Page 51 of Veil of Blood and Bone

Audra has ducked behind the desk with her hands over her ears. Glass shards glint with diamond brightness on the floor.

The door’s blown in, and the sign dangles from its hook at the top, spinning between Open and Closed.

The temperature plummets, frigid and killing. Worse here.

I half expect snow drifts to push toward the books and swallow their spines whole. It’s the chill of death, the chill of a never-ending winter. I remember.

Thoughts clank together and disappear.

I grab for my belt and the ax I hadn’t put into its holster today. Uskitr. The dual swords across my back give a single pulse of remembrance, a siren call as I brandish them.

These will do.

“Go to your sister and shelter,” I yell to Audra, boots crunching on glass.

The bookstore, calm at first, has become a tornado. Icy gusts shred the building, paper and debris flying like projectiles.

The rest fades in time, buried beneath lust, a different type than earlier. My cock hardens further with the scrape of blade to blade, and I’m complete.

There is no roar to announce our visitor, no sudden movement designed to grab attention. This troll holds itself as still as stone, the wind stealing the thin wheat-colored strands of hair irregularly stuck out of its head. Beady black eyes land on me and lock.

Being pulled into battle is natural. Normal.

What isn’t normal is Helene, reaching around to pat my belt in search of the daggers I keep there. As though she already knows where every individual weapon rests.

Did she remember...

“Saw these when you were accosting me,” she says with such ease my mouth waters. “Figured since I’m unarmed, I can borrow a few. I hope you don’t mind.”

“You were supposed to run.”

This woman, with a blade in each hand, ready to protect her family, is the single most erotic thing I’ve ever seen.

And for the first time in centuries, I am well and truly alive.

She shrugs. “Yeah, well, it didn’t seem fair to have you hunt out danger all alone. All those self-defense classes have to pay off somehow. Besides, I've been conditioned for this.”

Asphalt shakes with the troll’s next step, a warning, a challenge. The stoplight at the intersection flashes erratically between three colors.

“You might not feel so confident when you see your opponent, little shieldmaiden.”

I jerk my head toward the creature.

Helene steps out from behind me, shivering in the cold, and stops in her tracks. “This one is bigger than the last one. Two-stories!”

“So you admit they’re real?”

Traffic, piled up at the light beyond, honks out a chores of frustration but this area has gone still. Ripe with magic. And troll.

“Real enough to make me second guess myself.” Helene adjusts her grip but stands firm.

“And pungent.”

The troll’s odor permeates the air like snowflakes.

She barks out a laugh, her face screwing tight with the stench.

And when the creature catches sight of her, it's electrified into movement. The storm ramps up, tree limbs tugged free from their sockets and the fallen leaves a frenzy.