I swallowed hard, or tried to, because my past had tightened my throat like a noose. I had deliberately not thought about this time in my life and so had not really gone over the possibilities that Boomer and Harriet were not human. They were supernaturals like me. But what were they?
Funny, but thinking of them as supernaturals stole some of the fear away. I’d dealt with monsters before. I could do it again.
“Go see if the kid is still tied down,” Harriet snarled and smacked her lips. “I thought he was dead, but maybe he got away.”
I stood where I was, holding my ground. Maybe if I was being honest I just couldn’t move. I couldn’t go forward and couldn’t go back. Boomer’s steps drew closer and closer. The air tensed around me and I lifted both hands. No . . . they knew magic, or at least how to repel it. I reached over my shoulder and pulled the sword from my back.
If anyone deserved to die, it was these two. No human justice would ever be handed out to them. I coiled my body, ready to spring.
Boomer stepped into the hall, and for the first time, I really saw him. Saw through the layers of falsehood he’d placed on himself to hide from the other humans.
His skin hung in loose, pale blue and green folds from his chin all the way down to his knees. Like someone had given him three people’s worth of flesh and attached it randomly here and there. A mouth that filled most of the lower half of his face had random teeth protruding past oversized, swollen-looking lips. A long tongue flicked out, tasted the air, split in two, then three and wriggled this way and that, left and right. His piggy eyes were as deeply set as ever, but they widened when he saw me. A troll, Boomer was a bloody damn troll.
“Who the fuck are you?” he roared but he didn’t take a step toward me. Maybe he was smarter than he looked.
“Who is it?” Harriet screeched from the other room.
“Some chick with a sword. Looks familiar.” Those tiny eyes narrowed to mere pinpricks. “Wait a tick, I know you. Pamela. You was the one your parents took back and had the demons exorcised at the church.” He laughed and it boomed through the house, shaking the timbers and drawing a scream from the third floor. “How’d that work for you, witch?”
I pointed the sword at him, noting that the tip trembled not because it was heavy, but because my nerves . . . I couldn’t seem to slow them.
He wasn’t afraid of me. Wasn’t afraid of my magic, which told me something vital. Some trolls were Immune, like Rylee. Immune to the touch of magic and that put me at a disadvantage.
But were they Immune to an elemental’s power? A tingle of excitement whispered through me. “Worked fine. The Tracker saved me. And now I am part of her pack.”
Boomer lifted a hand and pointed one of seven thick fingers at me. “The Tracker? Ah, so proud of you to have gone so far.”
“You have a kid upstairs?” I pointed with my free hand to the stairs.
He nodded and gave a huge, rolling shrug that jiggled the layers of skin. “Helping kids, it’s what we do.”
I would have lunged at him then, but I’d been sloppy. Far too sloppy. I heard Oka call out, but her warning was too late.
The back door burst open and Harriet roared through, her form as beefy and overly skinned as Boomer’s, only her coloring was a pale pink and orange and that was all I saw before she got her arms around my upper body, pinning them down to my body.
“Fuck!” I screamed and fought to no avail against the loose folds of her flesh. Twisting my wrist, I tried to flick a ball of flame, but I couldn’t even manage that. She laughed and bounced me up and down in her arms like I was a fussy toddler she wanted to shake into silence.
“What a potty mouth. We didn’t teach you those words, Pamela.” She tsked at me, like a mother to a child. Boomer drew close and I fought to get my sword hand up, to lift the weapon and drive him through the belly.
“Bring her into the front parlor. I want to see her close,” Boomer grumbled. “Maybe we can still get something for her.”
I had a choice. I could try and make a leap through the Veil and possibly take Harriet with me. Or I could fight them on my own terms.
I relaxed in Harriet’s arms. I might be a fool for staying, but I had to see this through. Whatever it meant, I had to finish this task in this place. I had to put the past to bed.
Harriet trundled with me through the hall and as we passed the stairs, the sound of crying drifted down to us. The troll took note of the direction I stared.
“Yeah, that is our last one. She’s a pain in the arse, like you.”
“You aren’t going to survive this.” The words came out calm, clear, and steadier than I could have hoped.
“Funny coming from the one about to be tied to a chair.” She made a kissing noise in my ear and I jerked my head away from her. Seconds later, Boomer had a length of rope and was wrapping me in it. And that was when I realized my mistake.
The rope was spelled to keep me from using magic, so even though Harriet was no longer blocking me with her innate Immunity, I was still helpless.
Wankers and fuck nuggets, this was bad. I blew out a slow breath. I’d been in worse with Milly and Frank, so I could get through this too. That’s what I told myself in an effort to keep the panic at bay.
Only with Milly and Frank, I’d not been dealing with my past and the memories and pain that distracted me to the point of being unable to think clearly.
I kept my eyes on the two trolls as they waddled to stand in front of me. Behind them was the hallway to the back. And from the edge of the hallway peered two pale blue eyes that were narrowed with worry. I shook my head at Oka, just slightly, so they wouldn’t look.
I wasn’t done in, not yet anyway.
“What are we going to do with her, Harriet?” Boomer looked at his mate. She pursed her flabby lips and blew out a fat raspberry noise that splattered me with foul-smelling saliva. I tightened my own lips and glared at her.
Harriet touched a finger to her chin. “Well, nobody is looking for her. We know her parents don’t want her back. What about this Tracker? Maybe she would ransom her?”
I burst out laughing. I couldn’t help it. “You want Rylee to come here and get me? I think that’s a fabulous idea.”
Okay, I shouldn’t have said it like that, but I didn’t really want Rylee to rescue me. Not this time. I wanted—needed—to do this on my own.
They looked to one another and I wormed my arms a little while their eyes were off me. Despite his sloppy looks, Boomer was anything but sloppy when it came to tying his charges up. My wrists were bound tightly together, but they hadn’t considered I might have another weapon on me.
The knife Ajax had given me still sat snug against my lower back, just waiting for me to pull it free.
I shifted in my seat ever so slightly so I could reach into the back sheath. My wrists protested the awkward movement but I ignored the pain. A little pain now could save me more pain later. Carefully, I slid the blade from its hiding spot and turned it so I held the handle.
But I was concentrating so hard, I wasn’t paying attention to the trolls.
“What you doing, girl?” Boomer backhanded me and sent me and the chair flying across the room. I hit the wall hard. Stunned by both the blow and the force of the crash, the knife slid from my fingers. Blood flooded my mouth. I spit it out with a gagging cough.
Weaponless, I lay there and fought to see through the double vision and black spots. I was in trouble, and I knew it. But I couldn’t bring myself to ask for help, not even from Oka. She’d stepped out so I could see her fully—even if she wobbled a little, making two cats for a moment—and again, I shook my head. Her whole body quivered as she stepped back into the shadows of the hall.
“Sit her back up.” Harriet flopped into the extra wide chair across from me. The furniture groaned and creaked under her weight but didn’t scatter apart like I thought it should.
Boomer wound his hands through my hair and yanked me upright. I scrabbled my fingers for the knife one
last time as I was dragged toward the center of the room.
There, right at my fingertips was the handle. I strained for it, felt it spin away from me and then I was upright again, without the knife. Now I could only hope they didn’t see it.
I rolled my head forward, resting my chin on my chest as my mind raced. Blood flowed from my lips and the coppery tang sat heavy on my tongue and dripped from my nose.
“Should we kill her then?”
“Too easy,” Harriet muttered. “There was a witch looking for newbies to train. Bet we could sell La-la off to them.”
I cringed with the use of my childhood nickname. I’d never told Rylee or anyone else that La-la was what my adoptive parents had called me. They’d told Boomer and Harriet, and of course, they used it like a joke because we all knew it meant my parents weren’t coming back for me. I’d come to hate the name. La-la was a symbol of everything in my past and of the frightened little girl I’d been.
I swallowed hard, swallowed down blood and snot from the back of my throat and gagged again on the thickness of it. Screw it.
I coughed it up and spat on the floor. Wasn’t like I was going to make the place any worse.
Boomer backhanded me again and sent me flying once more, almost in the exact same place.
“Don’t be spitting on my floors,” Harriet intoned like a schoolmarm instructing a child how to say her A-B-Cs.
I hit the ground hard and used the momentum to push with my feet so I was close to where my knife lay. On my back, the chair dug into my arms, cut off circulation and made it hard to wiggle my fingers. But there, at the edge of my right hand was the knife. I jerked the whole chair, bouncing it hard as Boomer approached, and my hand lay over Ajax’s knife. This was my chance. I just had to take it.
CHAPTER 15
BOOMER STARED DOWN at me and I stared right back up from my place on the floor, my arms still pinned back to the chair. He snarled down at me, spittle splattering my face. But I didn’t close my eyes, even when some saliva hit my eyelid. I needed to be on point for this.
“Bitch. You haven’t changed much. Seems we didn’t break you as good as we could have. We can fix that now, though.” Boomer grabbed my hair again and I gritted my teeth against the pain. I curled my hand around the knife in the split second before he dragged me back to the middle of the room and set me up once more so I faced the hallway and his mate. He turned his back to me, bent and picked up the sword. “Bet we can get a pretty penny for this too, eh, Harriet?”
She reached for the sword and while their attention was off me, I sawed at the rope as fast as I could without moving much. Which really wasn’t that fast at all, but it was better than not having the knife.
I worked the blade across the thin rope, knowing it would be spelled against being cut too. Probably. That would make sense to me. Then again, this was a blade that had belonged to a half demon. Maybe that would help.
The threads of the rope came apart with an ease that shocked me. So much so that I just sat there as the ropes fell from my body.
The trolls’ eyes were on the sword, inspecting it and not watching me at all. I flexed my hands as my mind raced. My only hope was that by using more elemental magic, I could have some effect on them. Slim hope, but I would take it. I brought my hands around even as I called all five elements into a single snapping orb over my palm. The five colors danced and fought as I held them up. Without another thought, I flicked the orb at Boomer’s feet. At least I could take the footing out from under him.
That was the least of what happened.
The orb hit the floor boards and the room vibrated with the impact. A silent thump of power erupted and it threw Boomer straight up through the ceiling. He screamed as he went crashing through all three floors. There was a second thump of his body landing and then nothing but silence.
I stared at Harriet.
She stared back, her mouth hanging open and her eyes, as tiny as they were, bugging out of her head. “Not possible.”
I prepped a second orb and held it out. “You going to go quietly, or am I going to kill you?”
The words were hard and as true as any I’d ever spoken. Her death would not satisfy my anger; I knew that. But it would stop her from hurting anyone else. I narrowed my eyes and stared at her, using my second sight.
It wasn’t just her power I saw, but her heart. The darkness that rolled there, the desire for power and fear and how they fed her strength.
She would never give up hurting children. It was a drug she craved.
“Let me live. I can change. I promise.” She dropped to her knees and the fear on her smelled like oily fish frying in a hot pan, burning. Stinking the place up, making me want to vomit.
Harriet made the choice for me, though. She thought she would fool me. She leapt, her seven-fingered hands the size of catcher’s mitts reaching for me. I tried to dodge her, but only managed to avoid one hand. The other clamped over my arm, and like Rylee’s Immunity, her touch blocked my own magic.
Which left me only a single option. I had to go into a knockdown, drag-out fist fight with a troll five times my size. Thank the gods for Rylee’s training.
I pulled hard as if I would drag her with me. I yanked her, jerking my body, throwing it in one direction with as much strength as I could, putting her off balance a little. She pulled back, a natural reaction.
I flung myself hard away from her once more and when she moved to react, stepping back, I went with her. Using her own momentum, I let her pull me toward her so I was wrenched into the air. I flew at her, my knife aimed for the one place I knew would do the most damage.
Her beady little eye.
My aim was good, and only a little to the left. I hit the edge of her nose first, slid down it with the blade and drove into her left eye. The blade was sharp as a razor and went in all the way to the hilt. Four inches was enough to hit Harriet’s brain unless it was a great deal smaller than the average.
Her body jerked and her mouth flapped open over and over as her body convulsed. Her hand fell from me and she slowly fell backward like a tree that had been cut at the base. I held onto my knife as she dropped away. It slid out of her with a squelching pop and then she thundered to the floor, her huge body rattling the timbers of the house.
My hands shook, trembling so hard, I dropped the knife.
Oka raced in and pressed herself against my leg. “You did it, Pam. Breathe, you did it.”
“Not yet, it isn’t done,” I whispered because I couldn’t seem to get my voice to be any louder. “Boomer is still upstairs somewhere. He could be alive.”
Oka shook her head. “No, I don’t hear him. His heart is silent.”
That meant nothing to me. “He’s a troll with some magic. He could hide himself.” I pushed to my feet. “Shout if he comes down.”
She bobbed her head. “Be careful.”
I made myself walk down the hall and up the stairs without stopping. If I stopped, I wasn’t sure I would get going again. The stairs were wide enough for the trolls to fit, but they felt narrow to me, like they were closing in. At the first landing, I stared around at the open space. It had been something of a rumpus room with no walls.
I had indeed blown Boomer to the third floor. I grabbed the railing and headed up to the top floor. The smell of shit and piss filled the air more and more with each stair. I paused before I took that last step. My room was to the right and the door was open, I could see it from where I stood. The same metal-framed single bed, the thin bumpy mattress that had a sag in the middle so I could feel the springs in my lower back no matter how I twisted to get away from them. The same window with no bars, laughing at me that I couldn’t get to it. That I couldn’t get away.
I clenched my hands and forced my feet up the last few steps, turned my head away from my old room. This landing was small, and Boomer lay on it to one side. From the look of the ceiling, he’d lost steam and bounced off it, then headed back down. Only he’d missed the hole he’d come up throug
h.
The sword had run him through, right into his belly. I could almost see how it happened as if in slow-motion replay. He’d had the sword in his hand and it had spun around when he’d bounced off the ceiling. Then it had twisted and he’d landed on it. A rumbling noise escaped him and I had my hands up so fast, I wasn’t sure I’d even thought about moving them.
Air from both ends of him escaped as his body deflated around the sword. I gagged on the stench, heaved and threw up. Bent over at the waist, I waited for the urge to puke to pass. The stench wasn’t any better, but there was nothing left in my stomach.
I made myself go to Boomer’s side. The handle of the sword was underneath him which was going to be a pain. I put a boot to him and pushed. His body didn’t even budge. I bent and put my hands to the wooden flooring. I pushed a pulse of power through it and used the floor to tip him over. He teetered on the edge of the hole his massive body had created. I reached out and yanked the sword from him as he rolled the rest of the way and fell down the three floors.
“Pamela!” Oka yelled up at me and was halfway up the steps. I beckoned her up.
“I’m fine. Just retrieving the sword.” I pressed the tip into the floor and leaned on it.
Oka stopped with her front feet on the top step. “There is a child here, isn’t there?”
I nodded and turned toward the only closed door. It took so much energy to walk to it and try the handle. It was locked. I wondered briefly if it was an attempt to keep Tim’s ghost from wandering. I lifted the sword and drove it through the mechanism. Like a razor through silk, the blade cut through the metal easily.
I pushed the door open and stepped in. Tied to the bed was a young man. Only he wasn’t alive.
“Hello, Tim,” I said softly. The ghost of my friend looked at me, his eyes as sad as ever.
Pamela (The Rylee Adamson Epilogues, Book 3) Page 12