Read Alpha Omega 02 - Hunting Ground for Free Online Page A

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 might be that the artist saw somp’n. Somp’n he out ter not have seen, wolf-kin.” He patted the cement arm she stood on, and she took a wary step back. “Happen though, he built me a friend, so we’re all happy. Even the Gray Lord, there, she thought it were funny. Didn’t hardly hurt me at all for gettin’ seen and not tellin’ her.”
    The fae could hide what they were. Could look just like anyone else. But the hunger that shone in his eyes when he looked at her was as immortal as she was and a lot older.
    Her wolf didn’t like him, and Anna narrowed her eyes at him and let him hear her growl. He should know that she was not prey.
    He laughed again and slapped one thigh with a hand covered in a worn fingerless glove. “If’n I forgot meself so bad as to take a bite”—he snapped his teeth together and in the darkness under the bridge she saw the spark when they struck—“she’d chew me up and feed me to them great octopuses that live ’round here, she would.” The thought seemed to amuse him. “Though a good meaty bit of wolf-flesh might be worth it.”
    â€œTroll,” said Charles.
    He had been having so much fun with Anna, he’d forgotten about the real threat. Reminded, he jerked around, crouched, and hissed.
    Charles took out one of the plain gold studs he wore in his ears and tossed it at the fae, who caught it with inhu manly quick hands.
    â€œTake your toll and go, Old