I’d survived my first battle. Not too impressive considering I was able to survive being shot point blank, but still, it was something. The other two probably wouldn’t even consider that a battle, but I was going to. It was life threatening, after all. I bet Cray would agree with me.

“Can you feel where he went, Cray?” Starren asked. Cray nodded and headed off north… or was it west?

It didn’t matter. We followed him in silence. I took a deep breath as we walked. Mom had hauled me all over the U.S., but no other place we’d visited had smelled as good as this one. Just being here again brought back memories, picnics and sleeping in our car until a ranger caught us and kicked us out of the park after dark. Good times. At least it had felt that way to a nine-year-old. I’m glad now that I hadn’t known then that Mom and I would only be together another month, before she dropped me at the kids’ home.

Wade stopped ahead of me, nearly sending me straight into his back.

“What are you doing?” I growled.

He put a finger to his lips and moved to the side so I could see. A gorgeous waterfall sparkled down the rock face ahead of us, marred only by the ugly appearance of my troll. And… another troll? Two more trolls? Wait, not one, not two, but four trolls? One had almost gotten the best of me, now there were four?

“What now?” Wade asked.

“We should call this in, wait until the Council can get more people here,” Cray said.

“Can’t.” Starren drew her sword. “They might move on before the Council sends anyone. Plus we have a job to do. The sooner we get this over with, the sooner we can get back to it. And we don’t want any hikers showing up while we’re waiting.”

“So? I thought you didn’t care about humans?” She gave me a withering look, but I wasn’t being mouthy this time. I just actually wanted to know.

Her expression eased as she realized I was being serious. “One troll and the humans would think it was a bear. This many and we are in for major problems and major cover-ups. Easier to handle it before things escalate.”

“The portal here must be huge, for trolls to find it. They aren’t the brightest of creatures,” Wade said.

Starren nodded. “We take down one of them and the rest will run. They aren’t social creatures, so they won’t know how to fight as a group. They will run to where they feel safe, which will be home, leading us to the portal.”

Somehow that didn’t sound like a plan to me. Attack one, take it down, make the rest run and then chase after them? But who was I to say anything? It was better than me being bait.

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“You and you,” Starren said, pointing to Cray, then me. “Follow us down and let them think we are evenly matched, but don’t get involved. I don’t want to have to rescue you again.”

Rescue me again? Well wasn’t that rude. She was the one that had put me in the situation in the first place! I opened my mouth to let her have it, but noticed Cray watching me. I snapped my mouth closed and stared back. He looked down, avoiding further eye contact.

“What about weapons?” I asked. Surely that was a reasonable question.

Without answering, Wade walked away from me, scanning the ground. He kicked a couple small sticks before finding one that must have suited him. He couldn’t be serious. Never mind, he was doing something with it. He closed his eyes and concentrated. The wood slowly re-formed itself into a sword. Probably not too strong, but it looked good. And pointy. Pointy was good.

“Thanks,” I managed when he handed it to me. I looked at Cray again, mostly to avoid looking at Wade, and noticed that he’d made himself one too.

“Can all fae do that?” I asked Cray.

He nodded. “A little bit.”

Okay, that was new. Mom had taught me all about the history of the fae, had even started weapon training and made me as close to a black belt in hand to hand as a nine- year-old could get, but she said I wasn’t ready when it came to the powers. It had always sounded to me like she had planned to teach me some day, but then she’d disappeared. I’d never been able to figure out what had changed, no matter how long I’d spent thinking about it.

“Set?” Starren asked.

“Yep,” Wade answered. They went shoulder to shoulder and stepped out of the tree line. Clearly this wasn’t their first battle together.

Cray and I looked at each other, then mimicked them, walking so close we bumped into each other every few steps.

Trolls really were very dumb. Sure, I’d seen plenty of movies, read plenty of books that showed how stupid they were, but humans got most things wrong about the worlds they couldn’t see. Like the fact that trolls turned instantly to stone in sunlight. I figured the intelligence level, or lack of, I guess, had been exaggerated. Apparently not. We were super close by the time my troll noticed us. The only reason I could tell our troll apart from the others was that its skin was slightly pink on top of the grey, like it had been in the sun too long.

The whole sun turning them to stone thing was a myth, but they did burn, really, really easily. I would have felt bad for the poor guy if he hadn’t been planning on eating me thirty minutes ago. He must have been back long enough to forget the whole incident, none of them looked too worried. I wiped my sword hand down my shredded jeans before gripping the hilt again. Things were about to get interesting. As if they hadn’t been before.

Starren marched forward until she was close enough to yell. “On the authority of the Council, I command you all to leave the human realm and return to Faerie.”

“She can’t do that, can she?” one of the smaller ones asked, the words slurred as it continued to pick at its broken yellow teeth with a tree limb while it talked.

“Course not,” one of the bigger ones answered. “She’s little.”

Our troll slunk away from Starren. “Little, but she’s mean. She wouldn’t let me eat that one today,” he pointed a finger at me. At least it passed for a finger, it was about as big around as an electric pole.

Another one, this one very small, popped out from behind the waterfall. “Can we eat them? Please?” Great. Five. Any more that we hadn’t counted hidden in there?

“Yes, go, eat,” the next-to-biggest said. Its voice was a little higher. Female?

“Yay!” The small one jumped down from a ledge, shaking the ground under me. My body jerked, but I stayed on my feet. I looked over to see if Starren had noticed. Nope.

Starren and Wade moved into battle poses, swords up.

The small gurgled a laugh. And then came right at us.