Page 83 of The Troll’s Summer Flame

And Mama Troll is gaining on me. “You don’t have to do this!” I scream, even though it’s a stupid waste of breath, which I really, really need right now.

“Ha! You’re just the appetizer. The boys are next. I’m better without them. They’re disgraces!” she howls.

“They are amazing! They are the best.... Sons...” I can’t do this. I can’t reason, can’t talk. I just have to run, and listen for sirens.

But instead, I hear another noise. A whistling shriek like a missile passing my head.

There’s a red and white blur beside me. A blur with large, leathery bat wings and clothes that look like they were made from reptile skins and modeled after every comic book’s depiction of a jungle warrior goddess—uneven raggedy skirt that barely reaches her thighs, midriff showing, and boobs barely held in by strips of fabric.

Great. The succubus wants to fight the troll for dinner. I’m tempted to let Chopin go, hoping he’ll run to freedom. I start to unzip the carrier as I continue to make my way to the road, only to hear,

“Don’t touch the human! Leave her alone!”

Adrenaline doesn’t let me stop, but it allows for a single look over my shoulder—and the demon babe is plowing Mama Troll to the ground with her claws and tail lashing.

“What the fuck?” I ask the universe.

The universe answers with the scream of a siren and distant white lights.

I think... I think I might be safe?

I’m not sure. I think I’ll just keep running until I see Gordon behind the wheel of Big Red.

Chapter Nineteen: The Unexpected

I don’t expect to see Andrea and Chopin streaking down the side of a dark, windy road.

I don’t expect Hugo to be the first one out of the truck and into the rolling, screaming fray that’s happening in my yard.

I don’t expect the succubus with an eighties hairband mane of white waves to be pummeling my mother into the ground while sobbing that monsters don’t have to hurt humans anymore and that my mother is going to ruin her chance at a better life.

I need to sit down, but I can’t. I’ll sit later.

With practiced motions that I don’t have to think about, I leap from the truck and seize the axe on the side. I bring it down hard in the middle of three bodies with a war cry that would make my mother proud—if she ever felt that sort of maternal emotion. As it is, it separates the tangle of bodies.

Hugo and the succubus rise. My mother doesn’t. She is a bleeding, scraped mass on the ground, her breathing labored, blood gargling in her mouth as she continues to thrash and slash.

“Hello, Mother,” I sigh.

“I’ll kill you. You and the human bitch.”

Well, I don't know what sort of greeting I expected, but it was probably something like that. “No. I’ll kill you first,” I say calmly.

“Gordon, no!” Andrea calls from the truck.

“You stay there,” I warn, hand up as if I can will her to listen.

Nope. Andrea clambers out of the truck, but at least she leaves Chopin in the cab.

“Mother, why are you here? Why are you here?” Hugo asks Mother, then the demon next to him.

“Thought you could leave an old woman to starve? Faithless seed,” she spits in Hugo’s general direction. “Followed you. Days later. Tracking your scent. Stupid seed. Never learned how to hunt properly!” she raves.

“Lots of trolls leave. They eat the weak and old. They abandon them. Father tried to teach us to live as a family, didn’t he?” I sneer. “But you didn’t like that. Now you want us to carry out the lessons you always told us were worthless?” I challenge.

Andrea creeps over. “Um. The succubus helped. She saved me. I don’t want you to hurt her,” she whispers, taking my arm.

“I wasn’t going to.” Yet.