Fire Touched (Mercy Thompson 9)

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.