Wen Spencer - Wolf Who Rules

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."

"What's an elf?" Joey asked.

"She's still a girl elf, Keiko," The boy insisted.

"What's an elf?" Joey asked again.

"It means I have pointed ears." Tinker tapped on her left ear. She used it as a distraction to put the knife on the shelves as causally as she could. The two younger kids studied her ear, but Riki and Keiko's eyes followed the knife.

The coldness left Riki's face, but he still watched her carefully. "This is Mickey and Keiko." He released the littlest one. "And Joey. They're my younger cousins."

"Should we really be telling her our names?" Keiko asked. "What's she doing here?"

Joey pulled off the adult-sized sweatshirt he was drowning in. Underneath he had a ragged t-shirt like the other two - the back torn open to reveal the elaborate spell tattooed from shoulder to waistline, in black. "Look, look, I have wings too!"

He spoke a word, and magic poured through the tracings, making them shimmer like fresh ink. The air hazed around him, and the wings unfolded out of the distortion, at first holographic in appearance, ghosts of crow wings hovering behind him, fully extended. Then they solidified into reality, skin and bone merged into his musculature of his back, glistening black feathers, all correctly proportioned for his thin, child's body.

"Wow," Tinker said. "Those are cool."

Keiko hopped into the cote to catch hold of Joey and pulled him away from Tinker, giving her a dark distrusting look.

Riki said something in the oni harsh tongue that made the younger tengu look at Tinker with surprise.

"Her?" Keiko cried. "No way!"

Riki shrugged, making his wings rustle. "She's the one that killed Lord Tomtom. The dragon went to her. I have to check."

"Wait," Tinker said. "This all about the tattoo you think the dragon put on me?"

"Yes." Riki nodded.

"Are you nuts?" Tinker said.

"No, just desperate. Please, take off your dress."

"Oh you have to be kidding." Tinker took a step back and realized how crowded the tiny cabin had just gotten with tengu wings. "I am not taking off my dress in front of all of you."

Riki touched Joey's shoulder. "Wings, Joey. Keiko and Mickey, you too."

The boys spoke spell commands and their wings vanished. Riki picked them up, one at a time, and swung them up to the loft bed. They sat on the edge, dangling down their three-toed feet until Riki said, "Nyh, nyh, all the way up. Quiet little birds."

Keiko crossed her arms, flared out her wings, and leveled a hostile look at Riki. "I'm a warrior."

Riki glared at the tengu girl until the girl added something in oni. "A witness? Yes, I guess you're right."

"Yeah, I'm supposed to act as if that's better?" Tinker asked.

"Take off your shirt, let me look at you, and if you don't have the mark, I'll let you go."

Tinker scoffed. "Yeah, sure."

"I promise," Riki said.

Like that was worth anything.

"Don't be such a chicken shit!" Keiko said.

Riki slapped the tengu girl on the back of the head. "Hey, you're not helping. Would you want to take off your clothes in front of strangers?"