Tracker: A Rylee Adamson Novel by Shannon Mayer Page B

scale. And a large scale was exactly what we were looking at with at least thirty surrounding us.
    Doran glanced sideways at me. “Let me try to calm this before you start lopping off more heads. I’m not sure even you can manage this many.”
    While I didn’t put my swords away, I did give him the benefit of the doubt. He was right, there were too many for me to be thinking I could manhandle the situation. A bit of finesse every now and then didn’t hurt. Usually.
    He cleared his throat and raised his hands into the air, effectively silencing the crowd. “Boys, you have a slight problem inside the bar. One of your leaders has been ambushed by those who were supposed to be helping him.”
    A squarely built, pebbly-skinned Toad Troll stepped forward, his black beady eyes narrowing until they looked as if he’d closed them. His double genitalia swung from side to side, hitting his knees. Didn’t look comfortable to me, not in the least.
    “We don’t fight amongst ourselves anymore, fucking stupid fang face.” He spat at Doran who sidestepped the arc of poison easily. With his sidestep, he was now right next to the door, which he pushed open. The two Trolls alive inside were still beating the shit out of each other. It looked like I wasn’t the only one who’d gone about causing grief by chopping off a cock or two.
    The leader of the pack let out a long, gurgling hiss and about half the crowd rushed into the building. Doran lifted an eyebrow at me. “Can you handle fifteen?”
    I shrugged, my heart pic S mywidth="king up speed. “Better odds than before.”
    Without another glance at me, Doran spun and pulled two grenades from under his jacket. Grenades that looked suspiciously like the kind I’d gotten from Deanna. He threw them at Dox’s bar and yelled out the ignition word, “ Ignitio!”
    The two grenades hit around the same time, or I was assuming that was the case, because I was already rushing the remaining Trolls. “Alex, go for the pink one.” The werewolf let out a howl and launched himself full speed at the tiniest of the Trolls, taking it to the ground and snapping its neck in two seconds flat. I headed straight for the Toad Troll. That one could damage anyone but me. He spit at me, and I took it on the arm, the acid poison burning through my coat, but my skin only got a little bit warm. Booyah for being an Immune.
    “Gotcha, fat boy.” I lifted my sword to run him through, but had to spin and deal with an orange-ish Troll on my right coming in fast. A big brute, he reached for me with hands the size of turkeys and enough fingers that he could probably make a mean shadow-puppet professional. I slid toward him, using a back swing to take all those grasping fingers off. Bloody stumps fell to the ground at my feet, still twitching and writhing.
    “No touching the Tracker,” I said calmly, as if lecturing him on how to cross the road.
    “Stupid Tracker, I’ll skin you like I did the ogre bitches,” he yelled, before falling to the ground, using his teeth to try and gather up his lopped off fingers. The words echoed in my head; they were the same ones on the note I’d found at the farmhouse. These were the guys who helped take out Dox, Sla and the triplets.
    Everything around me seemed to slow, and I turned to make eye contact with Toad number two. All that anger I’d tucked away, all that fury I had to hold back, surged in me. “You helped slice my friends up and skin them alive?”
    He grinned at me, showing broken teeth and tiny fangs in behind the teeth, retracted like a snake’s. “They cried like little girls as we peeled their hides.”
    A scream erupted out of me, rage I’d never known coursing along each nerve ending until I saw nothing but Trolls and the edge of my sword. Blood and viscera flew around me, heads rolled, hearts pierced, and none of it was enough. None of it would bring back Dox.
    The seconds blurred, and distantly I knew I’d never fought like this, never moved this