Harbinger

20: I AM A BEING CAPABLE OF DOING TERRIBLE THINGS. RUN

The shopping trip had been a mistake. Oilcan was beginning to realize that he’d committed a cascade of blunders. He probably should have waited until the domana were back in the city. He could have asked someone to buy the furniture for him; half of Team Tinker had been at Sacred Heart. He should have started small — just beds for the twins. He shouldn’t have brought all the kids. He should have left Once More With Feeling the moment he found out that the ancient manager was the only employee in the store. He felt like he was stuck in resin that was slowly turning to amber.

They’d been there for hours as he bought out full sections of the store. Seven beds. Seven mattresses. All the linens. (Cattail Reeds added “fabric” to her list when she saw what the store had in stock for sheets and blankets.) Four dining room tables and dozens of chairs. Two dress racks. Two student desks. Every lamp that they could find. Even with three trucks, it was going to take more than one trip to ferry everything back to Sacred Heart.

The manager moved frustratingly slow. He wanted to tag their purchases as “sold,” do math by hand, twice, then fill out stock inventory sheets. The last step Oilcan was certain should have been done at the end of the day when customers weren’t standing and waiting. Bored, the kids investigated other parts of the store and started to bring him impulse buys. A garden gnome statue. An old leather suitcase. A singing fish. A giant German beer stein. A Raggedy Ann doll. A picture of Jeff Goldbloom in a delicate metal rose frame. (The last mystified Oilcan as he wasn’t sure if Cattail realized that the photograph could be swapped out of the beautiful frame.)

Oilcan didn’t mind the kids buying the random odd things except he wanted to be done with the “buying” and move on to “loading.” Each new purchase jumped the process backward as the manager would stop everything to find the “sold” tags. It was already well past noon and they were going to need to make two round trips to get all the furniture to Sacred Heart. Everything would need to be loaded and unloaded and dragged up three flights of stairs. It was quite possible that after going through the grueling process once, Andy, Guy, Rebecca, and possibly Blue Sky would bail. Postponing the second load might be a wise decision but it meant picking what went on the first load became all important. He wanted to make sure each of his kids got something today that they truly wanted.

“Can we start loading the big pieces?” Oilcan asked. It would keep the kids from finding new things.

The manager shook his head. “I need to supervise loading to make sure you only take what you’re paying for. Store policy. That’s why we normally have employees load up purchases.”

Oilcan realized that he was clenching his hands into fists out of frustration.

“We could go get ice cream,” Blue Sky said.

There were cheers and more than one “I’m hungry” made Oilcan realize that they’d missed lunch.

“You will be back?” the old man said in a voice full of suspicion.

“Yes.” Oilcan peeled off bills from his roll of cash to cover all that the manager had totaled up so far. It was an alarming amount but Tinker had promised to cover his expenses for a year. “You could hold onto this as good-faith money.”

The manager sighed deeply. “I’ll get you a receipt.”

As Oilcan crossed East Carson Street, there was a distant boom of an explosion, muffled by the hills and trees to the point that it became a barely audible thud. He paused on the opposite sidewalk to scan the horizon. A flock of birds rose from the far bank of the Monongahela River, startled by the explosion. A thick plume of black smoke went up against the gray blanket of clouds that covered the sky. It looked miles away, visible only because the explosion occurred on a hilltop.

“What do you think it is?” Oilcan asked Rebecca and Guy, who were pointing at the dark smoke and discussing it in whispers.

“I think it’s a black willow,” the tengu girl said. “There was a report of several trees moving toward Oakland. Don’t worry; the tengu are dealing with the situation. They must have dropped some kind of explosive on it.”

“Dynamite,” Guy murmured but didn’t offer any more information.

Tinker had said that Windwolf and the other domana were far to the east, miles from the city, with a majority of the elf forces. It left the city defended only by a small force of royal marines, the EIA, the local police, and the tengu. It was a lot of land to cover for a small force. The bridges created choke points and Oilcan was in the South Side, on the wrong side of the Monongahela River.

Maybe they should leave after they got the ice cream. They could come back tomorrow. He would say leave now, but all his kids were excited about their first taste of the human treat. Ten minutes shouldn’t make any difference.

He walked into the ice cream shop where his kids were gazing at the selections in wonder and confusion. The shop was an assault on the senses. The walls and ceiling were painted in pink stripes. Gaudy beaded chandeliers provided the light. A brightly colored toy train ran along a track near the ceiling. The sound system was playing “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.” It had a long, glass-enclosed, refrigerated counter displaying dozens of different flavors of ice cream in five-gallon tubs and then, at the far end, little bins of possible toppings like peanuts, gummy bears, M&M candies, and brightly colored sprinkles. The employees were two teenage girls in cute blue aprons. They had swooned at the sight of ruggedly handsome Guy Kryskill and seemed oblivious to the fact that there were two sekasha, four visibly battered elf children, and seven assorted “others” standing in front of them.

“Cotton Candy?” Barley read the Elvish runes that had been hand-scrawled under the English labels. Whoever had done the signs had simply used direct translation of the words without realizing that most of the names were utter nonsense to elves. “White House?”

Blue Sky did his best to describe the flavors. “White House is vanilla with cherries in it. I’m not sure how to describe Cotton Candy except as very sweet.” Blue Sky eyed the tubs sitting next to Cotton Candy: Moose Tracks and Muddy Sneakers. He pointed to a tub at the far end of the counter, probably to avoid having to explain the oddly named flavors. “I usually get the chocolate peanut butter.”

“Peanut butter?” Thorne and the kids said with excitement. Oilcan’s lone jar of peanut butter had been scraped and then licked clean within minutes of the elves discovering the spread. He hadn’t been able to find a second jar; the stores had been picked clean of pantry staples since the gate failed.

The type of cones had to be explained: waffle, sugar, cake, pretzel, or chocolate-dipped. All fifty different possible toppings were named and some of them needed to be described and/or sampled. The process of getting ice cream ground to a halt as everyone considered the hundreds of combinations.

Oilcan normally got his mother’s favorite of Rocky Road. He wasn’t sure what being transformed into an elf had done to his sense of taste. Tinker had been dismayed by the change. He wasn’t sure he wanted to find out that he no longer liked Rocky Road with all his kids to witness his disappointment. “I’ll take a waffle cone with two scoops of chocolate peanut butter, please. No toppings.” He handed across enough money to cover a dozen of their most expensive cones. “I’m paying for everyone.”

The taste was different. Better. Amazing even, but in a weird way, since with every bite he expected normal chocolate peanut butter.

Moon Dog was digging out dime-sized gold coins from a leather pouch and looking puzzled.

Most Pittsburghers wouldn’t take gold coinage; the exchange rate fluctuated wildly every Shutdown since it was based on the amount of rare metals within the coins. (To be fair, most currency fluctuated but most Pittsburghers weren’t aware that humans had anything but American dollars.) Nor did the elves completely trust the human cash. What ended up happening was that the enclaves acted as banks for the Wind Clan elves living within the city. They would exchange gold coins for dollars that they earned from their human customers.

Someone should have explained it to Moon Dog. Had he not stayed in an enclave since he arrived in Pittsburgh? Or had the Wind Clan elves turned a blind eye to the Stone Clan sekasha? It was doubtful since Tinker threatened to exile anyone who refused to help incoming elves because they weren’t Wind Clan.

It could be possible, though, that the Wind Clan elves were more scared of the young warrior than they were of being exiled.

Oilcan’s ice cream cone had started to melt down over his hand.

“I am paying for everyone’s ice cream,” Oilcan said between licks to control the melting. “Please consider it as a gift. It is the least I can do for the help that everyone is giving me and my household.”

“You are so kind.” Moon Dog put away his coins. “Thank you.”

Despite being young and obviously smitten with Guy, the teenage girls were fast and efficient. Whenever anyone finally decided what they wanted, the girls put together the ice cream combination of flavor, size, container, and toppings with practiced speed. In a matter of minutes, they had served all eleven people with Oilcan plus created three “doggy bowls” for the elfhounds guarding the trucks. According to Andy, chocolate was off-limits for the dogs, so they got plain vanilla with a bottle of water as a chaser.

“Shit!” the taller girl suddenly hissed as she jerked back from the glass counter. The girl fumbled with the various serving utensils, whispering fiercely, “A rat! Don’t let the customers see.”

All the sekasha had gone to full alert at her abrupt motion.

“I don’t think that’s a rat,” the other girl whispered back. “It’s pink and long and snaky.”

A weirdly familiar squeal of delight came from the counter. The baby dragon accompanying the talking mice had been pink and snaky.

“Wait, wait, wait!” Oilcan waved at Thorne and Moon Dog and Blue Sky to stand down. “I think it might be Joy. She’s a dragon.”

“A dragon?” everyone in the store echoed.

“Yummy!” a baby-girl voice cried in English from the tub of Cotton Candy flavor. The tiny pink dragon popped up to put her cream-covered paws against the glass. “Knock, knock! Who’s there?”

Everyone started to talk at once. Because Oilcan had named the dragon aloud, the counter girls were under the impression that it was his dragon and were not pleased. Guy and Andy wanted to know how Oilcan kept finding dragons; they seemed to think that the dragons were like scaly talking elfhounds. Thorne wanted to know if this was a good dragon like Impatience or a bad dragon like Malice. His kids were freaking out, thinking that it meant there were some oni somewhere close by. Moon Dog seemed to be the only one unimpressed.

“Waya!” Moon Dog had gotten a three-scoop cone with chocolate peanut butter, cotton candy, and cookie dough. “And this ice cream is waya too.”

“She’s ruined that entire tub!” The tall girl pointed at Joy while keeping as far back as she could get. “It was nearly full! I just opened it this morning.”

“I’ll pay for it.” Oilcan handed over the cash and then ducked behind the counter to lift the cotton candy flavor’s tub out of the freezer.

The baby dragon continued to happily shove fistfuls of blue-and-pink ice cream into her mouth. “Nom, nom, nom.”

“You are not taking that dangerous beast back to our enclave,” Thorne said firmly and then seemed to realize how it sounded. “Are you?”

Was he? Oilcan didn’t know what he was going to do with the baby dragon. This wasn’t like finding Impatience at his barn, far away from any other person who could be harmed by Oilcan’s curiosity about the strange beast. There were more than a dozen people crowded into the small shop, counting the frightened counter girls. According to the tengu, though, the baby dragon had come to Elfhome with the twins and was claiming them as her Chosen. Surely Joy wasn’t that dangerous.

Since Joy had spoken English, he decided that asking questions might be an intelligent thing to do. “Hi, there. What are you doing here? Were you looking for me?”

“Ice cream! Yummy!” Joy said in her baby-girl voice.

“Oilcan! Oilcan!” someone squeaked.

It was the four white mice from his odd waking dream. They sat astride their tiny hoverbikes on top of the ice cream counter. Instead of racing goggles, they wore wide-brim hats like the ones that Roach had tried to get for Team Tinker. Their hats were different colors: pink, red, green, and blue. Based on everyone’s surprised reaction, the squeaking mice were real, not a figment of Oilcan’s imagination.

Realizing that they’d caught his attention, the mice all started to talk at once with excited gesturing.

“We’ve been looking all over the city for you…”

“…we can’t find Alexander anywhere!”

“You’re in danger…”

“…so you need to cast it right away.”

“Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!” Oilcan motioned for them to stop talking. “One at a time. I can’t understand you when you all talk at once.”

They paused for a few seconds — and then all started to talk again, only faster and louder. This triggered a sudden fistfight, with three of the four mice flailing at one another while squeaking, “I was talking! Just shut up and let me talk! I’ll do it! Me!”

The fourth — the one that sounded like Christopher Robin — stood to one side, going, “This isn’t helping!”

Oilcan leaned closer to the mice, peering down at them. They weren’t living animals but small, well-articulated robots. What made it difficult to tell which mouse was talking was that their mouths didn’t move and at least two — the red and the green — were using the same computer-generated voice. Oilcan struggled to remember the names that went to the various colors. Nikola Tesla Dufae had been the one that sounded like Christopher Robin and he wore blue, marking him as the only boy. The pink one had a girl’s voice but was named Chuck Norris. Red and Green were the Jawbreakers.

Baby Duck edged closer to the mice. Robotic or not, she was barely controlling her greedy hands from scooping up the new cute little animals. The rest of his kids were attempting to hide behind Thorne, staring with confused fear.

“Westernlands mice can talk?” Merry whispered.

“I’m not sure they’re really mice,” Blue Sky answered her.

Nikola’s mouse suddenly transformed into a very large dog. “We don’t have time for this!”

Everyone shouted with surprise. The three mice blew raspberries at the dog.

“How…how are you doing this?” Oilcan asked. These were his new baby cousins? Oh, Tinker was going to totally freak out.

“We’re dream walking!” Chuck Norris cried. “Joy taught us how!”

“We’re baby dragons!” Green Jawbreaker stated firmly, but then added less surely, “Kind of. Wood sprites. Intanyai seyosa. It’s all kind of the same thing.”

“We can be anything we want while dream walking,” Red said. “We’re just used to being mice, that’s all.”

“It’s a comfortable size,” Nikola said as he turned back into a mouse. “Tesla feels too big to be just one of us.”

“We’re here, but we’re not really here,” Red Jawbreaker said. “We’re like a figment of your imagination but less so.”

Green smacked her sister. “That was a stupid analogy.”

“It doesn’t matter!” Chuck Norris cried. “You’re all in danger! We’re here to warn you and give you top secret information!”

“Yeah! We’re part of the Resistance now!” Red pointed at her wide-brim hat.

“The Resistance?” Oilcan echoed. “What’s that?”

Guy looked a mix of confused and horrified. “We are Pittsburgh?”

“We are Team Tinker!” the mice squeaked.

“Hooyah!” Chuck Norris added in.

“The Flying Monkeys are setting a trap for the domana!” Nikola said. “It’s a spell using one of the nactka that was in the Dufae spell-locked box! They’ve got troops moving into position to attack the moment that the spell is cast. They know where you are right now. They’re coming for you! You need to get to a place where you can cast a shield spell.”

“I’m a domana now,” Oilcan said. “I can just use my hands to cast—”

“It won’t work!” the mice shouted in chorus.

“It needs to be the special spell that Lou and Jilly made up!” Chuck cried.

“They’ve made the luggage mules fight until they found what Dufae was looking for!” Red said.

Green grumbled, “They wouldn’t let us race the mules while they working on them.”

“Joy has the printout of the…” Nikola paused to look around. “Joy, where’s the printout?”

“Quick! We need to find it!” Chuck Norris cried.

The mice started up their hoverbikes to fly around the room. They were fearless, making jumps that put Oilcan’s heart into his throat until he remembered that the mice weren’t really there — that the hoverbikes were some kind of illusion. Chuck Norris jumped past him and he realized the mouse was making the engine noise for the little hoverbike.

“Here it is!” Green called from inside the ice cream counter.

Everyone leaned in close to see that a full-size piece of paper was tucked between the ice cream barrels, covered with the metal ink of a computer-printed spell and some handwritten notes in crayon along the margins. The other mice landed their miniature hoverbikes beside Green.

“The oni are coming! Now!” Nikola said. “The main force is hitting Oakland but there are troops coming from the boat ramp at the dog park.”

“What?” Oilcan said.

This triggered all the mice to talk at the same time.

“You’ve got to run!” the mice cried. “You need to get someplace safe with a casting circle!”

“Bong!” Green had suddenly made an odd chiming noise.

“What was that?” the other mice cried.

Green threw up her hands. “Print job is done!”

“Hooyah!” Chuck Norris cried and vanished. Red and Green blinked out of existence.

“You need to go,” Nikola said. “You need to go now. Run.”

Then he too was gone.

Joy climbed up onto Oilcan’s shoulder. She grabbed the ice cream bucket from his hands and vanished, taking the ice cream with her.

“Holy. Shit.” Andy muttered exactly what Oilcan was feeling.

“We’re leaving,” Oilcan announced. “Everyone to the trucks.”

Oilcan waved toward the door as he took out his phone. He needed to call Tinker and warn her. The mice claimed not to be able to find her. He wasn’t sure where she’d gone; he’d seen the Rolls-Royce leaving Poppymeadows while he was in Oakland. She didn’t answer her phone. Guessing that Tinker might have gone to tell Esme about the twins, he called Lain.

“Hey, kiddo,” Esme answered the phone and started to talk without even asking who was calling and why. Lain and Tinker both did it all the time; until recently he hadn’t questioned it. “She was here but she left a while ago.”

“I need to talk to her,” Oilcan said.

“I think she’s gone dark,” Esme said. “I’m not sure where she’s at.”

“Okay. Thanks.” He hung up. Tinker had gone into hiding again? Why would she do that? Had she realized that the oni were about to attack Oakland? No, if she did, she would be heading back to Poppymeadows. Something else made her run and hide.

His kids were out the door but the two high-school-aged clerks were still behind the counter, looking scared and uncertain. The oni were coming for Oilcan and his kids, but they might grab the girls for the whelping pens.

“You should close down early.” Oilcan motioned for them to follow him. “Your boss will understand. You shouldn’t be here when the oni sweep into this area. You can come with us if you want.”

The girls looked through the big storefront window to Guy standing by his flashy pickup, glanced at each other, and nodded.

“We need to lock up first.” The taller girl opened the cash register, took out the bigger bills, and dropped them in the store’s safe. The shorter girl started to close lids on bins and to turn off lights. “It will just take us three minutes!”

“We’ll wait for you.” Oilcan walked across the street to their convoy of three pickup trucks. The kids were deciding who would ride where. Thorne and Moon Dog had gotten their range weapons out of the crate strapped onto the back of the flatbed. They were standing guard, scanning the area, bows in hand.

Oilcan did a head count and came up short. Who was missing? He ticked through who they’d brought: his five kids, Blue Sky, Spot, Thorne, Moon Dog, Guy, and Andy. “Where’s Rebecca?”

“Scouting,” Guy pointed skyward. “Ninja-like.”

Oilcan pointed toward the ice cream shop. “Those girls are coming with us. Let them ride with you.”

The teenaged cousins both nodded. Andy was older by two years but, judging by his expression, was confused by what was going on. Guy was only sixteen yet he looked as solemn and determined as a veteran soldier. Oilcan was glad that Guy would be driving. He seemed to have a better grasp of the risks involved.

Blue Sky unlocked the driver’s door of the flatbed. “Where are we going to?” He shook his head even as he asked, “Back to Sacred Heart?”

It was a bad sign that even Blue Sky recognized that as a horrible idea. By his tone, though, he was willing to try if Oilcan committed to it.

“No, not back to Oakland,” Oilcan said. If the oni were hunting down domana, then Forge and Jewel Tear’s presence at Sacred Heart was going to make it a prime target. Oilcan and his kids would have to cut through the thickest of the fighting to get to questionable safety of the half-finished enclave. “We need a casting circle.”

“Tinker blew the one at the hotel to hell along with Chloe Polanski,” Blue Sky said.

“Yeah, I know.” Oilcan held out his keys. “Why don’t you drive my pickup?”

Blue Sky gave the key ring a wary look. “Why switch?”

“If we get in a running fight, I want to be in the heavier truck,” Oilcan said.

“Okay.” Blue Sky tossed Oilcan the flatbed’s keys. “Then I’ll have all the other kids with me?”

“Most of them.” Oilcan trusted Blue Sky to cut and run if he knew that the others depended on him. “I’m counting on you to get them someplace safe if the shit hits the fan.”

The boy nodded solemnly.

“If you need a casting circle,” Guy called, “my brother has one at his shop.”

“Okay, we’re going there, then,” Oilcan said. One problem solved. But how did he get the spell to Tinker? He needed to copy it first. He grabbed his tablet out of his pickup. He put the paper on the flatbed and photographed it several times, focusing first on the tangled knot that was the spell he never seen before and then instructions written in crayon around it.

He emailed the photographs of the spell to Tinker with a note to cast it immediately. He didn’t bother to explain how he got it. The problem was Tinker would only get the pictures if she knew to check her email. She could be literally anywhere in the city; knowing her, it was someplace with an internet connection. Email, though, was probably the last thing on her mind. He might be able to count on her to know, the same way that Esme knew it was him on the phone looking for Tinker without being told. He didn’t like the idea of leaving it to some weird magical talent. Tinker could get laser focused on her own goals and ignore the rest of the universe until something whacked her hard.

He needed something to catch her attention. Wait, he could try a version of the “battle code” that the Harbingers were doing that morning.

He tapped the Spell Stones, summoning power. He dismissed it after a second. He tapped it a second time, holding it longer, dismissed it, repeated it. Short and long. Two shorts. One extra-long. He waited a minute and repeated the cycle. Email.

From somewhere north, a flare of power flashed. Held for a long moment. Another short flash. Roger.

Good. Another problem down. He just needed all his chicks gathered together so they could flee the area.

The ice cream girls came out of their shop, locked the door, and then hurried across the street. As they climbed into Guy’s cab, Oilcan double-checked who was in his pickup with Blue Sky. Rustle was in the cab since he had the broken arm, with Merry taking up the middle of the bench seat. Spot and Baby Duck were in the bed with the puppy Repeat. It put all the younger kids in one vehicle, but Barley and Cattail Reeds had gotten into the bed of Guy’s pickup. Oilcan wished he could send someone older with the little kids. Neither Barley nor Cattail Reeds would be much of a help in a battle. Moon Dog was a possible addition but Oilcan couldn’t trust Blue Sky to keep his temper around the outsider. At least they were only ten minutes or so from Gryffin Doors.

Oilcan patted the door. “Go to Geoff’s place. We’ll catch up. If Geoff’s isn’t good, head to your brother’s place.”

Blue Sky nodded understanding. He started up the pickup and headed west.

Where was Rebecca? Oilcan didn’t want to leave her.

Moon Dog suddenly sprinted away, heading east, nocking an arrow even as he dashed down the street.

Chaos came around the corner, a confusion of bodies and wings. Oilcan wasn’t sure where the swarm of wolf-sized hornets came from but at its heart was the tengu female, fleeing for her life. Moon Dog raced to meet Rebecca halfway, firing spell arrows. The wooden shafts transformed to light as they left the bow. The brilliance lanced through the swarm, cutting through several hornets at once. One or two dropped from the sky, but many of the others merely flashed translucence, revealing that the creatures were magical constructs. The massive insects were a solid illusion projected by a smaller creature within the puppet shell.

They were like the foo dogs that had attacked the salvage yard. Illusion or not, the hornets would be dangerously strong and hard to hurt.

“Go, go, go!” Oilcan yelled at Guy.

Guy didn’t like it, but he understood he was responsible for Barley, Cattail Reeds, and Andy. He roared off even as Andy shouted, “What? Wait! Rebecca!”

Oilcan ran toward Moon Dog. The sekasha’s personal protective shield haloed the warrior with a dark gleam. The spell couldn’t take fast repeated hits over a short period of time. A machine gun could eat its way through the shield. The swarm of giant hornets might be able to breach it. Nor would Moon Dog’s shield protect Rebecca; the spell only extended a hand’s width from the male’s body. Oilcan needed to get close enough to cast a domana shield on the two.

It will be just like playing backup for a band, coming in for the chorus, Oilcan thought to calm himself. Prepare for the chord. He tapped the Spell Stones, pulling power to him as he ran. Wait for the beat. As he closed on Moon Dog, Rebecca cried out in pain and tumbled onto the ground by the elf’s feet. A hornet clung to her leg, lancing her with a glistening black stinger the size of a butcher knife. She whimpered as it struck her again even as she tried to wrestle it off her. Behind her was a dark flood of giant hornets, loud as an entire orchestra of angry violins.

Now! Oilcan stepped in front of Moon Dog and cast his shield.

The swarm crashed on the invisible edge of the spell’s dome. They recovered to circle around the shield, a hundred alien faces staring at him. Oilcan never thought he was scared of insects but fear washed through him at the sight.

Thorne Scratch had kept pace with him despite being able to outrun him. She had shouldered her bow. As his shield went up, she drew her sword and stabbed through the giant hornet puppet on Rebecca to pierce the insect within. “Aim for the center of their thorax!”

Elfhome hornets were normally “Pittsburgh colors” of mostly black with touches of gold and only the size of a man’s thumb. Their stings were extremely painful but not normally deadly. Oilcan had burned their cone-shaped paper nests whenever they had taken up residence at the salvage yard or out at his barn.

The oni’s attack hornets were amber with stripes of black and, judging by the flash impressions of when the puppet-shell went translucent, large as a rat. Oilcan had no idea how deadly their poison was.

Oilcan’s shield had stopped the bulk of the swarm but three hornets had been close enough to be included inside his shield. Oilcan held the spell, trusting the others to deal with them. Moon Dog and Thorne killed the insects with quick, efficient stabs.

“We should reserve arrows.” Thorne sheathed her sword to check Rebecca’s wound. “Use Force Strike while holding the shield.”

“Oh damn, that burns!” Rebecca hissed in pain. “We’ve got to move. They’re off-loading an entire platoon from a barge. The hornets are just the first wave.”

“Can you walk?” Oilcan asked, as Rebecca hadn’t gotten off the ground.

“I can fly,” she said through gritted teeth.

Oilcan steeled himself to do a Force Strike into the swarm without dropping his shield. This would be a bad time to mess up his fingering. Hold the shield steady. Force Strike! The spell smashed away from him, reducing the hornets in its path to small wet splatters on the broken pavement. It also took out a stop sign and part of a building behind the insects. “Oops.”

“Only lives matter in war,” Thorne said.

He nodded but still aimed his Force Strikes with more care. It took three tries, but he smashed the insects to pulp. He dropped his shield and cried, “Let’s go!”

“I need a boost to get off the ground,” Rebecca said. The two sekasha hauled her to her feet.

“On three,” Thorne said. “One. Two. Three.”

They flung the tengu girl up higher than Oilcan thought possible. Her great black wings swept downward and she climbed higher.

“They’re coming!” Rebecca cried as she rose above the third-story buildings.

“Run!” Thorne commanded.

They ran back to the flatbed. Oilcan scrambled into the driver’s seat and turned the key. The big engine rumbled to life. Oilcan had never heard anything so reassuring sounding. Thorne climbed in the passenger side. Moon Dog vaulted onto the back. A moment later, Rebecca landed beside the male elf.

“Hold on, this might get crazy!” Oilcan stomped on the accelerator. He’d have to be careful on turns and stops. The flatbed didn’t have any sides or safety belts to keep the two in the back on the truck. It was one of the main reasons why he’d put the little kids in his pickup. The other problem was that the flatbed was a beast to drive. Blue Sky had mad skills at driving but the truck needed someone tall enough to work the stiff double-clutch manual transmission. Oilcan practically had to stand on the clutch to shift into second. It would have been unfair to expect the little half-elf to do it in a panic situation.

Oilcan was roaring up to fourth gear when Moon Dog called, “Here they come! On fast little chariots!”

On what? Oilcan glanced into his driver’s side mirror. The oni had hoverbikes. Of course they did! There seemed to be a baker’s dozen. A menacing black Jaguar sports car growled around the corner and joined the pack. The oni hoverbikes weren’t racing machines; street bikes became highly unstable over ninety miles per hour. The sports car wasn’t much better. The flatbed was stable as a rock and had a powerful V8 engine. Sheer physics were on Oilcan’s side.

Rebecca suddenly slid across the weapons crate and in through the back window. She’d dismissed her wings. Sweat covered her face. “The poison is setting in. I don’t know how much longer I’m going to be upright.”

“You’re fine,” Oilcan said to calm himself, shifting into fifth. If he ignored the guns, it was just a simple street race. He’d been racing since he was ten, just not with so many lives on the line. “It’s fine. Everything is fine.”

“I’ll deal with them.” Thorne pushed Rebecca down onto the floor to get her out of the way, and went out the window.

If Oilcan wasn’t so scared, he would probably feel sorry for the oni. Hoverbikes did not offer a lot of protection in the best of times. Also, the only people in Pittsburgh who knew their limits better than him were Tinker and Blue Sky. “Hold on, we’re making a right-hand turn!”

“We’re braced!” Thorne shouted back.

He made the turn as fast as he dared onto Tenth Street, shifting back down to fourth to give him more control. Two blocks ahead, the Tenth Street Bridge rose up to cross the Monongahela River. Hoverbikes couldn’t cross wide bodies of water; the magic involved in the lift drive required a high surface tension that rivers didn’t afford. If the oni wanted to give chase, they were going to have to stick to the straight, narrow shot of the road. Nothing to hide behind. Limited weaving and bobbing.

More importantly, it would lead the oni forces away from Oilcan’s kids.

The narrow, three-lane suspension bridge painted Pittsburgh gold ran fifty feet above the river with a span of a quarter mile. Oilcan floored the accelerator, shifting up through fifth to sixth gear. The big flatbed truck had a powerful engine meant to carry heavy loads at highway speeds, but it meant that without a load, the rig could fly. He wanted to get as far ahead of the pack as he could. His mind was racing even further ahead, mapping out a course. He heard Thorne get her rifle out of the weapon’s crate.

“Hold steady!” Thorne shouted.

Oilcan checked his side mirrors. The hoverbikes and Jaguar fanned out behind them, taking up all three lanes. There was a crack of a rifle. One of the bikes disintegrated at eighty miles per hour as the wounded rider allowed part of the machine to touch the pavement. The bikes started to weave back and forth in the narrow lane, which was a horrible plan at that speed with those vehicles. Two collided, made contact with the bridge’s side barrier, and instantly became tumbling bits and pieces. One tried to pop up onto the arching main cable. It missed the landing, hit the railing of the pedestrian walk, lost its balance, and slid off the side. The oni rider fell screaming into the river far below.

Thorne shot again, taking out another. Eight hoverbikes closed quickly.

“I’m taking another right turn ahead!” Oilcan warned as they neared the end of the bridge. He downshifted to gain more control over the flatbed. “Going into a tunnel.”

“Tunnel?” Thorne repeated to confirm.

“Yes! A short tunnel!” Oilcan shouted. “We’ll only be in it a few minutes at this speed!”

The end of the bridge was a confusing mess as there were various levels of road crossing their line of sight. The four lanes of the Parkway crossed directly overhead at the end of the bridge. It obscured the fact that on the other side of the intersection, the century-old Armstrong Tunnel cut through the base of bluff, directly under Mercy Hospital.

“Hang on!” Oilcan called as they hit the end of the bridge and ducked under the Parkway. The bridge and the tunnel didn’t match up completely, creating the need to swerve slightly. His wheels squealed in complaint as he entered the tunnel at nearly a hundred miles per hour.

A single line of antique lights dimly lit the old tunnel. The dark arching limestone roof and the bend in the middle made the tunnels seem claustrophobic despite their fifteen-foot clearance. Oilcan rarely used the tunnels. He couldn’t remember exactly how long they were. He was fairly sure that the tunnels were short. The upcoming exit definitely was onto a T-shaped intersection. Making a ninety-degree turn at his speed could be deadly, especially to the unsecured warriors on the back.

Oilcan glanced in the side mirrors. All the remaining hoverbikes were just entering the tunnel. He’d worried slightly that they would split up, using the outbound tunnel instead of entering the close quarters of the inbound tunnel. Apparently they weren’t thinking that far ahead.

He slowed as much as he dared, downshifting to fifth gear. “We’re going to turn shortly! Hard left!”

Rebecca surprised him by suddenly leaning across him to secure his seat belt.

“Stop at the end of the tunnel,” Thorne said.

“What?” Oilcan said as Thorne’s rifle cracked again, echoing loudly in the stone tunnel. Another hoverbike disintegrated with a horrifying noise as its wounded or dead rider lost control.

“She said stop at the end of the tunnel!” Rebecca said while putting on her own seat belt.

What was Thorne planning? Certainly the tunnel took away the hoverbikes’ maneuverability but they were still moving at close to seventy miles per hour. Oilcan slowed more, downshifting to fourth. If he was making a full stop, he had to slow even more. He only had at maximum forty feet of road at the end of the tunnel before he hit a literal wall.

The hoverbikes closed fast even as he neared the end of the tunnel.

He glanced into his rearview mirror to check on the sekasha. The two warriors leapt from the back, shields gleaming, swords drawn. The hoverbikes were roaring down on them. The Jaguar, however, was nowhere to be seen.

“Shit!” Oilcan hissed. He stomped down on the brakes. The sports car had taken the outbound tunnel instead of following directly behind them. The wheels squealed as the big truck slid forward. He fought to control the slide, downshifting so the engine wouldn’t stall. He couldn’t let the truck turn too soon. The bed alone was twenty-six feet long and the tunnel was only twenty-two feet wide. If he lost control, he’d wedge the truck sideways in the narrow passage. Once he was clear of the tunnel, though, he needed to turn to face the sports car that was trying to outmaneuver him by taking the outbound tube.

The oni in the car had guns.

Oilcan had a powerful heavy truck and a ram-prow front bumper.

As the flatbed’s cab slid past the tunnel opening, he could hear the roar of the oncoming Jaguar. The outbound tube was a mere six feet from him. A narrow traffic island separated the two lanes. Oilcan checked his mirrors. His tail wasn’t clear yet. He let the truck continue to slide forward, the air thick with black smoke from his tires. The snarl of the Jaguar grew louder. Not clear yet. He saw the running lights of the oncoming car reflected in the white tile walls.

Clear!

He floored the accelerator. The big truck leapt forward just as the Jaguar came roaring out of the tunnel. The driver wasn’t familiar with the road; he tried a panic stop as he realized that there was a building directly ahead of him, in less than forty feet. The Jaguar started to swing right, aiming for the driveway beside the building. The flatbed jumped the curb, and plowed into the Jaguar square in the passenger door. His seat belt bit deep into Oilcan’s chest as the impact checked their speed. He kept the accelerator nailed to the floor.

The Jaguar tried to pull away but Oilcan wrenched the flatbed’s steering wheel, turning with the Jaguar as he shoved it across the road. He slammed it through a low railing and into the retaining wall beyond. Its aluminum body crumpled like a beer can. Its horn went off in an unending death wail.

Behind him, bits and pieces of hoverbikes rained out of the inbound tunnel. There was no sign of the riders.

Oilcan put the flatbed into reverse and backed away from the crumpled Jaguar.

“You going to hit it again?” Rebecca was holding a pistol ready.

“It’s not going to be following us.” Oilcan didn’t want to think of its trapped and probably dead occupants. “That’s all that matters.”

Thorne and Moon Dog came running out of the tunnel and leapt onto the flatbed.

“Go!” Thorne said.

Oilcan turned and headed for Gryffin Doors, praying that his kids had arrived there safely.