by Wen Spencer
The elves had completely remade Oilcan in their image. His closed eyes were now almond-shape. 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 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 holsters 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.”
“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 crossing over their heads on spans of steel. The ground was a half a dozen feet down; a steep graveled slope lead 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 email. 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 mind boggling. 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 Tink
er.”
“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 outboard 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 shadow boxing 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. Tinker’s at the hotel where we grew up. Both Kajo’s strike force and Iron Mace are headed for her. She’s going to need backup or they’ll roll right over her.”
43: Lost
The elves eyed grandfather’s 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.
“Queee.” 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 as 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 want 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 to this. I’ve felt so useless.”
“You’re 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 rest 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 got 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.”
Blue Sky knew her too well. He knew that she was overwhelming them with technobabble until they were too numb to form an intelligent resistance. “Is this going to hurt him?”
“If it hurts him, I can cancel the spell.” She didn’t want to say more, not with her shadow possibly hearing every word, seeing every move.
There was a group hug, as if Rustle was going in front of a firing squad, and then the male came down the wide swimming pool’s steps to stand beside her. She tried not to notice that he was only a head taller than her and slender as a reed.
She canceled the healing spell that inked onto his arm. “Go stand in the middle. Be careful not to step on any of the glyphs.”
She paced around the outside of the spell, checking her work. Her insides churned with the fear that she might really mess things up. She’d run simulations, but she couldn’t account for all the variables because she didn’t really know which of the draconic powers the Skin Clan might have bred into the children. Nor, to be truthful, did she understand most of their powers.
Science was about discovering the unknown through experimentation and careful observation.
The dragons owed most of their powers to their dual nature, which seemed dependent on the presence of magic. Jin had asked that the enclaves defenses be lowered not to allow the tengu to enter, but so there was the abundance of magic necessary for Providence to manifest. When she first encountered Impatience, he’d been entirely animal, but after tapping the Sp
ell Stones power through her, he gained “consciousness” enough to realize that he was hurting her and stop.
It stood to reason, if the kids had powers, much like her and Oilcan, they needed some type of trigger to be able to access it. If you analyzed the initialization spell, it became obvious that it used the least common phoneme in the Elvish language and one of the more difficult hand positions. Considering how much time one spent talking and waving hands around, it was good that it was nearly impossible to accidently tap the Spell Stones.
On the other hand, it was possible that the kids—like the dragons—simply needed a vast amount of magic focused on them before their abilities became apparent. There was the fact that while she and Rustle both had a broken arm, hers was nearly healed while Rustle’s was still barely healed. The spell used on both of them simply funneled magic into their natural regenerative powers. On her, the spell was doing that was expected, but not on Rustle.
She made another lap around the completed spell, making sure Rustle hadn’t smudged anything by walking through it and that everything was correct. It shouldn’t hurt Rustle, she told herself. All it would do was focus magic on him.
She bent low and activated the spell with command word. The first ring shimmered to life as the resonance of the phonemes triggered the spell. She stood and stepped back as the second ring flared to power.
The detection ring rose, instantly gleaming with the countless connections. So Rustle was just like Merry in that regard. The inner most ring kicked in—like the healing spell—its function was to focus latent magic to Rustle.
The entire spell flared to unbearable brilliance.
Oh, that did not seem good.
“Is it supposed to do that?” Blue Sky asked. “Is he all right?”
Good question.
Tinker shielded her eyes with her hand as she tried to make Rustle out inside the spell. There seemed to be things raining down inside, like exploding corn kernels in a popcorn maker. Oh gods, she hoped it wasn’t pieces of Rustle. She edged close as she dared and squinted at the odd shaped pieces on the edges of the glare. It was popcorn.