by Wen Spencer
“You’re going to stir up mass hysteria when you don’t even know what caused this?” Chloe sneered. “All you have is a set of tracks…”
“And some well-chewed bodies,” Hal muttered in Jane’s shadow. She suspected that the woman frightened Hal by her sheer ruthlessness.
“Only an idiot would believe you could know what type of animal it is from its tracks.”
“My grandfather was a tracker, Ms. Polanski,” Maynard stated quietly. “He could tell everything about an animal—how big it was, how healthy it was, how long ago it had passed through the area and at what speed—just by its tracks.”
Behind Chloe, Covington zipped up the second bag.
“The police and EIA are spread thin still looking for Tinker domi.” Jane shifted to the side to keep the coroner’s activity out of Chloe’s peripheral vision. “Pittsburgh Backyard and Garden has agreed to track down and kill this creature, but we need help. One of your viewers gave us the original tip on this beast. He saw the creature in the river by the I-79 Bridge. Not only do we have to warn people about this thing, but we need all eyes looking for it.”
“And the credit will all go to WQED?” Chloe asked with scorn.
“Ms. Polanski, I require your cooperation in this.” Maynard stated it simply but it was fraught with implications. He was the god of Pittsburgh. Anyone that didn’t play by his rules found themselves exiled back to Earth. “I want this thing dead.”
Chloe gave him a cold, annoyed stare but then looked away with a slight huff of frustration. Thankfully she glanced not toward the last oni dead by bullet but at the hole that Hal had blown through the wall. “Fine. I want an exclusive interview.”
Jane relaxed slightly as Covington zipped up the last body bag for the headshot victims. All the evidence of their involvement was now covered up. Only the half-eaten bodies remained.
Maynard glanced at his watch. “You have five minutes.”
Chloe tapped her eyepiece. “This is Chloe Polanski with Director Maynard at Sandcastle Water Park.” She glanced down at one of the bodies. All that were on display were the monster-dismembered ones. “This appears to be an oni encampment hidden here at Sandcastle. How many warriors did you find here?”
Yes, how many?
Maynard blocked them both. “We haven’t matched up all the body pieces yet to come to an exact number yet. We will be issuing an official report later.”
“Were they all oni?” Chloe asked. When Maynard frowned slightly at the question, she went into more detail. “Were there any humans or elves…or tengu?”
Jane’s heart flipped in her chest. They had fled the scene so quickly that they had no chance to scrub away any sign of Joey and Boo.
“There was no sign that Tinker domi was held here.” Maynard leapt to a different but more obvious end of the questioning. “Tengu” was only linked to “Tinker’s kidnapper” for Maynard and not to “helpless children.”
Chloe wasn’t easily deferred. “So no signs of a prisoner possibly killed along with the oni? Is it possible that anyone being held captive—like Tinker—was eaten by this thing?”
“Tinker domi,” Maynard corrected her firmly. “The elves will not tolerate anyone being so informal with her title.”
Chloe flicked away the comment with her perfectly manicured fingers. “Yes or no?”
“There is no sign that Tinker domi was held here,” Maynard repeated coldly.
Chloe pressed her lips together into a tight, unhappy line but otherwise didn’t let her frustration show. She was being amazingly restrained but this was Maynard, not some poor grieving family who had lost their baby.
The oni in body bags were being loaded into the coroner’s van. Jane controlled a deep sigh of relief.
“Did you take anyone prisoner?” Chloe asked. “Oni or otherwise?”
“No.” Maynard wouldn’t lie about it. Probably. He had a reputation to uphold with the elves. That he would not tell a lie was part of his legend.
“So all you will discuss is this mythical beast?” Chloe asked.
“This is an unexplored continent on Elfhome. Not even the elves know what lives in the rivers.” He glanced at his watch again. “Any other question before you let your viewers know about this new creature?”
Chloe glanced around and eyed the body bags. Jane held her breath.
“I think we should dig around and see if we can turn up some tissue samples to run DNA scans off of,” Nigel said into the silence. “See what this blighter is made of. Surely there’s a lab somewhere in town that can do a rush job for us.”
“Maybe,” Hal said. “Or the elves could magic us something. Bibby-bobby-boo.”
Jane punched Hal in the gut for saying her sister’s name.
Chloe whipped around to stare at them. “What?”
“Nothing,” Hal whimpered.
Nigel continued as if Hal hadn’t slipped. “We can’t assume that this is a solitary creature. Depending on the species of crocodile, they lay anywhere from seven to nearly a hundred eggs. Electric eels can have up to three thousand young hatch from one clutch of eggs. Really it’s a matter of physiology. It would be helpful if we could get some DNA and see which species this monster is most closely related to. Scans would let us know what we’re dealing with.”
Chloe laughed. “Don’t you think we would notice three thousand giant electric crocodiles swimming around the Mon?”
“The hatchlings could be wee things compared to their mother.” Nigel measured out something only inches across. “In the water, if they swim in school, they’d be like piranha. The question is, how quickly can they walk on land?”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” Chloe tapped her eyepiece. “Reporting one monster is fine—certainly there’s undeniable evidence that something big went through here—theorizing a swarm of tiny man-eating fish walking around on land is too much.”
Jane hated that she secretly agreed with Chloe, at least at a gut level. Pittsburghers had enough on their plate being caught between warring nonhuman forces and their main ally, the EIA, filled with traitors.
“Just make sure you thoroughly warn your viewers about the adult creature,” Maynard ordered. “If anyone is harmed because you’re negligent, I’ll have you escorted back to Earth on the next Shutdown.”
Chloe huffed but nodded her understanding.
Maynard pointed at Jane. He’d figured out who actually was in charge. “Do whatever you need to do to kill this thing.”
* * *
Jane vetoed using Nigel’s whistle to call the monster to Sandcastle while the EIA were there. She didn’t want to risk the lives of all the men if they lost control of the situation. (Actually the idea that they would have any control with so little planning was laughable, so collateral damage was almost guaranteed.) She wanted a foolproof plan and an empty playing field—and a cannon—before facing the monster again.
She owned a chain-fed auto-cannon—well, technically Bertha belonged to her entire family—but waving it under the EIA’s nose would get her locked up faster than shooting oni.
Much as she wanted to gather up her crew and flee, they still should try to erase any evidence that they left behind.
Maynard refused to allow them to poke around in the water park’s boardwalk restaurants where Boo and Joey had been held. He stated firmly that if the buildings collapsed on them, he didn’t want to waste time digging them back out. His men were already cautiously searching the restaurants for clues to where the oni were holding Tinker. Jane could only hope that her team hadn’t left anything behind that would link them to the attack on the encampment.
It left them with only the camo-net-covered swimming pools to film while discreetly collecting gun casings. The Mon-tsunami wave pool was the closest to the tower where she’d covered their retreat. The oni had created a grating of chicken wire to cover it completely. The water was dark and smelled of river but wasn’t stagnating. The oni were aerating the pool to keep alive whatever lived in it.
; “What do you think they have in here?” Hal pulled out his extendable grab stick and poked at the wire. “Jumpfish?”
Jane caught Hal by the collar and hauled him away from the edge. A second later a dozen bodies plastered themselves to the screen covering, tentacles gripping the wire, sharp beaks attempting to find an opening in the grid.
“What the hell?” Jane breathed in surprise. “Are those water fairies?”
“Not quite,” Hal stated calmly. “They seem to be a larger, more aggressive version than any we’ve seen.”
Taggart panned the camera over the pool and then focused on the far end. The oni had dug a ditch that led toward the Monongahela. “I think they planned to release these into the river.”
“Why the hell would they do that?” Jane growled in anger. Water fairies were annoying but they were fairly timid.
“To drive humans out of Pittsburgh,” Nigel said. “The oni have been planning this war for years. The fewer humans in the city to side with the elves, the better. Monsters in the river. Monsters in the woods. Who would want to stay?”
“Those of us who were born here.” Jane looked around. “We’re not leaving here until everything in these pools are dead. We are not letting these things get into the river.”
Nigel nodded reluctantly. “After seeing what the oni did with your sister, there’s no telling what they might have done to these to make the water fairies more deadly. We can’t let them out into the wild. If nothing else, they’d probably replace the original species.”
“How do we do this?” Jane asked.
“Dynamite,” Hal suggested.
“We’re not going to start blowing things up with the EIA still here,” Jane whispered fiercely.
Hal spread his hands. “If they watch the show, they know that’s how we handle a lot of things.”
Taggart snorted with what sounded suspiciously like barely muffled laughter.
Jane pointed a finger at him. “This is not funny.” She switched targets to Hal. “At this time, I don’t want to go reminding the EIA of that.”
“When we were…” Nigel caught himself and dropped his voice to a whisper. “When we were here yesterday, I noticed that there were several carbon dioxide canisters for the drink fountains still sitting about. If we dispense the gas into pool, the water fairies will suffocate. It would be mostly painless, and very quiet.”
“Quiet is good.” She pointed up at the tower behind them. “Let’s go up, do an aerial shot of the park, and pick up casings. Then we’ll see what’s in the other pools.”
* * *
The rest of the day was surreal. The Mushroom Pool with the giant bright-colored sprinklers had river shark pups. The Tad Pool had baby jumpfish that flung themselves out of the wading pool like evil rain. Wet Willie’s Water Works was filled with large red, jellylike orbs the size of apples.
“What are those?” Jane asked the naturalists.
“Roe?” Nigel guessed.
“Yes, I think they are eggs.” Hal plucked one out of the pool with his grab stick. “Wonder if they taste like caviar.”
Jane smacked him in the back of the head before he sample it. “Don’t eat things when you don’t know what they are. It could be poisonous.”
“There’s thousands of them.” Taggart knelt to examine them closely with the camera.
“They’re extremely large,” Nigel said. “And freshly laid. The larvae are just developing. After about three days you normally can make out the eyes and the beginnings of the spinal cord.”
“There’s no camouflage netting over this pool.” Hal pointed to the set of monster tracks that led up to the edge of the concrete surrounding the shallow wading pool. “I think the monster laid these last night.”
Nigel eyed the evidence and then nodded. “It was returning to the place it was spawned.”
Jane laughed. The men looked at her with confused surprise. “Karma’s a bitch,” she explained. “It literally bit the oni in the ass. We couldn’t have called the monster here if it wasn’t already returning.”
“If it spawned here, it’s not a natural creature.” Nigel’s burr thickened with his anger. “It’s clearly a beast of war. We cannot let these hatch either. If we drain the water out of this pool and leave off the cover, the heat will kill them.”
And a few gallons of gasoline, just be sure. Jane could tell that it tore at Nigel to destroy life. Hal was much more pragmatic about it. He knew that humans rarely left the tiny pocket of Earth ecosystem that Pittsburgh represented. Beyond the Rim, there were no Earthborn species. They couldn’t compete with their magic-reinforced cousins. If the humans didn’t aggressively protect their ground, the flora and fauna of Elfhome would wipe them from the face of the planet.
“Let’s make sure we document all this before we start.”
* * *
The saurus had battered Nigel the day before. It hadn’t done serious damage, but under his clothes, he sported massive bruises and shallow claw marks. The pain was starting to show as they set up to film the roe. The EIA crews were still carefully searching the rubble, looking for the viceroy’s bride. It was a weird kind of torture, wanting them to find something, afraid that they would find the wrong thing.
“This is a nursery of monsters,” Nigel started with his indignant anger carefully controlled. “River shark. Jumpfish. These are large dangerous predators—known man-eaters—in a city fronted on all sides by water. Thirty percent of Pittsburgh lives within a thousand feet of a river. Pittsburghers have spent years trying to reduce the population of river sharks and jumpfish. As we saw the other day, the number of these predators in this area is staggering. The only logical explanation for there to be so many river sharks and jumpfish is that the oni have been restocking them from this hatchery.”
He gestured toward the other pools. “The water fairies here have obviously been genetically engineered into something larger, more aggressive, and perhaps more poisonous. In this pool, there are several hundred eggs, just like this one.” Nigel hefted up the egg held in Hal’s grab stick. “Consider that a salmon can reach to nearly five feet in length and its roe is smaller a pea. Imagine the size of the creature that hatches out of this egg. Such a monster killed and ate an unknown number of oni before laying these eggs. The oni planned to unleash thousands of these massive predators onto an unsuspecting city, unprepared for the onslaught. It represents bio-terrorism at a horrific level.”
* * *
In the end, she convinced the men to set the roe on fire using the gasoline in the PB&G spare gas can.
If only all her problems were as easy to solve.
* * *
Brandy showed up in a Pittsburgh police squad car as they were stowing their gear. Brandy slammed her door and came storming across the parking lot like the goddess of justice.
Jane figured that she’d better beat Brandy to the punch. “Why did you call Alton and tell him to sit on me? You know how my little brothers are. I had to deal with all five of them last night. They wanted to know why you wanted me sat on. You know if I’d told them, they would have gotten their guns and come here! Do you know what kind of mess that would have been?”
“You didn’t do this?” Brandy pointed toward the flaming egg pool.
“I have a temper but I don’t tear people in half and eat them.” Jane shoved the reflector into the production truck. “The oni were using Sandcastle to breed things like river sharks, and releasing them into the Mon. We think one of their monsters turned on them. Director Maynard called us in as consultants.”
“Oh.” Brandy deflated at the news. And then deflated a little more. “Oh. I’m sorry.”
“You’re sorry about what?”
“Your sister! Boo! You thought she might be here.”
Yes, Jane, you should be more upset. Anger was easier than pretending to be disappointed. “No! She’s not here!” Jane remembered then that the EIA was still searching the rubble for clues to Tinker’s location. “They’re checking to see if any surv
ivors are trapped inside the buildings. Any news about Tinker?”
“Nothing good. The viceroy’s ‘blade brother’ disappeared last night.”
“His what?”
Brandy spread her hands to indicate ignorance. “It means adopted brother or foster brother or something like that. The kid is the youngest elf in Pittsburgh; from what I can tell they consider him not much older than your baby brother Guy. He’d been at the hospice; they were testing him to see if he’d been drugged or had a spell cast on him or something. That part really isn’t clear; something about seeing things that weren’t real. What’s clear is he was forcibly taken.”
Jane cursed. Losing Boo had torn her heart out. If Guy had vanished too, it would have killed her. She couldn’t even imagine what Windwolf was going through. The damnable thing is that the humans were reporting on the viceroy’s movements. The oni could easily be moving Tinker from camp to camp, staying one step ahead of the elves.
Jane breathed in deep as she realized that Boo might know where all those camps might be.
Unfortunately Brandy noticed. “What?”
Jane stared at Brandy, fighting to keep dismay off her face. What the hell do I tell her? Jane caught sight of Taggart pretending not to be listening into the conversation. A lie spilled out, seeded in the truth. “My mom has this crazy idea,” she turned slightly and dropped to a whisper. “She thinks that I’m interested in Taggart. So she wants to do a big family dinner tonight and I’d forgotten until just this moment. It’s a ‘welcome to Pittsburgh’ dinner that is really a thinly disguised ‘welcome to the family’ thing.”
The family dinner wasn’t a lie. Her family was going to be gathering at Hyeholde, trying to make up for lost time and sharing the responsibility of protecting Boo and Joey. Jane had to go back to her place to get the cannon. If her brothers found out about the river monster, they’d want to help. The last thing Jane wanted was to have to ride herd on Hal and her brothers at the same time. Since her family would be at Hyeholde when they returned, they were going to have to wait until full dark to unpack the cannon.
Brandy glanced toward Taggart. “Oh, girl, if you don’t want to tap that, let me know.”