(This is perhaps the third or forth Grik and Dan story. I hope you enjoy it)
I stood at the bottom of the stone stairs to the police station and waited for Grik to bring the unmarked van we usually drove. He liked to go get it because Rock Trolls usually didn't drive vehicles of any sort. Grik was one of only ten Rock Trolls in the city with a driver's license, but he didn't own a car of his own. They didn't make them in troll sizes. Even the van was a tight fit.
A familiar black Vette pulled up, illegally pointing the wrong way, and Officer Brett Conner stuck his head out and gave a big, fake smile.
"Hey, Dan," he said. "Haven't seen you for a while. Waiting for your pretty partner?"
"Waiting for Grik, yes," I replied with my own fake smile. "I'll let him know you think he's pretty. You never know what might happen. Ah, there he is now."
Brett hit the gas, barely swerved around the oncoming van, and ducked into the lot.
Grik got out of the van and let me take the wheel. I'd gotten better at readjusting the seat and steering wheel.
"Was that Connor?" Grik asked as he climbed in. I'd already put on my seatbelt, but I still held on tight as the van bounced.
"Yes." I got us moving. "He asked if I was waiting for my pretty partner."
Grik grunted. Then he smiled, and it did not look friendly. "We can play with that."
I'm glad I agreed because it was all the fun we had that week.
Our case was going nowhere. A huntin faction had begun striking at various spots in the city, killing a dozen (exactly) humans and then disappearing again. Grik and I had shown some ability in finding huntins, so the Captain sent us out.
The price of doing your work well, I guess.
Huntins are eight feet tall, spindly, and insectoid. Some people think they arrived through the hole in reality that linked us with the faelands. Some thought they were local mutations brought on by the hole in reality that connected us with the faelands. Still others thought they were alien invaders drawn to us by the hole in reality...
You get the idea.
"There is always some madness in love," Grik said on our sixth day out. We'd just left the precinct.
"Frederiche Nietzsche," I said. Then I nodded. "That's the best one so far. Shall we have it done on a card? Black background, embossed gold lettering? Maybe a dozen roses?"
"Have you seen the price of roses?" Grik demanded. Then he gave me an odd look. "When was the last time you ... what do you humans call it? Dated?"
"Longer than I want to think about," I admitted. "No roses."
"I think a pretty rock would be better."
I laughed -- but that cut off quickly as our communications barked out orders to get to the site of a current attack. It was, of course, in the opposite direction.
"Lights and siren, Grik," I ordered. I was already spinning us around to go the other way, much to the consternation and anger of others. A dozen cars honked. Didn't they know there was a sound ordinance here? They stopped as soon as the siren started.
We went back past the precinct as Brett was pulling out in a convertible this time. Grik leaned out the window and waved, and Brett backed up before we had even gone by.
"Good work," I said.
Grik grunted.
The site was only about twenty blocks away, and this was our first chance to get there with the huntins still in place. I drove with less caution than usual and narrowly avoided two accidents -- but then we were at the street.
People were running and screaming, some of them with children in their arms. Seeing Grik startled them, but they mostly just ran faster. Good.
"Manhole is up. We were right," I said as I drew my gun.
Grik went to the back of the van and pulled out two bazookas and a shoulder bag of sonic grenades. I took the bag, and he loaded the bazookas.
"Third house on the right," someone shouted as she ran past a little dog in her arms.
"Thanks!"
"Should we thank them?" Grik asked as he left giant footprints in the otherwise perfect lawns.
"Better we know than the huntin spot us first."
He nodded and didn't grunt this time.
I wouldn't have realized the huntin were in the house, even with the door open. Most of the doors were open, and the places looked abandoned. Maybe she had the house wrong --
The moment we stepped in, I knew we had the right place. It wasn't a scent or an unnatural shadow. I just knew -- mainly because one dropped from the ceiling onto me.
Grik killed it before the creature injected me with poison. Then we went after the rest. We'd killed fifteen of them before any of the rest of the police arrived. By then, I had a killer headache thanks to the sonics, but we'd splattered all but two of them across the walls. The owner would have to rebuild.
My shoulders ached where the huntin had landed on me. I was having trouble turning my head. But we'd done good work. Maybe we'd taken out all of the group doing the killing, too. I'd like a break.
An extermination squad checked the manhole, and we declined to scout for them.
"You get to drive," I said when we reached the van. "Straight to emergency."
"Thought that looked bad," Grik said. He helped me up into the seat, and then he got slowly into the car and drove carefully away.
"Fortune and love favor the brave," I said.
"Ovid." He glanced at me at a stoplight. "I'm going to ask my sister to find you a date."
"Oh dear God, no!"
But I knew once a troll made up his mind, he wouldn't change it.
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