Wolf Who Rules

Chapter 21: No Place Like Home

Wolf was ready to kill something. When they should have been reacting quickly, instead they stalled with negotiations. He demanded that one of the Stone Clan return to the enclaves to guard the noncombatants. Earth Son assigned the task to Jewel Tears but then tried to maneuver True Flame into qualifying it as a failure on Wolf’s part to protect the enclaves.

“I can choose to protect the enclaves,” Wolf said, “and leave you to face the dragon.”

“We will have the dreadnaught.” Earth Son pointed out.

“No, we won’t.” True Flame snapped. “Human weapons can’t pierce the dragon shielding. The dreadnaught is good at spotting and attacking ground troops. It would be an aerial banquet table for the dragon.”

“We should travel light.” True Flame continued. “One Hand each. The fewer we have to protect the better.”

Wolf let Wraith chose which of his sekasha would remain. Wolf drew Little Horse and Stormsong aside; of the sekasha returning to the enclaves, they were the ones best suited to interacting with humans. “Call Maynard. Let him know what his people might be facing. They need to know that their weapons won’t work on this.”

Even as Jewel Tears and the extra sekasha left, Earth Son was still arguing True Flame’s decision. “We should wait until it comes to us. Running around, looking for it will only weaken our position.”

Wolf scoffed at this idea. “Sit here on our hands while it does what it will to the city?”

“Property damage can be fixed later,” Earth Son said.

“And what of the humans?” Wolf said.

Earth Son had the gall to say, “I do not know why you fuss so. They are short lived anyhow.”

“I think we should go and be the heroes.” Forest Moss struck a heroic pose. “Females are attracted to males of action.”

“What females?” Earth Son cried.

“Poor Earth Son, I might have one blind eye—” Forest Moss tapped his cheek under his ruined eye and the reached out to tap both of Earth Son’s. “— but apparently you have two.”

Earth Son slapped away Moss’ hand. “I am not blind.”

“Then you must see that this city is filled with fertile young females? There are so few domana females, and they are a choosy lot. The law prevents us from taking lovers outside our own caste who is not sekasha with naekuna, and the sekasha frown on us making another caste into domana — that would be too much like our Skin Clan fathers. Would not the sane plan be to follow Wolf Who Rules’ path, winnow out the perfect female from the thousands and thousands of humans and make her elfin?”

“No!” Earth Son flinched back from the mad one. “Are you even capable of recognizing sanity?”

Forest Moss thought a moment and then shrugged. “The sad truth is: I am not sure. But nor am I sure I care. I have found a certain freedom in madness. Ah, but it is oh so lonely. I do not wish to be alone anymore. Unfortunately, I have fallen into a paradox. As domana, you can not attract a household without sekasha, but the sekasha no longer trust me. I failed to protect what was mine. What a small mistake led to my downfall, nor did I make it alone. At our first encounter with the oni, despite their displays of friendship, we should have fought. One miscalculation and all was lost. Lost forever.”

“I fell in love,” Windwolf stated coldly. “Do not mistake my honest passion for calculated convenience.”

Forest Moss made little flicking motions with his hand. “Feh, feh, I will love her. She will, after all, win me what I wish for the most. I tried to show my responsibility and leadership by holding dogs, and monkeys and small birds. Surely keeping safe such fragile packages of life shows some ability to protect? Alas, no elf has offered themselves into my keeping.”

“And this mad plan would bring you respect?” Earth Son looked puzzled.

“Beloved Tinker holds two sekasha. I’m told that she lacks a full Hand merely due to the limits of time. That even the renowned Bladebite offered to her. Surely there is another female of the same caliber in this city.”

“No.” Windwolf growled. “My domi is a rare and treasured find.”

Forest Moss refused to be distracted from his plan. “Ah, well, I will have to settle for some lesser gem then. Let us be off. There is a dragon to kill, and females to impress.”

With the elder Stone Clan male strutting off, Earth Son had no choice but to agree to go after the dragon. It made sense now that Forest Moss tried to use the aumani to gain Little Horse. Although young, Little Horse’s bloodlines meant young sekasha would be willing to look to him as First. There was some sound reasoning to that — as well as this current plan of Forest Moss. Both, however, were equally distasteful.

Hopefully Malice would cut short Forest Moss’ plan.

Tinker spent hours in the infirmary, choosing out spells out of the Dufae Codex, modifying them to work with the batteries, printing them off, and casting them. She was learning that she wasn’t cut out to be a doctor; having to touch strangers so intimately was still unnerving.

Being weightless was at once a joy and a constant reminder that she wasn’t on Elfhome. What had happened when she fell into the Ghostlands? Pony had been up on the scaffolding with her. Had he fallen into the deadly cold and died? Or had he fallen through, like her, and was now lost on another world, or out in space? The possibilities terrified her. She wouldn’t allow herself to even consider what that might have happened to Windwolf. There was, however, the dreadful knowledge that Windwolf would put himself between Malice and Pittsburgh, and continue until either he or Malice was dead. She had to get back and help Windwolf — somehow.

The largest drawback to being weightless was that you didn’t fall down when you fell asleep. One moment she was drifting in a niche, waiting for some crew to move past, trying to think of a weapon that could kill Malice. The next she was wondering if there was enough black willow left to make lively maple flavored ice cream. Dragons, Oilcan was telling her over the phone, had a weakness for sweets.

“You’re going to have to make it.” She became aware that she had made the phone from two tin cans and a long string of red thread strung between them. The thread vibrated as they talked, a blur of red, resonating to their voices. Resonation was the key to everything. “It’s really easy to make. Just follow grandpa’s recipe.”

She realized then that the ice cream had been what they needed all along — but she had taken the recipe with her. While she considered this, she drifted through the wall of spaceship. Space, it turned out, was all sticky, sweet black treacle. Here was all the molasses they would want. She could make the ice cream out of this — only how did she get it back to Pittsburgh? Fling it from orbit? No, no, it would all burn up before it hit Pittsburgh.

“Domi?”

Tinker looked up. Stormsong was drifting toward her, a flowing angel of hazy gleaming white. The sekasha had one hand on the red thread and was following it to Tinker’s tin can phone. “Stormsong, I’m stuck in the treacle.”

“No, you aren’t.” Stormsong held out her hand and Tinker caught hold of it. It felt warm and intangible as a sunbeam. “Remember.”

“Remember what?” Tinker cried as Stormsong hazed to a nebulous gleaming form.

“There’s no place like home.” Stormsong whispered, brilliant now.

Tinker blinked against the brilliance. Stormsong had transformed to a shimmering ghost of Impatience. She clung to some of his snaky mane.

“Sssssaaaammmmmmaaananana.” Impatience’s voice rumbled against her skin.

A loud gasp made Tinker turn her head. Jin floated a few feet away, gazing at her with amazement. They were back in the infirmary, the wall beside her lumpy and cold and the smell of smoke and blood omnipresent.

Am I still sleeping? Tinker looked back at Impatience.

“Huuhuuhuuhuuhuuhuu.” Impatience rumbled and faded away.

Jin drifted toward her. His eyes still wide as he gazed at her. “Remember what?”

Tinker scrubbed at her face. Was she awake or still asleep? Her right hand felt warmer than her left — like she had held it over a open flame. “There’s no place like home.”

“That’s it?”

Dragons have a weakness of sweets and space is treacle? “Maybe.” Tinker realized that if she was awake now — somehow Jin had experienced part of her dream. “Did you hear Stormsong?”

“The dragon’s name is Stormsong? That doesn’t sound like a dragon name.”

Was pinching yourself an accurate test to see if you’re awake? If it was, then she was awake. “You saw the dragon?”

Jin nodded. “And I heard it. It said: remember.”

“You understood what it said?”

“I’m Providence’s child.”

“You’re what?”

Jin cocked his head in his bird-like inspection of her. “You walk with the dragons but don’t know their way?”

“No.”

Jin crossed to her side and settled beside her. “Providence is the guardian spirit of the tengu. Each generation a tengu child is born with the mark of Providence upon him.” The tengu undid his shirt buttons to expose his chest. Over his heart was a red birthmark that looked like the flowing outline of a dragon. “We’re taught the language of the dragons.”

A whole mysterious part of her life suddenly made sense. “This is what he was looking for.”

“The dragon?”

“No, Riki. He kidnapped me and made me strip. He wanted to know if Impatience marked me but he didn’t tell me what the mark was for.”

“Who is Riki?” Jin asked.

“A tengu — stuck between a rock and a hard place. Apparently he tried to stay out of the oni control, but they took his younger cousin, Joey, hostage. It put us on opposite sides, which is too bad, because I think we could have been good friends.”

Jin reached out and touched the necklace Keiko had given her. She’d forgotten she was even still wearing it. “Did he give you that?”

“No, his younger cousin Keiko did. She said it would protect me from tengu.”

“It will.” He tugged it out of her neckline so it laid overtop. “But you’ve got keep it out where it can be seen. So we can tell you’re under the protection of the Chosen blood.”

“The what?”

“I’m the Chosen one. The spiritual leader of my people. I decide the path for my people and they follow me. Riki and his cousins are all my nieces and nephews. In my absence, my people are turning to them.”

“Which made them targets for the oni wanting to control the tengu.”

Jin nodded.

Having experienced people turning to you for leadership, Tinker felt sudden sympathy for Riki. “One thing I don’t get. These people are astronauts and still buy ‘the chosen one’ bullshit?”

“When you’re born a mythical creature, you tend to have a different mindset on these things.”

“Wait — so — all this colonization — going back to Onihida stupidity was your idea?”

Jin looked away. For a moment, Tinker thought he wouldn’t answer, but he sighed, and said, “We’re half bird — we can’t breed with humans — not without magic. Yes a couple hundred of us came to Earth before the elves destroyed the pathway, but it wasn’t a big enough gene pool. For generations we’ve been careful not to interbreed, but we were coming to a dead end. We had to find someway to get back to Onihida and the rest of our tribe. You have no idea what its like to see genocide bearing down on you.”

“If Riki was looking for a chosen one, then that means the tengu don’t have a leader.”

“It seems like it.”

Tinker yawned. “When this is all over, I think I’m going to sleep for a week. Are we going to get gravity back?”

“We did another course correction, but it seems like something is pulling us down toward the planet. It’s already pulled all the debris into reentry. We’re not spinning up this time to save fuel.”

“So — if we don’t do anything, eventually the ship will be pulled out of orbit?”

“It seems like it.”

Tinker groaned. She didn’t want to deal with dreams! “No place like home — that’s what Dorothy says to get home. The stupidity was that she had the means to get home the entire time, she just didn’t know it. I have no idea how that Glenda bitch gets away with being the ‘good’ witch. What do I have on me?”

She unloaded her pockets, letting the items float in orbit around her. Although the dress had limited pocket space, she still managed to fit amount of stuff into them. Not only did she have her datapad, she also had her camera with the recording of Impatience trying to teach her — something.

“Oh my, these could be my ruby slippers!”

Tracking Malice proved difficult, despite his size. The massive dragon leaped and bounded and shifted through buildings like it was a ghost, leaving a shattered trail. Wolf chafed at the slower speeds that others traveled, but True Flame would not relent, and Wolf had to acknowledge that the older elf had battle experience, where he did not.

The trail led up the Monongalia River valley to beyond the Rim, and then disappeared without a trace.

“There is something wrong here,” Wraith whispered to Wolf as his Hand gathered close. “Smell the blood?”

Wolf gazed at the still, boulder strewn forest around them. There was a slight blurring to the trees, as if a mist hazed the air. He would not have noticed it if the sekasha hadn’t called his attention to it. Pulling out a survey map for the area, he confirmed his suspicions.

“I think this might be an oni encampment, covered by an illusion.”

The sekasha pulled their ejae, readying themselves for a possible ambush.

Forest Moss did a ground scry, took a few steps and repeated it several times until he stopped beside an ironwood sapling. “Wolf Who Rules, break this tree.”

Wolf aimed a force strike at the sapling and unleashed it.

The sapling vanished when the leading edge of his blow struck it. A tall square stone, inscribed with spells, replaced the sapling for a heartbeat before disintegrating into rubble. An oni camp sprang into being around them. The boulders changed into rough cabins. Mossy logs became well-gnawed humanoid carcasses. Blood soaked the ground and everywhere was dragon tracks.

“All the magic flowed toward the sapling.” Forest Moss nudged the remains of the crude oni spell stone.

The sekasha moved out to search the cabins.

“Malice has wallowed in magic and feasted on oni.” True Flame used his sword tip to point out that the skulls were horned. “Maybe it slipped its bonds, like the little one did.”

“There were no spell markings on Malice.” Wolf wondered too the significance of the dragon’s name. Tinker had called Impatience ‘hyper.’ If the dragon’s names reflected a personality, perhaps one named Malice needed no prodding to wreak havoc.

“I am not sure what the other beast is, but there is no mistake here, this is an oni dragon.” True Flame pointed out a four-toed print in the dirt. “The little beast has five claws like the hand of an elf.”

Red Knife reported for the sekasha, saying that the cabins were empty of oni and any evidence of what they planned. “There were, though, a hundred oni here only hours ago.”

“It is a good thing that we delayed, then.” Earth Son earned a sharp look from even his First, Thorne Scratch. “We would have had to face both oni and the dragon at the same time.”

Instead both had vanished away after having time to lay cooperative plans.

The dragon tracks led down to the river.

Earth Son made a sound of disgust, eyeing muddy water. “None of us will be able to track it in that.”

“If Malice was sent by the oni on Onihida to distract us, then he will circle back to the city and attack.” Wolf was glad that Jewel Tears was protecting the enclaves. While the Stone Clan was weak on attack spells, they had the strongest defensive spells. “We should return.”

True Flame nodded.

Tinker and Jin found a working computer station and with some jury rigging managed to get her state-of-art camera interfaced with the two decade old systems.

“I recorded about six hours so this is going to take a while.” Tinker started the play back.

“…we’ll build a dictionary of his words,” her recorded voice started out the recording. Cloudwalker had been filming the dragon but having trouble tracking it as it moved through the scrapyard’s offices.

“Riki says the dragon’s name is Impatience,” Tinker said, “but Riki has lied to me — a lot.”

Jin attention was on the recording. He nothing but he frowned slightly at this.

“…mmmenananannaaaaaaapoooookaaaammmammamamyyyyyyaaanananammmmoooo…” Impatience rambled on the recording.

“I’m not familiar with the name.” Jin paused the recording after another minute of the dragon’s monologue. “Dragons usually use a lot of words to say anything. Like ‘a pleasantly warm but not too warm, sunny, cloudless, time of the day that isn’t dawn but the sun hasn’t quite reached its zenith’ for good morning. It considered rude to get to the point too quickly. When you talk to a dragon, you’re supposed to elaborate as much as possible.”

“Dragon Etiquette 101?” Tinker asked.

“Historically, rude tengu are dragon snacks. This dragon, however, is being very to the point. He might come across as impatient to other dragons, which would explain his name.”

“So you understand him.”

“Yes, so far he’s said ‘what is this object? Oh, this moves. Ah, it makes light. I wonder how. This part twists. What are these? I see. It does not work without those. Why does it not make light? Have I broken it? It seemed as if it was suppose to come apart. A diagram. I must have them backwards. Ha, ha, ha.”

“Yeah, I got the laughing part.”

A female astronaut flew into the cabin with tengu grace, “Wai Szi is awake and wants to see the scarecrow.”

The tiny tengu woman was awake and looking surprisingly well compared to how awful she had been before. She gasped as Tinker swam into the infirmary. “Oh my, you are here! Oh, look at you! You’re so beautiful.”

Tinker blushed. As a female elf in a deep jewel red silk dress in zero gee, she was attracting a lot of attention from the crew. “It’s the dress.”

“Ah, yes, it not so practical in space, is it, my dear? Xiao Chen, can you find her something to wear?”

Xiao Chen had been the crewmember that summoned them to Gracie’s side. The tengu female nodded, cocking her head to study Tinker’s size before moving off, graceful as a bird in flight.

Jin looked at Tinker as if noticing the silk flowing around her for the first time and then smiled. “I don’t know. It’s good for morale. At least with the guys.”

Tinker smacked him and found herself floating backwards.

He laughed, and caught Tinker before she could hit something. “I am only joking.”

“Shoo, shoo!” Gracie shooed Jin away. “I want to talk to her without your noisy squawking.”

Jin smiled fondly at his cousin and flew away.

Gracie held out her unbroken hand to Tinker. “Let me look at you.” Gracie had tears in her eyes, which Tinker expected, but not the brilliant smile that the fragile tengu bestowed on her. Tinker found herself smiling back. “You’ve got Leo’s eyes and his smile.”

“Yeah, I guess. The patented Dufae face.”

“I’m so happy to see it. It hurt so much that I hadn’t been able to give Leo a baby. It made losing him all the more horrible. He was a wonderful, wonderful man and he was utterly gone.”

It occurred to Tinker for the first time how awful to lose your husband — never see him again — and a sudden fear took root in her. What if she couldn’t get back to Windwolf? What if she never saw him again?

“There, there, my love.” Gracie wiped Tinker’s tears away. “We’ll get you back to him somehow.”

“Yeah, I know, we’re working on it.” Tinker sniffed.

“Let me see your leg. I know Jin, he probably didn’t think to clean that cut. He might be Dalai Lama of the crows, but he’s hopeless with first aid.”

Gracie deftly took off the bandage, gently cleaned the wound and applied an antiseptic and re-bandaged the cut.

“Are you a medic?” Tinker asked her.

“I’m the ship’s xenobiologist,” Gracie said.

“You’re kidding.”

Gracie looked up in surprise, and Tinker found herself talking about Lain, and then about Esme. “Have you told her? I don’t think she’s realized who you are yet.”

Tinker shook her head. “Right now, it’s all too weird. I don’t even want to think about it. Besides, I’m kind of ticked at her. Not about leaving me. About everyone having to lie to me about it because — I don’t know — some strange family stuff. I didn’t know the truth for eighteen years. She can not know for a couple of days. I’ll tell her later.”

Xiao Chen flew into the area, carrying a set of clothes. “These should fit our scarecrow.”

“I don’t know if I like that nickname.” Tinker took the clothes and drifted awkwardly as she checked the pant size against her waist.

Xiao Chen laughed. “I am sorry. Just so long, we did not know your name, just that you were the scarecrow.”

“Did tell everyone about your dream?” Tinker asked Gracie.

Xiao Chen, though, answered. “All of us that slept that night shared Wai Szi’s dream — that is her ability. She is our dream crow.”

“In some ways, we are more bird than human,” Gracie said.

“Can you see the future? How am I going to get us out of this mess?”

Gracie shook her head. “Where one person can determine the future, the way is clear, but we’re in a tangle of possibilities. Many people can push the future one way or another. This is a time when everyone will determine the end.”

Since there were no private places, Tinker turned her back and they pretended to ignore her, talking in Chinese, as she changed. She tried not to feel like they were talking about her. Certainly with the ship falling out of orbit, they had plenty of things to discuss. At least with the dress on, she was able to change panties and pull on her pants without flashing them. The pants were a little loose, but Xiao Chen had included a length of nylon cord to serve as a belt.

Tinker turned back around and pulled on the knotted cord. “I look the part of the scarecrow now.”

The tengu laughed.

“I’ve been greedy.” Gracie reached out and squeezed Tinker’s hand. “I’ve kept you here too long. Thank you for letting me see you.”

Tinker hugged her goodbye and returned to the task of finding out how to get them back home to Windwolf.

Impatience, it turned out, had been trying to teach her a spell. It incorporated math, something that Elvish spells didn’t do, and used magic to manipulate time and space. It took everything she knew and pushed it in a new direction using an entirely new symbol set. Jim translated the words and then, later, the number system that Impatience used but looked mystified by most of what he was saying.

“You understand this?” Jin asked.

“Yes, yes. The roots of elfin magic is here, but taken to another order of understanding. This is recognizing the quantum nature of magic and its effects across boundaries of realities. My god, I really screwed up. I never considered that I could warp the fabric of space and time on this kind of scale.”

“What?” Jin cried in surprise. “You made this mess?”

“I had help. Okay, here’s what happened.” She found a marker in her pocket and drew a planet on the nearest wall. “The oni forced me to build a down-sized gate on Elfhome. I set up a resonance between my gate and the orbital gate.” She drew both gates in their proper positions and the wavy resonance line between them. “Now Leo’s gate was flawed. The time coordinate was never set.” She drew the ships entering the orbital gate. “So the default time coordinate became the moment of the gate’s destruction — or around midnight eastern standard time, seven — eight days ago.”

She totally lost track of space since she landed on the spaceship.

Jin understood the result. “Thus the collision.”

“Yeah. Old news. This is the important part — all the ships, when they passed through the gate, must have picked up the resonance signature.” She drew a ship on the other side of the gate, labeled it Dahe Hao and continued the wavy line to it. “As long as there are objects in orbit, the resonance will continue, which is why the discontinuity hasn’t collapsed. It’s because of this link, that when I fell into the Ghostlands, I ended up onboard. For every action, though, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Basically the power spike originates here on Elfhome and travels in this direction.” She drew an arrow parallel to the wavy line through the planet. “The multi-universe is trying to drag the Dahe Hao back along this line.” She drew a second arrow from the ship running beside the resonance path toward the planet. “Again, as long as the discontinuity continues, the Dahe Hao will be affected by this force.”

She turned and was startled to find her audience had grown from Jin to about twenty crew members. “Um, well, this isn’t all bad. We can use this force to our advantage. The entire ship and everyone on it is keyed to this location.” She underlined Turtle Creek. “Now if you look at this section of the text.” She pointed to the screen. “This is a spell. It creates a sphere of hyperphase. All we need to do is cast this spell which will step the ship into hyperphase and follow the line of force back to Pittsburgh.”

“That’s all?” Esme said.

Tinker turned back and found her audience had grown again. Esme and another twenty crewmembers crowded the small area. “My biggest concern is power. If the amount of magic we feed into the spell is too small, it will just punch a hole in the middle of the ship. We need enough power that we can guarantee that the entire ship goes. Even if we think we have sufficient magic, we probably should gather everyone close to the spell, and close all the hatches between the sections of the ship.”

“What we’ve collected isn’t enough?” Esme asked.

“I don’t think so and access time on it is slow. The spell is set up to mimic how the dragons cast magic with their mane. With elf magic, there’s a timing ring around the spell that controls the power coming in. It makes the magic a slow steady burn. This spell takes all the free magic and converts it in one burst.” Tinker sketched the ship and put an ‘x’ roughly center of the ship. “It’s kind of like dropping a stone into a pool of water. Splash!” She drew in the initial impact in a large circle around the ‘x’. “That’s the rock hitting the surface. There seems to be some resulting ripples in the fabric of space.” She added larger circles around the first, and then shaded in the space between the circles. “I’m not sure what the ripples will do, but I can’t imagine the delay factor will be good for the structural integrity of the ship.”

“In other words,” Jin sought to clarify what she said. “Part the ship returns to Pittsburgh seconds before the next section goes?”

“Yes. Leo’s gate, however flawed, did transfer all the ship to the same second. These ripples would have a different time coordinate, so probably we’re looking at pieces of the ship arriving in Pittsburgh — unless we hit it with a damn big rock.”

“So where do we get it?”

“I don’t know. If we could tap the spring under Turtle Creek, that would work, but I don’t see any evidence that power is seeping through.”

There was no sign of Malice in Oakland when Wolf and the others returned to the enclaves. Maynard had set up a command center in the building across the street from Poppymeadow’s. He and the NSA agents had set up lookout posts across the city, linked by radio.

“Unless it can go invisible, it hasn’t appeared in the city yet,” Maynard tapped three points on the map. “Between the Cathedral of Learning, the USX building and Mount Washington, we can see for miles — and Stormsong said that this thing was huge.”

Wolf nodded. “Unfortunately, it will be dark soon.”

Someone was hammering upstairs. The hammering stopped, and something large moved overhead accompanied with odd rhythmic clicking noise.

Wolf cocked his head, trying to place the sound. “What is that?”

Stormsong glanced toward Earth Son standing in the street, just outside the open door, and lowered her voice. “Domi’s nagarou brought the little dragon, so the humans can see what we’re fighting.”

Interesting how one afternoon could change your perspective on size.

Maynard had caught Stormsong’s caution and spoke quietly in English. “Briggs and Durrack are seeing what works against it.”

Wolf couldn’t decide if this was ingenious or unwise. He found the stairs leading up to the one large open room taking up the entire second story. The windows had been boarded shut and mattresses leaned against the walls. The dragon and others were in the far corner, standing around a computer set up on the floor. While Oilcan and Durrack were focused on the screen, Briggs and Little Horse and Cloudwalker were standing back and watching the dragon.

All beings — dragon, humans and elves — looked up when he arrived with his Hand.

“Domou.” Little Horse acknowledged his arrival.

“What are you doing here?” Wolf thought he had sent his blade brother back to the enclaves.

“There is nothing I can do for domi, but she would want her nagarou safe. Surely, the oni will try and take back the little dragon.”

Wolf glanced at his domi’s nagarou. There was so much of Tinker in his appearance that it hurt — her mouth, her eyes, and her haphazard haircut. In the hectic last two months, he’d not spoken once to the young man. Wolf realized now that Tinker was Oilcan’s only family; he was now quite alone. Wolf could not imagine it; an elf only found himself alone if he was exiled from his clan. Clans were so vast, that natural disaster would lay low entire households and families and there would still be someone left to be responsible for the orphans.

Wolf had been lax toward Oilcan because he was an adult — if he was an elf, Oilcan would have chosen a clan that superseded all family responsibilities. That had been wrong of Wolf. Even if he lifted Tinker out of her species, it did not completely free her of her culture’s obligations — and as her domou, her responsibilities was his own. But beyond that, it been wrong of him to be a stranger to the one person that Tinker loved as much as life.

Oilcan cautiously separated himself from the dragon, as if he didn’t fully trust either the dragon or the warriors from either race. “Wolf Who Rules.” Oilcan gave a proper bow. “I heard about Malice on the scanner,” he said in High Tongue. Sorrow filled his eyes as he spoke, and then was firmly put aside. “I thought we might learn something from Impatience.”

“Thank you, nagarou. That was wise of you.” Wolf dropped to low Elvish, and put a hand to the young man’s shoulder.

A smile flashed over Oilcan’s face, then vanished as he sighed. “Unfortunately, most of what we’ve found out so far isn’t good.”

“I did not expect anything else. What have we found out?”

“Well, there was a question if Impatience and Malice are both really dragons, given their size and various other differences. From what we’ve pieced together, we think they are. In Chinese mythology, the four claw dragons are considered common dragons but the imperial dragon has five claws. We think the variations are racial instead of species differences, and possibly represent political differences too.”

“Tengu worship five claws — they — compassionate guardians of tengu in past,” Durrack spoke very rough low Elvish. “Four claws — they have bad reputation — they work with the oni without being enslaved. Malice is not enslaved.”

“Now, the dragons can’t maintain its shields all the time,” Oilcan patted Impatience on the head, showing that the little dragon’s shields were currently down. “It takes them approximately thirty seconds to raise their shields.”

Durrack abandoned low Elvish, to add in English. “If we could catch Malice completely unaware, a sniper might be able to take him out with a well-placed bullet. But once his shield goes up, things get tricky.”

Oilcan murmured a translation to Little Horse and Cloudwalker, and then added in Elvish. “The shields, while they use ambient magic, they’re very efficient and translate all kinetic energy — including the motion of the dragon’s body — somehow into magic. Bullets, rockets, baseballs—” Oilcan nudged a ball on the floor that they apparently had been using in their experiments. “— anything you can throw at them — will only make them stronger.”

“And they can keep the shields up while they phase through walls.” Durrack patted a wooden partition erected next to him. Impatience took this as a request to demonstrate his phasing abilities. His mane lifted up and he shimmered into a ghostly haze and leapt through the wall and returned.

“Good boy!” Oilcan produced a large gumball from his pocket and gave it to the dragon, who chewed it with obvious relish. “We believe your lightening will cross the barrier because it’s composed of a different type of energy particle.”

“Electricity works.” Durrack lifted up half a cattle prod. “We established that.”

Impatience snatched the cattle prod out of the NSA agent’s hand and phased it into the wall. When the little dragon let go, the cattle prod remained as part of the wall. The other half, Wolf noticed, was already part of the wall. Apparently the little dragon didn’t like that test.

“As a one shot deal, pepper spray will work.” Durrack picked up an aerosol can. “Of course, it only annoys the hell out of them, and then the dragon changes it shields so that gas won’t penetrate.”

“I’m stunned you are all still alive.” Wolf realized that Impatience had to be remarkably forgiving to put up with these experiments.

“We talked first.” Oilcan said.

Briggs scoffed. “We drew pictures and did a lot of pantomime.”

“He seems to understand what’s going on.” Oilcan said. “He seems to hate both Malice and the oni, but he’s made it clear that he can’t beat Malice in a fight.”

“How do oni enslave the dragons in the first place? Do the tengu say?”

Durrack shook his head. “No.”

Wolf wondered if this was the truth. While he trusted Oilcan to be as forthright as Tinker, the NSA clearly saw themselves as separate powers with all that implied.

After the accident, and the various course corrections, the Dahe Hao’s low orbit didn’t put them within range of the Wind Clan spell stones at Aum Renau. After discussing their fuel situation and the reliability of their engines, they decided to look for stones elsewhere within a mei. The spell stones were large enough, and distinctive enough that the pattern recognition software found several sets. It was impossible to distinguish which clan the stones belonged to, but they found four grouped together in the place the crew nicknamed Giza.

“There are four major clans — wind, fire, water, stone — so I think it’s a safe bet that it’s one set for each major clan.” At least, Tinker hoped it was. She knew there were lesser clans, but she didn’t know anything about them. “At this speed, though, we’re already out of range, so I’ll have to wait until next orbit to check.”

“You’ve got about an hour and a half then.” Esme murmured a curse as something flashed red on her monitor. “But we’re drifting again. We’re going to have to do another course correction.”

“Try and keep us in this orbit,” Tinker said. “A mei is only a thousand miles, give or take a couple hundred miles. If we drop much closer to the equator, we’ll be out of range.”

Tinker then retreated to work on printing out the spell. Jin tracked her down a short time later.

“Gracie wanted to be sure you got something to eat.” Jin held out a container.

“Pft.” Tinker waved away the offering. “If I eat, I’ll have to figure out how you go to the bathroom up here, and I figure that’s not going to be a pleasant activity.”

Jin laughed, still holding out the cup-sized container. “You have to eat.”

“What is it?”

“Cream of tomato soup.”

“Oh! My favorite.” She took the container and found that it was warm. As she snapped it open and sipped the rich creamy broth, Jin swung up to perch across from her.

“It was your father’s favorite too.” Jin sipped his own soup. “I can see Leo in you. Hear him in the way you talk. It makes me happy.”

“Why?”

“Leo was my best friend for many years. I’m glad that in a way, he is living on through you.”

“If he was such a good friend, why did you kill him?”

She expected him to deny it, but he only gazed at her, sorrow filling his eyes.

“I–I made a mistake. We never told Leo that we were tengu. And he never told us — at least, not until it was too late — that he was elfin. We kept our secrets from one another, and in the end, it killed Leo.”

“I don’t understand,” Tinker said.

“Leo and I met at M.I.T. We both had radical ideas, ones that made us unpopular. We believed that magic existed — that there were other realms that could be visited via magical portals. Of course, we had the proof in our very blood, but that we never told anyone, even each other.” Jin sighed, shaking his head. “It seems so obvious now. Dufae. How did we miss it?”

“What really happened? My grandfather never told me details.”

“When Leo showed us his gate design, a possibility opened up to us. A paradise for the tengu. It became the flock dream, a bright promise at the end of a path through dark woods full of unseen danger. To be able to chose one’s mate out of love, and not a carefully ordered breeding plan. To be able to fly. To walk under the sun in our true form, and not to be always hidden. I went to the kitsune, who are powerful in the Chinese government and talked to them about funding. They involved other parties. It was dangerous, I know, but I thought I understood all the factors. What I didn’t know was Leo was an elf — that he knew exactly what the oni were — and that he wouldn’t cooperate with them.”

“Halfway through the meeting with the investors, Leo just freaked. He told them that he would never help the oni build a gate. And worse, he told them why. As much as the elves feared the oni, the oni of Earth feared the elves. He stormed out the meeting. I went after him. We were arguing —” Jin fell silent for a minute. “It happened so fast. One moment he was standing beside me on the street corner, arguing with me and the next he was dead in the middle of the road. I didn’t even see what happened.”

Jin sighed. “I wasn’t driving the car. I didn’t push him out into its path. But I brought death to him. And I can only say I’m sorry. And I am truly am. I loved him like a brother.”

All Tinker could imagine was Nathan out on the road, his blood on her. Oh gods, she didn’t want to cry again. She squeezed her eyes tight on the sudden burn of tears. “How do you deal with knowing that you fucked up so bad? That you killed someone that loved you? That trusted you?”

“Accept the truth of what happened, and then forgive yourself. They would if they could.”

She laughed bitterly. “Why would they?”

“Because they loved you.”

She pressed the palms of her hands into her eyes, and struggled to get back in control of herself. The truth of what happened? The truth was that she had ignored all the warning signs with Nathan. She had to pay attention, think about the consequences of her actions. Like now — she was desperately trying to get back to Pittsburgh, but what if she was totally wrong? With sudden terror, she saw the implications of her actions. She was taking Dahe Hao to Pittsburgh. She might be saving the human crew, but she was dooming the tengu crew to genocide.

“I’m worried about what will happen to the tengu when we reach Pittsburgh. The elves are killing people that they just suspect are oni. And I know they will see tengu as oni.”

“You still don’t think of yourself as one of them?”

“No, not really. Wait — how do you know?”

“For the last week, all we’ve dreamed about is you — all the weird twists and turns your life has taken.” Jin picking up the camera. Cloudwalker had trouble tracking the hyperactive dragon through the trailer and caught her and Pony in the viewfinder instead. “We’ve seen what you’ve done to keep your sekasha safe.”

“You know everything?” She wondered if this was why she been having such horrible nightmares lately.

“Enough. Your fight with the foo dogs. Your transformation from a human. Your fight with the oni lord.” Jin played a few seconds of recording as Pony acknowledged one of her requests with a slight bow. “This is just proof of what we already knew. You’re the Wind Clan domi, guarded by a Hand of sekasha, one of which is another dreamer.”

“Her name is Stormsong.”

“You told me.”

“I don’t know what to do about this,” Tinker admitted. “If we don’t do the spell, I don’t think anyone will survive. If we do the spell, then you end up in the mess in Pittsburgh.”

Jin reached out and tapped Tinker’s forehead, reminding her of the dau marked onto her forehead. “You have the power to protect us. You could make us part of your household. We could be yours, as these sekasha are yours.”

“Mine?” Tinker squeaked. “Why would you want that?”

“Because we trust you more than we trust the oni.”

That wasn’t saying much.

“I don’t know if that would work,” Tinker said. “The elves make a big thing about beholding. The sekasha promises to serve in exchange for protection. That everyone fits into society — someone above them responsible for them, but they are answerable to.”

“It seems fairly simple. I will promise that the tengu will obey you and you promise to protect us.”

“You’re serious? You would listen to what I told you to do?”

Jin nodded.

“Are you sure your crew is okay with obeying some snot-nosed kid?”

“Leo’s daughter who talks with dragons? Yes, I am sure.”

She opened her mouth and then closed it, reminding herself to think about implications and complications this time. She supposed that the tengu could make up a household like Poppymeadow’s, where the crew would be under Jin and the tengu captain would be under her, yet they wouldn’t be directly part of her household. She wished that she knew more about how the enclaves worked, but she suspected that they were like all things elfin, where an exchange of promises were enough to bind both parties. But how would the tengu fit into her life? There was terror deep inside her, one she didn’t want to look at closely, if she promised the tengu to protect them, it would have to be against the people that she loved the most. What would she do if Windwolf refused to acknowledge her claim on the tengu? She didn’t want to think about Windwolf systematically killing the tengu she had gotten to know. She didn’t want him to be the type of person who could do it. Yet she couldn’t stop thinking of Nathan dead in the road because she was married to Windwolf. Of the bloody streets of Chinatown. Of Tommy Chang within moments of being cut down.

If she committed to the tengu, then she might have to fight even Windwolf to keep them safe. I can’t. I can’t.

She pressed trembling hands to her mouth. But if she didn’t protect them, who would? How could she stand aside and let them be killed and do nothing to save them? “I’ll do my best to protect you, but you have to remember to do what I say, or I won’t have the power to stop the elves from killing you all.”

“I promise. You will have obedience of the tengu.”

Her life had so many strings attached that she felt like a puppet.

“Hey! Scarecrow!” Esme called over the ship’s intercom. “We’re getting close to your mark in five minutes!”

Tinker swam back to the bridge, blinking on the salt burning in her eyes.

“Two minutes,” Esme announced.

They waited in tense silence, bathed in the soft earthshine.

“In ten,” Esme said quietly.

Tinker made sure she had her fingers in the correct position.

“We’re in range.”

Tinker brought her hand to her mouth and said the trigger word. Nothing happened. Her heart jolted with the sudden spike of fear. “Daaaaaaae.” Still nothing. She checked her finger positions and carefully announced the trigger word. Zip. “Daaae. Daaaaae. Dae. Daaaaaaae.”

“And we’re out of range,” Esme said.

“Oh, fuck,” Tinker said.

“Just checking — it didn’t work?” Jin asked.

“No.” Tinker rubbed the heels of her hand into her eyes.

“Well, you better think of something else, Scarecrow.” Esme said. “We only have fuel for one more burn.”

“How’s it going?” The tengu Ushi asked. Tinker was finding that while the humans treated her with slight condescension after the initial novelty wore off, the tengu regarded her with odd mix of awe and affection. The ratio of worship versus familial warmth seemed to be dependent on how well they knew her father. Either way, they kept seeking her out, wanting to know if she was comfortable, or needed anything. It was driving her to distraction.

“I’m still thinking.” Thinking she needed to find a hiding place. “We’re at about two hundred miles above Elfhome’s surface, crossing over Spell Stones in Giza around eighteen miles per second. The reach of the Spell Stones are one mei, which is approximately one thousand miles, which means that theoretically we’re within their reach for about a minute and a half.”

“Why are they important?”

“They’re a source of a lot of magic. If I could pull on them, then I could use the magic to trigger the spell.”

She covered her eyes to think. Apparently Ushi took the cue that he was distracting her; when she opened her eyes again, he was gone. Too bad all her problems didn’t solve themselves so neatly.

Why couldn’t she call the spell stones? They were in range, more than a minute, nearly two, and a call took less than one. Something had to be interfering with the call. Was it that there wasn’t enough ambient magic to fuel the initial call? Tinker ran her hand across the wall of the ship, focusing on her magic sense. She could feel the latent magic. It was as strong as a ley line, but with a strange texture. It was like the difference between silk and wool. Magic on Elfhome flowed, smooth and quick. The magic here buzzed with static. If the call was suppose to be resonance of magic across the DNA signature of the domana, then perhaps that chaotic nature of the magic on the ship was creating too much static to that call.

Perhaps if she could filter the background magic to one frequency — oh, gods — how the hell did she do that? She groaned and pulled at her hair. The sekasha had magic stored in the beads woven into their hair which guaranteed that if they were in a magic poor area, they still could trigger their shields and have a few minutes of protection. She never examined them but knew in essence that they were a metal ball, insulated with glass that acted like her power sinks. She believed that storing the magic in a “clean” enough medium would reduce the static. So, she should be able to use a sink just like they used the beads. The problem probably would be eliminating the background magic so only the stored magic was active.

Wait, if she modified the Reinhold’s spell based on Impatience’s theorems, she might be able to trigger magic equivalence to a wide-scale electromagnetic pulse. It would basically clean the slate. The danger would be that it wasn’t only on the magic wavelength, but included the electronics of the ship. She could accidentally kill all the computers maintaining the ship’s life supports. That would be bad.

But if she wiped out the build up, and then used one shielded source to do a call on the Wind Clan Spell stones — would that be enough magic to trigger the jump? It might. Too bad she couldn’t pull from a second set…

Or could she? She had felt the Stone Clan magic. She had watched Forest Moss call on the Stone Clan’s spell stones. Did she remember the hand positions and vocalization? Yes, she was sure.

She was nearly quivering now with possibilities. If she could pull on both stones, at once — wait — at once — that kind of meant at the same moment. Since the vocalization was different she couldn’t do both. She wished she could pace. She thought better pacing. She settled for bouncing between the walls, flying through the air.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Jin suddenly caught her, and brought her to a stand still. “You’re going to hurt yourself doing that.”

“I can’t say two things at once! I considered sampling the resonance, but I suspect that the genetic key equates to vibrations in the quantum nature of magic — not that I know that for sure — and certain I’m at a loss as to how to test that theory. There isn’t time for me to invent a device that can sample how the magic interplays with molecular level, or the equipment we probably need to recreate that resonance. And according to all my last dream, resonance was the key to everything. And if getting home isn’t the full ball of wax —”

“Shhhhhh.” Jin put his finger to his lips.

She frowned at him and then put her finger over his lips. “Do that again.”

“Tinker, listen.”

“No, do the ‘shhh’ thing again.”

“Shhhh.” Jin repeated and then said, with her finger still in place. “We’re picking up the radio from Pittsburgh again. They say that Malice is attacking Oakland.”

“I need to get home. And I think I know how.”

True Flame drew Wolf aside to speak quietly with him. “You and I have the only attack spells that have a hope of hurting Malice. We need to pair off with the Stone Clan. They’ll provide defense while we focus on attack. Which do you want? Forest Moss or Earth Son?”

The mad one or the male that hated him? Both had good cause to see him dead. If they were wise, they would hold their political maneuverings until after the dragon was dead. Where Forest Moss lacked sanity, Earth Son lacked political savvy; Wolf did not think either was rational enough for wisdom. While he trusted Jewel Tears to defend the enclaves, he was not sure he could entrust his safety to her. From True Flame’s perspective, however, Jewel Tears’ youth made her unfit material for the front line, so it was a moot point.

“I rather not stake my life — and the lives of my people — on the Stone Clan.” Wolf spoke the blunt truth.

“I realize that.” True Flame said. “But we will need both hands to our most powerful attack spells, which means no shield.”

“In that case, I don’t want to take Hands into this battle. I do not want to leave them at the mercy of the Stone Clan.”

True Flame nodded. “That would be wise.”

“I’ll take Earth Son.” When faced two evils, Wolf would rather deal with the known.

When True Flame announced the pairing, Earth Son shook his head.

“I do not like this pairing. Forest Moss will go with Wolf.”

“You will go with Wolf.”

“I see reason for the pairing, and as clan head I should be with you.”

“I have given the choice of partners to Wolf since he is in disadvantage,” True Flame said. “We don’t have time for this. You are to pair with Wolf.”

Thorne Scratch stepped forward to murmur in Earth Son’s ear. The Stone Clan domou cast a dark look at his First and then smoothed his face to the unreadable mask of court. Wolf wondered what Thorne had to say to Earth Son.

“So my mewling infant of a cousin, I swear that was the last time that you’ll twist matters to get an unfair advantage.”

Clouds boiled across the sky. Wolf could sense a magical shifting of the winds, as if someone called them with a spell.

“I think the dragon is coming.”

“Wolf.” Storm held out something. “This goes in your ear. It’s like the walkie-talkie but smaller. Nagarou wanted you to have it. You should be able to use it without it interfering with your magic — I tested it with my shield.”

Wolf took the small bud of plastic. “How does it —”

Storm fitted it into Wolf’s ear. “Nagarou has gone to act as a spotter with the NSA. He is in the Cathedral. He will talk to you.”

“Windwolf, this is Oilcan.” The young man’s stated calmly in Wolf’s ear. “The dragon is in south east Oakland, at the intersection of Bates Street and Boulevard of the Allies. It’s seems to be leveling houses.”

Which meant it was less than a mile away.

Wolf did a wide range scry and caught the passage of something large in that area. Earth Son finished his spell and as he shook his head, Wolf lost the scry on the dragon.

“This way,” Wolf started to walk. Forbes Avenue was a major street in Oakland with multiple lanes leading from the downtown out to the Rim. The EIA had stopped traffic in the city, erecting barriers. To his right, at the center of its lush lawn, was the towering Cathedral of Learning with Oilcan at its summit. To his left was the massive stone Carnegie museum.

“Tell me how to get to Bates,” Wolf said.

“Go through that parking lot your left.” Oilcan started into the directions.

True Flame indicated that he would continue down Forbes Avenue, following his scry.

The boil of clouds had darkened to angry gray, with streaks of black where thunderheads were starting to build. When Wolf reached the top of Bates Street and looked down the hill it climbed, he saw that the shield around the massive dragon created a miasma that was forming the clouds. He understood now why the humans thought his lightening would be able to strike — it was the perfect lightening weather. Cloaked by his shields, Malice moved within the misty darkness, showing only flashes of himself.

“Call your shields,” Wolf told Earth Son. “Keep him back, otherwise the lightening will arc to us.”

Remember, you can’t trust Earth Son, Wolf thought to himself, and called on the winds in order to summon his lightening.

The darkness shifted, as if Malice had turned, and the gleam of his eyes appeared in the miasma and then vanished.

“He’s shifting to your right.” Oilcan’s voice was flat with the effort to keep the information concise. “He stopped just around the corner, behind the brick house.”

Wolf didn’t know how Oilcan could tell from his perch above the miasma but Wolf knew the humans had their ways. Magic thrummed around him, ready to be used. He shifted through his call lightening spell. His right hand primed the clouds as his left hand readied the ground. Magic flooded the street on a hot wave of air that flared out his duster. The hairs on his arms lifted as the magic shifted into potential. He felt it reach critical point and he brought his hands together, aiming the channel through which the lightening would run. The faint leader flashed downward out of the belly of the clouds, and then the return stroke leapt from behind the brick, up to meet the leader with a deafening clap of thunder. The blinding column of light flared the dark miasma to white haze, and the thunder rumbled as the stroke climbed up into the sky.

Malice roared in pain and anger. The lightening licked the sky, as leader and return stroke danced back and forth over the open channel.

“He’s coming at you!” Oilcan said.

“Keep him back!” Wolf shouted at Earth Son and started another call.

Earth Son locked into place, both hands set into shields. He was holding a force wall set half a block around them and another shield wrapped tight around himself. The lightening flared again and again. Wolf could feel the thunder in his bones. Malice stepped through the brick house, coiling like a ghost snake. His eyes gleamed blood red. Down Malice’s left flank was a massive smoking wound.

Wolf felt twin spikes of magic flash through the area and a moment later a fire strike bloomed around the ghost Malice. The dragon ignored the flames, rushing toward Earth Son’s force wall. Wolf focused on the growing potential, waiting for it to hit the critical point. He could only cast the spell, though, if Earth Son kept the dragon at a distance.

The lightening died and darkness closed in around them.

“He’s through your shield!” Oilcan cried. “He’s through your shield!”

Malice must have stepped through Earth Son’s shield the same way he had walked through the house. There was no time for Wolf to change to spells.

“Earth Son, cover me damn you!”

In the dark, the ghost Malice was a presence felt, not seen or heard, bearing down on him. A fire flare went off, lighting the area. Malice loomed over them, transparent as smoke. As the dragon snapped into solid form, a shield wrapped around Wolf. Forest Moss was protecting him.

The dragon struck him. The shield held, but the ground underneath didn’t. The pavement under his feet lifted, and he was airborne.

He had a dozen heartbeats to realize that Forest Moss had been able to save him from the blow, but that he wouldn’t be wholly protected at the landing. And then he hit.

“Windwolf! Windwolf!” Oilcan shouted over the radio. “He’s still after you! Can you hear me! Malice is coming for you!”

Pain shot up from Wolf’s right hand. Hissing, he looked down and found his fingers bent at impossible angles. He cursed, hunching over his hand. He could attack or defend, but not both now.

“Windwolf?” Oilcan called to him again.

“I hear you.”

“The oni are attacking the dreadnaught.”

Wolf cursed. “Get a message to True Flame. Tell him to deal with the oni. I’ll keep Malice busy.”

A backup source for magic was shielded, the spells were printed off and floated in place, the computers were turned off, and the crew was gathered around her. She cast the magical magnetic pulse spell and it flashed through her like a cold wind, leaving her feeling strangely empty. With sudden panic, she realized that her body might be a living computer.

Oh gods, I hope that didn’t destroy my ability to call the stones!

Esme powered up the workstation beside her. “Well, it didn’t kill our computers. We’re coming up to spell stone range in two minutes.”

Tinker triggered the first spell that pumped the filtered stored magic out. It was a relief to feel the magic start to pool around her feet. Tinker had told the astronauts they needed silence, and they had taken her seriously. They watched now, silent, fearful. More than one had their eyes closed, and lips moving in prayer.

Esme indicated that they were at the one minute mark.

Tinker made sure her fingers on both hands were in the correct position, and then stood, waiting.

Esme held up her fingers then and counted the last ten seconds down silently. When she nodded, Jin — with Tinker’s right hand nearly touching his mouth — and Xiao Chen — on Tinker’s left — pronounced the activations words for the Wind and Stone Clans.

Magic flooded through the connection. Tinker let it run for thirty seconds by Esme’s silent count. She could feel the purity of it, but the edges were starting to tangle, caught by the magnetic field of the ship. She dropped her hands and the tengu went silent.

The activation word for the dragon spell was a simple. She spoke it into the tense silence.

The universe went dark and formless.

Gravity tumbled Tinker and the others into a pile of bodies. The “floor” now formed walls up to the matching bulkhead ceiling. They untangled themselves.

“It worked.” By the tone of her voice, Xiao Chen hadn’t expected it to.

Tinker wanted to say “Of course” but the way her life had been going, the mind boggled as to all the ways it might have screwed up. “We’re on a planet but which one?”

Esme glanced upwards to the window far over their heads. “Don’t know yet.”

“We landed well.” Jin headed up the ladder. Tinker followed.

“That was not a landing.” Esme called after them.

“We’re on the ground,” Tinker said. “Engines down, bridge up. That’s good enough for me.”

“You do realize that this ship is nearly a half mile long?” Esme said.

Oops.

Jin reached the window. He turned his head this way and that, studying the view intently, before announcing. “Trees. Nothing but trees.”

“It’s not Onihida or Earth then,” Tinker said. “I hope its Elfhome, or we ended up someplace totally new.”

“That was the point of the colonization program as far as the humans were concerned.” Someone said from below.

“There’s an airlock at mid-section.” Jin kept climbing upwards. “We might be able to get a better view.”

Tinker only gave the window a passing glance. The trees looked like ironwoods but it was difficult to tell. They were ten or twenty feet above the canopy. If this was Turtle Creek, then she just erected the tallest structure in Pittsburgh — for however long it remained standing.

The airlock opened to summer dusk. There was a narrow ridge that wrapped around the ship. Tinker carefully picked her way around and found what she most wanted to see — Pittsburgh. Clouds boiled over Oakland, but no lightening flashed from them. Was that a good sign or bad? Had Malice killed Windwolf?

They had “landed” in Turtle Creek, neatly replacing the Ghostlands with the massive bulk of the ship’s engines. The Dahe Hoa would have taken out the center section of the Westinghouse Bridge if it hadn’t already fallen. The remaining spans of the bridge butted up against the side of the ship just ten feet down from the ridge she stood on.

And like one of her impossible dreams, Pony stood on the bridge, looking up at her. He lifted up his arms and motioned for her to jump to him. Relief flooded through her like a weakness. Her legs started to buckle, so she leapt to him.

Pony caught her and pulled her close. “Domi.”

“Oh, Pony, I was so scared that you were killed.” She hugged him tightly, burying her face into the warmth of his neck, smelling his scent.

“I thought I lost you.” His voice was husky with emotion.

She kissed him on the strong line of his jaw. He turned his head and captured her mouth with his and kissed her deeply. He tasted of the enclave peaches; the sweetness poured through her like warm honey; she clung to him, letting the feeling push out the fear and worry.

Tinker realized that Stormsong was beside her. She burned with sudden embarrassment at the way she was acting. Knowing that neither elf would see it as wrong didn’t help.

She broke the kiss but couldn’t bring herself to let go of Pony. With one hand, she reached out to Stormsong to pull her into a three-way huddle. “And you too. I was worried sick about both of you.”

“What? I don’t get a kiss?” Stormsong teased.

Tinker laughed and kissed her quickly on the lips. Then holding them close, she whispered. “Is Windwolf all right? Where is he? What’s happened?”

“We can not get close enough to the museum to look for Wolf,” Pony said. “Malice, though, appears to be searching for something, so we think that Wolf has eluded him.”

“The oni has stolen the dreadnaught and taken it downriver,” Stormsong said. “Our greatest fear has been that while Malice kept us busy, the oni would push an army through the Ghostlands.”

“Well, I stopped that.” Tinker gave a weak laugh.

As Pony and Stormsong updated her, Cloudwalker, Rainlily and Little Egret joined them at the end of the bridge. She greeted them with hugs. It felt good to be surrounded by her people.

The sekasha shifted to face crewmembers picking their way around the edge of the ship. It was Esme with Jin and handful of the tengu crew members.

“It’s okay. I’ve taken the tengu as my beholden.”

“Are you sure that’s wise?” Pony asked.

“Yes.”

“Okay.” She took a deep cleansing breath. She pressed her palms to her eyes and considered current obstacles and possible tools. If Malice was hunting Windwolf, then they would have to hunt Malice. The EMP spell that she used to clear the ship should work on Malice. They needed, however, a big gun to take advantage of it — a very big gun. She could think of only one place they could get such a gun. “Okay, we’re going to need the dreadnaught.”

“What’s a dreadnaught?” Jin asked.

“I suppose you could call it an attack helicopter on steroids,” Tinker said. “It’s more a flying fortress. It’s armed with a variety of heavy guns, from machine guns to cannons, and can carry a large number of troops into any location. The elves built them with magic in mind — so they’re very low tech, and thus extremely clunky.”

“And you want us to take it out?” Jin asked.

“No,” Tinker said. “We need it to take on Malice.”

“Take it over?” Stormsong said. “Are you fucking insane?”

She held up her hands to ward off Stormsong’s objections. “While we were at Aum Renau, I got inside of the dreadnaughts. I think it was part of me being the pivot — they didn’t know what I would need to stop the oni, so they told me anything I wanted to know — full access to everything.”

“Yes,” Stormsong hissed, her eyes going soft and vague. “The pivot keeps turning until the door is fully shut.”

Tinker shivered. “Oh, that creeps me out. I took detailed notes and I scanned them into my datapad — I was thinking of making a few for the Wind Clan.”

“You would,” Jin murmured.

“The big question is — do we have anyone that knows how to fire the guns?” Tinker expected that they would need to track down some the Fire Clan crew. Surprisingly, all the sekasha pointed to themselves.

“We were all taught how when we were in Aum Renau,” Pony explained. “After you showed an interest in the airship.”

“They didn’t miss a trick with me being the pivot, did they? How the hell did I miss — never mind, don’t answer that.”

“We will need a pilot,” Stormsong said. “The oni killed the dreadnaught’s crew.”

“How close is it to Earth’s aircraft?” Esme had worked her way down to the bridge. She spoke Elvish, which surprised Tinker and also made her realize that Jin had been speaking it too.

“The controls are modeled after a helicopter,” Tinker said.

“I’m your pilot then.” Esme noted Tinker’s surprise. “I’m the best fucking pilot you’re going to find. It’s the magic. On Elfhome, I can fly blindfolded.” Tinker remembered Stormsong’s ability with the hoverbike and realized that Esme probably had the same type of talent. “Taking over controls mid-air might be tricky — but should be a piece of cake compared to some of the NASA simulations.”

“You know,” Durrack called out of the gathering twilight announcing the NSA’s arrival. “We’re going to have to reclassify you to force of nature.”

“Oh good.” Tinker said. “We’re going to do an assault on the dreadnaught and we could use your help.”

Briggs scoffed as she joined Durrack. “And she’s not even trying to be scary.”

Tinker kept losing count of their numbers. They would need a tengu to get every non-tengu up to the dreadnaught while it was in flight. The problem was that she kept forgetting to count herself, or she added herself to both elves and humans. It was really starting to bug her.

“Eighteen,” She hissed to herself. “Nine tengu and nine people without wings.”

While the elves and the NSA agents arranged transportation and weapons, and the sekasha magical supplies, she and the ship tengu gathered high tech gear.

“I found the dreadnaught,” Durrack called as Jin winged her down to the bridge. Dusk was deepening into night. “The oni took it downriver to Shippensport and took over the nuclear power plant.”

“Without power, the humans will be crippled.” Pony pointed out the logic of the oni’s attack.

As if we didn’t have enough to worry about. “Did they damage the nuclear plant?”

“No, they haven’t. They just took it off the grid. EIA has dispatched a team to take it back, but they don’t have any way to fight Malice. They’re leaving him to us.”

“Did you find everything?” Getting a nod, she motioned toward the yellow delivery truck that the NSA had produced. “Let’s go.”

Malice cocked head, as if listening carefully.

Suddenly there was a massive boom, loud beyond description. A shock wave of air suddenly blasted through the streets, and a moment later, there was an echo under foot.

What was that?

Someone looped an arm under Wolf’s and pulled him to his feet.

“Shhhh,” A male hissed, and then added in English. “Don’t use magic.”

The male was an Asian human. He tucked in under Wolf’s arm, supporting him.

As Malice crashed loudly through the rubble, the man guided Wolf backwards, unhurried. Malice scanned the room, swinging his head back and forth, as if searching for them without seeing them. What magic was this that the man had?

A cold chill went down Wolf’s back as he realized that the male’s ears were furred and pointed like a cat’s. This was an oni like Lord Tomtom. Judging by Malice’s seemingly blind search, the oni was keeping the dragon from seeing them. But why was the oni helping Wolf?

Malice stilled and the oni froze in place. The dragon cocked its head as if listening closely. The oni male tightened his hold on Wolf as if worried that Wolf could act. Wolf, however, was under no illusions as to how useless his magic was at the moment.

The great beast grumbled, its voice like thunder, and it sniffed deeply. The massive head turned toward them and Malice stared long at where they stood. The oni stared back, gripping Wolf tightly.

Was the dragon truly fooled, or was Wolf the one being deceived? It was an uncomfortable thought — as was the awareness that the oni had hold of his good hand, making him totally helpless between the two.

Malice stalked forward, muttering deeply. The dragon stopped again, now only a dozen paces from them. Malice rumbled out, seemingly in disgust; its breath washed over them. The oni slipped a plastic jar out of his pocket, and carefully shook it, quietly sifting out a bright red powder. Malice sniffed deeply again, forming runnels in the dust at their feet. The dragon flung back its head, gave a series of deep coughing roars and shuffled back suddenly, away from them.

The oni jerked Wolf backwards and they hurried to a staircase at the corner of the room, and down the steps into darkness. Behind them, Malice smashed loudly, roaring, but Wolf couldn’t tell in which direction the dragon was heading — after them or away. In the complete darkness, they made a series of quick turns. Either the oni could see in the darkness or was running blind with one hand on the wall.

“What is that red powder?” Wolf asked.

“Cayenne pepper.”

They turned again, and the black gave way. A grate stood half-open to a dimly lit tunnel crowded by three pipes thick around as an elf. The oni pulled Wolf into the tunnel and shut the grate.

“This way,” the oni male said.

The floor was curved, making walking difficult. A hundred feet down, the tunnel joined another. Wolf knew that they couldn’t be inside the museum any more.

“What is this place?” Wolf asked.

“You ask a lot of questions.”

“I like knowing where I stand.”

“Yeah, nice when you can get it.” The oni kept walking. “These are the old steam tunnels that used to heat all of Oakland.”

“Who are you?”

“My name is my own to have.” The oni said.

“That makes it awkward to thank you.”

The oni paused to look at him. Finally, he said, “You can call me Tommy.”

“Tommy,” Wolf bowed. “Thank you.”

Tommy grunted as if surprised.

“You are Lord Tomtom’s son?” Wolf asked.

Tommy started down the tunnel without seeing if Wolf followed. “His bastard. Don’t think that you did a disfavor to me by killing him. Quite the opposite. I would have killed him myself if I thought I could have gotten away with it.”

“I see.”

“No you don’t. You have no idea. He raped my mother just to see if he could get a human pregnant. It took him months to get her knocked up, and kept her tied to the bedpost the entire time. Even after I was born, he’d come to our place and beat the snot out of both of us and rape her again, just because he could.”

“Is that why you helped me?”

Tommy glanced at Wolf, ears laid back. At the next intersection, he paused to ask quietly, “What am I?”

“You? You’re an oni.”

“The fuck I am. I’m a human.”

“Your father—”

“Was a sadist pig.” Tommy stalked off. “So my good, kind, beat-to-death mother doesn’t count, even though she contributed half my genes, gave birth to me, and raised me to be a man? A human man. I’m not one of them. Not that that means shit to you elves.”

Wolf had never considered that the half-oni would think of themselves as human. How could he refute the difference that mindset made in a person? Making Tinker an elf had not changed her basically human outlook. If the half-oni had the capacity of human compassion, then it had to be logical that they could be revolted by the oni’s lack of it.

“It means something to me,” Wolf told Tommy.

Tommy stared at him again, as if trying to see into the inner workings of his mind. Perhaps he could. “We know that the plan is to kill all of us mixed blood alongside of the oni, but we’re more willing to gamble on you elves being humane than the oni.”

How ironic, that both sides were looking for humanity in the other.

“We don’t want to be their slaves,” Tommy continued. “We’ve had thirty years of that shit.”

“Then why didn’t you leave? There’s a full planet for you ‘humans’ to go to.”

Tommy made a sound of disgust. “It’s all so black and white to you elves? I don’t get how you can live so long and not realize the world is full of gray. We didn’t leave because we couldn’t.”

“Why couldn’t you?”

“You can’t just walk out at Shutdown. The U.N. has fences and guards and you have to have the right papers or they throw you in prison. And even if you get past the guards, you need a birth certificate and social security numbers and high school diplomas to live in United States. And you need money, or you’re out on the street and starving.”

“And you don’t have these things?”

“The oni are masters of keeping power to themselves. They’ve got all the paperwork. They try to keep us from learning how to speak and read English. They know how much money we’re making, and they’ll beat we us half to death if they even suspect we’re trying to keep a little on the side. We don’t know how many oni there are in Pittsburgh — who is a disguised oni and who isn’t — so we can’t even turn to the humans for help. The oni spy on us as much as they spy on you.”

Wolf wasn’t sure if Tommy was telling him the truth, but certainly it would explain how the oni kept control of the half-breeds. He could see ways around the oni enslavement — until then he remembered that all the half-oni would have been born and raised in the oni control. A child could be kept ignorant, molded into believing it was helpless.

Tommy stopped him with a hand on his shoulder. The half-oni’s ears twitched. Wolf caught an echo of harsh voices. He would have to accept it as real.

“There are oni ahead of us,” Tommy whispered. “We can’t go this way. I can only cloud their sight and they have noses like dogs.”

Wolf nodded, and followed Tommy back to a tunnel they’d passed before. They went through a maze of turns and up a flight of stairs to go through another grate into a basement stacked high with cardboard boxes. The labels indicated that the boxes once held cans of food. Just as Wolf wondered if they still contained their original contents, Tommy opened a door and the smell of cooking food flooded over them.

Beyond the door was a large kitchen filled with Asians. A low right-angled counter divided the kitchen off from the restaurant’s dining room. The long leg into the dining room was a bakery display case filled with buns and breads.

“What are you doing here, Tommy?” One of the cooks, an old man, asked in Mandarin as he took a tray of buns from the oven. “Bringing him here?”

“The oni are in the steam tunnels,” Tommy answered in the same tongue.

“Ugh!” the old man grunted. “You get us all killed.”

Wolf looked at the crowded kitchen. “These are all mixed bloods?”

“No.” Tommy wove through the cooks. “These are all humans. That was my great-uncle.”

A herd of children galloped into the kitchen from a back room. Some could pass as human — might even be fully human — but mixed in were children with horns and tails. With cries of dismay, in ones and twos, the adults yanked the children out of Wolf’s path, leaving only one child standing alone.

The little female looked up at him fearlessly and he knew her. Zi.

“Hi.” She cocked her head, puzzled by his presence. She had a cookie in either hand. She held one up to him. “Do you want a cookie?” And when he hesitated, she added. “I didn’t drop it or anything.”

“Thank you.” Wolf took the cookie with his left hand and bowed slightly to her. “That is very nice of you.”

“Come on.” Tommy caught him by the left wrist, and said in rough low Elvish. “If oni find you here — they kill everyone.”

“What is she doing here?” Wolf resisted being moved. He had demanded that the little female be kept away from people that would poison her against elves.

“No one else would take her. The humans are afraid of the oni and the oni don’t give a shit. Look at me, I’m Lord Tomtom’s son, and even I don’t get a disguise to protect me.”

Wolf scanned the kitchen, seeing this time that the children were in the arms of only small-framed, battered women. There were only two males, men made fragile by time. They used Mandarin in their fearful cries, and it was Chinese written on the signs posted around the room. The skin clan used this kind of slavery — transporting women out of their homelands to places they couldn’t speak the language and then tied them down with children.

He understood now Tommy’s hate. It was the same hate that fueled the genocide of the Skin Clan.

Tommy suddenly pushed him back against the wall. “Stay still! I don’t have my father’s talent — I can’t mask a moving object from multiple watchers. They will kill everyone if they find you here!” He glanced to his uncle. “Mask the scent!”

The uncle opened the fridge, took out a container and flung the contents on the grill. An eye-watering reek filled the air. “Onions! Pepper!”

While some of the women quickly herded the children upstairs, others took out knives and attacked onions and bright red peppers. Tommy’s focus was on the door. Moments later, it opened, and oni warriors crowded into the restaurant. There were a dozen large, red haired, horned males. They had war paint on their faces and carried machine guns and swords. They snarled in Oni, wrinkling up their noses against the assault of smell.

The leader was the tallest among them. He set four of the warriors to watch the street and barked orders to the others. Three warriors raided the bakery counter. The rest moved into the kitchen and back rooms. The leader picked out a female, shoved her face down onto one of the tables, tore away her skirt, and forced himself into her with brutal casualness. The woman pressed knuckles into her mouth, stifling whimpers. No one else appeared even to notice, but Tommy locked down hard on Wolf’s good arm.

The bakery raiders stuffed their mouths and pockets and then flung the buns to other warriors.

Outside came a deep roar from Malice echoed up the street.

“He sounds hungry.” The leader spoke Mandarin so that the humans could understand. “He’s probably looking for something to eat.”

The warriors bayed with laughter and gestured at the frightened women. “We can feed him one of these fat sluts. That one looks like it has a fat ass.”

The leader finished with the woman he was raping and slapped her buttocks. “Yes, a nice fat ass.”

Their hunger satisfied, the warriors pelted each other with bread. The leader barked an order. The warriors gathered again at the front of the restaurant. The last one out of the backroom, though, was carrying a whimpering, squirming Zi.

“Look what they have.” The warrior held the little female out by the back of her shirt.

The leader took her by her throat. He turned and shook the child at the human like rag doll. “What is this doing here?”

“The EIA—” Uncle stuttered. “They imprisoned her crazy mother.”

The leader grunted. “If the elves find this here, they’ll know that this place belongs to us.”

“We’ll move her.” Uncle held out his arms but moved no closer to the warriors.

Without word or warning the oni leader broke Zi’s neck.

Everyone had told Wolf about the oni savageness — but he hadn’t comprehended it fully until too late. He gasped out in shock as the oni leader dropped the child’s limp body onto the floor.

“Malice is coming. Throw this out onto the street for him to eat.”

Wolf breathed in and anger burned through him like fire. Nothing mattered but to see these monsters dead. He jerked his arm free of Tommy, summoned a force strike and slammed it into the back of the oni leader. The front of the restaurant exploded out as the strike drove the oni male across the street. He made a bloody star on the far building. The warriors scrambled for cover, pulling out their machine guns.

“Hold still you stupid elf fuck!” Tommy growled.

Wolf braced himself as he flicked through a fire burst. The oni bullets chewed through the other side of the restaurant. Apparently between Wolf’s sudden attack and Tommy clouding their minds, the oni were disoriented to where Wolf was really standing. The fire burst went off, igniting three of the oni into columns of flame.

Wolf slammed a force strike at the last oni. A second bloody star joined the first.

“What the fuck was that?” Tommy screamed. “She was dead! This does nothing but make you feel better! All those women and children are now dead because you had to be a hero!”

Someone as young as the half-oni couldn’t understand that to be immortal was to have forever to regret. Wolf knew if he had let the oni walk away unpunished, he would not be able to live with himself. But Tommy was right. He brought danger down on the rest — the human mothers and half-oni children.

“I’ll see that they’re safe until this is done.”

“Yeah, that will make the kids safe! Until you kill them for no other reason than their mothers were raped by the wrong species.”

“I give you my word — they will not be harmed.”

Tommy caught himself from saying anything else, and stood, fists balled, panting.

“Windwolf?” Oilcan murmured in Wolf’s ear. “If you’re the one that just took out the Chang’s restaurant, Malice is coming your way.”

Wolf glanced out in the street where the oni still burned like massive candles. “Malice is coming. Get the others. We need to move to someplace safe.”

Tommy’s cat ears flicked. “Oh fuck. He is.” Tommy went off to gather the women and children.

Wolf gazed again the wreckage he was leaving behind. Tinker was rubbing off on him.