But if she didn’t use magic, then his weakness was all his fault.
Spot couldn’t keep up. They were moving too fast. They needed to keep ahead of the platoon until they could find a place to trap the oni. They needed a gorge or cliff to take out the entire platoon at once. If even one escaped, they would have the entire oni force chasing them.
It was becoming apparent that Tommy had to either carry his cousin or leave him behind. Tommy couldn’t afford to wear himself out; not with the rest of the family depending on him getting the damn elf bitch back to Pittsburgh. They were a hundred miles deep in a forest filled with oni, wargs, and man-eating plants. It would be kinder to kill the boy than to leave him — but Tommy couldn’t bring himself to do it. He put it off even as the boy fell farther and farther behind. As Tommy hit the top of a tall ridge, he realized Spot was totally out of sight. Sighing, he stopped on the pretense of studying the lay of the land.
As if their situation wasn’t bad enough, the valley beyond was broad and glittered with standing water half hidden behind dying trees. He growled at the sight, shaking his head.
“What is it?” Jewel’s breasts glistened with sweat and strained her dress with every deep panting breath.
Tommy turned away from the distraction her chest presented. “We’re boxed in. Black willows prefer marshes.” He spotted one of the massive trees stalking through the wetland and pointed it out to her. “My illusions don’t work on creatures like them.”
He glanced back the way they had come. From their perch on the ridge, he could now see the oni following them. A full platoon of thirty warriors was cresting the last hill and pouring down it at a fast trot.
Spot scrambled up the final bit to the top of the ridge, gasping for breath between whimpers of distress.
“It’s okay,” Tommy said despite the sick feeling roiling in his stomach. He couldn’t delay his decision any longer. He couldn’t keep both Jewel Tear and Spot safe, and for the sake of the rest of the family, the female had to be the one he saved. He scratched Spot behind each floppy ear. One quick twist and he could break the boy’s neck cleanly.
Spot looked up at him, trusting him completely.
Jewel put a hand on Tommy’s shoulder. “I can use the marsh to kill the oni.”
Could he trust her? For Spot’s sake, did he really have a choice?
“Let’s go then.” He hefted Spot onto his back.
It went against everything Tommy had ever felt or believed to trust Jewel Tear, but still he followed her into the swamp. She cast spell after spell as they pushed through the underbrush. He could hear the calls of the oni as they hit the top of the ridge and spotted them.
“They’ve seen us,” he warned.
She gestured, and he felt the change of air pressure as her shield encircled them. “Good! Let them chase us!”
He laughed at the savage tone of her voice. The ground underfoot was firm despite looking water-soaked. Somehow she was building them a path and, most likely, destroying it behind them. A bullet hit a tree in front of them and ricocheted with a whine. Jewel ignored it, shouldering her way through the underbrush to keep her hands free to cast spells.
He felt the ground shake and heard the crashing of something huge moving in front of them. “It’s a black willow.”
“I know.” Jewel turned toward the tree.
“What are you doing?” He paused only to be shoved from behind by her shield. He suspected if he didn’t keep moving she might be able to drag him along behind her with it.
“I’m going to use the tree against them.” Jewel Tear crashed through a stand of tall cattails, and suddenly they were face-to-face with a black willow. It was a huge, ancient thing, nearly two hundred feet tall, with a massive trunk completely blocking their way. One of the root-feet tore itself up out of the soil, stretched out and slammed its way back into the soft earth. The ground shook and the tree lurched closer. The whip-like branches snaked out and snared a rabbit darting through the cattails a dozen yards to their right. With a rustle like wind through leaves, more branches reached down and wrapped around the animal, cocooning it in green wicker even as it lifted the squirming, helpless animal upward. A muffled scream came from inside the wriggling ball. Blood was dripping from between the tightly woven branches even as it stuffed the rabbit into a huge maw where the trunk forked.
Spot yipped in fear and Tommy bit down on a curse.
“Come on.” Jewel stepped calmly over one of the splayed feet of the willow.
“Crazy elf bitch,” Tommy growled lowly. He had no choice but to follow.
“They hunt by vibration of the ground,” Jewel said. “I’m masking our footsteps. It’s blind to us.”
She led them several hundred feet deeper into the marsh. “Hold very still.” She cast another spell, a second, and then a third. “This way.”
From behind them there was suddenly screaming and rapid gunfire. They plunged through chokeberries, pussy willows, and nettles. There was an unnatural bridge of land through a pond filled with fairy lilies gleaming in the gathering dusk, and they stopped within sight of another towering black willow.
“Shh, don’t move,” Jewel whispered.
Tommy hadn’t planned on it, not even if someone set fire to his feet.
There was the deep cough of a flamethrower, and dusk lit up with the sudden flare. He glanced back to see the distant tree lift up the oni with the flamethrower. It cocooned the warrior even as its massive crown caught fire. The crushing branches ruptured the weapon’s fuel tank, and the entire bundle became a bright sun. The black willow seemed unable to unwrap its branches from the oni and waved the flaming ball even as it tried to back quickly away from its own limbs.
“That tree is toast,” Tommy whispered.
“I’m sending in this one,” Jewel whispered and cast a spell.
The black willow in front of them shifted as if she had prodded it hard. The world shook as it stomped toward them, and then, with branches trailing over Jewel’s shield, it walked past them. Spot whimpered, burying his face into Tommy’s hair.
“Hush,” Tommy breathed. “You’re not hurt. Be brave.”
Jewel stood still, casting spell after spell, watching the black willow as it forged its way toward the burning tree.
“How did you do that?” Tommy asked.
“They like soft earth, but they instinctively move away from land that’s too unstable. They can’t right themselves if they topple over.”
“You can’t let any of the oni out of this swamp alive.”
“Don’t worry. They’re all mine now.”
An hour later, they reached the far side of the marsh. Jewel Tear had set a total of four black willows onto the oni. By the second one, the oni were no longer giving chase but trying only to escape the marsh alive. Jewel Tear continually cast spells to keep the platoon trapped in the thick mud while herding the black willows into their midst. The gunshots and screaming decreased slowly until the swamp went silent. All that marked the oni was the burning tree and three well-fed black willows.
“You got them all?” Tommy wanted to be sure.
“Trust me.” Jewel Tear had no idea how impossible that was. “I got them all.”
The food bags held very little in terms of fruit and bread. Tommy didn’t want to trust the smoked meat that the oni had been carrying; it could be anything from pork to human. He built a small fire and then went out to set snares for rabbits.
By the time he returned to their hidden camp, Jewel Tear had worked her female magic on Spot. The boy was asleep, sprawled halfway across Jewel Tear’s lap as she picked nettles out of Spot’s dark fur.
“His fur is so soft,” Jewel murmured as she ran her hand over the boy’s head. She found another little black seed caught in his fur and plucked it out.
“It’s soft because he’s young.” Tommy lit his last cigarette, dragged the smoke deep into his lungs, and wished he had a whiskey to chase it. It had been a shit day. “It will shed out to coarser fur when he gets older.”
“I’ve never seen a child before.”
Tommy thought she meant “oni child” and started to bristle. Why did the elves insist that they were always “oni” and not “human?” They were equally half of each.
Jewel Tear, though, took no notice of his soft growl. “He’s so small. I don’t remember being so little, but I suppose I was.”
It was then he realized she meant “child” in general, but that didn’t seem possible. Elves weren’t adult until they were over a hundred years old. “You’ve never seen a child before?”
“They’re like mythical things. Oh, I’ve met a few older doubles at Summer Court, but you can’t really count them. They’re all but adults by that time. They’re not tiny like this.”
The elves’ terror of the oni’s proliferation suddenly made a great deal more sense. Tommy couldn’t put a number to the infants he’d fed, diapered, held as they died from beatings their own fathers gave them, and quietly disposed of. He was only twenty-four. To live to be more than a hundred and never have seen a child?
“Can he talk?” Jewel petted the sleeping boy like he was a puppy. “Or isn’t he old enough yet? When do children start to talk? My mother was horrified that all I did for months after I was born was laugh and cry — she thought there was something wrong with me.”
“Yes, he can talk. He’s just shy. He’s never met anyone outside our family.”
“Because of how he looks.”
“Yes.”
Jewel took Spot’s very small and human hand in hers and studied it closely. “His mother was human? Your mother’s sister?”
“Yes.”
Carefully she shifted the boy off her lap and gave his furry head one last pet. “What of his father?”
He took another drag on his cigarette and breathed out the truth. “I killed him.”
He’d never told anyone. He might have been Lord Tomtom’s bastard son, but the warriors his father had brought from Onihida were all considered royalty compared to the half-bloods born in Pittsburgh. His father would have executed Tommy if he’d found out. It had always been too dangerous to tell anyone. Tommy wasn’t even sure why he told her.
She nodded, neither shocked nor dismayed.
Tommy found himself explaining. “The oni used my mother and aunts as whores. It was safest just to suffer. But Spot’s father was more animal than most oni. He hurt my aunt badly. I had to do something.”
She watched Spot sleeping for a minute before murmuring, “It was good of you to hate the father but love the child.”
He laughed at the use of the word “love.” He cared for his family and valued them, but only the weak used words like “love” and “cherish.”
Any intelligent reply he had in his head vanished when she plucked at her dress bodice to cool herself. It left him with just hard want. For a moment or two, she didn’t notice his focus. Then she realized where his gaze was riveted. She stilled. And then, hooking her fingers into her bodice, she slid it down, freeing her right breast.
His hand cupped it before he even realized he had moved. It was perfection of a breast, filling his palm without overflowing, softer than silk, the nipple red and beautiful as a flower. He caressed it lightly with the pad of his thumb, and her gasp made it feel like a cord had been threaded down through his body, wrapped tight around the base of his dick, and yanked tight.
He managed to stop himself inches from kissing her. She had her head tilted up, lips parted, ready for him. “Why? Why are you doing this?”
She blushed and tried to look away.
“Answer me!”
Anger flared in her eyes. “I’m fertile. I know what they did to the kitsune. They promised me the same when they got me to the whelping pens.”
“So you’re using me to get yourself pregnant?”
“It’s not as if you haven’t enjoyed the process,” she snarled. “And yes, if I can fill my womb with your child, there won’t be room for them to get some monster on me, no matter what they mate me with.”
Her eyes blazed at him, full of fury and determination. He had the sudden image of her knocking him down and straddling him to get what she wanted. The thought took him to his knees. She tangled her fingers tightly in his hair and pulled him to her breast. It tasted as perfect as it looked. It was even better as he watched her anger melt to pure wanton pleasure.
He had heard once that the original lords of the elves had bred the domana to be the perfect whores. He could readily believe it as he stripped her bare. Everything from the unbelievable softness of her skin to how she contracted around him as he nibbled on her ears — it was as if she’d been created to bring pleasure. He would never again have a female so perfect in every way. He wallowed in her perfection.
Yes, he was going to enjoy filling her womb. He’d worry about the consequences later.