Peace Offering
Since war broke out between the elves and the oni, the stories in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette had gotten a lot more bizarre. Walking trees loose on the North Side. Dragons terrorizing Oakland. A spaceship crashing into Turtle Creek. Flocks of men with crow-wings mobbing downtown.
The Post-Gazette was still printed on paper complete with non-scalable fonts. Olivia had to wear her secret identity glasses to read it. She looked like a prim and proper librarian with them on, auburn hair twisted up into bun, a vintage blue gingham sundress on. No one could tell she was an illegal immigrant, a runaway teenage bride, and a whore. She and Superman. Both from Kansas. Both hiding behind the glasses. Both not what they appeared to be.
“Oh, I love this war.” Peanut’s moaned comment sounded like pure sex.
Olivia glanced up from yesterday’s newspaper. They were waiting for the keva bean handout on Penn Avenue, a block and a half from the head of the line. Earth Inter-dimensional Agency personnel and Pittsburgh Police officers had been on crowd control since dawn. A flood of red uniforms, though, signaled that the Fire Clan had arrived with the keva beans.
Everyone had gone tense as the elves fanned out, even the police and EIA personnel. The royal marines were laedin-caste and proved to be a surprisingly friendly and laid back group. Unfortunately Prince True Flame of the Fire Clan had also brought with him nearly fifty of the holy sekasha-caste warriors known as Wyverns. Because they were considered morally perfect, the Wyverns were above the law. They could and would kill anyone that pissed them off, even other elves. The humans scanned the incoming troops, looking for the scale-armored vests and protective spells tattooed down the Wyverns’ arms in Fire Clan red.
After a few minutes, it became apparent that there were no sekasha among the elves. The crowd seemed to take a collective sigh of relief.
Only Peanut had been unfazed by the arrival of the royal troops. She eyed the marines like they were red-frosted cupcakes. Until the war broke out, all the male elves in Pittsburgh that were interested in intercourse with human women had already been claimed. Peanut had been up against the window of a bakery, drooling at what she wanted and couldn’t get. Every day now brought more elf troops to the city. “Oh, I need to get some of this yumminess.”
“Don’t you get enough at night?”
Peanut laughed. “That’s all men. It’s the difference between a stale Twinkie and one of those hot fresh-made coffee rolls loaded with cinnamon and topped with icing.” She mimed licking her fingers. “Elves. They live forever and they see nothing wrong with sex, so they do it all the time, and they do it oh so well.”
Olivia wondered if it was also why half of the marines were female. Certainly her life would have been very different if her family hadn’t considered sex connected to sin and a woman’s weakness.
She’d arrived in Pittsburgh during the last official Shutdown in mid-July. It was the farthest from Kansas she could get; a totally separate universe from the one she’d grown up in. Elfhome was the world of elves that was a mirror to Earth, with Pittsburgh the only human outpost. It seemed like a perfect place to hide from her husband.
She’d gotten a job, found an empty house to squat in, and everything seemed good. Three weeks later, war broke out. Pittsburgh found itself lost deep in virgin forest, three hundred miles from the nearest elf settlement and an unknown number of oni hidden within the city limits. All contact with Earth and its bounty had been cut off.
Olivia had always believed that if she worked hard and used her head, she’d land on her feet. The writing on the wall, though, told her that she wasn’t going to survive this war. She might be from Kansas but she wasn’t Superman.
Certainly she was no longer surviving with any virtue intact.
Before the war, there was actually a shortage of workers for low-paying jobs. The city had needed people like her to fill the gaps. She’d been working at a bakery on third shift. She was paid under the table, so even though she was only making minimum wage, nothing was being held out for taxes or benefits. A week after the war started, though, the bakery was out of flour, sugar and salt.
Since then, she’d been walking Liberty Avenue with the other hookers, trying to keep food on her table.
“Oh, I want that one.” Peanut pointed at a clump of elves standing nearby. Olivia couldn’t tell which one had caught the girl’s eye. The elves looked like they could be brothers or cousins. Tall. Lean. Red haired. That they were impossibly handsome went without saying; they were elves. “Save my place?”
“Don’t be stupid,” Olivia whispered as Peanut shifted into full streetwalker mode, pulling down the neckline of her tight shirt to show off almost all of her breasts. “This is going to be the only handout. The food is here. The line is going to start moving any minute.”
“I’ll make it quick.” Peanut started to broadcast her interest at the elves and they received her message loud and clear. “Isn’t he gorgeous?”
“All elves are gorgeous.”
“That old one with the messed up face; he isn’t.”
The newspaper had carried candid photos of the new elf lords as they had arrived in Pittsburgh. Only one hadn’t been Paris model beautiful. “Forest Moss on Stone?”
“Yeah, him, he’s freaky looking. They say he’s a complete nutcase.”
Three of the male royal marines drifted over to peer down at Peanut. Olivia was a fairly tall woman but the elves were all a foot or more taller. They were armed with rifles, swords, and daggers. She’d been raised with ten stepbrothers and could probably match any human male in a fistfight, but the combination of the males’ height, weapons, and their sexual interest made her shift away from Peanut.
I’m not really with her. I’m a librarian. Can’t you tell by my glasses?
“I’m Peanut Butter Pie.” Peanut slid her mini-skirt up high enough to flash her red panties. The elves’ eyes dropped from Peanut’s sizable breasts to her lace-covered groin.
“I have heard that peanut butter is very, very good,” one of the males said.
Which was, of course, why Peanut picked her name. Something about the spread made it insanely good to elf taste buds. Peanut claimed her real name was boring and stupid. Not that Olivia really had the right to judge; all the girls walking Liberty Avenue knew her only as Red.
Peanut caught the male’s hand and tugged him toward the tiny dead-end alley called Mentor Way. “Let me give you a taste.”
Olivia shook her head. It was still early morning; only a handful of dumpsters and some fading shadows would screen the two from the curious eyes. Olivia studied the distant head of the line. People seemed to be stirring a block and a half down. Had the handouts started?
“Damn you, Peanut,” Olivia whispered. “I’m not going to starve because you were off getting boinked silly.”
“Forgiveness.” The marine’s friends were still hovering over Olivia.
She’d hoped that if she ignored them, they’d go away. She considered pretending not to know Elvish, but then decided she should figure out what they wanted. “Yes?”
“Are you an adult?” the taller of the two asked.
She considered how to answer. She had been told that no matter what, never lie to an elf. Her forged paperwork showed she was eighteen, but the truth was she was only sixteen. “Naekanain.” She fudged by pretending to not understand. “I live alone. I am one person—how do you say—my household.”
“You’re old enough to marry?” he asked.
“Yes.” She didn’t even have to lie for that one. It wasn’t her fault that she wasn’t “legally” married since the state of Kansas didn’t allow a man more than one wife, and a judge would have had to approve the marriage of a fifteen-year-old. She hadn’t wanted to get married in the first place.