Witches of the Night

Chapter 9 - City Trolls

Once again, a story in a local paper piqued my curiosity. It reported a series of strange car accidents that were taking place in the city of Braga. They all happened near where the cars were parked overnight and there were signs of sabotage, usually cut brakes. The deaths already exceeded a dozen. According to the story, the police believed that the culprits were one or more serial vandals, but hadn't yet found any clues or witnesses that would help identify them.

In the past, I would have readily agreed with the authorities, but after all I had seen in the previous months, I wondered if there wasn't another cause, something associated with the hidden world I had discovered. As such, one night I stayed working late, I decided to look around the city.

On foot, I visited all the streets where cars used to be parked overnight, looking for any movement beneath them. During the first hour, I didn't see more than one or two stray animals. However, near midnight, I saw a strange black shape under a Ford Fiesta. If I hadn't seen bizarre creatures before, I could have thought that it was another cat, but there was something about that shadow's shape that didn't seem animal-like.

I approached. Slowly, I lowered myself, and turning the flashlight on quickly, peered under the car. What I found wasn't a cat, but a troll, like the ones I helped to free from the Cerqueiras' house. It was clearly trying to rupture some of the pipes and cables on the underside of the car.

Alarmed, the being tried to escape. I grabbed it by the arm. If I could capture him, I might find someone who could communicate with him and understand why he was doing what he was doing. However, the troll promptly bit my hand, forcing me to release him. Still I ran after him, but, using his four members, he was much faster than me. I lost him, finally, when he climbed the wall of the terrain adjacent to one of the city's medieval towers. Besides being too high for me to climb, it was inhabited private property, which I didn't dare to invade.

The encounter, however, wasn't fruitless. When I grabbed the creature's arm, I realized that he had a mark consisting of a circle with an inverted C burned into his skin. So I decided to go to the Fairy Bar to look for Alice in the hope that she knew what it was and also give me some clue about the origin and objectives of that troll.

As I expected, and as in almost all of my visits to the Fairy Bar, I found Alice sitting at the counter. I sat beside her. After our adventure in the Cerqueiras' house, she no longer seemed so resentful about our first meeting, so I had no difficulty starting the conversation. After the initial greetings, I told her about the accidents, the deaths, my checking of the streets and my meeting with the troll.

"I've heard of these accidents," she said. "Almost all of the cars crashed into places inhabited by some of our smaller races. The one that brought down the wall of the Biscainhos Palace destroyed an entire community of fairies who made their home in the hollow interior. Marta, the fairy who went with us to the Cerqueiras' vineyard, lost her whole family. That a troll is behind these accidents can be an important revelation."

I stayed silent for a moment, trying to process what I had just heard. The deaths could have been just collateral damage from someone trying to disguise attacks on fairies as accidents. However, it didn't reduce my will to find the culprit. On the contrary.

I then told Alice about the branding I saw in the troll's arm. She looked at me with a grave expression.

"I've seen that mark before," she said. "It was on the trolls we released from the Cerqueiras' vineyard."

At that moment, I became white. One, or perhaps more, of the creatures I helped release could be responsible for more than a dozen deaths. It was hard not to feel that their blood was on my hands.

"Are you sure?" I asked, looking for a way through which to escape my guilt.

She just nodded silently.