18: TEARS IN THE RAIN
Tommy hated rain. Nothing made him put his ears back more than a cold heavy downpour. Nor did he like crowds, and the Rim in Oakland was a madhouse. It seemed like half of Pittsburgh had spilled into the area in pickups. Judging by the homemade flak jackets and number of visible weapons, the crowd was Alita’s “Resistance.” Tommy wove through the rainy darkness, clouding the mind of anyone who swung a flashlight in his direction.
It was a day that Tommy had known was coming since he was a child but it was still unsettling to see. Most of his life, he had assumed that the oni would win. After Tinker killed his father he’d started to hope that the elves had a fighting chance.
It wasn’t clear how the war effort was going. There were walking wounded, leaking out enough blood to taint the night air. There were people loading stretchers of critically injured into makeshift ambulances. Men trotted past, shouting out the names of bridges like “Fort Pitt!” or “Fern Hollow!” and getting answered with “Here!” One idiot was wandering up and down the street, yelling “Schenley!” over and over again. Work crews were frantically building barricades out of rubble at strategic spots—obviously bracing for the oni to wash through the area. By the sound of the gunfire, the front line was only a few blocks off. Something pulsed rhythmically brilliant in the direction of Centre Avenue, although Tommy couldn’t guess what it was or which side it belonged to.
The oni had taken out the phones and the power to the city. They probably did it to keep the EIA busy elsewhere. So far it seemed to be working, as there was no sign of the UN forces. Nor were there any elves in sight. Lord Tomtom had anticipated that the elves would hide in their enclaves. Each compound housed twenty to thirty laedin warriors. While the buildings along the Rim were protected by a magical defensive shield, the rest of the half-mile-long enclosures were unprotected beyond their high stone walls. It meant that the laedin were stretched thin guarding three sets of gates and patrolling a hundred acres of farmland.
Alita said that the oni had used some kind of genetic spell bomb to take out the domana. Was Oilcan still alive to protect the half-oni? Was Jewel Tear okay?
Sacred Heart’s new ironwood front gate was closed and barred. The stone walls were completed and rain sheeted down the nearly invisible magical shield over the building. There was no getting in beyond knocking on the gate and hoping someone heard him. He didn’t know who was on door duty. It meant he couldn’t cloud their minds so that they saw someone they trusted. He rang the front gate’s bell, hoping for the best.
For some odd reason, the female singer from Naekanain answered the door, sliding open the small spy hole. He’d crossed paths with the elf fusion band during raves but always interacted with only the human leader, Carl Moser. Tommy hadn’t dared to speak face-to-face with any of the elves in the band, even though they were probably young enough not to know what an oni looked like.
“I cannot let you in,” the female said in Elvish.
Tommy locked down on a frustrated growl. Scaring the female wasn’t going to get him in the door. What was her name again? Some kind of prickly flower. Thorn? No, that was Oilcan’s First. Thistle? Briar? Briar Rose! “I’m Oilcan’s Beholden, Briar Rose.”
“I know who you are and what you are but I cannot let you in,” she repeated.
“Is Oilcan even here?”
“No.” Briar Rose glanced behind her and then switched to English to elaborate. “Just Forge and he was unconscious until a few minutes ago. He is up and doing crazy wood sprite stuff just like Tinker domi. His holy ones are jumpy as shit and that is why I cannot let you in. They are giving us stink eyes and that is just because we are Wind Clan. I do not know what they would do to you.”
Oh, she thought she was protecting Tommy. How…strange.
Did “Just Forge” mean that Jewel Tear wasn’t there either? Tommy had worked hard the last few days to make it seem like he had no interest in the female domana. Asking about her first would probably be a mistake.
“Where’s Oilcan?” Tommy asked instead.
“Domi told him to fetch someone. He was here a little while ago, collecting Team Tinker members to go with him. He took Abbey, Gin, TC, and some others. Oilcan did not tell them where they were going. It seemed like he did not know himself. So…who knows where he is?”
It meant that both Tinker and Oilcan were awake and fighting—which was good news. “Unconscious” suggested that the spell had taken out Forge. It was surprising that Forge was already awake—Oilcan had been a bitch to wake up hours after he was made into an elf. What about Jewel Tear? He saw her at Sacred Heart in the morning but she might have left later on. Would her armed escort know how to get her back to the enclave? Who would she have left with? Most of the Wyverns left the city with Prince True Flame. He couldn’t stand here and pump Briar Rose for information when every question exposed his interest in Jewel Tear.
“I need to fetch my cousin, Spot. I left him here.” Tommy figured Spot could give him a full accounting of what was going on without the fear of exposing Tommy’s relationship with Jewel Tear.
“The kids are not here. Oilcan sent them off with Geoffrey’s little brother to someplace safe. Spot is with them.”
Another Kryskill in the middle of things. No wonder Alita figured out that Duff was running communications for the Resistance.
“Jewel Tear?” he risked asking.
Briar Rose peered out past Tommy before whispering, “I think the crazy bitch snapped. She started to scream and wail and throw around furniture after she woke up. She tore out of here in her nightgown.”
The news did weird shit to his heart.
He struggled to keep it out of his voice as he asked, “Alone? She didn’t have Wyverns or royal marines with her?”
“There was no one here to go with her,” Briar Rose whispered. “Oilcan has no laedin yet. Snapdragon and the others from our place are out fighting. The few that Jewel Tear had either died with her Hand or fled back to the Easternlands. Forge’s laedin have not arrived yet—those who came with the gossamer were all masons. One of Forge’s Hands left to support Tinker domi. The rest of the holy ones will not leave their domou while he’s vulnerable to attack.”
Somewhere out in the darkness, the sound of battle died off, as if either the humans had been overrun or the oni had run away. Tommy wasn’t sure which. Neither was good. Lesser bloods would flee in every direction, crawling into the smallest hole that they could find, making it hard to hunt down and kill them in large numbers. The Resistance was too few and too far between to keep handfuls of oni from roaming Oakland.
“Which way did Jewel Tear head?” He managed to sound only curious.
“I thought she was going to Poppymeadows. I followed her out to the curb to see if she got there safely but she headed toward Pitt.”
Why would Jewel Tear head that way? She’d only been in the city for a little while; maybe she didn’t realize how big it was.
“It’s an enclave’s duty to keep its guests safe,” Briar Rose said. “As Oilcan’s Beholden, she is your responsibility. You should go after her.”
He planned on it. He turned away from the gate to go.
“Be safe!” Briar Rose called after him.
That felt weird. He would have never thought an elf would say that to him and mean it.
* * *
His nose wasn’t as keen as Spot’s or Bingo’s. The rain was quickly washing away any hope of tracking Jewel Tear, but he could pick up hints of her passing.
She had gone in a straight shot toward the Cathedral of Learning. At the massive lawn, though, she had meandered in a circle. She had stopped several times long enough to lay down a strong scent trail. Had she literally “snapped” or was she looking for something? He couldn’t imagine what. Oilcan? Prince True Flame’s camp? Tommy? He felt a little stab of guilt that he had not given her any idea how to find him. At the corner closest to the museum, she had crossed into Schenley Plaza. He dashed across Forbes Avenue in the rain, hoping that she didn’t cross the bridge to Schenley Park. The place was dangerous even in the daylight.
He found her at the merry-go-round, sitting in the bright colored saddle of the Pitt Panther, weeping. She wore a human-made nightgown of yellow cotton that was soaking wet and clung to her like a second skin. It showed off all her fading bruises. A freaking huge black sword leaned against her mount. It was so long that he couldn’t even imagine her wielding the sword. It seemed to be made of some kind of wet black stone but had magical runes etched onto the entire length of it.
It started to rain harder, so he stepped up onto the deck of the ride.
“Hey,” he said quietly so as not to startle her. It was his experience that when women snapped under the pressure of their life, anyone and everything became a target. He didn’t want Jewel Tear to be swinging her big-ass sword at him.
She jerked her head up, blinking back tears. When she saw it was him, she started to wail. “I am lost! I am so lost! I do not even know who I am anymore.”
Did that mean she didn’t know who he was?
“You’re Jewel Tear,” Tommy said.
She laughed bitterly. “Oh gods, yes, I’m certainly Jewel Tear on Stone. How damned I was—even at birth. The priestess took one look at me and said, ‘You will never be happy.’ Is it my lot in life to only suffer? Was it not enough every ‘safe investment’ I made suffered some impossible disaster? That I lost what little backing my clan fronted me? That my thrice-cursed clan leader with her misbegotten traitorous child forced me to swallow my pride and come to this wilderness that terrified me? To ‘help’ the male that I had spurned on their urgings? Offered me a great reward if I killed another domana—in the middle of a war zone? That I lost all of my Beholden while I slept in a house that that cursed spawn told me was secure? Gods, I was so naïve. And when I thought the worse that the oni could do to me is rape and torture, they found a way to utterly break me. I thought I was safe—and they unmade me. What am I if I am not a domana? What will become of me now? What am I to do? My clan only supports me because I can tap the Spell Stones! Wolf Who Rules will not pay for my housing if I cannot fight. I cannot crawl back to the Easternlands on the pittance that I have to my name. Even if I could, where would I go? I do not know if my parents would take me in. I have no skill beyond being a domana. I would be no use to them.”
“My mom always said that as long as you have breath in your body, you can change the world.” Tommy’s mother said it every time his father beat him. “You’re stronger than you think. You got up every time you were beaten down: you had to be powerful to do that. A weaker person would have failed long ago.”
“I am so tired of being strong,” Jewel Tear said.
“I know.” Tommy was well familiar with the feeling. He cautiously moved closer to her and put out a hand to her. She slid down off the panther to collapse into his embrace.
“If you need a place,” he said, “you can stay with me.”
He knew it wasn’t a smart idea but he wanted her safe. He could protect her best if she was with all the others who needed him. Besides, he couldn’t very well drag her kicking and screaming back to Sacred Heart. Forge’s people wouldn’t like him manhandling her and Oilcan had limited space. Sacred Heart couldn’t really afford a nonpaying customer taking up one of Oilcan’s biggest bedrooms.
Jewel Tear pressed her face into Tommy’s shoulder, clinging to him. They stood in silence for a minute before she murmured, “Will they let me go and do as I please if I can no longer call the Spell Stones? I could disappear in the confusion of this night, but I could not stay hidden forever. What would they do when they found me?”
She had warned him that they had to keep their relationship hidden from the sekasha. It was the warrior’s holy duty to keep the domana bloodlines pure. If she just vanished, then things would look bad for Tommy—but what if she merely “moved”?
“We’ve taken over a…” He paused as he realized that he didn’t know the Elvish word for “hotel” other than “enclave.” Could not the William Penn be considered an enclave? “We started an enclave for the humans stranded in the city. It’s quite large—much bigger than Sacred Heart. We have…several…men already paying to stay at our enclave.” He couldn’t remember how many Trixie had checked in. “We are giving them a place to store their stuff and sleep. We’re cooking for them. It’s an enclave only for humans—at the moment. We could take in elves…”
She shook her head. “I do not think they will let me join your household. Such things are not done. A domana leads, not follows. Nor could I ask you to break your alliance to Oilcan. Such bonds are sacred.”
Did she misunderstand and think that he just proposed to her? Should he be happy with her reason for saying “no” to him?
He tried a different phrasing. “Would they be upset if you changed to another enclave?”
She blinked at him for another minute of silence before finally stuttering out, “I-I-I cannot pay.”
“We’re stretched thin. You could help out as a way to pay for it.”
“What would I do? What could I do?”
He wasn’t sure, so he named the things even the tweens could do. “We’ve got more children than adults. You could play with the little ones. See that they’re clean and fed.” He skipped over diapering. No one liked that duty. Was there anything that she alone could do? “Teach them how to read and write and do math?”
He’d picked up Elvish from a lifetime of living on Elfhome. He still couldn’t read their language. His mother and aunts had homeschooled Tommy, Bingo, and Mokoto but as the number of children mounted, the less time there was for teaching.
“Oh! I could try that.” Jewel Tear pressed closer to him, shivering from the wet and cold. “It would be good for me to learn how to deal with children. I never even saw a child until I came to the Westernlands.”
She was going to get sick if she stood around soaked to the skin.
“Come,” he said to get her to start toward his hoverbike.
She took a step away from him to grab her massive black sword. Despite its length, she shifted it as if it weighed nothing. The magic spells on it must negate its weight. “I was looking for Forest Moss’s domi.”
She had been trying to get to the Phipps Conservatory? No wonder she got lost.
“His domi is out with her royal marines,” Tommy said without going in details. “She’s not home.”
“Oh.” Jewel Tear seemed to shrink with disappointment.
“My cousins are with her, so she should return to my place.” It was a guess based on the fact that Olivia was cautious with other people’s lives. She wasn’t the type to drop Alita some random place in the city. “You can wait there for her to return my people.”
“Once again, you save me,” Jewel Tear whispered.
He took that as a “yes” and led her to his hoverbike.