Chloe laughed. “Don’t you think we would notice three thousand giant electric crocodiles swimming around the Mon?”
“The hatchlings could be wee things compared to their mother.” Nigel measured out something only inches across. “In the water, if they swim in school, they’d be like piranha. The question is, how quickly can they walk on land?”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” Chloe tapped her eyepiece. “Reporting one monster is fine—certainly there’s undeniable evidence that something big went through here—theorizing a swarm of tiny man-eating fish walking around on land is too much.”
Jane hated that she secretly agreed with Chloe, at least at a gut level. Pittsburghers had enough on their plate being caught between warring nonhuman forces and their main ally, the EIA, filled with traitors.
“Just make sure you thoroughly warn your viewers about the adult creature,” Maynard ordered. “If anyone is harmed because you’re negligent, I’ll have you escorted back to Earth on the next Shutdown.”
Chloe huffed but nodded her understanding.
Maynard pointed at Jane. He’d figured out who actually was in charge. “Do whatever you need to do to kill this thing.”
Jane vetoed using Nigel’s whistle to call the monster to Sandcastle while the EIA were there. She didn’t want to risk the lives of all the men if they lost control of the situation. (Actually the idea that they would have any control with so little planning was laughable, so collateral damage was almost guaranteed.) She wanted a foolproof plan and an empty playing field—and a cannon—before facing the monster again.
She owned a chain-fed auto-cannon—well, technically Bertha belonged to her entire family—but waving it under the EIA’s nose would get her locked up faster than shooting oni.
Much as she wanted to gather up her crew and flee, they still should try to erase any evidence that they left behind.
Maynard refused to allow them to poke around in the water park’s boardwalk restaurants where Boo and Joey had been held. He stated firmly that if the buildings collapsed on them, he didn’t want to waste time digging them back out. His men were already cautiously searching the restaurants for clues to where the oni were holding Tinker. Jane could only hope that her team hadn’t left anything behind that would link them to the attack on the encampment.
It left them with only the camo-net-covered swimming pools to film while discreetly collecting gun casings. The Mon-tsunami wave pool was the closest to the tower where she’d covered their retreat. The oni had created a grating of chicken wire to cover it completely. The water was dark and smelled of river but wasn’t stagnating. The oni were aerating the pool to keep alive whatever lived in it.
“What do you think they have in here?” Hal pulled out his extendable grab stick and poked at the wire. “Jumpfish?”
Jane caught Hal by the collar and hauled him away from the edge. A second later a dozen bodies plastered themselves to the screen covering, tentacles gripping the wire, sharp beaks attempting to find an opening in the grid.
“What the hell?” Jane breathed in surprise. “Are those water fairies?”
“Not quite,” Hal stated calmly. “They seem to be a larger, more aggressive version than any we’ve seen.”
Taggart panned the camera over the pool and then focused on the far end. The oni had dug a ditch that led toward the Monongahela. “I think they planned to release these into the river.”
“Why the hell would they do that?” Jane growled in anger. Water fairies were annoying but they were fairly timid.
“To drive humans out of Pittsburgh,” Nigel said. “The oni have been planning this war for years. The fewer humans in the city to side with the elves, the better. Monsters in the river. Monsters in the woods. Who would want to stay?”
“Those of us who were born here.” Jane looked around. “We’re not leaving here until everything in these pools are dead. We are not letting these things get into the river.”
Nigel nodded reluctantly. “After seeing what the oni did with your sister, there’s no telling what they might have done to these to make the water fairies more deadly. We can’t let them out into the wild. If nothing else, they’d probably replace the original species.”
“How do we do this?” Jane asked.
“Dynamite,” Hal suggested.
“We’re not going to start blowing things up with the EIA still here,” Jane whispered fiercely.
Hal spread his hands. “If they watch the show, they know that’s how we handle a lot of things.”
Taggart snorted with what sounded suspiciously like barely muffled laughter.
Jane pointed a finger at him. “This is not funny.” She switched targets to Hal. “At this time, I don’t want to go reminding the EIA of that.”
“When we were…” Nigel caught himself and dropped his voice to a whisper. “When we were here yesterday, I noticed that there were several carbon dioxide canisters for the drink fountains still sitting about. If we dispense the gas into pool, the water fairies will suffocate. It would be mostly painless, and very quiet.”
“Quiet is good.” She pointed up at the tower behind them. “Let’s go up, do an aerial shot of the park, and pick up casings. Then we’ll see what’s in the other pools.”
The rest of the day was surreal. The Mushroom Pool with the giant bright-colored sprinklers had river shark pups. The Tad Pool had baby jumpfish that flung themselves out of the wading pool like evil rain. Wet Willie’s Water Works was filled with large red, jellylike orbs the size of apples.
“What are those?” Jane asked the naturalists.
“Roe?” Nigel guessed.
“Yes, I think they are eggs.” Hal plucked one out of the pool with his grab stick. “Wonder if they taste like caviar.”
Jane smacked him in the back of the head before he sample it. “Don’t eat things when you don’t know what they are. It could be poisonous.”
“There’s thousands of them.” Taggart knelt to examine them closely with the camera.
“They’re extremely large,” Nigel said. “And freshly laid. The larvae are just developing. After about three days you normally can make out the eyes and the beginnings of the spinal cord.”
“There’s no camouflage netting over this pool.” Hal pointed to the set of monster tracks that led up to the edge of the concrete surrounding the shallow wading pool. “I think the monster laid these last night.”
Nigel eyed the evidence and then nodded. “It was returning to the place it was spawned.”
Jane laughed. The men looked at her with confused surprise. “Karma’s a bitch,” she explained. “It literally bit the oni in the ass. We couldn’t have called the monster here if it wasn’t already returning.”
“If it spawned here, it’s not a natural creature.” Nigel’s burr thickened with his anger. “It’s clearly a beast of war. We cannot let these hatch either. If we drain the water out of this pool and leave off the cover, the heat will kill them.”
And a few gallons of gasoline, just be sure. Jane could tell that it tore at Nigel to destroy life. Hal was much more pragmatic about it. He knew that humans rarely left the tiny pocket of Earth ecosystem that Pittsburgh represented. Beyond the Rim, there were no Earthborn species. They couldn’t compete with their magic-reinforced cousins. If the humans didn’t aggressively protect their ground, the flora and fauna of Elfhome would wipe them from the face of the planet.
“Let’s make sure we document all this before we start.”