“This is good soup.” It was cooling off, though. We’d been at it longer than I’d thought. “Have you been cooking for yourself since coming here?”
“Who else is going to do it for me?” Alpha watched me warily.
I ducked my head, embarrassed. I could barely make myself lunch and breakfast. Even though Alpha was my age—down to the minute—she felt older than that. Like a senior, or even a college student.
My attempts at friendliness didn’t seem to relax her. The trolls scratching the outside of the bedroom door were hard to ignore. “Maybe you could focus better if you close your eyes.”
“Hell no,” Alpha said. “I’m not closing my eyes around these things.”
“I thought they didn’t hurt you?” Us?
Her jaw clenched. “I told you that trolls never have non-trolls as alphas for long. There’s a reason for that.”
“You think they’ll turn on you?”
“I’ve seen it happen. I doubt they’re impressed with my leadership. All I can do is keep them calm to minimize damage in the meantime.”
Slowly, I realized her meaning: Alpha expected to die.
She’d finally escaped captivity, only for the very creatures that destroyed her world to destroy her, too. How could she be so calm? Like she was simply waiting it out.
Then again, what choice did she have? She’d tried fleeing, but the trolls followed her. She’d never win a straight-up fight with trolls that refused to stay dead. While the MGA could protect her or fly her somewhere the trolls couldn’t follow, she’d never go with them willingly.
The only solution was to defeat the trolls before they turned on her, and we weren’t progressing on that front.
Alpha was going to die. And she just accepted that.
Even now—an exhausted ball of nerves in pajamas—Alpha was a thousand times tougher than me. The resemblance ended at our skin and our name.
She should’ve been the Chosen One.
Not me.
Alpha reached for her soup on Tara’s nightstand, belatedly realizing the bowl was already empty. She ended up wiping spilled soup from the nightstand, then straightening the pillow on the bed. Her eyes darted around the room, like she was looking for something else to keep busy with. She resorted to picking at her fingers in her lap. “This isn’t working. The trolls are only getting more agitated, not less. You should go.”
It was all a distraction. The cooking, the TV. Alpha had been occupying her mind in order to keep the trolls calm. And if she was hesitant to close her eyes around them, and they insisted on being by her side every minute of every day . . .
“Have you been sleeping?” I asked.
“Doesn’t matter.” The veins creeping into the whites of her eyes told me enough.
“You should . . .” I had no business telling her what to do, and her hard look made me think she agreed.
Alpha’s head snapped to the window. “Someone’s coming.”
Moments later, I heard the sound of a car, and the skittering, scratching sound of trolls moving through the house.
“No, no. Keep driving.” Alpha drew her legs onto the bed and held on to them tightly. “Don’t attack, don’t attack, don’t attack,” she murmured, staring at the troll, which was in turn staring at the window.
The sound of the car faded. A long breath escaped her.
Had this been her life the past days? I hesitated, then said, “What if sleeping helps calm the trolls down?”
She snorted. “Not the kind of sleep I have.”
“Nightmares?”
“Most of the time. Sometimes the opposite. I’ll dream about being back home with Tara and Dad. Sometimes Mom is there, too, alive again.”
I jerked at those words. In her world, Mom was—
God, that thought was chilling.
Alpha continued, either not noticing or not caring about my reaction. “Those dreams are nice. Until I get this itchy feeling that something’s wrong. Until I wake up and see I’m not back. Until I remember I might never go back. Until I realize that even if I do miraculously make it home, I might be returning to nothing at all. It’s been years. Who knows what might’ve happened to them.”
“I’m sorry,” I said quietly.
“My Tara draws, too,” Alpha said abruptly. She stared at the drawings on the desk.
I swallowed a lump. My thoughts were still stuck on what she’d just said. Still, I remembered Rainbow’s shining smile when she talked about Tara. This topic might distract Alpha.
“I think it’s fan art.” I attempted a smile. “I don’t recognize the characters, though.”
“My Tara carries a sketchbook everywhere. Not fan art. We don’t really have internet like you do in this world.” She studied the room. “It’s strange, seeing how my Tara would’ve lived.”
“How did you two meet?” I asked.
“My parents and her dad were in the same troop when I was eight. Troop—that’s a group of about half a dozen adults and older teens who scout ahead to make sure it’s safe. Even after we broke off from the troop, our families stayed friendly. When Tara’s dad died, we took her in.” A muscle twitched in her jaw. The troll on the bed tensed.
As much as I wanted to know more, this seemed like the wrong tack. Questions about Tara were too close to questions about Alpha’s home; either topic could upset her more. I ran a hand through my hair. “You said you wanted to go downstairs?”
Alpha shot up like she’d been waiting for the go-ahead. The second she opened the door, trolls surged around her. She stiffly descended the stairs. Trolls followed along on all sides of her.
By the time I arrived downstairs, Alpha was already sitting on the couch, legs drawn up, knife by her side, remote in hand. The news was still giving beat-by-beat updates on the rift. Authorities had finally started a large-scale mandatory evacuation of Philadelphia, prioritizing the neighborhoods most likely to be in the rift’s path. Residents from other neighborhoods were self-evacuating, which was complicated by the full roads and the rift knocking out power around 30th Street Station.
“Do you want to practice again later?” I asked.
“No,” Alpha said. “I’ll wait it out.”
“And if you wait it out and”—get killed—“the trolls appoint a new alpha, will the rest of the world be any better off?”
“Probably not,” she conceded. She wrapped one arm around her legs, the other resting casually by her knife. She studied a troll by her feet. It looked up with feverishly eager eyes. “They’ll be more organized. They’ll be far more vicious with someone actually steering them instead of calming them.”
“Even more vicious?”
“Yeah. This is nothing. Right now, the trolls are protecting their territory, nothing more. They’re scattered and aimless. They’re not even merging.”
“Uh,” I said, “merging?”
“They can get huge. Sounds fun, doesn’t it?”
“So we need to defeat them soon. With you in charge, we have at least one advantage.”
“You can’t defeat them,” Alpha said, exasperated. “You can organize and ward them off. Or you can stay on the run and learn to avoid them. Eventually, there’ll be so many they’ll split into factions. They’ll be distracted fighting each other half the time. Listen. I can’t help. I’ve been trying for days. I’m not the solution.”
I tried to smile. “Thanks for trying.”
The TV showed shaky images of people getting pulled from a collapsing building. The rift had opened inside an apartment tower and ruptured a gas line.
Maybe the news wasn’t the best distraction, either.
Hell—what was? I could only guess at everything on Alpha’s mind. Exhaustion. Longing for home. Rage at the MGA. Fear of her fate. Guilt over the trolls’ rampage. And, if she had any sense, resentment toward me.
I didn’t have even half of that to deal with, and I couldn’t make my brain shut up. Why did I think half an hour of concentration exercises would do the trick for Alph
a?
She was right; she wasn’t the solution.
On the screen, a firefighter carried a soot-stained child from the wreckage. The kid wasn’t moving.
“Can I . . .?” I held out my hand for the remote, then changed the channel. Rift. Rift. More rift. I settled on what looked like a harmless documentary. I needed to join the others at the library and figure out how the hell to defeat the trolls, but I couldn’t leave Alpha alone with those sights on the screen.
“. . . have to prepare for the worst. In any company, especially a start-up like this, losing a leader unexpectedly can be disastrous. The work floor is thrown into chaos. Teams fall apart. For a time, the company is extra vulnerable to takeovers and bankruptcy. If a leader dies, the whole organization may follow.”
An obnoxiously loud oatmeal ad came on. I switched to another channel.
“Thing is,” a sunburned guy said, gesturing at a pasture, “these sheep need leadership. As a flock, they’re strong. On their own, they get confused. And the wolves know that, so they go after the shepherd dogs, first. Eliminate the dog, and the flock is ripe for the taking.”
I frowned. Changed the channel again. Footage of a twentysomething guy in front of an empty office floor. “If a leader dies, the whole organization may follow.”
This wasn’t right. I glanced at Alpha, suddenly nervous. I wasn’t alone. The trolls around her feet were upright, claws twitching. I hit the off button on the remote. The channel changed. A sunburned sheep farmer filled the screen. “Eliminate the dog, and the flock is ripe for the taking.”
According to the information bar, this was a music channel.
I suddenly, vividly remembered what Neven had told us earlier. About the car alarm that alerted the trolls, and how the Powers might’ve triggered it. About how they dropped hints. Gave nudges.
A pair of trolls entered the room, mouths open to reveal stubby teeth.
“. . . thrown into chaos . . .”
Alpha had turned pale white. A troll leaped off the couch. It stalked at me, letting out a rasping snarl.
I stepped back. “No. No, we wouldn’t—”
“So I am the solution.” Alpha sounded hollow.
Several other trolls turned toward me, hatred in their eyes.
I had my answer. I knew what the Powers wanted us to do.
We needed to kill Alpha.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
“I swear!” I stumbled into the kitchen. “We’re not going to—!”
A troll snapped at me. I flung the remote at its skull and yanked my knife from my pocket. I swung—I ran—I pleaded—but Alpha’s only answer came in the form of the trolls on my heels. One troll came barreling through the open kitchen window. Shit, this was freaking Alpha out so bad that surrounding trolls were flocking to her rescue.
I couldn’t blame her. What the Powers wanted—No, I had to be wrong. I could’ve misread the signs. It could’ve been a coincidence.
In no world could killing a teenage girl be considered heroic.
Getting mauled by trolls wasn’t heroic, either. Escaping came first.
I burst through the front door and sprinted across the front yard. Movement on my right. I swerved left. Cold wind gusted past me and I gasped for breath, determined to keep going. Behind me, the trolls’ nails tapped rapidly against the pavement, like hail pelting a window.
They’d reach me any second now. I was tempted to look over my shoulder. Instead I crashed down the street, wind tugging at my hair. The trolls’ patter was getting closer—and it wasn’t just coming from behind me.
In front of me, several trolls turned onto the street. They bolted straight at me, some on all fours, some skittering sideways.
I turned so abruptly I nearly lost my footing. Couldn’t go back, couldn’t move forward. I sucked in cool winter air with erratic gasps. At least a dozen trolls were barreling toward me. More in the distance. I could do this, I could do this, I had to do this . . .
The roar of an engine cut through the air. A pickup truck careened around the same corner the trolls had come from.
“Run!” one woman crouching in the back shouted at me. She gestured at the street behind them, right as the truck caught up with the trolls. It crashed into them. The trolls screamed—a sound like boulders colliding.
I sprinted down the street. Past twitching piles of dirt, past the truck, which came to a screeching halt. Within moments, the group had leaped onto the asphalt, clutching everything from clubs to rakes. All metal.
“Looks like they were headed here,” one guy grunted. “Why the hell were they in such a rush?”
The truck must’ve followed the trolls. Alpha’s panic had reached far.
The group spread out without even needing to discuss a plan of attack.
A handful of damaged trolls rushed toward the truck on all fours, dirt teeth bared. One woman tightened her grip on her spade and swung it in a low arc. She sliced through two trolls in one go. Dirt sprayed through the air. A leg dropped, twitching, to the street.
Others were still running at the truck—no, past the truck. They weren’t focused on fighting the group. They were focused on me.
The truck abruptly backed up, crushing another few trolls.
But taking down trolls in a fair fight wasn’t the way to beat this problem. The Powers had something different in mind.
I kept running. I stayed low and tried to keep my footsteps quiet. An uncomfortable, heavy feeling twisted in my chest. Leaving these people to fight my battle. Leaving Alpha behind, panicked and alone.
And no plan for how to fix any of this.
I reached the end of the street. For a moment, I was unsure where to go. My breathing came labored. Find a quiet place to call the other Hazels or Torrance? Find the library?
Neither. I needed to find Neven.
She’d said she’d wait for our signal just outside of town, hiding in the same woods we’d crossed through to get in. I crept through the streets as quietly as I could. Here and there, I saw trolls or heard the click of their nails; every time, I dove behind a shed or parked car and held my breath, wondering about the trolls’ sense of smell. The sweat pooling under my arms and in the small of my back could tip them off.
For a few silent minutes as I walked, I might as well have been on another world. This was a movie. An idle daydream gone too far. I needed to get my feet back on solid ground and return to West Asherton life as I knew it. This wasn’t my city, wasn’t my fight, wasn’t my weapon, these weren’t even my clothes—
This wasn’t me.
But for now, it was. No matter how much the notion terrified me.
With one hand on a wooden post, I leaped over a barbed-wire fence. I ducked through long grass toward the trees. When I slipped into the shade of the forest, I didn’t know whether to be relieved because I’d be harder to find, or worried because the trolls would be harder to spot. I wished I could just call Neven aloud, but any trolls nearby would find me before she did.
Once I was shielded, I took out the phone and texted Torrance. Are you still with the others? Stay away from the house. Will come to library to explain.
I also texted Alpha, who still had Tara’s original cell phone. We’re not going to hurt you. I promise.
I stared at the screen. The text left a bad taste in my mouth.
The phone vibrated. If it was Alpha, maybe—
No. The text was from Torrance’s phone. Red here. Still at the library. Everything OK?
I replied, Am fine. See you soon.
When no other texts arrived, I kept walking. Every step I took, every leaf I crunched or twig I snapped, I was sure the trolls would be on me in seconds. I ended up aiming the phone screen at my feet, keeping it active by tapping it every now and then. It was a lot less noticeable from afar than the phone flashlight.
A murmur from up ahead. I recognized Neven’s voice.
I released a sigh of relief. I was already stepping closer when I heard a second voice.
“—qu
estioning me?”
I recognized that voice, too.
It was my own.
My mind ran through the others’ locations. Red had told me minutes ago they were at the library. Alpha had to be at or near the house.
I slipped the phone into my pocket. Another step forward. There, past a knobby old tree, I saw a glow. The shape was familiar. Long wild hair, a tall shape in a pink T-shirt—
That was me.
A sixth version of me.
A glowing sixth version of me.
The glow was so gentle I doubted I’d have noticed it if not for the dark surroundings. It looked similar to how my knife lit up whenever I held it. Just enough to think: This doesn’t look right. Where’s that light coming from?
The Hazel stood a few feet from Neven in a partial clearing. I only saw Neven from behind—the roundness of her belly, the slope of her skull. I shifted so the tree hid me better.
Glowing. Was there a dimension where I glowed? That couldn’t be right.
“You could’ve warned me you planned to call the trolls,” Neven snapped. “You knew she wasn’t prepared.”
“We had to spur them on.” This Hazel’s voice sounded subtly off, like it had an echo. “We need this rift closed before I get into worse trouble.”
“Listen. Hazel is untrained, inexperienced, and far too eager to please. I tell her to take initiative, and she takes on a dozen trolls instead of sensibly fleeing. The girl’s barely ever been in an argument, let alone a fight. She wasn’t ready. You could’ve gotten her—No. You did get her killed. Didn’t you?”
Hazel—glowing Hazel, not-quite-right Hazel—eyed Neven coldly. “I fixed it.”
“And tore the rift wide open in the process. Nothing else could cause that. Not so quickly, not at that precise time. Admit that you made a mistake. The trolls were too much, too fast. How did it happen? Which girl was it?”
“The local one. Trolls shredded her throat. I tweaked it so she saw them coming.”
Killed?
I stared at the glowing figure across the clearing. By “local one” she had to mean me. Killed. She got me killed. What did that mean? What did she “fix”?
The Art of Saving the World Page 17
