“Why couldn’t you?”
“You can’t just walk out at Shutdown. The U.N. has fences and guards and you have to have the right papers or they throw you in prison. And even if you get past the guards, you need a birth certificate and social security numbers and high school diplomas to live in United States. And you need money, or you’re out on the street and starving.”
“And you don’t have these things?”
“The oni are masters of keeping power to themselves. They’ve got all the paperwork. They try to keep us from learning how to speak and read English. They know how much money we’re making, and they’ll beat we us half to death if they even suspect we’re trying to keep a little on the side. We don’t know how many oni there are in Pittsburgh — who is a disguised oni and who isn’t — so we can’t even turn to the humans for help. The oni spy on us as much as they spy on you.”
Wolf wasn’t sure if Tommy was telling him the truth, but certainly it would explain how the oni kept control of the half-breeds. He could see ways around the oni enslavement — until then he remembered that all the half-oni would have been born and raised in the oni control. A child could be kept ignorant, molded into believing it was helpless.
Tommy stopped him with a hand on his shoulder. The half-oni’s ears twitched. Wolf caught an echo of harsh voices. He would have to accept it as real.
“There are oni ahead of us,” Tommy whispered. “We can’t go this way. I can only cloud their sight and they have noses like dogs.”
Wolf nodded, and followed Tommy back to a tunnel they’d passed before. They went through a maze of turns and up a flight of stairs to go through another grate into a basement stacked high with cardboard boxes. The labels indicated that the boxes once held cans of food. Just as Wolf wondered if they still contained their original contents, Tommy opened a door and the smell of cooking food flooded over them.
Beyond the door was a large kitchen filled with Asians. A low right-angled counter divided the kitchen off from the restaurant’s dining room. The long leg into the dining room was a bakery display case filled with buns and breads.
“What are you doing here, Tommy?” One of the cooks, an old man, asked in Mandarin as he took a tray of buns from the oven. “Bringing him here?”
“The oni are in the steam tunnels,” Tommy answered in the same tongue.
“Ugh!” the old man grunted. “You get us all killed.”
Wolf looked at the crowded kitchen. “These are all mixed bloods?”
“No.” Tommy wove through the cooks. “These are all humans. That was my great-uncle.”
A herd of children galloped into the kitchen from a back room. Some could pass as human — might even be fully human — but mixed in were children with horns and tails. With cries of dismay, in ones and twos, the adults yanked the children out of Wolf’s path, leaving only one child standing alone.
The little female looked up at him fearlessly and he knew her. Zi.
“Hi.” She cocked her head, puzzled by his presence. She had a cookie in either hand. She held one up to him. “Do you want a cookie?” And when he hesitated, she added. “I didn’t drop it or anything.”
“Thank you.” Wolf took the cookie with his left hand and bowed slightly to her. “That is very nice of you.”
“Come on.” Tommy caught him by the left wrist, and said in rough low Elvish. “If oni find you here — they kill everyone.”
“What is she doing here?” Wolf resisted being moved. He had demanded that the little female be kept away from people that would poison her against elves.
“No one else would take her. The humans are afraid of the oni and the oni don’t give a shit. Look at me, I’m Lord Tomtom’s son, and even I don’t get a disguise to protect me.”
Wolf scanned the kitchen, seeing this time that the children were in the arms of only small-framed, battered women. There were only two males, men made fragile by time. They used Mandarin in their fearful cries, and it was Chinese written on the signs posted around the room. The skin clan used this kind of slavery — transporting women out of their homelands to places they couldn’t speak the language and then tied them down with children.
He understood now Tommy’s hate. It was the same hate that fueled the genocide of the Skin Clan.
Tommy suddenly pushed him back against the wall. “Stay still! I don’t have my father’s talent — I can’t mask a moving object from multiple watchers. They will kill everyone if they find you here!” He glanced to his uncle. “Mask the scent!”
The uncle opened the fridge, took out a container and flung the contents on the grill. An eye-watering reek filled the air. “Onions! Pepper!”
While some of the women quickly herded the children upstairs, others took out knives and attacked onions and bright red peppers. Tommy’s focus was on the door. Moments later, it opened, and oni warriors crowded into the restaurant. There were a dozen large, red haired, horned males. They had war paint on their faces and carried machine guns and swords. They snarled in Oni, wrinkling up their noses against the assault of smell.
The leader was the tallest among them. He set four of the warriors to watch the street and barked orders to the others. Three warriors raided the bakery counter. The rest moved into the kitchen and back rooms. The leader picked out a female, shoved her face down onto one of the tables, tore away her skirt, and forced himself into her with brutal casualness. The woman pressed knuckles into her mouth, stifling whimpers. No one else appeared even to notice, but Tommy locked down hard on Wolf’s good arm.
The bakery raiders stuffed their mouths and pockets and then flung the buns to other warriors.
Outside came a deep roar from Malice echoed up the street.
“He sounds hungry.” The leader spoke Mandarin so that the humans could understand. “He’s probably looking for something to eat.”
The warriors bayed with laughter and gestured at the frightened women. “We can feed him one of these fat sluts. That one looks like it has a fat ass.”
The leader finished with the woman he was raping and slapped her buttocks. “Yes, a nice fat ass.”
Their hunger satisfied, the warriors pelted each other with bread. The leader barked an order. The warriors gathered again at the front of the restaurant. The last one out of the backroom, though, was carrying a whimpering, squirming Zi.
“Look what they have.” The warrior held the little female out by the back of her shirt.
The leader took her by her throat. He turned and shook the child at the human like rag doll. “What is this doing here?”
“The EIA—” Uncle stuttered. “They imprisoned her crazy mother.”
The leader grunted. “If the elves find this here, they’ll know that this place belongs to us.”
“We’ll move her.” Uncle held out his arms but moved no closer to the warriors.
Without word or warning the oni leader broke Zi’s neck.
Everyone had told Wolf about the oni savageness — but he hadn’t comprehended it fully until too late. He gasped out in shock as the oni leader dropped the child’s limp body onto the floor.
“Malice is coming. Throw this out onto the street for him to eat.”
Wolf breathed in and anger burned through him like fire. Nothing mattered but to see these monsters dead. He jerked his arm free of Tommy, summoned a force strike and slammed it into the back of the oni leader. The front of the restaurant exploded out as the strike drove the oni male across the street. He made a bloody star on the far building. The warriors scrambled for cover, pulling out their machine guns.
“Hold still you stupid elf fuck!” Tommy growled.