Jane realized that her brothers were staring in surprise at the naturists.
“What exactly happened at Sandcastle?” Marc asked.
They showed her brothers the video from the day before. It was surprisingly viewable even as Taggart ran for his life, dragging the namazu away from Hal and the children. It had been stupidly brave of him.
She had worried that her brothers would cheer the oni dying but they were better than that. They flinched every time one died.
“The namazu is big but fairly slow when you compare it to a saurus or a warg,” Jane listed out the river monster’s strengths. “What makes it dangerous is the electricity. We first spotted it on Fort Pitts Bridge Outbound. You know how high that is? The discharge was arcing to the point where it almost reached us. I don’t think we can do a second-story shoot as we would for a saurus. We’re going to have to treat it more like a pack of wargs on steroids.” The magical cold of the warg’s breath made houses fragile boxes to trap anyone inside. Killing wargs normally required a running fight. “The vehicles should be safe from the electricity.”
“Assuming you can get just one at a time,” Alton muttered darkly. He had the most experience dealing with Elfhome wildlife. “It doesn’t seem to be able to turn in a tight area. See, it backed up there instead of twisting around. You might be able to use that to your advantage.”
“You left eleven oni alive.” Marc took out his phone. “I’m going to see if anyone on the force knows what the EIA found. If the guards aren’t all dead, you might have to deal with them at the same time.”
“Don’t ask too many direct questions,” Jane warned. “The oni have moles in the EIA. They probably also have some in the police department.”
Marc snorted and gave her a bemused look. Right. He was the one known as “Stone” by most people. He walked out into the night, saying to the person that answered, “What do you know?” After that, there was no more from his end of the conversation except occasional grunts.
“Because of Bertha’s range and rate of fire, the only ‘safe’ place to film this will be in the passenger seat.” Jane tapped the back of the Humvee. “We can mount some smaller cameras for more coverage; they’ll be insurance on getting something on film. Everything is going to be fairly choppy as soon as Bertha opens up.”
“Annnnd I’ll be where?” Disappointment filled Hal’s face as he realized that he wasn’t going to be driving or shooting.
“You and Nigel will be in the production trucks. We’ll have the mobile antenna up for both of them and cameras feeding to both, just in case we end up out of range of the Chased by Monsters truck.”
“Jane!” Hal whined.
“If we have ammo left over, I’ll take you out to the quarry and you can play with Bertha while we get additional footage to pad the episode. I’m expecting that most we get won’t be useable.”
“How much ammo do we have?” Taggart asked.
“Hopefully enough,” Jane didn’t want Hal to know the exact number because she planned to limit him to a few hundred shots. “She fires five hundred shots a minute, which is a good thing and a bad thing. We have to be sure we have the namazu in the crosshairs when we open up or we’ll chew through everything before we kill her.”
By “we” she meant herself. She just didn’t want to have to fight every male within hearing about it.
Marc returned to the garage, his face set, which usually meant he was unsettled by what he learned.
“Well?” Jane asked.
He leaned close and whispered, “The EIA just found someone alive in the rubble. She’s hurt. They’re taking her to Mercy.”
“Her?” Jane whispered. Boo hadn’t mentioned that any of the oni were female. Not that it mattered, but Jane had gotten the impression it was a strictly males guarding the two children.
Marc lowered his voice even more. “They think she’s tengu.”
“Oh, shit.” All of the guards were oni because Joey was being kept hidden from the tengu. Kajo couldn’t trust his hold on Joey’s people if there was any chance that they could free him. The only reason that a tengu would be at the hatchery was because she’d been attempting to find and rescue Joey. The boy had at least two aunts and a female cousin prior to the attack on the house in California. Boo had said that they were killed but it was possible that one had escaped, and thus good as dead for Kajo’s needs. Was this one of them?
It was easy to think of Joey as their new baby brother. He was a sweet little kid that desperately wanted to be safe and loved. An adult who was “extended family” was something else. Jane had some cousins she wouldn’t trust any further than she could throw them. (Her mom’s side of the family reflected a sense of law and order, but her father’s side showed their moonshiner background.)
If Joey was now Boo’s brother, and by that tedious blood link, their new baby brother, what did it make his cousins? No one would blame them for ignoring that implausible connection—except Boo, who’d suffered too much already.
Then again, the enemy of your enemy is your friend.
If the oni only controlled the tengu through their hold on Joey’s family, couldn’t Jane use the same leverage to get Tinker and Windwolf’s baby brother back?
But there was the small matter that the female would be under heavy guard with the elves probably quickly closing in to take custody of her.
“Alton, stay with the kids.” Jane pointed at her oldest brother. She wasn’t sure what she was going to do, but she didn’t have time to sit and think. She needed to act now if ever. “Marc and Geoffrey, finish with Bertha. Duff and Guy, go through the sightings and find me a kill zone.” She would need the Chased by Monsters team for an excuse to get access to the tengu. “Nigel, Taggart.” And then because if she left Hal, he’d get into trouble, her garage possibly could be destroyed, and he’d end the night tied in a chair, she pointed at Hal. “Come.”
It was a forty-minute trip to Mercy Hospital. By the time Jane parked in their special reserved parking space—Hal’s slot of shame—they had a plan. A simple plan. Alarmingly simple. Claiming that they were seeking medical attention for Nigel’s saurus wounds, they’d enter Emergency and start to ask lots of questions on the guise that they were gathering material for a show. Technically they wouldn’t even be lying.
Once they determined where the tengu was located, it should be just a matter of pushing their way in for “an interview.” After that, they’d be purely winging it.
The last part of “the plan” had her stomach doing somersaults. Her family had been put right. She wanted to salvage Joey’s and save Windwolf’s, but it put Boo into jeopardy. How were they to know if they could trust this tengu female? Why would she believe anything that Jane had to say?
Dr. Nan was on duty. The petite blond doctor knew them too well. She laughed as she caught sight of Jane. “What did Hal do this time? Ah, he’s at least upright this time.” She snapped on a pair of latex gloves. “Come here, my pretty.”
“No, no, no, no, not me. Him!” Hal hid behind Jane.
Dr. Nan clapped her gloved hands together. “Fresh blood!”
“Nigel Reid, this is Dr. Nan Nuessle.” Jane waved to the naturalist. “Yesterday, he was roughed up by a saurus. He’s not feeling good.”
“Yesterday? Oh, good lord, you people!” Nan pointed at Nigel. “You, on the gurney. Show me where it hurts.”
Nigel gingerly peeled off his shirt. “We cleaned the wounds and applied antibiotics and plasters.”
“Plasters?” Dr. Nan looked a little alarmed.
“Bandages,” Jane clarified, having been through this exact discussion the day before. It was the difference between American English and British English.