent his knee, keeping the dirt coated man away like one does a nosey, younger sibling.
Holding it up, Nikolai tried to inspect it more, but the ever-consistent hand slaps against his calf and knee were distracting.
He sighed, scruffing Bobby and holding him up in the air too.
“I don’t have a choice. Now, what’s he got planned?” Nikolai tucked the prototype into his pockets. Thankfully, while it was chunky and awkwardly shaped, his pockets were just black holes.
“I’m not telling you that. It’s my only leverage if he finds me!” Bobby thrashed again, back and forth in attempt to dislodge himself.
That doesn’t make any sense. Nikolai glared at him, “What kind of dirt do you really have on him?”
“I’m! Not! Talking!” Bobby squealed, kicking his legs back and forth.
Nikolai huffed, rolling his eyes. This is getting me nowhere.
While he was the muscle, Nikolai knew he wasn’t the interrogation kind.
If he wanted info to stop Bjorn, he’d need to bring Bobby to Jessie.
Throwing his head back, Nikolai groaned.
Fuck my life. He turned to walk back to town, only Bobby slipped out of his moldy shirt and dropped to the ground.
The bastard bolted, and Nikolai took a moment to stand still, dropping the gross fabric out of his fingers, and stared deep into the darkness with disdain.
Then, after a moment of reminding himself, he did actually need Bobby, he took off after the car salesman.
It irked him to no end to chase down Bobby.
His boots pounding against the earth, every zig zag earned Bobby another broken finger when he caught that motherfucker.
It took an hour for Bobby to finally start to slow down.
By then Nikolai had fought off a cloud of gnats, tripped over what was hopefully a fawn, and chased the gnome all over the woods.
The darkness around them was slightly lighter, still hazy as a fog crept along the forest floor.
After getting a face full of tree branches and stepping in something that squelched, he finally snatched Bobby by the back of his scalp.
Then, in before the fucker could thwart him again, punched the man so hard in the head that all Bobby’s lights went out.
Nikolai trudged through the woods back toward the city, following the sounds and lights that slowly began to break through the tree line. Coming out somewhere near Hauntingsao nodded numbly.
“And I’m going out on a limb here, and assume you did this because The Executive told you to do this or else he’d what?
Kill me?” Jessie cocked his head to the side.
He laid Bobby face down into the tile, still jerking left and right but unable to do a thing.
Bobby was at the mercy of a minotaur who didn’t care if he was comfortable.
Nikolai let out a weak, winded snort, but nodded again.
“You couldn’t have told me—”
“He threatened to hurt the kid,” Nikolai croaked.
Jessie inhaled sharply before hoisting their newest guest off the floor. He spun Bobby to look him in the face. “Hey there, Bobby, long time no see. Looks like we’ve got a lot to catch up on.”