Troll Or Derby, A Fairy Wicked Tale (8 page)

He laughed, tusks peeking out from his lower lip. I’d been seeing a lot of those lately on folks, drugs or no drugs.

“What
are
you?”

“What do I look like, Little Miss Roller Deb?” He looked at me like he could see through my clothes.

The kids’ laughter had turned to moans of pleasure, and I was afraid to look around—afraid of what I’d see. The sprites from Dave’s shoulders were rolling together down his body, back into the fire, and the things they were doing were making me ill.

“What are you doing to these kids?”

“Nothing they don’t want to do already,” he said. He shotgunned a beer and gave a loud belch. “A little drink, a little smoke, and they’re free to enjoy themselves. They’re relaxing. Just being
human
.” He said it like it was a dirty word.

There was a small stifled scream, and I looked just in time to see the English kid bite the ear off of his Amish girlfriend. He chewed on it, munching loudly, and she pressed her hand against her head, laughing. The English kid smiled over at me, his own set of tusks showing as he grinned.

“Pay the toll to the troll, you know,” said Dave. He chuckled at his own joke and pulled a cell phone out of his pocket. It played La Cucaracha in his hand, and he held up one finger to me. “Just a sec, gotta take this.”

He walked away from me, into the barn. No one seemed to be watching me. I thought about making a break for it, but how far could I get through the woods of Graber’s farm before Dave caught up with me?

And if these guys are really trolls …

It was kind of freaking me out, thinking about what hidden talents they might have for tracking young girls through the dark woods.

I focused on feeling normal, on trying to see sanity through the cloud of drugs or whatever Dave had done to me. I had to get him to take me to Gennifer, or at least to tell me where she was.

He returned from the barn and shoved his cell phone into his pants pocket, staring hard at me.

“That was Gennifer. She’s just fine,” he said. He opened another can of beer.

“Did you tell her that I’m here with you?” I asked. I didn’t honestly believe he’d been talking to my sister—not by the way he’d seemed so respectful of whoever was on the other end of that phone.

“I did, I did,” he said. “Made her a little jealous, you know.” He winked at me, and his smell filled my head. I half-swooned, and sat down hard on the bale of straw.

Dave crossed to me, and sat down close—too close. “We can go to my car and talk about it, if you want,” he purred into my ear.

Part of me wanted to vomit. The other part of me—the part controlled by the drugs—could have actually done something illegal and immoral with Dave at that moment. I pressed my eyes shut, held my breath, and decided to play along. Maybe if I acted like I was into him, I could fool him long enough to slip away at some point—after he’d told me where Gennifer was.

Dave’s car was nice—too nice, like it just rolled off the showroom floor of Satan’s Cadillac dealership. It smelled brand new, and the seats were an unblemished, supple leather that I’d never seen before.

“This a custom job?” I asked, rubbing my hand across the bench seat in what I hoped was a sensuous manner.

“I could let you give me a custom job, sure,” he said. He started the car. “Oh, wait, you meant the upholstery. You could say it was a gift. Gift from the class of 2006.” He laughed and turned on the stereo.

A dozen kids went missing that year—our school had become infamous for it. Double the number from the previous year, at that. Their bodies were never found. Everyone said it was some kind of suicide pact, or commune-dwelling hippies who lived in the woods between Bedrock and Bloomington, but there was never any proof.

I remembered one of the missing girls from the trailer park. She used to babysit Gennifer and me sometimes when Mom was at Bingo. She showed up one night with a bandage on her arm, and when we begged her to take it off, she relented and showed us her brand new tat, a swastika.

There was a tattoo on the armrest of the passenger seat. A swastika tattoo.

The hair stood up on the back of my neck. Was there any chance Gennifer was still alive, or had she already been turned into some ghastly accessory for one of Dave’s pimped-out rides?

“Don’t be scared,” he said, patting my leg. “I’m not gonna hurt ya—tonight.” He sniggered and rolled my window down. Cold air blasted me hard in the face, and combined with fear for my sister, the effects of the drug were waning.

I didn’t want Dave to know that, though.

I giggled. I leaned my head back on the seat and arched my back, rolling as if in ecstasy. I wanted to throw up in my mouth a little, but I kept pretending—to save my own life.

He must have been fooled, because he pulled the car over into another wooded driveway, deeper into Graber’s Farm. He shut off the car, and through the open window, I could hear the sound of the highway, probably no more than a mile away. There were no lights, and seemingly no houses anywhere around us.

I didn’t know if Dave intended to rape me, kill me, or what—but I meant to get to that highway, one way or another.

Dave turned the music down low, and leaned in close. His lips were putrid and his breath smelled of things I didn’t have the stomach to imagine. When he kissed me, it took all my willpower not to jerk away.

“Aw, sweet little thing, never been kissed,” he said. “Probably a virgin, too.” He pressed into me, his torso pushing me into the car door. I could feel the door handle pressing hard into my back.

“Ooooh,” I moaned. I hoped that was a noise women made when they were excited.

It evidently was, because in a few seconds, Dave had unfastened his belt, and his ham-hock hands were fumbling with my button-flys. I arched my back, faking pleasure, and put my hand behind me to open the door softly. I had to think of a way to distract him, so I could make a run for the interstate. Something that would keep him occupied for a few moments.

His phone went off, and for a second I thought about bolting, as he dug it out of his pocket. I got a better idea.

“Yes, boss. Of course. Just—having a snack,” he said, winking hard at me. This time I did throw up in my mouth. It tasted like beer.

Dave finished his call and sat the phone on the dashboard, and crouched over me again. The shape I saw in the shadows between his body and mine did not fill me with lust whatsoever.

“Poor Gennifer,” I said aloud, before I realized what I was doing.

“Yeah?” Dave said, squinting at me in the darkness.

“Yeah,” I said, giggling. “Now you’re all mine,” I purred. At least I hoped I was purring. I still haven’t got much of a handle on that whole sex kitten thing.

Dave buried his face in my neck, and I could feel the tusks pressing into my flesh. “You’re like a vampire,” I said, as if I liked it. “It’s so kinky.” My hand groped across the dashboard, until I found his cell phone.

He lifted his head, and I quickly moved my hand to my backpack.

“What’re ya doin’?”

“Just—trying to change the radio station,” I giggled, hoping to sound girly. “I always wanted to lose my virginity to Stevie Nicks, you know? I know it sounds silly, but …”

Dave grunted, only half-amused. “You want I should buy you roses, too?” he asked. He sat up and punched a few buttons on his stereo, and while he looked away I shoved his phone hard into my backpack, praying it wouldn’t ring before I could slip away.

A few clicks of the dial, and “Live and Let Die” poured from the speakers of Dave’s Cadillac. “It’s not Fleetwood Mac, but it’ll do,” he said, leaning back over me. “Now, let’s get this thing on.”

I tried to stall for time. “Is this song a remake?” I asked. How exactly would I wiggle out of this, with Dave’s phone and my backpack intact? Could I outrun Dave in these woods? I had to try.

“For God’s sake, less talk, more action!” Dave growled.

“It’s just that it doesn’t sound like Axl Rose,” I said. “Do you have some more to drink? I think I need more to drink.”

“I gotta cooler built into the trunk, sweets. I always have something to drink.” He sat up and ran his fingers through his naturally frizzy hair. “If I get you a beer, will you blow me, already? It’s McCartney, by the way. Wings. The original.” He got out of the car, grumbling something about stupid kids.

This is it. As soon as he’s fully inside the car, I’m making my run.

Dave slammed the trunk closed and climbed into the driver’s seat with more than a couple of beers clutched in his sweaty paws. He sat a pair of rusty handcuffs on the dashboard and looked at me meaningfully. “Your sister’s favorite,” he said, “I just found ‘em.” He chuckled, cracking open a beer and passing it to me. I picked the cuffs up and slipped them over my hand like a pair of brass knuckles, smiling.

I pretended to drink the beer. When Dave tossed his own beer back, eyes closed in ecstasy, I put my thumb over the opening of the can, shaking it as hard as I could.

“What the hell?” he said, spewing alcohol blasting him hard in the face, as I cracked open the can. He squinted against the liquid, those lower tusks protruding in anger. I hit him hard, three times in the eyes with the rusty cuffs.

“Bonus points, mother fucker!” I said, and took off into the darkness with his phone, his cuffs, and my backpack.

I felt his roar behind me, but I knew better than to look back.

Chapter 8.5

Baby Got Back

Harlow

Big as Dave was, he still took bodyguards with him everywhere—even when he was just raping a teenager in his grisly ride. Two Amish kids—half troll, half English—followed about twenty paces behind Dave no matter where he went, and though they were not likely to be any threat to me, I still wanted to keep them in the dark, lest they alert Dave to my presence.

I reached into my pouch, and pulled out a handful of what the casual observer might think was just pocket lint and dried leaves. I picked out the actual pocket lint, and rolled what was left of the mixture together in my hands. A fragile snake of cloth fibers and brittle leaves formed and broke again. Not a good sign.

I rolled it into a ball, and this time the mishmash adhered. So, it wasn’t the first spell I’d had in mind, but it was going to have to do.

I glanced over my shoulder in the dark woods. The only witness to my magic was an owl, staring accusingly from a limb on a sycamore tree. I gave him the evil eye, and he hooted twice, then flew away, disrupting branches and showering pine cones all over the ground around me.

“You hear that?” the first of the half-English kids said. “Someone out there?”

“It’s an owl, you dumbfuck, didn’t you hear it tweet?” said the other.

“Owls don’t tweet, douche-for-brains. They crow.”

The argument escalated, the two boys trading insults and insights into aviary communication tactics. They drifted away from the back of Dave’s car, and I angled myself to the side, hoping I could get them both in one strike. Chances were good that if Deb managed to get away from Dave without my help, Dave would be counting on these two idiots to help him catch her as she ran.

None of them were counting on me, though.

The nitwits began pushing and shoving. The Cadillac rocked and bounced, and before I could give any serious thought to what might be happening inside it, I swung my arm hard, bowling the lint-roll toward the bodyguards.

Where there had only been fluff and leaves, two rolling badgers now tumbled angrily toward the boys. A good old Saarkenner family recipe spell, that one is. My dad taught me that when I was very young.

Surprising them from the dark cover of the forest, the badgers lunged for the Amish kids’ legs. I couldn’t so much see what they were doing, as hear it—and that was impressive over the strains of Wings emanating from Dave’s car.

I smelled fear, then blood, then my animals were gone, chasing the footfalls of the boys as they headed back to the bonfire. I was moving toward the car to pull Deb out of it, when the passenger side flew open, and she tumbled out, scrambling hell-bent for leather into the darkness.

I didn’t know if she had any idea where she was going, but considering we hadn’t yet made our introductions, I figured a helpful troll was the last person she wanted slowing her down.

Dave laughed to himself as he shot out of the car after her. The sick fucker was enjoying the chase—or at least set to. Then he saw my face, and his mouth fell agape. The stupid look on his face as he processed my presence was completely out of sync with the bellowing roar of anger that followed.

“Happy to see me, Cousin?” I asked. He lunged for me, and I threw myself backward at the same time, catching his wrist and using his own momentum against him to sling him further off-balance, into the mud.

That move, I learned from my mom.

I rounded the Caddy, grabbed the keys out of the ignition, and tossed them hard into the darkness, then slid over the hood of the car and took off after Deb into the woods. It might not be the right time to introduce myself to her, but I was damned sure not going to let Dave get to her first.