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Guttural voices roared and light shot from the middle of the room beyond where Quinn, Evalle and Devon remained.

What had happened to Tristan?

High-pitched screams sounded like kids, then deep shouts and bellows overpowered them.

Quinn rushed forward just as the glamour hiding all of that fell away.

Tristan appeared in the center of the space now, fighting two trolls. A third troll with black eyes and long, spiked teeth stood in front of a series of large cages containing two terrified teenagers and three adults. With a horn sprouting out of his thick head, hair everywhere, and standing seven feet tall, the guard troll held a short axe in each hand. He looked ready to bludgeon anyone who dared touch the cages.

Devon said, “He’s mine.”

Evalle rushed over to help Tristan.

Using kinetics, Quinn knocked one of Tristan’s attackers backward so Evalle and Tristan could battle one at a time.

The eight-foot monster troll Quinn had knocked away rolled and came up on his huge feet. He had linebacker shoulders if someone wanted a giant on the football squad. A vicious tusk jutted down each side of his mouth where saliva drooled. When he charged Quinn, he opened a maw filled with needle-sharp fangs.

Shoving up a kinetic wall, Quinn prepared to drive the monster back.

But the troll opened his hand and tossed sparkling dust in the air that blasted Quinn’s invisible wall apart.

Those sparkles stank of burned limes. Noirre majik?

Screw being careful.

Quinn shouted to his people telepathically, They’re using Noirre. Don’t link and do whatever it takes to win.

That countermanded his original order of bringing in the kidnappers, or at least one they could use for intel. Right now, he was more concerned about all of his team surviving.

Fighting a troll had inherent risks for anyone.

Fighting one that wielded Noirre majik turned the odds against even a Belador.

Devon struggled with the shorter, black-haired troll who had been guarding the cages. His telepathy didn’t always work as well as the others so Quinn didn’t know for sure that Devon caught the message authorizing him to use deadly force.

Evalle had thrown her power in with Tristan to battle his adversary. They had their troll on the ground. As soon as one of them could get free, Devon needed help.

Monster troll roared, yanking Quinn’s attention back to staying alive. The troll swatted a beefy power hit at him, but the power blast connected with Evalle instead.

She went flying across the room backward and hit a wall, bouncing to the ground with a groan, but still upright.

Tristan’s troll was back up and now had Tristan by the throat.

Quinn kept slamming kinetic hits at his big troll, hoping the miserable beast wasn’t schooled in how to use Noirre majik effectively. If so, this troll would have already done a better job of wielding it as a weapon.

Growling, Evalle ran across the room, leaped into the air and flipped, landing on the back of the troll choking Tristan. She lifted her spelled blade and reached around, shoving it through the troll’s forehead.

She shouted an order for the spelled blade to stay put.

Quinn got hit across the middle with an invisible bat. He blinked at the monster troll, who drooled through a snarl. “Die, Belador.”

“Not yet,” Quinn said, gasping for air and catching his balance.

Tristan fell back, holding his throat and sucking in air.

Quinn’s troll pulled out another fist of sparkles.

Where was he hiding the bag of that crap?

Fuck this. Quinn would rather dive into sewage than enter the mind of a troll or a demon, but this one appeared to be running the show and had control of their Noirre supply.

When Tristan’s troll fell backwards, Evalle leaped away then yanked out her blade. She turned on Quinn’s troll, who cocked back his arm to throw the Noirre at her.

No time left.

Quinn shouted at Evalle, “No!”  He pushed inside the troll’s mind and shoved power hard into that thick skull. Dull pain slugged through Quinn’s head. This shit would hurt later.

The massive troll slapped his head with the hand holding Noirre crystals. He smashed the sparkles into his eyes and howled, jerking his head back and forth.

Evalle swung around with a what-are-you-doing? look.

Quinn gritted out, “Help Devon!”

“I’m on it.”  She spun around and dove toward Devon, who was on the ground in a wrestling battle with the guard troll.

As long as Quinn had forced his way into his troll’s head, he might as well find out what was going on. But the deeper he pushed, the more it was like digging face first through a clogged toilet. Flashes of faces and names came through, but nothing he could grab hold of except ... get Belador children.

The harder Quinn fought with his mind lock, the louder the troll roared and finally ran himself head first into a wall.

Quinn jerked out of his mind a second before the troll’s head literally exploded. Murky-colored blood splattered everywhere, choking the air with a sewage odor.

Damn, that was too close. If Quinn had stayed in there, he might have suffered serious brain damage through the connection.

“Way to go, Evalle,” Devon complimented.

Quinn looked over to see Evalle standing over her blade shoved into another forehead. At close to six feet tall, with dark brown hair and wearing black cargoes and a long-sleeved T-shirt instead of her usual BDU shirt and jeans, she was the role model for badass women.

She cut her eyes at Devon, gave him a half grin, and shrugged.

Tristan walked up to Quinn, looking like a magazine model gone to war. He kept his tawny hair cropped in the messy look of today’s young men, and filled out his black ensemble with cut muscle. Coughing, he pointed at the exploded head and said in a hoarse voice, “There goes our intel.”

“Better to lose intel than any of you.”  Quinn gave Tristan a long look. “How did you know you could teleport inside their glamoured area?”

“I didn’t, but it seemed like a good idea.”

Bloody hell. Quinn had seen Tristan go from a loner who cared for no one except his foster sister, to someone who had tried to sacrifice himself for Evalle and their cause as he fought alongside her. Tristan had helped Evalle and their new leader, Daegan, escape the Medb stronghold. Now this young man was their dragon king’s Rí Dtús. Daegan had come from an era where that title designated a right-hand man.

Taking Tristan’s new responsibility into consideration only made his teleporting stunt that much worse.

“What would I tell Daegan if we’d lost you?” Quinn asked.

“Shit happens?” Tristan lifted his arms, then seemed to notice the odd quiet that had settled over the room. He frowned and turned around to face the cages.

Quinn peered at the enclosures, too.

All five humans were silent. Three were staring in wide-eyed shock.

He took in the red-haired pair of human teenagers who fit the description of the seventeen-year-old boy and fifteen-year-old girl missing from a Belador family. Those two were shaken up, but they wouldn’t be overly surprised to witness Quinn and his team battling trolls. Belador families were aware of the preternatural world but kept its secrets.

The other three humans sat slack-jawed, no doubt trying to process the battle that had just taken place.

Tristan whispered, “We should ask the humans a few questions before calling in Sen.”

Evalle walked up. “Why?”

Devon was right beside her. “Because, cher, they’ll tell us anything right now. We’re their saviors.”

Quinn said, “Good idea, Tristan.”

Tristan’s smile jumped to cocky, so Quinn added, “Much better than the one where you teleported into a pile of trolls that could have killed you. I would rather not have to share that detail with Daegan.”

That wiped the gloating off Tristan’s face.

“Hey, what the hell are you people?” a man in the last cage called out.

Devon murmured, “There we go.”

Quinn asked Evalle, “Would you go talk to the two children? Confirm they’re our Belador family?”

“Sure.”

There were ten cages. The first one held both teens, then there was a gap before the last three. Quinn would like to think keeping them together had been out of consideration for the kids, but it was probably simpler not to listen to those two complain and whine if they were left apart.  

Evalle opened the cage and slipped inside, squatting down to speak softly with them.

No one could come out of the cages until the cavern was cleaned up. Noirre sparkles scattered around still had the potential to harm a human. This place stank like crazy.

Tristan had stopped at the cages with the other two adults and tried to talk to the men. Both were around thirty and looked snatched straight from the ’hood. They scooted back into the corners, as far away from him as they could. He shook it off and moved on to the guy who appeared anxious to engage.

As Quinn joined them, he was surprised at the candor of the human speaking.

This guy looked closer to forty, with thin brown hair that had been cut nicely but looked ratty right now. He’d been captured wearing a suit that was now dirty and sweaty.

Shoving a wary gaze to Quinn and Devon first, the man turned to Tristan and said, “What are you?”

“That’s rude,” Tristan said. “Most people ask names first.”

Quinn barely managed not to roll his eyes at Tristan.

“Oh, uh, I’m Marty.”  He wiped his mouth with a shaky hand, but his eyes said he had a thousand questions. “What’s your name?”

“Tristan.” Pointing at Quinn, Tristan said, “This one is the boss. His name is Quinn, and that one is Devon. The woman with us is Evalle. How’d you end up here?”

“Those things ... uh, sorry, I don’t know what to call them. I don’t want to insult anyone, but, are you guys ... aliens?”

“No. We were all born here on earth. Those were trolls.”

“No shit? Trolls really exist?” Marty’s eyes bugged out when he stared at the closest troll. Evalle’s blade remained buried in the troll’s head. Marty sank onto the single broken chair against the wall in his cell. His attention returned to Tristan. “I’m a freelance reporter. A lot of my articles make the local news. I’ve been following wild stories about trolls, witches, warlocks and demons. I’ll be honest, I thought it was all a hoax until one of those ... trolls caught me one night and knocked me out.”

“He hit you and you survived?” Devon asked in disbelief.

“No. I mean he put some kind of mojo on me and I just passed out.”

“Oh, yeah, that makes more sense.”

Marty said, “I woke up in this cell.”

“Did you hear anything they said?”

“I always heard them, but they didn’t always speak English. Sometimes it sounded like maybe Swedish or Nordic or hell I don’t know. Weird.”  He caught himself, quickly addressing everyone. “I’m not calling anyone weird. I don’t judge.”

Quinn noticed Tristan’s eyes twinkling.

The Alterant was enjoying this. Quinn might have too if not for how bad this place smelled between the Noirre majik, troll BO and stinking blood.

Marty had quieted for a moment, concentrating on something.

If Quinn had to bet, he’d say the reporter was thinking about how much he should share. He probably thought he was going to get an exclusive on this.

Devon must have read the same thing. He scratched his jaw and his next words came out sounding like a Cajun from the back woods of Louisiana instead of the Ivy League graduate Quinn knew him to be. Devon was a warrior who would use any method at his disposal for withdrawing intel.

“I can understand a human bein’ too terrified to get anything useful from a troll,” Devon said.

Affronted, Marty sat up straight. “I’m an award-winning journalist. I’ve been in the middle of military operations that would turn your hair white and I’ve gotten exclusive interviews with world leaders. My network didn’t expect me to come back alive from those campaigns.”

Tristan said, “I’m impressed. We work for a top-secret arm of the government to protect humans. It’s imperative that you share anything you heard so we can find the other missing humans.”

Devon coughed to cover his choked laugh.

Quinn managed not to smile.

Tristan remained dead serious while he faced Marty.

“I understand. I want to help save others, too. The troll you fought was called Arto. The big troll that Quinn fought was called Gils,” Marty said. He glanced at the third one, which had guarded the cells. “I don’t know his name. He said very little and just did whatever Gils said. Right before you showed up, Arto was trying to convince Gils to grab their stash and run. He said they’d end up dead if they didn’t.”

Quinn looked at Arto. He’d been right.

Evalle joined them. She whispered, “Those are our kids and they’re good.”

Thankfully, Quinn could now face the warrior who hadn’t expected to get any of his family back, and return his children safe and sound.

Marty said, “Gils argued they’d made a deal for, uh, something that sounded like no-war-ay.”

Tristan nodded. “Noirre majik.”

“Right.” Marty frowned in thought then continued. “Gils contended they had to make good on their end of the bargain. If they backed out now there would be nowhere to hide from some goddess. He also called her a queen.” He looked up at all three of them. “Do you have a queen?”

Tristan turned to Quinn, letting him answer.

“Yes, we do, but not the queen the trolls were talking about.”

“Oh, man. Do these goddesses and queens have powers?”

“Yes.”

Marty’s face exploded with enthusiasm as if he’d just found the Holy Grail. “I thought I was going to die, so this sucked at first, but now it’s gonna be amazing.”

“Not if you don’t have more to tell us, Marty,” Tristan said in a mild warning tone.

That snapped the reporter back to the moment. “Got it. Arto argued that they didn’t have everything the woman wanted and the longer they stuck around, the less time they had to hide from her. Arto would have made a much better leader,” Marty mused.

“What else?” Quinn asked, trying to move this along. He was ready to call in Sen for cleanup, plus he had a child of his own to find and no decent leads. The only positive point about his child was that few knew of her existence and no one knew where she lived.

He hoped that was the case since he hadn’t been able to find her even with his considerable resources.

“Gils flat-out said no,” Marty continued. “He said he’d rather cut out his own heart with a dull knife than face what that woman would do if they ran without delivering on their end and she caught them. He said they had plenty of food and could finish this the right way.” Marty’s eyebrows dropped low over his eyes in a look of deep concentration. “You know what? I never saw them bring in any food.”

Tristan snorted and covered his mouth to hide his reaction.

Poor Marty didn’t realize he was sitting in the cupboard.

Evalle asked, “How did they catch the other people?”

Marty stood up and dusted off the minute he realized she had noticed him.

Smoothing his wild hair to now be neat, but grimy, Marty said, “Hi. You’re really amazing.”

Evidently he found spiking trolls in the forehead with her blade hot.

Evalle quirked an eyebrow at the obvious flirt. “Thank you. My mate would agree.”

“Mate? What kind of mate?”

“He’s a Skinwalker. He turns into a jaguar about this tall.”  Evalle held her hand level with her chest, which wasn’t an exaggeration. “He killed a troll bigger than these because it hurt me.”

Marty swallowed and toned down the charm.

Sounding pleasant, Evalle encouraged, “You were telling us how the trolls were getting humans.”

“Oh, yeah. The two guys over there were following ads offering money for information on paranormals.”

Tristan tensed. “What kind of ads?”

“That’s the crazy thing. There are two ads. They look identical and I’ve seen the one from the guy in Atlanta who has been hunting paranormals for a long time, but I think the trolls copied it and put out their own.”

Muttering a curse, Tristan told Quinn, “I know people at the company he’s talking about. They’re legit humans and only one woman there knows about us, but she keeps our secrets. Until we get this troll problem handled, I’ll see about having their ads pulled. Then we can go after the phony ad.”

“Good.”  Quinn recalled Evalle mentioning that Tristan had met a young woman with that group. The damned ads had apparently become a chum line for trolls.

Marty snapped his fingers. “Hey, I want to interview each of you and get pictures.”

Evalle snickered. “That’s not going to happen.”

“Okay, forget the pictures. I can appreciate you want to remain anonymous like Batman, but this is huge.”

“Batman?” Tristan scowled. “We’re real.”

“Of course you are,” Marty said, rushing ahead. “Look I’m ready to get out of this cell.”

“It’s too dangerous for you to walk around the Noirre majik,” Devon warned him. “You get that stuff on you and hoo-man, that’d be bad.”

Marty’s eyes widened when his gaze dropped to the floor, searching it as if man-eating scorpions would jump out of the cracks. “Okay, I understand.” 

Tristan sighed and suggested, “We might as well call in Sen. Time to wipe their minds.”

“What?”  Marty started looking back and forth, immediately agitated. “No. You can’t do that ... can you?”

“Yes, and it’s for your own good,” Evalle pointed out. “You don’t want to be involved in any of this. You’re lucky you didn’t get eaten.”

“Eaten?”

She nodded. “The trolls were trading those two teens, but you three were rations.”

Marty went from excited to frightened to disappointed all in ten seconds. “I’m glad I didn’t get eaten.” He shivered. “But this is the story of a lifetime.”

“We’ll make you a deal. If we ever go public, we’ll let you do a story,” Devon offered.

“Thanks. I appreciate that potential story, but do you really have to wipe my mind?”

“Yes.”

“Well, shit. At least tell me this. Is there really a dragon?”

Everyone froze and looked at him. Quinn posed the question, “Why would you think that?”

“Arto said he’d do his part for that woman’s event, but he was leaving the minute the dragon showed up because he didn’t believe that she could keep them safe.”