Elfhome

The great and holy Jin Wong. The Buddha of the tengu. He was a secret legend of Pittsburgh the entire time Tommy was growing up. Somehow it was fitting that Tinker had produced Jin out of thin air. And the mighty Jin wanted to meet with the half-oni?

Tommy leaned forward to see the front gate. At a distance, Riki’s young female cousin looked like a little fierce bird. What was Jin thinking, sending her? Did he think Tommy would be less likely to hurt a female? If he did, that he was an idiot.

But Tommy was curious. This was the mountain coming to Mohammad. If he was going to make the ban on tengu stick, he couldn’t meet with Jin at the racetrack. He needed a neutral ground. Someplace where the tengu were at a disadvantage, which meant indoors. “Tell him that we’ll meet him at the aviary in an hour.”

“The what?”

“He’ll know what it is.”

#

The national aviary was on the North Side. His mother used to bring Tommy down to see the birds. When he was very small it was an ancient facility with a few hundred Earth birds and curious elves. Over the years, new buildings had been added and filled with birds from Elfhome and researchers from Earth.

It wasn’t until he was inside and watching the brightly colored songbirds flit through the mock woodland that he remembered why he’d loved the aviary as a child. In the American cartoon, the small and defenseless birds always outwitted the bigger cats and dogs. He could come and see the tiny yellow finches and the small roadrunners and have hope that one day he would be able to defeat his father.

Tommy avoided the new buildings, keeping to the birds of Earth in the old sections. He settled among the owls and waited for the common enemy. The tengu swept into the aviary, a flock of crow black. Jin wore nothing to single him out as the leader of the tengu, except the lack of weapons.

Jin was a surprisingly slight man. Tall. Lean. Quiet. He had a weird sense of presence, though, that made him impossible to miss. It was like every cell in his body was silently shouting, “I am.”

He came with a platoon of bodyguards that Tommy all knew by sight as the most kickass of the tengu. Males and females that even the best of his father’s warriors would be leery of tangling with. It was clear that they would all die to keep Jin safe. Warriors of the cause.

That Jin was bound to the whim of a little girl like Tinker would be nearly laughable if she didn’t have the habit of redefining the world.

“I’m here.” Tommy growled. “What do you want?”

Jin spoke quietly, without any anger in his voice. “I wish to apologize.” Jin bowed deeply to Tommy. “Those who have wronged you have been punished. I have made it clear to my people that I will not tolerate this type of activity.”

Tommy bit down on the distaining laugh that wanted out. A man like Jin Wong didn’t come in person and apologize, not to the likes of him. There was more to this. “And?”

“I ask that you reopen the racetrack to my people.”

Yeah, that’s what he thought. “No. Saying you’re sorry and slapping your people on the wrists will not make this better between us.”

“I put to death those that wronged you.”

Tommy went still in surprise. “You killed them?”

“What they did was inexcusable.” Jin’s eyes were hard and cold. The male was deadly serious.

“You killed all ten of Team Providence?” Tommy asked just to be clear.

“There were thirty tengu involved. The ten on the team and the twenty that laid the bets. I questioned them all closely to discover what they had done and why. They all knew what was planned and cooperated in it, so they were all treated equally. I executed all but one for their crimes. We’re still looking for the last one.”

They weren’t going to find him. Tommy made sure of that. Was this an elaborate scam to get Tommy to confess? Jin could wait for the end of time if that was the case. Oh wait, Jin had been to the end of the time and came back.

“You killed twenty-nine of your own people for trying to cheat me?”

“We were enslaved by the oni for thousands of years.” Jin tapped the cage holding a great horned owl. The large bird clicked its beak at the crow. “For the first time ever, we have the hope for lasting peace. At this moment, though, that is all it is: a hope. The elves must win this war with the oni and we must fight alongside the elves, the humans, and the half-oni.”

“No, no, don’t put us into that mix. We’re flying solo. Hell, half my people are under the age of ten, and a quarter of the other half are pregnant. We don’t want to fight anyone.”

Jin gave Tommy a sad smile. “You have broken your ties with the oni — that is all that is important to me. The tengu has one enemy, and only one enemy. I do not want my people to ever lose sight of that.”

Twenty-nine tengu. Dead. Tommy couldn’t quiet wrap his head around it. That was more than his three aunts and all his younger cousins combined. Lined up and killed in cold blood by the person they would die to protect. The one person that should have been protecting them.