The head lay on the grass, its body hidden from my view. A chunk of dirt crumbled from its skull and rolled to the ground.
Moments later, the dirt grew limbs and a head. The new troll skittered away.
The trolls were unmerging.
“They did it,” I whispered. The Hazels and Torrance had placed Alpha in a coma. Either that, or the coma hadn’t worked, and they’d—
No. I refused to think about that.
I hobbled toward the back of the truck using the sharpened rod as support, almost catching my foot in the tarp, then staggered outside. I swerved to take in the world around me. The same scene played out all over. Trolls fighting, trolls confused, trolls collapsing. Neven was across the field, flying toward me with her tail wrapped around a flailing truck driver.
A troll rammed into my thigh and pinned its claws into my jeans. I yelped. The troll hissed, low and hard.
I jabbed the blunt end of the rod into its torso. The troll dropped like a bag of sand. It sputtered out dirt, already scrambling to attack a second time. Before it could, I flipped the rod and pushed it into the troll’s chest. It went through as easily as my hunting knife would’ve. The troll jerked and collapsed into dirt.
“That,” Neven said, flying in a low circle around the truck, “didn’t go entirely as planned.”
“Let go! Put me down! Girl, run—!” The driver beat his fists futilely against Neven’s tail.
“You realize she saved your life?” I said. “She’s on our side. Promise.”
“Dragon good,” Neven informed him. “Trolls bad.” She landed by my side and gently put down the driver. Two approaching trolls had gotten knocked over from the gusts produced by her wings.
“You’re hurt,” I said softly. That gash on her hind leg looked even worse up close.
“So are you. Let’s not dwell on blaming ourselves or one another. You have business to attend to.” Her tail casually whacked aside a troll rushing her. About a dozen others approached. In the background, even more were stirring, as though realizing I was still here.
“Yeah. Yeah. Um.” I glanced at the remains of the troll I’d taken down a minute ago. It hadn’t moved yet. It was too early to tell whether the plan worked—the goal had been to weaken the trolls enough that steel could kill instead of just incapacitate them—but it looked like a good sign.
Taking out one troll was an awful lot easier than taking down dozens, though, no matter how weak they were. More and more were coming at us, but several were breaking away, slithering off toward the trees. I needed to take them out before the group fragmented further, and before I got trapped in a fight I couldn’t win.
I looked at the steel around us, gleaming dark in the evening light. The blue tarp was all bunched up in the nearest pile of junk.
“I have an idea. Can you two hold them off?” I turned to Neven and the driver and offered the latter the spike. “I’m sorry, I hate to ask—it’s only for a minute, and the trolls are weaker now, and . . . if things go wrong I can still jump in. I’ll be fast. Don’t stab the dragon.”
“It’s rude,” Neven added.
“What are you—?” the driver started, deathly pale.
“Troll!” I pointed behind him, then crouched. Pain jolted through my leg. With the truck behind me, steel in front of me, Neven on one side, and the driver on the other, I had some time to work. I tugged at the tarp. The steel clattered every which way. Once I had the tarp free, I hoisted a bundle of rods into its center. These were thinner ones, like rebar, which would serve my purpose fine.
I dragged my hunting knife along one edge of the bundle, turning the blunt ends sharp.
I dragged the knife along the bundle again, cutting half an inch off the sharpened ends. Chips of steel tinkled onto the tarp. With every cut, more slices dropped down. I worked fast, like helping Mom prep beans in the kitchen.
“Got it,” I said before the last pieces even hit the ground. “Neven?”
She took one look at the tarp and the heap of sharpened steel chunks and nodded. Satisfaction glinted in her eyes. “Let’s go.”
CHAPTER FORTY
That night, steel rained from the Damford skies.
The slices flickered and gleamed as they fell. Most embedded in the ground or bounced off the asphalt. The rest hit unsuspecting trolls with enough force to bury deep into their bodies.
Most dropped within seconds.
None got back up.
The largest merged troll tried to stand as we flew overhead, its face twisted in rage. The moment the steel hit its body, it started crumbling. Parts collapsed into dirt, while other parts shifted into smaller trolls that instantly scattered across the grass.
We took them out, too.
We cleared the fields, the roads. In town, we dropped the driver at the library and confirmed with Four that Alpha was comatose and safe inside a local clinic, being looked after by the resident nurse—Mr. Ávila, Tara’s dad. (I then had to escape Red, who wanted me to join Alpha at that clinic—my bloody jeans had caught her eye.)
I left the library with a high-powered flashlight in hand and took a couple of minutes to replenish our supply of steel shavings. Then Neven and I went back into the sky. We searched the Damford streets for any stray trolls. Most were already being taken down by local fighters, laughing and jeering, their every movement sheer elation. I’d heard the nearby towns were the same. The second the trolls showed weakness, survivors had gone after them with a fury.
I hoped the Powers That Be were watching.
We’d only arrived in Damford that afternoon, and already we’d wiped the vast majority of trolls from existence. The few trolls left would be too weak to multiply, and would be hunted down
