“With just one of these bombs, they could turn all the elves in the Westernlands into monsters,” Yumiko explained. “We believe that the reach of the spell is limited to the wavelength of magic or one mei. When our people were transformed from humans into tengu, it took all of us, even the ones in hiding, far, far away. Our only advantage is that if the oni wanted the spell to transform all the elves in the West Coast Wind Clan holdings and the southern-most Stone Clan ones, they would need to stay near Pittsburgh. Otherwise they could cast the spell anywhere in the Westernlands.”
“Just the elves? Not the humans and tengu too?” Law asked.
“The transformation spells — we think — need to be keyed to one genetic pattern. When we were transformed into tengu, there were oni guards surrounding us that weren’t affected by the spell.”
Yumiko showed Law a photo on her phone of a large, elaborately decorated egg. It looked like something made if Fabergé had been on acid. “The Skin Clan on Onihida only had access to Providence’s body. Their people hidden among the elves manipulated Forest Moss into finding the sole remaining pathway between Earth and Onihida. In the brief time between its discovery and the elves destroying it, those moles created eleven of these genetic bombs. We believe Kajo has them but we don’t know where Kajo is hiding. Shortly before Jin Wong returned to us, Kajo killed all the tengu under his direct control and moved his camp. Tinker domi believes that he’s using dream crows to stay one step in front of the elves. She says that she could only outwit Chloe’s ability by doing things that Chloe couldn’t understand, even if she saw what it was that Tinker domi was doing. We need to be unexpected to get ahead of Kajo.”
“And I’m unexpected,” Law said.
“You stopped the train,” Yumiko said.
“Okay.” That was not a comforting logic because Law knew how she sketchy her entire plan had been. “How do I pick out this Kajo from thousands of other oni? What does he look like?”
“We’re not sure,” Yumiko admitted reluctantly.
Everytime Pittsburgh traveled to Elfhome, a tiny uninhabited island in the middle of the China Sea traveled to Onihida. The Skin Clan were freed from their prison but needed to get across several of Earth’s international borders to reach Pennsylvania. They also needed legal identification, visas, and the ability to pass as human on a planet that had no magic.
The original inhabitants of Onihida, known as “true bloods,” could jump through all the legal hoops and security checks to make the trip. They were, though, now a small minority on their home world. The immortal Skin Clan had been experimenting on the native population for thousands of years. The bulk of the oni were “lesser bloods” that often had animal genetics mixed into their bloodlines. No amount of paperwork could get them across international borders.
It meant that the Skin Clan could smuggle very few of their warriors into Pittsburgh. They needed a standing army to take on the elves and humans. What they could get in large numbers were poor Chinese women and a wide range of Elfhome animals. These they could interbreed to create a fast-growing warrior stock. Most of the “half-oni” that Law knew, like Trixie Chang, were children of true bloods and humans. The ones hidden away were fathered by lesser bloods. Those ranged from humanlike beings to things so monstrous that they couldn’t be called sentient.
The problem was that some of the lesser bloods would only obey orders from beings that appeared as fierce as themselves. To appear more menacing, the true bloods painted their faces and the greater bloods wore ferocious-looking masks.
Yumiko said that Kajo would be fairly easy to spot among the oni — he was short, slight of build, and wore a distinctive crimson demon mask with horns. She provided a drawing of the mask as the tengu never managed to get a photo of it.
“I’ll keep my eyes open,” Law promised. “But I’m not going to wade into that mess out east of Monroeville, not after what happened at Station Square. Cana Lily tried to kill me.”
Windwolf had protected her but she couldn’t count on his protection for Bare Snow.
“We’re not asking for you to join that fray. It would be very like Kajo to allocate the fighting to an underling. Lord Tomtom would have led their forces on the battlefield if domi had not killed him. Kajo would have not trusted the spell bombs to Lord Tomtom or his replacement. The lesser bloods are cannon fodder, no more, to Kajo.”
Law nodded her understanding even as she wondered if the tengu were giving her too much credit. She had been able to stop the oni before by sheer luck of being onetime lovers with Trixie Chang and having a grandfather who worked on the railroad. The two aspects combined to allow her to apply insider knowledge of how the trains worked to an offhand remark about what Tommy Chang had discovered about the oni movements.
This time she had two photographs, one of an egg and the other of a mask. What was she supposed to do with these?
9: BRACE FOR IMPACT
Two Tinkers.
Two.
Oilcan barely survived a childhood riding herd on one little mad scientist. He couldn’t even count the number of times they’d narrowly escaped death and/or dismemberment. It started when he was ten and Tinker had been an insanely brilliant six-year-old. When most kids were learning how to read, she’d been making go-karts out of old lawn mowers. Making the go-karts led to racing them on a small island in the middle of a shark-infested river. Then there had been the “let’s see if it explodes” phase that led to the rocket sled experiment. The larger and larger trebuchets until they accidentally leveled one of the Roach Refuse outbuildings with a three-hundred-pound cracked engine block. The homemade fireworks. The magical wiffleball shooter. The hoverbikes. The hoverbike racing on the prototype racecourse. The hovertank experiments put on hold merely because she couldn’t gain legal access to a large enough printer.
What were two of Tinker going to be like?
Being older — and not fearless like her — Oilcan had been the voice of reason, reining in anything that was sure to be deadly, but that left a lot of wiggle room for Tinker to exploit. He had often wondered why he was so boringly sane compared to her. He and Tinker were both Dufaes. He thought it might be a case of nature vs. nurture, where his mother’s quiet control won out over his grandfather’s lax parenting. Having met Forge and Esme, Oilcan was having second thoughts on the whole subject. Forge, so far, had been quietly sane. Esme had been the one who crash-landed a spaceship and flew an attack helicopter against a dragon. Maybe it wasn’t the Dufae bloodline that made Tinker so dangerous. Unfortunately, the twins were also Esme’s daughters and all that implied.
“Auejae,” Pony called from behind Oilcan.
Oilcan had started the summer thinking that he was highly fluent in Elvish. Since Tinker’s transformation, though, he’d stumbled over one unfamiliar phrase after another. He wasn’t sure what auejae meant but Thorne Scratch turned with pleased surprise on her face.
“What is it, Little Horse?” Thorne Scratch used Pony’s nickname with the elves.
“This is for you, auejae.” Pony held out a square package the size of a backpack, elegantly wrapped in cloth.
She undid the cloth wrapping to reveal a wyvern-scale vest dyed to Wind Clan Blue. “I…I did not expect you to have one for me. Not so soon.”
The tone of her wonderfully rough, scratchy voice said that she was very pleased with the gift.