I skirted around a couple of dead, fallen trees, with Devon and Felix trailing along behind me. I hopped over the last fallen tree and stopped, since the ground dropped away into a sharp, rocky ravine that was about ten feet wide.
My friends stood on either side of me, with Devon shining his flashlight back and forth, straight out in front of us, highlighting the dense thicket of trees on the far side of the ravine.
“I don’t see anything,” he murmured.
Me neither. So I looked around, searching for the blood I’d seen before. A second later, I spotted it, splattered on a tree to my right, with smears on the ground as well. A horrible thought occurred to me.
“Shine your light down,” I whispered. “Into the ravine.”
Devon did as I asked, the beam of his flashlight sinking lower . . . and lower . . . and lower....
Until it hit the first body.
A tree troll was lying on the ground about ten feet down in the ravine, its furry gray arms and legs splayed out at awkward angles. Deep, vicious cuts crisscrossed the creature’s chest and belly, and a few small pools of blood surrounded its body, although not nearly as much as I would have expected, given the horrible wounds.
And it wasn’t the only one.
Devon moved the light back and forth, from one side of the ravine to the other, revealing more than a dozen dead trolls. All of them were in various states of decomposition, and many had been reduced to nothing but bones, although none of them had been killed as recently as the one closest to us.
“What do you think did this?” Felix whispered. “A bear? A copper crusher? Another monster?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know. I doubt a bear would be this close to the Family compounds, not with all the people, lights, and noise. Of course, monsters are everywhere, but they usually like to stay hidden. But if it was a copper crusher or some other monster, why wouldn’t it have eaten the tree trolls, bones and all? There are so many of them—”
“Too many for one monster to eat.” Devon finished my horrible thought. “Way too many.”
“But why kill a tree troll if you aren’t going to eat it?” Felix asked. “It just doesn’t make any sense.”
I thought of the murdered troll we’d found behind the dumpster yesterday. Once again, that soft, evil laughter echoed in my mind, making me shiver.
“Maybe . . .” my voice trailed off. “Maybe it was just about the killing. Maybe whoever did this didn’t care about eating the trolls at all.”
Felix gave me a horrified look. “You think someone did this for fun? That they caught and killed a bunch of tree trolls? How would they even do that?”
“They’d have to have some sort of trap,” Devon said.
He lifted the flashlight, shining it up into the trees around us and moving the beam back and forth.
I sucked in a breath when I spotted the cage.
It hung about ten feet up in a blood persimmon tree off to our right. A cage. Someone had actually put a cage out here so they could trap, torture, and murder monsters. Anger roared through my body, and I ran over, took hold of the trunk, and started scrambling up the tree.
“Lila,” Devon said. “Be careful.”
I nodded and kept climbing. A few seconds later, I was at eye level with the cage. It was a small, metal contraption, about the size of a pet carrier, with bars all around it. The door on the cage was open, and something flat and gold gleamed inside. I reached through the opening—careful not to trip the lever that would send the door shooting down—snagged the object, and dragged it out where I could see it.
A dark chocolate candy bar.
My stomach twisted, and bile rose in my throat. Someone had deliberately put the chocolate here to lure a new troll into the cage since they’d already killed the monster who’d been trapped earlier tonight—and all those other poor trolls before it.
“Lila?” Devon called out. “What is it?”
I tucked the chocolate bar into one of my coat pockets, then took hold of the metal cage.
“Use your compulsion magic and tell me to destroy something,” I snarled. “Now.”
Devon drew in a breath. When he spoke again, his voice held a cold crack of magic. “Lila, destroy.”
Devon’s voice wrapped around me like the mist cloaking the trees. The second I heard his command, invisible hands took hold of my arms, moving them this way and that. Devon’s power soaked into my body and quickly melted into a familiar, icy wave of magic flowing through my veins, so cold that it was almost painful. Suddenly, I was stronger than before—and I used that strength to rip the metal cage apart with my bare hands.
Bit by bit, bar by bar, I tore the trap apart, the pieces ping-ping-pinging off the tree branches and disappearing into the darkness. I had just snapped off the final bar when the last of Devon’s magic burned out of my body. I exhaled and took a moment to get my emotions under control before I threw away the remains of the cage and climbed down the tree.
“The trap?” Devon said, shining his flashlight at the broken pieces of metal that had fallen to the ground.