It had skin the color of a green bell pepper. Sparse, lacy moss green . . . stuff grew out of its shoulders and feathered down from its head. It wasn’t hair, but it would give that appearance to anyone not holding a pair of binoculars. Smallish eyes were set a little below a wide-nostriled nose. On either side of the nostrils were slits that looked as though someone had cut its face open with a sharp knife. The inner edge of the slits was bright red—gill slits for breathing underwater, maybe. Trolls lived near water by preference and, when they could, around bridges. There is magic in places that are between: crossroads, thresholds, bridges. Which might explain why he stayed on the Cable Bridge rather than running over the top of the police and into Pasco or Kennewick.

It was certainly a he, and he really was enjoying his climb. I was a shapeshifter, and I’d grown up in a werewolf pack—body shy I was not. But bright red was still really, really shocking next to all that green.

“Yup,” I said, trying to sound nonchalant because it wouldn’t do to run around screaming in front of a group of police people I was trying to impress for the good of the pack. Ever since the werewolves had admitted to their existence, they’d had to fight for the goodwill of the communities they lived in. Goodwill made it safer for everyone. “It’s a troll.”

Somehow, a troll hadn’t seemed as scary when I was reading about it in Ariana’s book. The drawing had been about four inches high by two inches wide. The real creature was terrifying, even half a mile away—elephant-sized or a hair bigger, judging by a rough comparison to the cars nearest him.

I couldn’t see any of the wolves—not even Adam or Joel. The bridge was slightly angled from where I stood, and the center barricade between the opposite lanes blocked what line of sight was left with the battered cars littering the roadway, but from the agitation of the troll, I expected that they were there.

Having evidently gotten as far up as it intended, the troll swung for a moment from both arms, which were overly long for his body, longer than his legs. That accounted for the instant association with gorillas—though his features and coloring were nothing like one. His mouth was horribly humanesque despite the eye placement, until he smiled and displayed teeth, sharp and wedge-shaped, in double rows like a shark’s.