Protect

by Laura Wylde

  “The Sphynx didn’t lie,” said Lenny loudly. “He was misinformed, just like I’ve been misinformed.”

  He looked pointedly at Tanya, who wilted like a flower. “Pease don’t be like that,” she begged, a sob in her voice.

  Jack might be our Incredible Hulk, but Daniel does an impressive job at blocking doors. He stood in it now in a defensive posture. “Lenny, if you have something to say, you should come right out and say it instead of beating around the bush. It’s affecting your performance.”

  “My performance! That’s what it is! My performance.” Lenny stared at Tanya bitterly.“Did you like Jack’s performance better, or Jamie’s? Obviously, Daniel’s wasn’t enough, so who was it? Did you like them both?”

  Daniel flashed Tanya a look that could only be described as awe with a touch of adoration. “You did them both?” She nodded miserably, her head down. “At the same time?” She nodded again, tears falling from her eyes.

  That yearning look in Lenny’s eyes told me one thing; he wanted to bolt. I stepped back to help Daniel barricade the door. The freckles marching down Daniel’s face and neck seemed to do a little communicating of their own, shifting in color between light tan and dark brown. He looked at me curiously. “How did you feel about that?”

  “I liked it,” I admitted frankly. I wasn’t going to lie for anybody’s sake.

  He looked at Jack, who was gathering every shred of dignity he could find. “And you? Are you still attracted to Tanya?”

  “I am.”

  “So, nothing’s changed?”

  Jack turned his head, so he was gazing directly at the lady in question. She clutched at her robe with both hands,one at the bust, the other at the lovely little treasure chest. Her blonde hair stuck wetly to her face. Her guilt and remorse turned my heart into melted butter. Jack’s face reminded me of a bloodhound’s, his mouth attempting to hold up the long lines weeping my eyes to chin. “I don’t see how it could change. If possible, I like her even more.”

  “Tanya, is there something you wish to say?”

  Her nostrils were pinched in, and her cheeks were red from crying. She touched the wide middle of her upper lip with her tongue as though it was cracked and dry. “Lenny, you have to believe me when I tell you I like you a lot. I also like Daniel a lot, and Jamie and Jack. I don’t know how to make a choice between any of you…”

  She was running out of words. She looked around as though she might find more written out in the steam, while Lenny began running out of heat. He hung his head, defeated. “I don’t want to lose you, Tanya.”

  I wasn’t at all prepared for what happened next. Without saying a word, Daniel crossed the few feet to Tanya’s side and stood determinedly in front of her. He pulled her hands away from her robe and watched as it fell in a long, straight sheath. He drew her arms up around his neck, kissing the inside of the elbows gently. She moaned and leaned against him, her robe falling away for his hands, which crept inside and around her back. He gave her a long, deep kiss.

  He broke away slowly, backing up and tying her robe around her waist before straightening up. He turned her to face Lenny. The two looked down at their feet instead of at each other. Daniel lifted Lenny’s face with both hands. “Look at me.” Lenny looked, his mild brown eyes drooping.

  He stepped out from between them and pushed them closer together, so that Tanya’s perky, silk-covered breasts brushed against Lenny’s chest. “Now, look at her,” he commanded.

  What Lenny saw was her bowed head. He stroked back all the wet, sticky pieces clinging to her face and lifted her chin. She looked back at him sorrowfully, then wrapped her arms around his neck in a sobbing, passionate kiss.

  I was getting a boner all over again, and so were the others. Just seeing Tanya in a passionate embrace, her robe dripping down like an emerald waterfall, was enough to cause a small earthquake in my groin. We stood in a silent, tight circle, realizing we had reached a pitiful point in our careers. We were in the middle of a case and all we could think about was making love to the victim.

  Daniel

  The steamy room was only half-lit by candles and dim over-head lighting. It softened their features, even their arguments. As the group stared at each other, their words fell away. They looked guilty, as though they had all been stabbing each other in the back. They were all attracted to the same girl, and she was attracted to them. For her part, that was a bonus point. She was willing to share rather than pick one of us out and reject the rest. The question was, could the rest of us?

  We didn’t get a chance to find out. While indecision flitted over our faces, the intruder alarm went off. We heard a thud at the entrance door. Harpies! One of them must have followed me home and returned to the park to tell the others. Quickly, we shape-shifted. “Barricade the hall entrance,” I ordered. “While I take Tanya upstairs.”

  I used my wings to cover her as we hurried out to the foyer. The harpies had already pried open the entrance door but had not yet oriented themselves to their surroundings. They screeched as they flew in circles, then darted into the living room, searching their victim. It wasn’t the best place to corner them as the living room had an open access to the hall and kitchen, but at least we would be able to hold them back until Tanya was securely locked into her bedroom.

  She was trying to run on her own and I pulled her half-dragging, half desperately pummeling her feet forward, up the stairs. Back to back, Jamie and Lenny defended our mad flight, their wings forming a wall behind us, their beaks open, their talons extended in front of them. Jack the mighty, flew into the living room, ripping into two that tried to enter the hallway. His claws slashed the face of one, four wide, evenly spaced marks that ran all the way across her chest. She howled and rolled backwards, leaving her sister hovering angrily above him, more anxious now for revenge than to retrieve the victim we were smuggling away.

  Tanya tried to protest being locked away, saying things like it was all her fault and that she should stand up to them, but I didn’t have time to listen. I pushed her into her room, not giving her a chance to hold or kiss me. Affections could come when it was all over. “Close the shutters,” I told her gruffly so she would know I expected her to obey. “Just push the lever to the left. They’ll close and lock automatically.”

  I left listening to her muffled voice sobbing about how sorry she was. I’m sure I heard her whisper, “let me help you fight them.”

  I didn’t care what she said as long as she followed instructions. “Shutter the damned window!” I roared as I left to join the fight.

  The harpies had gained entrance to both the living room and the kitchen but had not been able to fly up the barricaded stairs. Lenny and Jamie had beaten them back to the bottom steps and were gaining additional ground. Jack needed help. He had cornered the wounded one on the false staircase that we used for our plants. Thinking she had found an escape route, she had flown at the ceiling and damaged her wings. She was on the top step now, hissing and screaming, one sheathed foot stretched in front.

  While Jack tried to keep her at bay, a second harpy swooped high above the hanging lamps and zeroed in at his head. She pecked at it repeatedly, never remaining long enough for him to swat her away.His wings churned as he struck out blindly, which kept him busy while a third harpy abandoned the battle for the stairs and moved in for the kill.

  I flew over the top of Lenny and Jack, following the third harpy. She was swooping low, aiming for the vulnerable spot at the back of Jack’s neck that would cripple the use of his wings. I flew in stealthily behind her. Just before her claws were able to form their deadly grip, I ripped at her back with my talons. It was only a glancing blow, but she screamed and flew straight up, tangling herself in the hanging lights.

  Her shattering calls alerted the others, who realized that with one of them incapacitated and another trapped in the light fixtures, they were outnumbered. Like the cowards they truly were, the able-bodied among them flew out the door. After ripping out the fixtures, the fre
ed harpy flopped around the room a few times, wires and cords knotted around her legs, while her sister climbed out of her corner. Hissing and lashing their tails back and forth furiously, they hobbled backward out of the room, facing us. We let them go. It wasn’t time to take the battle out to the yard. First, we had to reconnoiter and form a tactical plan.

  I examined the entranceway before going inside. The door itself wasn’t damaged, but the harpies had torn out the security panel with its computerized locking mechanism. We would have to barricade the door from inside until Jamie fixed the panel. Hopefully, it wouldn’t take him very long. Now that our location was known, we couldn’t afford any structural weaknesses.

  The front of the house was in shambles. In the kitchen, pots and pans had been knocked off the walls and boxes of food had been spilled from the cupboards. There was broken glass and pottery everywhere. In the living room, plants spilled all over the floor. The hanging lights display was destroyed. Two of the couches were ruined and there was a large crack in the flat screen home theater. I could understand them throwing around our dishes and wrecking our furniture, but did they really have to harm our entertainment center? I sighed. There was a lot of clean-up ahead of us.

  It wasn’t until I went into the foyer that I realized how costly our fight had been. Lenny was seated half-way up the steps, writhing in pain. He hadn’t changed back into his human form, and his wings thrashed helplessly around him. Jack was seated beside him, trying to soothe him. “What happened?” I asked, my heart pounding. The harpies could have burned down the house and they would not cause me nearly as much agony as harming a member of my team.

  Jamie was the only witness. “We were battling one for one. I had finally managed to chase a harpy into the kitchen. She began throwing everything she could find at me, then knocked down the overhead cupboard of bar glasses. While I was scrambling to get clear of the debris, she dashed into the foyer and joined the other harpy on the stairs. Together, they attacked Lenny and snapped both wings. Then they hurled him down the stairs.”

  Lenny gave an involuntary howl that he tried to suppress, leaving him to moan miserably. I knelt beside him. He was a brave lad. A champion. Harpies have been on the endangered species list for a hundred years, so I know there is some sympathy among the gate-keepers toward them. They were allowed to hunt and breed within reasonable limits. By that, they meant harpies could practice their ways as long as their ways didn’t draw undue attention. It was the grudging compromise the guardians shared with all the night creatures. They were tolerated as long as they kept their inhuman practices within limits.

  These harpies had overstepped the boundaries of humans and guardians. They had singled out an innocent for sacrifice. They had exacted their revenge on a protector. They had to be taken out as rapidly as possible; all five. There could be no mercy. “Lenny,” I said. I smoothed back his damaged feathers and placed my hand over his wildly beating heart, looking steadily into his eyes. “We’ve got this. We know who they are. We’re going to take them down. All of them.”

  I needed him to focus on healing instead of the pain. Dark sweat beaded around his feathers. He drew himself up, supporting his weight with his back against the steps. “I’m going to help,” he said between clenched teeth.

  I sat with Lenny while Jack pushed some heavy furniture in front of the door. Jamie had gone to release Tanya from her solitary confinement. I heard the quick rustle of her feet as she tripped down the steps. She hadn’t dressed, which was a little disconcerting. She still wore the same green robe that lit up her eyes like emeralds. She sat on the step above us, the robe crunched between her knees, a long vee opening revealing her neck and trailing between her breasts. She cradled his feathered head in her hands. “Lenny, Lenny! What happened? Who did this to you?”

  “The harpies snapped his wings,” I explained. “He can’t shape-shift back to human form until they’re mended.”

  “Oh!” She bent over him, big tears welling up in her eyes and streaming down her face. “Lenny, I’m so sorry. You are my champion. But all I do is endanger you and cause you pain. It’s not fair. It’s not fair at all.”

  My throat felt raw from trying to hold back my own emotions. Lenny was in bad shape. He flopped feebly, with one leg turned unnaturally, telling me he had at least one other broken bone beside the ulna and metacarpals. His agony was mine. The scalding tears tore at my eyes begging to drop. “Why don’t you let them?”

  The voice startled me a minute. It was my grandfather, waking up deep inside my memories. “Do you think it will make you less a man if you cry? What is the modern world teaching you? You are a phoenix! A protector! Your tears have healing powers. You won’t shed them because you want to look like a bad ass?”

  “No!” I groaned out loud. I let them fall; huge, salty drops that glittered on the golden plumage. It was like a flood gate had opened and I wept over his broken body. Then, it happened. First, the shuddering pain subsided, and he began to breathe more evenly. Next, his twisted, torn wings slowly fused back together, and his leg straightened. His feathers, so raked and pulled he looked like he was molting, smoothed and regained their golden luster. He shape-shifted and lay back, panting with the effort. Soft, downy feathers surrounded him like snow.

  He muttered in a strained, gritty voice, “no need to get mushy on me now, boss. I’ve had worse.”

  “The hell you have!” I laughed. I was so happy to see him back, all I could do was hold his hand while my tears dried on their own.

  It was what we needed to restore morale. Now that Lenny was on the mend, we went to work on repairing some of the destruction. Jack and I did the brute labor. There were overturned cabinets, shelves and furniture. The light fixtures had been destroyed, the wiring snarled and knotted on the floor. We had to cut the power to the living room so we could remove them, along with the broken flat screen.

  Tanya followed behind us, sweeping up the broken glass and putting kitchen items away. When we had finished with the living room, she tenderly placed each plant back in its pot and scooped up the soil to place around it. Watching her reminded me of a woodland fairy tending wildflowers. They are the loveliest things when they are at work. The way they hover like hummingbirds, their lashes curtaining their bright eyes, their lips making a perfect cupid’s bow. When they shape shift, they have doll faces, with long necks and porcelain shoulders.

  Jamie engineered a new security panel. Other than the wiring and a fried memory chip, the components were still good, but he wanted to include an automatic sliding cover for the face, the way we used a metal panel to seal our glass, sliding doors. It didn’t really matter how much we fortified the house. If the harpies wanted a way in, they would find it. The only thing we could do was make it more difficult for them; and more uncomfortable once they got inside.

  We spent the next few days fortifying the brownstone. We no longer needed to worry about looking for harpies. They were looking for us. We needed Lenny to recuperate fully. We all needed to be in top form. Once everything was in order and we had regained our strength, we returned to the sauna and put on our thinking caps.

  Lenny

  The first thing I remembered was swimming through a dark, endless tunnel. This tunnel was full of black, vicious things squeezing and twisting my limbs, causing excruciating pain. Pain so great, it burst out in hot, red bubbles. Slowly, the pain ebbed, the black things squiggled into nothingness, and I opened my eyes to a warm, fuzzy light.

  The next thing I remembered was Daniel’s face just inches from mine. His face was as wet as though he had been out in the rain, but his hair was dry. I realized there were two soft hands holding my head and they were too small and delicate to be Daniel’s. I smelled a perfume that reminded me of violets. I heard a light, sweet voice. “He’s coming around! I think he’s trying to shift!”

  I hadn’t shifted yet? I raised one wing and winced. My feathers really needed a good grooming. They were bent and ruffled. There were gaps where some had fallen out.
“Just take it easy,” Daniel advised, placing a hand against my chest and pushing me back. My head settled between Tanya’s knees, certainly something I was not going to complain about.

  It took a couple efforts, but I finally shape-shifted back to my human form. I tried to stand up and immediately felt dizzy. Daniel propped one arm under mine and guided me down the three steps to the living room, where I collapsed on a slightly shredded daybed.

  It was all coming back to me; the entire battle. I remembered hovering over the stairs, determined not to allow any harpies to reach the upper landing and dueling with one who kept trying to dodge under my tail, causing me to swoop and rake at her disgusting human belly; pouched, wrinkled and cracked like old leather. Around and around we tumbled, with both of us trying to dodge under the other to do the most damage. I was blindsided from above.

  The team had been busy while I was out. Most of the damage had been repaired, the floors swept, the pictures straightened. The big screen was trash. They piled it up along with a couple of heavy dressers in front of the door for their barricade. Daniel, though, was feeling unusually thoughtful. He brought his own television out from his bedroom and hooked it up for me. It wasn’t as large as the family set, but it had higher definition. He had it tuned to the sports channel.

  Tanya was fussing over me like a mother hen, although much sexier than a chicken. More like a cooing dove, with long lashes curled over sparkling eyes, made brighter with tears. When she bent to tuck the blanket around me, I grabbed her hand. “You are alright? The harpies never got up the stairs?”