“See, intelligence disguised.” Riki waved his cigarette, reminding her of the astronomer post docs when they went into lecture mode. “Legends say that a dragon has a body and a spirit, and you can encounter the one without the other. Usually in the old stories, the dragons send their spirits out to cross great distances — but while they’re doing it, it’s a very unwise thing to approach them. The lights are on, but no one’s home.”
“Running on autopilot?”
“Let’s just say that there’s more than one story about someone getting their head bitten off while a dragon’s spirit is absent.”
She remembered with great clarity the sense of intelligence filling the dragon’s eyes — its surprise at having a hand clamped into its mouth. “So you’re saying the dragon was unconscious at the time he attacked me.”
“Probably.”
That would certainly explain how she managed to walk away with nothing more than a sore hand. “So where is this dragon now?”
“Even if I knew that, I wouldn’t tell you. I want Impatience for the tengu. That’s what I was doing at Reinholds. The oni had set a trap for it, using the fountain as a lure.”
“The oni?”
“Impatience was one of two dragons the oni had waiting on Onihida for the invasion. The other is Malice, who is much bigger. Somehow Impatience managed to slip the oni’s hold on him and escape.”
“So, on top of the royal troops and the oni, we have an unaligned dragon running loose in Pittsburgh.”
“Well, a party is only fun if you invite lots of interesting people.”
She stuck her tongue out at him. “How do you plan to find Impatience?”
“I don’t know. You apparently have to follow the yellow brick road.”
In her dream, though, the road ended with the tree. This was going to drive her mad. In the silence between them, she heard a slight noise from Riki’s hip pocket. He frowned, slipped out a cell phone and answered it with a cautious, “Hello?”
As he listened, his look changed to worry. “You’re where? Jesus Christ what are you doing there? Oh fuck. Yes I said that, what do you expect me to say? No — don’t — don’t…” Riki sighed. “Put your cousin on. No, no, not Joey! Keiko.” Riki waited a moment until the phone could be traded off on the other side of the conversation. “Yeah, I’m here. What’s going on?”
Riki listened for several minutes, grimacing as if what he heard pained him. “I’ll be there in a few minutes. Hang tight.” Riki tucked away his phone. “Change of plans.”
“You’re letting me go?”
“Sorry,” he actually managed to look it. “I’ll never have this chance again. I can’t throw it away.” He pulled out a silk scarf and tied it over her eyes. “I don’t want you to know where we’re going.” He took firm hold of her and jerked her off her feet. “This time, don’t wriggle so much.”
She felt him leap, knew that he left the safety of the tree, and nearly screamed at the knowledge. His wings rustled out, caught the air, and they swooped upwards.
Fifteen or twenty minutes later, Riki dove down and wove through light and shadows to land again. Numb from dangling, her legs folded under her. Riki lowered her down to a prone position and then knelt behind her, panting with exertion.
Their landing site seemed too flat to be a tree branch but it swayed slightly with the rustling of the wind.
“Damn it, Riki, where are we?”
Riki tugged down her blindfold. She lay just inside the door of a tiny cabin; only eight-foot square, it would have been claustrophobic if it actually contained furniture.
“We’re at a cote,” he panted. “Emergency shelter.”
The cabin seemed to be made of scrap lumber. The one small round window letting in light held glass, and the high ceiling bristled with nails, indicating that the roof was shingled, so the cabin was weatherproofed.
“Stay put.” He stepped past her to pull something off a set of shelves on the back wall. “There’s no safe way down to ground. I’ll be back.”
Cabin, hell, it was a tree house. Under any other circumstance, she would have been entranced with the notion.
Riki took a deep breath and stepped backwards out the door, spreading his black wings.
“Stay,” he repeated and flapped away.
Not trusting his word, she struggled to her feet and went to the door. The view straight down made her step backwards quickly. It was a place strictly for birds. If her hands weren’t bound behind her back, she could get to the massive branch just outside the door, but there was nowhere to go from there. The tree was too wide, and the lowest branch too far from the ground to allow climbing down. She could see nothing but virgin forest through both the door and window, not even a glimpse of sun or river to give a clue which direction they flown.
The cote was cunningly made. A brace along the back wall provided the one anchor point so the stress of the shifting tree could not tear the room apart. The front of cabin rested on a beam yoked over side branches. A loft bed nearly doubled the floor space. A generous overhang meant the front door could hang open even during a rain shower to let in light without the weather. The outside of the cabin had been painted gray and black in a pattern that mimicked ironwood bark.
She kicked shut the door but the latch was too high for her to shift with her hands bound.
The shelves on the back wall were stocked with survival gear: warm clothing and blankets in plastic bags, extra plastic bags, rolls of duct tape, a serious first aid kit, ammo for guns, flashlights, two box knives, waterproof matches, bottled spring water, a water purifier kit, a small cooler filled with power bars and military rations, and even a roll of toilet paper. Judging by the shape of the bag, Riki had taken a set of clothes with him.
She fumbled with one of the box knives, blindly sawing at the plastic strap binding her wrists. The blade kept slipping, nicking her wrists, before she finally managed to cut through. She bandaged her wrists, looking at what she had to work with. A rope ladder from strips of blanket, reinforced with the duct tape? Or perhaps she should just try to jump Riki and take his cell phone. No, he’d gone to meet someone, so he could return with others.
As if the thought summoned the tengu, Riki kicked the door open. She snatched up the box knife and spun around to face Riki as he dropped in through the doorway. He wasn’t alone. He had a child with him — a little boy in an oversized black hooded sweatshirt.
“Riki!” She started toward him, angry at the tengu, and afraid for the boy.
Riki looked up, saw the knife in her hand, and his face went cold. She had always suspected that the tengu treated her with kid gloves. Suddenly, it was if a stranger was looking at her, one who would hurt her if she took another step forward.
She stopped, and reached out with her empty hand. “Don’t hurt him.”
Still tight in Riki’s hold, the boy glanced over his shoulder at her, and blinked in surprise. He had the tengu’s coarse straight black hair, electric blue eyes and sharp features — though his nose wasn’t so nearly beak-like as Riki’s. “Oh, hello,” the tengu boy said with no fear in his voice. “I’m Joey. Joey Shoji. Who are you?”
With a rustle of wings, two slightly older tengu children crowded the doorway. Wearing blue jeans and torn t-shirts, they would have seemed like human children except for the way they clung to the sides of the doorway with bird-like feet, fanning the air with black wings. The girl looked thirteen and sported the black war paint and sharp spurs that Riki wore. The boy was younger — eleven? Ten? Both had Riki’s dark wild hair and sharp features.
“Hey, what’s a girl during here?” The boy asked in English and hopped into the cote.
The girl scowled and remained hovering at the door. “She’s an elf — the fairy princess.”