Now! Oilcan stepped in front of Moon Dog and cast his shield.
The swarm crashed on the invisible edge of the spell’s dome. They recovered to circle around the shield, a hundred alien faces staring at him. Oilcan never thought he was scared of insects but fear washed through him at the sight.
Thorne Scratch had kept pace with him despite being able to outrun him. She had shouldered her bow. As his shield went up, she drew her sword and stabbed through the giant hornet puppet on Rebecca to pierce the insect within. “Aim for the center of their thorax!”
Elfhome hornets were normally “Pittsburgh colors” of mostly black with touches of gold and only the size of a man’s thumb. Their stings were extremely painful but not normally deadly. Oilcan had burned their cone-shaped paper nests whenever they had taken up residence at the salvage yard or out at his barn.
The oni’s attack hornets were amber with stripes of black and, judging by the flash impressions of when the puppet-shell went translucent, large as a rat. Oilcan had no idea how deadly their poison was.
Oilcan’s shield had stopped the bulk of the swarm but three hornets had been close enough to be included inside his shield. Oilcan held the spell, trusting the others to deal with them. Moon Dog and Thorne killed the insects with quick, efficient stabs.
“We should reserve arrows.” Thorne sheathed her sword to check Rebecca’s wound. “Use Force Strike while holding the shield.”
“Oh damn, that burns!” Rebecca hissed in pain. “We’ve got to move. They’re off-loading an entire platoon from a barge. The hornets are just the first wave.”
“Can you walk?” Oilcan asked, as Rebecca hadn’t gotten off the ground.
“I can fly,” she said through gritted teeth.
Oilcan steeled himself to do a Force Strike into the swarm without dropping his shield. This would be a bad time to mess up his fingering. Hold the shield steady. Force Strike! The spell smashed away from him, reducing the hornets in its path to small wet splatters on the broken pavement. It also took out a stop sign and part of a building behind the insects. “Oops.”
“Only lives matter in war,” Thorne said.
He nodded but still aimed his Force Strikes with more care. It took three tries, but he smashed the insects to pulp. He dropped his shield and cried, “Let’s go!”
“I need a boost to get off the ground,” Rebecca said. The two sekasha hauled her to her feet.
“On three,” Thorne said. “One. Two. Three.”
They flung the tengu girl up higher than Oilcan thought possible. Her great black wings swept downward and she climbed higher.
“They’re coming!” Rebecca cried as she rose above the third-story buildings.
“Run!” Thorne commanded.
They ran back to the flatbed. Oilcan scrambled into the driver’s seat and turned the key. The big engine rumbled to life. Oilcan had never heard anything so reassuring sounding. Thorne climbed in the passenger side. Moon Dog vaulted onto the back. A moment later, Rebecca landed beside the male elf.
“Hold on, this might get crazy!” Oilcan stomped on the accelerator. He’d have to be careful on turns and stops. The flatbed didn’t have any sides or safety belts to keep the two in the back on the truck. It was one of the main reasons why he’d put the little kids in his pickup. The other problem was that the flatbed was a beast to drive. Blue Sky had mad skills at driving but the truck needed someone tall enough to work the stiff double-clutch manual transmission. Oilcan practically had to stand on the clutch to shift into second. It would have been unfair to expect the little half-elf to do it in a panic situation.
Oilcan was roaring up to fourth gear when Moon Dog called, “Here they come! On fast little chariots!”
On what? Oilcan glanced into his driver’s side mirror. The oni had hoverbikes. Of course they did! There seemed to be a baker’s dozen. A menacing black Jaguar sports car growled around the corner and joined the pack. The oni hoverbikes weren’t racing machines; street bikes became highly unstable over ninety miles per hour. The sports car wasn’t much better. The flatbed was stable as a rock and had a powerful V8 engine. Sheer physics were on Oilcan’s side.
Rebecca suddenly slid across the weapons crate and in through the back window. She’d dismissed her wings. Sweat covered her face. “The poison is setting in. I don’t know how much longer I’m going to be upright.”
“You’re fine,” Oilcan said to calm himself, shifting into fifth. If he ignored the guns, it was just a simple street race. He’d been racing since he was ten, just not with so many lives on the line. “It’s fine. Everything is fine.”
“I’ll deal with them.” Thorne pushed Rebecca down onto the floor to get her out of the way, and went out the window.
If Oilcan wasn’t so scared, he would probably feel sorry for the oni. Hoverbikes did not offer a lot of protection in the best of times. Also, the only people in Pittsburgh who knew their limits better than him were Tinker and Blue Sky. “Hold on, we’re making a right-hand turn!”
“We’re braced!” Thorne shouted back.
He made the turn as fast as he dared onto Tenth Street, shifting back down to fourth to give him more control. Two blocks ahead, the Tenth Street Bridge rose up to cross the Monongahela River. Hoverbikes couldn’t cross wide bodies of water; the magic involved in the lift drive required a high surface tension that rivers didn’t afford. If the oni wanted to give chase, they were going to have to stick to the straight, narrow shot of the road. Nothing to hide behind. Limited weaving and bobbing.
More importantly, it would lead the oni forces away from Oilcan’s kids.
The narrow, three-lane suspension bridge painted Pittsburgh gold ran fifty feet above the river with a span of a quarter mile. Oilcan floored the accelerator, shifting up through fifth to sixth gear. The big flatbed truck had a powerful engine meant to carry heavy loads at highway speeds, but it meant that without a load, the rig could fly. He wanted to get as far ahead of the pack as he could. His mind was racing even further ahead, mapping out a course. He heard Thorne get her rifle out of the weapon’s crate.
“Hold steady!” Thorne shouted.
Oilcan checked his side mirrors. The hoverbikes and Jaguar fanned out behind them, taking up all three lanes. There was a crack of a rifle. One of the bikes disintegrated at eighty miles per hour as the wounded rider allowed part of the machine to touch the pavement. The bikes started to weave back and forth in the narrow lane, which was a horrible plan at that speed with those vehicles. Two collided, made contact with the bridge’s side barrier, and instantly became tumbling bits and pieces. One tried to pop up onto the arching main cable. It missed the landing, hit the railing of the pedestrian walk, lost its balance, and slid off the side. The oni rider fell screaming into the river far below.
Thorne shot again, taking out another. Eight hoverbikes closed quickly.
“I’m taking another right turn ahead!” Oilcan warned as they neared the end of the bridge. He downshifted to gain more control over the flatbed. “Going into a tunnel.”
“Tunnel?” Thorne repeated to confirm.
“Yes! A short tunnel!” Oilcan shouted. “We’ll only be in it a few minutes at this speed!”
The end of the bridge was a confusing mess as there were various levels of road crossing their line of sight. The four lanes of the Parkway crossed directly overhead at the end of the bridge. It obscured the fact that on the other side of the intersection, the century-old Armstrong Tunnel cut through the base of bluff, directly under Mercy Hospital.
“Hang on!” Oilcan called as they hit the end of the bridge and ducked under the Parkway. The bridge and the tunnel didn’t match up completely, creating the need to swerve slightly. His wheels squealed in complaint as he entered the tunnel at nearly a hundred miles per hour.