Elfhome

44: IRON MACE

Oilcan watched as Neville Island erupted. Flame and smoke billowed upward. In that one thunderous moment, the oni army descending on his childhood home vanished.

Tinker!

Beside him, Tommy breathed a curse. “You know, for someone so small, your cousin is freaking destructive.”

Oilcan forced himself to nod. The smoke parted, and the hotel was still standing. “Yeah, she is.” Godzilla-like. Only a scattered handful of oni seemed unharmed.

The sound of gunfire continued from inside the hotel. There was a flare of magic on Grand Avenue, and Oilcan realized that a Stone Clan domana was wading into the fight. He scanned down the street until he spotted Iron Mace heading for the hotel, left hand holding a shield while flicking oni out of his way with his right. In the distance was a black cloud of tengu winging their way to Neville Island, but they couldn’t take on the domana.

“Damn him.” Oilcan turned his hoverbike toward the steep cliff. “No time to follow the roads.”

Tommy eyed the steep drop-off and muttered a curse.

They dropped down the cliff, nearly in free-fall, skipping off projections to slow their descent, and then raced flat-out across the steel catwalk above the sluicegates of Emsworth Dam. Jump fish leapt in their wake, reacting too late to their darting shadows.

“You sure your cousin doesn’t have more bombs planted?” Tommy shouted as they gunned down Grand Avenue in Iron Mace’s wake.

“She doesn’t have the patience for planning more than one level of backup defenses. She’s all or nothing.”

“Yeah, that sounds like her.”

Which meant she probably hadn’t held back anything to deal with Iron Mace. With a broken arm, there was no way she could take the male. As they raced toward the hotel, he could feel Tinker and the bright motes of her sekasha desperately fighting something at close quarters in the casting room. His kids and a handful of adults spilled out the casting room’s back door. Iron Mace blasted open the lobby doors, now less than a hundred feet from Tinker.

“Circle around,” Oilcan shouted to Tommy. “Save my kids. I’ll take Iron Mace.”

Oilcan gunned his hoverbike, darted alongside of the hotel to smash through the window into the ballroom. Momentum slid him across muddy marble floor to the doorless opening. Leaping from his bike, he stepped out into the dim hallway and snapped up a shield between him and Iron Mace.

“You!” Iron Mace rocked back in surprise. “I killed you.”

“Like you killed Amaranth?”

Iron Mace sneered, all pretense of being a grieving brother abandoned. “My baby sister had the decency to stay dead. I understand your mother knew the trick. If I’m lucky, it’s a female trait.”

Oilcan squared off behind his shield. “I’m not going to let you hurt my cousin.”

Iron Mace laughed. “Go ahead and bark, little mutt puppy. What Forge taught you doesn’t mean you can bite.”

“I already could bite!” Oilcan took out the floor supports in the hotel’s nice deep basement and dropped four stories of hotel on top of Iron Mace. Half a lifetime of good memories — and one surprised domana—thundered down into the sudden hole. Oilcan knew it wouldn’t hurt Iron Mace, but he figured it might piss him off enough to forget about Tinker. He took off running, keeping his shield up as he ran.

Maybe if Oilcan hadn’t spent his childhood playing lab assistant to a mad scientist determined to bend the hell out of reality, he might be clueless as to how to hurt Iron Mace behind his shield. It was just a matter of hitting the male fast and hard with the right series of spells.

Out in the parking lot, Oilcan snapped through a set of spells. Alone they were utilitarian and innocuous; combined by a mad scientist, they reduced asphalt to a frictionless surface. It had taken all three of them days to copy over the glyphs and spell rings to convert a driveway to a hockey rink. The massive power of the Spell Stones transformed the hotel’s expansive parking lot to a glassy sheen in a matter of seconds.

The broken rubble of the hotel rumbled, heaved, shuddered, and then exploded upward, disgorging Iron Mace in a roil of dust.

“Lying brat!” Iron Mace shouted. “You said you didn’t know your esva.”

“I just need to know physics!” Tinker had explained about the strength of domana shields, how they redirected kinetic energy around the caster and were nearly impenetrable. Oilcan had been paying attention when his grandfather taught him physics. He just rarely had any need to apply the principles. “This is all science.”

And science was all about experimentation. Taking out the floor supports told him that he could control the ground under Iron Mace’s feet. He pulled—yanking the elf onto the frictionless parking lot. Still pulling, he added his momentum to Iron Mace by running forward, hitting the edge of the shining surface, and sliding.

In a frictionless environment, things in motion stayed in motion — including elves.

They slid fast toward each other. Oilcan tried a blast against Iron Mace’s shield. The force was redirected without changing Iron Mace’s angle of motion. Iron Mace twisted as they passed each other like two freight trains, and blasted the ground ahead of Oilcan. A great crater appeared.

Oilcan ignored the oncoming disaster to keep Iron Mace focused tightly on him and not on where he was heading. A childhood of racing go-karts on the island had taught Oilcan to never lose track of the river’s edge. It was a lesson Iron Mace learned the hard way when he flew off the end of the parking lot and out over the water. Like a flat stone, he skipped three times before sinking.

It turned out that tumbling into a massive crater at twenty miles per hour wasn’t painful when Oilcan had his shield spell up. He scrambled quickly back up to the edge of the crater. Iron Mace’s shield was still active under the muddy water, drifting downriver like a massive hamster ball. It was possible that the elf could save himself, but he was against a ticking clock — there was only so much air trapped in the shell with him. Iron Mace cast a scry spell. The river and its currents were mapped out, bisected by the Emsworth Dam and the powerful undertow beyond it.

“Yes, bastard,” Oilcan whispered. “You need to get out before you hit that.”

The current was going to sweep Iron Mace across the river and up against the high walls of the lock on the far bank. Annoyingly, there was even a ladder there for someone to scramble up from a boat. It would be impossible for a human to climb it with one hand, but an elf’s longer reach meant Iron Mace could do it and maintain his shield.

Oilcan slid to the edge of the parking lot and took off running for the dam. Tommy was right about needing the strength to do the hard thing, because this fight was to the death. Iron Mace had to kill Oilcan and anyone else that might know about what he’d done. He had dug a deep, deep hole, and the only way out was to fill it with bodies. Oilcan had to be sure that the elf never got out of the river. He held close to the anger thrumming through him, hot and heady. So, how did he kill this bastard?

There was no way Iron Mace could go near the sluicegates without being swept over the dam. Beyond the gates was a dangerous undertow that would pin Iron Mace under water. The only safe way out was the ladder. It was the same heavy steel as the catwalk, bolted solid into the cement wall of the lock. If Oilcan hit it with a force strike, it would blast the entire ladder to shards.

He could mark Iron Mace’s position by the circling jumpfish. Oilcan reached the end of the catwalk and scrambled down to the lock’s wall. At the top of the ladder, he cocked his fingers, brought his hand to his mouth, and then paused. If he blasted the ladder now, Iron Mace might just find another way out of the water. As long as the male maintained his shield, he was safe to find another way. If Oilcan waited and cast the spell while Iron Mace was holding on to the ladder. .

The result would be awful and utterly necessary. It went against everything Oilcan tried to be, but he wouldn’t have a second chance to take Iron Mace while vulnerable. So he waited, hating himself, trying to hold tight to his anger. This male had attacked him in his home. Had left his kids defenseless. Had come to Neville Island to kill Tinker.

The last brought the rage he needed.

Iron Mace surged up out of the water and caught hold of the lowest rung. Jumpfish were bouncing off the elf’s shield, trying to snatch him off the wall. Oilcan waited until the male had heaved himself up, swearing and grunting with effort, and got a foot onto the rung and grabbed the second rung tight.

Oilcan tapped the Spell Stones. Iron Mace looked up, eyes going wide in surprise. Oilcan closed his fist tight in the force strike. Iron Mace’s hand and foot shattered along with the steel of the ladder. The male screamed, falling backward, his shield vanishing as he flailed in pain, and the jumpfish took him.