Elfhome

41: SOUTHERN RIM

Tommy filled his hoverbike’s tank again and roared through the city flat out, as the crow flew. Down paved streets. Through backyards and parking lots. Up and down Pittsburgh’s countless steep hills. Across scores of creek beds. The sun was setting, throwing long shadows over the city.

His mind kept going back to Jewel Tear walking away. If he had played it different, would have it ended better? There was a niggling little voice that said he should have talked to her about beholding, but no, once he went over all reasons again, he’d been right not to. He would never completely trust anyone outside of family, but if he understood how they thought, he could at least work with them. Windwolf and Jewel Tear were about as understandable as space aliens. Tinker had always been impossible to guess — her brilliance took her careening all over the map.

Oilcan, though. .

Tommy had watched Oilcan grow up on the racetrack. Even at sixteen, he’d been quiet, serious, and responsible. Tinker was the brains and the media darling, but Oilcan had been the one that kept everything going smoothly on the team. Listening to the songs that Oilcan had written, it was obvious that the man understood the weird collision of humans and elf culture that made Pittsburgh. The city was going to need people like him and Tinker to keep things from exploding, as the elves got more and more insistent that the humans conform. They didn’t get that most of the humans in Pittsburgh were in the city because they didn’t want to conform. It was people that liked living on the edge that stayed, everyone that wanted safe and familiar had fled to Earth the first chance they got.

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.