Project Elfhome

by Wen Spencer

  “That’s—that’s a stretch.” Taggart rolled down his shirtsleeves and buttoned his cuffs.

  “Why else would she take it?” Jane tossed the linens again.

  “It doesn’t make sense that she’d take it once she had a good look at it. If she hadn’t taken it, you wouldn’t be worried now.”

  Taggart had a point: she wouldn’t be aware of the bracelet’s importance if Yumiko hadn’t taken it. With his sleeves buttoned, his bracelet was hidden, as were Nigel’s and Hal’s. Since she was wearing a tank top, hers had been the only one visible. She realized why the tengu female had taken the bracelet.

  “Yumiko took it so Sparrow wouldn’t see it. Sparrow is an oni double agent; she probably could guess that the bracelet meant that we have Joey. She probably would have shot us all.”

  “That makes sense,” Taggart agreed slowly. “I think the only reason Sparrow didn’t shoot us was because you were obviously hurt.”

  Jane glanced about the empty hospital room. “We should head back home and talk to Joey. We need to know who Yumiko is. If we can trust her.”

  * * *

  “What the hell happened to you?” Geoffrey cried when Jane walked back into her garage an hour later. Since both Nigel and Hal were soaked from head to toe, she didn’t bother hiding her bandaged arm.

  Her brothers must have finished installing Bertha on the Humvee as a canvas tarp had been draped over it. They’d raided the toy bins in the storage room for plastic dinosaurs and matchbox trucks. The reptiles dwarfed the vehicles; unfortunately it probably was the correct scale.

  “Hal was Hal,” Jane temporized, getting a “hey” of indignation from Hal. “What are you doing?”

  “Tactics,” Marc said without embarrassment while Duff and Guy distanced themselves from the toys. Joey was hanging on Alton’s back like a monkey.

  Jane held up her phone with the downloaded capture of Yumiko Sessai’s driver’s license on it. She didn’t want any of her family seeing Yumiko attacking her. “Joey, do you know this person?”

  “That’s Yumiko!” Joey cried.

  “Is she related to you?” Jane asked.

  Joey shook his head. “She’s a yamabushi.”

  “She’s a what?” Jane asked.

  “Yamabushi!” Joey cried. “They’re the seven loyal servants of Wong Jin who were given magical powers by our guardian spirit, Providence, so they could protect his daughter.”

  “They’re like super ninjas that guard the Chosen bloodline,” Boo translated, and then gave a condensed version of everything she knew about them. “There were five living in the house behind the Shojis’. The two places shared backyards, so they acted like one big home. The yamabushi all used the name Sessai and pretended to be Mom and Dad and kids. One was around my age. His name was Haruka.”

  Joey nodded enthusiastically; he didn’t realize the significance of the past tense. “He goes to school with Mickey and Keiko. Yumiko goes to Caltech with Riki.”

  “And these?” Jane held up Alton’s wrist to show off his since hers was gone. “What are they?”

  Joey leaned over Alton’s shoulder and probably would have fallen if Alton hadn’t tightened his grip. “The charms? They’re for protection.”

  “What kind of protection?” Jane said.

  “Against tengu!” Joey said. “It tells tengu not to hurt you because you’re under the protection of the Chosen line.”

  Boo caught Jane’s hand to inspect her wrist. “What happened to yours? You didn’t throw it away, did you?”

  “No. I gave it to Yumiko.” Jane wasn’t sure if this was a good thing or bad. If all of Joey’s family was dead, the yamabushi most likely saw herself as his next of kin. Jane didn’t see it that way; it seemed too much like giving him to the first stranger who thought they had a right to him. It might become a custody battle fought at night with guns.

  There was a chance that Yumiko might also want Boo since she was now genetically part of the Chosen bloodline. No way in hell.

  Jane didn’t want to discuss the possibilities with her brothers. They might be tempted to shoot Yumiko on sight. Jane wanted to give the female the benefit of the doubt. The enemy of Jane’s enemy was her friend—at least until they need to be coldcocked, tied up and handed back to the EIA for questioning.

  Jane tucked away the phone as she turned the facts over in her mind. If Yumiko was a bodyguard, then it explained Yumiko’s actions. The female had been at Sandcastle searching for Joey. Captured, she’d been playing dead, waiting for a chance to escape. Jane showed up wearing the bracelet. To protect Joey, Yumiko would need to erase all trace of him, which meant taking the bracelet.

  “Where is Yumiko?” Joey asked.

  “I don’t know,” Jane said truthfully. “She disappeared before we could talk to her.”

  “Intonjutsu!” Joey cried.

  “What?” Jane asked.

  “That’s the ninja skill of disappearing,” Nigel murmured. “The yamabushi were a sect of warrior monks that live in temples deep in the mountains. The Japanese believe that the tengu are protective, yet dangerous, mountain spirits. They are often depicted in the distinctive robes of the yamabushi monks.”

  Joey was nodding along with this. “When the Chosen was brought to Earth, his servants hid him among the yamabushi. They took the name to honor the monks.”

  “The oni don’t know that the yamabushi exist,” Boo added. “The tengu managed to keep the Chosen bloodline hidden on Onihida. Only after they came to Earth did the oni find out about the Chosen.”

  “Are you sure?” Jane asked.

  Boo gave her an annoyed look. “Kajo had a fight with Lord Tomtom about it. Tomtom didn’t believe there were yamabushi. He said that it was a myth to frighten the other lesser bloods; to keep them from trying to prey upon the tengu. He thought that any tengu that was particularly fierce encouraged people to think they’re yamabushi to boost their reputation.”

  If half the oni command doubted Yumiko’s existence, then the female could have the other members of Joey’s family safely hidden someplace. Somehow they had to have a long conversation with Yumiko.

  First things first: the namazu.

  Her brothers had raided more than just the toy box. They’d also managed to round up a half-dozen wooden sawhorse barricades and Team Tinker’s headsets.

  Jane eyed the equipment with dismay. They would be spread across three vehicles with Duff fielding monster sightings from viewers, monitoring police activity, and coordinating the running fight. They needed seven linked headsets. Because the PB&G equipment was so old, her set of four weren’t compatible with the four that the Chased by Monsters crew had brought with them. She’d told her brothers to solve the problem; she didn’t expect this. “You didn’t tell our cousins about Boo or Sandcastle or anything?”

  “I bribed Andy with cannoli and beer,” Duff stated. “He didn’t even think to ask.”

  That sounded like their youngest Roach cousin. His older brother was the business manager of Team Tinker. He would have held out for the piece of whatever action the Kryskill boys were gearing up for.

  The headsets were custom made by Tinker herself. They used voice-activated microphones to create a full-duplex tac net and had more bells and whistles than God. There were ten in all, so there were more than enough for their needs.

  Duff was scared that he pissed her off. “They don’t use an open channel like the production truck’s headsets. We’ll still use code words—because yes, the oni could be monitoring the phone systems—but this is going to be much more secure. Plus I can patch in anyone with a cell phone, so if I need to, I could even call Alton or Mom at any point and link them in.”

  “Don’t you dare call Mom!” Jane wanted to stay in control. Last thing she needed was her mom wading in and taking over. “I don’t care what happens, you do not call Mom.”

  Duff nodded his understanding.

  “Do we have a kill zone?” Jane asked.

  “Hays Woods,” all her brot
hers answered.

  “Here.” Duff picked up his tablet and flicked through some satellite pictures. “These images are really old but Pittsburgh hasn’t changed much in terms of roads and such. This is Hays Woods. It’s about seven hundred acres of forest on a steep hillside.”

  Alton pointed out narrow dirt road meandering through the woods. “There’s lots of walking trails through it that’ve been widened so that foragers like me can get trucks in and out. Between the river and South Hills, the woods are isolated from the Rim, so they’re mostly Earth flora and fauna and are fairly safe. I hunt squirrels, deer, and fish. Some people cut hickory for smoking meat.”

  “Oak for carpentry,” Geoffrey stated to prove he knew the woods as well. “There’s some cherry too.”

  “Good. Good.” Jane headed off a flare-up of sibling rivalry. She studied the map. The woods occupied a steep bend in the Mon River with Hazelwood across the water. The trees would hem in monsters, but the width of the trail would also make turning difficult. They needed to stay out of range of the monster’s electricity attack. If they called in more than one monster, they could be trapped between the two with nowhere to run. As long as they fired downhill toward the river or east toward Sandcastle, it would be unlikely they hit anything important. Downtown, however, was within the gun’s four-mile range to the west.

  “Viewer tips get us any sightings?” Jane asked.

  “There were two from the Hot Metal Bridge.” Duff swept a finger down river, around the bend, to the first bridge across the Monongahela. The historic landmark used to carry crucibles of molten steel from the blast furnaces on the south bank to the rolling mills on the north bank. Originally a railroad bridge, it had been converted just prior to the first Startup. It was one of the bridges that linked the heavily populated South Side to downtown and Oakland.

  “Shit,” Jane breathed. “Do we know the range of the monster call?”

  “Not really,” Nigel confessed. “I was told that it might be up to a mei since it uses magic, but there’s no way to confirm that. So far, we’ve been practically on top of the monster when we used it. We were lucky that we’ve hit on the ‘come here’ command.”

  “There’s a very steep dirt road here off of East Carson,” Alton pointed out. “It was a power line right-of-way for the electric company but it’s been expanded so you don’t need to drive all the way around to Glass Run to access the walking trails.”

  “There’s also this path off of Becks Run Road,” Geoffrey added.

  Jane shook her head. “We would have to drag the monsters under this railroad bridge. If they damaged the bridge, the connection to the East Coast would be cut short of the city proper. That could be critical if this goes to full out warfare.”

  Jane hated everything about this fight. That they didn’t know how many monsters were in the river. That she needed to involve her brothers. That they were the only ones who could call the monsters out of the river. Short of handing over the monster call to the compromised EIA, no one else was as heavily armed as her family. “We’re doing a running fight. We’ll use the monster call here East Carson. Once we have incoming, we’ll head up this dirt road into the woods. We’ll pull the first one to this clearing and open fire. Lather, rinse, repeat.”

  She ran her finger down East Carson. South Side Flats was about a square mile of flood plains beside the Mon River. Because of the steep hillsides that edged the river, East Carson had very few side streets beyond the flats. “If we set up the barriers here just after South Thirty-Third Street and here at Becks Run Road, and then here where it ends at Eight-Eighty-Five, then we can have two or three miles to ourselves to work with.”

  Jane wished they could take advantage of the night cover but she didn’t want to fight blind. “We’ll head out at four-thirty. The production trucks will find hard cover at the top of this hill. The Humvee will set up the barriers, make sure the area is clear of bystanders, and do a dry run of shifting from East Carson to the walking trails.”

  “What about me?” Hal had been studying the map intently. “How am I going to see anything with so many trees in the way?”

  Jane smacked him. “You’re to stay behind hard cover in case we accidently fire in your direction.”

  Alton zoomed in on the map to find a small side street. “There’s a vacant private school here. It’s all brick, so it would provide lots of cover for the production trucks. The walking trails edge the property, so the cameras will be in range.”

  “I won’t be able to find that,” Hal stated firmly. “We’ve never filmed in that area. There are no backyards and gardens. It’s all abandoned and, knowing Pittsburgh, there were never street signs, even before the first Startup.”

  Nigel eyed the maze of side streets they would need to take from Becks Run to the school. “Och, neither could I, not in the dark without GPS.”

  Jane considered not filming the hunt.

  If she just left Hal, Nigel and Taggart at Hyeholde…

  No. That wouldn’t work. She’d have to lock them into the basement or something. If it had been just Hal, it would be fairly simple to just pick him up and carry him squirming and kicking to the bathroom and handcuff him to the sink. (She’d done it before when she decided his drinking needed serious intervention. The bathroom gave him access to water and a toilet.) She had four bathrooms (Hyeholde was a restaurant after all), but she only had one pair of handcuffs. It would be a mistake to underestimate any of the men. They were all intelligent and used to getting themselves out of all sorts of odd trouble. (Mostly because they also seemed to have the same level of common sense—which was to say very little.) Taggart and Nigel were wild cards; there was no telling what they might know. They could be black belts in martial arts and have Houdini-level escape skills. Locking them up could be tricky. If one got free, he’d free the other two.

  Earth needed to see what the oni were doing in Pittsburgh. They had to see the forty-foot walking electric catfish to believe it. If she was going to put her little brothers at risk, she’d better reap the maximum gain out of it.

  “I know Hays Woods,” Guy said. “I’ve gone with Alton a bunch of times. I can guide them.”

  Jane scanned her brothers. Alton was going to keep Boo and Joey out of the mess. Geoffrey and Marc were going to be in the Humvee with her. Duff was handling communication; with three vehicles in motion, they were going to need someone outside the action as backup to keep things clear. Nor did Duff know the area any better than Hal and Nigel.

  “Come on!” Guy cried. “I can do this! I won’t be in any danger if I stick with the production trucks.”

  If Guy was with the production truck, he could keep Hal in check. Without someone babysitting Hal, there was a strong possibly that Hal would try to see the fight somehow. Typical Hal stupidity would follow.

  If it was anyone but her baby brother…

  But that was the source of all of Guy’s rebellion. No one was letting him be anything but the baby while he knew full well that all his older brothers had been treated as adults long before they turned eighteen. It was part and parcel of being allowed to handle a gun.

  “Fine,” she said. “I want you take your rifle with you.”

  “Yes!” Guy went bouncing off to do a victory lap around the Humvee, arms upraised.

  Her four other brothers glared at her.

  “Someone has to sit on Hal,” she explained the most obvious point. Understanding dawned on their faces. Taggart looked amused by it.

  “Hey!” Hal cried.

  Guy leapt at Hal and grabbed him in a chokehold, proving he’d grown taller than Hal sometime in the last month. “Consider him sat on!”

  “Let’s get some sleep and head out at four-thirty.” Jane ignored the fact dragging her brothers into this fight meant she was going to have monster-sized nightmares.

  * * *

  At a little after five in the morning, with sunrise still an hour away, they rolled into South Side Flats. Most of the windows in the row houses a
nd three-story apartment buildings were dark. Graveyard shift hadn’t ended and dayshift workers weren’t awake yet. Jane prayed silently that the hunt went fast and they could kill whatever was out there quickly and quietly. She hated that all but one of her brothers was in harm’s way.

  Marc drove the Humvee in the front. They’d covered Bertha with a heavy tarp but anyone with two brain cells could tell what was underneath. While Marc stopped to set up the police barricades, complete with flashing warning lights, Guy and Nigel continued on down East Carson in the production trucks.

  “Can’t I at least drive?” Hal complained yet again over the channel.

  “No!” Jane, Duff, Geoffrey, and Guy all snapped.

  Jane continued with reasons why. “Chaser One knows where he’s going and he’s a better driver than you.” And it will be easier for Guy to ignore Hal from behind the wheel than on the passenger side. “He can’t babysit the incoming feed and make sure all the backup cameras are online. You have to do that. We’re only going to be able to do this once.” Hopefully. “You’ll let us know if any of the cameras go out and we’ll do what we can to fix them.” As long as Bertha is operating, since our lives will ride on keeping the cannon firing. “And I told him that he can punch you if you don’t listen to him.”

  “Jane!” Hal knew that her brother only lightly smacked him when they thought he needed to be hit. “Punching” was a whole different ball game.

  “Chaser Two, you already have a broken nose,” Jane ruthlessly pointed out. “Another hit to the face means nothing.”

  “Jane!” Hal pleaded that she not be so cold to him.

  “I’m trusting you with my baby brother. Don’t you dare screw up! And stick to the code words—stop using names.”

  “Jane—ow!” Hal cried.

  “Just checking my reach.” Guy hated “baby” and probably felt the need to prove he could keep Hal in line.

  After that, silence came from the PB&G production truck.

  Beyond the wide flats of South Side, there ran only a narrow ledge at the foot of the steep hills that edged the river. The bank was thick scrub trees and the old cracked pavement of the Heritage Trail. Jumpfish made the old walking path too dangerous to use since it lay only feet from the water and well within the big fishes’ range. On the other side of the road were the railroad tracks that headed straight east to the coastal elf settlements.