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24: FLYING THE COOP


Tristan was trapped, listening to his family fall into ruin.

All he could do was huddle in a ball on the floor, a baby chicken inexplicably cradled in his hands, as Hal Rogers reported one death blow after another. The changeling was on the front line with all the powers of a domana with three esva. She had sekasha from three different clans fighting beside her. She’d called in all the tengu—thousands of them pouring in to answer her summons. She’d unearthed dangerous toys that Roach called “xylophones of doom” and killed the horrors that were meant to plow through the elves unchecked. There were EIA troops on the scene and more expected to arrive. There was a well-organized militia of an unknown number of humans backing her up.

Worse was the information flowing in from other quarters.

Boo squeaked and waved her hands to attract her cousin’s attention while covering the headset’s microphone. “Duff says Sean is on the family channel. He wants to talk to someone here.”

Sean was the oldest of the Roach brothers. He’d left Elfhome to live in Alaska for several years before moving back to Pittsburgh.

“Someone?” Roach looked confused for a moment and then understanding dawned on his face. “Jane didn’t tell him about…the big news…yet?”

Boo shook her head. She disconnected the headset so she could hand the base to Roach.

Jane hadn’t told Sean that Boo had rejoined the family? No wonder Lucien’s spies hadn’t been able to find Boo if she was being kept hidden even from close family.

Roach clicked transmit and spoke into the radio. “What’s up, Kodiak?”

“We were totally right about the cockroach,” Sean said. “What chaos! I’ve never had so much trouble squashing a bug before but he’s flat on his back, legs in the air. The thing is, he did manage to take out our production trucks. Instead of rewording the news coming from the front, I’m going to rebroadcast Bullhorn’s signal. I thought it common curtesy to let Bullhorn know.”

Sean was a deejay for KDKA, the largest of radio stations in Pittsburgh. Lucien had foreseen that once they cut the power, Pittsburghers would be turning to the radio for news. He’d planted trusted moles at the three official radio stations, counting on anything small and indie like WESA wouldn’t have a generator. Apparently said mole at KDKA hadn’t realized who he was dealing with in Sean Roach. Lucien might not have warned their mole because the Eyes already doubted the wisdom of keeping Boo alive. The less said about Boo’s extended family, the better.

Roach handed the radio to Marty.

“Bullhorn here,” Marty said. “Permission granted. Bullhorn out.”

“Roger that!” Sean said. “Kodiak out.”

Roach handed the radio back to Boo, who reconnected the base to her headset.

Father was going to be furious and yet it was his fault. He’d taken the reins of power from Lucien, stripping away Lucien’s ability to keep a close eye on the Kryskills just as they awakened to the knowledge of his father’s plans. If Lucien had been able to keep his careful watch on them, he would have seen them gathering up people and resources to fight back.

Tristan needed to warn his brother. If things continued to unravel, their father’s anger would come crashing down on the nearest person he could punish. Lucien needed to shift to a safe distance.

Boo hissed a curse word.

“What’s wrong?” Roach asked.

“The oni are closing on Duff’s location. He’s gone dark. Our communication hub is down until he’s moved to someplace safe. I think he’s got that one bunny with him, but there’s no one else with him on Mount Oliver.”

“I’ve got to go pick up some troops,” Adele had told Tristan. “And search out a nest of troublemakers on Mount Oliver.”

Adele had gone to find the militia’s communication hub. She was going to kill Boo’s brother if she found him.

“I’ll tell Marc.” Roach brushed past Tristan to reach the back door.

Roach hauled up the van’s back door. The rumble of the generator and rolling thunder flooded in with the smell of rain and diesel exhaust. Roach stepped out of the van, heading toward the knot of people on the other side of the big generator and the pickup truck that had towed it to the station. “Marc!”

Tristan slid out into the rain and dark behind Roach. If he was asked, he planned to say that he was going to find a bathroom. No one seemed to notice or at least care that he left. He ducked to the left, putting the van between him and the people working on the generator.

* * *

Tristan walked quickly away from the van, taking the first turn that took him off the main street and into a back alley. Once he was out of sight, he searched out a hiding space. He tucked under a set of stairs that led up to a second-story apartment and struggled not to hyperventilate in pure panic.

The baby chicken in his hand peeped, oblivious to his fear. Perhaps it was also caught up in its own trauma of losing its entire family. Maybe that was why it kept peeping.

Tristan pulled out his phone. He had to juggle the baby chick into his left hand so he could thumb through the address book. Adele didn’t answer Tristan’s desperate warning call. The phone rang three times and dropped into voice mail. A computer voice instructed him to leave a message. He left a terse warning of incoming tengu and hung up. Thinking maybe that he’d guessed wrong who was who, he tried the number assigned to “Sissy.” The same response. He repeated the warning.

He called Lucien. Tristan expected it to just ring three times but the phone rang and rang. It made sense that Lucien didn’t have his phone set up the same way as the Eyes. His brother would need time to get out of their father’s hearing to answer his phone.

Just as Tristan started to think that Lucien wouldn’t answer, his brother’s voice said, “What is it?”

“Everything has gone south,” Tristan said. “The changeling wasn’t affected by the spell. She’s killing the horrors right and left. There’s at least two radio stations broadcasting the fighting. All the tengu are fighting—”

“What about Boo?”

You’ve got to get away from Father, Tristan wanted to shout but he answered the question as calmly as he could. “She’s back with her family and they organized an entire frigging militia—”

“Is she safe?”

Tristan nearly screamed. He stopped. Counted to three.

“Is she?” Lucien asked again. “Is she safe?”

“Yes, she’s safe.” He forced himself to be calm. “She’s with her older brother Marc and their cousin William Roach and a bunch of tengu. She’s obviously told them everything she knows about you and the Eyes and our plan.”

“I kept her innocent of our plans.” Lucien’s voice went soft and gentle. “Nothing she can tell them can harm us.”

She told them enough!

Tristan dropped the chick into his lap so that he could rub at his forehead. The chick viewed this as being abandoned and started to peep louder and faster.

What should I do? How do I save my family?

Tristan comforted himself with the knowledge that, since their father avoided technology, Heaven’s Blessing wouldn’t be receiving any panicked phone calls from the battlefront, updating him on their failures. Still, Tristan needed Lucien to leave the camp as soon as possible.

“You need to distance yourself from Father.” Tristan was direct as possible. “It’s too dangerous to stay near him now.”

“He plans to head to Aum Renau to take out the Spell Stones.”

That made sense when there would be no domana able to protect the stones. He would still have to mow through laedin and whatever sekasha the Viceroy’s siblings held, but machine guns and rocket launchers would make that fairly simple. Once all the elves were dead, Heaven’s Blessing could deactivate the powerful shield that protected the Spell Stones and blow them to pieces.

The plan was pure suicide if any of the domana at Aum Renau still had their powers.

“The changeling is throwing domana magic around,” Tristan said. “It’s possible that all of the domana were unaffected by the spell. Father will be furious at our failure.”

“Yves is—was—not a radical thinker. His spell had flaws that I did not have permission to fix. It was generalized to take out single esva using domana. I had doubts about the changeling, what with her cousin able to use the Stone Clan esva before he was changed, and the fact that it was the wolf child’s genetics that were used to shift her back to full elf. She’s been fiddled with so much I doubted that Yves’s spell would take her out. It’s why I told Chloe to kill the changeling despite her value as a gate builder. I’m sure the Harbingers and the other Stone Clan are dead in the water. Prince True Flame too.”

Lucien hadn’t included the Viceroy.

“What of the wolf child?” Tristan asked.

“He might still be a problem,” Lucien said. “Yves’s spell should have had a secondary function to deal with special cases like the wolf child and the changeling. Maybe now that Yves is dead and his spell has failed, Father will let me improve on the design.”

How could Lucien be so calm?

“So we’re dealing with both the changeling and the wolf child?” Tristan said.

“He’s out in the forest with dozens of horrors and thousands of our cannon fodder to wear him down. He’s quite alone with so many to defend.”

Alone and outnumbered was not the same as powerless when talking about a domana. They were walking cannons.

Except Lucien wasn’t focusing on the Viceroy or the upcoming attempt to destroy the Spell Stones.

“You saw her?” Lucien looped back to Boo. “Healthy and safe? With your own two eyes?”

Tristan took a deep breath. Counted. “Yes, with my own two eyes.”

“Can you capture her safely?”

Tristan wondered if Lucien meant “without harming her” or “without getting yourself killed.” Probably the first, since both boys had spent their entire childhood learning the art of assassination. There was even a time that Tristan had believed the lie that he was being taught self-defense. He had never actually killed anyone. Once he explained the setup to Lucien, he was fairly sure that Lucien would suggest the obvious tactic.

Marc had assumed that Tristan was a harmless lost child and Tristan hadn’t done anything to dissuade him of that belief. It would be easy for Tristan to regain entrance to the van. He could simply say that he’d needed to go to bathroom and slipped out to do it out of sight. Lucien knew that theoretically, Tristan would only need his little Swiss Army knife to take out everyone but Boo. While he probably could, Tristan didn’t want to.

“No,” Tristan said, struggling to keep his voice level and detached. “I’m not going to be able to slip her away from her family. Not by myself. There’s too many people protecting her.”

The chick climbed up Tristan’s chest, peeping.

“What is that noise?” Lucien asked as the chick got close enough to be picked up by Tristan’s phone.

Tristan shook his head. “It’s a chicken. A little one.”

Lost and afraid as I am, he didn’t add.

There was a pause as Lucien dealt with the non sequitur. He decided to ignore the information. “Where are you?”

Lucien was twenty minutes out by hoverbike. Longer by truck. Could Tristan get Boo’s family to abandon the radio tower before Lucien arrived? Doubtful. With the militia’s communication hub unable to transmit, the tower was the only means of communicating with the city’s population and the militia’s scattered units.

“Little brother?” Lucien murmured.

It was a warning from their childhood, a not-too-subtle reminder that Lucien was older and taller and stronger. It required an immediate answer.

“Adele dropped me on Mount Washington,” Tristan said.

“Mount Washington?” Lucien murmured. “Oh, that janky pirate radio station that Adele likes so much. I thought yanking the generator out would be enough to keep it from broadcasting during our Oakland push. I would have pulled down the tower but Adele had indoctrinated Boo in the music that they played. Boo would have been sad.”

Lucien’s fixation on Boo was worse than Tristan thought. No wonder their sisters wanted to get rid of her.

“I think Adele might be back soon,” Tristan lied. “I might have to leave to keep her away from Boo.”

“Yes, that would for the best,” Lucien said. “Keep an eye on Boo for as long as you can. I’m coming to get her.”

That worked to get Lucien out of Father’s reach. Now to get Boo out of the area.

* * *

Tristan headed back toward the van, wondering how he was going to juggle this. The militia needed the radio tower but surely with the generator in place and their little brother in danger, Boo’s family would leave its defense to others.

When he got back to the main street, he noticed all the tengu were gone along with all of the pickup trucks. Had everyone charged off to save Duff? That was good news regarding Lucien but bad for Adele.

“What do you think you’re doing, Tristan?” a familiar female voice said behind him.

It was the one person he never thought he’d see again. She’d gotten on a spaceship nearly nineteen years earlier and disappeared out of his life.

“Esme,” he breathed.

She didn’t look a day older. Same purple-dyed hair. Same big-sister superior smirk as she caught him doing something he wasn’t supposed to. He wilted with guilt before the look. He’d done so many evil things since he last saw her.

“Tristan!” She used that “you’ve been a bad boy and I’m disappointed in you but now I get to gleefully punish you” voice that went with the smirk. She could always come up with the most embarrassing punishments.

Tristan attempted to hold onto his eighteen years of maturity since he last saw her. “What are you doing here?”

“Discovering that my baby brother didn’t come see me after I’d finally managed to make my way back to solid ground.” She crossed her arms and looked vaguely cross but the smirk lingered.

“I didn’t know until earlier today,” he could say truthfully enough. “No one told me until Lucien showed me…”

He shouldn’t have mentioned Lucien. He really shouldn’t have mentioned Lucien!

“Lucien is here too?” someone said behind him.

For a moment he thought it was his mother. Lain had gotten old since he last saw her. She’d aged into the mother he remembered as a baby.

“Oh!” The word of hurt pushed its way out. “Oh! Oh, no!”

Lucien was coming. Tristan had fond memories of his older sisters but he wasn’t so sure about Lucien. His older brother had borne the brunt of their father’s expectations. Worse, he was coming to kidnap and possibly murder people. Lain and Esme would never forgive such actions—it’s why their father hadn’t tried to use them as tools. And Tristan suspected that Lucien wasn’t completely sane after years of being a tool.

“I-I-I’m lost.” Tristan defaulted to his earlier script. “I’ve only recently come to Elfhome and I took the wrong subway car.”

He waved in the general direction of the transit stop and then remembered that he was carrying the baby chicken in one hand. He held it out to Lain. “I’m supposed to give this to Tinker. I don’t know why. Some crazy old female elf gave it to me. She said that she was part of our family.”

“Yes, Tinker is my daughter,” Esme said, coming forward to rescue the chick.

“No, the crazy old female elf. She claimed to be our mother’s great-grandmother or something like that. That Anna is part elf. Was. She said that mother is dead.”

He didn’t even have to act. It was like he’d regressed back to being a baby. The tears came and he couldn’t control them. “Could…could you take me to your place? I’ve been squatting here and there. I really don’t have any place to call home.”

“Oh, baby boy!” Lain gathered him into a hug. “You can come live with me.”

Esme made a noise that indicated she thought Lain was being a pushover.

“Hush, you.” Lain guided Tristan toward a big SUV. “He just found out his mother died. We can worry about the fine details after we grieve.”



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