Fire Touched

2

Adam had not quite changed all the way when the traffic on the highway to town bogged down. A traffic jam on this road was unusual, but then so was a monster that destroyed cars. I suspected there was a connection. Sometimes, I’m observant like that.

I slowed until the cars ahead stopped moving altogether. Then I put the SUV into four-wheel drive and pulled onto the shoulder of the road, driving on the sidewalk when I had to in order to get around the parking lot the highway had become.

At the old metals-recycling center, I pulled into their abandoned parking lot and stopped. From here it would be faster to go on foot. As soon as I opened the door, I could hear the sirens.

Joel hopped out of the backseat into the driver’s seat. He flowed out of the car and it rocked, because he was denser in tibicena form than a real animal could be. He waited until all four feet were on the ground before igniting the fire inside him. His skin cracked and broke, revealing something that glowed fiercely even in the daylight.

Adam, all wolf now, exited after Joel. He shook himself once, then set off for the bridge. Joel and I followed him.

Even on two feet, I was fast, though the coyote would have been quicker. But I needed to have clothes on when talking to the police—for some reason, I suspected the police wouldn’t take me as seriously if I were naked. So I stayed human and ran with the silver-and-black wolf who was Adam on one side of me and Joel, who no longer could be mistaken for a dog, on the other.

We garnered attention. Pack magic operates passively to make it difficult for mundane people to notice werewolves. Adam could run down the interstate at high noon and only one or two people would see anything but a stray dog. We’d discovered that wasn’t true of Joel, even though he was a member of the pack. It was as if something in his magic fought to be seen.

Joel’s eyes were hot coals that glowed like those of a hellish demon out of a comic book. He was bigger than Adam, and he left oily black marks on the ground wherever his feet touched. People noticed. Once they noticed him, they noticed Adam.

Adam was a public figure, and though he didn’t often appear in his wolf form on the national news, locally, even in his werewolf shape, he was a celebrity. A smallish-town hero, if only because he was sort of famous.

“Hey, Mercy,” came a shout from the double line of cars. “What’s up? When you gonna reopen the shop? Sheba has an electrical problem I can’t find.”

“Shop phone still gets me, Nick,” I called, waving vaguely without looking around. I didn’t need to see him to recognize him. Nick’s Sheba was a VW bug that broke down with a regularity that was almost supernatural. “Gotta go help the police with a car-eating monster on the bridge right now.”

“What’s on the bridge?” he called, but I just waved again because I was already too far to yell loudly enough for him to hear me.

But a woman stuck her head out of a car as I passed, and yelled, “Is it werewolf trouble, Mercy?”

I didn’t know the voice, but I’d been bathing in the reflected glory of Adam long enough that I wasn’t anonymous anymore, either.

“Nope,” I told her. “Fae monster, I think.”

I was sure that Tony wouldn’t have approved: I was informing the public without talking to him. But I figured that in this era of cell phone cameras, whatever was on the bridge was already due to be famous on YouTube anyway.

The bridge was visible from a long way off on both sides of the river. Something big enough to be “eating cars” was certain to attract people with cameras and cell phones. There would be no covering this up.

Up ahead, the Lampson Building came into view, as did the blue and red flashing lights of dozens of police cars. Lampson International builds the world’s largest cranes, and they’d built their headquarters right at the base of the Cable Bridge. Four stories tall, the glass-and-steel structure was distinctively odd. It looked very much as though some giant had picked up a pyramid, turned it upside down, and squished it back into the ground.

The police had set up two barricades. The first was at the last intersection before the bridge, to keep cars away from it. There were several uniformed policemen directing traffic there. The second barricade was closer to the bridge, just past the entrance to the Vietnam Memorial, which was on the edge and up the hill from the parking lot of the Lampson Building.

We ran past the first barricade without any of the police trying to stop us, though we drew sharp looks. Probably they were too busy with traffic, but it also takes real moxie to try to stop someone who is running with a tibicena and a werewolf. Maybe they recognized Adam.

The land rose gently to meet the beginning of the suspension bridge. I looked away from the police and the stalled traffic to peer at the bridge.

It arced gracefully over the river, more or less a mile across, the most beautiful of the three Tri-Cities bridges over the Columbia, and the only one that was not a highway or interstate. Drapes of thick white cable descended from both sides of the two towers on either side of the center of the bridge.

From the Kennewick shore, I could only see to the top of the arc, halfway across the bridge, about a half mile off. There were a few cars with their noses pointed (mostly) toward us in the Kennewick-bound lane, stopped and apparently empty. The nearest car, a red Buick, rested on its roof, one of the rear tires missing. It looked, to my educated eye, like something had grabbed the tire and ripped it off the car.

The Pasco-bound lane on the right side of the bridge was clear until about halfway to the center. The rest of it looked as though a five-year-old playing with his toy cars had had a temper tantrum. The illusion was enhanced by the distance that made the cars look smaller than they were, tiny and abandoned. It was a false picture of harmlessness: all of those cars had been carrying people. I’ve seen enough wrecks to know which cars might hold bodies, waiting in endless patience for us to deal with whatever had done this before we took care of the dead.

I ran into Adam, who’d turned broadside to me. In wolf form, he was tall enough that I didn’t fall when I hit and big enough that I didn’t knock him over. He waited until I recovered, then looked at the police off to our left. They’d seen us, but, except for Tony, who trotted toward us, didn’t approach. There were a few of them who looked battered, and I could smell blood from here. Theirs or the victims’ I couldn’t tell, but it smelled fresh.

“Okay,” I told Tony. “You should have two other werewolves here already. Adam’s called in the rest of the pack, but it might take a half hour or more to get anyone else here. What do you need?”

“Can you kill this thing? Failing that, we need to keep it on the bridge until the National Guard gets here—about two hours at last check,” Tony said grimly.

He leveled an opaque look at Joel. This was Joel’s first public appearance as a member of the pack. To Tony’s credit, a black dog that looked as though he’d been half formed out of burning charcoal didn’t seem to faze him long. He barely even paused before he continued to speak.

“It doesn’t seem to be inclined to leave the bridge, thankfully. At least here it’s contained, but it has amply demonstrated that it’s staying on the bridge because it wants to be there. Nothing we’ve been able to do does much more than annoy it.”

Adam gave me a sharp look.

“I’ve got this,” I agreed. “You and Joel can go find whatever’s playing Matchbox cars on the bridge.”

Adam started out, then hesitated and turned back, Joel attentive at his side. My mate looked me in the eyes, his own golden and clear.

“I know,” I said, feeling his emotions sing to me through our mating bond. He should be able to feel mine, too, but sometimes words matter. “I love you, too.”

He turned and ran, the efficient lope of the beginning of a hunt rather than a racing stride. Joel kept pace at his hip.

Tony cupped his hand under my elbow and tugged me over to the gathered police officers, some in uniform, some in business casual, and some in whatever they happened to be wearing when they got the call. I recognized a few faces, recognized more scents, and Detective Willis, who was regarding me with an expression I couldn’t read.

“Don’t shoot the werewolves and the tibicena,” I told him—because that was the main purpose of my coming with Adam. “They’re the good guys.”

“Tibicena?” Detective Willis tasted the unfamiliar word, but that wasn’t enough to hold his attention for long. He turned to look at the bridge, not at Adam and Joel, who had slowed to take advantage of the cover provided by the strewn-about cars. “What can you tell us about the thing on the bridge? Why can’t we shoot it? Bullets don’t seem to do anything to it.”

“I don’t know what your monster is,” I told him. “I haven’t had a chance to see it yet. The tibicena is the scary black doglike creature running beside Adam. Adam is the werewolf, and the tibicena is a friend. Please tell everyone not to shoot them, okay?”

Willis gave a quick look at Adam and Joel, then frowned and narrowed his eyes, as if he’d finally realized that Joel wasn’t just a weird werewolf. “That thing is a tibicena? What the hell is a tibicena?”

“My friend,” I said coolly. “Who is risking his life to help out.”

Willis grimaced at me. “Don’t take offense where none is meant, Mercy Hauptman.” He put a hand to his face and pressed a button I couldn’t see because he said, “Do not, I repeat, do not shoot the scary black dog . . . doglike creature. Don’t shoot the werewolves, either. They are on our side, people.”

Tony, who’d followed me over to Willis, said, presumably to me, “We have a couple of SWAT snipers up on top of the Lampson Building and a couple more on top of the Crow’s Nest on Clover Island—for all the good that’s doing us.”

Clover Island was a boating and tourist mecca just west of the bridge, lots of boats, lots of docks, and, on the tiny island itself, a hotel, the Coast Guard office, and a few restaurants. The Crow’s Nest was the restaurant on the top floor of the hotel. “They can’t get a shot, the wind is too high.” His voice was cool and controlled. “Pasco’s got a couple of marksmen up on their side of the river, too. At this rate, we’re more likely to shoot each other than whatever that thing is. And given how effective our bullets have been, it wouldn’t matter anyway.”

“It’s over the hump, and I haven’t been able to see it,” I said. “What’s it look like?”

“King Kong,” said one of the officers I didn’t know. “If King Kong were green and covered in moss with a nose set higher than his eyes. And it is well and truly a him because that part isn’t green.”

“Like Christmastime,” agreed a woman I’d seen before but hadn’t been introduced to. “Red and green.”

“That’s more than I saw,” said a guy in sweats with a long streak of dried blood on the sleeve. “I was too busy getting out of there with my battered civilians.”

“What’s it doing?” I asked. “I mean, why is it still on the bridge and not somewhere else? Have the werewolves been keeping it on the bridge?”

“If it wanted off the bridge,” said an officer grimly, “it would be off the bridge.”

“Adam’s people are doing a fine job of keeping it occupied,” said Tony. “According to the Pasco police, they’ve been distracting it whenever it seems to be thinking about heading off. But it really doesn’t seem to want off.”

The guy in the bloody sweatshirt spoke up. “One of the victims I escorted out said it just stopped and ran back to the middle of the bridge. It’s been back on our side a couple of times, Pasco, too—but mostly seems to be hanging out in the center section.” He looked at me. “That thing was coming right for me, and this big black guy ran past and hit it with a baseball bat. I figure I’ve played baseball most of my life, and I never saw a human swing a bat like that. Broke the bat, which I have seen, but not like that. He saved my life and the lives of the four people I was helping off the bridge, too. Is he one of your guys?”

Darryl. Darryl carried a baseball bat in his car, a baseball bat and a baseball. In Washington, it was illegal to carry only a baseball bat in your car. Darryl wasn’t out as a werewolf at his work. I suppose that cat would be out of the bag after today.

“Probably,” I said.

“Then why wasn’t he sprouting fangs and hair?” growled someone else.

I opened my mouth to snap something back, but then I located the voice. She had a compression bandage on her arm, which was in a sling, and a rosy flush that would be black-and-blue tomorrow covered half her face.

“No time,” I told her. “Most werewolves take a while to change—ten minutes or even fifteen or twenty. My friends—the two werewolves who beat us here—were driving by when they realized what was going on. They called us, then dove in to help.”

“Thank goodness for that,” one of the patrolmen said. I didn’t think I was supposed to hear him because he said it under his breath.

“The other one was changing,” one of the guys who looked familiar said. “It was pretty freaky.”

“It’s hard for a werewolf not to change when something’s trying to kill him,” I told them. “A werewolf in midchange isn’t helpless, just not as good in a fight because he’s distracted.” And not as likely to be able to control himself. But they didn’t need to know that.

“We were hoping you might ID it for us,” Willis said. “So we know what to do about it.”

I’d helped the police with fae affairs before. But I wasn’t an expert by any means—and my fae connections weren’t available. Samuel and his fae wife, Ariana, were in Europe, and would be for another month or more. Zee and Tad were, as far as I knew, prisoners on the reservation in Walla Walla. But I had been studying up, and I’d had access to information that most humans wouldn’t have had.

“It would help if I could see it,” I told him. Green, I thought. King Kong, though, so we were dealing with something that looked like a large, green gorilla that was big enough to toss cars around. And it stayed on the bridge.

I closed my eyes and envisioned the book I’d borrowed once, a book that detailed a lot of the fae, what they were, what they could do, and how to protect yourself from them. It had been written by a fae—Samuel’s Ariana, in fact—so the information was pretty accurate.

“Troll,” I said, opening my eyes. “It could be a troll. Green—how tall?” Some of them were green.

“Like a semitruck,” Willis said. “That tall, not that big, though it’s big enough.”

Someone let out a shout, and I looked at the bridge. Right at the top of the arc, I could see movement—something green and about the shape of a gorilla. It leaped and grabbed one of the cables—which were bigger around than both of my hands could reach together—and used the cable to climb upward.

“So look at it,” said Tony, and he handed me a pair of binoculars.

It had skin the color of a green bell pepper. Sparse, lacy moss green . . . stuff grew out of its shoulders and feathered down from its head. It wasn’t hair, but it would give that appearance to anyone not holding a pair of binoculars. Smallish eyes were set a little below a wide-nostriled nose. On either side of the nostrils were slits that looked as though someone had cut its face open with a sharp knife. The inner edge of the slits was bright red—gill slits for breathing underwater, maybe. Trolls lived near water by preference and, when they could, around bridges. There is magic in places that are between: crossroads, thresholds, bridges. Which might explain why he stayed on the Cable Bridge rather than running over the top of the police and into Pasco or Kennewick.

It was certainly a he, and he really was enjoying his climb. I was a shapeshifter, and I’d grown up in a werewolf pack—body shy I was not. But bright red was still really, really shocking next to all that green.

“Yup,” I said, trying to sound nonchalant because it wouldn’t do to run around screaming in front of a group of police people I was trying to impress for the good of the pack. Ever since the werewolves had admitted to their existence, they’d had to fight for the goodwill of the communities they lived in. Goodwill made it safer for everyone. “It’s a troll.”

Somehow, a troll hadn’t seemed as scary when I was reading about it in Ariana’s book. The drawing had been about four inches high by two inches wide. The real creature was terrifying, even half a mile away—elephant-sized or a hair bigger, judging by a rough comparison to the cars nearest him.

I couldn’t see any of the wolves—not even Adam or Joel. The bridge was slightly angled from where I stood, and the center barricade between the opposite lanes blocked what line of sight was left with the battered cars littering the roadway, but from the agitation of the troll, I expected that they were there.

Having evidently gotten as far up as it intended, the troll swung for a moment from both arms, which were overly long for his body, longer than his legs. That accounted for the instant association with gorillas—though his features and coloring were nothing like one. His mouth was horribly humanesque despite the eye placement, until he smiled and displayed teeth, sharp and wedge-shaped, in double rows like a shark’s.

He opened his four-fingered, thumbless hands and dropped from maybe thirty feet up—it was tough to judge from that distance, binoculars or no. I couldn’t see him land. The inconveniently placed center cement barricade hid my view. But I could feel the impact on the ground under my feet from half a mile away. I heard it, too, and saw the bridge shudder. I handed back the binoculars. It hadn’t landed on any of the wolves, I told myself. The pack sense would have told me if someone had died.

“What’s a troll?” Tony asked as he took the binoculars, then made an impatient sound. “I know what it is in the stories—‘Three Billy Goats Gruff’ and all of that. But how do you stop it? Our guns didn’t seem to do much more than tick it off while we were trying to get the civilians to safety.”

“They’re tough,” I told Tony. “Usually more brawn than brains, though they can talk, or most of them can. A troll’s skin is supposed to be very thick; the book I read about it compared it to a suit of armor, for whatever that’s worth. It must be tougher than most medieval armor if your guns didn’t hurt him.”

I tried to remember everything I could. “He’ll be equally comfortable on land or the river—you should warn your guys in the boats.” There were a number of boats gathering on either side of the bridge, more now than there had been five minutes ago. I judged that most of them were gawkers, but I thought I saw a couple of official boats, too.

“Any idea how we can kill it?”

“Back in the day, people used to hunt them with lances,” I told him apologetically.

Tony gave me an unamused laugh. “Mercy, we’re all that stands between the citizens and that thing when it comes down off the bridge. I don’t have any mounted knights down here.”

“J.C. has a horse,” the guy with the bloody sleeve said.

“Yeah,” said another guy absently. Like Tony and a few others, he had a pair of binoculars. He was staring through them as he spoke. “But his lance is too small.”

“You’d know about small lances,” said still another guy. This one apparently was J.C. because he continued, “But my horse is afraid of sheep and small children. I don’t think I could get him within a mile of a troll—and no one’s lance is that big.”

“How many people do you have injured?” I asked Tony quietly as the other police officers worked off stress and fear by exchanging rude and inappropriate comments.

Tony shrugged. “We got the civilians off on our side. Pasco got them off on theirs. Some idiot tried to protect his car and got thrown into the river. Sheriff’s patrol on the river says he hit wrong and broke his neck. We lost one of our guys who was distracting the troll from a car while Pasco officers cleared the passengers out.”

“Ate him,” said Willis grimly, though he kept his voice down so he was talking just to Tony and me. “I’ve known that man for ten years. Lousy cop. He was lazy and good at making sure that someone else took the call. He stepped up today, though. No kids, no wife.” He shuddered. “No body.”

“Willis?” said a muffled voice. I turned my head to see Willis put his hand to his ear and hold the earpiece tighter.

“Yes?”

“You see that gray van? West side of the bridge, Kennewick-bound lane, stopped just over the arc toward you? The one with the caved-in side?”

“I see it.”

“There’s someone in that van. The left side’s smashed, but the right side door slid open a minute ago. Looks like one of the werewolves, one of the first two, might have opened the door. The one who has been turning into a wolf.” That would be Zack, I thought.

There was a pause. “I can see him again. There’s still someone else in the van, a woman. They aren’t coming out. Shit,” he said. “Oh damn. There’s a car seat. They’re trying to get a baby out of the car seat. But they’re having trouble. There’s something wrong with the woman, and the wolf isn’t equipped to deal with a car seat.”

Willis stiffened. “We’ll get someone over there.”

In my mind’s eye, I thought about what would happen to a police officer—a dozen police officers who tried running in front of the troll to get to the car. The troll had eaten one of them already. Adam and the wolves would do their best, but humans were too slow.

I wasn’t slow.

I’d promised Adam I wouldn’t be stupid. But there was a car seat and a baby. I considered what might be the problem that Zack hadn’t been able to get them out of the van. Baby seats attached to the car with seat belts. Babies produced a lot of sticky substances that could make buckles tough to open, and the belts were strong. Werewolf jaws do fine with rending and ripping, but they might have trouble with seat belts attached to fragile babies.

I felt my pockets to make sure, but the only thing I had in my pocket was the essential oil bottle Zack had stuffed there. My concealed-carry gun was in its holster in the small of my back, but that wouldn’t be much use if I had to cut a seat belt.

“Hey, Tony,” I said casually. “Do you have a knife I can borrow?”

Tony was talking to one of the officers about something else. He didn’t even ask me what I needed it for. Just handed me a sleek black pocketknife. I took it and slipped it into my pocket, where pocketknives go, right?

I had watched the troll. He had moved fast, but not as fast as the werewolves could because he had tried to drop on them and failed. If the werewolves could outrun him, so could I.

I was pretty sure I could outrun him.

Willis briefed everyone on the new problem because they were human and couldn’t overhear the bluetooth earphone. As he talked to his people, I considered my actions carefully because I’d made a promise to Adam.

I could outrun that troll if I had to—better than that baby trapped in the van could outrun it. Better than any of the officers who already had casualties.

I had to be able to look at myself in the mirror. If I stayed safe when I might have saved someone else, especially a baby . . . that would poison what was between Adam and me.

“I’ll do it,” I said. “I’m faster than you guys are.”

Tony’s hand clamped on my arm. “Civilian,” he snapped.

I looked at him. “You know what I am,” I said dryly, because he did. I’d kept what I was a secret for most of my life. But being Adam’s wife, belonging to the pack—that looked like it meant that a lot of my secrets were going to come out. Being Adam’s wife meant that being a coyote shifter wasn’t going to make me any more of a target than I already was.

The other officers were paying attention while trying to pretend they weren’t. We’d been clear with the news media that I wasn’t a werewolf.

I gave Tony a smile. “You’ve seen me run.” And so the police would know we hadn’t lied to them outright: “I’m not a werewolf, but I’m faster than any mundane person.”

He didn’t smile back. “Maybe so. Are you faster than that thing?”

A howl echoed from the bridge, and I saw the gathered police officers come to alert, their hands sliding to weapons and their muscles tensing. I understood the instinct; the distinctive howl was as much a weapon of the tibicena as the volcanic heat under his skin. He hadn’t loosed the full power of his cry. But despite that, despite the distance between us, the howl sent an atavistic icy finger of fear up my spine, only partially alleviated by my understanding that it was just magic.

“It looks like we’re going to find out. Besides, our tibicena”—who had been lion-sized, half-formed, and growing the last time I’d seen him—“won’t forget I’m an ally. I’m not sure he’d make the same association with a stranger.” I didn’t know how much of Joel had stayed in charge when he took full tibicena form. Joel said it was hit-and-miss. So far, the tibicena had been friendly, more or less, to anyone in the pack.

“No,” Tony said.

“No,” snapped Willis.

“Not your call to make,” I told them. Then I twisted using my shoulder and opposite hand to break Tony’s grip and slipped by his attempt to regain a hold. As soon as I was free, I bolted for the bridge.

My ears told me no one had taken more than a couple of steps to stop me, but at the end of the bridge, I glanced over my shoulder to make sure. Then I dropped to a walk.

Running would attract the troll’s attention if it looked this way. The bridge had four lanes with a central divider. On the outer edge of the outside lane was a guardrail, a sidewalk, and a waist-high banister-style galvanized fence designed to keep people from leaping off into the river. There was a sign, too, that announced there was a $250 fine for jumping from the bridge. The outer coat of galvanization on the metal railings had begun to peel under the effects of the sun and wind, but it didn’t look trashy yet.

I gripped the top of the rail and walked steadily up the bridge. I looked at the ground, the sky, the water below, dark blue because the wind was blowing in a storm. I even looked at the men crouching on top of the island hotel. I didn’t look for the troll. Some things can feel you watching them. If I made it to the van without attracting attention, it would be a very good thing.

Ahead of me, I could hear the sound of metal crunching and glass breaking. I could hear Adam growling and the sound of Darryl’s voice, though I couldn’t tell what he was saying. Whatever they were doing, they were doing it on the far side of the bridge.

I made it safely to the first car, the upside-down red Buick. There was blood on the broken glass of the driver’s-side door. It wasn’t enough to have been life-threatening—but people die from things other than blood loss when their car has rolled. Tony and Willis had only described two deaths, so the occupants of this car were probably going to be okay. I clutched that reassurance to myself and kept walking.

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.

“It won’t start,” the woman behind me said. “My sister, she tried and tried. I told her to get out, that I was right behind her, and she ran. She figured it out, but by then the police had her.”

“Shh. It’s okay.”

I tried to put it into neutral, but the linkage was stuck. It would still roll with the clutch in—but I’d have to push the van and hold the clutch at the same time. I tried to open the door—and it wouldn’t open. I remembered the huge crease that something had put down the driver’s side of the van.

All the werewolves were fighting for their lives—but the hunting song touched them all, I couldn’t block it. They knew I was in trouble, and one of them came to help. Two wolves against the troll weren’t enough. But Adam was the heart of the song, its director if not its dictator, and he directed Joel to come help me. He picked Joel because Joel could best protect me if he and Zack failed to hold the troll back.

Out loud because he was ignoring me otherwise, I said, “No, Adam. I’ll figure out something.”

Joel came anyway. I could see him in the rearview mirror. Joel looked a little different every time he took on the tibicena form. It was the subject of much discussion in the pack. Zack said he thought it might be because the tibicena is a creature of the volcano, and lava doesn’t have a hardened shape. That was my favorite explanation.

This time, fully formed and mostly solid, he looked a little like a foo lion, his muzzle broad and almost catlike, with a mane of dreadlocks that crackled and hissed as they moved, breaking the outer black shell and displaying liquid-orange-glowing lava that cooled rapidly to black again as some other part broke open. The effect was a shimmering, flashing, black-and-orange fringe about six inches long.

His body had thickened and his legs lengthened, front more than the rear, so his back had a German-shepherd slant. His tail lashed back and forth, more like a cat’s than a dog’s, and the end of his tail was covered with the same lava-light-enhanced dreads that his neck wore.

He put his shoulder against the van, and the battered metal smoked and . . . we both felt it when Adam staggered under a blow that shattered his shoulder. Zack was there with Adam, but we all knew, the hunt sense knew, that he was not the partner that Joel was. We felt his frantic efforts to distract the troll from Adam, who had fallen.

Joel heaved, and the van started rolling—and Joel ran back to the battle. The van moved sluggishly around the SUV, but when I got the wheel straight, it traveled better.

By the time we reached the bottom of the bridge, we had achieved a pace that made weaving through the dead vehicles interesting because I had to keep the nose of the van pointed downhill. I passed the last car, the red Buick, and I lost the song of the hunt. The loss was unbearable, leaving me raw—and frantic, because the loss fried some circuit in my brain. I could feel the pack bond, feel the mating bond between Adam and me—but it told me nothing other than that Adam and the pack were there.

I stayed the course until the van coasted past the police barricade—which they had moved so I could get the van through. As soon as I stopped the van, police and EMTs swarmed around it.

The woman and her baby as safe as I could get them, I abandoned them to run back up the bridge. What I expected to do to something the werewolves weren’t able to stop, I didn’t know. I only knew that Adam was hurt, and I wasn’t there to make him safe.