The Accidental Troll

by Dakota Cassidy

  “He was just carryin’ on about his inheritance. That’s it. That’s all I know.”

  Bracing her hand against the tree, she asked, “Do you know who the guy is? Did he…did he look like Sten?”

  “I didn’t see his face. He had a hood on. I only saw him draggin’ a little troll through the woods.”

  Her heart began to pump harder and harder. “Was she okay?” she asked, barely able to manage the words.

  “She was screamin’ like a damn banshee troll. So for sure her lungs were good.”

  “You know what I meant, Pete.”

  “Don’t get huffy. She was fine.” He flapped his wings, clearly annoyed with her. “Now, about that bread…”

  She dug a hunk out of the basket and held it up, but when he tried to take it, she pulled her hand back. “Did you hear him say where he was going?”

  Pete sighed. “I told you what I heard, lady. Though, I did see which way he went.”

  Her heart sped up again and her hands grew clammy. “Which way did he go? Can you show me?”

  “Bread first, and I’ll show you the exact spot.”

  She tucked the bread back into the basket. “Not until you show me the spot.”

  He made a clucking noise. “That wasn’t the damn deal, lady.”

  “Show me, Pete!” she demanded.

  Pete lifted his wings and said, “Follow me, but there’d better be bread at the end of this, or I’m gonna shit all over your car.”

  He lifted off from the limb and she followed without even thinking, without pausing to tell anyone what she was doing.

  She ran behind him, weaving in and out of the rocky path to avoid tripping over the rough terrain while she looked up through the thick umbrella of trees to keep track of Pete.

  In hindsight, she would realize that it was a stupid thing to do, but while she was doing it, it made sense to blindly follow him. After all, they hadn’t gone that far from the others, because she was no runner and she was only a little out of breath.

  Murphy didn’t have to run much farther before Pete circled what looked like a barren patch of land with only dirt, set in the middle of more trees, and as she slowed to keep her eye on him, she didn’t watch where her feet were going.

  Without warning, the ground gave way beneath her feet, and the last thing she saw before falling into what was surely a black hole, was the bread flying out of the basket and up in the air, and Pete swooping down to the ground to snatch it up.

  Chapter 21

  “Murphy!” Sten hollered, caring little that the enemy, whoever the enemy was, might hear him. He was too worried about where she was and whether someone had taken her.

  “Fuuuck!” Nina spat the word, planting her hands on her hips. “She was right there on that damn log, dude. Right. Fucking. There.”

  He stormed back to the log she’d last been sitting on when he’d given her the basket of bread and cheese. It was getting dark, and at night, in the forest, it was pretty cold. Her backpack was still there, and so was her water bottle, but the basket with the food was missing.

  “Okay, before we do anything, let’s think this through rationally. You guys have amazing hearing, right? Did you hear her scream? Cry out? Anything?”

  “I was so damn engrossed in trying to figure out where the fuck we go next, I wasn’t paying attention,” Nina said.

  They all shook their heads. “Nope.” Though, I do remember her making that noise she made with the animals at your house, and with Bellamy’s cat. So maybe she found something out from one of the animals and went to investigate?” Marty asked.

  Sten whipped around, his eyes instantly scouring the area. “Maybe, but after we all agreed the smartest thing was to stay together, why would she run off to do anything? That’s not like Murphy.”

  “Sten? Look,” Bellamy said, pointing to the soft ground. “Footprints. Maybe we can follow them?” She didn’t wait for him to answer; she began walking, careful not to muck up the shoe prints.

  Everyone fell in line, following the footprints until they’d walked maybe a few hundred feet, just out of sight of the log where they’d last seen her—and found a huge hole in the ground and the basket of food, the latter thoroughly scavenged by the birds.

  Nina parted the group and said, “You two smell anything?”

  Marty and Wanda both sniffed the air. Marty squinted and said, “It’s vague, but the damn scent of the forest keeps getting in the way, and I’m not sure if her scent is just lingering or if it’s coming from the hole.”

  “Hold the fuck on. I’ll jump down and see what I can see.”

  The moment the vampire spoke the words was the moment she jumped down into the hole.

  Sten grabbed the flashlight from his backpack and shined it on her. “See anything?”

  “Nope, but I damn well smell her. Believe me, I know her scent, she’s only hugged me a thousand times since we met.”

  “What the hell is this?”

  “Looks like a bunch of tunnels.”

  Was it a tunnel to the mines? Did it spread out as far as the middle of the north end? That’s the only thing that made sense. Fuck, Sten needed to spend more time learning about the ins and outs of Troll Hill.

  He pulled the map from his back pocket again and looked at it, frowning. “If there are tunnels down there, they don’t show up on the map.”

  Nina put a hand over her eyes to peer up at him. “I’m tellin’ you, dude, she’s fuckin’ down here somewhere. Maybe she fell in? The dirt looks pretty scuffed up, but I don’t smell blood.”

  Shit. “Broken bones don’t bleed,” he reminded her.

  Marty put her hand on Sten’s shoulder, likely sensing his worry. “But remember, she’s pretty strong. If she has to, she can defend herself until we can get to her.”

  His chest grew tight. “But can she defend herself against magic? She has none, Marty.”

  “Then in we go,” Marty said, before she leapt into the hole with Wanda right behind her.

  Bellamy looked at him, biting her lip. “You okay?”

  Sten chucked her under the jaw the way he used to when she was little, worried about her mental state of mind.

  Yes, she’d done this, she was the catalyst. But the pile-on had to really be eating her up, and as much as he wanted her to feel remorse, he didn’t want her to be browbeaten forever.

  “I’m okay. You okay?”

  “I just want to find whoever the hell this is and get Mom and Nova back.”

  Sten squeezed her slender shoulder. “You do know Mom’s a tough old bird, right?”

  She laughed a dry chuckle. “I know. If it’s possible, Mom’s giving whoever it is hell. Just like she does Dad when he forgets to take out the bins.”

  Sten let a small laugh escape his lips. “That sounds like Mom. You sure you’re up for this?”

  She looked at him, her green eyes glittering. “There’s no damn way I’m not going with you. I did this. This is all my fault. So don’t even bother to ask.”

  He pulled her into a hug, and she clung to him for a second before she pushed off his chest. “Then in you go,” he said into the coming dark.

  As Bellamy jumped down, and he prepared to do the same, he sent out a prayer to the universe they’d be able to handle whatever happened next, and that his mother and Nova and the rest survived it—even if he didn’t.

  Murphy was never one for corn mazes even though she loved Halloween. She just wasn’t very good directionally speaking, and after falling in the hole and cracking her head on a rock, she woke up to find herself in a dirt tunnel of some kind. When she looked up, the hole above her was gone.

  Judging from the marks on the ground next to her, someone had tried to drag her and probably given up the ghost because she wasn’t exactly a hundred pounds. She wasn’t even a hundred and fifty pounds.

  Who had tried to drag her was the question, and why? But that had been the question all along. Who was doing this? Who was pretending to be Sten?

  A sh
iver ran along her spine and left goose bumps on her arms. Was it the person who had Nova? And where the hell was she?

  A small, distant rumbling, almost like a low hum, greeted her ears, but she didn’t recognize it as something familiar. Though, all the talk about mines made her wonder if this was the entrance to one. What else could it be?

  Now she was wandering these tunnels with only the flashlight from her phone, and that couldn’t last forever. She’d left her backpack behind, so there were no flares or lighters to help her. It was just her and her crappy sense of direction in a maze of dirt and rock.

  She didn’t know whether to keep moving or to stay in one place in the hopes someone would find her. But if someone did find her, would it be the right someone?

  And what if no one found her? Ever? Or what if they found her too late? Though, if she died in here, it would likely be of starvation—if nothing else, they’d find her skinny.

  Murphy rolled her eyes. God, she was losing it. Focus, Murphy.

  Deciding the right thing to do was lie low and keep moving, she went down another dirt corridor, turning off the flashlight and using her hands to feel her way to the end so she wouldn’t waste her battery. And when she reached said end, she dug her fingers into the dirt wall to mark where she’d been.

  By the time she’d easily gone down ten more tunnels, she stopped, angry and frustrated.

  She would not give in to fear. Though, that was a hard pill to swallow when no one knew where she was, and she certainly couldn’t count on Pete to tell anyone because they couldn’t communicate with him.

  She stopped for a second, turning off the phone once more and taking deep breaths to ease her rising panic. Of all the damn powers she could have gotten, why couldn’t she have gotten the one where she could turn anything into food?

  While they’d been in the middle of this maelstrom of crazy, she’d looked up trolls on the Internet, and there was a variety of troll who, according to Google, could turn anything into food.

  Which would have been really helpful right now, because despite the dire circumstances, she was starving.

  That would teach her to leave home without breakfast.

  The rumble of her stomach echoed and swirled around the dirt walls of the tunnel. If she was going to die here, all alone, she wished she had a Big Mac to do it with.

  Inhaling again, Murphy fought off the vision of some fries, forcing herself to walk some more. Eventually, she had to hit the tunnel that would lead her out of here—didn’t she? If it had a beginning, it had an end.

  Somewhere.

  Reaching the end of yet another length of tunnel, she flicked the light on to mark the spot and realized she’d already been here.

  Fuck and more fuck.

  Resting her arm against the wall, she pressed her forehead to it and sighed. She wanted to punch a hole through the wall, she was so angry.

  Her head popped up.

  Wait. Could she do that?

  She was pretty strong now, right? Could she dig her own tunnel? And if so, where should she start digging first?

  Turning her phone back off, she stuck it in her back pocket, faced forward, and kept moving until she found a dirt wall. Pulling her arm back, she made a fist and shot her arm forward, driving her hand into the dirt.

  When she made contact and pushed her way through the dirt, it stung a little, but it was nothing she couldn’t withstand if it meant getting out of this dark hovel.

  Taking a page from Nova, she punched her other hand into the wall, and then she began scooping out dirt. Gravel flew everywhere as she picked up speed, hitting her in the face and neck, but she kept going until she almost couldn’t breathe.

  With shaky hands, she pulled her phone from her back pocket again and flipped on the flashlight app, holding it up to the wall.

  “Well, that’s a fine how do you do.”

  She’d done nothing more that dig a huge hole, not only weakening the wall—which now quivered from the force of her impact—but leaving her hands cut up and sore.

  If this was a mine, didn’t she have to be super careful about the structure and mass something or other?

  Man, she was creative, not technical, and that sounded like a technical question—either way, she didn’t have the answer, but now she wondered if she’d done more damage than good.

  Now what? Should she keep digging to China or should she stop and go down another tunnel and hope she hadn’t already tried it?

  Leaning back against the wall, she closed her eyes and tried to weigh the pros and cons.

  “Choices, huh, Murphy?” a voice said.

  Her eyes flew open and she stood up straight, shining her flashlight app at the direction of the voice.

  Sten! It was Sten! Thank God it was Sten!

  She didn’t think about how it would look or whether it was appropriate or not; she didn’t care. Murphy lunged for him, throwing her arms around his neck and pressing a kiss to his cheek.

  “Oh, my God, I can’t believe you found me!” she yelped. “I’m so glad to see you!”

  But Sten pulled her arms from his neck and glared at her before roughly pushing her away. “You’ve got the wrong guy, Murphy,” he said, before she heard the rustle of something…and then she saw the shiny barrel of a gun.

  That was when she made the connection. She didn’t understand all of it, but she sure as hell understood a gun and who this was.

  Murphy? Meet Sten-alike.

  Chapter 22

  Murphy blinked until her eyes adjusted to the very dim light Sten-alike had on a desk in the corner of a room in the tunnels.

  Her hands now bound with zip-ties dipped in magic, according to him, he dragged her through the door and threw her down on the ground. She stumbled and fell into the wall, scraping her face against the hard-packed dirt and rock, hitting the ground with her eyes closed.

  Her brain must have been addled from her fall, because she could have sworn she heard Arch yell out, “Mistress Murphy!”

  “Hey! You don’t gotta be so rough!” said another voice, surely Darnell’s, if she was hearing correctly.

  What were they doing here?

  “You insidious, hateful animal! No wonder you were kept hidden!” another voice hissed, this one female and completely foreign to her.

  That was when she heard a loud crack and a whimper, before Darnell yelped, “You betta hope I don’t get outta this thing, pal! What kinda man hits a lady?”

  “Shut up! All of you, shut the fuck up!” who she’d come to know as the Sten-alike screamed, before she heard retreating footsteps.

  As Murphy tried to right herself and get her bearings, she heard a continual scratching sound. One that would surely drive her mad.

  Someone shimmied up alongside her and used their shoulder to nudge her upward. “Miss Murphy, listen to me. Can you hear me?”

  “Darnell?” she groaned, her head pounding as she rolled over and blood began to drip into her eyes.

  “Yeah, it’s me. Listen to me, okay? We’re gonna get outta here, but you have to sit tight. Now open your eyes and lemme see you look at me.”

  Clenching her teeth, she groaned again before she forced herself to open her eyes and look into Darnell’s soft, round face. “Where are we? What is this place?”

  “Somewhere in the mines under Sten’s house.”

  Her thoughts swirled in her head like a tornado as she tried to gather them. “Under his house? The one in Troll Hill?”

  He nodded in the dim light. “Yes, ma’am. There’s a network of ‘em all over Troll Hill.”

  “I can’t believe this jerk’s been under our noses the whole time. We were going to the north to try and find him and he was right here!”

  “We were as surprised as you are, Mistress Murphy.”

  “I don’t understand how you guys got involved?” What the hell was going on?

  Arch scooched over a little, his short, stout body inching toward her, his hands tied, too. “As you know, we were all at the hous
e waiting with Jannick, the lovely Birgit’s husband, when this man—who quite looks like our Master Sten—burst through the door, rounded us up like cattle, threatened us with a gun then used some sort of magic to bind us and zapped us here, where we’ve been ever since, praying for someone to find us.”

  “But why? Why does he care about any of you?”

  “He was looking for Mistress Nova, Murphy, and when he didn’t find her, he became quite angry. I fear Master Sten’s quaint cottage might be due for an overhaul, when all is said and done.”

  When she was able to more clearly see Arch’s face, Murphy winced, fighting the tremble of her lower lip. “Oh, Arch, are you okay? Did he hurt you?”

  But Arch blustered, puffing out his cheeks. “Surely not as much as my pride. It’s nothing more than a scratch from when he shoved us all in here and I, old man that I am, tripped. There are days when I wish for my vampiric powers once more. I would have shown this ruffian a thing or two!”

  “Does he have Nova, too?” she squeaked, her throat raw from all the dust. She knew it was likely a stupid question.

  Who else would have Nova? But she asked anyway on the smallest of chances someone else had her.

  Arch and Darnell looked at each other. Their faces said it all. “He does, Mistress Murphy.”

  “Oh, Darnell…” she whispered. “I’m sorry. Arch, I’m so sorry.”

  “Mistress Murphy, please don’t fret. This isn’t your fault.”

  Darnell, now that she could see him more clearly, too, was pretty roughed up. There was a gash over his eye, crusted with blood, and a long scratch along his chubby cheek. “When we realized he wasn’t Sten, I was gonna take him out, but he had a gun on Arch. Arch ain’t like us, Murphy. I couldn’t take a chance. Then he used his magic to zap us here anyway. I don’t have the kind of magic he does. It’s strong. Real strong.”

  Leaning into Darnell, Murphy looked him in the eye. “But are you okay, Darnell? He looks like he really let you have it.”

  He bounced his dark head. “I’m fine. Ain’t nothin’ that won’t heal. I’m a demon, remember? We heal up right nice.”