by Karen Chance
She was hurting more.
“How do you do it?” she asked again, sounding fairly desperate. “I can’t turn into this thing. I won’t!”
I didn’t know what to say, because the truth wasn’t something she wanted to hear. The fact was, anger management had never been my specialty. I’d learned a few tricks, but it was always a crapshoot whether any would work. Mostly, I’d learned to live with it by letting my emotions out on a regular basis when I hunted, which helped to calm them the rest of the time.
And calm emotions kept the door locked on Dorina.
But Claire was a vegan nurse; she didn’t hunt.
I didn’t know what that meant for her.
But I didn’t say that, or anything else. Because the back door suddenly slammed open and a bunch of trolls spilled out. And they weren’t looking happy.
Chapter Eleven
“What now?” I said, as Claire scrambled to her feet.
“Is the little one okay?” she asked, looking worried.
But the trolls weren’t stopping to chat. They were already off the porch and halfway across the garden, leaving me and Claire looking at each other, because they were obviously heading for Caedmon. And I don’t think either of us knew what to do about that.
But the royal guards didn’t seem to have that problem. They went from relaxed and mostly supine, lounging around the fire in that boneless, catlike way the fey have, to on their feet in a row in front of Caedmon, swords out and game faces on, in about the time it took for me to blink. I sometimes wondered why the hell I spent so much time worrying about hurting people, when I was probably the weakest one around here anymore.
That didn’t change when Olga came out of the door a moment later, and then just stood there, hands on hips, looking pissed. Because she’d clearly had enough of the macho brigade for one day. She started down the steps, but Claire grabbed her arm.
“What’s going on?”
“They being stupid,” Olga said.
“Is the boy all right?”
She nodded. “He asleep.”
“Then what—”
“They want to know why he help,” Olga said, gesturing at Caedmon. Who was on his feet now, too.
“Why wouldn’t he? He had the power to spare—”
Olga started to say something, and then just gestured at them. Because yeah. Inside voice was apparently not a thing in trolldom.
We took off for the latest crisis, despite the fact that we could hear them from the porch. And so could half the neighborhood, not that they’d probably understand what they were saying. I sure didn’t.
But not because of the language barrier.
“Boy has no clan. No one pay for him. You get nothing!” That was the big troll with the scraped face, and yes, I’d been right. Now that we were in better lighting, I could see that it was definitely some kind of black, sparkly gravel embedded in his skin, from temple to neck, and glinting redly in the setting sun. The skin had grown back around it, in scarification-like swirls, as if it had been in there for decades. Because sure. Why pull it out, right?
I didn’t understand trolls at all.
And it looked like Caedmon didn’t, either.
“I don’t recall asking for anything.”
It was said mildly enough, but for some reason, it seemed to enrage the trolls, several of whom took a step forward. To the point that they were almost touching the shiny tips of the royal guards’ swords, which no one had lowered. And which a couple of the boys looked like they’d enjoy having an excuse to use.
Claire must have thought so, too, because she started forward, only to have Olga hold her back. It would have been funny under other circumstances, because Olga’s gesture was that of a mother reaching an arm across a child during a sudden stop in a car. But Claire wasn’t a child, and she didn’t look like she appreciated it.
Like, really didn’t.
And, suddenly, the hairs on the back of my neck were standing up.
“I have a grandson,” Caedmon was saying, apparently oblivious. “The boy is scarcely older. I wanted to help—”
“No Light Fey help Dark! Not for no reason!” Gravel Face looked pissed.
“He did. Boy fine. Go home,” Olga told them, but nobody was listening.
Possibly because a lot of them wanted a fight. The royal guards were bored out of their minds, with nothing to do all day but hang around Claire’s garden. And the trolls—well, I frankly didn’t know what their problem was, but they definitely had one. Making me wonder what the hell they had expected to happen.
“Did you want us to just let the kid die?” I demanded.
I didn’t really expect an answer, but for some reason, I got one.
“He too sick, can’t get to healer in time,” Gravel Face said, still staring down Caedmon. “Olga say she know another, so we come. But not to him!”
“But . . . he saved him—”
“And now we owe debt! He want us fight for him, die. We not die for Light Fey king! No more!”
The garden exploded with the chant, and with chest-beating and growling and half lunges toward the guards, who planted their feet and stood their ground. Even though the only thing keeping Dark Fey blood from smearing the tips of those swords was the thickness of the hide battering into them. Great.
“He doesn’t want you to fight for him!” I yelled, to be heard over the racket. I looked at Caedmon. “Tell them!”
“I’m always happy to recruit new auxiliaries—”
“Caedmon!”
“—but that wasn’t what I was doing today. You owe me nothing.”
“See?” I asked, and Olga nodded. And then threw up her hands, because they clearly didn’t see.
“You say that now,” White Hair said, in perfect English. So I guess he’d just been being a dick inside. “But when the time comes, you’ll call in the debt, and throw us in front of your own troops to spare their blood. We know how you see us, fey king. We know how all of you see us, as nothing but animals—”
“My daughter-in-law is not an animal,” Caedmon said, his eyes on her.
Like mine should have been, I realized, because Claire was looking a little . . . odd.
It wasn’t physical. She was the same slender girl in an old-fashioned floral print dress, which should have made her look dowdy but somehow never did. All she needed was a big, floppy-brimmed straw hat, her hair in messy braids, and a wheat field to model for one of Vogue’s “Girls of Summer” covers.
And a different expression.
A really different expression.
“Claire?” I said, and got a low, rolling growl in return.
Uh.
“Maybe we should go inside? Check on that soup?” I began, only to be cut off by raised voices from the crowd.
This time, they weren’t in English, so I don’t know what they said. But whatever it was prompted a quick interjection from Olga, who wasn’t looking so concerned with etiquette anymore. There was some yelling and gesturing and then—
“You lie!”
It was Hothead again, and I was beginning to understand how his face got like that. I was hankering to chain him to the back of my car and drag him for a few miles, and I’d just met him. But if pain hadn’t taught him something before, it probably wouldn’t this time, either.
Not that I got a chance to find out.
Not before he jumped for Claire.
Annnnnd that probably wasn’t his best move, I thought, stepping abruptly back. Or what he’d expected, judging by his expression when his back slammed into the ground, hard enough to tremble it. And to add some rocks to other parts of his anatomy as he thrashed around, in full-on panic.
And went nowhere.
Because the taloned claw suddenly pinning him to the earth didn’t belong to the girl I knew, or even to the cute baby dragon I remembered. But t
o something else entirely. For a long moment, I just stared.
The first time I’d seen Claire in her alternate form she’d been . . . well, frankly, adorable. I’d still been weirded the hell out, because dragon, but even then, I couldn’t help noticing the absurd tuft of purple hair between the two little glasslike horns on top of her head. And the tiny black wings squashed against the ceiling in the hall, because she’d transformed in a too-small space. Or the, um, healthy thighs and butt, neither of which those wings were gonna be lifting anytime soon.
Of course, I could have been wrong about that.
Because it looked like baby was all grown up.
The fat little haunches were currently sleek and gleaming with a river of pewter scales. The wings were huge and thick and heavily veined, blocking out much of the sky. And bisected by a ridge of amethyst that had been just a smear of color up the spine last time, but was now a line of crystalline structures, like they were literally carved out of semiprecious stones. And the ridiculous tuft of hair was now a full-on mane, falling between two massive, translucent, curled horns.
She was beautiful, if a twenty-foot embodiment of death can be described that way. Or, rather, twenty feet if you didn’t count the tail, which was long and spiked and thrashing around, digging out great swaths of grass and telegraphing her mood all at the same time. A mood that could obviously be summed up as face-eating furious.
I didn’t want to see her eat the troll’s face, despite not caring for it much.
Because I did care for Claire, and I didn’t know how she would take that once this was over.
Scratch that. I knew exactly how she’d take it, considering that she planted freaking marigolds around her garden to ward off pests, so she didn’t have to kill them. So, yeah. Time to save the asshole troll.
Only problem was, how?
I glanced at Olga, but she wasn’t much help. She was just standing there, blinking slowly. Because yeah. She hadn’t been there before, had she? And while she’d known what Claire was, knowing and seeing are two different things.
Very different.
So it was up to me.
Only I was unarmed—seemed to be a theme, lately—and even if I hadn’t been, I didn’t want to hurt Claire. Not that that was likely. Because the talons at the ends of those huge, scale-covered paws—the ones that had previously been the size of my handy penknife—were now somewhere between butcher and machete range, and razor-sharp. The one pinning the troll down had a slight scritch-scritch motion going on, hardly anything really, barely enough to notice.
Except for the line of green-black blood dripping down his rock-hard chest and side, the ones that the fey swords hadn’t even managed to dent.
I swallowed, and licked my lips.
“Uh, Claire?” It was soft, tentative, almost a whisper. Yet a split second later, the huge, finely tapered snout was in my face, and I was staring into a pair of eyes that had once been pansy colored and kind of silly, but weren’t so much right now.
Now the nictitating membrane that had freaked me out last time slid across irises of fiery orange, burning yellow, and, at the very edge, a ring of pale purple. That would have been intimidating enough all on its own, but for today’s serving of extra crazy, the striations . . . weren’t static. The little lines that radiate out from the pupil in a human’s eye just sort of stay there. I’d thought the same had been true of Claire’s, even in her transformed state, although I admit to being slightly freaked out and not nearly this close last time, so maybe I just hadn’t noticed. But I was noticing now, and these . . . were not.
These spread outward in an ever-moving kaleidoscope of light and color. Orange lines pierced the yellow; yellow radiated back into the orange; the purple flared and blurred with barely contained elemental fire; the whole a hypnotic dance of color and movement and . . . and . . .
And shit, I thought, shaking my head, feeling dizzy. And warm and happy and kind of sleepy, because she’d almost had me. Without even trying, she’d almost had me, a gal who had thrown off vampire suggestions all her life, like water off a duck’s back. But I had almost been hypnotized just standing there, swaying lightly on my feet until I made myself stop, and shook my head again before looking back up at her defiantly.
Because not today, Claire.
Not fucking today.
“You need to stop this and go back inside,” I told her, my voice a lot stronger this time. “Right now.”
Only that swishy tail didn’t think so. It casually destroyed a stone garden bench, reducing it to rubble without apparently noticing, and scattered the pieces far and wide. Meanwhile, the talon continued to press into the troll, a little harder now, judging by the size of that trickle. And the vertical pupils, like the fucking eyes of Sauron, met mine with what I swear was a challenge in them.
I got a sudden flash on Mrs. Nedermeyer’s cats, and the snake that one of them had found in her yard one day. Just a little thing, a bright green grass snake, harmless and kind of cute. But that hadn’t mattered to the cat. Who had stayed on its haunches, its tail swaying side to side, right in front of the little creature. And every time it had raised up its snaky head, thinking maybe it would make a slither for it, the cat would put out a paw.
And bop it back down.
Because cats like to play with their dinner, don’t they?
Just like dragons.
“Stop it, and go in the house!” I said, more forcefully.
The sunburst eyes narrowed. She didn’t like that. Like I didn’t like the snout suddenly thrust the rest of the way into my face, to the point of literally touching my nose. It was a dominance move, and a pretty damned good one, with the great chest heaving, and the huge jaw cracking, and the tornado of breath billowing through a really impressive collection of teeth and feeling like it was about to set my hair on fire.
For the record, staring a dragon in the face is . . . intimidating. It makes you feel small and vulnerable in ways that short-circuit the brain, and send your mind on odd flights of fancy, like wondering if you taste good. It also makes you forget what, exactly, you had to say that was so damned important, but that your brain can’t seem to remember right now because it’s kind of busy gibbering in a corner.
“Uh,” I said, trying to look intimidating and having a really good idea how badly I was failing at it.
But I still didn’t move.
Not even when the great snout started sniffing around me, with huge wheezing breaths that ruffled my hair and felt like they might be giving me a sunburn. Or a dragon burn, I thought, my brain snapping out of it for a sec to decide that our final thought would be flippant, because sometimes my brain is an ass. But I didn’t lose it and run screaming across the yard, although I don’t get any points for that considering that my knees had just locked and I couldn’t seem to move.
I don’t know what would have happened next, whether Claire would have remembered me or whether I’d have ended up as an appetizer. Because the main course took that moment to show up. I heard the old fence gate squeak its way open; saw someone in a bright red ball cap come in carrying a tower of pizza boxes; smelled meaty, cheesy goodness spreading across the lawn.
And screamed: “Claire, no!”
But it was too late. I hadn’t even gotten the words out when the huge body turned in a flowing motion, elegant yet quick as lightning, like a striking snake. Only she didn’t need the advantage. Because the poor delivery boy didn’t even see her, thanks to the huge pile of boxes.
Not that it would have helped if he had, because a second from now he was going to be a memory, and there wasn’t a single thing I could do—
About it, I thought, my brain not keeping up with the action, but fortunately, someone else’s was.
Namely, Olga’s was, because she’d moved—I didn’t know when, since I’d been kind of busy. But she’d used the distraction I’d unwittingly provided to
do something, since the rest of us were just standing about, hoping not to get eaten. Only what she could do, I wasn’t sure.
Until I saw Aiden.
She was standing between Claire and the house, looking impossibly tiny despite being eight feet tall, because of the contrast. Yet, there she was, not too far from the clueless delivery guy, holding Aiden up in the air like Rafiki holding Simba. She didn’t say anything, and neither did Aiden, but then, they didn’t need to. Because, if there’s one thing every mother knows immediately, instinctively, it’s her own child.
A second later, the delivery guy was forgotten, the big neck was curving, and the huge creature was delicately snuffling her only son. Who did what you’d expect a one-year-old to do in that situation, and started wailing. I knew the feeling, I thought dizzily.
But Claire obviously didn’t. The huge head reared back, the very nonhuman face somehow managing to convey a very identifiable progression of emotions: horror, chagrin, dismay. And then pain, the depth of it searing my retinas before a flash of golden light made us all cover our eyes.
When I looked again, a hysterical, naked woman was running for the house, sobbing; Olga was cuddling a very confused Aiden; and the pizza guy was just standing there, the boxes scattered around him and trodden in the mud, his face slack with disbelief.
Before he suddenly shuddered, a deep, all-over motion, and leapt for the fence, fumbling with the gate for a moment before deciding, “Fuck it,” and jumping across, and then ignoring his car in favor of running down the road, screaming.
On the plus side, the trolls didn’t give us any more trouble after that.
Chapter Twelve
Several exhausting hours later, I was huddled on the porch under a makeshift tent eating a popular type of toaster pastry. And wondering why it was popular. It was chalky and overly sweet, and had too little filling. And most of that had never seen a piece of actual fruit in its life.
The turnovers Claire made were a thousand times better, buttery and flaky and stuffed to overflowing with her own vine-ripened crops. Only I didn’t have any of those. Of course, I didn’t have anything else, either.
