He had me there. It was coming, one way or the other. I had no delusions that the troll was going to let us walk out of here with a smile and a slimy handshake. Then again, feeling that cold ribbon of muscle loop around you in the heat of battle was different from waiting for it, quiet and accepting. Considerably, horrifically different. I shook my head again. "No. Just… no."
"It's for Georgina." His eyes held mine, gray to gray. "She would do it for me, Cal. Allow me to do it for her."
Dirty pool. Honest and true, but dirty nonetheless. "Jesus." I lowered the shotgun muzzle fractionally and did my best to swallow the apprehension that was a noose around my neck threatening to choke me. "Fine. Do what you want, Nik. You will anyway. Play footsie with the monster all you goddamn please."
The corner of his mouth quirked at my ill-tempered surrender. "Love you too, little brother." Not a hint of sarcasm, not a whisper of irony—there was only tolerant affection. Not only had he gotten all the human genes in the family, but all the emotional stability too. How fair was that? "Very well, Abbagor," he continued, voice hardening to the unwavering blue of steel. "You have your taste. Ten seconds. Longer than that and you and your tentacle part ways."
"So bold. So audacious… for a human." Abby was entertained but good now. The mud sloshed around his waist as more tentacles shot into sight. The pit had to be five feet deep. If we tumbled into that… if Niko was pulled in, there would be no getting out of it. I hooked the fingers of my free hand onto the waistband of his black pants. It was probably futile as hell, but I did it anyway.
"Bold, audacious, and highly annoyed," Niko said flatly. "Get on with it, troll."
"Such an impatient race. Comes from being barely evolved, I suppose." As the words flowed, so did the tentacles, but they weren't alone. In his trench, Abbagor moved. Ripples of mud spread sluggishly from his path, releasing a smell of decay so strong that it rivaled the stench that already saturated the place. It wasn't the by-product of corpses, although I was positive there were plenty of those to be found below the bubbling brown surface. It was the smell of sickness, the putrescence of living flesh, not dead. Abbagor was sick. Maybe I'd done more damage last year than I'd thought. Or maybe Abby had picked up a really bad fungus down here in the swamp. Who knew? But from what I was getting a whiff of, he was rotting from the inside out.
I tensed as the troll approached, but stood my ground. He was moving slowly, cautiously… so careful not to scare the kiddies. He didn't want to ruin his good time, now, did he? "That's close enough," I warned with lips twisted in disgust.
"A true Auphe, king of all you survey." Abbagor had teeth. Fangs actually. I hadn't noticed that last time. Curving and black as the talons on his hands, they were full of poison, if the yellow dripping from the top two were any indication. "You are the word made law, and I obey."
That'd be the day… the day Abbagor was a particularly pungent fertilizer. Abbagor bowed to no one, not even the bygone Auphe. And a sick Abbagor was only that much more dangerous. I'd seen those nature specials when Niko had refused to turn over the remote. Predators tend to get cranky when wounded. When he'd previously tried to kill us, the troll had actually been in a good mood. I really didn't want to see a bitchy, disgruntled Abby in action.
Attention back on Nik, Abbagor murmured again, "A touch. Only a touch." But it wasn't a tentacle he extended toward my brother; it was his hand. Four or five times the size of a man's hand, it was held out palm up. And in the center of that palm was a mouth, a human mouth. Pale lips, soft and full. Not just human, but a woman's mouth. One of his prisoners. How they were dissolved within Abbagor, how they continued to live, I didn't know. I didn't want to know. If I did know, I had doubts that I would ever sleep again. Then again, the sight of a rosy pink tongue tip peeking between those lips might have just sealed that deal for me anyway.
It also happened to be the trigger to Niko's losing it.
Of course, a loss of composure and temper came off a lot better on my brother than it would have on me. Lips thinned to nothing and eyes dark with a cold fury, Niko said in a tone that would've been conversational if not for the razor edges lining every word, "Remove it from my sight or I'll remove it from you." His sword was already in motion, stopping to hover bare millimeters above the clay-colored wrist. The blade hung perfectly motionless, still and sure.
Personally, I was all for the chop. Yeah, big fan of the chop. But Abby gave in, the son of a bitch. "Very well," the troll sighed dolefully, pulling the hand back. "I bow to your prejudices, human." Right. "Prejudices," it would've almost been funny if not for the revulsion and horror that saturated the air like a dank humidity.
An especially plump tendril took the place of the hand. Deftly avoiding the naked blade, it rested gently on the back of Nik's hand. "Ahhhh, I remember. That piquant flavor, so unique. You taste of metal and blood, of green grass and blue sky. And, after all this long, long time, you still taste of… me." The tentacle didn't curl or grip; it didn't threaten in any way. At least, not physically. It simply… petted. A light caress, a soft stroking, harmless, right? Wrong. Niko's olive skin faded slightly as old memories came to a boil. It was the faintest of differences, nearly undetectable, but it was enough for me. And by God it was more than enough for Nik. "Okay, that's it," I snapped, knocking the writhing cord aside with the shotgun. "You've had your jollies. Now tell us about the Calabassa."
"That was hardly the agreed-upon ten seconds." As one, all the tendrils retreated with an unnatural speed to wrap themselves back into the whole of Abbagor. "Seven at best."
"Close enough, you bastard," my brother said with a deadly calm.
There was going to be a fight—we'd known that going in—but as it stood now Niko just might beat Abbagor to the first blow. And if he didn't, I was more than happy to move up in line. But at the last moment it looked as if the battle might be postponed for a minute or two. Abbagor was going to speak and there was nothing Abbagor liked more than showing off his knowledge. Funny, you never think of killing machines as being proud or full of an almost human conceit, but sometimes they can be.
A heavy, pregnant silence surrounded the troll like a poisonous fog. Finally, he pronounced with a rippling displeasure, "Disguised cheaters, prating mountebanks." I recognized that it was a quote, but I couldn't identify it. Not much of a surprise, considering what I read in my spare time. Didn't you just hate it when monsters were more literate than you?
"Seek out your kind," he continued. "They have the Calabassa. They're quite enamored of baubles."
My kind. He knew. How could he know already? It was impossible. It had only been a little over a day. "My kind," I said between stiff lips. "What do you mean, my kind?"
"Not your kind." The venomous grin gaped wider and the large head tilted in Niko's direction. "His kind. Gypsies." Both of us, Niko and I, were half-Gypsy through Sophia, but my human half was easily washed away, it seemed.
"Gypsies? Which clan? And what is so important about the crown?" Niko asked, sword still in hand. "Does it perform some function? Is it especially valuable in any way?"
"One taste, one question." The mud sloshed as Abbagor took another step in our direction. It looked as if playtime was over. "But here is a question for you. I see all. I know all. I am all. Did you think the passing of the Auphe at your hand would escape me?" Another step, slow and ponderous. "Did you think I wouldn't know what you've taken from me?"