Fire Touched (Mercy Thompson, #9)(17)

I dropped the bottle and prepared to be hurt. I held the walking stick as I’d have held a spear in class with my sensei, though the metal-shod end had not changed, as it sometimes did, from decorative embellishment into a blade. A bad sign, I thought.

But Adam’s presence meant that I wasn’t alone. For some suicidal reason, that left me in the Zen state that I only managed at the end of a very hard workout with Adam or Sensei Johanson.

I narrowed my eyes at the troll and thought, Bring it. The troll, so close I could feel his breath, stepped on the pavement where I’d dropped the essential oils and staggered back as if he’d hit a wall.

Adam didn’t wait for an engraved invitation. He leaped up the troll, in almost the same way that Darryl had, except that when he reached the troll’s shoulders, Adam extended his claws and brought his front feet, good shoulder and bad, together in a great swinging motion and dug deep into either side of the troll’s head. The troll cried out and reached back, and just as he had with Darryl, he grabbed Adam and pulled.

A sudden burst of pain ran down my shoulder from my mate bond, dropping me to the ground with the unexpected fury of it, as real or worse than if it had been my own pain, the mating bond abruptly opening up clear and full. I screamed with the pain and utter terror because the pain I felt was Adam’s and not my own. The terror drove me back to my feet, and I went after the troll with a fury that lit my bones with determination to stand between my mate and anything that hurt him.

I whacked the troll behind the knee with the stick, but it didn’t even flinch. So I hit him again, harder, with the narrow end as though the walking stick were a foil and I wanted to stab him. The spearpoint did not form on the end of the stick, as it sometimes did, but apparently the silver-shod end was enough to hurt. The troll whined and turned his shoulders toward me, but Adam pulled the creature’s head back where it had been.

From the feel of the pain he shared with me, I knew Adam’s shoulder had begun healing from the earlier damage the troll had done, but it was tearing again. Even so, a werewolf’s claws are like those of a grizzly: the troll couldn’t dislodge Adam. As the troll pulled, Adam’s refusal to release his own grip meant that the troll was wrenching Adam apart.

This wasn’t the time to be squeamish. I hit the troll in one testicle with the butt end of the staff in the fencing stance I’d used before. As I did, there was a wet, popping noise.

I thought I’d done some damage, but there was no blood where I’d hit him. For a breathless second, I wondered if the troll had broken Adam. But it was the troll who screamed as he pulled Adam loose—and ripped off a cap of moss hair, thick skin, and gray-green bone along with Adam. Then there was a lot of blood.

The troll tossed Adam in a gore-dripping, bloody mess over my head. I heard him hit the pavement, but I couldn’t afford to look away. The troll was hurt but not dead. Adam was unconscious, and I was the only thing standing between him and the troll.

Though there was a gaping hole in his skull, the troll didn’t seem to be appreciably disabled. I tightened my hold on the walking stick, my only weapon, and prepared to be annihilated.

Something flew through the air, buzzing as it passed me, and buried itself in the newly opened section of the troll’s skull. The troll’s roar was so loud it hurt my ears.

The projectile fell out of the troll’s head and onto the pavement with a clang, revealing itself to be a five-foot chunk of steel pipe, modified with a point on one end and crude fins on the other.

The troll, eyes wild, bashed one fist into the cement barrier between the lanes in a berserker rage. He screamed as cement fell away from his fist in chunks, revealing the barrier’s framework of rebar. He grabbed the rebar cage and jerked an entire section of cement free.

I turned and sprinted, visions of a flying Miata in my head. Adam couldn’t move out of the way. Adam lay unconscious on his side, blood darkening his fur and flattening it.

I made it to him in four strides. Dropping the walking stick, I grabbed a handful of the fur over his hips and skin behind his neck. I’m strong for a woman, but no stronger than any human woman who worked out four times a week with a werewolf and a sadistic sensei. Adam-as-a-werewolf weighs nearly double what I do. But I lifted him over my shoulders, staggered a step, then ran.

I expected to see the police barricade, though the SWAT team in their body armor was new. Funny how I wouldn’t risk aiming the troll at the police to save myself, but for Adam I’d have thrown the whole lot of them to the troll, despite the genuine friendship I felt for some of them.

But it wasn’t just the police I saw.

Running toward us was a very wet Darryl, who otherwise looked unharmed by his immersion in the river. He had one hand back in a classic javelin thrower’s pose, another pipe weapon pulled back to throw. Keeping pace beside him with visible effort was a too-thin, grim-faced Tad. He held another pipe in his hand, and I watched as he molded it with magic into a weapon that matched the one Darryl held. Darryl took a couple more racing strides and let the pipe javelin go.

I couldn’t tell what it did once it flew past me, but something hit the bridge and bounced the pavement under my feet so I stumbled. Cement and broken rebar flew over Adam and me and bounced ahead of me—evidently the troll had thrown his chunk of cement barrier. I managed a couple of trying-to-get-my-balance steps before I lost that battle entirely. I landed hard on my knees, wobbled, then fell full length, chin first, when Adam’s weight overbalanced me.