Wolf Who Rules

"Stop squirming or I might drop you." Riki growled through teeth gritted with the effort to carry Tinker aloft.

She glanced down and went still in shock of being dangled mid-air forty feet up and climbing. "Shouldn't we be going down?"

"Down is good for you - very bad for me."

"Damn it, Riki, my people need me. Put me down!" Tinker found herself gripping his arms so he couldn't just drop her.

"There's so many things wrong with that statement that I don't have breath to explain it all."

Movement at the window she'd smashed out of caught her eye and with relief she saw Cloudwalker pointing up at her. Moments later Pony and the others joined him at the opening.

"Oh, thank gods." Tinker breathed.

Riki rose above the roofline. The crown of the black willow bristled in the street beyond. Its booming footsteps echoed up from the canyon of buildings. She felt a great surge of magic and a massive fireball suddenly engulfed the tree. Whoa! Apparently Prince True Flame had arrived. No wonder the tengu didn't want to land.

Riki dipped down behind the next building, out of sight of her Hand. Black smoke billowed behind them. He flew straight west - as the saying went-as the crow flies, faster than a man could run despite being weighed down by her. When he reached the Ohio River, he turned and followed its course.

Where the hell was he taking her? It occurred to her that he couldn't have been just passing by and caught her by luck.

"You planned this! You knew if you screwed with my spell, I'd come to fix it."

"Would you believe this had nothing to do with you?"

"No."

"Believe it not, the world does not revolve around Tinker the Great."

How far could Riki fly? Could he keep up his speed, or had that been a sprint? And what did he want with her?

She tried to form a plan to escape. Riki, though, wouldn't underestimate her - he knew her too well. Of all the people in Pittsburgh, he could match wits with her. Her first thought was to force him to drop her into the river. The large dark form of a river shark swimming under the water, following their passage, killed that plan. They followed the Ohio around its gentle bends, and Pittsburgh vanished behind the swell of the surrounding hills. Once the city was out of sight, Riki climbed the steep hill that once was Bellevue and crossed the Rim. There he dove into the ironwoods. The forest canopy rushed toward them, seeming to her a solid wall of green. Riki though flicked through openings she hadn't seen, darting through slender upper branches to finally land on a thick bough, close to the massive trunk.

The moment they landed, Tinker twisted in his hold and swung at him hard as she could, aiming for his beak-like nose.

"God damn it!" He caught her hand and twisted her arm painfully up behind her back. He leaned his weight against her, pinning her to the trunk. "Just hold still!"

Cheek pressed to the rough gray bark, Tinker saw for the first time how far up the tree they stood - the forest floor lay a hundred feet below. Normally she didn't mind heights - only normally she wasn't this high up with an enemy spy. She felt stopped struggling, fear trying to climb up out of her stomach. She swallowed down on it - she had to keep her head.

Riki grabbed her right wrist, and then catching hold of her left, bound both hands behind her with a thin plastic strap. Once she was bound helpless, he turned her around. He wore war paint-streaks of black under his vivid blue eyes and shock of black hair. His shirt was cut on the same loose lines of the muscle shirt he wore often during her captivity by the oni, but of glossy black scale armor. On his feet, with their odd bird-like toes, he wore silver tips that looked razor-sharp.

"What do you want?" She was pleased she didn't sound as scared as she was.

"I'm not going to hurt you."

"Somehow I don't believe you." She wriggled slightly to indicate her tied wrists. It made her teeter alarmingly on the branch, so she carefully scrunched down until she straddled the thick limb. There, perfectly safe. Ha!

Riki watched her with a cocked head. "There's no shame in being afraid of heights. Most people are."

She stared at him with shock. That was exactly what he said in her dream - wasn't it? She glanced downward and felt dйjа vu; they'd been up high in her nightmare.

"What do you want?" she asked. "Are you going to turn me over to the oni again?"

"No. When you killed Lord Tomtom, we Tengu managed to break free of the oni."

"I gave that up. You melted the witch, so I got out of my no-compete contract."

This was seriously weird.

"Riki, who is the wizard of oz?" "Huh?"

"I had a dream and you were in it."

"And you and you and you too," Riki quoted the movie.

"Oh good, at least you know the source. In my dream, I was trying to get to the wizard of Oz."

"Ooookay, and I thought I was deep in left field. Oh this is sad."

"Do have any idea who he might be?"