by A Corrin
With a gleeful skip in his step, Garrett spun around and ran into the model home. I burst in a few steps behind him, head low and fists up, but he was gone.
“Garrett!” I roared, only half aware of what I was saying. “Garrett, get out here! Did you do this? Did you cause the crash?”
There was no response. I started prowling through the rooms, listening for a breath or a footstep, and stalked upstairs, trailing my hand on the railing.
“Come on, Garrett,” I growled, pausing at the top of the stairs, “I know you’ve wanted this as much as I have. You almost killed Carl, you had your friend in the park pull a knife on Nikki. But you think that makes me afraid of you?” I laughed, a loud, harsh, and mocking sound, moving down a long hallway. “You’ve pissed me off, Garrett. You should be afraid of me.”
“Hey, Jonathan”—Garrett grabbed the back of my shirt and threw me against the wall, holding me there with his elbow—“you should watch where you’re going.”
Before I could do or say anything, he tossed me to the ground, sending me skidding along the wood floor. I scrambled to my hands and knees and tried to get to my feet, but Garrett planted his shoe against my back and pushed me down again.
“‘My friend in the park,’” he snorted. “Yeah, he’s good at what he does. He takes people who consider themselves brave, and he breaks them. You think you know what’s going on?” He ground the heel of his shoe into my backbone. “So arrogant. So damned heroic. I’m sick of coming to school and seein’ you there, surrounded by your admirers. Prince Jonathan, the popular one.”
Listening to his snide voice, I could barely breathe. It hit me how earnest it sounded, how it was full of loathing. And I knew that this wasn’t going to just be a cathartic little fistfight. Everyone was occupied with the emergency outside—no one was going to enter this house for weeks until the destruction had been taken care of. Garrett had lured me in here because he was going to try and kill me. That realization sent an icy shiver down my spine and an electric tingle up my limbs. Nausea made my skin go clammy. I dug my fingers into the floor and strained to pull away, like a mouse tearing itself out from under the claws of a cat. His fingers curled themselves into my hair and gave a vicious yank. My roots screamed in protest. I was pulled up to my knees and twisted to face Garrett’s eyes. He was enjoying this.
Garrett stared into my face for a while, searching for something. “Nah,” he said, as if disappointed. “You aren’t ready, yet! Get angrier, Jonathan!” Then he laughed and hit me hard in the jaw.
I was surprised it didn’t snap; my lower face went numb, and fuzzy dots danced tauntingly in my eyes. The force of his strike flung me backward and my back hit the railing leading downstairs. I put my hand on it, trying to concoct a plan of defense. All that came to mind were images of Garrett in the diner, the men in the park threatening Nikki in Garrett’s name…
That got my blood pumping again, and I felt a pinprick of anger. I grasped it and let it blossom, filling up my body with a warm and excited buzz. I looked over to see Garrett stalking closer, his hands flexing.
I lunged down the stairs and ducked behind the wall, at the base of them, tense. Garrett’s loud, confident footsteps came closer and closer. Suddenly, his fist smashed around the corner and right where my face had been seconds before. I’d been expecting his move and ducked, shouldering into his chest so that he collapsed with a loud grunt. I tugged him back up, punching him onto his butt at the bottom of the stairs. He leaped to his feet and football tackled me around the waist.
We plunged into the neatly arranged sitting room, hitting the coffee table, rolling off it, and taking out a lamp. We writhed and snarled on the carpet like two feral dogs finding each other on the same territory.
Strategy. I need to think strategy, I thought. What were my strengths?
Garrett had me by the shirt front and, as we grappled, seemed to be trying to steer me away from the front of the house and toward the door leading down to the basement. Is he moving us somewhere that no one will hear us? I wondered. That sent a strange chill down my spine. How could he actually be capable of that kind of rationality at this moment?
When I felt my back touch the door to the basement, I desperately channeled my football energy and bent low, hefting Garrett up and throwing him down like a sack of potatoes. As he still had hold of my shirt, I went with him, yelping in alarm and frustration. I tried to pin him, maybe give myself time to turn my impotent panic and anger into the rage I’d felt in the diner after saving Carl on the mountain, but all I saw was the green flash of Garrett’s eyes as he rocked his head forward to butt it against mine.
Red splotches blossomed behind my eyes as I clutched my face. I rolled off of him, and Garrett, completely unfazed by anything like what should’ve been a killer headache, dragged me up onto my feet by the back of my shirt, pinned me against the refrigerator, and drove his fist into my gut. I doubled over. He chuckled wheezily and straightened me back up.
“Your friends aren’t here now, are they, Jon?” Garrett hissed, his eyes alight with savage joy. “It’s just you and me.” He leaned in closer to whisper, “And this is only the beginning.” His face seemed to glow red, but then I saw something like a red light reflected in his eyes. Was the light coming from me?
Garrett gave a joyous laugh. “Yes, Jonathan, there you go! I knew you could do it!”
“What are you talking about?” I gasped, still trying to get adequate air into my lungs.
“Your eyes are red. And glowing like the steel in a forge’s fire. You know what that means, right?” He hit me in the stomach again, shoving me into the fridge and making it rattle. “It means that you’re ready to play the game.”
I held my hands protectively around my body and kept my head lowered, spitting up syrupy blood and watching it fall to the linoleum: a small red puddle in the gem-green grass. That blood, my fear...it made me think about the people outside…the victims of Garrett’s sadism...Carl and Nikki...people in pain, people who suffered while Garrett just stood there like a king surveying the ruin of his enemy’s kingdom and laughed.
A roar built up in my throat, and my hands clenched at my sides. I ripped away from Garrett, batted aside his fist that was coming at my throat, swung back my arm, and shot it at his face, letting loose with another animal roar just as I felt his nose shift under my knuckles. I heard a popping sound and saw Garrett’s eyes go big, his nose slightly off-center and pouring blood.
He fell to his knees, touching a hand carefully to his nose and staring at the scarlet fluid it came away with. I was too insanely exhilarated to see at the time how he was more surprised than in pain. He should have been crying in agony or passed out, but instead he just pinched the bridge of his nose, inclined his head, and looked curiously up at me.
My voice was shaky. I swallowed hard, pointed a trembling finger at him, and said, “I don’t want to hear from you ever again. It’s over, Garrett. I’m calling the cops and your ass can rot in jail where it belongs.” I shuffled my sore weight, trying to see if I had more to say, but instead spun around and headed back toward the living room where my phone had fallen out of my pocket.
I’d done it. I had finally stood up to the guy who had mocked my grief after my mother had died, taunted me when I came to school tender and depressed after a beating from Dad, insulted Nikki for caring about someone he called pathetic, a wimp, a loser...
My cheeks felt warm and wet, and I pulled my shirt sleeve up to siphon away the blood, but there was none. I wiped at my tears with the heel of my palm and blinked furiously.
It was over. That was what mattered.
A splintering throb of pain burst in my lower back, below the rib cage and to the left. It stung like a hornet’s tail, all sorts of agony.
I fell to my knees and reached back to feel the handle of a steak knife half-buried in my flesh. My shirt was soon soaked with red. There’s a knife in my bac
k, I thought, but that truth felt detached and distant from me like I was dreaming about something that had happened to someone else.
Toppling to my side, I watched Garrett limp around to glare down at me. “Next time I’ll make a frontal approach, Jonathan,” he said with a giddy smile and a red glint in his pupils that this time seemed to come from inside his eyeballs somehow, “None of this cloak and dagger-in-the-back stuff. I want to stare into your eyes as you die.”
Everything seemed to pulsate once like a heartbeat. A red haze descended from the sky like mist or the light from a lunar eclipse. I heard his steps dwindling, heard the front door open and shut, and I lay there bleeding out on the carpet. I tried to move, but the pain was intense; it tore through me and I gnashed my teeth and screamed, collapsing back down again.
Something clattered loudly upstairs. Was there someone else here?
“Help!” I cried. My voice was weakening. But whoever had made the sound must have heard because they came bounding down the stairs. I waited for a pair of shoes to round the corner into the living room. Instead, a brown, speckled creature the size of a weasel with large, round eyes and long, mule-like ears came hopping in and perched on the coffee-table above me, gazing down at me with concern.
I knew right away what it was, but I couldn’t understand it: a charlatan, a clever critter known for its cunning, speed, and clownish tendencies. I’d read about it in Peter Malone’s book on mythological beasts. What was one doing here in reality? Was it a weird hallucination? Maybe I’d finally snapped after everything that had happened, and I was really still in bed, catatonic, having some vivid dream.
It sounded real enough, making a comforting cooing sound. It reached down and ran its paw down my face in a soothing gesture. It felt real enough.
“Help, please,” I murmured. “Get help.” The charlatan chattered like a squirrel and leaped away toward the kitchen. I heard it rummaging around, heard the clank and clatter of dishware and pots being shifted.
“I must be crazy,” I muttered to myself. “This is crazy. Everything is crazy. What am I doing?” I tried to get up again but couldn’t manage the strength. The blood from my back had soaked, warm and sticky through my shirt and was crawling up the carpet to about my elbows, saturating everything crimson.
I heard the charlatan return dragging something behind it. Hell, maybe it was a first aid kit. But when it came around within my field of vision, I saw that it was lugging along a giant frying pan. Aiming carefully with its tongue sticking between its teeth, it hefted the frying pan up into the air by its handle, balancing on its two back legs.
“Wait, no!” I yelped.
“We’ll take care of you, my prince,” the creature said solemnly in a high, squeaky voice, and the frying pan came rocketing down at my skull. I heard a loud clang and experienced a feeling of wonderful, pain-free weightlessness before I left this world completely.
Chapter Eight:
I Meet a Gaggle of Griffins
Warm water seeped over my tongue. I was thirsty, so I took a few weak gulps. The water was salty, but it cleared up my achy head. My first thought was that maybe my blood had pooled up toward my face and gotten in my mouth and I tried to push myself off the ground, but there was no ground. Water continued to pour into my mouth and nose, and I spat it out, trying to keep my head aloft.
I opened my eyes and saw that I was floating in an ocean, the sky was brilliant blue and cloudless, and a bright, hot yellow sun beat down on me...which led me to my second thought: the little charlatan rat had knocked my brain loose. I would plot some appropriate revenge when I was out of my current predicament. Calming down as best I could, I paddled in a circle, looking for shore. Behind me a short distance was a beach of golden sand. It was already getting closer as the tide pushed me in.
Up the beach a ways was a line of tropical trees and jewel-green foliage. To the right of the beach was a behemoth cliffside covered in small trees and shrubbery. An archway of stone populated by droves of shrieking seagulls protruded from halfway up the cliff and arced down into the water. I couldn’t see anything beyond the edges of the beach; it curved around beyond my field of vision.
Though I had never been here before physically, I recognized the location from Peter Malone’s book. It was called Pebble Embark, and it was where, supposedly, many heroes of legend had made their beginnings. That book had obviously been a work of fiction. So was this another vision? Another dream?
I swam hard for shore, surprised at how ungainly I was. Normally, I was a pretty good swimmer. I didn’t feel any pain in my back from the fresh knife wound—more proof that I was tripping. When I felt mushy sand under my feet, I tried to stand, but my legs felt stiff and a great weight pulled at my back. I fell forward, reaching out to catch myself, and got the shock of my life.
Instead of my hands digging into the sand in front of my face, I saw monstrous bird talons.
“What the heck?” I blubbered, sitting back on my heels to examine my appendages. My skin was rough, scaly, and yellow-brown. My “fingers” were sensitive and nimble and guarded by long, curved, ebony-black claws. A fringe of fine coppery-colored feathers started at my wrists and thickened farther up my arms. I wriggled the talons. They moved like human digits, and I dug the wicked claws into the sand, then watched the salty seawater fill up the holes.
Flopping around, I found my reflection in the water. A long, curved beak, half open to allow my frantic breaths, was set into a fierce raptor’s face with pure-white eyes and small ear tufts. My eyebrows had lengthened and turned bright yellow, fanning above my head. I cried out, my heart starting to race and my stomach to churn, and scrambled away, twisting my head to see huge, tentlike wings folded out above me. Then there was the tail, which ended in a bushel of long feathers. I moved them up close to my face, fanning them out like a peacock’s tail.
“No, no, no, no!” I whimpered, spinning in circles, trembling with fear, muttering my denial, clenching angrily at the sand with my claws, and then cycling back to fear again. Finally, utterly worn out, I sat back like I’d seen Nikki’s cat do and wrapped my tail around me.
I had to do something. Maybe there was someone around who could help me. I hoped I was capable of human speech and that I hadn’t just chanted desperate repetitions of the word “no” and a few swear words in some monster-bird language only I understood. I doubted any poor person I came upon would patiently wait while I spelled everything out for them in the sand.
With that plan in mind, I made to venture into the trees, but something moved atop a steep, grassy hill to the left of the beach choked with stones and tree roots, and I looked up in the hopes that maybe someone had come to me. Instead, I saw a large beast that looked exactly like me but bigger and easily more majestic. I brought myself to think the word: “griffin.” We were both griffins.
The jungle climbed up to fringe the base of the high, rocky hill, trees standing precariously on the edges of the drop-off, and the griffin was almost invisible in their shade. He had rich, dark, chocolate-colored feathers. His ear tufts were larger than mine and more pointed and thin, whiskery hairs wisped back from his eyes and beak. One white streak ringed each eye, making the gray irises stand out.
He seemed to be amused, watching my antics with his beak quirked up at the corners just under his eyes where they were fleshy and mobile. Rearing back, he flared open his wings to reveal cream-colored undersides striped raggedly with bars of chestnut brown.
I wasn’t sure what to do. I balanced on the tips of my feet, paws, or whatever they were now, and got ready to bolt should the need arise.
The griffin dropped forward gracefully off the hill and soared over the sand to me. At the last moment, he pulled back, flapping his wings hard and buffeting me with their gusts, and touched down on his hind lion paws. When he had come down on all fours, folding his wings after preening a few choice feathers with his beak, the griffin turned his silver eye
s on me. I felt like I was being inspected by a UFC heavyweight—someone who could take me down in a second and slurp what was left up a straw.
The griffin opened his beak and spoke in a deep, bass voice. “Calm down, Jonathan. I am sorry to be blunt, but the Rankers have gained the upper hand and plan to use it. I assure you that you will eventually master the ability to shift into your human form, but you must adjust to these changes that have come over you first.”
I watched his beak blankly as he talked. It took me a few extra seconds for his words to sink in. When he had finished, I said, “I understand you,” feeling unbalanced—like I was standing on a very thin, wobbly wire, about to topple off of it into a chasm of insanity.
“Well, that makes things a whole lot easier, doesn’t it?” the griffin remarked with mirth.
“You can talk,” I stated again. My words dropped from my mouth—beak, now, I guess—in a dull monotone.
“Keen observation,” the griffin teased again.
I registered what he had said and narrowed my eyes suspiciously. “How do you know me?”
The other blinked. “I know a lot about you. I’ve been watching you. My name is Peter.” He dipped his head in greeting.
I tried to move back but did it too fast and fell over, crushing one of my wings. When I boosted myself back up and shook myself to clear away the sand lodged in my fur and feathers, I asked, “Not the same Peter who wrote those books Josiah gave me?”
Peter rocked back on his haunches and spread his wings, holding his talons out to the sides as if to present himself. “The very same,” he said, falling back onto all fours. “I had Josiah give those books to you, to help prepare you.”
“You know my school counselor?” My voice dripped with dubiousness and I started looking around as if for a portal or doorway that I could take back to the real world. I was bleeding out on the floor somewhere with a knife in my back and Garrett on the loose. I had to wake up and get help—and give that charlatan a good kick if it was still there.