Elfhome

“Don’t kill them!” Oilcan cried, getting a surprised look from all the sekasha. “We need to find out where they took the other children.”

Pony sheathed his ejae and pulled out two knifes. “We’ll take them prisoner. Ready, domi?”

“Yeah, fine, whatever.” Tinker growled.

In one fast and violent motion, the sekasha attacked. Tinker had shifted forward, maintaining her shield spell to protect Her Hand as they dove into the back of the van. Merry screamed as Thorne slammed into the oni holding her, knifes flashing. Oilcan’s heart hammered in his chest at the sound. Rainlily grabbed Merry and jerked her back, out of the fray. She was drenched with blood and her yellow tunic hung in tatters. Oilcan tried to move toward her, and only then realized Cloudwalker had hold of him and was shielding him from stray bullets.

Just as suddenly as it started, it was over. The sekasha had the disarmed oni pinned and bound.

“It is not her blood, cousin.” Rainlily rocked Merry as the little female clung sobbing to her.

Oilcan breathed out relief. When Thorne slashed through the driver’s door, he realized, she had cut the driver in half, spraying the inside of the van with his blood. The smell hung thick in the hot air.

“Where are the other children?” Thorne kicked the oni that been holding Merry. “Where did you take them? Are they still alive?”

Oilcan repeated the question in English, and then tried the little Mandarin that he knew. The oni gazed up at him blankly. “I don’t think they speak anything but Oni.”

Judging by the looks on the sekasha, none of them spoke Oni.

“I’ll call Jin.” Tinker rubbed her arm, grimacing in pain. “The tengu will be able to talk to them.”

Tinker’s Rolls Royce sat abandoned twenty feet down Liberty Avenue, all doors open and engine still running. As Tinker climbed into the Rolls to find her cellphone, Thorne staggered to the low planter in the center of the street and sat down. Blood streamed down Thorne’s arm from a slice in her shoulder.

Oilcan got the first aid kit from his truck and bound the wound. “You’ll have to have the hospice staff look at this.”

“After we find the children,” Thorne said.

Oilcan nodded and then hugged her carefully. “Thank you. I couldn’t have stopped them. They would have just driven away with Merry and I wouldn’t have been able to do anything to save her.”

She hugged him tightly, burying her face into his shoulder. There was something desperate in her hold, like he was the only safe handhold in a flood. She breathed deep, with only the dampness of his shirt to tell him that she was crying.

“Idiot,” she growled after several minutes. “You don’t have shields. You don’t have a weapon. Next time, just stay out of my way and let me deal with it.”

He opened his mouth to say that he sincerely hoped there wouldn’t be a next time, but then, that would mean there would be no reason for her to stay close. “Okay, next time, I’ll stay out of your way.”

6: Whelping Pens

Tinker expected Jin to come with bodyguards. He was, after all, the tengu’s spiritual leader. He came alone, apparently trusting her to keep him safe. He glided down out of the summer sky on great black wings. With one easy backstroke, a muffled clap of glossy feathers, he landed on the far side of the train station’s parking lot. He stood there, bare chested and panting, letting the sekasha grow used to his presence. His wings were solid illusions, called into existence by the spell tattooed on his back, real down to their vanes and quills and hooks. He dismissed them with a word, making them vanish back to the nothingness from which they came.

Tinker really had to figure out how they worked.

Jin had a white button-down shirt tied to his waist that he pulled on, buttoned, and tucked into his blue jeans like a priest donning his vestments. When he crossed the parking lot, he seemed nothing more than an Asian man out for a summer walk. He wasn’t even wearing fighting spurs on his bird-like feet; he wore a pair of tennis shoes. The only things that marked him as the spiritual leader of all the tengu was the air of calmness that he seemed to radiate and the dragon birthmark of the Chosen faintly showing under the fine linen of his shirt.

“Thank you for coming,” Tinker said as he bowed to her.

“You needed me, of course I would come.” Even though she had greeted him in English, he’d answered in fluent Elvish. “You’re our domi, it is our duty to serve as it yours to protect.”

It was weird having elf pledges coming out of a tengu’s mouth, but the tengu were safe only because they were her beholden.

Jin tilted his head and then stepped closer to hug her. “Are you all right, domi?”

“No.” She had nearly lost Oilcan. If she had been a minute longer reaching the train station. If Oilcan hadn’t called her. If Thorne hadn’t been there to protect Oilcan. It had been so very, very close. “I’d say ‘give me time’ but we don’t have it.”