by Baen Books
"Does Dmitri know he's here?" Hal asked and then answered himself. "Of course Dmitri knows. Dmitri knows everything. He's freaking omniscient. That's just an act when he calls right in the middle of something amazing and goes 'what are you doing?' like he doesn't damn well know you plan a glorious explosion. Just freaking glorious."
Hal was rambling on about his recent misadventure with high explosives. If Taggart weren't standing there, she would take advantage of Hal's drugged state and quiz him on that, because she still was trying to figure out where he got the C4. More importantly, if the source was going to supply him with more in the future.
The network cameraman was eyeing Hal over her shoulder with open surprise and dismay. "What exactly happened this morning? He looks like he's been flogged."
"We were victorious!" Hal shouted. "We looked that thing in all seventy-four eyes and burned out its heart!"
Jane sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose. So many things wrong in that sentence, she wasn't even going to try. God, she prayed that Nigel wasn't anything like Hal. "Right, let's get going. I want to get home before dark."
#
Technically she lived in Pittsburgh but barely. The true city's edge was another mile or so north. Once the township of Coraopolis, the nearly unpopulated neighborhood, however, was one of the points where the Rim had migrated inward via invading Elfhome vegetation. What had been housing plans once gathered around Pittsburgh International Airport was now collapsing homes among ironwood forest. The trees were still considered "saplings" but already towered a hundred feet over her driveway. The harsh sun instantly softened in a way that seemed nearly magical.
Chesty jumped out his open window the moment she parked and started a perimeter parole of the front yard. The cost of living so close to the Rim was she had to be ever vigilant. Only after he'd made a full sweep of the front yard without signaling danger did she get out and take a deep breath of the green stillness.
Taggart slid out of her SUV and stood taking in her ancestral home in the sun-dappled forest. The massive stone walls. The turrets. The gables. "Wow."
"Welcome to Hyeholde."
"This – this is not what I expected," he said quietly, as if not to disturb the peace. "A castle? Here?"
"When my great-great-grandfather proposed to my grandmother, he promised her a castle. He never mentioned that they'd have to build with their own hands. It took them seven years just to finish the West Room."
He laughed. "So you are a native guide."
"You can't get much more native without being an elf."
"Mine!" Hal cried from the backseat for the zillionth time since leaving the hospital.
"So, you live here alone?" Taggart obviously was asking if Hal lived with her.
"Yes." She hoped the brusque answer would stop any more questions, but she hoped in vain.
"Your family went back to Earth?"
"Don't ask personal questions." Jane added a glare so he'd get the point.
"She's got lots and lots and lots of family in Pittsburgh." Hal shouted. "And they all drive her nuts, so she hides out in her Fortress of Solitude."
"Shush you." Jane considered duct tape for Hal's mouth. God knows what he might tell the New Yorkers. She keyed open her gun safe and took out her assault rifle. "Stay with the SUV until I've checked the house."
#
Her great-great-grandfather had built the castle to be a restaurant, so it had an industrial-sized kitchen. She'd opened it up into one of the smaller dining rooms to add in a small eating and living room space. She got Hal settled on her big leather couch and assigned Nigel the task of keeping him there, one way or another. For the next hour as she squirreled away her supplies, fed Chesty and made a simple dinner, Hal ranted at hyperactive speed about his time doing network television.
She knew the pain medication was wearing off when Hal grew quiet.
When she paused to check on him, Hal asked, "Why are they here?" in a small miserable voice that sounded nothing like the normal Hal.
She opened her mouth to answer and realized that she really didn't know why the two were there. She'd been so caught up in trying to wriggle out of responsibility and taking care of Hal that she hadn't actually found out the details.
He probably hadn't asked Nigel because, despite the friendly banter, he didn't trust the man. The common thread of his stories, she realized, was that on Earth he'd been betrayed and abandoned by people he thought he could trust to more famous stars. Wives. Producers. And ultimately fans. Had he kept to old Earth stories in order to keep from playing up anything connected to PB&G?
"They've got a network show called 'Chased by Monsters' and Dmitri wants me to keep them out of trouble," she explained.
Hal frowned and looked at Taggart who was now slumped in the matching chair, looking exhausted. "You're not here because network is betting on a war?"
"Depends on who you ask," Taggart said. "Ask me, no. I'm never doing that again. I've had enough of the stench of blood. I wouldn't put it past Network though, certainly they suddenly green lighted our show after months of having us on hold."
"Wait. What?" Jane had missed something important.
"Taggart is an award winning war correspondent," Nigel said because Taggart apparently was modest and Hal was falling into a pain stupor. "Network probably okayed our show because it created a win-win for them. If there's a war, they have one of the best men trapped inside. If there isn't, they get what promises to be a hit show."
It suddenly made sense why Network hadn't warned Dmitri last Shutdown about the men's arrival and yet had given them a freshly painted truck. The decision had been made to send them after they'd processed WQED's last news dump, and then it was too late to send an email to Pittsburgh.
Jane swore. "Bastards."
Nigel spread his hands slightly in a "what are you going to do" motion. "It gets us what we wanted, so we can't really complain."
"We've been trying to get onto Elfhome to film documentaries for years." Taggart scrubbed at his face. "The UN has a chokehold on information coming out of Pittsburgh. Most people wouldn't notice it. We notice because there's a huge black hole where things like wildlife documentaries should be. Jane Goodall's work produced sixty years of film. Jacques-Yves Cousteau alone had thousands of hours of documentaries. Oxford Scientific Films did four seasons on meerkats. What do we have from Elfhome in nearly thirty years? A whole new world with fascinating people, plants and animals? Zip."
"Maybe the networks don't think they'll sell."
Taggart snorted. "Documentaries are funded differently. Production companies like ours often fold their profit back into the next film, along with money from private investors, government grant money and philanthropists who have a special interest in the source material. Normally we make a film and then market off the rights to networks. It gives us creative control over what we do."
Nigel nodded along with Taggart's explanation. "We've had the money for the last three years, but our visa applications kept getting turned down. We just didn't have the clout to force them through. So we decided to see if a major network would have better luck – and they did."
"But you're stuck filming crap now." Hal snorted. "Chased by monsters? Better be damn good at running."
"And exactly how do you get hurt filming a landscaping show?" Taggart retorted.
"If it can't kill us, we don't film it," Jane said, to stop the fighting before it could start. "There's a lot of dangerous flora and fauna in Pittsburgh and it doesn't stay beyond the Rim. It comes into people's backyards and sets up shop. We teach our viewers how to deal with it, but it means we have to actually get close enough to get hurt."
"Deal with, as in kill?" Nigel seemed flabbergasted.
"This isn't Earth. These aren't endangered species. This morning we were dealing with a very large strangler vine in a neighborhood with lots of children. There's no way to 'move' it to someplace where it isn’t a danger, especially while it's actively trying to kill anythi
ng that stumbles into its path. Pets. Children. Automated lawnmowers."
"That one is always amusing to watch but it always ends badly for the lawnmower," Hal said.
"Well, yes, the idea behind 'chased' is that we aren't hunting the creatures."
She remembered that they'd mentioned a list when they first met Chesty. "Which creatures?"
They had a list that made Pittsburgh Backyard and Garden's fare look tame. She stared at it, trying not to slip to horror. Half the animals were mythical – possibly – and certainly never seen near Pittsburgh. Did they have the pull to get them all the way to the Easternlands to find out? Humans were discouraged from leaving Pittsburgh city limits, with the exception of the train crews, who actually got to travel to the east coast. The elves normally forbid humans from traveling to the other continents. Fame, however, opened many doors.
"What, exactly, did the network set up for you in terms of visas?"
"Why?" Taggart asked.
"Many of these animals aren't native to the Westernlands." She scrolled down and a laugh of disbelief or perhaps fear slipped out. "Basilisk? Bigfoot?"
"We thought we should list all legendary animals," Nigel explained – apparently without realizing it – why they had visa problems. "Can't hurt to ask. Dragons are real, right?"
"Elves say they are." Jane desperately wanted a scotch but if she had one, Hal couldn't resist needing one, and she didn't want go back down that road. "This list is suicidal if you're not willing to defend yourself. This isn't Earth, where you can sit in your Jeep and take picture of lions, or go sit in the middle of a bunch of apes. Most of these things will peel open an SUV like it’s a can of sardines and make a snack of everything inside."
"It would be amusing to watch but it would end badly for you," Hal murmured. It was hard to tell if he was making a play on his previous statement or if he didn't realize he was repeating himself.
"The list is a starting point." Nigel leaned forward, face lighting up with inner fire. "To get us in the door. What we want is all of Elfhome. To revel in all that it has to offer. The virgin iron wood forest. The beautiful immortal elves. The strange and magical beasts. And the humans that live peacefully side by side with all this."
Jane shook her head, trying to resist the power of a TV host beaming at her one-on-one. "Don't snow job me."
"I've seen this kind of shit before," Taggart said with quiet intensity. "When a country goes dark, its means someone has something it's trying to hide. And often what they're hiding is horrible war crimes like mass graves and attempted genocide. Someone is keeping the media out of Pittsburgh."
#
The knowledge that there were people sharing her house, people whose safety she was responsible for, weighed heavily on her. It sunk her into the murky waters of old nightmares, where well-founded grief blurred into something strange and nearly unrecognizable.
She bolted awake with Chesty nosing her face.
"I'm fine!" She pushed him away and sat up. Her alarm clock read six in the morning with the sky just lightening with dawn. Hal's soft snores invaded the normal quiet of her house. "I'll be even better when I get rid of all these men."
She stomped across the hall and pounded on Hal's door and got an "I'm up!" yelped in reply. She stalked down the hallway, shouting, "Daylight is wasting ladies! Time to get up!"
She wasn't prepared to find Taggart already in the kitchen. Judging by the smell, he had made coffee and toast. He wore low-slung pj bottoms and had been standing in front of the bank of televisions she'd set up so she could watch all three Pittsburgh channels at once.
He had dark curls on his chest that matched his long black mane, which only served to underscore her first impression of wild man. Judging by his muscled abdomen, he visited a gym often in New York. She could also tell in a glance that she was very much into dark haired wild men.
She opened her mouth to tell him to get dressed and nothing coherent came out.
He gazed at her with open worry. "Are you okay?"
"Just – just…" Needed to remember that she was extremely pissed at him for invading her life. "I had a nightmare."
He quirked an eyebrow.
"Lawn gnomes had taken Hal. I couldn't find him."
"Ah, so you don't really hate him?"
She was caught off guard by the question. "No! Why would you say that?"
"Friendship is a rare beast in our line. Most people only fake it."
"I don't fake anything."
"I'm starting to understand that." His gaze made her blush because it seemed to suggest he was into tall blondes. Then again, most men were, at least at first meeting. Usually after they met her father's ghost, though, they realized that tall and blonde only stretched so far.
"Tell me, who exactly is Tinker?" He nodded toward the televisions.
All three channels were covering the same story from slightly different perspective. Jane swore as the details filtered in, painful in the familiar cadence, as if time had wound back seven years. Vanished without a trace. No witnesses. Missing since yesterday. Jumpfish and river sharks made finding a body unlikely.
"Oh god." The cameras of the news crews picked out all the same trappings as when Boo disappeared. The police cars. The EIA river patrol boats. The family waiting on the shore for news. The only difference this time was that it was elves gathered into a protective circle. The Viceroy's face was full of unbearable grief.
"You know him?" Taggart asked.
"Her. Tinker is a girl." Not much older than what Boo would be now, if Boo was still alive. "Everyone knows her. She's famous." Jane thought of all the photos of the muddy hoverbike racer that they had sent Network. In every one of them, Tinker had blazed glorious. Determined in battle. Joyous at her wins. Grinning even in defeat.
"I'm sorry," Taggart said quietly and Jane realized that there was a tear rolling down her cheek.
"I don't really know her." Jane wiped at her face. "She's just eighteen; she's still just a kid." According to certain juvenile betting pools, Tinker had barely started to date before meeting the Viceroy. "But Pittsburgh is a small town. Everyone has dozens of points of commonality. My cousins are on her crew. My younger brother hangs out with her cousin. My mechanic's little brother is her best friend."
The impending ripple of grief moving through the city, touching everyone, made Jane's throat tighten up. She focused instead on the chaos on the screen trying to understand when and where Tinker had disappeared. Last Jane had heard, Tinker had been building something out beyond the Rim. How had she disappeared with all those people at her beck and call? She wasn't a kindergartener with five older brothers to distract everyone. Tinker might be barely five foot tall but her personality expanded to fill the room. Any time that Jane had crossed paths with Tinker, everyone in the area tracked her movement.
Maddeningly, none of the three reporters were actually covering what had happened. Chloe Polanski hated working with a crew (and from what Jane had heard, the feeling was mutual) and used an eyepiece camera. Her shots were either close-ups of herself or confusing sweeps of the river. The woman was good for interviews but sucked when there wasn't a warm body to tear into pieces. Kimberly Shotts was going for the human-interest angle and her cameraman stayed focused on the Viceroy. Only Mark Webster's cameraman was showing enough of the surroundings for Jane to get her bearings as to where the elves and humans were gathering. They seemed to be at the old Greyhound parking lot off of Second Avenue, about six hundred feet from the footings of the 10th Street Bridge.
Jane swore as Mark's camera showed the wreckage of Tinker's famous hoverbike in the emergency pull off lane of 376, just feet from the Monongahela River. "What the hell did she hit?"
As if to answer her, the camera panned upwards to the Boulevard of the Allies at the top of the cliff beside Second Avenue. The drop from the highway above was straight down several hundred feet.
"Looks like she went off the cliff," Taggart said.
"Not by accident," Jane said. "
She could make a hoverbike do anything. She could fly…"
Jane realized that Mark was showing the edge of Mercy Hospital. "Oh, freaking hell."
She scrambled to her camera charging station. She'd swapped out memory cards before stowing her camera in the truck. If Hal had actually recorded anything yesterday, it would be the only thing on the fresh card.
The first thing was Hal's "call" to the studio. She had missed out on him thanking her profusely for her promise to come and get him.
"Thank you, Jane. You wonderful, wonderful girl. A true goddess! You magnificent Valkyrie! I love you…"
She hit fast forward, swearing softly, as she started to burn with embarrassment because Taggart had followed her from the televisions.
"Is that your main camera?"
"It's our only camera."
"That ancient thing? I thought you were the top show."
"Welcome to Pittsburgh," she growled. The truth was that Hal killed too many cameras to let PB&G have the newer equipment, not that what Mark's crew were using could be consider state-of-the-art. Jane paused as she found Hal's "big bird." Hal wasn't the best cameraman so it blurred in and out of focus. At first the scale was impossible to judge until a hoverbike suddenly soared out into the air near it. The rider and bike separated even as they both plunged toward the ground.
Jane gasped in horror. The rider was Tinker. Falling.
The black bird dove and caught Tinker in mid-air. Only then the size of the creature became obvious. It was huge.
"What is that?" Taggart asked.
"I don't know. I've never seen a bird this big."
"Is it a bird?"
"I don't think it’s a wyvern. Its wings look feathered. Wyverns are lizardlike with bat-wings."
"Are you sure?"
"There's a wyvern stuffed in the Carnegie Museum, just down the hall from the dinosaurs. Every other year in school we went there for a field trip because there's not much else to see in Pittsburgh."
Tinker thrashed in the bird's hold and then went heart-stoppingly limp. The black bird flapped away. Hal attempted to keep the bird in sight with zoom and things blurred in and out of focus again.
