This would be easy.
I smelled the others, as well, the ones I’d come with, racing up what remained of the stairs nearby. Because they’d spotted him, too. They were faster than I’d expected, these ponderous-looking creatures, but they had to throw the people blocking the stairs out of the way, and deal with the man’s servants, whom he’d left behind to slow their pursuit.
I didn’t. And while he might be fast enough to avoid them, he was no match for me. A fact he seemed to realize when we reached the roof, him bursting out of a stairwell and me vaulting through the tattered opening the fire had provided, at almost the same time.
He was panicked; I could smell it in his sweat, hear it in the labored breaths he was taking, glimpse it in those pale eyes. But not enough. Not like one who has seen his death and has no way to avoid it.
That look I was intimately familiar with, the pallor of the skin, the slump of shoulders, the resignation that sets in, seconds before any damage is done, because they know it’s coming.
It was absent this time.
There was something wrong.
I glanced around, but with the limitations of this borrowed body, it was difficult to tell if he had reinforcements. It was dark, with most of the light below us now, a moving lattice etching the night that did little to dispel the gloom this far up. And there was nothing in the air that I could scent, except soot and smog and exhaust, the acrid burn of asphalt still warm from the day, and a soothing gleam of rain behind.
And his weapons, a metallic taste on my tongue that shouted a warning, not that it mattered.
His toys couldn’t hurt me.
But something else might.
I threw myself to the side, hitting concrete a second before a wall of energy spiraled out of nowhere, tearing across the roofline right where I’d been standing.
It would have been exhilarating in my old body, a roaring finger of power spearing the night, right overhead. But in this one . . . it was a problem. The electric flood from the portal had frightened my avatar as the battle had not, the strange light searing his small eyes, the strange smell filling his nostrils. It wasn’t fey, it wasn’t human, it wasn’t anything he knew, and it was everywhere, leaving him scent-as well as sight-blind, with no senses he could trust.
It made the huge body huddle and cringe, and swamped the mind with panic, always the hardest emotion to see through. He began fighting me, desperate to get away, to get anywhere that felt familiar. And in the few seconds it took for me to reassure him, the slaver—
Was gone.
The portal winked out of existence as quickly as it had come, allowing the blue-black darkness of the city to close over our head again. I pulled us back to our feet, reeling from the troll’s surging emotions, and the fury of my own. Because the slaver could be anywhere now. From another point on Earth, perhaps thousands of miles away, to another realm altogether, if this portal connected to Faerie. I had failed.
So why could I still smell him?
I growled, a low thread of anger that matched the troll’s changing feelings. His fear was receding as rage took its place, that the creature he so hated had made him cower and cringe once again—and gotten away. To a place where he’d do it to others, the way he always did, the way he always had.
I had a sudden flood of memories, not mine, but vivid just the same: the hulk I was inhabiting once small and frightened, his young wrists scarred from shackles he couldn’t break, his child ribs showing through the scraps of clothing he wore, yet being forced to fight nonetheless. Because if he did not, the rod came, the tip of which felt like fire. It hurt; it burned. And, eventually, if used enough, it killed.
So he fought, even though he knew his role wasn’t that of victor. He was to be loaned out to battles as one of the bodies carried away at the end of the night, to give the crowd the blood it craved, yet spare the better combatants. The ones who chose to be there, as he did not.
Yet, again and again, they were the ones carried away, and he remained, battle-scarred and seething, growing larger than them all, and waiting . . . for his chance. Not to live; he had nothing left to go back to. He didn’t know where they’d found him, who his people were, didn’t even know his true name. Only the one they’d given him: Magdar. It meant “cudgel” in some Earth tongue, and that was all he’d ever been.
What did he know of life?
No, his plan wasn’t escape, but to do what he’d been trained to do: to kill. This slaver, the one who owned him now; the others, who had had him before—until he became too much to handle; THE slavers, the two who had taken him from his home, who had ripped him from his mother’s arms, who had dragged him screaming through a portal.
Into this never-ending nightmare.
Killers. Abusers. Desecrators.
He would have them; he would have them all.
And I will help you, I promised, while scenting the air, drawing in great bushelfuls at a time, filling the great chest. And no, I hadn’t been wrong. I could still smell him, and not just the residue his presence had left behind. But him, although distant now, indistinct.
And getting more so by the second.
We let out a roar and leapt across the roof, to the side facing the parking lot. With the distance and these eyes, I couldn’t make out much, even with the lot lights spearing the darkness. But I could see movement, and a slim, pale shape weaving among the cars, because that portal hadn’t gone to Faerie, had it? It had let out somewhere near the bottom of this building, like an emergency slide without the slide, and now our prey was getting away.
And I couldn’t catch him like this.
Your shackles are gone, I reminded the other. Come find me when this is over. And we will hunt again.
I felt the nod, the way I had when I’d made my initial offer. And then the disorientation of a mental flight hit me, a thousand minds crowding in from all sides, all at once. Overwhelming, exhausting, thrilling . . .
Until I burst free of the building and soared into the night.
I didn’t have much time, and not only because of the slaver. I couldn’t hold free flight for long; I had to have an avatar, and soon. But there were far fewer options out here.
There were some vendors cleaning up and getting ready for another onslaught after the fight. There were a few drunks under tables and slumped in tents, too far gone to care about the night’s revelries. There was a bag lady with her little cart, who had wandered in through the unwatched gate, because its keepers had snuck away to the fights. And who was now staring around, her mouth hanging open.
None of which could help me.
But he could.
The troll my twin had sent to watch her weapons was sitting in the cab of our truck. The door was open, because there wasn’t enough room for him to be comfortable inside even with the seat all the way back. He was therefore sitting sideways, one huge leg bent over the other, to bring his foot up to his face.
So he could pick at his toes.
These creatures would have fascinated me another time, how clear, how clean their minds were. With none of the anxiety, the constant worry, the thousand pesky thoughts even a dull-witted human had running in the background all the time. This one was simply thinking about his toe, and the splinter that had somehow wedged itself into the tender flesh around his cuticle.
He was perfect.
And a moment later, he was straightening up, was twisting around in the driver’s seat, was grasping the wheel—
And was then just sitting there.