“Yaahh!” Rainbow dove, hacking at its skull with the claw part of her hammer.
A troll ran past me on all fours in a sideways leap-skitter. The slash in its face widened into a grin.
I crouched and swung my knife, cutting the troll from shoulder to hip. A cloud of dirt sprayed into the air. The troll curled up and went skidding across the street.
Red’s baseball bat brought it to a stop.
For a moment, it felt like we were winning. Slashing and hacking and yelling and running.
Then the scattered dirt on the street twitched. It gathered in separate heaps. I knew what came next.
We needed help. “Red!” I yelled. “The whistle!”
The other Hazels and the couple from the SUV were attacking the re-forming trolls and fending off new ones. The girl and I had backed up the street, farther and farther away from the rest of them.
The girl was fearless, the way she dove at the trolls and swung the club. It was getting to her, though. She was panting. Unsteady. Tensely looking from left to right.
I wasn’t much better. All I had going for me was a magical hunting knife and the knowledge that killing these trolls was apparently my freaking destiny.
A destiny that’d be easier to accomplish if they would actually stay dead.
The girl backed onto someone’s lawn. She nearly tripped over the decorative stones bordering a path, but caught herself in time.
I scanned the street. If Red had called Neven, she’d be here soon. But what about the girl? The adults from the SUV? We couldn’t just leave them.
A weight slammed into my back. Claws tore through my coat. Chittering sounded by my ears.
Wildly, I reached behind me to slash at the troll on my back. The knife didn’t connect. Then there were claws on my cheeks and a splinters-and-dirt grin an inch from my eye. Pain flared in my leg—
I crashed into the grass.
There were at least two trolls. Maybe more. Their claws dug deep, shredding my clothes and stabbing the skin underneath. One troll weighed down my arm. I couldn’t reach it with the knife. Something else slammed into me. Pressure on my throat. And movement—something thin and sharp—
It didn’t hurt.
But my tongue tasted of iron, all of a sudden. My skin felt warm. Not warm like panic or adrenaline. Warm like blood gushing from my throat. It dripped down, fast and slick, down my neck and into my clothes.
I saw it, too. The blood sprayed up in bursts at the edge of my vision.
A grinning troll face, moss-covered and bloodstained, loomed over me. Claws piercing my skin. Screams in the distance. The girl. Running at me. Golf club raised.
I felt even warmer, suddenly. Gasping, sputtering, and it hit me that I was about to—
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
The girl and I had backed up the street, farther and farther away from the rest.
The girl was fearless, the way she dove at the trolls and swung the club. It was getting to her, though. She was panting. Unsteady. Tensely looking from left to right.
I wasn’t much better. All I had going for me was a magical hunting knife and the knowledge that killing these trolls was apparently my freaking destiny.
A destiny that’d be easier to accomplish if they would actually stay dead.
The girl backed onto someone’s lawn, all immaculate grass and decorative stones. Her toes caught behind one of those stones. She tripped, slamming onto the path. She grunted in pain and folded her leg against her chest, gripping her ankle.
I crouched by her side. “Is it bad?”
A muffled sound. I took it as a yes.
Movement flashed in my peripheral vision. A troll was bursting at us. I pushed myself away from the girl, slashing in the troll’s direction. It lunged, pulled back, shifted sideways, tried to get at us that way. After several attempts, I finally hit it properly. Two uncoordinated slashes at its skull were enough to take it out.
The girl—half sitting up by now—knocked away an approaching troll with her golf club. I cut it down, then swiped the trolls’ dirt all over the grass and path. Maybe that would slow their return.
“Can you get up?” I glanced nervously at the clumps of dirt.
“Let me—nope.” The moment she put weight on her ankle, her face twisted.
Her parents’ SUV was thirty or forty yards down the street. The trolls would get her before she could even stumble halfway there.
The nearby shed stood open, though.
“Come on,” I whispered, offering an arm. The girl leaned on me as we crossed the few feet to the shed. We slipped inside. I left the door open a minuscule crack—I wanted to hear what was happening outside, and wanted to flee the second it seemed necessary.
The light in the shed was still on. No trolls. I didn’t have to look hard, given how tidy the place was: clean floor, mostly empty workbench, a firmly locked storage cabinet.
One corner wasn’t so tidy. Two brooms, a rake, and an old spade lay tangled together on the floor. Must’ve fallen from the empty hooks on the wall above them.
Nearby, I spotted dried blood.
“Don’t worry,” the girl said weakly. She leaned against the workbench and lowered herself to the floor. She groaned, hopefully more from relief than pain. “This is the Hendersons’ shed. They were attacked. Fought the trolls off with a shovel. They’re holed up in the library now. Lots of people are.”
Distant, panicked yells came from outside. I had to help. This was my fight, after all. “I’ll go outside,” I told the girl. “I’ll tell your parents your location.”
“No.” She kept her voice soft and glanced at the door at the same time I did. “If the trolls see you and realize I’m still here, I’m dead. I’ll text my dad. He’ll pick us up.” She pulled a phone from her coat pocket. It dropped from her
