Closer. Closer…
The giant leapt, front talons outstretched to pin her like an unlucky mouse. She jagged to the side—and poured speed into a powerful leap. Her wings screamed, not built to take her heavy lion’s body straight up into the air like that.
But she pulled out enough lift to evade those descending talons—and with perfect timing so the monster plowed beak first into the pier. Splintering wooden planks, shredded awnings, and countless colorful mossback things flew through the air. The pier creaked, groaned mightily, and the pylons beneath the giant snapped under the stress. The whole length tilted, debris pounding the monster’s beaked face.
A small black body zipped around her head, cawing furiously. Rhy, back in raven form. He flew away, zooming toward Lena and Stella. Relief washed through Zeph like cool water. Rhy would protect them.
The giant screamed—not a sound of pain, but of profound frustration—and threw back its head, massive pale wings crashing all around, tail clearing swaths of buildings.
Seeing her opportunity, Zeph didn’t hesitate. Folding her wings, she dove into the monster’s gaping black eye.
~ 13 ~
Astar roared with furious denial as Zephyr’s golden form folded its wings—and plummeted into the giant faux-gryphon’s black eye.
What in Danu was she thinking? She couldn’t possibly survive that. He could only hope that Rhy had managed to find Lena and Stella. He knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that Nilly was alive, so he could only hope she and Lena could work some magic to destroy the monster—and that they all could somehow retrieve Zephyr.
He scrambled over wreckage of houses, doing his best to ignore the dead bodies—or, worse, the mashed-together leavings of still-twitching people and animals—grateful for his powerful grizzly body and claws that made short work of barriers. The town was a complete wreck. It would take massive efforts to rebuild the town and restore trade to the upper parts of the Thirteen Kingdoms. If the townsfolk were even willing to return to a place of such horror.
He’d have to be the one to tell Ursula and King Groningen—not a pleasant duty, but at least the burden of dealing with the aftermath would be theirs.
He only wanted to get to Zephyr.
Able-bodied people gaped at the sight of the massive grizzly bear rampaging down the street, but they were stunned from the giant’s attack and did little more than clear the way for him. What would they think if they knew the bear was their future high king?
He thrust that worry aside, taking sharp-angled turns to follow narrow lanes that frustratingly didn’t run straight toward anything. What you got for building a town on a triangle of land. The giant misshapen gryphon loomed in the sky above, guiding him to Zephyr.
Galloping hooves on cobblestones alerted him along with Jak’s shout. “Astar!”
Gen, foam dripping from her muzzle, galloped toward him from an intersecting alley. Jak had his sword out. He pointed it at the giant gryphon that looked unsettlingly like Zephyr, and also horribly distorted. “Is that?” Jak yelled, and Astar roared without slowing, figuring they’d follow.
They rounded a sharp corner and burst into scene of decimation. The monster’s tail cleaved great swaths of wreckage, clearing piles of detritus into huge mounds on either side of it. Its wings battered everything into crumbles and dust, but it didn’t seem to know how to use them to fly. A bit of luck there, as the last thing they needed was for it to fly off to destroy another town and people—and take Zephyr with it.
With one taloned paw, it raked at the eye Zephyr had flown into. Maybe she was alive in there, wreaking havoc on the inside of the creature’s skull. They needed to get to her and help. More than ever, Astar cursed himself for having only First Form, and a grounded one. What wouldn’t he give to be able to fly right then?
You’re so locked down, so determined to be a mossback prince in every way, that you stop yourself from embracing the ferocity of your nature—or of taking on any other form. Zephyr’s voice and accusing eyes flared in his memory. She was right. And he was failing her.
Should he try for a winged form? Desperation might lend him impetus. Zynda was forever preaching that emotional drive affected shapeshifting—and that if he wanted it badly enough, he’d find other forms as he had when he was too young to worry about it.
But no—it would be irresponsible to experiment right then. He had a duty to the others, and trying for other forms wouldn’t serve anyone.
They all skidded to a halt outside the flailing of the giant gryphon’s wings and tail. Needing speech, Astar shifted to human form, the cold air hitting his sadly unfurred skin with a vicious bite. “Gen—take wing. Your choice of form. Zephyr went into its eye.”
Jak nodded. “Smart. Looks like she’s driving it crazy.”
“Let’s drive it more crazy, then. I need to get up there. Jak, you’re with me.”
Blessedly, neither argued. Gen burst into the form of a large eagle—good choice—and took off with a scream of fury that belied her previous exhaustion. Probably she’d been able to restore her energy by shifting, something else Astar would love to be able to do. “Ever ridden a bear?” he asked Jak, who grinned jauntily at him and sheathed his sword.
“An excellent chapter for my memoirs,” he declared. “This will be amazing.”
“Just watch the giant’s wings and tail for me,” Astar replied with a huff—surprised he could feel amusement at this grim moment—then shifted back to bear form. It wasn’t easy, as he’d shifted so many times in a row, and tiredness swamped him. He tried following Zynda’s advice, leaning into the heart of the grizzly, the hot-blooded need to defend his mate. Jak clambered aboard, knees squeezing into Astar’s ribs, arms coming around his thick neck.
“No good handholds,” Jak said. “Don’t shake me off.”
Astar started at a walk, growling at having to restrain himself as Jak found his balance. Above, Gen harried the giant gryphon, flying at its other eye so it stopped digging at the one to swat at her. With a screech, she ducked, and the giant echoed the sound with warped harmonies.
“I’m good, I’m good,” Jak yelled. “Go!”
Needing no further prompting, Astar picked up speed, building into a lope, then putting on a burst of speed. Keeping his eyes on the uneven and precarious path, he trusted Jak to warn him of the crashing wings and lashing tail.
“Wing. Tail. Wing. Wing. Tail.” Jak called the warnings a second or two before the impact of said body part, Astar taking evasive action each time. “Wing. Wing. Wing. Oh, shit—fast tail!”
Astar dodged, but the impact of the huge whip of a tail shattered stone beside him, making Jak yelp. “A scratch,” he yelled. “Go go go. Wing. Anndd… talons!”
The taloned paw crashed down beside them. Good to be inside the wing reach. Now they had to evade the paws as the monster danced about, trying to swat Gen out of the air like an annoying fly.
“Calling right paw,” Jak shouted, vaulting from Astar’s back and rolling in a bare patch of what had been someone’s garden. He bounced to his feet with native agility, drew a set of twin daggers, and launched himself at the nearby paw, leaping atop it and plunging one dagger in. “Like chalk,” he called, stabbing in the other dagger as the giant lifted its foot and hanging on as he swung through the air.
Astar followed Jak’s example, galloping to a back paw—the other front paw still high in the air, alternately batting at Gen and clawing at the eye socket Zephyr had disappeared into—and launching himself to climb the hind leg like a tree.
His claws slipped and scrabbled, but Astar refused to be shaken. Rounding the haunch, he ducked the whipping tip of the tail and ran for the head. The creature had imitated the look of Zephyr’s feathered neck, but not the texture of the feathers. The serrated stony ridges of its neck worked in Astar’s favor, and he climbed with renewed strength and speed—though he occasionally had to pause to hang on as the monster tried to shake them off.
He’d nearly made it to the creature’s eye—
truly a gaping hole like a cave—when the texture of the stony body under his claws began to soften, the ridges shifting and sliding. Shape-changing. He didn’t have time to contemplate what that meant, or to wonder if the appearance of Rhy in raven form, joining Gen in harrying the monster, was a good sign or a bad one. Nilly burned bright in his mind still, so he fervently hoped it was a good sign.
Clawing his way over the lip of the eye cavity, which was like rapidly shifting sand as the whole head rose higher into the sky, he leapt into the abyss.
It wasn’t bottomless, but the drop steepened, sliding him precariously along a skidding slope. Scrabbling for purchase, he roared. Not her name, but he knew Zephyr would recognize his voice anyway.
She roared back, leonine and powerful. With a gust of wings, she landed beside him, digging her talons into the shifting surface and pumping her wings for balance. Then she hammered her beak into a bony protrusion, ripping out a chunk and spitting it out again. Outside, the monster howled and they both had to cling to the inside of its skull as it hit itself hard enough to rattle them.
Following her example, he used his claws to rip out a piece. A drop in the bucket of its great mass, but satisfying to hear it react in apparent distress. They couldn’t take it apart this way, he realized. All they could do was delay for the sorceresses to do… something.
At least Zephyr was alive—though bleeding and bedraggled, one hind leg drawn up in injury. It infuriated him to see beautiful, carefree Zephyr wounded, and he poured that rage into wounding the grotesque monster, little as that might be. Shouts echoed from outside and Rhy zipped in, circling their heads and shooting out again.
The message to get out was clear. The method less so. Even if they scaled up to the eye socket, they had a huge drop to deal with. Zephyr could fly out, though. He shifted to human form—shit, it was cold without fur—his clawless fingers sadly inadequate for holding onto much of anything. But he did have words. “Go!” he shouted at Zephyr. “Get out of here.”
Perched on the lip of the eye socket above, Rhy cawed at them urgently.
“You can fly,” he told Zephyr. “I can’t. Go.”
She shook her head, clacking her beak rapidly and pointing it at her back.
“I’m too heavy for you,” he argued. “We’ll both go down. Save yourself.”
She clacked angrily, shoving her lethally curved beak into his face. He batted it away. As if Zephyr would ever hurt him. “Go! That’s an order.”
She raised her golden crest in obvious and arrogant refusal.
“Hey!” Rhy, now in human form, sitting on the eye-socket ridge, bare feet dangling, waved furiously at them. “Salena and Nilly are about to hit this thing hard. Get out now or I’ll have to tell them to hold off.”
That wasn’t going to happen. No way would he jeopardize destroying this thing just to save himself. “We’ll be right behind you. Go!”
Rhy didn’t waste time, the raven shooting into the sky before Astar fully realized Rhy had shifted. Zephyr poked him hard in the chest with the sharp point of her beak, one front paw on his belly, her talons extended as she glared at him meaningfully. Around them, the skull shuddered, bouncing as the giant apparently broke into a run. Good thing Zephyr had him pinned, or he might’ve brained himself on a stony protrusion. She pricked him with her talons and snapped her beak at him.
“You don’t scare me,” he ground out. “I gave you an order.”
She shifted to human form, fully splayed against him with one hand on his belly and most of her draped between his thighs. She was naked. “I am not a soldier in your army,” she snapped, the words carrying the echo of her biting beak, her sapphire eyes scorching. “And I’m not interested in your noble self-sacrifice. You have three choices: shift to a bird form, get on my gríobhth back so I can fly us out of here, or fuck me now because I’m not leaving you. If we’re both going to die in human form, let’s do it happy.”
He gaped at her, overcome by her blazing nudity against him, the absurdity of even considering having her here and now as they faced probable death—and how urgently he wanted her. “Zephyr…” he choked out.
“Save it,” she bit out. “No arguing. Put your mouth on me or take option one or two.” She gripped his jaw. “Decide.”
“You can’t carry me,” he argued anyway.
“We don’t know that. And I don’t have to lift, only glide us to the ground.”
“And what if you get killed trying to save me?”
“Better than getting killed inside this stinking stone creature.” She grinned salaciously, nimble fingers undoing his pants. “Think of the ballads, how they found our broken bodies naked and joined, in the midst of—”
He cut her off with an incoherent growl of hunger and horror. The image she painted had him instantly hard, desperate for her—and horrified at what everyone would say. “Fine, I’ll ride.”
She smiled, not pleased so much as sadly vindicated, withdrawing her hand. “At least I know how to get to you. If you don’t get on my back immediately, I’m shifting back to human with my mouth on that hard cock.”
She became the gríobhth before he could react—and by the gleam in her eye, he knew she meant every word. Climbing onto her lion’s back, he nearly muttered that her threat was hardly a disincentive, but he wasn’t going to tempt her mercurial nature. As much as he thought he might be willing to face death right then to have her luscious mouth on him, that would be a bad idea.
Right?
He had no time to think because he had to concentrate on hanging on as she scaled the nearly vertical slope to the eye socket, digging in her talons for purchase. It would’ve been smart for him to climb up as the bear and meet her there, save her the effort, but too late now. Her lower body was strong anyway. It was her wings he worried about. Unbidden, a memory came back to him of that last picnic in Annfwn, when Zephyr dove from the cliff in human form and pierced the water as the gríobhth. Maybe this could work.
She reached the lip of the eye orbit right as the giant shrieked, a ghastly sound that pierced his ears. The world outside bounced and spun—the ground unbelievably far below. Before he could think to fret, Zephyr leapt into the air, wings spread.
~ 14 ~
He was too heavy. Zeph’s wings trembled with strain as she fought not to drop like a rock. Her shoulder muscles burned with agony, the muscle fibers tearing as they tried to sustain the glide. She aimed for the river, figuring an icy, slightly softer landing was better than the debris-strewn ground. Get them down alive and she could shift to heal.
Then she’d tear Astar up one side and down the other for being such a stubborn, stupidly noble idiot. At least the fear that she’d taint his shining honor had impelled him to act to save himself. If she lived, she’d have to sort out how messed up she could be in the head that she so desperately wanted a man who reacted with such visceral horror to the thought of bedding her.
She banked, trying to catch a current, but the icy air—nicely thick, at least—had no handy thermals to provide lift. They were going down and going down fast.
Behind them, magic exploded, a wave of it rippling through the air, followed by shards of stone from the giant. Fine shards pierced her hide, but worse—the impact of the wave unbalanced her, nearly sending her into an uncontrolled and tumbling fall that would certainly kill Astar. She threw everything into regaining her glide, a howl of agony ripping from her throat as her left wing ripped out of its socket.
“Zephyr!” Astar screamed her name, clutching her shoulders as if he could hold her aloft. He began to swing a leg over, clearly intending to jump, but she snaked her tail to whip him across the cheek. “Ow! What the—”
But it was enough to distract him. Letting the dislocated wing drag—agonizing, but the pain kept her alert—she focused on the water. They would hit harder than she’d like, but so it went. Rhy flew wide circles around them, croaking encouragement, and Gen in eagle form winged ahead like a guiding star. Astar held on, chanting words of encou
ragement. At least he wasn’t fighting her anymore.
They hit with a violent splash of bone-chilling water and chunks of ice. Zeph went under, sucking in too much water, but kicked for the surface with all four still-strong legs. Gen was already there in manatee form—which had to be miserable in those temperatures—shouldering under her wrenched wing, Moranu bless her.
Astar had fallen away and she cast about wildly, searching for him—then spotted the grizzly bear swimming toward her with powerful strokes, ice forming on the long guard hairs mantling his powerful neck and shoulders. He wedged under her other side, pushing up beneath her to hold her afloat. Gratefully, she clung to him as he struck out for shore, the ice at least numbing the agony in her wing, and all over her body where they’d hit, but exhaustion sweeping through her.
“Shift, Zeph,” Gen urged, back in human form and wearing an enviably warm-looking fur cloak, helping Astar deposit her as gently as possible on the bank. It still hurt, her body on fire with pain—though she felt oddly detached from it. She had no energy to lift her head, despite the chill of the snowy bank against her drenched fur and feathers. Her wings hung heavily, dragging with the weight of water. A harsh panting sound disturbed her, until she realized it was her.
“Zephyr,” Astar said, wearing only the shirt and pants he shifted back to human in. She really needed to teach him to come back wearing something moderately warmer. Trying to scold him, only a hiss emerged from her beak. Oh, right. She was the gríobhth still. But why did she hurt so much? “Zephyr, listen to me.” Astar grasped her head on either side of her beak, panicked summer-sky blue eyes staring into hers. He was so pretty, even with his golden hair soaking wet and freezing into snarls, and that bleeding cut on his cheek. “You have to shift, to heal yourself. Pick any form. Just do it. That’s an order.”
The Golden Gryphon and the Bear Prince: An Epic Fantasy Romance (Heirs of Magic Book 1) Page 12