Under the Bridge (3 page)

“As for the rest of you…” He launched into a
very boring and exceedingly wordy description of the late poet’s
life.

Billy could hardly focus. Her attention was
fixed on the monster, seated within troll’s arm reach of her
cousin. All the while she ran scenarios through her head, going
through the ways she could incapacitate the troll before it killed
everyone in the class.

All around her, students sat oblivious. They
doodled, drooled and nodded off, jerking awake to pointed questions
from Mr. Duncan. A few of the diligent ones took notes, secure in
the knowledge that they would live to see tomorrow, and yes, there
would be a test. ARGH! She wanted to scream as the minutes plodded
by.

Finally the class was dismissed. Billy was up
out of her seat and by her cousin’s side before anyone else could
rise from their chair.

“Carrie. I wanted to talk to you about this
morning,” she said, giving her cousin a meaningful look. “Let me
walk you to your locker and we can talk about it.” Out of the
corner of her eye, she saw the troll cock his head in interest. He
took his time about rising, clearly listening in.

“Later. I wanted to welcome our newest
student,” Carrie said impatiently. She looked around Billy and
smiled flirtatiously. “Hi, there! I’m—hey!” she protested when
Billy blocked her way. “What’s your problem?”

“Troll,” Billy mouthed.

“What?” Carrie’s gaze followed the troll
distractedly
as he strolled out of the room,
smiling over his shoulder.

Billy shuddered at the flash of his teeth.
She couldn’t discuss this here, though, not with Mr. Duncan looking
at them curiously.

Carrie wasn’t waiting in any case. She
grabbed her books and headed for the door, in hot pursuit of the
monster. Billy caught up to her outside the room and grabbed her
arm. “Wait a minute, will you? I’m trying to tell you that
he’s—”

“Mine!” Carrie bit out, pulling out of her
grasp with surprising strength. “He’s a hottie, and I saw him
first. You got that?”

Billy gaped at her. It took
her precious seconds, but she finally found her tongue. “Are
you
stupid
? Don’t
you realize what that is?”

“Yeah. He’s taken, that’s what he is, so you
just keep your hands off.” Carrie poked her with a long pink nail
in emphasis. “I don’t want you getting anywhere near him.”

Billy was so dumbfounded that she actually
watched Carrie walk away and didn’t try to stop her. Was it
possible that anyone could be that stupid?

4. Stupid Cupid

Billy finally caught up to Carrie again in
gym. They didn’t share a math class, and Billy had spent the last
hour fretting, willing the clock to move. She’d seen the troll go
into the math class with Carrie, and wondered if he’d arranged to
be in all of her classes. By the time she’d tracked Carrie down on
the basketball court, she’d worked herself into a froth.

Carrie sent her a look of disdain as Billy
strode up to her, while her friends looked at her as if she were
some kind of nasty frog. “What do you want?” She didn’t wait for an
answer before leaning over to whisper to her friend Terra, “Have
you ever seen a backside like that? I just want to squeeze it.”
They were looking at the troll, of course.

“We have to talk,” Billy interrupted their
giggles by grabbing Carrie’s arm. She tried to get close enough to
whisper, but Carrie kept leaning away. When her friends came to her
aid, Billy had no choice but to use big guns. She muttered in the
Old Tongue to their underwear,
“You’re far too tight.”

Instantly the girls had other things on their
mind. Twisting and picking, they struggled to adjust their clothes
without drawing attention. Terra wore a pained look as she tried to
hide behind the others while she tugged at her thong.

What kind of moron wore a thong to gym?

Unfortunately, the precious reprieve didn’t
last. The gym teacher blew her whistle and divided everyone into
teams, then ordered everyone onto the court. Billy had to allow the
underwear to relax its stranglehold so Carrie’s friends could play.
She couldn’t afford for the teacher to become suspicious.

Besides, she had bigger problems. The teacher
had put her on the same team as Ash Bergtagen.

Billy and the troll sized each other up. The
troll raised a brow. If he could see it, he didn’t seem impressed
by her armor. Judging by his control, he was old, with all the
abilities of a full-blooded fae. A younger troll would have a hard
time resisting the urge to snack. To him, the students probably
looked like a buffet of walking Twinkies.

From what she had seen in English, he wasn’t
stupid. He probably realized that Billy knew what he was and was
trying to protect her niece. Besides, he’d probably already quizzed
all of Carrie’s secrets from her during math.

He looked amused. Billy fought a surge of
irritation. Well, it wasn’t as if she’d hoped to scare him.

Carrie was on the opposing team. She sent
Billy a look of promised retribution for being chosen to play on
the “hottie’s” team, and Billy bared her teeth. She wanted to slam
dunk Carrie’s head for being so dense.

Determined to make Carrie listen, she sent a
sneaky, distracting charm the teacher’s way, then blatantly ignored
all the rules. Rushing Carrie as she blocked Carrie’s pass, she
hissed in the Old Tongue,
“He’s a troll!”

Carrie grunted at the elbow in her ribs and
tossed the ball over Billy’s head. “What?”

Ash neatly intercepted the ball, flashing
teeth at Billy as he darted between them and effortlessly sent the
ball flying into the basket.

Billy tried again in a minute, crashing into
Carrie as they wrestled over the ball. “Troll, stupid! Ash is the
troll.” She had the satisfaction of seeing Carrie’s eyes widen
before the game broke them apart.

Visibly shaken, Carrie retreated to her
position and stared at Ash. Her eyes widened, and her hand crept to
her throat. It looked as if she were finally
seeing
.

Ash saw her expression and smiled like a mad
hyena. His nostrils flared at the thick scent of terror, and his
expression became a little too fixed.

Afraid of what he would do, Billy charged in
his way as the whistle blew. It was like trying to stop a bus. His
momentum sent him right over her, crushing her with the force of a
bulldozer.

The armor didn’t work the way Billy thought
it would. Instead of hardening, it softened
her
, turning her
insides liquid, like a Billy-shaped gummi bear. The shock of his
foot compressing her jellied spine stunned her, left her gasping.
Her whole body rippled from the contact with the hard floor.

She was seeing stars as Ash leaned over her.
Oddly, the double vision made his troll form visible for several
seconds, but her brain was too scrambled to feel the appropriate
fear. She gulped in a breath and said, “You’re very heavy.”

“Good thing you’re so soft and squishy.” He
grinned and hauled her to her feet without warning. She wavered a
moment, then straightened as her bones solidified. As her wits
returned, she tried to back away from him.

His hand on her arm tightened. If she weren’t
wearing armor, she’d have been bruised to the bone. He muttered
something in the Old Tongue, a suggestion that the teacher pay
attention now. “I think I should take Billy to the nurse. She’s a
little rubbery still.”

Billy shot him an annoyed look, but the
teacher was fully alert now. She looked Billy over carefully.
“Maybe you should. That was quite a spill.”

Billy opened her mouth to protest, but the
troll had already flung an arm around her back and was
force-marching her toward the exit. Alarmed, she glanced at Carrie,
but her cousin didn’t seem inclined to come to the rescue. She
resembled a timid goldfish with the way her mouth kept opening and
closing. If it were up to Carrie, it was clear that this might be
the last time anyone saw Billy alive.

Up close, the she could smell his musky
scent, like expensive cologne. It smelled enticing, masculine,
even. That same scent, magnified and corrupted by the smell of
carrion, was only one of the things that should have alerted Carrie
to the troll lurking under the bridge.

Outside the gym, Billy tried to throw on the
brakes. It was like trying to slow a Maglev Train; the troll kept
on rolling. She tried words instead. “Are we going to have this out
here? Kind of public, don’t you think?”

He grinned down at her. “I could throw open
any of these doors and find Underhill. I may not have your skill
with wicked charms, but that I can do. Is that the privacy you
want?”

Conscious that he could feel her deep breath,
she still couldn’t help wiggling. His arm tightened like a steel
cable. “I guess the nurse’s will do, if that’s where you’re going,”
she gasped.

He found an empty staff room and deposited
her on top of a table casually, as if she were as light as a
textbook. “This will do.”

She felt the air change around them with a
shiver of old, old magic. “You made us invisible?” she guessed.
That wasn’t her first choice; the more witnesses, the better.

“Our business will be private,” he confirmed.
He looked her over, lightly fingered the sleeve of her armor.
“Interesting stuff, pixie armor. Chewy.”

She snatched her arm away. “Yeah, guaranteed
to stick in your teeth,” she warned. He didn’t look as if he’d
gobble her right up, but what did she know about trolls? “About my
niece.”

He sat down at the table next to her, forcing
her to twist to keep him in sight. “Yes. I was entertained by your
display this morning. You have a gift for naughtiness.”

She felt her face heat. It was not the sort
of thing she was used to having praised. “Bad habit,” she
muttered.

“I like bad habits,” the troll rumbled. When
he let down his guard, he had a voice like a bass guitar. It left
her bones vibrating. “And I don’t think you’re very fond of your
niece.”

Lying to a fae was not possible, so Billy had
to choose her words carefully. She made a non-committal noise. “We
don’t always get along. We’re pretty different.” East and West
different; not that she would say as much to a troll.

He studied her for an uncomfortably long
time, with the patience of a hunter who had lived for centuries.
The old ones did that sometimes; let time slip away. Billy knew
better than to verbally admit impatience, but after a while she
found herself shifting, looking around. Her fingers began to
tap.

He laughed, as if he’d won already. “A very
young hunter.”

She tensed with temper, and her hand flexed,
longing for her favorite dagger. It had a lovely steel blade etched
with silver, and a razor’s edge. She’d dearly love to stick it in
his eye.

A rumbling sound of contentment sighed from
his throat. “I can see vast entertainment here, so this is what I
will do.” His greenish eyes lightened to yellow. “I am going to
kill the niece you don’t like, pixie. I will grind her bones under
my teeth as I did her graceless lover. All the while you will watch
me hunting, knowing that you can’t stop me. In the end, I think,
you will even enjoy being rid of her. What say you?”

Billy snapped her teeth like a small piranha.
She could feel them sharpening as her fae aspect grew stronger.
That hadn’t happened in a long time, and she wondered if this dark
fae’s presence had brought it out. “I say my family is mine to
protect. I won’t give them over to you.”

“I have a claim,” he pointed out.

“A toll,” she spat. “We’ll pay it today and
fulfill our obligation.”

“I have enough gold,” he said calmly, and
smiled when her eyes bugged out. “Yes, one as old as I might say
such a thing. I may choose to take a different forfeit.”

Billy didn’t know what to say. All her
research in her mom’s books said that a troll lived for gold. As
bad as dragons, the trolls squirreled away a fortune over their
lifetimes. Since collecting their toll was a pleasure seconded only
by the acquisition of fresh prey, Billy couldn’t imagine what else
he might demand. It worried her.

He watched her fret for a moment and then
stood up. “We can discuss this in more depth later, once I’ve made
up my mind.”

Now that he was leaving, taking the threat of
his presence with him, Billy’s mind abruptly focused on other
concerns. “Hey,” she said sternly, jumping to her feet. “About your
hunting.” He turned very slowly, obviously not accustomed to being
spoken to in that manner. Her heart surged in dread, but this was
business. “We are willing to pay your toll, and we might even
negotiate a reasonable substitute. However, if you persist in
hunting humans in this area, we
will
intervene.”

Though his body didn’t change, suddenly he
seemed to be looming over her. “And what will you do, pixie?” His
intent stare reminded her that she was considerably lower on the
food chain; mere krill to a beluga whale.

She couldn’t back down now, or she’d lose
face. She stiffened her knees and said sternly, “I know and like
many of the people here.” She didn’t make any dramatic statements
about being willing to die for them, lest it become a
self-fulfilling prophecy. Besides, there was no point in backing
him into a corner—he was fully capable of launching himself from it
and demolishing her.

Perhaps he appreciated her approach, for his
expression turned crafty. “You like the killers among you, then?
The rapists and corrupters of innocence?”

That was trickier to answer. Of course she
didn’t like them, but she couldn’t out and sanction their murder,
could she?

Unfortunately, he took her silence as assent.
“We are agreed, then. I will prey only on the predators of your
kind. Your town will become the better for it.”