off easy.” With a thought, he turned Axel inside out, the redcap’s innards splattering on the pavement with a wet slap. Yashar cocked his head at Dietrich.
Dietrich eyed the pile of bone, muscle, and skin that was once his friend and then looked up at the djinn. Sneering, he spat angrily on the ground, cursing him. “Don’t keep me waiting,” he said. “Just do it.”
Yashar flung himself at the redcap, grabbing him by his shirt with one hand, pummeling him mercilessly with the other. His huge fist pounded relentlessly into Dietrich, flesh and bone not slowing the beating for a moment. He picked him up off the ground, throwing him into a nearby brick wall, the redcap’s body flopping limp as a rag doll onto the ground below.
Yashar was undeterred. He picked Dietrich up again, heaving him across the street, slamming him into another wall.
Once more Dietrich hit the ground. What few remaining bones of his that weren’t completely shattered were merely broken. He tried to push himself up, but the bone in his forearm splintered, puncturing the skin. He cried out.
Yashar slowly marched across the street, picking Dietrich up, throwing him one last time, putting him through a cinder-block wall. Blocks showered inward. Dietrich writhed on the floor, trapped beneath half a dozen blocks. With a single hand, Yashar palmed a cinder block, straddling the redcap.
“You deserve far worse,” said Yashar, “but I don’t have the time.”
The cinder block came down, bursting his head like a melon.
Yashar took a deep breath. His flesh lost its golden sheen, returning to its native olive, terrible scars marring his once smooth skin. He shrank, tufts of thick black hair growing out of his head. Within seconds he was a somewhat disfigured mockery of his old self, brutalized and scarred, but whole.
Colby stood behind him, eyeing the carnage. Yashar could feel him there but didn’t turn around.
“Do you still hate me?”
Colby shook his head. “Hate that strong is only worth carrying around with you if you aim to use it to kill a man. Otherwise, what are you keeping it for?”
“And?” asked Yashar.
“I don’t intend to kill you.”
“I sold you out. I told them where Ewan was.”
Colby nodded. “You can’t hold your breath underwater forever.”
“No, you can’t.” Yashar stood up and turned around.
Colby scrutinized him; Yashar was intact, but just barely. “Let’s go find Ewan.”
SEVERAL REDCAPS HUDDLED together behind an imposing stone troll, cautiously moving up the street through an ever-thickening fog, their pikes extended, their faces full of fear. The troll was massive, carved from granite, with eyes of onyx, teeth made of jagged quartz, dragging an uprooted tree for a club, the sound of grinding stone echoing off the buildings around him as he moved. The fog grew thicker still. And it began to whisper awful things.
The redcaps huddled closer, gripped their pikes tighter.
The air grew colder. The world dimmed darker.
“Just do it already,” one of the redcaps growled.
The shadow materialized in the darkness. Snatched a redcap by its pike. Vanished into the murk.
The redcap screamed as if his very flesh was being torn from his body.
The troll swung its tree through the blackening mist, striking nothing. It bellowed a shrill, bitter boom that rattled windows, setting off car alarms blocks away.
The screaming stopped. The bellow echoed into the distance, the patter of rain the only nearby sound. White knuckles clasped the two remaining pikes.
A balled-up red knit cap and a pile of rent skin slopped on the pavement before them.
The shadow emerged again, dragging another of the redcaps, hollering, off into the darkness.
The last redcap flailed his pike, slashing repeatedly at the nothing surrounding him on all sides. The troll looked down at him, rockbound jaw dangling, onyx eyes wide with horror.
The redcap grew uneasy, trying to puzzle out what the troll’s expression meant. Then he too was tugged away into the brume.
The troll thrashed its tree, smacking the ground around it, its trunk audibly splintering, cracking. It cried out, confused, upset. He was alone and afraid in a dark morass, both hands tightly around his maul.
Then the tree came alive, writhing, gnashing, clawing at the troll. He was wrestling a snake by its tail, fangs sinking into his stony flesh, breaking off chunks, spraying gravel.
The troll tossed away the tree, cracking it in half against the corner of a nearby building.
Bill the Shadow stepped from the fog, staring silently at the troll.
The troll took one step back, rearing up, his arms stretched wide, ready to swat Bill between his