Under the Bridge (6 page)

Billy had stared at her grandmother over her
teacup. “It seems you’re gambling on a lot of things. A noble
liking me, getting me pregnant—which you keep saying it’s tough to
do; me being willing to go through all that…which is your biggest
hurdle right there. I’m flat out telling you; I’m not going to do
it. I’m sorry, but no.” Billy’s voice remained quiet, but there was
steel there. She didn’t like it, but when she had to, she could
refuse her grandmother.

She’d thought that had been the end of the
matter. She’d been a fool.

Billy carefully rinsed her cup and went to
her room.

Feeling the old defiance, she sat down on her
bed with her homework. Funny how little things could make her feel
like she was right back in high school.

She smiled sardonically, knowing that most
kids would have rebelled by avoiding their math, not doing extra
pages of it. She had just been so tired of looking stupid at
school. She knew she was as smart as anyone there, and it had
embarrassed her to bring home the grades she did. It might not have
been her fault that she didn’t have time to complete assignments,
but she was the one who looked lazy when she handed in incomplete
work, or ducked her head to avoid being called on because she
didn’t study. She tried, fell asleep trying, but the groceries
needed to be bought and the bills paid. Even in high school, she’d
shouldered most of the financial burdens.

Her job at The Flower Pot had demanded a lot
out of her, even if she only worked four days a week, after school
and weekends. Her mother had enchanted the garden to produce
year-round and kept quail that laid eggs, but there was the
electric bill, clothes to be bought and gas for the vehicles.
Nothing was free.

It was still a struggle. On top of everything
else she had to do, she now had a troll to deal with.

Billy scowled and tossed aside her books. She
lay on her quilt and stared at the ceiling, sparing the troll some
thought. She’d looked up his last name. Bergtagen meant “taken to
the mountain” in Scandinavian. It also meant “bewitched”. An
English equivalent was “taken by the fairies”, which could mean
that someone was not quite right. In the old tales, of course,
people were literally taken by the fae.

She knew the troll was not using his real
name. True names had power in the Old Tongue; that was how magic
worked. To know a thing’s true name was to be able to manipulate
it. It only worked on inanimate objects in her experience; to work
on the living was dark magic. A thing with a will should never be
subjugated.

She wondered why Ash had chosen that name.
Was it his German origins or a sense of humor? A hint of his
intentions?

That didn’t make sense, though. As far as she
knew, the troll meant to eat Carrie, not steal her away. Oh, the
website she’d gotten the name from had mentioned old fairy tales,
but she dismissed them. Like a troll was going to carry her niece
Underhill to be his bride. Her mother’s books had been very clear
that a troll’s most powerful trait was hunger. Even if he could
impregnate a pixie, it would take amazing control for him to let
her live long enough to give birth. Sharing a cave with her for ten
months (fae had a longer gestation time than humans) would be like
Billy leaving a life-sized Godiva chocolate statue unlicked. It
wasn’t going to happen.

Her thoughts began to drift. Somehow her
image of a chocolate statue turned into a living chocolate Indian
brave. She imagined rippling muscles and hard thighs as she chased
him through a forest of spruce and birch, his loincloth fluttering
enticingly. She was smiling as she drifted to sleep.

The dream had nothing to do with chocolate.
Billy sat on a dark rock overlooking a silvery-black lake of liquid
metal. As she stared at the lake, a stallion’s head broke the
surface, rising completely dry from the depths. Its fiery red eyes
fixed on her as the powerful neck rose, followed by a deep
chest.

“Eyrnie,” she sighed. “You know I have school
tomorrow. I’m going to be bushed if I run with you.” There was no
“if”, of course. When a pooka came for you, you rode. One could not
refuse the Night Stallion.

She didn’t want him to know she knew that,
though. She didn’t want him thinking he had the upper hand. Eyrnie
needed to be managed carefully, lest he get delusions of power.

“Chocolate Indians, Billy? Are you finally
going through puberty?” He placed one steel hoof on the smooth
surface and walked to her, moving with the smooth grace of a
perfect gait.

“If you don’t like my dreams, you shouldn’t
snoop,” she informed him loftily. She couldn’t resist a fond pat on
his shoulder, though. She’d almost forgotten how steel muscles felt
under silky hide. She’d always loved horses, but couldn’t afford to
ride often. Midnight gallops with Eyrnie were always a treat.

It had been a while since he’d shown up. His
emerging power had made his control touchy at times, and he’d said
it wasn’t safe. That he was here now said he was pretty confident
that he had a handle on it; and confident that she was strong
enough to show no fear if he did slip. Admitting fear to a pooka
only encouraged misbehavior.

“So what’s the occasion?” she asked,
deliberately stalling. She couldn’t give in too easily to her
desire to ride. It was his desire, too, and too compelling to
resist long. The trick was to fight it long enough to assert a
measure of dominance. A pooka uncontrolled had the ability to run
until she was nothing but rotting bones; a skeleton clinging to his
back as they raced across the midnight moors.

Since she had no interest in becoming a
screaming mind trapped within a grinning skull, she waited.

He pawed the ground, just once. “I thought we
should check in on the troll tonight. See if he’s keeping his part
of the bargain.” Battle readiness rolled off him in hot waves. He
was hoping for a fight.

She sighed. “Great. If he’s not, it’s you and
me charging at him. Should I bring a pike or a gun?” She was only
half-joking. Steel would piece him, but she didn’t want to be in
arms reach of him when it did.

She frowned as something occurred to her.
“Wait a minute! We’re in a dream. I couldn’t do anything to him if
we did find him misbehaving. Unless…would my magic work if I’m not
really there?” She frowned in confusion. There was a hazy quality
to her thoughts in the dream world. She couldn’t seem to pin down
an answer.

Eyrnie’s chuckle rolled around in his deep
chest. “Just get on.”

The stuff of dreams was clay to a pooka.
Eyrnie changed the scenery to a moonlit plain and ran, fire
streaming from his hooves. She had no idea where they were going,
but she trusted Eyrnie not to get lost. She let the wind finger
through her hair, enjoying the speed. Tomorrow she’d be as tired as
if she’d never slept, but this was worth it.

“How are you going to find him?” she called.
All she could see was flat ground from horizon to horizon. Unless
the troll was dreaming, she didn’t see how this would help locate
him.

“Watch,” he rumbled, and a staircase of
moonlight appeared before them, ascending into the clouds. He
surged forward, racing up the stairs until they were among the
clouds.

Billy laughed in delight at the sea of lights
below. “This is great! I can see the whole town from here.”

There was smug joy in his voice as he said,
“I can find anyone in the world from the dream realm. A troll in
the middle of town will stick out like underwear from a freshman
wedgie. There! Look, he’s moving down that alley. Betcha he’s
hunting.” Eyrnie angled toward the city, not bothering with the
illusion of stairs. Maybe this was his stealth mode.

Billy didn’t see what he meant at first, but
as they got closer, she could see that some of the lights were
people. He must be homing in on the troll’s light somehow. “Why are
there so many colors?” Some of the lights were quite murky.

He snorted as his hooves struck sparks from
the pavement. “Soul stains darken the light.” He glanced right.

Billy followed his gaze and screamed. A huge
delivery van barreled toward them, too close. It rushed
through
them without warning, rocking them with the wind of
its passage, and sped off.

Eyrnie rocked with silent laughter.

“Jerk!” she slapped his shoulder, hurting her
hand. “You could have warned me.”

“We’re not really here, Billy. I’d have come
to your bedroom window to fetch your body for that. Quiet. He’s
close.” They paced silently down the street, past oblivious
pedestrians. Knowing it would bother her, he avoided passing
through them. If he were alone, he’d probably take no more notice
of them than he would of blades of grass brushing his body.

“Why are we being quiet if no one else can
detect us?” she whispered, leaning close to his ear.

He flicked it at her, and she subsided. Maybe
some fae could detect a pooka in stealth mode. Maybe he just didn’t
want to take any chances.

They stopped in the shadow of an alley and
peered across the street. There was a man arguing loudly with a
cringing woman. His light was red and black, pulsing. He raised his
hand as they watched.

Billy’s knees automatically squeezed, urging
Eyrnie to spring forward. They couldn’t just watch.

He didn’t move.

Across the street, Ash came into view. She
knew it was Ash, because there could not be two such creatures
prowling the city.

He was enormous, twice the height of a man.
His tusks curled up from his lower jaw. One of them nearly pieced
his cheek—the other had broken off. Long gray hair the texture of
sheep’s wool hung down from his skull, matted with burrs. It had
grown past his ankles and brushed the ground. It fell in his big,
yellow eyes as he tilted his head to study the man.

“What’d you want?” the man demanded. “You
looking to buy an hour?” he jerked his head, indicating the hooker.
It was clear he only saw Ash’s glamour

Ash smiled his special, scary smile. Billy
shuddered. It was a hundred times worse in his true form. “I’m not
looking to buy.”

The man told him what he thought of that in
very rude terms. Then he told him to get lost.

The troll’s chuckle shook his rounded,
swollen belly. The hard fat there looked as solid as a bag of
cement. He scratched the horns at his temples with cracked, dirty
nails. The horns were small, almost delicate, and rose straight up
like a young goat’s. In his human glamour, it probably looked like
he was rifling his hair. “I like you. I thought the two of us could
enjoy a meal.”

Billy shivered.

The pimp took Ash’s suggestion the wrong way.
He stepped forward, gesturing aggressively. “What, you a homo?
Well, I’m not down with that. Tell you what, you want some of that?
How about I help you out.” He came at Ash, swinging his fists and
running his mouth.

Ash simply picked him up, opened his mouth,
and bit his head off.

The hooker stared. She stood there frozen, as
if unable to take in what had just happened.

Billy leaned forward and buried her head in
Eyrnie’s mane. She concentrated on his clean, horsy smell, trying
not to vomit.

She heard the troll spit, a muffled thump.
“Too bony,” he said politely to the woman.

She began to scream.

Billy looked up. The troll was sauntering
off, the pimp’s body slung over his back. His head lay there on the
sidewalk, its sightless eyes focused across the street at her.

8. Eyrnie approves of the Troll’s Diet

“It was clearly a case of self-defense,”
Eyrnie said calmly as he turned around and walked away, ignoring
Billy’s protests. “Besides, he has good tasted in victims.”

Billy stared at the back of his head. “You
sound just like Maura.” She was still shaken by the sudden
slaughter. Shedding blood in the heat of battle was one thing, but
Ash’s cool killing was another thing.

She could almost see Eyrnie grimace.
“Ordinarily, I’d argue with that. You’ve got to admit that the
troll is keeping his bargain…for now.”

She didn’t have to admit anything. Her mind
was still replaying the grisly way the pimp had died.

“You wouldn’t kick up this much of a fuss if
I
had killed him,” Eyrnie pointed out. “He had it
coming.”

She didn’t want to think about that. Eyrnie
probably would have killed him. He had definite opinions about the
right way to treat women, and pooka weren’t above a little
slaughter now and then. They were hardwired for it.

The thing was, Eyrnie was her friend. She
understood him. Besides, he didn’t make a habit of snacking on the
people; cannibalism really bothered her.

“Take me home. I don’t want to puke all over
your back,” she moaned.

His tail swished in agitation. “Don’t even
think about it!” He took off at a gallop, his legs eating up the
distance.

She woke the next morning tired and out of
sorts. She’d had the kind of dreams one would expect after spending
half the night riding a nightmare. Sighing, she reached for
yesterday’s jeans…and found a white rosebud tucked into her front
pocket.

She stared at the rose and then slowly picked
it up. A sniff told her it was from her favorite bush. The hair
rose on the back of her neck. Eyrnie paid no attention to flowers.
Who could have left it?

Could her mother have found her way back?

Billy made her way cautiously down the
stairs, dagger in hand. A quick search proved there was no one in
the house now, and the yard was empty. Huh.

She took the rose with her to school,
pressing it inside her English Lit book. The sweet fragrance helped
to sooth her aching confusion. It also served as a reminder that
she had to be cautious. Her dreams had reminded her that the world
was full of dangers, not all of them in the form of a stranger.