by Wen Spencer
The elves had been treating Oilcan as one of them, even while he was still fully human. Chances were that by now, Oilcan was as much an elf as Tinker. But if she was any indication, no matter how pointy the ears got, a human still thought like a human.
* * *
He’d guessed right. There was a fresh path cut through the dark forest where Route 88 hit the Rim. The trees were hacked down in one clean cut, as if felled by a giant axe, and their massive stumps blasted away. He had to give one thing to the elves: at least the people in charge were scary powerful. This close to the Rim, all the houses stood empty. He glided his hoverbike through the missing sliding door of a nearby ranch house into a cave-dark living room. Plaster from the ceiling crunched underfoot as he spun the bike, parking it ready for a quick getaway later.
The night echoed with life. Someplace far off, children were playing baseball, the crack of ball against bat triggering excited joyous shouting. The bass from a distant stereo thumped to an inaudible melody. A dog barked for attention. It was the sound of peaceful life. The kind of life he wanted for his family, where dark was nothing more than time to relax and play.
He checked his clip and headed into the forest.
Less than two miles from the Rim, the path hacked through the towering ironwoods ended in a wide clearing. The perimeter guards were few and far apart, with eyes only watching outward. Once Tommy blinded them to his presence and slipped past them, he had no trouble moving unnoticed through the camp. It was a matter of walking with purpose, as if he had full right to be there, while keeping to the shadows.
Bingo had said that the Stone Clan domana had come to Pittsburgh with only their sekasha and laedin-caste guards. As a result, the camp wasn’t as refined as was normal for elves. There were only a few elfshines drifting among a dozen tents done in dark fairy silk, which made it easy to move unnoticed.
Tommy found Oilcan asleep in a small, unguarded tent. Tommy breathed out in relief. He’d gotten to the man before Kajo managed to have him killed. Tommy only needed to get Oilcan safely to Tinker.
Unless Kajo set Tommy in motion without him realizing he was being played.
Tommy paused at the tent’s flap with the sudden doubt. What if Kajo planned all along for Tommy to find Oilcan and whisk him out from under the elf’s watch to someplace that Kajo could easily kill him? Kajo had him running circles with the tengu scam. Only Oilcan and Blue Sky had kept him from that trap. What if this was another snare?
No, the tengu scam had been Tommy acting like normal. Watching out for himself and his family. Flying solo. Caring only about what was his. The only thing that saved him was that he’d swallowed his pride and asked for help. Kajo apparently hadn’t counted on Oilcan and Blue Sky working together to save the half-oni.
So it was probably safe to assume that Kajo wouldn’t know how much meeting Jin had changed Tommy. Hell, even Tommy hadn’t realized it until he was deep in the wilderness, staring down at the massive oni army and realizing how fragile the peace of Pittsburgh was. How he would have to join the fight to protect it. How the only way he could protect his family was doing stupid-ass things like sneaking into elf camps.
No, Kajo wasn’t pulling his strings.
Tommy stepped into the tent and let the flap close behind him. He needed to get Oilcan to Tinker—wherever she was—before Kajo could land his killing blow. He moved quietly to the cot and reached out to shake Oilcan awake.
They had changed Oilcan into an elf.
The sight kicked Tommy to a full stop. He’d expected it, but still . . .
The elves had completely remade Oilcan in their image. His closed eyes were now almond-shaped. His ears were pointed. His fingernails were perfect half-moons on fingers innocent of hard-earned calluses. The newly flawless skin and lack of facial hair made Oilcan look more like a boy than a man, child-vulnerable to what they had done to him. Anger for Oilcan’s sake flashed through Tommy, igniting a hotter fire of annoyance for letting himself care. They were basically strangers to each other—certainly not family—and Tommy didn’t make friends with anyone.
He reminded himself that it was better for him and his family that Oilcan was an elf with all the bells and whistles. An elf with a human soul.
Still, he couldn’t stop thinking of the last time he had seen Oilcan. The human had been in his racing leathers, five o’clock shadow dusting his face, smelling of sweat, oil, gas, and some lucky female. He had fought hard to save Tommy’s family and dared to face Tommy’s rage to keep the half-oni from bringing harm to himself. The elves had taken that good and decent man and tried to make it as if he had never breathed life as a human.
Fighting down his anger, Tommy put a hand to Oilcan’s shoulder and tried to shake him awake. Oilcan’s eyes fluttered, opened a moment to gaze guilelessly up at him, and then slowly closed. A second shake failed to rouse him at all. No wonder the man hadn’t tried to escape; he was drugged and helpless.
Breathing out a curse, Tommy hauled Oilcan up and hiked him over his shoulder.
Getting out of the camp was going to be harder than getting in.
Boot steps warned Tommy that someone was coming. He jerked back away from the empty cot and focused on the elf beyond the tent flap. He locked down on the elf’s mind as the male slipped into the tent.
Oilcan asleep on the cot, drugged beyond waking.
Going by Bingo’s description of the Stone Clan domana, the newcomer was Iron Mace. The male stood a moment, intent not on the cot but on the movement of the camp beyond the silk walls. Had Iron Mace heard Tommy? The night was still and quiet as Tommy erased himself from the male’s awareness.
Apparently satisfied that there was nothing to hear, the male turned toward the cot. He pulled the pillow out from under Tommy’s illusion and then pressed it firmly down onto the illusion’s face.
Tommy clamped down on a curse. The bastard would have killed Oilcan while he was completely helpless. This was Kajo’s puppet. If Tommy were caught by the elves after witnessing this attack on Oilcan, Iron Mace would have to kill him. Oilcan’s “murder” needed to be convincing.
Tommy had suffocated Spot’s father while the oni warrior was drunk. He’d been sixteen and scared shitless, but he could still feel the male struggling under him like it was yesterday. He fed the domana the memory: the drunken body weakly flailing under the pillow, the muffled cries, and slow but inevitable stillness.
Iron Mace leaned his whole body weight down on the illusion of the much smaller male and held the pillow tight even after the body went limp. He panted hoarsely in the stillness. Finally Iron Mace slowly lifted the pillow. Tommy planted the image of a dead Oilcan, unseeing eyes open and mouth slack. The elf gave a quiet, shaky laugh and carefully replaced the pillow under the illusion’s head. His crime hidden, Iron Mace strolled out of the tent as if he had merely checked on the sleeping Oilcan.
Tommy rested a hand on Oilcan’s back and felt the reassuring rhythm of his breathing. He needed to get both of them out of here safely.
42: AWAKING
“Wake up.” The command was growl low and menacing. “Damn it, wake up.”
Oilcan opened his eyes, feeling strangely hollow and light.
“About fucking time,” Tommy growled. A noise made the man glance off into the gray of oncoming dawn, giving Oilcan his tense profile. Tommy’s black-furred cat ears twitched as he listened to the distant noises.
Oilcan felt like a house open to the spring wind, blown clean and cold. He could remember Iron Mace drugging him and convincing Forge to change him, and then nothing. He put his hands to his ears and found elfin tips. “God damn him,” he growled as anger flowed into the emptiness and filled him with hot murderous rage. “Damn lying bastard. I-I-I . . .”
He wanted to kill Iron Mace. Never in his life had he wanted so desperately to destroy someone. Beat them with his hands so he felt the blows land hard and vicious. Hear their bones break. Reduce them to a smear of blood and then wash that away. He clenched his fist against
the rage.
Tommy coldly watched him fight the anger as he took a pistol out of a kidney holster and screwed a silencer into place. “That anger isn’t a bad thing. If I were you, I’d hold tight and ride it, because you need it to be hard enough to do what needs to be done.”
“Iron Mace drugged me and was going to throw me out a third-story window. When my grandfather stopped him, the damn fucking lying bastard used Forge’s grief to keep me helpless.”
In a cold, hard voice, Tommy explained how Iron Mace had tried to smother Oilcan in his sleep. “What did you do to piss him off so bad?”
“Not me—Forge’s son. He stole something from Iron Mace, a spell of some sort, something I think was deadly incriminating. He ran away from home, all the way to Earth, and handed down bits and pieces of a puzzle. I’m not sure what he took from Iron Mace, but the bastard came to Pittsburgh just to make sure nothing incriminating was floating around after nearly three hundred years.”
“Kajo pulled Iron Mace’s strings. The damn greater blood probably made sure Iron Mace had good reason to believe you and Tinker know more than you really do. Iron Mace will probably go after her next.”
“He wouldn’t dare,” Oilcan whispered and realized Iron Mace had killed his own sister to keep his secret. He would try to eliminate Tinker, too.
“Don’t let the fear in,” Tommy said. “That doesn’t do you any good. Keep hold of the anger—that’s what you’re going to need. Let your rage make you strong.”
Oilcan struggled to come up with calm, rational things to say as his mind screamed in rage and fear. “How long have I been out of it?”
“I’m not sure. I was out of the city when the shit started flying. I got back yesterday afternoon, so it’s been at least a day, maybe two. I’ve been trying to get you to wake up for six hours now.”
Oilcan swore quietly as he studied their surroundings. They were someplace in Pittsburgh, tucked up into the superstructure of an overpass. A roadway crossed over their heads on spans of steel. The ground was half a dozen feet down; a steep graveled slope led down to yet another road and then a stream that glittered in pale dawn. “Where are we?”
“Close to the Southern Rim, somewhere near 88. I’m not completely sure—I cut through the woods instead of following the path out. I figured that the Stone Clan would start chasing us the minute they found you gone. Jewel Tear said that metal interferes with the Stone Clan’s scrying spells.”
Hence the nest of steel. They needed to move quickly once they left the safety of the overpass. They weren’t far from his barn retreat, where he had his spare hoverbikes. And clothes. All he had on were loose cotton pajamas three sizes too big. He was missing all his normal pocket clutter, including his cell phone. “You have a phone?”
Tommy handed him a cell phone. Tinker’s phone went straight to e-mail. He tried his own number. No messages. Tinker hadn’t left him word where she was going. With Tinker, the possibilities of where she might run off to were mindboggling. Who might know where she was?
Lain didn’t know. “Try the tengu,” she said. “They’re looking for you, so they might know how to find her.”
He hated that he still had Riki’s number memorized and that as he punched it in, Tommy’s phone recognized it. Obviously the oni ex-slaves had worked together when they were both enslaved.
Riki answered on the first ring with “What is it, Chang?”
“It’s Oilcan. Tommy pulled me out of danger—”
Riki gave a heartfelt, “Oh, thank God.”
Oilcan tried to ignore Riki’s relief. “I need to find Tinker. Iron Mace tried to kill me twice. He’s going after Tinker.”
“She disappeared on us,” Riki said. “I’ve got all eyes that I can trust completely looking for the both of you.”
If the tengu didn’t know where she was, then it was unlikely that the elves knew. “Where’s Windwolf?”
“The inbound train was captured by oni. They tried to ram it into the outbound train with all the elves onboard. The elves managed to derail the inbound engine on the South Side. The domana are blowing hell out of everything, and there’s oni everywhere.”
“Jesus,” Oilcan breathed, thinking about the Wollertons and everyone else he knew that lived on the South Side.
Tommy’s sharp ears had followed the conversation. “It’s a diversion. Kajo is keeping the domana occupied so a smaller force can attack someplace else.”
“Shit, you’re probably right!” Riki said.
“Kajo will keep the elves shadowboxing until he gets whatever he’s really after,” Tommy said.
Providence had told Tinker to fight her shadow. Both Esme and Tinker had dreamed of playing hide-and-seek on Neville Island. To play, you first shut your eyes. If Tinker dropped contact with the tengu—her eyes—then she might be playing hide-and-seek already. If Kajo had a force of oni heading for Tinker, there was no way she could take on Iron Mace, too.
The question was: Did he tell Riki where she might be? Forgive and trust wasn’t the same thing. Riki’s people needed Tinker alive and well and had proven that they were willing to fight and die for her. Tinker might have started the game of hide-and-seek, but this Kajo had her outclassed.
“Riki, get everyone you can trust to Neville Island. I think that Tinker’s at the hotel where we grew up. Both Kajo’s oni strike force and his puppet, Iron Mace, are headed for her. She’s going to need backup or they’ll roll right over her.”
43: LOST
The elves eyed the casting room with confusion and suspicion. With all her outer-perimeter defenses activated, Tinker had her Hand, Thorne Scratch, Blue Sky, Oilcan’s kids, and all the laedin warriors gathered in the big room with her. At one time it had been an outdoor pool, but her grandfather had enclosed it with ironwood and glass. The morning sun dawned through the windowed ceiling, starting the cycle of turning the chilly room into a stifling oven. The unused buckets of chlorine already scented the air with ghosts of summers past.
“Quiee.” Baby Duck broke the silence.
“And you and sama lived here alone with your grandfather?” Cattail asked for the zillionth time.
“What a waste of a wonderful bathing room,” Barley said.
“It is . . . it was a—” What was the Elvish word for swimming? She settled for the English. “Swimming pool, not a bathing tub.”
Everyone but Blue Sky gazed at her blankly. Maybe elves didn’t swim. Considering what lived in most large bodies of water on Elfhome, she didn’t blame them.
The casting room had been one of the epic wars between Lain and her grandfather. Lain maintained that if her grandfather was going to raise Tinker in the middle of a river that routinely flooded, Tinker should know how to swim. Her grandfather believed that if Tinker could swim, she would be more likely to play in the river. (Ironically, they were both right on the subject.) They both ordered supplies, and the race was on. Her grandfather’s cement truck beat Lain’s water truck by a few hours, sealing the swimming pool’s fate. The pool-maintenance supplies—from algaecide to winter pills—shipped from Earth and nonreturnable—were still piled in one corner of the room, unused.
As a measure of her childhood, her greatest despair had been watching the gray cement slosh across the pool’s pale blue floor. She had been planning on building an entire fleet of toy submarines. She could only wish that her problems had stayed that trivial. It had been over a day since Iron Mace and Forge disappeared with Oilcan. So far, the tengu hadn’t found where they’d gone.
Tinker tried to stay focused on the spell she was transcribing on the white marble slab that been laid on the cement insulating layer. It was the same spell she had tried on Merry earlier, only slightly modified. She needed to know what the oni wanted from the kids if she was going to protect them. She was afraid that the condition she found them in reflected how little the oni needed the children alive. Was it mere chance that the three that died lacked whatever the other five had? Statistically, it was unlikely, but she didn’t wa
nt to stake their lives on what could have been random luck. Perhaps in time, the oni would have killed all the children.
Tinker finished the spell and stepped back. “Merry, could you come down here?”
Merry meeped quietly and backed up slightly, wide-eyed.
“No,” Rustle said. “Not Merry. Let me do this. I’ve felt so useless.”
“Your arm will be better soon,” Merry cried. “You shouldn’t feel useless.”
“You should have gone down the chute before me. You’re younger than me. You’re smaller. I should have been the one holding back to protect you.”
Merry rested her head against Rustle’s chest. Unfortunately, it only made it more obvious that she was so much smaller than him. “You’re hurt now, so I’m the one that should be brave.”
“I’ll hate myself if I let you take all the risks for all of us.” Rustle wrapped his one good arm about her shoulders. “We should share the risk of being hurt.”
“It’s just a spell.” Blue Sky didn’t have an ounce of romance in him yet. He was giving the two an impatient scowl. “It won’t hurt.” He turned to Tinker, full of blind trust. “Right?”
This was where Oilcan normally smacked her until she admitted that she only vaguely knew what she was doing. She ached deep inside. It felt so wrong not to be charging around, looking for him. She hated this feeling that she was doing the wrong thing. Especially since it made her aware of how much of her life she sailed through, assuming she was doing the right thing, just because she had thought it up. It was thinking like that which had gotten Nathan killed.
Blue Sky’s trusting look started to fade as he saw the doubt on her face. “It isn’t going to hurt him?”
“The spell I did earlier on Merry indicated that she was connected to an infinite number of points—evenly.” It was simpler to ramble, trying to be reassuring while not lying. The kids were scared enough without telling them that she really wasn’t sure what she was doing. “Normally magic is affected by a number of things: gravity being one of them. Springs and ley lines are side effects of gravity’s influence on magic. That the points were evenly distributed indicates that the connections weren’t affected by gravity.”
