Fire Touched (Mercy Thompson, #9)(19)
The black stone surrounding the tibicena cracked and fell away, leaving Joel in his human body, pale, naked, and unconscious, facedown on the roadway. The boy stepped back. When he met my eyes with his own, for a moment I could see that fire lived inside him. Then they were just ordinary hazel eyes.
“Did you hear that, Aiden?” Tad said. “The fire dog is a friend.”
“Yes,” said the boy, “I hear you. I heard, when the big man who killed the troll told us both the same thing before we set foot on the bridge. I’m not an idiot. I need them. The man who bears the fire dog will come to no harm from this. I didn’t kill anything, just banked the fire for a while.”
The boy’s accent wasn’t so much a matter of pronunciation but of cadence. English wasn’t his first tongue.
I took a good long breath and took stock.
Darryl, the big-man-who-had-killed-the-troll, was a couple of yards away—in position to step in if the boy hadn’t defanged the tibicena. His hair still dripped water, but his various cuts and bruises from the fight had begun to fade.
“How did you get out of the river?” I asked. I didn’t move because, beside me, Adam had awakened and was considering rolling to his feet. Where I was standing, my legs touching him, he could use me as an unobtrusive crutch.
His pack was loyal. Two years ago, Darryl might have put Adam down had he come upon him when he was injured like this. Adam’s decision to court me had weakened the pack, and Darryl would have viewed himself as the better leader. Part of me didn’t like seeing him so close to Adam when Adam couldn’t defend himself—even though matters had changed. Darryl respected Adam and had not so much as breathed a desire to move to the top of the food chain.
I don’t need protection from Darryl. Adam’s voice was clear in my head, though he made no effort to move. I think you’ve gotten caught up in the battle that is over now, sweetheart. But there are others watching. I’d just as soon wait until I’m sure I can walk before I try to get up.
We’d discovered that he had more control of the link between us than I did. The werewolf mating bond seemed a little confused by me. I’d grown to believe that the weird way the mating link seemed to function stronger some times than others was due to my partial immunity to magic. But this time I caught his words just fine.
He was right about Darryl, and about the wound-up feeling in my stomach that tried to tell me that the battle wasn’t over yet. I breathed in and tried to relax.
“One of the patrol boats fished me out,” Darryl was saying, answering my earlier question. “I got to shore and ran into Tad, Zee, and that one.” He nodded toward the boy, who smiled, a wide, sweet smile that sent the warning hairs on the back of my neck straight up.
“The troll,” said Zee’s voice heavily, “was sent after us, but someone forgot about trolls and bridges and the effect of running water on some forms of magic. Old Jarnvid might not have won in the lottery when they were passing brains out to trolls, but running water was his element, and trolls are difficult to control when they are in the same room with you.”
I stayed where I was, one foot touching Adam, but turned to see my old friend. It was unlike him to have sent Tad into battle while he waited on the sidelines.
Zee wasn’t looking at me but at the ashes of the troll, which were blowing away in the river’s breeze, as he continued talking. “Or maybe they thought they were safe because trolls can’t connect to most bridges now. Too many of the bridges today use too much steel. Maybe they—whoever they are—mistakenly assumed the troll would remain under their influence despite the distance and the running water. Or maybe they intended to ‘accidentally’ lose control and let loose one of the more violent trolls in history on the human population.”
Beyond him, I saw a handful of pack members running up the arc of the bridge toward where we were standing. Down by the police barricade, Warren was talking to the police officers. I knew from his body language, and because I knew Warren, that he was keeping them back until we had our vulnerable protected and our dangerous people contained.
“Hey, Ben?”
Our English wolf looked at me, his clear blue eyes missing their usual ironic cast, and sprinted the rest of the way to us.
“Could you go check on Zack? I think the troll threw a car on him just over the crest of the bridge.” He wasn’t dead. I’d know if he were dead, but I was betting Zack was a long way from healthy.
“Car?” Ben said, and glanced around. “Fucking troll throwing f*cking cars. What’s the world coming to?” He pointed a finger at Scott and Sherwood, who’d followed his sprint. “You and you, come with me. We’re to rescue our Zackie boy, who might have gotten smashed by a f*cking car.”
Ben’s swearing was usually a bit more creative. I had the feeling that he was a little overwhelmed. It didn’t stop him from herding his chosen minions over the bridge. Ben had been climbing the pack hierarchy—not by battling his way up but by not backing down. It was a subtler way to do it, more difficult in its way. But it was better for the pack, and for Ben.
Satisfied that Zack would be attended to, I turned my attention back to Zee. “You escaped from the reservation, and they sent a troll after you?”
Zee was wearing his usual appearance, a wiry old man with a small potbelly and a balding spot in the thin white hair on his head. Unlike Tad, he didn’t look thinner or grimmer or anything. But Zee wasn’t half-human, and his glamour could look any way he chose. He held himself stiffly, as if he hurt—which explained why it had been Tad transforming pipe for javelins and not Zee. But the look in Zee’s eyes told me not to mention it.