Kindle Edition
Amazon
Category:
Young Adult/Teen
Type: Fiction
Price: $2.99 (eBook)
When she learns that the giant trolls who live peacefully under the viaduct are being brutally murdered, a teenage witch must discover who else can see these invisible creatures and why they want them dead.
Brittany is new to the world of the occult, but already she has accomplished amazing things through magic. Unfortunately, this makes people think she can do more than she feels capable of doing. When Stone the Earth Troll mistakenly names her Queen of the Humans and asks for her help solving a murder, Brittany adds "protector" to her list of impossible tasks. Can she stop the murderer from striking again before the troll community goes on a vengeful rampage of their own?
Excerpt
Brittany crossed the wide yard. Stone watched her, his beetle-black eyes glittering in the starlight. The skunky smell diminished as she approached—a sign that she didn’t make him feel threatened.
“Hello, Stone,” she said. “It’s nice to see you again.”
He sat on his haunches, but even scrunched down, he was taller than she was. “Good evening, Friend Brittany,” he said in a gravelly voice. “It is with a heavy heart that I visit you this night. I request your help.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Rim is missing.”
“Oh, no.” Brittany frowned. Rim was the first troll she met. He had a dry sense of humor. She’d liked him immediately. “Could he have wandered off, gotten lost? Or gone someplace else to live?”
“I know only that he would not have left us voluntarily.”
“Kidnapped? That’s impossible. No one’s strong enough to kidnap a troll.”
“And yet I, myself, was once kidnapped by your witch queen. Held hostage against my will.”
“Yes, but she was using demons.”
As if on cue, she sensed Tusks the Demon materialize behind her. Stone stood and stepped back, looking like he might bolt.
“This is Tusks.” She glanced at the demon. “A friend. He was also held prisoner by the queen. Tusks, this is Stone of the Earth Trolls.”
Tusks inclined his head. Stone’s face relaxed, but he remained standing. Brittany’s neck cricked as she stared up at him.
“Stone, why did Queen Imogene kidnap you?” she asked.
He hesitated. “I lived alone at the time. She sought me out with the intent to recruit me as a guard at her dungeon. No doubt as a forerunner to recruiting more of my brethren. I refused by throwing a rock at her. It was a rather large rock. The next thing I knew, I was a prisoner in the aforementioned dungeon. An ironic twist of events.”
“Yes, that sounds like her.”
“Friend Brittany,” Stone said, “I formally request your assistance in locating Rim.”
Formally? “But what makes you think that I—”
“You are the Queen of the Humans.”
“Me?” she yelped. “Oh, no no no.”
“But you must be. I saw you kill the witch queen. You have no choice but to replace her. That is how it is done.”
“How it is done,” Tusks agreed.
Brittany gave him a you’re-not-helping look. She did not kill the witch queen. Queen Imogene died of a heart attack. But this wasn’t the time to argue that fact. She blew out a breath. “Where did you see Rim last?” she asked Stone.
“At our camp. In his special place.”
Under the viaduct. “All right. Go home. I will meet you there shortly.”
“Thank you, Friend Brittany.” He stepped back into the forest then disappeared under the trees, surprisingly stealthy for such a large being.
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