A few minutes before race time, the tengu team arrived, bike intact. Tommy wasn’t sure how they slipped it past the various traps his cousins had laid outside the racetrack, but it didn’t matter. It was here, and he was out of time. Everything rode now on Team Big Sky and Team Tinker.
Blue pulled on his racing leathers and mounted the Delta.
John caught his brother’s chin and made the boy look at him. “You do not take unnecessary risks. This is just a race. It is only money. Your life is more important than either one of those. Do you understand?”
Blue glanced to Tommy.
“It’s only money,” Tommy forced himself to say.
Blue pulled on his helmet, started up the Delta, and swung it out onto the racecourse.
Oilcan came out of Team Tinker’s pit, his Delta as bare as John’s. While he was bigger than Blue Sky, Oilcan was a compact man. Both teams were in Wind Clan Blue, near twins as they slid up into their starting gates. Oilcan looked in Tommy’s direction, giving him a long, unreadable study. As Windwolf’s in-law, Tommy realized, Oilcan probably knew that Tommy was half-oni.
Team Providence brought their bike out last, trailing the pack. It was a standard street frame and enlarged power housing. The rider was a tall, lean male with a tengu nose in the team’s bright red color. He frowned at the stripped Deltas as he took his gate at the end.
There was a moment of near quiet with only the deep rumble of the engines as the clock counted down the last second. Then the horn blared, the gates dropped open, and the hoverbikes leaped forward. The crowd roared. Blue Sky darted into the lead position with Oilcan on his flank, and a second later the tengu surged forward out of the pack to close the distance. The lead three flashed around the corner into the first series of jumps. The last bike cleared the gates. As the gate crew moved to swing the gates out of the way, Tommy crossed the track and swung over the retaining wall. He wanted to watch from the stands in order to see the full racecourse.
It was clear that his bike gave the tengu the advantage. In the straights he pulled ahead, only to lose the lead again and again to the more experienced Blue Sky and Oilcan on the smaller bikes. He was shifting too much power into his lift drive to make each jump, stealing too much from his spell chain that provided the speed. Blue Sky had the lead, shaving the clearance of his jumps down to fractions of an inch. Oilcan kissed down each time, seconds behind him, but with nearly a foot in on his landings.
“Yes!” Tommy hissed. His nails bit deep into his palm as he clenched his fist tight. If the two could hold out the entire race, they might win.
There was another straight after the jumps, and the tengu pulled ahead but slowed for the hairpin second turn. Blue Sky flashed past him, riding high up the wall to slip around the tengu. Oilcan took back second and then pushed into first as they went through the moguls, perfectly timing his liftoff to grab the most airspace.
Tommy pulled his eyes off the racers to check on the tengu pit. Their spotter was down off his perch, huddled with the rest of the crew. They knew they were in trouble. What would they do? Tommy watched them carefully. While the elves had accepted the tengu’s claims of being humans crossed with crows, it didn’t make them any less oni in Tommy’s eyes. And oni were capable of anything.
The crew captain broke away from the huddle, talking on his headset, shielding the earpiece from the unending roar of the crowd. Tommy tried to read his lips but couldn’t tell which of the many languages in Pittsburgh the tengu was using. The captain was repeating the word. What was he telling his rider to do?
The captain turned and looked not out at the riders, but up at the grandstand. He was talking to someone in the stands. No, he was looking too high. On the grandstand roof!
The leaders flashed in front of the pits, and the captain gestured at them and repeated the word. Tommy guessed the word—shoot.
Fury filled him, like a cold dark storm. He shoved his way through the crowd to the stairs down to the concession level. The dim cement hallway was empty of people and echoed with the wild cheering.
“I’ve got a shooter on the roof!” Tommy shouted at Trixie as he ran past her in the concession stand. “Get someone to back me up!”
He had to jump to grab the bottom of the access ladder. Then he scrambled up it. A tengu male was crouched at the far lip of the roof, a rifle at his shoulder, aiming at the leaders. Tommy clenched his ability tight around the tengu’s mind and willed him blind. The tengu lowered the gun, shaking his head as if trying to clear his vision. Tommy stalked forward, all need to hurry over, letting his fury carry him. The tengu got to his feet and cautiously backed away from the edge of the roof. Tommy grabbed the rifle and jerked it from the tengu’s hands. Changing his grip on the rifle, Tommy swung it like a club.
“This!” The stock hit with satisfying solidness. “Is!” His hit smashed the tengu to the ground. “My!” The tengu’s nose disintegrated in a spray of blood. “Track!”
The tengu writhed on the ground, trying to escape him. Tommy pinned him in place with his foot, reversed the rifle, and placed the tip of the barrel at the center of the tengu’s forehead. He released his hold on the tengu’s mind, letting him see the rifle. “And no one fucks with what is mine.”
The roaring of the crowd grew, indicating that the race was nearly done. The tengu team would be free to look for their missing shooter, and the grandstand would be swarming with idle racegoers hanging out between races. If he killed the tengu, there could be hell to pay. He kicked the tengu in the temple, knocking him unconscious. Bingo scrambled up the ladder to join Tommy on the roof.
“Don’t kill him, but get him down off here.” Tommy turned to watch the end of the race.
The leaders were coming around the last turn. Blue was tight and low, leaned so close to the inside wall it seemed like it had to be peeling off his jacket. Oilcan was tucked close behind, his spell chain nearly touching Blue’s lift engine. The human flicked out as they hit the straight, moving to try and pass the half-elf. The tengu whipped around the curve and poured all his power into speed and surged forward. Oilcan continued to slide right, blocking him. The tengu tried to shift left, and Blue darted into his path. They roared toward the finish line, the lead two weaving a dance to keep the tengu blocked.
Team Big Sky won. Team Tinker took second. Team Providence took third.
Oilcan stopped Tommy before he reached the tengu team. “Don’t hurt them, Tommy. This has been bad enough for the racing. Don’t take it any further.”
“This is their gun. They were going to use it on you and Blue.”
Oilcan’s eyes widened at the blood-splattered rifle, but still he shook his head. “You beat them. If you take it further, it’s only going to look bad on you.” He indicated the sekasha in the stands.
Tommy flung the rifle into the tengu’s pit. “Clear out and don’t come back. All tengu teams, from here on out, are banned from the race. All tengu are banned from the racetrack. They are banned from every place that I have influence over. I offered a fair race and fair odds, and you tried to grind that into the mud, and I will not deal with you again.”
“Do you think we care?” the captain asked.
“Take your dishonor back to your flock. Tell your shame to Jin. Then tell me if you care.”
It took a minute, but then it dawned on the male that in Pittsburgh, with the elves holding a sword’s edge to the throat of all that was non-elf, he and his cohorts had just fucked themselves over royally.