My Impossible Secret: Trollmageddon, #1, page 27
“Not for long.” I motion him back while I study it, taking a few rallying breaths. I flip my switch, and bam I Shift into troll form. I take a minute to examine my arms, hands, touch my ears and tiny horn nubs. I’ve never been so glad to be a troll in my entire life. The door is metal, which means it’s natural and I can pinpoint its weak spots. I punch my hands through two areas and take the entire door in my fists and yank it from the wall. I see a gagged and bound Nila tied to a chair in the center of the room, looking terrified when she sees me. Four armed men lining the walls turn their weapons on me, but I use the door as a shield. Bullets ricochet off the metal, and I hear two men blurt out a noise and fall from their own bullets coming back at them. The roof starts to tear and crumble, and when we look up, fire rains down from above.
The two remaining armed men now aim at the ceiling, their ratatats deafening in the room. I stomp up to the nearest one and temper my swing of the door into him; he goes flying across the room and crashes into the wall.
The other one stops firing at the ceiling and focuses on me. He exchanges his machine gun for something that looks like a crossbow, and I hold the door before me, ready to block.
A giant net with wooden blocks at the corners shoots out, spreading as it comes for me. I hurl the door into it; the net surrounds it, but the door keeps going.
Right back at the shooter.
The door doesn’t hit him, but a wooden block smacks him in the face.
All is silent.
I glance around and feel a shudder work through me as I view the carnage. I think the three are dead from their own weapons. The guy I threw against the wall is alive.
A door opens. A man now waltzes into the center of the room while Nila stares at me in abject horror. I can’t look at her; I’ve got to focus on the man aiming a gun at her head. He’s wearing a baseball hat, and the brim is pulled low over his eyes. Probably the same jerk-face that brought her here. I crouch, ready to charge.
“By all means, come closer if you want her dead.”
Crouching stopped. Not for nothing, but that sounds far more ominous than, Don’t you dare.
“Shift back. Your friend doesn’t believe she knows such a terribly ugly monster.”
That hurts. I try to remember that Mr. Alexander likes how I look. And that Scarlett said I had the most beautiful fur. “I’m not a monthter. I’m juth different dan you.” Did I mention how hard it is to talk through a dog’s muzzle?
He nudges Nila’s head with the gun. “Shift back.”
I flip the switch and hear Nila’s gagged cry of shock. She’s even more scared now, and she struggles and cries into her gag, looking at me and shaking her head in panicked disbelief.
I should have told her years ago. I should have come clean. I put my palms out to the man and stand still. My arm is bleeding, and it hurts like the devil. “Please don’t hurt her.”
He addresses Nila. “Now do you believe me?”
Tears stream from her eyes. She doesn’t want to agree with her abductor, but she also doesn’t want to side with me, the terribly ugly monster. Her head bows, and I hear her whimper.
I try one more time. “Please, don’t hurt her.”
The man in the ball cap says to me, “Oh, I don’t want to hurt her. After all, I’m not the enemy. You are.”
He takes off his hat, and I gasp at step back. It’s Door-Slamming Dorford, my history teacher. My eyes tear up. “Why are you doing this?”
“Freaks like you don’t belong on this planet. My family, for generations, has spent their entire lives getting rid of your kind, and I’m sure not putting up with any of your filthy race in my school.”
I know what he’s referring to, but I’ve got to hear him speak the words. “What do you mean, for generations?”
“Blitzenbomben is not complete until all you half-breeds are dead,” he spits out, then looks around at my pals. “I didn’t know there were other kinds of you here, though. Shifters. Dragons. Thought we were done with the lot of you.”
I don’t answer, even though I’d like to tell him there are hundreds of different types of shifters. Not to mention the other races that still exist, like the dwarves who died on the bus.
And then I realize that half the school is endangered.
But if Dorford didn’t know there were other species in school, who attacked the buses?
I take one step closer. “I’m here like you asked. Please let Nila go.” I look at her, but she’s terrified of me. Her eyes dart back and forth between her captor and me and Jed, who has now entered the room.
Dorford looks at Jed. “What’s his role in this?”
I open my mouth to say, “He’s her boyfriend,” to give him a cover story, but Jed beats me to it and says, “I’m a reaper, and I’m here for your soul.”
I wonder if that’s Dorford’s parting comment, but he only cracks a smile and pushes the gun to Nila’s head again. “You Goth kids don’t fool me. You think your white eye contacts and bleached hair makes you something special, but you’re not.”
Scarlett drops down from the ceiling, in human form, landing on her feet. “Let her go before she pees herself.”
I try not to roll my eyes. Leave it to Scarlett to insult someone she’s supposedly rescuing.
Pierce saunters in from the back door. “You’re surrounded, Dorford. You’ll never make it out of here alive.”
He scrutinizes Pierce and says, “You’re the boy from the bonfire. That was pretty stupid, what you did. Your picture has gone viral. Everyone and their mothers now know dragons exist, and you,” he fixes his gaze on me, “are in almost every picture.” Then he chuckles and points to the upper corners of the building and says to me, “We were warned that you might have made some powerful friends, so we were ready.”
We look up and see video cameras in every corner, and the energy in the room saps dry. I flit my eyes in Pierce’s and Scarlett’s directions. I never meant to have them reveal themselves, risk their lives for some chapter of an anti-troll hate group. Schist and schist again. I keep my gaze riveted to Dorford’s, because if I look at Pierce right now, I might cry.
“Of course, it’s all being routed to an off-site location. What do you think your families will do when they see this?”
I can’t even begin to think what my parents will say, and Pierce must be in enough trouble from the last time. We’re probably all dead meat. If we survive the night.
Dorford senses my hesitation because he waves his gun around. “So, how do you want me to end this? Do I kill your best friend, or do you?”
“Take me.” I step forward, heart thumping. For the first time in my life, I’m terrified, down to my very marrow. My palms are sweaty, my breathing shallow. Tears fall in steady streams from my eyes, and I have no saliva in my throat when I try to swallow. Reminding myself I’ve never backed down from a fight isn’t helping, either. This one, simply, is one I cannot win. “Nila is innocent.”
I can smell the tears rolling down Nila’s face, and I hear her whimpering. I know she’s afraid of what I am, but maybe, just maybe, if she sees me devoting my last breath to save her, she’ll know I was always, always, always her best friend.
“She befriended a troll. You’re an abomination to nature.”
“She had no idea who or what I was until just now. I’ve spent my entire life protecting my troll side from her knowledge and would have taken that secret to the grave had you not interfered. And as far as the other, I beg to differ. We are simply another race of human.”
“Looking human does not make you so.”
“Forcing us to marry humans in the guise of peace does.”
“Those humans were my ancestors,” he snaps at me.
“Mine, too, asbestos head.” He’s being a jerk.
He glares at me for a few long seconds. “My family founded this anti-troll group. We didn’t want to be forced to marry animals like you ever again.”
My mind goes straight back to Mythology class. “People. The church wouldn’t marry its parishioners to animals.”
He curls a lip and scans me in disbelief. “Have you seen yourself? No human child would look like that.”
I lash out with, “Trust me; my race was forced to marry yours for thousands of years, too. It wasn’t what we wanted, either, but we did it to keep the peace.”
He waves off my statement. “It’s disgusting. No human would want to marry one of you.”
My God, won’t he just let up? I level him a healthy glower. “And no troll, ever, wanted to marry a weak little human. Like your entire puny race, you forced your will upon others to ensure your survival. We had no choice.”
“You are a beast.”
“Says the man with the gun and the hostage.”
I hear movement behind another set of doors I didn’t notice before, and I back up, away from Nila. Two seconds later, four men pile out of two opposite doors, all armed with guns and another net thrower. They flank us.
I try to aim my butt for a corner, but they open fire. Pierce and Scarlett Shift and blast white-hot fire at the cameras. Jed merely stands there, taking bullets. Something hits my arm, and I realize I’m shot and bleeding. Something inside me snaps. Maybe it’s because I’m about to die. Maybe it’s because gunfire is whizzing over Nila’s head. Maybe it’s even because Mr. Dorford is the world’s largest certifiable butthead. But as the blood drips down my arm, that final straw inside me breaks. Instead of running away or panicking, pure rage fills me. My skin ripples, and I give that chain in my head a hard tug as I gulp my last breath. The morph overtakes me, and I shuffle my giant legs into the center of the room. I swing my shiny pink arm into one man and knock him against the wall. Then I pick up his body and swing it into another man, leaving them both broken. Two more aim and open fire on me, but their bullets and buckshot ricochet off me into the metal walls.
Another net is fired, and I assume it’s going to slip off my quartz body like water, but it doesn’t. I’m caught! I turn to face the dragons, and they both blast orange flames on me, burning the rope from my body, then they direct their fire at the feet of the men, their fire blue, not hot, not deadly.
They herd the men into a corner, and I realize they aren’t going to hurt them. At all.
They won’t, but I will. I grab what remains of the net and whirl it lasso style over my head until it whistles, then slam it into our attackers. I hear the wooden blocks connect with their bones.
I leave their crumbled forms for the reaper.
I can’t last any longer in this body without air, so I Shift back to troll form and advance on Dorford. He fires at me, and I act instinctively, yelling, “Don’t!” right before morphing to stone once again. He continues firing, so I lumber over to him, swinging my shiny arm back to club him one. That’s when I see Jed sneaking closer to Nila, aiming one of the dropped rifles at Dorford as he crawls along.
Dorford sees him and turns his back to me, swings the pistol back on Nila. He yells to Jed, “Don’t you dare!”
I freeze at those words.
Dorford lunges for the rifle.
He and Jed grapple.
I hear gunfire.
Then Nila’s muffled scream.
Her chair clatters hard to the ground.
Chapter 53
I hear the bellow of the dragons melding with my own roar as I lumber over to Nila. Dorford smashes Jed in the head with the butt of the rifle and tosses it away when Jed falls, then whirls on me. He fires round after round from his pistol at me. I don’t stop advancing. I’m impervious and impermeable in this form. I can’t breathe, but right now, I’m both so enraged and paradoxically so numb I’d be holding my breath anyway. I raise my fist to pound him into sandstone but gunfire to my left makes me turn my head.
A bloody Jed is sitting there, holding the rifle, and I watch Dorford stumble and crumble.
He didn’t, did he?
Jed tosses away the rifle like it’s hot lava, and Dorford grabs his stomach to stop the flow of blood.
I need to breathe. I yank on my mental chain, turning myself back to troll, and wait until Dorford collapses to the ground. I see his wounds, and they are everywhere. Buckshot. Hundreds of tiny holes, each one painful and bleeding.
Reality slams into me. Between the ungodly battle, Dorford’s bloody body, and the morph, my stomach has had enough. I scurry to the corner and lose my stomach contents.
I sound just like a dog when I do it, too.
God, I hope Pierce didn’t hear that.
My ear swivels at Nila’s sounds of distress. I race over to her and drop to her side. She’s breathing fast, shallow, and I know she doesn’t have much time. I hate that she has to see me like this, hate that I’ve lied to her our entire lives.
Pierce gives a gentle cough and indicates my body. “Shift back,” he whispers.
I get behind Nila’s head and lift the chair to untie her arms. She landed on them, and if she survives this, I can only assume she’ll have two broken wrists. She’s crying and sobbing and terrified that I’m touching her.
“Shift back,” Pierce whispers again, a little louder.
I take the ropes in my hands and tear them with my claws like they’re nothing more than tissue paper. “I can’t.” I ease her chair upright, not knowing if that’ll make her bleeding better or worse, but I can’t handle seeing her on the floor.
“Why not?”
My voice is scratchy, sounds like it’s coming from someone else. “I went thtraight to morph when he thot me. I’ll be naked if I Thift back.”
Pierce looks at Jed, but Jed’s just standing there, almost in shock. I watch as Pierce walks over and tugs that long black leather jacket off him, pats him once on the shoulder, and drapes me in the clothing. I nod gratefully to him and Shift, tucking my arms into the sleeves without ever moving from my hunch. I stand and fasten every button before easing around to face Nila.
She’s fading fast. The buckshot caught the entire right side of her torso. I grab her hands. “Nila, I’m so sorry I couldn’t tell you. I wasn’t allowed.”
Her eyes flutter open. She eases away from me. Starts gasping.
“Please don’t. Please don’t be afraid of me. I’m your best friend. I’ve always been your best friend.”
Faster and faster her breathing comes, and I know she’s gasping for air. It looks like the buckshot punctured her lung, and probably her intestines, and I hear wheezing coming from the holes in her chest. I spread my hands over the wounds, trying to keep the oxygen in, stop all the bleeding, and her eyes meet mine for a second.
She takes four more fast breaths.
A pause.
Two slow ones.
Another pause.
Exhales one long low quiet breath.
Then she breathes no more.
I fall back to my heels, wanting to cover my mouth, but I see her blood is all over my hands. I’m covered with it. Nila’s gone. Dead. And Dorford killed her.
The noise that comes out of my mouth is inhuman. It’s a noise I’ve never made. It’s agony. Pain. Death. Lies. Deceit. It’s a combination of sounds that no person should ever have to hear or make.
Scrambling noises behind me makes me turn, and I see Dorford reaching for the pistol he dropped. His baleful eyes lock on mine. “I’ll die a martyr. My family will honor me for years to come.”
Hate fills me. I clam up and stomp on the gun before he can reach it. Tears burn my eyes, and his face swims in and out of focus, but my voice is low, menacing. “You will die a lonely death, and no one will care that you’re gone.”
His eyes widen, and he draws in a sharp breath. Jed seems to come to life at that, like he was in a fog, waiting for me to say something. He races over and says, “I think I know how to save her. It might not work, but at least, I can try.”
My eyes snap to his.
“You willing to have her back at any cost?”
I don’t know what he’s getting at. “Zombie? Vampire? No.”
“Not those. But there is always a price.”
At that moment, I know I will pay any price. Money? Got it. Gems? Sure. My soul? Nobody would want it. “Yes. Save her.”
He glares at Dorford and grabs him by the shirt, trying to drag him to Nila but can’t. I heft the man by the belt and haul him closer, trailing his blood across the floor.
Jed places one hand on Dorford and one on Nila and bows his head.
“What are you doing?”
“Shh.”
Okay. I watch his hands glow and see their bodies both light with golden fire. Then, Dorford’s body bucks, and the golden light zaps its way through Jed, like he’s some kind of energy conduit. Jed screams, his face contorting in pain, and I watch his body get hurled five feet away. He lands and rolls, and I hear him groan, tuck into a ball.
I hasten over to him. “What happened? You okay?” I look between Dorford and Jed and Nila and see Nila’s breathing again.
Dorford is not. In fact, he looks rather fried.
The dragons watch something lift from the man’s body, and they assume a trance-like state as whatever it is goes up and up.
“That energy that’s released when people die? That reapers need to survive? Well, I took Dorford’s and pumped it into Nila.” His tale seems to weaken him, because he falls spread-eagled on the ground, out cold but breathing steadily.
I can see Nila’s blood is still flowing. “We’ve got to get the buckshot out.” I whip my head to Pierce. “You. You can heal. I’ve seen it.”
But they both shake their heads. “We heal ourselves. We can’t heal humans.”
“What’s the difference?”
“They aren’t Galtarachi,” Scarlett says. “We can’t interfere.”
“That’s bullsh— uh, schist,” I catch myself and my foul mouth and try again. “Please, you’ve got to save her.”
They look at each other and shake their heads. “Our magic doesn’t work on humans even if we wanted it to.”
“That’s not what you said. You said ‘interfere.’”
“It’s the truth,” Scarlett tells me. “We physically can’t. Can’t, not won’t. I’m sorry.”
