But if he used the money to restart his businesses, then it was more than enough to keep them free of elfin entanglements. The most profitable was running numbers on the hoverbike races. Now that martial law had been lifted, racing could start again. Carefully managed, he could grow the seed money.
And money meant freedom.
John Montana ran a repair shop and makeshift gas station out of the old McKees Rocks Firehall. He also captained Team Big Sky, which had ruled the racing season until the elves locked the city down. The firehall’s three tall garage doors were open to the summer night as Tommy pulled up on his hoverbike. John had a car up on the end rack. Surprisingly, his younger half-elf brother, Blue Sky, was with him. The boy was practicing drawing a wooden sword and bringing it up into a guard position. It confirmed the rumors that the elves had discovered that the boy’s father had been a Wind Clan sekasha and taken custody of him. Apparently they’d given John visitation rights to the brother he had raised like a son. How good of them.
John came out from under the car and greeted Tommy with a cautious look and a nod. “Blue, I’m getting hungry. Can you heat up the food you brought home from the enclave?”
Being a good kid, Blue immediately put away his sword. Blue was seventeen years old, but because of his elf heritage, he was as small and naïve as a ten-year-old. “Is Tommy staying for dinner?”
“No, he’s not.” John mussed Blue’s hair and then gave him a little push to get him moving. He waited until the boy had left before asking, “What do you want?”
Did John know that Tommy was half-oni? Of all the people in Pittsburgh, he might know, since Blue was coming and going from the viceroy’s enclave. It was hard to tell, as John had always been protective of his little brother around Tommy.
“Elves lifted martial law,” Tommy said.
“I heard.”
“I’m setting odds for this weekend.” Tommy leaned on his handlebars, keeping to his bike out of grudging respect for John. The man had always done right by his brother, even though he wasn’t much more than a kid when they’d lost their mother. “Is Blue riding?”
John nodded. “The sekasha figured out fast that taking everything from him would only break him.”
Was it good of the elves to be worried about breaking their possessions? The oni never did. Did it make the elves more compassionate, or just more careful with what belonged to them? “Letting him come back here is also to keep him from breaking?”
John pressed his mouth into a tight line, as if he’d said more on the matter than he wanted to.
“If I was you, it would piss me off.” Tommy pressed for more information, wanting to know what is was like to have elves control your life. “Them taking him like that.”
“Didn’t say I was happy about it.” John lowered the rack, dropping the car down to the garage floor. “But some of it makes sense. He likes to fight. It’s why he likes to ride. And since we don’t have any family here on Elfhome, they’ll take care of him if something happens to me. He’s going to be a kid for a long time — probably longer than I’m going to be alive.”
Trust John to still be thinking of what would be best for Blue Sky even while the elves were rubbing his nose in shit. What made humans so damn noble and oni so monstrous? Was it because the oni greater bloods had bred the lesser bloods with animals? Tommy didn’t like to think what that made him, but he couldn’t deny the catlike ears hidden under his bandana. And did those ears mean he could recognize nobility, admire it, but never attain it?
Tommy distracted himself by starting up his hoverbike. He had dozens of teams to visit. “Still think it sucks.”
Since Windwolf had reduced their warren to rubble, Tommy had hidden his family away at an industrial park on the South Side. The building was large enough to hold them all, had running water and toilets, and was easily defended by a handful of people. After the luxury of the enclave, it was also very dirty and ugly. His cousin Bingo guarded the main door. He slid the massive door aside to let Tommy ride his hoverbike into the cavernous warehouse.
“Glad you’re back.” Bingo pulled the door shut and threw the locking bar. “I’ve been getting calls all day. People are asking if we’re taking bets.”
“I’ve been out to the teams.” Tommy fished out his datapad and handed it to Bingo. “Call Mason at the Post-Gazette and give him the list of teams that will be racing. Tell him we’ll be starting to take bets tomorrow morning.”
There was a brittle crystalline crash from the back of the warehouse. Tommy reached for his pistol then stopped as he realized Bingo looked only mildly disgusted by the noise.
“What’s that?” Tommy asked.
Bingo shouldered his rifle. “Numbnuts got Aunt Flo knocked up last time he boinked her — just before Windwolf turned him into an oni candle.”
“Shit, again?”
His cousins were all mildly terrified of Aunt Flo, even though their oni blood made most of them nearly two feet taller than her. The more the oni humbled her, the more she would rage at his cousins. Tommy suspected her fury was the main reason she’d survived where his mother hadn’t. If he didn’t stop her, she was capable of breaking all their dishware. Sighing, he headed to the back of the warehouse.
They had salvaged what they could from the restaurant, including the dishes. They had nailed up shelves to the back wall and stacked the survivors there. Aunt Flo had worked through rice bowls and was now throwing bread plates.
“Stop that,” Tommy snapped. “We’ll need those to start up the restaurant again.”
She flinched away from him, shielding herself with the plate.
“I’m not going to hit you.” Tommy wanted to, though, just for thinking he might. She read the anger on his face and continued to quail. “Throw the last one, and then clean up the mess.”
Reassured that he wouldn’t act, she let loose her anger again. “I didn’t want another baby!” She flung the plate against the wall. It shattered, its pieces raining down to a pile of broken china. “I’m sick of babies! You could have stopped him!” She turned to flail harmlessly at him. “You stood there and let him finish and then you killed him! You should have just killed him when he first walked in!”
He caught her wrist and controlled himself so he didn’t hurt her, despite his growing anger. “He had his warriors with him. Did you want us all dead just to save you from. . what? Doing what he’d done a hundred times before? We’re free of oni now. This time, you can go to the human doctors and have an abortion.”
The fight went out of her and she started to cry, which only made him angrier, because he’d been helpless to protect her in the first place. It had been Windwolf that killed the oni, not him. She clenched the front of his shirt with both hands, seeking comfort from him as she sobbed. The herd of his younger cousins thundered past, all shrieking loud enough to wake the dead, the one in the lead with some treasured toy that all the rest wanted.
God, he needed a drink.
4: THREE ESVA SHY OF A FULL DECK
Tinker had spent the evening studying the recording that Blue Sky had made of the warg fight. She ran it through a video editor so she could isolate the domana and analyze every frame as they cast their spells. Blue Sky had caught Prince True Flame doing the fire strike, Jewel Tear doing the scrying spell, and both the Stone Clan putting up their shields. The fire strike scared her slightly. It looked so simple she barely could keep from trying it out; her curiosity, though, was often deadly to those around her. The problem was she wasn’t completely positive how the prince was directing and limiting the power of his attack. She’d gone to bed wondering how she could practice the spell without worrying about setting things on fire.