I whirled and caught a glimpse of the chrome bumper of my truck swinging toward me like a baseball bat. The bumper caught me just beneath the chin, snapping my mouth closed, my head back, and my whole body into an unplanned backflip.
Pain lanced through me like electricity as I landed in the grass. It came from both my ringing head and my finger.
Don’t you dare pass out! Maggie shouted.
I propped myself up on my forearms. If I get hold of this bastard again, flame him.
No can do. We have company.
I didn’t have time to figure out what she meant. I heard footsteps coming fast, and I rolled on pure instinct. The end of the bumper slammed into the grass where I’d just been. I tried to get to my knees only for the next swing to tag me on the shoulder. I flipped around and finally rolled to my knees just as another swing came for my head.
I caught the bumper with both hands. My tusks were completely out now, blood streaming from my torn gums and bashed-up chin. Red mist clouded my vision. “That’s mine,” I said, wrenching the bumper out of the second draugr’s grip. In such close quarters it wasn’t going to do me much good, so I discarded it and came up swinging with my left hand.
My Mjolnir tattoo might not have punched through the brute-force sorcery animating a draugr, but Grendel’s claw didn’t need to. I brought my hand up vertically and perfectly flat, like an upward karate chop, and caught draugr right in the center of the sternum. The tips of my fingers sliced through bone and tissue like a knife blade, bisecting its sternum, punching through the top of its spine, and then slicing its entire skull perfectly in half.
The draugr disappeared in a scattering of dust.
I stumbled through the cloud, coughing in the remains, and managed to take a second to get my bearings. I looked up to find that a pair of pickups had pulled up to the crash while we’d fought. Imps had piled out of them and now stood at a safe distance to watch. Among them was Kappie Shuteye, grinning from ear to ear at my blood-covered face.
The other draugr was limping toward our crashed cars and holding its shoulder. My Mjolnir tattoo must have done more damage than I’d thought. The fiend glanced over its shoulder as it crossed the ditch and, though it had no eyes, its body language betrayed a wariness that hadn’t been there before.
I wasn’t sure if the draugr had some kind of weapon in the car it meant to retrieve or if it planned on escaping to fight again another day. I had no intention of letting it do either. I snatched up my bumper and sprinted after the draugr. I jumped the ditch just as it reached the driver’s side of its car. Swinging the bumper up and over my shoulder, I brought it down in the middle of the draugr’s skull.
I was, to be honest, more than a little shocked when he didn’t disintegrate immediately with such a powerful blow. His skull bounced off the hood of his car and twisted around, hanging on to the spine by a few willowy sinews. Head on backward, the draugr hissed at me.
Mjolnir flared. I put my right fist through its teeth and watched it fade to dust.
I staggered forward, seeing double for a moment, and leaned on the hood of the car. It took a few moments to clear the blurriness from my vision, and when I did, I saw Kappie standing out at the front of his imps, chuckling happily to himself.
“We heard the car crash and came to see what happened,” Kappie said.
I pointed at the car. “You have anything to do with this?”
“That? Not me,” he said. He was so pleased with himself that I wanted to put my fist through his teeth. In fact, I was struggling not to. This close on the heels of a fight, the haze of troll berserker was still trying to gain control of my mind. All the hate and revulsion I felt for Kappie wasn’t helping things. My hands balled instinctually into fists, my tusks aching as I tried to get them to retract.
You all right, big guy? Maggie asked cautiously.
I fought with my base, violent instincts. Is he lying? I finally asked.
No. All truth. He had nothing to do with this.
Kappie walked over to me slowly, twirling his cane, and gave the crash site – and then the grass where I’d fought the two draugr – a considering glance. His eyes settled on my tusks. “How powerful of a necromancer did you piss off?” he asked.
I blinked a couple more times. The berserker haze finally began to clear. “What are you talking about?”
He tapped his cane on the thin layer of dust on the concrete. “Draugr will rise multiple times if the summoner is powerful enough, and those guys looked like they’d already been killed once.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” I really didn’t. I was finding it hard to think through the stiffness, the bleeding, and the sudden onset of a screaming headache.
Kappie continued to grin. “If reanimated by a strong enough necromancer,” he said slowly, as if explaining to a thick child, “draugr can’t be killed. Destroy them, and they’ll reform in their graves. You have to put them down for good.” He pointed his cane emphatically at my chest.
I pushed it aside and staggered to my car, where I searched among the broken glass for my phone. It was, thankfully, undamaged. Is he right about the draugr thing? I asked Maggie.
Uh, yeah. Yeah, he is. She sounded awfully sheepish.
I narrowed my eyes. You knew about this?
I didn’t think he was that powerful! she protested.
I sighed and dialed 911. “I’m calling the cops,” I told Kappie. “Unless you guys are gonna give witness statements…” The imps were all back in their cars by the time someone answered the phone. I took a step back, reported the crime, and then stood there, staring at my twisted wreck of a truck while I waited for the cops to arrive.
Chapter 8
I got a call from Nadine the next afternoon while I sat at a Cracker Barrel, having a late lunch. “Alek,” I answered.
“How are you feeling today, hun?” Nadine asked.
“Like I got hit by a car, funny enough,” I answered flatly. My troll blood let me shrug off a lot of damage, but everything ached badly, and that headache was still floating around the back of my skull. I wanted nothing more than to lie down and sleep it off for a few days, but that wasn’t going to happen.
“You should go to the doctor. Get some oxy.”
“I don’t have time for that shit.” I’d taken a triple dose of aspirin, and it would have to be enough. I couldn’t afford to be foggy-headed this week.
“I can get you a little weed if you need it.”
“It’s never done jack for me.”
“Sorry, hun. Let me know if there’s anything I can do.”
“I appreciate it, Nadine. What’s up?”
I heard her tapping something out on her keyboard. “Have you checked your email today?” she asked.
“Not for a few hours. I’ve been hitting up a few more informants to try to dig up more leads.”
“Anything?”
“Nope.”
“Well, you’ll get there. Your buddy over at OtherOps has sent you an ID on one of those dead imps. He cc’d me on the email to make sure you got it.”
I took the phone away from my ear long enough to check. “Yup, it’s there. I appreciate it. Did LuciCorp give you any more information on Judith?”