22: THE MONSTER MASH
With one last jump, the twins arrived at the graveyard.
It was hard to navigate in the pouring rain. The power was out in the city. They jumped high up into the sky, arcing to the east, and floated down to land within the wooded grounds of the graveyard. Lightning flickered. There were towering obelisks, gravestones large and small, playhouse-sized crypts, and statues all around them.
“Hide!” Jillian whispered fiercely as she ducked between two large crypts.
“Why are we hiding?” Louise whispered as she and Crow Boy hurried after Jillian. Thunder rumbled. Louise couldn’t see anything in the rainy dark but the sense of danger pressed in on her like solid black dread.
“Because we’re behind enemy lines in a war zone!” Jillian whispered. “And this place is scary.”
Louise hadn’t expected the graveyard to be scary. Calvary Cemetery had been near their home in Queens—you could see it from the Long Island Expressway. It had been open and orderly compared to the Allegheny Cemetery. Calvary had straighter roads, far fewer trees, fewer hills—resulting in gravestones that had been in rows a bare ten feet apart. It looked more like a parking lot or a department store showroom than someplace scary. She always thought Calvary would be an interesting place to have a picnic and sightsee the many statues.
Allegheny Cemetery—especially on a dark rainy night—looked like something out of a horror movie. It was easy to imagine monsters lurking behind every tree and stone. Worse, she couldn’t even wave the possibility away, saying it was her imagination. This world had monsters.
Lightning flickered again and Jillian jerked her hand up to her mouth, shouting the word that linked her to the Spell Stones. Louise yelped in surprise and scrambled to cast her shield.
Crow Boy pulled out the pistol that he wore low on his leg like a gunslinger cowboy.
Louise trembled as she held her shield. “What? What?”
“Oh, geez!” Jillian shook her hand, breaking the link. “I thought that statue was someone standing there. I almost hit it with a force strike.”
Said marble statue was a robed woman holding what looked like a flower blossom in her hand that she was about to drop onto the grave before her. It was very lifelike and probably historic.
“That would be bad,” Louise whispered and jumped as the thunder rumbled loudly. She was still holding her shield spell.
Crow Boy holstered his pistol. “The dark is to our advantage. Don’t let it spook you.”
Easier said than done.
Louise took a deep breath to calm herself. “Let’s find the babies first and then go after the nactka to free Joy’s brothers and sisters.”
Jillian looked around, peering hard into the darkness. “Where do you think the babies are?”
“They said that they had a tank,” Louise said, trying to remember everything Chuck Norris and the others told them. The babies had talked to an elf who claimed to be their grandmother—which seemed impossible but could be true, considering they had a grandfather elf in Oakland. They also said something about Sir Galahad and a goat that didn’t make any sense. “A tank shouldn’t be too hard to spot.”
“That’s what I thought but this place is a lot bigger—and scarier—than I thought.” Jillian turned suddenly to peer into the darkness. “What are they doing over there?”
Louise followed her gaze but couldn’t see anything. “Who? What do you see?”
“I don’t see—I feel,” Jillian said. “Someone is using magic over…there?”
Jillian waved toward the rolling hills covered with gravestones and trees. They stared hard into the darkness, at first seeing nothing. Then far in the distance, the underbellies of the cloud lit up gold and red with sudden flame.
“Oh, wow!” Jillian breathed as a noise like cannon fire rolled in from the direction of the massive explosions. “That’s a flame strike! We’re seeing a flame strike in person! We can see it all the way from here? That is so awesome! Who is that? Windwolf? Prince True Flame?”
“No,” Louise said without thinking. Was that right? Was it a guess or her power kicking in?
“Windwolf and the prince were deep in the forest this afternoon,” Crow Boy said. “I doubt it is either of them. It must be Tinker domi; she can use Fire Clan esva.”
“Can we?” Louise asked as Jillian brought her hand up to mouth again, this time to try and call the Fire Clan Spell Stones.
Crow Boy shook his head. “Tinker domi is able only because Windwolf gave her access to both Wind Clan and Fire Clan Spell Stones when he transformed her into a full-blooded elf.”
“Shoot,” Jillian muttered with disappointment. “How are we going to find the babies? We didn’t give them a plan—not that they would actually follow a plan.”
Their parents always had an “if we get separated” plan of action. She and Jillian thought it was silly as they always believed that they were far too smart to get lost. Six Flags Great Adventure—the second largest theme park in the world, filled with loud, fast-moving, colorful distractions—had proved them wrong. One minute they had been obediently following after their parents and the next they were lost in a sea of people. It had taken them an hour to admit defeat and follow the plan of asking a staff member to escort them to the “lost parent” counter.
The cemetery was nearly as big as Six Flags. There was no lost parent counter. No helpful employees. No parents to claim them at the end of the night.
My parents are dead and buried in a place like this, Louise thought, and tears welled up in her eyes. It was like a black hole had bloomed in her chest with the gravity of thousand suns. The weight of the grief nearly took her to her knees.
Jillian turned in a circle. “We don’t even know if the babies got here yet—they could have gotten distracted by something shiny or yet another complete stranger handing out Arthurian quests. Find Sir Galahad and the White Goat!”
Louise blinked away her tears as she forced herself to focus. She couldn’t afford to be lost to grief. Not here. Not now. How would they find four tiny dream-walking souls inside some sort of highjacked robotic tank? “Joy is with them. If we do a scry, we be able to get a ping off of her.”
“Oh, yes, that’s right.” Jillian took off her backpack to dig through it. “I printed a bunch when we were stuck out at Laurel Caverns. I thought we might have to hike to Haven.”
Louise realized that she had let her shield spell drop during her explosion of grief. Her left hand was stiff and sore from maintaining the shield the entire way from Haven. She massaged her fingers and palm, trying to ease away the pain. “A scry would work best with a strong source of magic. Are we near a ley line?”
“We’re standing on one.” Jillian took out the spells printed out on their printer loaded with metallic ink. “That’s why I picked this spot. More oomph to anything we tried. Here. Take these. I can hold the shield to give you a break.”
“Thanks,” Louise said.
They’d printed out copies of spells for the nestlings rescue mission. They stored them in plastic sandwich bags to protect and isolate them so they couldn’t be accidently triggered. The names of the spells were written on the outside in big letters to make it quick and easy to find the ones that they needed. Shields. Healing. Scry. Traps. They had taken anything that might be useful. They could probably now cast everything using the Spell Stones but they only had the fingering for a handful of spells memorized.
Louise found the papers printed with the scry spell, took out one, and laid it on the stone footing of the crypt. She spoke the key word. With the extra power of the ley line, a massive dome gleamed to life over the paper. The cemetery took form in ghostly outlines, stretching in all directions around them. All the gravestones, statues, obelisks, crypts, and the decaying caskets under the dirt were shown in wispy details. She, Jillian, and Crow Boy were three small dots in the middle of the landscape of death.
The outer edge of the cemetery was marked with a tall stone wall. There was a cluster of buildings in one corner with a massive number of glowing dots of different intensities moving around them. One building had an active spell running that took up almost its entire footprint. The tracings were too small and blurred for Louise to recognize it.
“Oh, shoot.” Jillian stared off into the darkness in the direction of the buildings. Her ability to feel magic meant that she could sense more from the scry than what could be seen within the gleaming display. Louise could only wonder what it felt like. “That has ‘Villain Hideout’ written all over it.”
Crow Boy crouched to study the distant signatures within the glowing dome of the scry spell. “They’re definitely oni.” He pointed out various signatures. “These are probably wargs. Those are most likely lesser bloods. I think there are true bloods scattered in. They’re not spell-worked, so they’re less magical than the lesser bloods. They might even be humans. There doesn’t seem to be any of the fake ones that were on Earth with Okami Shiroikage. I wonder what spell they have running in that one building.”
He meant the elves pretending to be human who worked under Yves. Of the people that they fought at Laurel Caverns, only one or two had worked at the mansion. It meant most of the staff was still unaccounted for. There was no way of knowing if they had been with Yves or had stayed behind on Earth.
“Joy really stood out when we did this during the rescue,” Jillian said. “I don’t sense her now.”
Louise ignored the confusion of bodies moving around the buildings to scan the rest of the glowing dome. It didn’t seem possible that the babies hadn’t arrived yet. They could have gotten lost, though, within the mazelike cemetery grounds.
Jillian frowned as she continued to stare into the darkness, considering what only she could sense. “I can feel a bunch of little weird things. Are those the nactka?”
Louise spotted a lone glowing dot as something darted unseen through the cemetery, bearing down on them. It was only thirty feet away and closing fast.
“Incoming!” Louise jerked out one of the spells labeled “trap” and slapped it down. The twins had combined “gravity” with “tethers.” It could hold down and then tie anything in its area of effect. She shouted the key word.
There was a startled yelp as the trap went off.
“You got them!” Jillian shouted with fear.
Crow Boy had pulled his kusarigama. He held the chained sickle ready as he stared into the darkness. “They must have some way of being invisible. I can’t see them.”
“Sh-sh-should I hit them with a force strike?” Jillian said.
“Please do not!” a female voice called out of the darkness in English. It switched to Elvish. “I am not sure who you are but the tengu are aligned with Tinker domi and would not betray her, so I think we are allies.”
“How can we trust you when we can’t even see you?” Louise called out in Elvish.
The female whispered something—most likely the key word to the invisibility spell—and appeared at the center of the trap. The female elf was young, black haired, and very, very naked.
Louise and Jillian both yipped in surprise.
“Where are your clothes?” Jillian shouted as Louise asked, “Why are you running around naked in the middle of a thunderstorm?”
“I’m looking for Law,” the female said slowly in English as if she wasn’t completely fluent in it yet.
Louise winced, realizing that in their surprise, she and Jillian had switched back to English.
“Law?” Jillian echoed in confusion.
Unless it was short for Lawrence, it didn’t seem like a human name. It sounded like a nickname for an elf whose full name might be the “Protection of Law and Order in Wind” or “Justice Striking with Fire” or possibly “Lawfully Farts a Lot in Wind.” Some elf names could be downright cruel—what were their parents thinking? It was possible, though, that the female was looking for the police.
“You’re looking for a person named Law?” Louise said in Elvish.
“Yes!” the female cried. “Law is brave and noble! A protector of those who are weaker.”
“Sir Galahad, I presume,” Jillian murmured.
Did that make this female the White Goat?
“What is your name?” Louise said.
“Law calls me Bare Snow!” the female answered in her slow fumbling English.
Which probably meant Law was human, using a nickname for the female. Maybe Law was short for Lawrence. Snow was white but there was nothing goatlike about the elf. Then again, she might be using the English nickname because her real Elvish name was something like Screaming Goat on Bare Snow.
“Law is here—someplace?” Jillian asked.
“Someplace. We…we…” Bare Snow stumbled in English and then switched to a mix of the two languages. “We were following a yellow truck around the city. We thought it came to this very odd garden of stones but we were not sure. This place is so big and odd. To cover the area faster, we split up. We were to meet at the little stone house with the reclining monster cat women but Law did not return.”
Reclining monster cat women? Louise glanced at Jillian. Her twin shrugged.
The graveyard was filled with death symbology that the elves were unfamiliar with. Bare Snow might mean one of the many angel statues or there might be something more exotic—maybe something Egyptian themed.
“Save Sir Galahad?” Jillian murmured.
“If we don’t, the babies will try to do it,” Louise said.
Jillian sighed. “That’s so true. Okay, I’ve got a plan: Death from Above.”
Louise could guess the plan solely on the name. It was a rehash of an abandoned idea from their museum heist. “We’re going to bounce into the middle of that compound?”
“I hate this plan already,” Crow Boy said.
Jillian glared at Crow Boy. “Dropping into the middle means we don’t have to push through all that nastiness and we’ll have the element of surprise.”
“We might be only surprising ourselves,” Crow Boy muttered unhappily.
Jillian pointed out the big active spell on the scry. “I think this is the nactka and that is a gravity-and-tethers spell functioning as a trap; it’s almost the same as the one that we just used. To me, it looks like the nactka were out in the open like bait, and I’m guessing by this dot here in the middle of the trap is our missing Sir Galahad. We drop in, grab the nactka, free Galahad, bounce out. Even if I’m wrong, we can just bounce out before they figure out what’s going on.”
Uneasiness washed over Louise. It felt like they were racing a clock; if they waited, the situation would get worse. “Let’s do it.”
* * *
The reason for Louise’s uneasiness became clear as they vaulted several hundred feet straight up into the rainy sky—this time with invisible Bare Snow added into the mix. Once above the cemetery stone walls, the canopy of trees, and the steep hillside that led up to Oakland, they could hear the endless gunfire of the front line. The oni were pushing toward the enclaves where most of the elves in Pittsburgh lived. Any powers-that-be on the elves’ side were going to be focused on that fight. Their small foursome were the only ones who were free to save the baby dragons within the nactka. One had already been murdered, rendering most of the domana helpless. Louise had the growing sense that a second might be killed at any minute.
Jillian cast “soft” at the peak of their climb, cancelling their acceleration. “They must have generators at the maintenance compound—there’s some lights on.” She turned suddenly to look behind her. “What the hey is that? It just popped up out of nowhere.”
“That” was a giant glowing insect only a mile or so away from them. It seemed to be a scorpion with two massive front pincers and a curled stinger tail—except house-sized and flaming.
“A phoenix scorpion,” Bare Snow said. “The oni are unleashing their horrors.”
Louise assumed that both names were self-explanatory. “Fire makes it stronger?”
“Yes,” Bare Snow said.
“It’s going for Orville or Alexander!” Jillian said. “They were both fighting a few minutes ago but one pulled out of the fight.”
“Tinder domi was hurt?” Crow Boy asked in an alarmed tone.
“I can’t tell who is fighting the horror,” Jillian said. “I don’t know why one of them stopped fighting.”
The scorpion made a horrific noise—painfully loud despite the mile or two distance between them. The sound rose and fell like a siren but somehow not as mechanical—almost like the call of some bird or animal.
“Sounds like a cicada,” Jillian said. “A freaking huge one.”
The scorpion flew forward, a blur of motion. It was breathtakingly fast.
“We need to get in, get the nactka, and get out,” Louise said. “Now.”
“Okay, let’s do this!” Jillian said.
Crow Boy activated his black wings and let go of the twins.
Louise knew that the plan was for the older kids to move out of her protective shield and search for the nactka. Still, her heart dropped as he left the safety of her side.
“Ready!” Crow Boy winged close, hand out.
Louise felt Bare Snow let go and leap, invisible, to Crow Boy. It spoke of impossible courage and naïve trust. Bare Snow seemed to believe that since the twins were using domana magic, they were totally trustworthy. Crow Boy knew how badly their plans could fail.
The tengu boy dipped down as he caught Bare Snow. A moment later, Crow Boy vanished out of the sky, using his yamabushi ability.
The scry had pinpointed where both the nactka and someone who might be Sir Galahad were located but the area swarmed with oni. The twins were to serve as a distraction as the two invisible people found the nactka and freed the trapped human.
“Going in hot!” Jillian announced.
They’d been drifting down toward a tight cluster of buildings in the corner of the cemetery. The maintenance compound matched up to the map that Louise had studied before they left Haven. A new long building of rough-hewn ironwood had been erected beside them, screened from the outside by the stone boundary wall and a tall line of evergreen hedges.
With Louise holding the shield strong, Jillian used the acceleration spell to slam them down toward the wood-shingled roof like a cannonball. They smashed through it, shattering rafters and support beams, to crash hard into the stone floor. Shingles rained down around them. The whole building groaned and shifted alarmingly.
The interior of the long, rough-hewn building reminded Louise of an Amish barn. They had landed in the northern bay. The space was dim, lit by floating elf shines and the purple haze of magic was so dense that even Louise could see it. The floor was made of white marble, its surface polished to a gleaming finish. In the corners of the room were gasoline generators connected to a dozen magic generators—the source of the purple haze. They had always suspected the disappearance of the generator’s inventor had been Ming’s doing. This was proof of it.
A massive spell was marked out on the marble. It reminded Louise of the spell under the cage that they had found Crow Boy locked in. Looking at it made her skin crawl. At the very center, there was blank circle the same size as the nactka’s shell with black lines acting like jumper cables on a circuit board. Obviously the nactka was the missing core to the spell.
There were curtains of fabric hung from the framing timbers, obscuring the rest of the barn.
“Oops! That might be a problem later,” Jillian murmured, gazing up at the hole they had punched through the roof. It was shifting out of alignment for their takeoff as the entire building canted. “Think they haven’t noticed?”
“They noticed.” Louise sensed danger drawing near. She quickly scanned around them. There was no doorway near them, only solid ironwood walls. “We should get out of here before—”
Shadows loomed behind the gauzy fabric of the curtains. Wargs and ogre-sized lesser blood oni shifted forward, a chorus of growling and dangerous muttering. There was no sign of the nactka or Sir Galahad or either of the invisible searchers—but that was kind of the point of their landing choice. The twins were to draw the oni troops away from the real prize.
“Oh, crap,” Jillian whispered.
“Language,” Louise murmured, making sure that she was holding her shield firm.
A woman ghosted through a part in the curtain. There was something oddly familiar about her. She wore a white dress and held a red ribbon in her hand.
“Oh, Esme, you didn’t stop at one, did you?” the woman breathed. “How many more little monsters are going to pull of your hat?”
The woman looked like Anna Desmarais. Tristan had asked about his sisters. What had been their names? Adele. Bethany. Chloe. Danni… Yes, that felt right.
“Danni,” Louise said.
Danni frowned and then smoothed away the evidence that she was surprised and annoyed by Louise knowing exactly who she was.
Jillian shot Louise a side glance. Who?
Had she told Jillian the names of Tristan’s sisters? Had she even mentioned that part of the conversation? The odd reaction of the staff to Tristan’s question?
“No matter,” Danni said as she tied the red ribbon across her eyes as a blindfold. “You. Your changeling sister. Your annoying knight errant. I expected one or all to show up.”
By “knight errant” did she mean Sir Galahad or Crow Boy? One was already trapped. Had she expected the other? What was Crow Boy walking into?
Wargs pushed through the curtain, a dozen in all, snarling. The building groaned and the storm wind gusted the fabric about, showing flashes of true blood oni with heavy machine guns and the ogre-sized warriors with spell-engraved spears. Lightning flickered as rain drummed down through the broken roof.
Why wasn’t Danni ordering an attack? Was she trying to scare the twins into surrendering? Or was she worried any collateral damage could bring the roof down onto the casting circle before she could finish her work? Or had she foreseen the building collapsing? She was drifting from right to left, maybe heading for the nearest door.
If Danni had prepped expecting Tinker, then she would have chosen effective weapons. Louise was fairly sure that, given time, the wargs’ magically cold breath could penetrate a domana shield. The shields allowed light to pass freely and leaked in air, heat, cold, and moisture. The twin’s cold damp clothes were proof of how even the rain could seep through the powerful barrier. Then there were the spell-marked spears. Louise could only guess that they were tailored to fight domana.
Of course, the moment that the battle started, it would be an endurance race of Louise’s shield versus the staggering of number of oni that could come into play. Danni seemed unprotected but she was drifting toward an exit door. She might be worried that she could take collateral damage if she unleashed her troops immediately.
Jillian caught Louise’s right hand with her left. For a moment, Louise thought it was just her sister seeking emotional support, but then Jillian tapped her fingers quickly through Morse code.
DC. FB. Five. L.
Divide and conquer, fade to black, on five at Louise’s signal.
They were familiar tactics out of their playbook of how to get around any adult. They had worked countless times in the past but never with stakes this high. Divide and conquer meant that one twin took point and created a distraction to allow her sister to do something unobserved. Jillian normally took point as she was better at lying while Louise was better at not getting caught while trying to be sneaky. Fade to black meant that the person who wasn’t point created a means for them to escape. Louise would start the countdown once she set up a means to escape.
Louise tapped back “okay” even as her heart went into overdrive. Jillian was counting on her to figure a way out of this mess—probably because Louise could see the future. Louise stuck her hand into her backpack, searching blindly. What could she do with what little she had within her bag?
“You cannot hope to stand against me,” Danni said. “I am an intanyai seyosa. I can see what you’re planning before you can even act.”
Jillian started her part, keeping Danni’s attention on her by making dramatic gestures with her hands. “Adults have been saying that to us since we were born! Your father probably has said it to you more than once. You do remember your father? Edmond Desmarais? Heaven’s Blessing? Emperor of Elfhome?”
Jillian had figured out who Danni was.
Danni laughed. “Oh, child, he’ll be dead in a few minutes along with his snobby-nosed cohorts.”
Louise gasped as she realized the significance of the spell etched onto the floor before them.
“You’re killing them all?” Jillian said in surprise.
“It will be a clean sweep.” Danni smiled widely. “We’re getting rid of all the elves in the Westernlands. The Skin Clan. The Imperial forces of the Fire Clan. All the thousands of Wind Clan. Even the pockets of the Stone Clan. Empty out the entire continent. Dismantle the Spell Stones while there is no one to protect them. At that point, Pure Radiance can rage all she wants in the Easternlands. Any domana she sends over the ocean will be like any other elf up against troops with machine guns and cannons.”
Danni was talking too much. She was obviously trying to distract them while buying time to either trigger a trap or escape or maybe both. It was painfully obvious. She had something up her sleeve that she thought trumped their plan.
Was she right? Whatever they did, they better go big.
Louise’s fingers found what she needed. She hadn’t known what she was looking for exactly but brushing across runes printed on slick plastic clarified a plan in her mind. She tapped out “On Five” and braced herself for action.
Okay, Jillian tapped back and then let go of her hand. Louise felt like she’d been set adrift without Jillian anchoring her. Who was the brave one now?
“What about the sixty thousand humans here in Pittsburgh?” Jillian said. “They have guns and they outnumber you.”
Five.
Danni snorted. “You don’t know your history. Humans have always been fine with subjugating natives to plunder their resources. Christopher Columbus helped to wipe out entire tribes of Caribbean Indians and the United States still honors him hundreds of years later.”
Four.
“Besides,” Danni continued, “the transients outnumber the locals by tens of thousands,” Danni continued. “They thought they were here just for a month or two. They’re desperate to return to Earth. All they care about is what goes into their pocket before they go back home.”
Three.
“What about Tristan and Lucien?” Jillian said. “They might not survive a spell aimed at elves.”
Danni gave a breathless laugh. “It’s not like any of us are going to survive my father. His children are disposable tools. Used until they’re broken and then discarded without a care.”
Two.
“So you’re just going to kill Tristan?” Jillian said. “A little boy who loves his mother?”
“He, at least, had a mother,” Danni growled. She glanced slightly to the right. It made Louise aware of an incoming motorcycle or hoverbike, oncoming at incredibly fast speed. Danni had been delaying for reinforcements. One of her sisters was coming to even the numbers.
One.
Jillian put her hand to her mouth and cast a massive force strike at the nearest support timber. It cracked loudly and the building started to lean at an impossible angle.
Louise pulled the monster call whistle from her backpack and blew the “come here” command. In the distance came a roar of an answer. An incoming horror should distract the oni long enough for the twins to escape.
Danni shouted something. The wargs breathed out. The world whited-out. Louise’s invisible shield became a solid dome of bitterly cold ice. The twins both yelped in surprise and dismay. Jillian cast force strike after force strike. Shards of ice broke and fell to the ground only to be replaced by another breath attack from the wargs.
“We can’t stay here!” Louise shouted and hit the support timber again. It gave a long creaking noise and the building started to fall.
“Okay, okay, I’ve got this…” Jillian said.
“Duck!” Louise jerked Jillian down and a moment later a gleaming shaft of light flashed through the air where Jillian had been a moment before. It had gone through her shield as if it wasn’t there.
“Spell spears?” Jillian shouted because she was scared. “Is that a thing?”
“Apparently.” Louise fought to keep her voice calm.
“I can’t see the hits coming!” Jillian shouted as Louise threw them out of the path of another spear of light.
“Jump us!” Louise said. “I haven’t had a chance to practice the spell.”
“Jumping!” Jillian clapped her hands together to signal the start of their casting protocol.
“Shield up!” Louise wrapped her right arm tight around Jillian as she was already holding the shield.
“Jumping!” Jillian warned wrapping her left arm around Louise. She cast “jump” but they collided with the falling timbers and dropped back down to the floor. “No, no, no.”
Louise yelped as Jillian tried to jump again and they ping-ponged through the collapsing building. “Stay calm! This is not the time to panic!”
“This is a perfect time!” Jillian shouted. She finally managed to leap them out of the hole that they had made in the roof. They broke out into the dark night. Rain smeared over their shield. Lightning flickered in the distance. High in the sky, the lightning was a thousand more times more frightening than when they were safe in a house.
There was no sign of Danni but Louise felt weirdly sure that the woman had escaped the collapsing building. Danni was still a threat. A massive number of oni had gathered around the building’s exit. They pointed upward at the twins, and then a wave of awareness went through them of a bigger threat. They turned and looked eastward and then started to run.
Louise turned to look. A scorpion was rushing toward them like a flaming comet. “We’ve got trouble incoming.”
“That was your distraction plan?” Jillian shouted, pointing at the horror.
“It’s distracting them!” Louise pointed down at the scattering oni.
Jillian jumped them westward to get them out of the path of the horror. The massive glowing insect veered to follow them.
“It’s locked onto us! Why? How?” Jillian cried and then answered her own question. “It must be the shield! It’s a magic unique to domana. It identifies us as the enemy. Well…might as well use it to our advantage! Hold on!”
Jillian dropped them down into the compound proper. There were a half dozen buildings flanking the large L-shaped driveway of crumbling asphalt. All the structures looked like they were a hundred years old, made out of a faded saffron-colored brick with slate roofs. They landed in front of a low-slung garage with seven bays. A large yellow box truck sat within the right-most bay.
There were a hundred oni or more in the area. They turned toward the twins, reacting first with surprise and then, as the horror came roaring after them, with panic.
“What do we know about this thing beyond its name?” Jillian shouted as she flung them toward the end of the driveway, plowing through the oni a few feet off the ground.
“Nothing!” Louise shouted.
Louise spotted an ice chest floating inside a building that looked like a salt shed. A woman was lying on the ground in front of the ice chest, pinned in place with a faintly glowing spell. She shouted something like “Puffball!” as the twins zoomed past the building. If she was Law, then Bare Snow and Crow Boy were someplace close by.
“We need to get this thing away from the others!” Louise shouted.
Jillian nodded and took them down the compound’s drive and out into the city street beyond. “What do you think it’s vulnerable to?”
Louise looked behind them. The scorpion plowed through the oni troops as it charged. Random items were catching on fire: cardboard boxes, litter on the ground, and all the oni troops with fur. “Not fire! Rain doesn’t seem to bother it. Or bullets.”
This was because some of the oni had shot at it. The bullets had seemingly caused no damage to it.
Lightning flickered in the sky.
“Maybe electricity?” Jillian guessed.
“Power is off in the city,” Louise said. “We don’t have access to Wind Clan Spell Stones. Maybe if we dropped a building on it or something.”
Jillian landed them in front of a redbrick duplex. The entire building seemed abandoned with the front picture windows boarded over with plywood. Jillian tried both doors and found them locked. “Oh, come on!” She hit the left doorjamb with a controlled low-power force strike, splintering it at the deadbolt. “We’re hiding in here! It won’t be able to fit through the door.”
The interior of the building had been cleared of everything that made it a home: curtains, rugs, wall art, but someone had moved in recently and started to remodel. The front room had been turned into a makeshift kitchen. It smelled faintly of toast and bacon. A refrigerator stood in the far corner, purring softly, meaning that the building somehow had power. A battered wooden table served as counterspace, holding a toaster and electric can opener. Beside it was a big freestanding commercial sink cluttered with dirty dishes. A large new industrial stove stood under the boarded over front window, hooked up to a large propane tank just inside the front door. Boxes of supplies sat open and partially unloaded. The back of the house was under construction with walls partially removed to make the duplex into one big home.
Something about it felt like Danni, even though there was nothing with her name on it. The house seemed like it might be Danni’s secret campsite—close enough to the cemetery to be convenient without making it obvious that the graveyard was Danni’s main focus in the area. Louise was sure that if they went upstairs, they would find a bedroom fit for a princess complete with canopy bed and spare clothing all in Danni’s size.
It was all very rustic and homey—if one ignored the army of oni in the area, all wanting to kill them.
Louise tried not to think of the swarms of oni. Stay focused! They had come to the cemetery to get the babies and save the nactka. Until they killed the horror, they couldn’t do either.
“I don’t know how to hurt that thing.” Louise tried to shut the door but the force strike had torn the entire frame loose. “The refrigerator is running on a one-ten line. The breaker will trip if we try to just use that outlet. If we could find the breaker box, we could bypass it and maybe jury-rig something.”
“Too complicated!” Jillian caught Louise’s hand and pulled her out of the kitchen, into the dark hallway beyond. “We don’t have any tools or ten-gauge wire or even know if electricity can hurt it. I like the idea of dropping a building on it. With these holes already knocked into the walls, it probably is structurally weakened.”
“I’d rather not be in the building when we drop it,” Louise said.
“I’ll try to keep that in mind,” Jillian said. “It’s going to keep chasing us unless you drop our shield.”
“I’m not dropping the shield!” Louise had already been shot once this summer. She was not going to go through that again. There were too many armed oni in the area to move around without protection.
The scorpion landed with a heavy thud, the light from its glowing skin flaring through the open door. Its massive pincer probed the doorway, catching the jamb on fire.
“It’s going to set that propane tank off!” Louise cried as she felt the oncoming danger. “This building is going up!”
The horror made a loud hissing noise like steam engine letting off pressure.
“It’s going to sing!” Louise warned.
The scorpion made the loudest noise that Louise ever heard. Louder than any train horn or car alarm. It felt like the sound became a physical object to be shoved into her ears and pierce her brain from both sides. She clapped her hands to her ears, forgetting to maintain her shield for a moment. Her palms did little to mute the painful sound. Louise gave up trying to block the noise and recast her shield.
She glanced back as Jillian pulled her through the dark house. The flames had spread from the broken doorjamb to the walls. In a matter of seconds, they would reach the propane tank. Jillian jerked open the back door. Damp night air washed over her. The piercing call of the scorpion was even louder. They stumbled out into the rowhouse’s cement driveway just as the propane tank exploded in a wash of flames that blossomed out of the open back door. Rain poured down over her shield. The scorpion gleamed like a rising sun behind the house.
Louise expected Jillian to jump but her twin pointed toward the alley that ran behind the rowhouses. Right. The scorpion might be able to quickly triangulate our position if we leap straight up.
By staying at street level, Jillian probably hoped that the horror would think that they were still somewhere within the house. With luck, maybe the building would collapse on it.
How clever was the monster?
Louise glanced back to see that the scorpion was plowing through the building, setting the wreckage aflame even as it rushed toward the twins.
Clever enough! The collapsing house wasn’t even slowing it down. It came roaring forward, rain hissing and steaming off its glowing shell.
She braced herself, hand locked in a shield.
The scorpion slammed into her, skidding her back on the wet pavement. The heat of its glowing shell washed over her even through her shield, suffocatingly hot. The blare of its call was unbearable, taking her to her knees.
We can’t fight this!
Jillian cast force strike. The power of the spell washed over the creature but didn’t seem to damage it in any way. Jillian was shouting something but Louise couldn’t make out her words over the scorpion’s call.
The horror beat on her shield with its massive pincers and stinger tail.
What should she do? Even if they jumped, the winged scorpion could chase after them. It was possibly faster than them in the air. They didn’t have any attack spell memorized except force strike, which was mysteriously ineffective against the beast. They had the spells written out on paper but they depended on local magic level. They simply wouldn’t have the power to work on such a large monster. The trap spell might be able to pin down a person but it wouldn’t be able to stop a speeding car. There was just too much momentum to cancel out. The scorpion was bigger than a car. The sound made it difficult to even think.
The horror shoved them across the driveway and up against something metal. It gave a hollow bong as her shield hit it. Louise realized in terror that it was a five-hundred-gallon gasoline storage tank.
“Why does Danni have so many things that explode?” Louise cried. “Did she know we were going to be running through her house with this thing chasing us?”
Jillian pointed to her ear to indicate that she couldn’t hear Louise over the din of the scorpion’s call.
If the tank exploded, they would be trapped in the heart of the fire. Her shield wouldn’t protect them against prolonged exposure to heat and smoke.
“We need to jump!” Louise pointed upward.
Jillian clapped her hands together to signal a jump and then caught hold tightly to Louise.
Louise nodded and focused on keeping her shield up.
Jillian cast the spell. They started upward, only for the scorpion to bat them back down to the ground with its tail.
“Stupid scorpion!” Louise did a force strike, trying to push it back.
Jillian tried again to launch them but the scorpion had them pinned.
The air within her shield was stiflingly hot. She was starting to feel lightheaded. The gasoline tank hadn’t exploded yet. When it did, the heat would overwhelm them even if the shield protected them from the blast.
She had to do something. But what? They hadn’t had time to prepare. They’d rushed to the cemetery to save the baby dragons. Baby dragons? Wait. There was something she could do. They’d discovered earlier that Joy could teleport and seemed to be monitoring their conversation with something akin to telepathy.
“Joy! Help!” she shouted. “Joy? I’ll get you candy!”
The world was suddenly quiet and cool.
“Stinky bug!” Joy muttered from Louise’s shoulder. The little dragon’s mane flowed as if she was standing in a strong wind despite the fact that the air within the shield was perfectly still.
“Joy, can you call Impatience like you did before?” Louise said.
“Pfft, don’t need hurry-hurry boy,” Joy said.
A massive column of light punched a giant hole through the scorpion.
Louise watched in confusion as the horror suddenly shrank in scale from larger than a house to something only the size of a Saint Bernard. The insect had spell runes etched onto its carapace, although some sections of the spell were now missing, along with various body parts.
“What the hell just happened?” Jillian asked in the sudden silence.
The massive laserlike attack had come from a big square machine. It looked vaguely like a tank with a rotating cannon turret on top but it had no track or wheels of any kind. It just floated in the impossible way that a brick might float. The hovertank came floating over to the twins.
“Tu-tu-doo!” Red did a trumpet impression over a speaker.
“Tesla Mark Two to the rescue!” Chuck shouted. “Hooyah!”
“Tu-tu-doo!” Green copied Red’s impression.
Louise had thought one time that the babies in Tesla were like a crew of a tank. Had that thought been foresight?
“What are you guys doing here?” Nikola asked.
Getting in over our heads, Louise thought. “Crow Boy was securing the nactka. Something went wrong.”
She spoke without thinking. Why do I think that? She remembered the odd shout of “puffball.” She was suddenly sure that the trapped woman was calling out a warning to her rescuers.
“Lots of things went wrong,” Jillian muttered as she hugged Louise tightly. She was shaking.
“Where is Crow Boy?” Nikola asked as the tank’s turret swung right and left as if looking around.
“There’s an enemy intanyai seyosa here someplace,” Louise said. “I think she ‘saw’ that someone was going to try and rescue Sir Galahad and set a trap for them.”
“We can take her!” Chuck said.
“No, you will not take her.” Jillian headed down the alley to cut around the burning house. “You can’t go around killing people even before you’re born. That’s bad.”
“Woof-woof-woof!” Chuck pretended to bark. “That’s my other dog imitation.”
That felt like a movie quote but Louise wasn’t sure from where. It was odd to think that the babies might know something that she didn’t. It made her feel even less in control. To be truthful, they were rarely in control of the babies. Oilcan was right to be worried.