Empty clearing. He held on as tight as he could to their minds. Six was easier than twelve, but they were still slick and unwieldy in his hold. Nothing to see.
“Where is he?” The nearest growled to the second-in-command.
They were clumped too close together. There were six tight around him and he only had four bullets left. They’d cut him to ribbons before he could change his clip.
Carefully, he fed them the image of someone darting through the trees, running from them.
“There!” One bayed and leapt after the phantom image. A second and third were quick on his heels.
“Idiots!” The second-in-command shouted. “There’s no…”
Tommy shot him. The first bullet hit the male in the left shoulder. The oni roared with pain, lifting up his machine gun and open fired blindly. The others aimed in Tommy’s general direction and fired.
Dust, lots of billowing dust, something staggering to the right as bullets slammed into it.
Tommy gritted his teeth, staying still as the bullets tore up the ground beside him, spraying him with dirty and bits of stones. He emptied his clip into the second-in-command, dropping him. After that, he could only wait until the other two warriors reached the end of their clip, hoping they didn’t hit him.
As he hoped, they both emptied their guns at the same time. For one moment, they lost their focus as they changed their clips. He ejected the clip from his pistol, slammed a fresh clip home, and gave them a new image.
Dust billows, revealing and hiding a body laying on the ground. Elf long hair, wyvern armor, sekasha tattoos.
After the thunder of guns, the silence rang loud in his ears.
Slowly the warriors moved closer to look at the phantom body.
“Can they do that?” The one asked. “Be invisible?”
The other was shaking his head like a wet dog. “Isn’t right. Isn’t right.” The male growled.
“Can they or can’t they?” The first asked.
The second worked his nose, sniffing. “Not the right scent.” The male growled. “I smell that damn cat.”
Shit. How good was the warrior’s nose? Would he be able to track Tommy?
The three that had charged into the woods, though, were returning. He reached for their minds and made them see two elves standing over the fallen oni. Their response was satisfyingly violent. In the matter of minutes, only one warrior was left alive.
And one warrior he could completely blindside easily.
From the woods came Spot’s cry of anger. Tommy’s heart leap in his chest, followed hard with anger. He told the boy to stay put! He dashed toward the sound, rejecting the spent clip and inserting a new one.
The lone oni warrior had caught the elf female by her long dark hair, but as he had struggled to subdue her, Spot had jumped the oni from behind. Tommy couldn’t shoot in fear of hitting his cousin. The oni reached over his shoulder, and grabbed the boy. Spot bit down hard on the oni’s hand. Roaring with pain and anger, the oni flung the boy down onto the ground, stomped down on Spot, and pulled his gutting knife. Pinned, the boy was at least out of the line of fire. Tommy took aim and shot.
The oni went down, and both Spot and Jewel went for the knife. The elf was closer, and snatched it up with her tied hands.
“Don’t hurt him!” Tommy roared in Elvish, leveling the gun at her. “Hurt him and I’ll gut you myself!”
Jewel backed away from the boy, bound arms bent at the elbow to hold the knife ready to strike.
Spot scrambled up and dashed to Tommy, wrapping his arms around him and burying his head into Tommy’s side. The boy was shaking hard.
“Are you okay?” Tommy asked him in Mandarin. The boy only whimpered. “Damn it, are you hurt or not?”
Spot shook his head. Tommy sighed out relief and patted the boy on the back. Reassured, he focused back on Jewel Tear. The greater blood oni bred for brute force, not caring that the lesser bloods looked like monsters. In the case of the oni warriors, it might even be a benefit. The elves went for looks; there was no such thing as an ugly elf. Jewel Tear was radiant even muddy, bruised, and battered. Her rich sable-colored hair fell to her knees. Her eyes were a stunning amber brown with thick long lashes and dark elegant eyebrows. Her skin was the warm caramel color. The oni had torn rends into her green silk gown and through the tears, Tommy could see tantalizing glimpses of her body.
That she was bound and yet armed and ready to fight only made her more erotic to him. They eyed each other over the oni gutting blade.
“I don’t want to hurt you.” He indicated with his pistol that she should drop the knife. “But I will if I have to.”
“You will have to kill me. I will not submit.”
He reach out with his ability and projected an image of him standing before her, gun leveled, thinking out the problem. Keeping that firm in her mind, he holstered his gun, stepped forward, jerked the knife out of her hand and shoved her to the ground. She landed with a cry of dismay. He stepped back of her range and let go of her mind.
“What—What did you do?” she cried.
“I told you, I don’t want to hurt you.” Tommy handed the gutting knife to Spot. It had been a mistake not arming the boy so he could defend himself. “If you haven’t noticed, I’m trying to rescue you.”
Her eyes narrowed in study of them. She in took in Tommy’s cat-like ears and Spot’s dog-like features. “You’re Wolf Who Rule’s half-oni?”
“We don’t belong to the viceroy.”
“But you’re saving me? For him?”
“True Flame thinks I had something to do with your kidnapping.”
She grasped it instantly. “Because the oni used the kitsune’s illusions? And you have that mind trick of yours.”
“Yes.” Tommy hauled her to her feet. “Come on. I’m taking you back to Pittsburgh.”
She gave a laugh that ended with a sob. “Back? Back to what? The ruined shambles of my life?”
Tommy scoffed and put a hand to her slender neck. “I could kill you and end all your suffering.”
She gasped in surprise and gazed at him with doe-eyed amazement.
“Well?” He ran his thumb down her windpipe, feeling her pulse flutter like a moth under his palm. God, he found holding the life of a little, naïve female in the palm of his hand such a turn on. It made him want to tear off what remained of her clothes and take her, but he controlled the urge. That was his father’s way—to force himself on unwilling females.
Her eyes flicked to Spot, reminding Tommy that the boy watched. “Your son?”
“My mother sister’s son, but he’s my responsibility. I’m head of our household.”
She looked back to Tommy and studied him.
“What do you want?” He knew what he wanted.
“I want to live.” Amazingly, the pupils of her eyes dilated in anticipation, and she leaned toward him, seeking his mouth with hers.
It was all the invitation he needed.
#
It was a crazy-making fuck. She was on him like a sack of mud: clinging, demanding, and impossible to scrape off. His body responded too fast, leaving his brain struggling to catch up.
After Tommy collapsed on her, panting, Spot nudged him. His cousin looked north, his ears twitching. Tommy had forgotten about the possibility of other oni. The rest of the oni force couldn’t be close or Spot would be more anxious. Still, it would be best to get moving.
Tommy leaned back onto his knees. Jewel Tear lay in the green moss, her sable hair a dark halo around her. Her silk dress was in tatters, showing alluring flashes of her tawny skin through the shredded fabric.
She gazed up at him with a lazy, satiated look. She lifted her leg and ran her foot up his bare thigh and hooked it around his hip and tugged slightly on him. “Untie me.”
He took out his knife and cut her free. She sat up, feline graceful.
“What’s your name?” she said.
“Tommy.”
She echoed it, running her hand up
his neck to play with the hair at the back of his neck. “What does it mean?”
“It’s a human name. It doesn’t mean anything.” He fought the urge to nuzzle the full breasts that nearly spilled out of her tattered dress. Forget not having time for it. Now that he’d taken the edge off his desire, his basic mistrust of people was kicking in. Why was this high born elf acting like a cat in heat?
Danger had a way of doing that to some people. Was she one? Or was it more than that?
“We need to get going.” He forced himself to stand up, breaking her hold on him, and pulled on his clothes. “I killed twelve warriors. Were there more?”
That rattled her, as if she, too, had forgotten the oni in the heat of the moment. She scrambled to her feet and brought her freed left hand to her mouth. Tommy flinched as she cast a spell. The last domana he’d seen casting spells had been Windwolf as the male set oni on fire like giant candles.
Nothing seemed to happen but Jewel’s eyes went wide.
“What is it?” Tommy was fairly sure he wasn’t going to like the answer.
“We need to move.” She stripped a food pack off one of the dead oni and then headed straight east in a fast walk.
He grabbed a second pack and followed even though he could hear nothing. “Do you know where you’re going?”
“Away from the oni.” Jewel Tear dug through the bag and found an apple that she ate hungrily. “Big camp back there.” She waved the apple toward the camp that Spot had searched for her. “And another there, there, and there.” The apple traveled in a circle. “And the whelping pens that they were taking me to.”
She shuddered and flung the apple away with a curse.
He was surprised that she knew where the oni were taking her. “You speak oni?”
“Forest Moss has insisted on teaching it to me. Hours of tramping all over that damn city with him using it as an excuse to say vile, disgusting things to me.”
“Oni doesn’t have nice words.”
“I’m of that opinion now.” She walked faster. “Since, in last two days, there were only a smattering of words that I didn’t understand.”
Her guards must have realized that she understood them and used that to terrorize her. They probably delighted in explaining what would happen to her at the whelping pens.
Tommy realized that Spot was trotting to keep up with them. The boy wouldn’t be able to keep that pace. He caught Jewel Tear’s arm. She screamed, dropped the food bag and whipped her hand toward her mouth. He caught her wrist before she could cast a spell.
“We’ll wear ourselves out at this speed.” He growled.
“There’s a platoon behind us! They’ll find their dead and they’ll come after us at a run.”
Tommy swore but kept hold of her, keeping her helpless. “Can you fight like Wolf Who Rules? Prince True Flame? Set things on fire?”
“I can fight.” She tugged carefully, testing his hold, trying to free herself. He was careful not to hurt her. They both knew a broken arm would make her helpless. Her wriggling ended with her pressed against him, head tilted so she could glare up at him, lips nearly brushing his. “I can’t set things on fire. That’s Fire Clan esva.”
He breathed in her rich scent and resisted the urge to kiss her. “They’ll scout and see that there’s only the three of us. They probably won’t send for reinforcements. Let’s lure them further away from the rest and deal with them. Most of the oni haven’t fought a domana—and lived. They don’t know how dangerous you are.”
She gave a wicked laugh that promised hurt in the oni’s future.
He cautiously released her and backed away.
She rubbed her wrist where he had held her helpless. “Don’t ever grab my arms again.”
#
The earlier sex had only whetted Tommy’s taste for Jewel Tear. When he was sixteen, he and his cousins had stolen a canister of nitric oxide and spent a blur of days falling into sweet oblivion. Afterwards, he felt he could easily kill to gain another canister, and the feeling made him both scared and angry. Frightened because he already had one master: the oni. He didn’t need one that he willingly served. Angry because he had given himself the weakness.
Now he was feeling the same lingering want, tainted again with fear and anger. He’d never wanted a female like this before—but then he’d never had a female this fine. He avoided humans. Even if the woman was drunk and he had her pinned face down in the bed—the fear of discovery always ruined his pleasure. That cold niggling feeling reached down in him and awoke long buried memories of his own rape. It kept him from the very lush University of Pittsburgh students with their painted on leggings and tight shirts. The half-oni girls were safe but never as fine. Not that it really was their fault: they didn’t get enough to eat and sometimes had literal dogs for fathers.
No, his experiences weren’t with females this beautiful, rounded, soft, clean and wonderfully scented. Even her mouth tasted of some sweetness he couldn’t name. In the quick hard fuck, there hadn’t been time to wallow in it all. The oni army was breathing down his neck and yet he was wondering what it be like to bare her chest and suckle to his heart’s content.
It scared him that he couldn’t keep his mind off her. On Elfhome, more than a dozen nasty plants liked to lure in prey and then pin them helpless to be eaten alive. The plants were all sweet smelling, beautiful things. Did this elf female have him already pinned? Had she used some kind of magic to ensnare him so tightly? Having time to think about it, he couldn’t come up with any sane reason she would spread her legs so willingly for him otherwise.
But if she didn’t use magic, then his weakness was all his fault.
#
Spot couldn’t keep up. They were moving too fast. They needed to keep ahead of the platoon until they could find a place to trap the oni. They needed a gorge or cliff to take out the entire platoon at once. If even one escaped, they would have the entire oni force chasing them.
It was becoming apparent that Tommy had to either carry his cousin or leave him behind. Tommy couldn’t afford to wear himself out; not with the rest of the family depending on him getting the damn elf bitch back to Pittsburgh. They were a hundred miles deep in a forest filled with oni, wargs, and man-eating plants. It would be kinder to kill the boy than to leave him—but Tommy couldn’t bring himself to do it. He put it off even as the boy fell further and further behind. As Tommy hit the top of a tall ridge, he realized Spot was totally out of sight. Sighing, he stopped on the pretense of studying the lay of the land.
As if their situation wasn’t bad enough, the valley beyond was broad and glittered with standing water half-hidden behind dying trees. He growled at the sight, shaking his head.
“What is it?” Jewel’s breasts glistened with sweat and strained her dress with every deep panting breath.
Tommy turned away from the distraction her chest presented. “We’re boxed in. Black willows prefer marshes.” He spotted one of the massive trees stalking through the wetland and pointed it out to her. “My illusions don’t work on creatures like them.”
He glanced back the way that they had come. From their perch on the ridge, he could now see the oni following them. A full platoon of thirty warriors was cresting the last hill and pouring down it at a fast trot.
Spot scrambled up the final bit to the top of the ridge, gasping for breathe between whimpers of distress.
“It’s okay.” Tommy said despite the sick feeling roiling in his stomach. He couldn’t delay his decision any longer. He couldn’t keep both Jewel Tear and Spot safe, and for the sake of the rest of the family, the female had to be the one he saved. He scratched Spot behind each floppy ear. One quick twist and he could break the boy’s neck cleanly.
Spot looked up at him, trusting him completely.
Jewel put a hand on Tommy’s shoulder. “I can use the marsh to kill the oni.”
Could he trust her? For Spot’s sake, did he really have a choice?
“Let’s go then.” He hefted Spot ont
o his back.
#
It went against everything Tommy ever felt or believed to trust Jewel Tear but still he followed her into the swamp. She cast spell after spell as they pushed through way through the underbrush. He could hear the calls of the oni as they hit the top of the ridge and spotted them.
“They’ve seen us,” he warned.
She gestured and he felt the change of air pressure as her shield encircled them. “Good! Let them chase us!”
He laughed at the savage tone of her voice. The ground underfoot was firm despite looking water-soaked. Somehow she was building them a path and, most likely, destroying it behind them. A bullet hit a tree in front of them and ricocheted with a whine. Jewel ignored it, shouldering her way through the underbrush to keep her hands free to cast spells.
He felt the ground shake and heard the crashing of something huge moving in front of them. “It’s a black willow.”
“I know.” Jewel turned toward the tree.
“What are you doing?” He paused only to be shoved from behind by her shield. He suspected if he didn’t keep moving she might be able to drag him along behind her with it.
“I’m going to use the tree against them.” Jewel Tear crashed through a stand of tall cattails and suddenly they were face to face with a black willow. It was a huge ancient thing, nearly two hundred feet tall with a massive trunk completely blocking their way. One of the root-feet tore itself up out of the soil, stretched out and slammed it way back into the soft earth. The ground shook and the tree lurched closer. The whip-like branches snaked out and snared a rabbit darting through the cattails a dozen yards to their right. With a rustle like wind through leaves, more branches reached down and wrapped around the animal, cocooning it in green wicker, even as it lifted the squirming helpless animal upward. A muffled scream came from inside the wriggling ball. Blood was dripping from between the tightly woven branches even as it stuffed the rabbit into a huge maw where the trunk forked.
Spot yipped in fear and Tommy bit down on a curse.
“Come on.” Jewel stepped calmly over one of the splayed feet of the willow.