by Wen Spencer
“Where are the other children?” Thorne kicked the oni that been holding Merry. “Where did you take them? Are they still alive?”
Oilcan repeated the question in English, and then tried the little Mandarin that he knew. The oni gazed up at him blankly. “I don’t think they speak anything but Oni.”
Judging by the looks on the faces of the sekasha, none of them spoke Oni.
“I’ll call Jin.” Tinker rubbed her arm, grimacing in pain. “The tengu will be able to talk to them.”
Tinker’s Rolls-Royce sat abandoned twenty feet down Liberty Avenue, all doors open and engine still running. As Tinker climbed into the Rolls to find her cell phone, Thorne staggered to the low planter in the center of the street and sat down. Blood streamed down Thorne’s arm from a slice in her shoulder.
Oilcan got the first-aid kit from his truck and bound the wound. “You’ll have to have the hospice staff look at this.”
“After we find the children,” Thorne said.
Oilcan nodded and then hugged her carefully. “Thank you. I couldn’t have stopped them. They would have just driven away with Merry, and I wouldn’t have been able to do anything to save her.”
She hugged him tightly, burying her face into his shoulder. There was something desperate in her hold, like he was the only safe handhold in a flood. She breathed deep, with only the dampness of his shirt to tell him that she was crying.
“Idiot,” she growled after several minutes. “You don’t have shields. You don’t have a weapon. Next time, just stay out of my way and let me deal with it.”
He opened his mouth to say that he sincerely hoped there wouldn’t be a next time, but then, that would mean there would be no reason for her to stay close. “Okay, next time I’ll stay out of your way.”
6: WHELPING PENS
Tinker expected Jin to come with bodyguards. He was, after all, the tengu’s spiritual leader. He came alone, apparently trusting her to keep him safe. He glided down out of the summer sky on great black wings. With one easy backstroke, a muffled clap of glossy feathers, he landed on the far side of the train station’s parking lot. He stood there, bare-chested and panting, letting the sekasha grow used to his presence. His wings were solid illusions, called into existence by the spell tattooed on his back, real down to their vanes and quills and hooks. He dismissed them with a word, making them vanish back to the nothingness from which they came.
Tinker really had to figure out how they worked.
Jin had a white button-down shirt tied to his waist that he pulled on, buttoned, and tucked into his blue jeans like a priest donning his vestments. When he crossed the parking lot, he seemed nothing more than an Asian man out for a summer walk. He wasn’t even wearing fighting spurs on his birdlike feet; he wore a pair of tennis shoes. The only things that marked him as the spiritual leader of all the tengu was the air of calmness that he seemed to radiate and the dragon birthmark of the Chosen faintly showing under the fine linen of his shirt.
“Thank you for coming,” Tinker said as he bowed to her.
“You needed me, of course I would come.” Even though she had greeted him in English, he’d answered in fluent Elvish. “You’re our domi. It is our duty to serve as it yours to protect.”
It was weird having elf pledges coming out of a tengu’s mouth, but the tengu were safe only because they were her Beholden.
Jin tilted his head and then stepped closer to hug her. “Are you all right, domi?”
“No.” She had nearly lost Oilcan. If she had been a minute longer reaching the train station. If Oilcan hadn’t called her. If Thorne hadn’t been there to protect Oilcan. It had been so very, very close. “I’d say ‘give me time,’ but we don’t have it.”
“Was he hurt?” Jin asked after Tinker explained how Oilcan had discovered that Stone Clan children were arriving in Pittsburgh and being kidnapped at the train station by oni.
“He got a couple of impressive bruises. I had him take Merry to the hospice; she’d been fairly roughed up by the oni.” It had taken Tinker twenty minutes of bullying to get Oilcan to agree to stay at the hospice and wait for Tinker to find the children. After seeing Oilcan nearly killed, Tinker wanted him a safe distance from the fighting. He agreed only after Tinker had ruthlessly pointed out that the hospice staff were all Wind Clan elves and might not treat Merry without Oilcan there to force the healers into it.
As soon as he left, though, Thorne Scratch started to restlessly pace like a big cat in a cage. Sekasha apparently were calmer when they had someone to protect.
“It’s unlikely the children are still alive,” Jin said. “Lord Tomtom was very careful with you because he needed you well and functioning. Obviously the oni wanted the children for some reason, but still, they’re rarely careful with their prisoners.”
Tinker shivered and nodded. She had seen how the oni tortured their own; she didn’t want to think of the horrors that the missing children were suffering.
Jin crouched down beside the first oni prisoner and spoke at length in the coarse oni language.
After several minutes, Thorne Scratch growled with impatience. “What are you telling him? Your life story?”
“No.” Jin shook his head. “He knows he’s going to die. He knows that the elves don’t take oni prisoners. He also knows that the elves are too noble to torture prisoners.”
“I’ll show him noble,” Thorne growled.
“You don’t have enough experience in inflicting pain to impress him,” Jin said gently. “I’ve reminded him that we tengu have lived as slaves to the oni for a thousand years. We had every excruciating torture that our masters know inflicted on us. We tengu are known to be clever and quick to learn. I have reminded him that we tengu have a bone to pick, so to speak.”
The memory of sharp knives and white bone flashed through Tinker’s mind. She wrapped her arms tight around herself. “Gods, Jin, I know what oni do—”
“So does he,” Jin said. “You would give him a quick, clean death. It would be merciful compared being turned over to those who hold a thousand years of misery against his kind.” He spoke again to the oni, and this time the oni glanced at the other tied-up oni and started to talk. Jin listened intently, nodding.
“They were told to come to the train station every day, that there would be elves traveling alone. They were to grab them quietly and take them to a warren on the North Side. Humans think that it’s a dog kennel. There’s a greater blood called Yutakajodo who wanted them for a project.”
“Dog kennel? Shit, I know where that is.” Tinker even knew people who had bought dogs from the kennel. Big ugly mutt dogs. She thought of Chiyo and the warg and shuddered. “What project?”
Jin asked the oni questions, but it was obvious that no more information was forthcoming—much to the oni’s distress. “He doesn’t know. I didn’t expect him to. Greater bloods rarely explain themselves to the lesser bloods. All they knew was they were to keep the elves alive until Yutakajodo dealt with them.”
“How did you get him to talk so much?” Stormsong asked.
“I promised that the first to speak would earn a clean death. I pointed out that you needed only one of them to talk. I told him once you had the information that you wanted, you’d turn your focus to the missing elves.”
Jin had implied that the remaining oni would be left to the tengu.
“I’m not giving you them to torture,” Tinker said.
Jin gave Tinker a smile that came straight from his heart. “I know, and I’m glad. I want my people to make your nobility theirs. We’ve learned too much cruelty from the oni. It’s time to learn a new way.”
* * *
Tinker didn’t want to go after the children with just her Hand, not with the oni armed with automatic assault rifles that could chew through the sekasha’s protective spells. Her people needed someone that could fling tanks around and reduce cars to molten lava—not someone that could barely maintain one shield spell. Judging by the very faint tingling against h
er magic sense, though, Windwolf was someplace very far away, fighting the oni. She couldn’t wait for him to finish his battle and return to Poppymeadow’s. The oni were so elusive because they scattered anytime one of their number was captured. As soon as it became apparent that the oni in the van weren’t returning, the oni with the children would abandon their hideout, either taking the children or killing them.
“You need more than six sekasha to take out a warren,” Jin said. “I’ll call some of my warriors.”
“Thank you.” Tinker felt uneasy at the idea of leading her Hand and the tengu into danger. “I hate risking lives to save lives.”
He smiled at the worry. “This is our war, too. If the elves lose, we’ll fall under the oni’s control again.”
She supposed no one understood the dangers facing Pittsburgh better than the tengu.
Jin turned to face northeast and let out a crow call that resonated across her magic-sense like a spell being cast.
“What the hell was that?” Tinker asked.
“It’s a power of the Chosen to be able to call the Flock,” Jin said.
“You called the entire Flock?” Tinker said. “All twenty thousand?”
Jin laughed and shook his head. “I have warriors I know I can trust and are fluent in Elvish. I’ve called them.”
“So, it’s like calling out for Chinese? An order of Sum Yung Gai with wings?”
Jin laughed again.
Who else could she highjack into the effort? Remembering that Oilcan had mentioned a troop of royal marines, she sent Rainlily to track them down and then called Maynard.
“Durrack and Briggs are still clearing out the steel spinners,” Maynard said when she identified herself. “There’s a huge nest up in the air ducts.”
She frowned at the phone for a moment. Which air ducts, and why did Maynard think she cared? Maynard made it clear when he finished with “Until we have the steel spinners cleared out, the highway engineers can’t do safety checks on the tunnels.”
“No, I’m not calling about that. I need backup on the North Side. The oni are holding some elf children prisoner. I’m going in to rescue them.”
“Just you?”
She laughed at the question. “Just five-foot-tall me with the badly bruised right arm? No!”
“I’m at Shippensport with Windwolf, Prince True Flame, and both Stone Clan domana.” In other words, all the heavy hitters were tied up protecting the nuclear power plant.
“I’ll have my Hand—plus one—and some tengu—and some royal marines if Rainlily can find them between now and then.”
There was a moment of silence, and then, “I’ll send you backup.”
* * *
The royal marines turned out to be a small regiment that specialized in warg hunting. Her Hand claimed that they were a crack commando team, but they were like an unruly group of teenage boys, laughing and joking about the upcoming fight. She had the commanding officer repeat the information that “the tengu were allies and not to be shot at when they showed up” many, many times and loudly.
Maynard’s assault team of thirty men seemed more like the steely-eye soldiers she would expect out of “crack commandos.” They too were warned of the incoming tengu.
The warnings turned out to be a good thing, as the tengu looked dangerously feral when they showed up. They landed on the roofs of the buildings around the parking lot. Unlike Jin, they wore fighting spurs and war paint and not much else—it was like they’d pared clothing down to offset the weight of knives and guns. The lack of shirts really showed off the fact that flying was great for upper body strength. Jin’s nephew Riki Shoji was the first to arrive.
Riki winged down and landed beside his uncle. “You called.”
“The oni have taken some elfin children,” Jin said. “Domi needs us to help rescue them.”
Dismay and anger flashed over Riki’s face. Tinker thought for a moment that he was upset at her for asking tengu to save elves, but then he said, “Oh, domi, nothing will give us more pleasure than to kill these monsters, but the children are most likely dead already.”
Jin put a hand to his nephew’s shoulder. “A greater blood wants them alive.”
“Then there’s a chance,” Riki admitted.
“The greater blood is named Yutakajodo,” Tinker said. “Do you know him?”
Riki shook his head. “I only dealt with Tomwaritomo. The oni don’t play nice even with each other. Yutakajodo is a true greater blood and automatically outranked Lord Tomtom, but Lord Tomtom had clawed his way up from the lesser bloods, and he didn’t see it that way. If Lord Tomtom could have gotten the upper hand, he would have killed Yutakajodo long ago. Yutakajodo, though, was always three steps ahead of Lord Tomtom. True to form, Kajo killed all his tengu a few hours before you returned Jin to the Flock.”
“Kajo?”
“It’s oni for snake. Yutakajodo is the name of the most poisonous snake on Onihida.”
* * *
Fear skittered through Tinker as they drove across the city toward the dog kennel. Thanks to her elf regeneration abilities, the pain had been more bearable when she cast her shield to save Oilcan, but this wasn’t going to be a short skirmish. She thought of Prince True Flame leading the royal forces, his shields protecting all his people. She was going to have to do that, but she wasn’t sure she could withstand the pain for hours.
They stopped a mile from the base, and the tengu scouted ahead. The Rolls proved to have a small arsenal in its trunk. Thorne Scratch geared herself along with Tinker’s Hand. With ninja-like stealth, Riki suddenly appeared overhead and dropped down with a quiet rustle of feathers. Since her protection of the tengu was through Jin alone, she had asked him to stay behind and give command to Riki.
“This is not going to be easy.” Riki spread a map out on the hood of the Rolls.
“The warren is tucked between the river and this cliff. The oni know that they can’t run, so they’ll dig in and fight. The only way in is down this street”—Riki slid his finger along a road through several blocks of empty lots, void of any cover—“and through this reinforced gate. There’s netting over this area here, so my people can’t drop in and eliminate any guards quickly.”
The netting and reinforced gate were new additions. The one time she’d been down this street, years ago, the compound had looked and sounded like just a dog kennel.
“So we go straight in.” Tinker’s stomach was doing flip-flops at the thought, but if they went in fast and hard, the fight would be over quicker. “I’ll lead, and my Hand will take out the gate while I protect them.”
Pony pointed to various areas on the roof. “Put your people here with rifles. Use the cover to stay safe but protect the others as they follow domi in.”
Riki nodded his understanding. The marine commander took it for granted that the domana would lead the assault, but the EIA commando leader looked slightly alarmed that she would be first one into the fight.
“Get into positions,” Tinker ordered, ignoring him. Actions would speak louder than any words.
She spent the next few minutes bracing herself for what was about to follow. She was going to lead a hundred of her people into a fight to the death for the lives of seven children—and it was going to hurt like bitch in more ways than one.
“We’re ready, domi.” Pony took his place slightly behind her and unsheathed his ejae.
Tinker took a deep breath and set up resonance with the Spell Stones and quickly called her shields. Her right arm throbbed with dull, bearable pain. “Okay, let’s do this.”
* * *
She walked as quickly as she could straight up to the gate. The EIA commandos might have been dubious, but the oni knew trouble when they saw it coming. They unleashed a thunderstorm of gunfire onto her. At the gate, her Hand slashed through the tall steel door. When it crashed to the ground, the marines charged with a roar up the street, and there was no turning back.
The first part of the complex was a wide roadway with s
mall buildings to either side, which at one time housed security guards and office workers.
“We’ll keep them pinned. Search the side buildings,” Pony ordered the commandos and marines. He sheathed his ejae and unslung the bow from his back and nocked a spell arrow. The rest of the sekasha followed his lead.
The spell arrows screamed away. The sound of their flight triggered the spell inscribed on their shafts. The arrows flashed to laser-intense light and punched through the ranks of oni. Pony led the others slowly forward as they carefully picked out targets for their arrows, trusting Tinker to keep them safe. Tinker gritted her teeth against the pain throbbing in her arm and followed in their wake.
With Tinker pushing her shield forward, the oni had no choice but to retreat. The other fighting units fanned out to search the smaller buildings. Tinker tried to ignore the gunfire behind her to stay focused on maintaining her spells. She hated that she couldn’t protect all her people. Until they found the children, she couldn’t even use her one attack spell.
The narrow street ended at a loading dock with a dozen bays facing the road. All the doors were closed, the oni retreating in through a man-sized side door on the far right.
“Hold here.” Pony stopped short of the loading dock. “Advise me, domi. What would lie behind those large doors?”
“It’s a warehouse,” Tinker said. “All those doors, including the small one, will lead to the same large room. If we hit the leftmost door, we can clear the room left to right.”
Of course, there was the slight matter of getting onto the nearly five-foot-tall loading dock. The stairs were barricaded. It had posed no problem to the tall oni, but she wouldn’t be able to use her hands to climb.
Pony backed up, slinging the bow across his back. “Cloud, assist domi.”
The sekasha charged forward and leapt up onto the loading dock.
“Assist? What do you mean by—” Tinker yelped in surprise as Cloudwalker lifted her up and deposited her onto the loading dock. Somehow she managed to keep her shields up. “Oh for the love of God, I wish people would stop doing that to me.”
