The Troll-Demon War Read online

  Her hair remained short and brown, though currently it covered her head in a mop of artificial curls. (She was never, ever going to get a perm again, no matter how much her human doppelganger Tina proclaimed that Christine would look cute that way.)

  Christine wore a loose-fitting gray sweatshirt that she’d cut both the sleeves and the collar off of—easier to do that then to try to fix the tears that she’d accidently put in the material with her claws that one time when she’d been in a hurry. Her pants were the traditional troll variety, plain brown cotton that ended just below her knees.

  She turned and slashed her ax again, first with her right hand, then with her left. The form felt good now, and she had no fear that she’d accidently let go of the ax, causing it to spin across the room and imbed itself in the far wall.

  Besides, she’d only done that a few times early on.

  Ozlandia had made Christine learn the full form first, testing her recall by just calling out the name of a position and having Christine be able to perform it. Only after Christine had fully memorized the form—able to perform it backwards as well as forwards—did Ozlandia take the next step, showing Christine how each position was used in combat.

  At least twice a week, Christine sparred with members of the king’s guard. Just as regularly, she went to one of the gyms north of the city and trained with Patrick the orc. She also practiced her form every day. It was a moving meditation for her, as the few times she’d tried doing a sitting meditation she’d promptly fallen asleep and her own snores had woken her up.

  Christine had purposefully built the room she practiced in. It was located deep underground, part of the rambling home that her earth powers had helped her excavate. The ceiling was higher than the other rooms, over fourteen feet tall, so that Christine could swing her ax overhead and not have to worry about striking anything. Solid, packed earth made up the floor. The walls still contained some of the beautiful rocks in situ that Christine had discovered when she’d been scooping out the dirt. A string of magical lights was strung around the edges of the ceiling, glowing in bright pastel colors. They mimicked human Christmas tree lights, but were actually made out of a string of rocks that Christine had enchanted. The room smelled of good dirt, fresh and fertile, the kind that could grow anything.

  Before Christine could finish going through her form, something announced its presence.

  She came to an abrupt halt, holding her ax at the ready. What had just disturbed her?

  Flinging her senses wide, Christine realized that someone on the surface had just called her name.

  With merely a thought, Christine rose out of the ground and appeared at the foot of the fairy troll bridge. She’d destroyed the original bridge in order to free her air element, that aspect of her magical powers that had been bound to the stones there. Then she’d rebuilt the bridge, twice, and was now its guardian.

  Christine was also the gatekeeper on this side of the bridge. While the bridge had its own powers—it wouldn’t allow an oath breaker to cross it—Christine ensured that those traversing the bridge to one of the other planes didn’t mean those beings harm. She also viewed herself as tour guide, and had started a collection of tourist brochures for those new to visiting the human plane.

  The bridge was primarily used as the main gateway between the Pacific Northwest of the human world and Trollville. However, with the right incantation, the bridge could lead to many of the other worlds of the kith and kin.

  “Whoa there!” came a definitely human voice as Christine swung around with her ax. “You’re going to hurt someone with that thing.”

  Christine rolled her eyes. The voice belonged to Dennis, the human brother she’d been raised with before she’d broken the changeling spell and taken on her true troll form.

  Dennis stood with a huge grin on his face, just outside of her reach. He wore an off-white wind breaker that was just a shade lighter than his beige pants. His sky-blue shirt made the blue of his eyes stand out. Cool winds gave his pale cheeks a “ruddy” quality, or so claimed Mum. He wasn’t balding, not yet, but Christine could see it in the way the sandy-brown hair at the front of his head was already retreating and would leave a mere tuft in the center in just a few more years.

  “You ready?” Dennis asked, sticking his hands in his jacket as yet another wind came racing down along the trees.

  Though it was the start of June, it was still Seattle. The natives frequently called this time of year “Junuary.” The weather was as changeable as ever, with it being sunny and in the 70s one day, then rainy and down into the 50s the next.

  “Ready?” Christine asked. “For what?” She thought for a moment. What day was it? Was it Saturday? No, she always worked Saturday mornings at the little café run by the gatekeeper on the other side of the bridge in Trollville, serving up hearty slices of ham and cheesy eggs to those who stopped by.

  She’d done that yesterday, so today had to be Sunday.

  Christine had problems keeping track of the days. She no longer worked her human job—needing to be on call for bridge travelers at all hours of the day and night. She’d inherited enough money to keep her comfortable, well, forever, if she didn’t go crazy with it.

  At least her brother no longer teased her about being “retired.” Just because she no longer worked as an archivist at the library downtown didn’t mean she wasn’t working.

  She no longer went to church with her family—she’d been haunted by too many angels to be comfortable with the human God.

  However, she did still have Sunday dinner with her family on a regular basis. It wasn’t time for that, was it? She glanced up. The sun was still warm and growing stronger, so it couldn’t be later than eleven, at most.

  Dennis sighed. “You forgot, didn’t you.”

  “Maybe?” Christine said. It wasn’t anyone’s birthday—she had a reminder on her phone for those. She hadn’t promised to go on another date with Dennis and his current girlfriend—the last double date had been disastrous enough that even Dennis had proclaimed his appetite for adventure had been worn thin.

  “It’s Father’s Day,” Dennis said after a bit. He looked put out. “You know, the day you spend with your family? Honoring your father? We’re all going out to brunch?”

  “Oh! Right!” Christine said. She remembered now. “I did get him a card and a present,” she said defensively.

  “Just change,” Dennis said, waving his hand at her troll form. “I know you’re a bad-ass princess warrior now, but we’ve got to go.”

  Christine bristled but didn’t say anything. Dennis and the rest of her family sometimes forgot that the reason why Christine had been transforming herself into a “bad-ass princess warrior” was to protect them, her family.

  The Great War had only been delayed. Yes, she’d put the main leader of the demons—Lars Sorgenfreys—into prison, supposedly for a century.

  She didn’t believe that Lars would stay there for his entire prison sentence. He’d escape, somehow. It had been five years. She had a bet with herself that he’d show up with some stupid scheme for starting up the Great War before ten years were out.

  Instead of arguing with Dennis, Christine slid her ax into its holder on her back, then touched the amulet hanging around her neck on a silver chain. She didn’t actually need the amulet in order to transform from her true troll self to her human form. She used it more as a focusing point.

  The amulet contained a pretty blue stone set in swirling silver wire. Christine had been drawn to it because of the asymmetry of the piece, how the wire looped from the top left side to the bottom right. It wasn’t until much later that she realized that the amulet actually resembled the royal troll sigil, her personal symbol that was tied to much of her magic.

  Originally, the amulet had contained a transformation spell. Christine had accidently burned it out before she’d realized her own magical powers.

  Christine didn’t physically transform, like a demon or a shape shifter. She didn’t merely cast
an illusion spell either. What she did was somewhere in between, her troll self shrinking down to human size, following the conservation of mass so she appeared as a very curvy human female. Then an illusion spell wrapped her skin, changing it from the dark green-brown of a troll to a lighter human color. Though the rest of her family had the pale white and ruddy complexions of the British, Christine had always thought of herself as being more Mediterranean colored. It was just one of the ways she differed from her human family.

  Her hair stayed the unruly dark brown mop, but her jaw shortened to human dimensions, her upper and lower fangs withdrawing. Instead of the old sweatshirt and half pants, Christine dressed herself in a nice white blouse and jeans.

  Christine knew that while a human male might think of her as “cute,” most wouldn’t even take a second look at her. Which was fine by her, now that she realized she was a troll and actually only attracted to male trolls. (She was officially a millennial, who tended to not put a lot of focus on the gender of their partners. Christine had learned that it was only male trolls who she was attracted to, though she always held herself open to the possibility that she just hadn’t met the right female yet.)

  After Christine finished her transformation, she turned and put a low-level shield spell across the bridge. It was kind of like turning the “Open” sign in a shop over to the “Closed” side. If anyone had serious need, the bridge would allow them to cross anyway. However, most travelers would wait until Christine returned.

  “You need to put these things in your calendar or something,” Dennis said, still intent on scolding her.

  Christine shrugged. While her human family meant the world to her, the rest of the human holidays didn’t hold as much meaning as they once had. She would come to Christmas, but she first celebrated the coming of the light with her troll relatives.

  It was kind of like being adopted into a family with a different religion.

  Christine had tried bringing Alan, which was short for Alanorin, along to some of her family get togethers. But he was much more trollish than she was, having been raised in Trollville. He was uncomfortable here in the human plane, as most trolls were. It was one of the reasons why Christine had met so few trolls in Seattle, the bridge troll in Fremont notwithstanding.

  “Anyway, I’m glad I got a chance to talk with you before we got there,” Dennis said as they got into his car. It was the same car that he’d driven for years. Christine always got a tiny thrill out of the small burned mark in the ceiling from one of the first times she’d actually performed magic.

  “Okay,” Christine said. She could have gotten herself to her parent’s condo down in Madison Park through one of the portals. There was one in the Japanese garden just across the street from the bridge, and another one down on the docks half a block from her parent’s building. However, she’d discovered that while she could bring Dennis or other mundanes through them, it took a lot of focus and energy.

  As much as Dennis had tried, it turned out he had no magic whatsoever, something that Christine suspected still irked him.

  Dennis pulled onto Madison Street before he continued. “Do you think that some of that, you know, thing that had infected Dad, is still there?”

  “What do you mean?” Christine said. “What makes you ask that?”

  “He’s starting to act kind of funny,” Dennis said. “And forgetful.”

  “Dad’s always been kind of funny, you know,” Christine said. He used words like “swell” and “golly gee”—not because he was old enough to have used them as a kid, but because he thought it was cool. He’d semi-retired the month before, cutting down his work to just three days a week, Tuesday through Thursday.

  “Yeah, but…he seems to be growing more funny,” Dennis said. “And his memory is getting really bad.”

  That worried Christine. “He isn’t coming down with something like Alzheimer’s, is he?” Trolls didn’t tend to get those sorts of human illnesses, including heart attacks or cancer.

  Dennis shrugged. He still looked worried. “I don’t know. But is there something you can do? Can you take him to a healer or something?”

  It was Christine’s turn to shrug. “I’ll talk to Nik about it,” she promised. While she knew that there were some troll healers, they specialized in fixing broken limbs and sewing up battle wounds. Plus, there were very few trolls who actually had magic, and they tended to be in the royal family. Healers had their own guilds and families, and didn’t traditionally have magic.

  “And I’ll ask Tina,” Christine added after a moment.

  Tina was Christine’s human doppelganger. Tina was actually Christine’s parents’ biological daughter. Christine and Tina had been swapped at birth so that Tina could be raised in a magical family and fulfill her Destiny.

  Tina was the most magical person Christine knew. She actually glowed when she got excited talking about magic. It had taken a few years of convincing, but Tina was finally over the fact that it appeared that Christine had usurped her Destiny when she’d broken the changeling spell.

  “Thanks for checking,” Dennis said.

  They were quiet the rest of the way down the hill to the lake, silent in their worry.

  It seemed so unfair to Christine. She was doing everything in her power to protect her family from external threats.

  How could she protect them from internal threats like human disease?

  Chapter Three

  Nikolai waited patiently behind his counter for the next customer to come to Nik’s Emporium and Trade Goods. He was good at waiting. It was an art that he’d practiced over the centuries.

  Waiting for the next customer. Waiting for shipments of specially ordered spell components. Waiting for the next Great War.

  The shop was as tidy as Nik was willing to keep it. Magic kept the gray tile floor swept clean—one of the first tasks he’d “automated.” Wooden shelves—many of them built by him—filled the open floor. The ceiling rose up over eighteen feet tall, so that the giants who came to shop didn’t have to crouch over. Magic also kept cobwebs from forming up there.

  Human light fixtures holding long neon light tubes ran along the ceiling. They weren’t powered by electricity, but by magic. They automatically adjusted themselves to the brightness that a customer required. Colorful posters advertising various goods lined the walls. Nik found it particularly amusing that some of the companies now used human actors representing those well-known elves and dwarves from the movies, though real elves and dwarves didn’t look anything like the Hollywood portrayals.

  Nik took a lot of care to make sure that the room generally smelled “neutral.” A lot of spell components came with strong scents—like the dried chicken feet or the green mushrooms—that would attract only a small percentage of his clientele. Still, he frequently detected a sweet Frankincense fragrance floating through the air.

  Though Nik told his customers that he’d been around since the last Great War, that was only technically true. He had run the same magical emporium then as now, located in a small pocket between worlds. (Though he had to admit he much preferred the current incarnation—running his shop out of a tent had always been difficult. Particularly when it came to keeping the flies out of the ointments.)

  Before the previous war, over two thousand years ago, he’d been one of the strongest human magicians around, though few would have realized it. Nikolai had always maintained a low profile. However, he’d learned the hard way that a human body was too easily compromised. Not only physically, but mentally.

  Demons had influenced Nik’s actions without him even realizing it. He’d never forgiven himself for how he’d betrayed humanity, even though, strictly speaking, it hadn’t been his fault.

  When the Great War had ended and the humans had won, an angel who’d owed Nik a favor had helped him transfer his consciousness over to the wooden body he’d built.

  Nik had wanted to create a much taller version of himself. That hadn’t been possible though, not with the technolo
gy of that time. He’d come to accept that he would spend eternity being just three feet tall. He wore a charm that cast the illusion that his painted mouth spoke, and that his painted eyes held the entire range of human emotions.

  From the looks Christine shot him from time to time, he wondered if it was time to renew those charms.

  Today he wore his usual modern clothing—brightly colored plaid shirt, today in baby blue, sunset red, white and black—along with a comfortable pair of loose-fitting slacks. Black leather shoes covered his wooden feet, hiding the fact that he’d never quite perfected the joints of his toes.

  Christine should be arriving soon. She came to the shop every other week and catalogued his various finds. Nik specialized in antiques and frequently went to auctions and estate sales. Not the human variety, but either from a demon who’d just passed or one of the kith and kin. The heirs usually just boxed everything up and sold it, not bothering to assess the treasures they had.

  While finding potential treasure was important, Nik’s true super power (as he liked to think of it in this modern age) lay in knowing exactly who needed what he’d discovered. Particularly since the internet did not run outside of the human realm, something Nik was sure was the Host’s meddling.

  A quiet ping rang through the shop. To all but Nik, it would have been imperceptible. It meant that someone had activated the portal in one of the planes and was on their way here.

  Nik put a pleased expression on his face, anticipating Christine.

  However, Lars Sorgenfreys walked into the shop. Nik recognized his human form—handsome overall but with a smarmy smile and blond hair that still fell into his blue eyes, giving him that bad boy vibe. He’d not aged much during his time in prison.

  “How can I help you?” Nik called out as Lars stayed by the entrance, still looking around, as if waiting for a hidden threat.