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Earth Son locked into place, both hands set into shields. He was holding a force wall set half a block around them and another shield wrapped tight around himself. The lightning flared again and again. Wolf could feel the thunder in his bones. Malice stepped
through
the brick house, coiling like a ghost snake.

His eyes gleamed bloodred. Down Malice's left flank was a massive smoking wound.

Wolf felt twin spikes of magic flash through the area and a moment later a fire strike bloomed around the ghost Malice. The dragon ignored the flames, rushing toward Earth Son's force wall. Wolf focused on the growing potential, waiting for it to hit the critical point. He could only cast the spell, though, if Earth Son kept the dragon at a distance.

The lightning died and darkness closed in around them.

"He's through your shield!" Oilcan cried. "He's through your shield!"

Malice must have stepped through Earth Son's shield the same way he had walked through the house.

There was no time for Wolf to change spells.

"Earth Son, cover me, damn you!"

In the dark, the ghost Malice was a presence felt, not seen or heard, bearing down on him. A fire flare went off, lighting the area. Malice loomed over them, transparent as smoke. As the dragon snapped into solid form, a shield wrapped around Wolf. Forest Moss was protecting him.

The dragon struck Wolf. The shield held, but the ground underneath didn't. The pavement under Wolf's feet lifted, and he was airborne.

He had a dozen heartbeats to realize that Forest Moss had lost track of him. He had no protection. And then he smashed down through the skylight roof at the museum. He tumbled painfully downwards through the building. Unseen layers broke under him, as if he was falling through a house of cards. He landed hard on a marble floor, surrounded by construction materials.

"Windwolf! Windwolf!" Oilcan shouted over the radio. "He's still after you! Can you hear me! Malice is coming for you!"

Gasping for breath he tried to get up. Pain shot up from Wolf's right hand. Hissing, he looked down and found his fingers bent at impossible angles. He cursed, hunching over his hand. He could attack or defend, but not both now.

"Windwolf?" Oilcan called to him again.

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"I hear you."

"The oni are attacking the dreadnaught."

Wolf cursed. "Get a message to True Flame. Tell him to deal with the oni. I'll keep Malice busy."

A backup source of magic was shielded, the spells were printed off and floated in place, the computers were turned off, and the crew was gathered around her. Tinker cast the magical magnetic pulse spell and it flashed through her like a cold wind, leaving her feeling strangely empty. With sudden panic, she realized that her body might be a living computer.

Oh gods, I hope that didn't destroy my ability to call the stones!

Esme powered up the workstation beside her. "Well, it didn't kill our computers. We're coming up to spell stone range in two minutes."

Tinker triggered the first spell that pumped the filtered stored magic out. It was a relief to feel the magic start to pool around her feet. Tinker had told the astronauts that she needed silence, and they had taken her seriously. They watched now, silent, fearful. More than one had their eyes closed, and lips moving in prayer.

Esme indicated that they were at the one-minute mark.

Tinker made sure her fingers on both hands were in the correct position, and then stood, waiting.

Esme held up her fingers then and counted the last ten seconds down silently. When she nodded, Jin—with Tinker's right hand nearly touching his mouth—and Xiao Chen—on Tinker's left—pronounced the activation words for the Wind and Stone Clans.

Magic flooded through the connection. Tinker let it run for thirty seconds by Esme's silent count. She could feel the purity of it, but the edges were starting to tangle, caught by the magnetic field of the ship.

She dropped her hands and the tengu went silent.

The activation word for the dragon spell was simple. She spoke it into the tense silence.

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The universe went dark and formless.

It wasn't the sense of falling that she always felt during Startup and Shutdown. This was like death. All Tinker could feel was growing terror that she had just pulled her greatest fuckup. She had killed herself and all the astronauts. Then light and sound and gravity returned, tumbling Tinker and the others into a pile of bodies. The "floor" now formed walls up to the matching bulkhead ceiling. They untangled themselves, laughing with relief.

"It worked." By the tone of her voice, Xiao Chen hadn't expected it to.

Tinker wanted to say, "Of course," but the way her life had been going, the mind boggled as to all the ways it might have screwed up. "We're on a planet, but which one?"

Esme glanced upward to the window far over their heads. "Don't know yet."

"We landed well." Jin headed up the ladder. Tinker followed.

"That was not a landing," Esme called after them.

"We're on the ground," Tinker said. "Engines down, bridge up. That's good enough for me."

"You do realize that this ship is nearly a half mile long?" Esme said.

Oops
.

Jin reached the window. He turned his head this way and that, studying the view intently, before announcing. "Trees. Nothing but trees."

"It's not Onihida or Earth then," Tinker said. "I hope it's Elfhome, or we ended up someplace totally new."

"That was the point of the colonization program as far as the humans were concerned," someone said from below.

"There's an airlock at midsection." Jin kept climbing upward. "We might be able to get a better view."

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Tinker only gave the window a passing glance. The trees looked like ironwoods but it was difficult to tell. They were ten or twenty feet above the canopy. If this was Turtle Creek, then she had just erected the tallest structure in Pittsburgh—for however long it remained standing.

The airlock opened to summer dusk. There was a narrow ledge that wrapped around the ship. Tinker carefully picked her way around and found what she most wanted to see—Pittsburgh. Clouds boiled over Oakland, but no lightning flashed from them. Was that a good sign or bad? Had Malice killed Windwolf?

They had "landed" in Turtle Creek, neatly replacing the Ghostlands with the massive bulk of the ship's engines. The
Dahe Hao
would have taken out the center section of the Westinghouse Bridge if it hadn't already fallen. The remaining spans of the bridge butted up against the side of the ship just ten feet down from the ridge she stood on.

And like one of her impossible dreams, Pony stood on the bridge, looking up at her. He lifted up his arms and motioned for her to jump to him. Relief flooded through her like a weakness. Her legs started to buckle, so she leapt to him.

Pony caught her and pulled her close. "
Domi
."

"Oh, Pony, I was so scared that you were killed." She hugged him tightly, burying her face into the warmth of his neck, smelling his scent.

"I thought I lost you." His voice was husky with emotion.

She kissed him on the strong line of his jaw. He turned his head and captured her mouth with his and kissed her deeply. He tasted of the enclave peaches; the sweetness poured through her like warm honey; she clung to him, letting the feeling push out the fear and worry.

Tinker realized that Stormsong was beside her. She burned with sudden embarrassment at the way she was acting. Knowing that neither elf would see it as wrong didn't help.

She broke the kiss but couldn't bring herself to let go of Pony. With one hand, she reached out to Stormsong to pull her into a three-way huddle. "And you too. I was worried sick about both of you."

"What? I don't get a kiss?" Stormsong teased.

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Tinker laughed and kissed her quickly on the lips. Then holding them close, she whispered. "Is Windwolf all right? Where is he? What's happened?"

"We can not get close enough to the museum to look for Wolf," Pony said. "Malice, though, appears to be searching for something, so we think that Wolf has eluded him."

"The oni have stolen the dreadnaught and taken it down river," Stormsong said. "Our greatest fear has been that while Malice kept us busy, the oni would push an army through the Ghostlands."

"Well, I stopped that." Tinker gave a weak laugh.

As Pony and Stormsong updated her, Cloudwalker, Rainlily, and Little Egret joined them at the end of the bridge. She greeted them with hugs. It felt good to be surrounded by her people.

The
sekasha
shifted to face crew members picking their way around the edge of the ship. It was Esme with Jin and a handful of the tengu crew members.

"It's okay. I've taken the tengu as my beholden."

"Are you sure that's wise?" Pony asked.

"Yes." She took a deep cleansing breath. She pressed her palms to her eyes and considered current obstacles and possible tools. If Malice was hunting Windwolf, then they would have to hunt Malice. The EMP spell that she had used to clear the ship should work on Malice. They needed, however, a big gun to take advantage of it—a very big gun. She could think of only one place they could get such a gun.

"Okay, we're going to need the dreadnaught."

"What's a dreadnaught?" Jin asked.

"I suppose you could call it an attack helicopter on steroids," Tinker said. "It's more a flying fortress. It's armed with a variety of heavy guns, from machine guns to cannons, and can carry a large number of troops into any location. The elves built them with magic in mind—so they're very low tech, and thus extremely clunky."

"And you want us to take it out?" Jin asked.

"No," Tinker said. "We need it to take on Malice."

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"Take it over?" Stormsong said. "Are you fucking insane?"

She held up her hands to ward off Stormsong's objections. "While we were at Aum Renau, I got inside of the dreadnaughts. I think it was part of me being the pivot—they didn't know what I would need to stop the oni, so they told me anything I wanted to know—full access to everything."

"Yes," Stormsong hissed, her eyes going soft and vague. "The pivot keeps turning until the door is fully shut."

Tinker shivered. "Oh, that creeps me out. I took detailed notes and I scanned them into my datapad – I was thinking of making a few for the Wind Clan."

"You would," Jin murmured.

"The big question is—do we have anyone that knows how to fire the guns?" Tinker expected that they would need to track down some the Fire Clan crew. Surprisingly, all the
sekasha
pointed to themselves.

"We were all taught how when we were in Aum Renau," Pony explained. "After you showed an interest in the airship."

"They didn't miss a trick with me being the pivot, did they? How the hell did I miss—never mind, don't answer that."

"We will need a pilot," Stormsong said. "The oni killed the dreadnaught's crew."

"How close is it to Earth's aircraft?" Esme had worked her way down to the bridge. She spoke Elvish, which surprised Tinker and also made her realize that Jin had been speaking it too.

"The controls are modeled after a helicopter's," Tinker said.

"I'm your pilot then." Esme noted Tinker's surprise. "I'm the best fucking pilot you're going to find. It's the magic. On Elfhome, I can fly blindfolded." Tinker remembered Stormsong's ability with the hoverbike and realized that Esme probably had the same type of talent. "Taking over controls midair might be tricky—but should be a piece of cake compared to some of the NASA simulations."

"You know," Durrack called out of the gathering twilight, announcing the NSA's arrival. "We're going to have to reclassify you to 'force of nature.'"

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"Oh good," Tinker said. "We're going to do an assault on the dreadnaught and we could use your help."

Briggs laughed as she joined Durrack. "And she's not even trying to be scary."

Tinker kept losing count of their numbers. They would need a tengu to get every non-tengu up to the dreadnaught while it was in flight. The problem was that she kept forgetting to count herself, or she added herself to both elves and humans. It was really starting to bug her.

"Eighteen," she hissed to herself. "Nine tengu and nine people without wings."

While the elves and the NSA agents arranged transportation and weapons, and the
sekasha
magical supplies, she and the ship tengu gathered high-tech gear.

"I found the dreadnaught," Durrack called as Jin winged her down to the bridge. Dusk was deepening into night. "The oni took it downriver to Shippensport and took over the nuclear power plant."

"Without power, the humans will be crippled." Pony pointed out the logic of the oni's attack.

As if we didn't have enough to worry about
. "Did they damage the nuclear plant?"

"No, they haven't. They just took it off the grid. EIA has dispatched a team to take it back, but they don't have any way to fight Malice. They're leaving him to us."

"Did you find everything?" Getting a nod, she motioned toward the yellow delivery truck that the NSA had produced. "Let's go."

Malice cocked his head, as if listening carefully.

Suddenly there was a massive boom, loud beyond description. A shock wave of air suddenly blasted through the streets, and a moment later, there was an echo under foot.

What was that?
Wolf wondered.