Fire Touched (5 page)

As I passed the Buick, I got a whiff of the troll for the first time. It smelled like water-fae magic and a bit like pepper—something sharp that made my eyes want to water but didn't smell unpleasant, at least not to me.

I took two steps beyond the upended Buick and stopped as the pack hunting song abruptly and unexpectedly flooded through me, connecting me to those of the pack who were on the bridge.

When I'd become one of the pack, I'd learned pretty quickly that there were some downsides. I'd had to learn to shield parts of my mind to keep the pack from influencing my actions. But there were some upsides, too. My favorite was the hunting song. When the hunt was on, we connected. Like a Broadway dance company who had performed together for years, we knew what each member of the hunt would do almost before they moved. It didn't happen every hunt, just on the ones where the outcome of the hunt was important.

It wasn't a matter of Adam's controlling us all. That would have been creepy and absolutely unacceptable. It was a linkage of purpose that allowed us to meld our movements—and it felt like
belonging
. When the song of the hunt sang through the pack bonds, it was the only time I ever felt as though I really was a part of something bigger than myself, that my presence in the pack wasn't an unhappy fluke.

Admittedly, the pack had been a lot better lately. It was me who was holding grudges now, I thought. I knew it wasn't useful,
but it didn't matter. The pack was finally willing to welcome me— well, mostly they were. I just wasn't sure I wanted to accept.

But the hunting song only cared that I was part of the pack out risking life and limb together. Between one step and the next, I knew that Adam didn't like the taste of troll blood, that his hip was bleeding but it wasn't serious. I knew that Darryl's shoulder was bruised, restricting the use of his left hand, and that he was sweating with the effort of not changing.

Zack was frantic. He had no way to get the baby out of the car, and the woman's fear was making it hard to control his wolf. Submissive or not, a werewolf was a predator, and his wolf liked the scent of her blood and terror. Even the baby wouldn't be safe if he lost control. He didn't know if he could live with a child's blood on his hands.

Adam wasn't troubled by Zack's fears. I could feel his confidence that Zack would figure out how to rescue the human woman and her child without harming them. And so could Zack. The submissive wolf drew on Adam's belief and used it to control his wolf.

I knew that the troll had lost track of the wolves because they had let him become distracted. He'd found a shiny blue car and was smacking it into the guardrail over and over as if he enjoyed the noise it made.

Adam slunk unheeded along the bridge on the other side of the battered cement barrier from the troll. The barrier hadn't looked like that last time I'd driven over the bridge, so the troll must have played smash the car with that barricade, too. But it was sufficient to keep Adam out of sight as he worked to get in position to push the troll in Joel's direction.

The hunting song told me that while the werewolves hadn't been able to harm the troll much, Joel had been a little more
successful, and the troll had quit letting the tibicena close with him. So they'd decided to force the troll into a confrontation with Joel, more to see exactly where the troll's weaknesses were than because they expected Joel to be able to finish him off quickly.

Darryl, crouched low, threaded through the battered cars, heading to a position where he would complement Adam's attack. They'd be two sides of the funnel, with Joel at the narrow end. Darryl had acquired a tire iron and carried it in his good hand. Joel was a foggy presence in the hunting party. His actions were clear, but everything else was murky and hot-rage coated. The rage was unfocused, but I could feel the fury of it building. He let out a roaring cough that sounded more like a lion's hunting cry than anything canine, but he refrained from making the spine-chilling cry that might drive the troll away from him. I took that as a sign that he was cooperating with Adam's planning.

All of this information I received between one breath and the next. At that point, they all realized I was there, too.

From Adam came a flash of betrayal—I had promised to keep safe. That faded as he understood that I was there because of the baby, that I could help Zack. A pause. Acceptance. He knew about protecting the weak.

I knew that he, Darryl, and Joel would do their best to keep the attention of the troll away from the van with the fragile humans trapped inside. Zack and I were to get the people to safety.

Zack was very relieved. More relieved, I thought, than was really justified. I hoped I could help. I hoped not to be just another civilian to protect.

I was nearly to the van, noting almost absently that it had been manufactured in the same era as most of the VW bugs I kept running. It had been lovingly restored to a high polish not very long
ago. The front end was crunched, though whatever it had hit was gone—maybe it had been the troll himself.

Antifreeze from the van's radiator ran down the bridge in narrowing rivulets. I could feel Zack's presence on the left side of the van, but it was the right side that had working doors, so I decided to leave it to him to keep an eye out for the troll while I took a look inside the van.

I started around the van but stopped. I trusted Zack—but I snuck around the front of the van and looked for the troll anyway.

I found him in the Pasco-bound lane, the far side of the bridge, smashing the shiny blue Nissan into the metal rails. I caught a glimpse of a white sheet of paper on the rear window with a date written in black Sharpie. The Nissan had been someone's new purchase. I hoped their insurance would cover trolls.

“Smashing” was maybe the wrong word to use for what the troll was doing, I decided, though metal, glass, and fiberglass were getting crumpled. “Smashing” implied that the troll was beating the car into the rails. The troll's actions were more . . . playful than that.

He pushed the car forward, then let go as it rolled with some force into the rails. Bits of car broke off in the impact, then it rolled back into his hands. It was either in neutral, or he'd destroyed the transmission in some interesting fashion I'd never encountered before.

After a particularly hard impact, the front window shattered. The troll bounced around in excitement—the bridge moved under my feet—and then he propelled the Nissan with even more force than before. The car sped into the rail. The rail bent, and the little blue car got stuck.

Mood abruptly altered, the troll tossed back his head and let out an ear-piercing scream of rage. He grabbed the car in both hands,
shoved it
through
the guardrail
and
the railing on the far side, and over the edge of the bridge. Hooting in triumph, the troll jumped up and grabbed one of the bridge cables and climbed up it so he could watch the car in the river.

I tried not to reflect on the strength it would take to force a car through both sets of rails designed to prevent just that as I took a chance while it was distracted and moved back to the front of the van with slow caution, so no sudden movement of mine would attract the troll's attention. Then I sprinted to the passenger side of the van.

The sliding door was open and bent, so it would never slide open or shut again. From the marks, I was pretty sure that Darryl had opened it, or maybe Zack before he was wholly wolf.

Zack stood beside the open door, looked at me, then rounded the back of the van again to resume his observation of the troll. I felt him settle into a guard position on the driver's side of the van. If the troll made a move toward us, he'd warn me and do his best to keep us safe.

The car seat was nearest the door. On the other side of it, a woman held a bottle to the baby's mouth, keeping the baby happy and quiet. Smart woman.

“Hey,” I whispered.

She was not much older than Jesse. One of her arms was obviously broken just above the elbow, and she held it against her side.

“I'm here to help,” I told her. I was being quiet. The troll was making more noise than World War III, but that didn't mean he couldn't hear us.

“I can't get my baby out,” she said. She took her cue from me and kept her voice down, but it vibrated with desperation. “The seat belt jammed, and the bottle is almost empty. When it's gone, she's going to start crying.”

The baby was not very old, swaddled in a pink blanket and set backward in the seat. She was still in that plastic stage where her mouth and nose looked like every other baby's mouth and nose instead of the person she would someday become. Her eyes were wide and blue and focused on her mom as she sucked.

I took a good look at the car seat. It wasn't one of the ones that the bucket holding the baby just popped out. I didn't know a lot about baby seats, but it looked to me as if it were an older model, and something had jammed the latch, something with a big fang. The button was pressed in, but the catch hadn't released.

I pulled out Tony's knife and started working on the tough webbing of the seat belt. The knife looked good, but the blade was as dull as a bad-skin-cleanser commercial.

“When we get out of this,” I said, very quietly, “remind me to give Tony a whetstone and a book on how to use one.”

“Who is Tony?” she asked.

“The police officer whose knife I borrowed,” I told her. The stubborn belt parted at last, and I pulled the seat free. I took a step back—and that's when I saw that the arm wasn't the only injury the woman had. Her knee was swollen to twice its normal size.

“Can you walk on that leg?” I asked.

She bit her lip and shook her head. “But you can get Nicole out,” she said. “Get her out, and I'll be okay. I told the werewolf that.”

The baby made a noise.

It was only a little noise, more of a squeak than a cry.

But there were a lot of creatures on the bridge with very good hearing.

The wolves had been letting the troll entertain himself—but the blue car, by now surely sunk under the river, wasn't interesting
anymore. The pack hunting song told me that the little noise of something helpless . . . of a helpless human baby . . . had attracted the troll's attention. There was a thump, and the van rocked a little when the troll landed back onto the bridge from his perch among the cables.

I could feel the troll's regard, but he couldn't see me. I rocked the baby seat a little, and the baby settled. We all were very still—until the troll started banging on another car.

I had to get them both out, and I couldn't carry the mother. But we had wheels. The radiator fluid I'd seen told me that it was unlikely we could get the engine going, but we were on a downhill slope, and both Zack and I could push. All I had to do was get the van moving.

I put the baby, car seat and all, back next to her mother, who put the mostly empty bottle back in the baby's mouth. She, the baby, smiled, kicked both feet, and resumed sucking. That made a noise, too, a small, whistly-sucky noise that made the troll grunt in satisfaction. I don't know if it was my instincts, the pack hunting sense, or the sudden lack of smashing sounds, but, with the hairs on the back of my neck, I felt the troll start toward us at a slow hunter's pace.

The fae are attracted to children. Someone, I think it was Bran, told me that children held power because they were in the process of becoming something. In that promise there was magic—and it was like catnip to the fae.

In the past, some of the fae craved children as pets, leaving something in their place because magic required balance—and that I'd learned from Ariana's book. Some of the fae simply ate them. A baby . . . a baby was on the cusp of becoming.

The troll's near-silent approach was filled with an intensity, a
lust I could scent. And then the pack hunting song exploded with information.

Adam leaped over the barrier, and Joel bolted from around the car he'd been hiding behind, but Darryl, who'd been a few steps closer, reached the troll first. He struck at the side of the troll's knee with the narrow pry-bar end of the tire iron. The troll slapped the iron away—and knocked Darryl over in the process. Either the touch of iron or the force Darryl had swung it with hurt the troll, who stopped to shake his hand. That gave Darryl a second chance for attack. He took a running leap onto the troll and, without slowing down, climbed up its side, making it all the way to the troll's shoulders. Zack stayed where he was, between the van and the troll, the last barrier. I could feel his determination to slow the creature down so that I could get the human and her child to safety.

Recalled to my task, I scrambled to the front seat, taking a quick glance out the window while I did.

The troll was still on the opposite side of the barrier, so I couldn't see Adam or Joel, but I had a good clear view of the troll reaching behind himself. His shoulder joint was built differently from any ape or monkey I'd seen because he had no trouble reaching behind his neck and grabbing Darryl in both hands and throwing him off, over the railing.

When Darryl disappeared from the pack hunting song, I told myself fiercely that it was only that he was too far away. Werewolves don't swim, but there were a lot of boats down there. A lot of boats. And some of them knew that the werewolves were trying to help.

His abrupt absence hurt, and I couldn't see past the hurt to tell if he was just gone from the hunting song or if he'd disappeared
from the pack as well. Zack broke away from the van, running to help the other two keep the troll away.

Darryl doesn't have to be dead, I told myself fiercely as my butt hit the front seat of the van. His sudden disappearance from my awareness was traumatic, and I couldn't reach the subtler pack sense. Couldn't tell if the wave of loss I felt was only from the hunt, or if it was his death echoing through me. I put my foot on the clutch.