Fire Touched (Mercy Thompson 9)

They both, troll and wolf, covered the quarter of a mile in a time that would have won an Olympic sprint, but for some reason it seemed to take hours as I stood waiting.

I suppose I could have turned and tried to outrun the troll; I might even have managed it. But I was horribly aware of the humans behind me who had no defense against a fae like the troll. Maybe it would continue to follow me as I ran past them—assuming I did manage to outrun it.

But what if it stopped and attacked the humans instead? I knew some of those police officers. If they saw it chasing me, they would shoot at it. If they hurt it, it would go after them. And then there were all those people stuck in traffic. Easy targets.

I was not going to lead it off the bridge, where I might gain my life at someone else’s expense. I didn’t know why I’d decided it was my job to keep them safe, but, like Zack standing between the van and the troll, I’d accepted it and would do my best.

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.