by Steve McHugh
“And the fourth victim, the young woman, I assume that’s Sally-Ann?”
Doctor Pierce nodded. “She’s the odd one out. There are still some beating marks, but they were done after she died. And they were from someone’s booted foot.”
“Someone kicked her in anger after they killed her.”
“I wouldn’t like to say if it was done in anger or not, but the rest of what you say is correct.”
“So, what was cut out of them?” Bill asked.
“I have no idea,” Doctor Pierce said. “But from the size and depth of wound, I’d say they were either removing something from inside them, or there was something on them that they needed and weren’t too concerned about how much flesh they took to do it. They were also inflicted postmortem.”
“A tattoo?” I asked.
“It’s possible. Although they could have taken a lot less flesh if they were just removing one. Oh, one final thing, the knife to do this was incredibly sharp. There’s no hacking or sawing, it’s was just gouged out.”
“How was the girl, Sally-Ann, killed?”
“Throat was cut, one slice across the carotid artery. She bled out in minutes at most. She would have been unconscious in seconds.”
“So her death and the way her body was treated after death was different?” Bill said. “Could be someone using the other murders as a way to hide the body.”
“That’s also possible,” I said. “But something tells me otherwise. I think she was a mistake. She didn’t fit with the usual victims for some reason and they had to kill her anyway.”
“All I can say,” Pierce said as he and Bill lowered the body back onto the metal table, “is that I hope you find those responsible very soon. I don’t want to keep seeing the young men and women of this state end up on my tables.”
CHAPTER 8
After the morgue, Bill drove us both up toward to where the body of Sally-Ann had been found, just inside the forest that surrounded Mount Bigalow. We didn’t talk on the journey, but it wasn’t uncomfortable, merely the silence of two people who had bigger things to think about than small talk.
Bill pulled his Ford Bronco over to the side of the road and switched off the engine.
“They found her just up there,” he said and pointed toward a slight hill before opening the door and stepping out into the cold.
I quickly followed. The air was jarring, but the wind would have been much worse if not for the protection of the dense forest that towered on both sides of the road. A few dozen cars passed us by as I followed Bill to the top of the hill. We stopped there and looked down a steep fifteen-foot bank. I was amazed that anyone had seen Sally-Ann’s body.
“She was dropped here and pushed down the verge,” Bill said. “The snow should have completely buried her, but her hand remained free.”
I jumped down the embankment, using air magic to keep myself upright, and skidded along the top of the snow until I reached the bottom.
“We can’t all show off with magic,” Bill shouted as he made his way farther along the road to where the drop was more manageable.
I left the detective to his own devices and stepped into the forest. “Were the other three bodies found here?” I asked as I heard Bill arrive.
“The other three were found about a mile north of here. There was nothing done to hide the bodies. They were just dumped in the woods.”
“Do you have a lot of predators around here?
“We’ve got some lynx and the occasional black bear, maybe a few wolves; people say there’re cougars here, but I’ve never seen one.”
“Maybe they hoped the wildlife would do the job for them.”
We walked deeper into the woods until we could no longer see, nor hear, the cars on the road.
“You fancy telling me where we’re going?”
“I need to see someone,” I said. “According to Galahad I can find him and his colony around this area of Mount Bigalow.”
“A colony of what, exactly?”
I didn’t answer as as we carried on walking for a few hundred yards until we reached an opening with a stream. It was maybe ten feet wide and looked deep enough to swim in when it was warm. Twigs and branches were piled up against some of the larger rocks that had been there for a lot longer than I’d been alive, deposited by the gentle current of the water as they’d been swept from farther up in the forest.
A few feet away there were two huge boulders and then a third smaller one. Someone had placed a sizeable branch between the two boulders to serve as a makeshift bridge, then piled stones and rocks beside it to make steps.
“Stay here a second,” I said and climbed up onto the first boulder and walked across the branch, which as it turned out was actually a tree trunk. Someone had torn it from the ground and placed it in exactly the right spot. The roots had been ripped away—bite marks said someone had probably eaten them.
When I got to the second boulder, I saw what I was looking for. Fur. Dark brown in color and coarse to the touch, it had been snagged on a smaller branch.
“Bill, this way,” I said and dropped down onto the third rock before jumping over onto the other side of the stream.
I waited for Bill to make his way across, as he was considerably more nervous than I was, although he still made the way without complaint.
“What is that, bear fur?” His eyes darted around us and his hand dropped to his gun.
“No, no bears here, this belongs to something else.” I noticed movement out the corner of my eye. “I’d take your hand off your gun. And I’d do it really slowly.”
Bill did as he was asked, but never stopped glancing around to see what was going on. “Are we in danger?”
“Not yet, but you’ll know if we are.”
“How?”
“We’ll be dead.” I walked into the forest once more and after a few hundred feet stopped and sat on an fallen tree.
Bill sat beside me. “We’re still being watched.”
I nodded. “They’re trying to figure out what we’re here for. Take your holster off and put it on the grass beside you. I’m going to try and get them to trust us.”
“You want me to remove my gun? Are you mad?”
“Okay, you can keep your gun, I’m almost certain there’s not a bullet you own that will hurt one of these. So unless you’re planning on using it to shoot yourself, it’s sort of useless here. Hunting is illegal, yeah?”
He nodded. “Had a few hunters out here about three years ago. Never found the bodies.”
“Still think your gun is going to help?”
Bill sighed and unbuckled his holster, dropping it on the ground by his feet.
I stood up and took a deep breath. “My name is Nathan Garrett,” I said, using my air magic to carry my voice deeper into the forest. “You may have heard my name, you may not. But I am not here to hurt you. I’ve been sent by Galahad to discover the identify of those who have been killing. Those who have been hunting on your land, those who will keep killing. They will not stop. But I will stop them. I will bring peace back to your forest. But I need your help. I need to know what you know. I need to know where these people are.”
“Why?” came a booming voice from inside the woods.
Bill fell back off the branch and immediately started looking around for where it came from.
“These people only placed one body on our land. We made sure she could be found, uncovered the snow that hid her. They did not stay long enough for us to remove them.”
“But you tracked them?”
There was a long pause. “Yes.”
“Will you help me?”
The pause was longer, and for a second I thought I’d lost them. “Are you really Nathan Garrett?”
“Yes, why?”
“Many years ago, it’s said that you saved the life of a member of ano
ther colony. Is this true?”
“He was injured…another sorcerer tried to kill him to use his blood in a ritual. It was in Wisconsin as I made my way back from Montana. I was in no mood for people with delusions of grandeur.”
“You killed the sorcerer—one of your own kind?”
“My kind don’t slaughter because they want more power. They earn it.”
There was another pause, and the tree next to me seemed to move slightly before something stepped out from behind it. It was as if they had been part of the tree, the camouflage was so complete. It was nearly eight feet tall and very slender, with long powerful arms that looked a little like those of an orangutan. He had long fur, a mixture of dark browns, greens, and black. It was a little darker than the patch I’d found on the tree. What appeared to be leaves were growing out of his body, and I noticed that some of the other trolls had small flowers or a bark-like substance over their fur. His face resembled that of a gorilla, dark and hairless, although the skull wasn’t quite as tall and the maw was longer, almost baboon-like. He opened his mouth and showed the razor-sharp front teeth of an apex predator.
“What is that?” Bill asked. “Is that Big—”
“No,” I snapped. “Don’t use that word, they really don’t like it.” Three more creatures had stepped out of the shadows behind Bill, none of them less than seven feet tall. All of them were slender and very strong. One of the three, a female, touched Bill’s head and he jumped in shock.
The creature who had made himself known to me barked at her in a language I didn’t understand and the female moved back.
“What’s he saying?” Bill asked.
“No idea, but I’m guessing he told her to leave you alone.”
“How do you know she’s a girl?”
“White strip on the top of her head. The wider the stripe, the older they are.”
“I was only wondering why you had no hair,” the female said, making Bill look very nervous.
“You can all speak English?” Bill asked, ignoring the hair comment.
“Yes, of course,” she said. “Some of us can speak many languages. English isn’t very hard.” She glanced up at me. “The one you saved was my brother. I thank you for what you did.”
“It was no problem,” I told her.
“How do you keep in touch?” Bill asked. “Do you have phones?”
The female laughed; it was an odd sound, sort of like a human laugh, but as if the person had swallowed a bag of nails first. “All kin share a mild telepathy.”
“Umm, who are you?” Bill asked her.
“My name is Theris of the Maine Wood Troll colony. I am the alpha female. My mate, the one Nathan was talking to, is Rean. And you, human, are welcome into our homes.” She stepped aside as dozens of wood trolls stepped out of the shadows.
“How did you know this place even existed?” Bill asked as we sat against a huge tree, watching the wood troll children running around. Occasionally a brave one would come toward us and ask a question, scurrying away the second we answered.
“Galahad told me to come here and find the colony.”
“So, they’ll help us?”
“Not sure, it’s why the elders went off to talk alone. Wood trolls don’t tend to get involved in events that don’t concern them. If our killer was dumping a lot of bodies in their territory, they’d have been jumping at the chance. As it is, it’s probably fifty-fifty. But it was worth a try.”
“You think they know where the killers are?”
“If they tracked the car, then yes, they would know. It depends on how angry they were about what happened. They may not have wanted to get involved, but they’re still going to want to be aware of what’s out there.”
“Have you dealt with wood trolls before?”
“Oh, yeah, there are a few who work in Avalon, and you can find them all over Europe and Asia.”
“And they’re all friendly?”
“Some are assholes, some aren’t. But as a rule, they don’t go out to hurt people who leave them alone.”
“Are there any other types of troll?”
“Swamp, cave, and snow, although wood trolls are the most tolerant of people.”
“And the other three?”
“Swamp trolls are fairly ambivalent toward everyone else as a rule. Snow trolls, or yetis, want nothing to do with anyone. In my entire life, I’ve seen three yetis. They’re not exactly social.”
“And cave trolls?”
“They’re probably the closet thing to a psychopath that the troll world has. They kill for sport, for food, or because they simply have nothing better to do. They’re massive beasts who would tear even another troll apart just because it can.”
“You ever met one?”
“A few, yes.”
“You ever kill one?”
“Once. It’s not something I care to go through again.”
Any further questions were cut short by the arrival of Theris and a young wood troll I hadn’t met before. I stood and gestured for Bill to do the same. Theris gently pushed the youngster forward with one of her huge hands.
“My name is Thean. You have met my mother and father.”
“Nice to meet you,” I said and Bill nodded a hello.
“My father has given me the duty to inform you that we cannot help in this matter. We will not be dragged into a conflict with these people.”
“From your tone, I guess you don’t agree,” I said.
“My mother and I think he is wrong. I think he is short-sighted. These people will get bored of hunting humans soon enough. Because I voiced my displeasure at his decision, I am duty bound to give you the news. Apparently, I have to remember my place.”
“Thean,” his mother said. “Your father looks out for the colony. And Nathan, I am sorry we can’t help further.”
“Are you serious?” Bill demanded as Rean arrived and glared at the policeman. “People are being murdered out there, and you know where these people could be, but you won’t help?”
“Bill,” I said, warning him to stand down. Trolls aren’t like people, they take anger as a sign of challenge. Bill did not want to challenge a wood troll in front of his entire clan—I wasn’t sure I could stop them from tearing him apart.
“No,” he snapped. “I don’t want to see any more bodies brought into the morgue because these people are too afraid to involve themselves.”
Silence descended like a dropped anvil.
“You dare question our bravery?” Rean roared and took a few steps toward Detective Moon. The detective was a good two feet shorter than the wood troll, but he didn’t back down or even blink.
“Then help us,” Bill said softly. “What if it were your son we’d found? What if it were one of these kids? Wouldn’t you want me to do everything in my power to find those responsible?”
“You compare our kinds, but we are not the same,” Rean said, his voice full of anger. “We would have tracked down the killers and slaughtered them after the first body was found.”
Emotions were starting to run high, and I had to drag Bill aside before he said something he’d regret. Wood trolls might be more accepting than their brethren, but they still had a limit after which they would physically retaliate. And having a human get in their face and question their decisions was going to make that limit arrive a lot sooner than anyone wanted.
“Thank you for your time,” I said to Theris and Rean, the latter of which stormed off as we left the colony.
“You’re a lucky idiot,” I told Bill after we’d reached the stream a few minutes later. “A few more minutes of shouting and I’d have been trying to stop him tearing you in half.”
“That fucking asshole knows where these people are; they’re just not going to tell us because they’re scared.”
I took a seat on a sizeable rock. “They�
��ve been in this forest for decades, probably longer. If they got involved, there was always a chance that any peace and quiet they’ve managed to make from themselves would be shattered. People could die. And to a wood troll, their own people are more important than the lives of other species.”
“All they had to do was take us to where they tracked the killers, and we’d have done the rest.”
“But to them, that was too much. You can’t push trolls; when they push back, it tends to be very final.”
“So, we’re back to square one?”
“Not exactly. We know that the trolls tracked the killers when they drove off, and that no wood troll I’ve ever heard of would have left the confines of the forest to track.”
“Okay, so instead of no idea, we have a couple hundred square miles to search through. That’s not a whole lot better.”
“You have better than that,” Rean said as he stepped out into the clearing. “I’m going to show you where they are.”
I had to admit that took me by surprise, but Bill got there first. “What the hell are you playing at?”
“I’m sorry for my deception, but most of the elders do not wish for us to become involved.” Rean bowed his head slightly and stared at his feet; such a gesture was to show either fear or respect. I knew for a fact that Rean wasn’t scared of Bill or me. It was an apology for his actions. He soon straightened back to his full height. “However my mate and I both agree that our involvement is a necessity if we’re to remain protected in this forest.”
“But you had your son—” I started.
“I know, but I cannot have my son involved any more than he already is. He’s young and impulsive. As we all are at his age. I won’t risk his standing with the elders by going against their wishes. I’m an elder already, the worst they can do to me is make disapproving noises.”
“More than he already is? It was your son who tracked them, wasn’t it?”
Rean nodded. “He was out with a small hunting party, they saw the body, and Thean decided to go after the killers. He came back once he established the threat against the colony was minimal. He wanted to go back and force them to leave, but I would not allow it.”
