The troll moved into my best target range. I took a step toward them, aimed, and shot the magazine of my gun empty as fast as I could pull the trigger. I didn’t hit Adam.
I was sure that most if not all of the shots had hit the troll. I’ve always been a good shot, and this past year, I’d gotten serious about practicing. But the only shot that was important was the one that hit his left eye. I’d been aiming at his eye with all of my shots, but it was small, and he’d been moving.
It brought him to a staggering halt. He brought one hand up to his face—and hit Adam with the other, knocking him out of the air and into the cement barricade. I’d hit the troll and hurt him, but not enough to matter.
I holstered the gun, and my foot landed awkwardly on the walking stick that should have been on my chest of drawers at home instead of the pavement in front of me.
The walking stick had been made by Lugh the Longarm, the warrior fae who’d been a combination of Superman and Hercules in the old songs and stories of the Celtic people. There were no stories I’d ever read about Lugh—and I’d been reading as much about him as I could find since the walking stick had come back into my keeping—that had him fighting a troll. Lugh was a Celtic deity, and trolls were more populous in continental Europe. Maybe the walking stick had come here to fight for the troll. It, at least, was fae, and I was not, though it had defended me against the fae before.
I snatched it off the ground because it was better than nothing. It was probably a coincidence that I remembered the essential oil that Zack had shoved into my pocket as soon as I touched the walking stick. I pulled it out of my pocket and saw at a glance that Zack had gotten it right, grabbed the Rest Well and not any of the other oils that I’d bought. The Rest Well had been mostly St. John’s wort.
While I was doing that, Adam rose to his feet, but he was clearly dazed. The troll growled at him, but when the troll went on the attack, he came after me.
I wrenched the cap open. I was clueless how to use it; all that I knew about it was that placing the real plant around the windows and doors of a home was supposed to keep the fae out—like garlic is supposed to work for vampires. It didn’t help that I remembered that garlic doesn’t work on vampires despite the stories.
For lack of any better idea, or any more time to fuss, I swept my hand out from left to right, scattering the liquid in front of me in a rough semicircle. Adam was running again and gaining on the troll. But the troll would reach me before Adam caught him.
I dropped the bottle and prepared to be hurt. I held the walking stick as I’d have held a spear in class with my sensei, though the metal-shod end had not changed, as it sometimes did, from decorative embellishment into a blade. A bad sign, I thought.
But Adam’s presence meant that I wasn’t alone. For some suicidal reason, that left me in the Zen state that I only managed at the end of a very hard workout with Adam or Sensei Johanson.
I narrowed my eyes at the troll and thought, Bring it. The troll, so close I could feel his breath, stepped on the pavement where I’d dropped the essential oils and staggered back as if he’d hit a wall.
Adam didn’t wait for an engraved invitation. He leaped up the troll, in almost the same way that Darryl had, except that when he reached the troll’s shoulders, Adam extended his claws and brought his front feet, good shoulder and bad, together in a great swinging motion and dug deep into either side of the troll’s head. The troll cried out and reached back, and just as he had with Darryl, he grabbed Adam and pulled.
A sudden burst of pain ran down my shoulder from my mate bond, dropping me to the ground with the unexpected fury of it, as real or worse than if it had been my own pain, the mating bond abruptly opening up clear and full. I screamed with the pain and utter terror because the pain I felt was Adam’s and not my own. The terror drove me back to my feet, and I went after the troll with a fury that lit my bones with determination to stand between my mate and anything that hurt him.
I whacked the troll behind the knee with the stick, but it didn’t even flinch. So I hit him again, harder, with the narrow end as though the walking stick were a foil and I wanted to stab him. The spearpoint did not form on the end of the stick, as it sometimes did, but apparently the silver-shod end was enough to hurt. The troll whined and turned his shoulders toward me, but Adam pulled the creature’s head back where it had been.
From the feel of the pain he shared with me, I knew Adam’s shoulder had begun healing from the earlier damage the troll had done, but it was tearing again. Even so, a werewolf’s claws are like those of a grizzly: the troll couldn’t dislodge Adam. As the troll pulled, Adam’s refusal to release his own grip meant that the troll was wrenching Adam apart.
This wasn’t the time to be squeamish. I hit the troll in one testicle with the butt end of the staff in the fencing stance I’d used before. As I did, there was a wet, popping noise.
I thought I’d done some damage, but there was no blood where I’d hit him. For a breathless second, I wondered if the troll had broken Adam. But it was the troll who screamed as he pulled Adam loose—and ripped off a cap of moss hair, thick skin, and gray-green bone along with Adam. Then there was a lot of blood.
The troll tossed Adam in a gore-dripping, bloody mess over my head. I heard him hit the pavement, but I couldn’t afford to look away. The troll was hurt but not dead. Adam was unconscious, and I was the only thing standing between him and the troll.
Though there was a gaping hole in his skull, the troll didn’t seem to be appreciably disabled. I tightened my hold on the walking stick, my only weapon, and prepared to be annihilated.
Something flew through the air, buzzing as it passed me, and buried itself in the newly opened section of the troll’s skull. The troll’s roar was so loud it hurt my ears.
The projectile fell out of the troll’s head and onto the pavement with a clang, revealing itself to be a five-foot chunk of steel pipe, modified with a point on one end and crude fins on the other.
The troll, eyes wild, bashed one fist into the cement barrier between the lanes in a berserker rage. He screamed as cement fell away from his fist in chunks, revealing the barrier’s framework of rebar. He grabbed the rebar cage and jerked an entire section of cement free.
I turned and sprinted, visions of a flying Miata in my head. Adam couldn’t move out of the way. Adam lay unconscious on his side, blood darkening his fur and flattening it.
I made it to him in four strides. Dropping the walking stick, I grabbed a handful of the fur over his hips and skin behind his neck. I’m strong for a woman, but no stronger than any human woman who worked out four times a week with a werewolf and a sadistic sensei. Adam-as-a-werewolf weighs nearly double what I do. But I lifted him over my shoulders, staggered a step, then ran.
I expected to see the police barricade, though the SWAT team in their body armor was new. Funny how I wouldn’t risk aiming the troll at the police to save myself, but for Adam I’d have thrown the whole lot of them to the troll, despite the genuine friendship I felt for some of them.
But it wasn’t just the police I saw.
Running toward us was a very wet Darryl, who otherwise looked unharmed by his immersion in the river. He had one hand back in a classic javelin thrower’s pose, another pipe weapon pulled back to throw. Keeping pace beside him with visible effort was a too-thin, grim-faced Tad. He held another pipe in his hand, and I watched as he molded it with magic into a weapon that matched the one Darryl held. Darryl took a couple more racing strides and let the pipe javelin go.
I couldn’t tell what it did once it flew past me, but something hit the bridge and bounced the pavement under my feet so I stumbled. Cement and broken rebar flew over Adam and me and bounced ahead of me—evidently the troll had thrown his chunk of cement barrier. I managed a couple of trying-to-get-my-balance steps before I lost that battle entirely. I landed hard on my knees, wobbled, then fell full length, chin first
, when Adam’s weight overbalanced me.
Darryl grabbed the javelin Tad handed him and bolted past Adam and me. I let Adam go and rolled so I could see. The troll was down; the second pipe javelin had struck truer than the first, and the top third of the troll had turned an unhealthy gray color. Darryl, javelin held high, skidded to a stop when Joel, his whole body a bright flaming orange, leaped from the top of a car, over the cement divider, and landed on top of the troll. Darryl backed up until he was level with Tad, who had stopped next to me, as Joel attacked in a ferocious rage and a heat that I could feel from twenty feet away.
The troll didn’t move when Joel tore into it, gulping down the green-and-red flesh. The troll was unconscious or dead, I couldn’t tell which, and it didn’t matter for long. Its flesh melted where the tibicena touched it, turning first black, then crumbling to gray ashes. The huge body was consumed by Joel’s heat in what could only have been a few minutes. The tibicena continued to eat, even when there was no meat left.
We didn’t move, none of us, but still, Joel looked up suddenly, his mouth full of ash. He glared at us, his eyes a hot, iridescent red.
I stood up, using the walking stick, which was under my hand though I’d left it a dozen yards away, for balance. I didn’t like being on the ground with a predator so near.
I cleared my throat. “Joel,” I said. My voice sounded oddly wobbly to me, and I hoped no one else heard it.
Joel’s lips curled back, displaying black teeth and a red, red tongue. The fringe of stone mane around his neck rippled as he shook his broad head in open threat, and it made a clattering noise, almost like wind chimes. He growled.
“Joel,” I said, reaching for Adam’s power. “Stop.”
I’d done this before, called upon my mate’s power of domination to make someone do something—or not do something. But this time, there was no surge of Alpha magic in my words. There were a lot of possible reasons for the failure: the fact that I’d never tried it with Adam unconscious came right to mind. Maybe he was too wounded to fuel my voice. But the reason didn’t matter, only the result. The tibicena took a step forward.
Some motion at the corner of my eye attracted my attention. I took a quick glance to my right and saw a kid, a boy maybe ten years old give or take a couple of years, climb over the cement barrier, just a few yards from Joel. I blinked, and it was still true. This stupid kid was dropping on the ground, his face calm, approaching Joel as if he were a friendly dog instead of a slathering tibicena with smoke and heat rising from his body in waves.
“Stay back,” I shouted, starting forward—but a hand closed around my arm and pulled me back against a man’s body. He only controlled that arm, so I twisted toward his hold, desperate to get free so I could stop the poor dumb kid who was about to die. When I turned, I saw it was Tad who held me back, his face thin, grim, and bruised. I only just stopped the instinctive hit that would have broken his ribs and set me loose.
“Let me go,” I snapped at him. But I kept my voice low—I didn’t want to set the tibicena off. I jerked to get free, but Tad held me as if I hadn’t been practicing how to break this exact hold just last week—if I’d been willing to hurt him, I could have broken away, but I couldn’t make myself do it.
“Wait,” he said.
“Tad, Joel isn’t running this show,” I hissed. “He’s going to kill that boy.”
Joel had quit looking at me at all. His attention was focused on the kid, who was dressed in sweats that were too large for him. They looked suspiciously like the sweats we kept tucked around in the cars of pack and friends of pack members.
Joel wouldn’t survive if he killed a child. The thought decided me, and when I started struggling again, I went for blood.
Tad grabbed my hand before I could hit him in the jaw, then pinned me in a lock I couldn’t break, my back to his front. “It’s okay,” he said. “This one isn’t just a kid. Watch.”
Joel snarled at the boy, who ignored him and touched the tibicena’s shoulder. Joel, who was not Joel but the volcano demon who lived inside him, looked smug, probably waiting for fiery death to consume the boy the way it had the troll. Horrified, I waited for the same thing.
We were both wrong.
The skin of the boy’s hand flushed red, and the color traveled through him, and he rocked back a little, then leaned his weight on his hand.
Whatever he looked like, that was not a human boy. His hand hadn’t burst into flame or blackened with third-degree burns. No human could have touched Joel when he was running that hot without getting hurt. Tad released my arm with a pat. I took two steps so that I stood next to Adam’s prone body, in case the tibicena decided to do something rather than just stand under the boy’s touch, because fire was only one of Joel’s weapons.
The hot air on my face faded, replaced by river-cooled wind. Joel staggered and collapsed. The curious blackened-stone exterior of the tibicena lost the redness of heat and became entirely black.
“I told you it would be okay,” Tad said.
“He’s not hurting Joel?” I asked anxiously.
“Joel?” he asked. “Is that the name of the fire-breathing foo dog? I thought you killed it. How did you manage to take the volcano god’s servant? I assume he’s yours from the way he was fighting.”
“Not a foo dog,” I said tightly. “He’s a tibicena. They are very hard to kill, and when you do, they go out and invade the body of friends. Like Joel. But we . . . I made him pack.”
The black stone surrounding the tibicena cracked and fell away, leaving Joel in his human body, pale, naked, and unconscious, facedown on the roadway. The boy stepped back. When he met my eyes with his own, for a moment I could see that fire lived inside him. Then they were just ordinary hazel eyes.
“Did you hear that, Aiden?” Tad said. “The fire dog is a friend.”
“Yes,” said the boy, “I hear you. I heard, when the big man who killed the troll told us both the same thing before we set foot on the bridge. I’m not an idiot. I need them. The man who bears the fire dog will come to no harm from this. I didn’t kill anything, just banked the fire for a while.”
The boy’s accent wasn’t so much a matter of pronunciation but of cadence. English wasn’t his first tongue.
I took a good long breath and took stock.
Darryl, the big-man-who-had-killed-the-troll, was a couple of yards away—in position to step in if the boy hadn’t defanged the tibicena. His hair still dripped water, but his various cuts and bruises from the fight had begun to fade.
“How did you get out of the river?” I asked. I didn’t move because, beside me, Adam had awakened and was considering rolling to his feet. Where I was standing, my legs touching him, he could use me as an unobtrusive crutch.
His pack was loyal. Two years ago, Darryl might have put Adam down had he come upon him when he was injured like this. Adam’s decision to court me had weakened the pack, and Darryl would have viewed himself as the better leader. Part of me didn’t like seeing him so close to Adam when Adam couldn’t defend himself—even though matters had changed. Darryl respected Adam and had not so much as breathed a desire to move to the top of the food chain.
I don’t need protection from Darryl. Adam’s voice was clear in my head, though he made no effort to move. I think you’ve gotten caught up in the battle that is over now, sweetheart. But there are others watching. I’d just as soon wait until I’m sure I can walk before I try to get up.
We’d discovered that he had more control of the link between us than I did. The werewolf mating bond seemed a little confused by me. I’d grown to believe that the weird way the mating link seemed to function stronger some times than others was due to my partial immunity to magic. But this time I caught his words just fine.
He was right about Darryl, and about the wound-up feeling in my stomach that tried to tell me that the battle wasn’t over yet. I breathed in and
tried to relax.
“One of the patrol boats fished me out,” Darryl was saying, answering my earlier question. “I got to shore and ran into Tad, Zee, and that one.” He nodded toward the boy, who smiled, a wide, sweet smile that sent the warning hairs on the back of my neck straight up.
“The troll,” said Zee’s voice heavily, “was sent after us, but someone forgot about trolls and bridges and the effect of running water on some forms of magic. Old Jarnvid might not have won in the lottery when they were passing brains out to trolls, but running water was his element, and trolls are difficult to control when they are in the same room with you.”
I stayed where I was, one foot touching Adam, but turned to see my old friend. It was unlike him to have sent Tad into battle while he waited on the sidelines.
Zee wasn’t looking at me but at the ashes of the troll, which were blowing away in the river’s breeze, as he continued talking. “Or maybe they thought they were safe because trolls can’t connect to most bridges now. Too many of the bridges today use too much steel. Maybe they—whoever they are—mistakenly assumed the troll would remain under their influence despite the distance and the running water. Or maybe they intended to ‘accidentally’ lose control and let loose one of the more violent trolls in history on the human population.”
Beyond him, I saw a handful of pack members running up the arc of the bridge toward where we were standing. Down by the police barricade, Warren was talking to the police officers. I knew from his body language, and because I knew Warren, that he was keeping them back until we had our vulnerable protected and our dangerous people contained.
“Hey, Ben?”
Our English wolf looked at me, his clear blue eyes missing their usual ironic cast, and sprinted the rest of the way to us.
“Could you go check on Zack? I think the troll threw a car on him just over the crest of the bridge.” He wasn’t dead. I’d know if he were dead, but I was betting Zack was a long way from healthy.