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26: ONE SHOT TO RULE THEM ALL


Where was the rest of Pittsburgh?

Jane crouched behind a stack of bricks in the upper story of a building under construction, wondering at the pitiful number of fighters on the allied side. There were sixty thousand humans in the city. There were only a thousand or so militia who were trusted locals—family, soulmates, and close friends, all stitched together by confidentiality. Jane and the others that helped her organize the militia had hoped that once the fighting started, all of Pittsburgh would rally to their cause.

Monsters in Our Midst had been created to build awareness of the oni lurking in the shadows. Yes, it was to gather together militia members but it also was supposed to bring the common masses to their feet when the hammer dropped.

Of the sixty thousands humans on Elfhome, close to eighty percent were off-worlders. They were EIA soldiers, diplomats, embassy staff, businessmen, college professors, and students. Almost all of them were armed—rifles were standard-issue for almost all non-students who “visited” Elfhome. Even the college students who were studying xenobiology and interdimensional geography would eventually arm themselves. The likelihood of colliding with something deadly in your backyard or nearby side alley was too high to go unarmed.

Hal’s call to arms had generated maybe a few hundred more fighters to their side, but there were tens of thousands unaccounted for.

Thank God that Oilcan and Tinker had been still up and fighting. Without them—and the tengu that Tinker commanded—the oni would have plowed right over the militia.

“What are those…things that Geoffrey is firing?” Nigel said as Tinker’s pipes bonged loudly and blasted out a massive ray of destructive light. Taggart was swapping memory cards so it was safe to talk.

Jane motioned to Hal to cover his mic. He was still broadcasting live to WESA. KDKA had picked up the feed and was rebroadcasting it.

She covered her own mic so she wouldn’t be spamming the command channel. “I don’t know what their proper name is but my family calls them ‘the xylophones of doom.’ Tinker invented them the summer that my cousins first met Oilcan and Tinker. I think she was ten at the time. They would go to my aunt’s place and hang out, doing insanely inventive things like catapulting a car engine through the roof of one of my uncle’s equipment sheds.”

Geoffrey had talked endlessly about his newfound friends who were teaching him magic. For some reason, Jane had thought that Tinker was Oilcan’s little brother, not his female cousin.

“The xylophones were turned backward the first time the kids fired them,” Jane said. “It almost took out my aunt’s house. She had this huge prize lilac bush beside the back porch. The xylophones left nothing but a crater where the lilac used to be. The bush never grew back. The xylophones got packed up and nearly forgotten except as a family legend. Every spring my aunt bitches about it on Easter Sunday—which is around the time that lilac would have been blooming.”

“How do the xylophones work?” Nigel said.

“They’re like spell arrows.” Hal’s tone indicated that he was smugly happy to be able to answer the question. “Geoffrey explained them to me once—the best he understood. I’ve never seen them, but like Jane said, it’s a family story that gets repeated a lot.”

Hal got invited to all her family events simply because he would otherwise be dangerously alone on holidays. Unfortunately, her family events always included vast amounts of food, booze, cameras, and guns. It meant Hal was never suicidal but still dangerous. There was a reason why her family viewed Hal like an unruly child. Jane sincerely hoped that he wasn’t going to go on a rampage at her wedding. Maybe she should ban all guns?

“We should probably explain the xylophones to the radio listeners.” Taggart shifted his camera back to his shoulder. “They’re very visible. People might think they’re oni weapons. We can get footage of them shooting for future viewers.”

Jane nodded agreement to this. “Stay as general as you can, we don’t want people trying to re-create them after the war. They’re dangerous as hell.”

“No worries,” Hal said as he straightened his shirt and brushed dirt off his knees. “I don’t understand them well enough for someone to copy them from my explanation. I can handle the technical end. Nigel can do color.”

“Go.” Jane waved them off as Captain Josephson was making his way toward her. They moved off to get a better view of the pipes.

“Storm Six, this is Storm One,” Duff suddenly reported after being silent for several minutes. “My position has been made. I’m going dark. I’ll contact you once I find safe shelter.”

The channel went dead.

“Shit!” Jane swore as she felt like she’d been hit in the heart. The oni were after her little brother! They’d put the communication hub on Mount Oliver because it was one of the highest points in the city, allowing them to transmit down into Downtown, Oakland, and the other possible areas of conflict. The bakery and several of the neighboring houses were owned by her mother’s first cousin, who had married into the aptly named Baker family. The building was outfitted with a generator in case of power outages. Anyone witnessing activity at the bakery would think it was related to making bread. The only true drawback to it was the fact that it was extremely isolated. His location had been one of their most protected secrets. Duff’s cell was purposely the smallest of the militia—he’d recruited only two or three tech-savvy young people. He’d talked about sending some of them to the museum to scour any computers left behind by the oni. There was a good possibility that Duff was all alone.

Jane glanced around and spotted Alton. “Alton!” She waved him over. “Do the tengu have eyes on Duff?”

Alton shook his head. “There’s some yamabushi on Mount Washington guarding Boo, since she’s part of the Chosen bloodline now. Jin Wong called all the other tengu into Oakland under Tinker’s orders.”

Jane swore softly. She had been hoping that Duff’s guard was still on Mount Oliver with him.

“I’ll send one of my tengu to Jin Wong,” Alton said. “He might be able to use his ‘Chosen One’ powers to quickly shift some of the yamabushi on Mount Washington to Mount Oliver.”

Alton left in a crouching run.

Captain Josephson took the space vacated by Alton. “Are your people still on the bridge at South Aiken?”

Jane shook her head. “Wyverns took command there. I have no authority to move them.”

Josephson nodded his understanding and added, “We’ve been warned to keep a wide berth of them.”

The sekasha had lately started to lop the heads off people right and left. Lots of oni disguised as humans. Sparrow. Earth Son. Nathan Czernowski. The holy warriors had hair triggers on their sense of justice.

It was her experience that “make-shift” equaled “untrustworthy” in most people’s eyes. The militia had jury-rigged equipment and a haphazard sense of style. She was worried about letting them anywhere near the sekasha. She herself had tiptoed around Tinker’s Hand.

“At this point in time, I’m not willing to expose my troops to the Wyverns,” Jane said. “They have some royal marines with them and seem to be focused on doing mop-up, so I asked the tengu to keep eyes on them. Where are all the EIA troops?”

“Scattered from one end of Pittsburgh to the other,” Josephson said. “The oni started acts of sabotage early this morning. Plowing cars into substations and the like.”

That explained the power outage that morning at WQED.

Josephson continued, “Troops were spotted in the South Side, apparently chasing after Oilcan. There was an outbreak of fighting on Neville Island. We had enemy movement as far south as Southeast Rim near Wheeling. We’re spread too thin to be effective.”

“Can we expect any reinforcements?”

“Maynard is sending three squads from the South Side but they’ll be another ten minutes.”

That was something. At the moment, they had a choke hold on three access points merely because the oni weren’t using their superior numbers to swarm down into the busway and into Oakland. Considering that the humans had machine guns, it wasn’t a completely stupid tactic. The oni were probably being conservative because they weren’t expecting human resistance and didn’t know the size of the allied forces. That could change if the oni command realized how few humans were standing against them.

It was the first time in her life that Jane was happy for a dark, stormy night. The only illumination came from the lightning, the xylophones of doom, and the fiery horrors on the other side of Centre Avenue Bridge. The storm was moving fast, whipping the treetops on the other side of the busway. If the earlier weather report was correct, the bulk of the storm had already passed over them.

“I think we should hold our position,” Captain Josephson said, “at least while Tinker domi is dealing with the horrors. Those pipes aren’t very portable and crossing that busway would be suicide. Once we’re sure that the horrors are dead, we can reevaluate the situation. By then the EIA troops should have arrived.”

“I agree.”

“Tinker domi gave me this intel.” Josephson pulled out a phone, unlocked it and found a photo. “This is the enemy commander. His name is Moriyajuto. He’s a greater blood under Kajo. Tinker domi says that the oni command structure is stretched as thin as we are.”

Jane studied the photo. It was blurry. In a nightscope, everything would be shades of gray but the white and red of the mask would make the pattern unmistakable. “So, if we can take him out, there’s no other officers to pick up the reins?”

“From the intel she got, Moriyajuto is the only commander,” Josephson said.

That could explain the caution that the oni were taking in using their superior numbers. A surge down and across the jumbled mess of the busway and then uphill against humans who were under heavy cover would have needed high morale among the oni troops and strong commanders to carry it off.

* * *

Allied troops continued to trickle in. More tengu arrived from Haven—out of breath but able to hold a rifle. The EIA troops arrived. Teenagers and twentysomething locals and handfuls of graduate students. The average humans, though, stayed away.

She couldn’t understand it. They were trapped on Elfhome. Over the last few months, the evidence mounted that the oni were willing to do anything to win. If the elves were wiped out, the oni would turn their attention on the humans.

It was sheer stupidity to ignore the war on their doorstep.

She’d known that the oni had powerful connections on Earth. They’d blocked Nigel’s and Taggart’s visa requests for years. They’d kept a news blackout going across the board—so much so that even the top-rated TV show Pittsburgh Backyard and Garden couldn’t be syndicated on Earth. If the humans from stateside continued to stand back and do nothing, then the oni might lose this battle but win the war. Sooner or later, Pittsburgh would be reconnected to Earth. If the oni had managed to hold the elves and their allies at a stalemate, their network on Earth could kick in. The elves might not like it but anyone who came to their defense today could end up facing charges in a human court in the future. She knew it was a possibility going in but she thought that the chances were low. Now, as she watched it all play out, the odds were racking up against the militia.

They had to win. After winning, her team would need to focus on damage control.

Alton returned. “Jin Wong managed to reach the team at Bullhorn on Mount Washington. There was a running fight down off of Mount Oliver that ended well for our side—but Duff wasn’t part of it. The oni were chasing the Dove.”

“Who the hell is that?” Jane said.

Alton shrugged, blowing out his breath. “Some little redheaded girl that Forest Moss marked as his domi. No one knows much about her. She’s not a local—possibly illegal. The elves gave her the name of Olive Branch. Noah’s ark. The bird that brings back the olive branch. Code name: the Dove.”

Random dots connected for Jane. There had been a post that morning on the militia’s message boards. A bunch of illegal immigrants had gone missing, most of them known Liberty Avenue streetwalkers. The post asked for any information that could confirm their safety if they had simply taken shelter someplace. Duff had mentioned, during one of Jane’s many phone calls during the day, that he was worried about a redheaded girl the bakery let go. That would explain how the Dove ended up in the otherwise abandoned part of town.

Alton continued to explain: “The Dove has been spotted all over town with an honor guard of royal marines and a possibly stolen EIA cargo truck. Rumor is that she shot Jonnie Be Good for some reason—although that man needed to be shot. I’d been tempted to do it myself in the past. The tengu aren’t sure what the Dove is doing but they’re fairly sure that she lured the oni away from Duff.”

Jane let out her breath. Duff hadn’t been alone when he went dark. A platoon of royal marines would have given him enough covering fire to slip away. Duff had studied that area of the city until he knew it inside and out, just in case he needed to rabbit. Jane had to trust that her little brother had been smart, kept his cool, and gotten away safely.

“The EIA says that the oni are stretched as thin as they are.” Jane updated Alton on what Captain Josephson had told her. “There’s been strikes all over the city. The bulk of the oni troops in the city are the ones we’re fighting, but there’s just one commander: a greater blood named Moriyajuto.”

“So, if we take him out, their chain of command here will be broken?” Alton asked.

We. Alton recognized it was a job for a sniper. The question was only who would pull the trigger.

Her younger brothers had put too much on the line already.

“See what the tengu know about the oni command,” Jane said.

* * *

She had her father’s rifle and his night scope. She didn’t like what she had to do. Somehow picking one person out of a crowd was so much harder than aiming at an entire mob of people shooting at her. There’s the knowledge that at the moment, they’re not actively trying to kill her specifically.

It had been an innocent game her father taught her. Read the patterns of the troops’ movement. Runners would lead you like ants to the nest. Leaders tend to stand still—in the back—so that followers could find them in the confusion of the fight. They would have bodyguards, also standing still, keeping watch. The guards paid attention to who came and went, verifying that no mole reached the leader. Once you found the central point where the runners kept returning, then watch for an indication of who listened and who spoke. Who pointed. Who nodded.

It meant a long study of the enemy, carefully filtering through the chaos of a battlefield to find the leader. The age of radios had changed the game slightly but not completely. A beginner sniper needed to learn the basics—thus the version that her father had been taught and passed on to her.

The white mask with red horns made it easier to verify that she’d found the right rat’s nest. The idiot had made a tent to hold off the rain. They’d lured in elfshines to light the place and then tried to shield it from snipers with flaps that only occasionally were drawn to protect those within from sight. She forced herself not to think of this person whose name was Moriyajuto, or that Boo probably knew him. Had known him for years. All that mattered was her distant target: the bull’s-eye in the shape of a horned mask.

Jane focused on the foot-wide break in the tent flaps, controlling her breathing, trigger finger loose, waiting for that flash of white.

When it came, she took the shot.

She didn’t even get to see the bullet hit. The flap was dropped even as the bullet leapt the distance.

Did she hit?

There was a new small hole in the canvas. She sat waiting, eye to scope, watching.

Then—unexpectedly—the bodyguards fled in all directions. One of them tripped over the tent guidelines and brought it down. The nearby troops noticed the collapse and the desertion. Panic started to spread, slowly, as the allied forces held most of the oni’s attention. Little by little, the front line noticed the sudden exodus.

As the oni front line turned and fled, a confused and tentative cheer went up from the militia. They didn’t understand what had happened. They didn’t know why the oni were fleeing. Last time the oni had retreated, it had been just to clear the field for the horrors. The giant gleaming bodies littered the battlefield, killed by the xylophones of doom. Was it over? Had they actually won?

“We’ve won the battle but not the war. Not yet,” Jane whispered. The question was: at what cost? Who had they lost? How many friends and neighbors of the militia had been killed? Had Duff found someplace safe?

Almost as an answer, Duff came back on air.

“Storm Six, this is Storm One,” Duff said.

“Storm Six here!” Jane said.

“The dog needs his basket,” Duff said. “The dove is taking the basket to the dog. Is the way clear?”

She didn’t expect Duff’s first transmission to be so on point but that was fine. If he felt safe enough to transmit, then she was okay with that. Overjoyed even.

She focused on the coded message. The dog was Windwolf. Basket was the train, as in “don’t put all your eggs in one basket.” Dove was taking the train to Windwolf? Really? Why her?

“We’re talking Echo One?” Jane asked, using the code for Penn Station. The passenger trains and freight trains used two separate rails in and out of Pittsburgh proper. The freight trains ran alongside the Mon River, through South Side, to the freight yards near McKees Rocks. The passenger trains diverted deep in the forest to cut through Oakland and end up Downtown.

“Yes, Echo One.”

It meant that Dove would send the train straight through the battlefield. Of all the insanity!

Jane waved Alton to her. “We need to know if the tracks are clear from Penn Station to the Rim.”

“On it.” He turned to call the tengu to him.

She wanted to ask Duff where he was. How safe he was? Did he need support? How did he get teamed up with the Dove? Jane didn’t ask. One wrong word could put him back into danger.



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