“Here he comes!” Tinker cried.
Esme scuttled the airship backwards, roaring out over Uptown, keeping the cannons pointed toward the onrushing dragon. “Come on, come on.”
Suddenly Malice dove into the ground.
“Where the fuck did he go?” Esme cried.
“He’s phased!” Durrack shouted. “He can move through solid objects!”
“Oh, you’ve got to be shitting me!” Esme flung the airship forward and they raced up Fifth Avenue, into the heart of Oakland.
“Where are you going?” Tinker cried.
“You said run.” Esme put all power into forward motion, tilting the airship to fit down the narrow places of Fifth Avenue. They lost something — hopefully not vital — as they took out one the red lights over the street.
“Not this way!” Tinker cried, pointing at the towering Cathedral that stood over Oakland, where Oilcan was with Impatience.
“It had to be this way!” Esme snapped.
Tinker looked behind them. Malice rose out of the ground where they would have been if they had continued toward Uptown. “Okay, this is good.”
“He’ll come after us,” Esme said. “Trust me. When you run, it’s like you put out a sign that says ‘free lunch.’ It’s an easy way to make even the smartest ones get stupid.”
Perhaps she was right; Malice was giving chase, coiling through the air like a snake in water. Esme banked around the curve of the Hill, nearly clipping the top of houses.
“It’s like trying to drag race in a Volkswagen.” Esme complained.
Tinker had been watching the Cathedral dwindle behind them. She realized now that they were heading into downtown, the most densely populated area in Pittsburgh.
“No, not this way either!” Tinker pointed away from the city. “I don’t want to open fire in the middle of the city!”
“I don’t either.” Esme said as they nearly skimmed across the Veterans Bridge and ducked into the forest of skyscrapers. “But we need time for me to get turned around and facing him.”
They wove through the buildings, the gleam of the cockpit reflecting in the glass walls as they streaked by.
“Okay, keep going west,” Tinker pointed out west just in case Esme didn’t know. “After you get out of the city, try to get Malice south of us, up against Mount Washington. It’s a blank slate. We can open fire on him there.”
Esme suddenly squeaked in surprise and banked hard to the right. A moment later Malice came through a skyscraper and fire jetted out of his mouth. The night went bright with the flame, the light reflecting off the canyon of glass around them.
“Oh shit!” Esme banked again, somehow dodging both the flame and the PPG tower. She clipped the side of the Fifth Avenue Place. “Oh shit — we lost our front right props.” She fought the ship to keep it from careening out of control. “No one said anything about him breathing fire!”
“He’s a dragon,” Jin said. “That’s what they do!”
“We’ve got a fire up here!” One of the tengu shouted from the front engine room.
“We’re running out of city.” Durrack warned.
“I know, I know, I know.” Tinker was loath to open fire in the city, but if Malice took the airship down, they’ll lose the guns and then they’ll all die. Point Park was going to have to do. “Get ready people!”
Esme wrenched the airship about as they roared over the empty expense of the park. Malice flew at them. Tinker watched him come, spell in hand, waiting for him to get clear of the city.
When he cleared the highway dividing city from the park, she cast the spell.
The coldness flashed over her. The wings vanished from the tengu’s back. Cloudwalker’s shield winked out. The miasma of Malice’s shield vanished and he fell, twisting madly as he plunged out of the sky. The cannons roared. One of the shells caught him in the left eye, blasting his head backwards.
“I’m losing it!” Esme shouted as the dreadnaught slid sideways toward the massive Fort Pitt Bridge. “We’re going down!”
Tinker called for her shields and nothing happened. The ambient magic in the area hadn’t recovered from the flux spell yet. “Oh shit.”
And then they hit the bridge.
Wolf braced himself for the worse. He trusted that Tinker would somehow kill the dragon, but he was afraid she leapt one too many times into the void. As he hurried toward the downed dreadnaught, his fears only deepened. The airship had struck the first span of the twin decked bridge and then crashed into Monongahela River. The crumbled wreckage laid half in and half of the water. Human emergency crews gathered on the shore and on the water, trucks and boats with bright flashing lights.
Wolf pushed through the tightest knot of people find Little Egret lying unconscious on the pavement. A pair of soaked tengu were giving the young sekasha CPR. As he watched, Little Egret coughed and sputtered weakly back to life. Oilcan had told him that the astronaut tengu were helping Tinker kill the dragon. He assumed that these two were part of that crew.
“Where’s Tinker?” Wolf asked the two tengu.
“We were in the aft engine room.” The tengu female indicated the submerged section of the dreadnaught and then made a vague motion at the part smashed up against the bridge. “She was in the cockpit.”
He left a healer from the hospice with Little Egret and moved on, working his way around the airship. One section was still burning, and the humans were frantically trying to douse out the flames. Wolf caught snatches of their conversations that focused on the live ammo still on board the ship.
There was a body under a white sheet. He paused to draw aside the sheet. A male tengu, badly burned.
Little Horse, Discord and Briggs were on the other side of the wreckage along with more dead and wounded. They worked with the Pittsburgh Fire Fighters and more tengu, hacking at the splintered wood hull.
“Domi was on the bridge with Cloudwalker.” Little Horse hacked at a section of the hull with his ejae. “Rainlily took in too much smoke, but she got out without being burned. Two of tengu with her were not so lucky. You were hurt?”
Wolf held up his spell-covered hand, careful not to flex. “Just this but it’s healing.” Wolf glanced over the many dead laid out and covered. “How many tengu did you take with you?”
“Those are oni.” Discord was favoring the leg bitten by the dragon earlier in the week. “Most we killed taking the dreadnaught.”
Blood on the pavement showed that there had been fighting after the crash too.
A cry went up and people were lifted free of the wreckage. A tengu male and female, both young, face painted for war. They were battered but alive.
“Were they with you or against you?” Wolf asked.
“They caught domi when she was knocked from the dreadnaught.” Little Horse said.
“Domi promised that all tengu would be under her protection,” Discord added.
“All?” Wolf indicated that the war-painted tengu were not to be harmed. “How many does that include?”
Discord shrugged and then gave a wry smile. “I do not think domi bothered to find out.”
More survivors were lifted out. Durrack, a woman, and another pair of tengu, these from the spaceship.
“I can see shielding!” Little Horse cried. “Cloudwalker has his shield up!”
“He and domi should be the only ones left.” Discord said.
They cut carefully through the shattered wood and broken instruments to the young sekasha. Despite his shield, he’d been knocked unconscious. He still protected Tinker, however, in his loose hold. Wraith leaned into the hole they had cut and whispered to Tinker the word to deactivate Cloudwalker’s shields, which needed to be spoken close to the sekasha’s heart. It felt like eternity before the hurt and dazed Tinker understood what was wanted of her and the shimmering blue of the shields vanished.