Alpha Omega 02 - Hunting Ground

sat unmoved by the thousands of cars that traveled beneath them. Over the smell of the cars was the scent of water and salt from the Puget Sound and various other saltwater lakes and ponds. The gray skies leaked here and there, not enough to turn the wipers on full but too much to let the rain accumulate long.
    Following Charles’s directions, she exited the highway and found herself tootling along a slower road in what could just as well have been a small town in Britain as a part of Seattle. It looked old, quaint, and beautiful, if a little self-conscious. On the water to her right was a series of docks with boats and houseboats, while on her left, narrow buildings covered the side of a hill that got progressively steeper as she drove.
    A huge silver bridge arched over the water and the road she was driving, soaring up to land on the top of a steep hill above. The name of the cross street that ran directly under the bridge had Anna pulling her foot off the gas so she could be sure that she was reading the street sign correctly.
    â€œTroll?”
    â€œWhat?” Charles had been looking toward the water, but he turned back to look at her.
    â€œThere’s a street here called Troll?”
    He smiled suddenly. “I’d forgotten about that. Why don’t you follow it up the hill?”
    She turned the car up the road and thought for a moment the decision was a mistake because the little blue car strained to crawl up the hill, which was even steeper than it had looked from the bottom. The road was narrow and claustrophobic, with the bridge for roofing, its steel feet closing in from left and right.
    She was so busy worrying about driving that she didn’t see it until they were quite close. The road they were on ended and teed into another road. The bridge overhead plowed into the top of the hill. And in the space between the road and the end of the bridge crouched a giant something.
    Without consulting Charles, she parked.
    Someone had sculpted a huge humanoid monster out of cement, rising from the sand: a troll for the bridge. Cement hair hung limply over one eye while the other stared over Anna’s head at the waterway at the bottom of the hill they’d just driven up. One of its hands, which rested on a real VW Bug, was big enough to engulf the car. The Bug’s nose burrowed beneath the troll’s beard as if it sought refuge there.
    Anna got out of the car slowly and strolled across the road, Charles at her side. The statue had been attacked with chalk recently, and the bright pink and green colors only enhanced the oddity of the creature. Fingernails and the lines of knuckles had been drawn on the creature’s hands. Pink and green chalk flowers followed the contours of the Bug’s fender, and on the back window—cement-covered glass—someone had written “Just Married.”
    Peripherally, Anna sensed they were being watched. Above the troll, in the notch where the bridge met the top of the hill, three or four street people observed them warily. One man set aside a newspaper he’d been reading and started down toward them.
    He was a little above average height, though he slumped until he appeared shorter. He wore a battered canvas duster that was liberally splattered with muck. Mismatched Nikes adorned his feet. The right shoe had a hole in the toe and the left another along the edge of his heel, exposing the dirty, sockless foot inside. The jeans he wore were new and stiff, though as mucky as his duster. She caught glimpses of layers of shirts—a red flannel shirt over a yellow plaid button-up that almost obscured a graying white tee.
    Anna took note of the man, but with Charles at her side the stranger wasn’t a threat—and Anna was more interested in the troll. So she let Charles deal with him as she climbed up the back of the Bug and onto the creature’s arm, then higher still until she could rest her hand on his overlarge nose.
    â€œLike my little troll, eh?” the stranger said to Charles, his voice rough like that of a man who’d smoked a pack a day for years. He didn’t smell like cigarettes, though. His scent, rising through the air to Anna’s nose, was earthy and magical, sharp with a predator’s musk.
    â€œWas it a real one?” Anna asked him, safe upon her perch, safe with Charles.
    The stranger looked up at her and laughed, exposing ragged, blackened teeth as sharp as he smelled. “Well, now. It