Nik. He wanted Nik.

"No way," I snarled, immediately putting a pound of pressure on a two-pound trigger. "No fucking way."

"Be calm, Aupheling." Soothing, so soothing… not. "I only wish to touch. I've missed my fair-haired thrall."

I didn't need any college to know that "thrall" was a fancy word for slave. I'd have to remember to tell Niko that the next time he nagged me about higher education. "Then touch yourself, you piece of shit. Just wait until we're gone to do it." The shotgun was already cocked and I raised the muzzle to point directly at Abbagor's face.

Suddenly disinterested, the troll turned his head away. "That is my price. A touch for what only I know. Pay or no, I care not."

"I could make you care, you son of a bitch." The pound of pressure had gone to one and a half when Niko's hand closed on my shoulder.

"Wait," he ordered calmly.

"No, Nik. Absolutely not." I didn't have to hear the words to know what my brother was going to say. And I didn't have to hear them to say no.

"It's only a touch, Cal," he pointed out in his most practical tone. Reasonable, logical, and a complete and utter lie. The lightest of brushes from Abbagor's tendrils could and had resulted in less-than-innocent things. On our first meeting, he had dragged me at a breakneck speed by my ensnared arms and had cocooned Niko so quickly that my brother had disappeared right before my eyes. He had been lost inside Abbagor. He had been gone. A touch wasn't simply a touch with Abbagor, creepy PSAs aside. And no matter how composed Niko might appear on the outside, he had to be screaming on the inside. I know I would've been. Shit, I was, and I'd only seen what had happened to Niko. I hadn't lived through it as he had.

"No, Cyrano." I shook my head stubbornly. "It's not going to happen. So shut up and start chopping."

I had doubts, serious doubts, that there was anything we could do to Abbagor that would force him to talk, but I would rather give it a homicidal whirl than let him touch Niko.

The hand on my shoulder tightened. "It's a game, Cal. Only a game." Resolute and serene, but so what? Niko would've been resolute and serene at his own execution. "Besides, isn't it better to know that it's coming?"

He had me there. It was coming, one way or the other. I had no delusions that the troll was going to let us walk out of here with a smile and a slimy handshake. Then again, feeling that cold ribbon of muscle loop around you in the heat of battle was different from waiting for it, quiet and accepting. Considerably, horrifically different. I shook my head again. "No. Just… no."

"It's for Georgina." His eyes held mine, gray to gray. "She would do it for me, Cal. Allow me to do it for her."

Dirty pool. Honest and true, but dirty nonetheless. "Jesus." I lowered the shotgun muzzle fractionally and did my best to swallow the apprehension that was a noose around my neck threatening to choke me. "Fine. Do what you want, Nik. You will anyway. Play footsie with the monster all you goddamn please."

The corner of his mouth quirked at my ill-tempered surrender. "Love you too, little brother." Not a hint of sarcasm, not a whisper of irony—there was only tolerant affection. Not only had he gotten all the human genes in the family, but all the emotional stability too. How fair was that? "Very well, Abbagor," he continued, voice hardening to the unwavering blue of steel. "You have your taste. Ten seconds. Longer than that and you and your tentacle part ways."

"So bold. So audacious… for a human." Abby was entertained but good now. The mud sloshed around his waist as more tentacles shot into sight. The pit had to be five feet deep. If we tumbled into that… if Niko was pulled in, there would be no getting out of it. I hooked the fingers of my free hand onto the waistband of his black pants. It was probably futile as hell, but I did it anyway.

"Bold, audacious, and highly annoyed," Niko said flatly. "Get on with it, troll."

"Such an impatient race. Comes from being barely evolved, I suppose." As the words flowed, so did the tentacles, but they weren't alone. In his trench, Abbagor moved. Ripples of mud spread sluggishly from his path, releasing a smell of decay so strong that it rivaled the stench that already saturated the place. It wasn't the by-product of corpses, although I was positive there were plenty of those to be found below the bubbling brown surface. It was the smell of sickness, the putrescence of living flesh, not dead. Abbagor was sick. Maybe I'd done more damage last year than I'd thought. Or maybe Abby had picked up a really bad fungus down here in the swamp. Who knew? But from what I was getting a whiff of, he was rotting from the inside out.

I tensed as the troll approached, but stood my ground. He was moving slowly, cautiously… so careful not to scare the kiddies. He didn't want to ruin his good time, now, did he? "That's close enough," I warned with lips twisted in disgust.

"A true Auphe, king of all you survey." Abbagor had teeth. Fangs actually. I hadn't noticed that last time. Curving and black as the talons on his hands, they were full of poison, if the yellow dripping from the top two were any indication. "You are the word made law, and I obey."

That'd be the day… the day Abbagor was a particularly pungent fertilizer. Abbagor bowed to no one, not even the bygone Auphe. And a sick Abbagor was only that much more dangerous. I'd seen those nature specials when Niko had refused to turn over the remote. Predators tend to get cranky when wounded. When he'd previously tried to kill us, the troll had actually been in a good mood. I really didn't want to see a bitchy, disgruntled Abby in action.

Attention back on Nik, Abbagor murmured again, "A touch. Only a touch." But it wasn't a tentacle he extended toward my brother; it was his hand. Four or five times the size of a man's hand, it was held out palm up. And in the center of that palm was a mouth, a human mouth. Pale lips, soft and full. Not just human, but a woman's mouth. One of his prisoners. How they were dissolved within Abbagor, how they continued to live, I didn't know. I didn't want to know. If I did know, I had doubts that I would ever sleep again. Then again, the sight of a rosy pink tongue tip peeking between those lips might have just sealed that deal for me anyway.

It also happened to be the trigger to Niko's losing it.

Of course, a loss of composure and temper came off a lot better on my brother than it would have on me. Lips thinned to nothing and eyes dark with a cold fury, Niko said in a tone that would've been conversational if not for the razor edges lining every word, "Remove it from my sight or I'll remove it from you." His sword was already in motion, stopping to hover bare millimeters above the clay-colored wrist. The blade hung perfectly motionless, still and sure.

Personally, I was all for the chop. Yeah, big fan of the chop. But Abby gave in, the son of a bitch. "Very well," the troll sighed dolefully, pulling the hand back. "I bow to your prejudices, human." Right. "Prejudices," it would've almost been funny if not for the revulsion and horror that saturated the air like a dank humidity.

An especially plump tendril took the place of the hand. Deftly avoiding the naked blade, it rested gently on the back of Nik's hand. "Ahhhh, I remember. That piquant flavor, so unique. You taste of metal and blood, of green grass and blue sky. And, after all this long, long time, you still taste of… me." The tentacle didn't curl or grip; it didn't threaten in any way. At least, not physically. It simply… petted. A light caress, a soft stroking, harmless, right? Wrong. Niko's olive skin faded slightly as old memories came to a boil. It was the faintest of differences, nearly undetectable, but it was enough for me. And by God it was more than enough for Nik. "Okay, that's it," I snapped, knocking the writhing cord aside with the shotgun. "You've had your jollies. Now tell us about the Calabassa."