by Michele Hauf
She was blessed to be doing something she enjoyed and not stuck behind a desk nine to five.
With a turn of the key in the ignition, the Taurus hummed to life. Kizzy didn’t own a car. Never had and couldn’t foresee ever needing to. She currently held no permanent address that required a car to get from a home to an office job. But she did appreciate the freedom a rental car granted when it was necessary to travel beyond city limits.
Shifting into gear, she allowed her gaze to linger on the boulders below. Her heart tightened, almost as if someone were squeezing it. She shook her head, thinking it was too early in the day for another nightmare. Why she dreamed about a werewolf grabbing her heart was beyond her. But the recurring dream had haunted her about twice a month since the accident.
“I’ve spent too much time seeking monsters,” she muttered as she turned the car around on the two-lane highway and headed toward Thief River Falls. “Bound to catch up with me in my dreams sooner or later. But a werewolf?”
Such creatures were on her list of most feared paranormals. As a believer, she knew to have a healthy fear of the more dangerous sorts, especially those who sported claws or talons. And there had been that one time when she was six and her dad had taken her camping at Lake Bronson. Had it been a werewolf lurking behind the outhouse on the moonlit summer night? She’d screamed so loudly, her father had thought she’d been attacked by a bear. He’d laughed when she’d told him what she thought it was.
Why did men always make her feel stupid for her beliefs? What was so wrong with having a healthy imagination? With not ruling anything out until it was proven otherwise?
Once back in town, she dropped off the car at the rental site because she didn’t plan to drive anywhere else out of city limits. The city was very walkable, and she would take a taxi to the airport at the end of the week. The apartment rental had included a bicycle, but she shook her head as she studied the pink ten-speed. The park was only a half-hour jaunt across the river.
With her trusty DSLR camera on a strap around her neck and the camera bag slung over one shoulder, she headed down the sidewalk and toward the vast city park. Her faded red Vans got her most places comfortably. And her standard slim jeans and a loose but comfy faded pink T-shirt saw her through summer like a pro. The gray linen scarf she’d slipped around her neck this morning hung out of her back jean pocket so it didn’t get tangled in the camera strap.
Crossing a street, she held up her hand to the honking car and swished her long brown hair over a shoulder to cast the driver a thankful smile. He waved her off, a disgusted grimace clouding his face. Didn’t he notice the gorgeous light on the horizon so swiftly slipping through the sky? Grump.
She quickened her steps. The park was not busy; maybe half a dozen people were scattered about, and a few of those were headed toward their cars. It was the supper hour. As she passed the swing sets, she had to laugh at the little girl getting a push from her dad. She screamed madly, but as soon as the swing made its return—from a mere two-foot lift into the air—she giggled.
Striding beyond the semiformal 4H gardens in which she’d spent her high school summers volunteering—clipping, trimming, getting the hornbeam and roses ready for fall—she leaped over the final box hedge. In her peripheral view, she sighted a man walking to her left. No kids in tow. If he had any appreciation for shadows and light, he should be taking in the glimmer of sun setting just beyond the jagged silhouette of forest. He looked a bit older than her, but beyond that she didn’t linger on his appearance.
Though she was twenty-nine, having kids was not on Kizzy’s radar. She’d not once heard her biological clock tick and wasn’t worried about that, either. A husband might add a new angle to this adventure called life but wasn’t necessary to her happiness. As long as he didn’t mind her wanderlust and constant need to move, a man would fit into her life nicely. As a partner in adventure, but never as someone she needed to take care of and expect the same from in return.
And he should never laugh at her beliefs.
Kizzy had been off the market, as her mother liked to call it, for eight months. Call it a bad relationship. Call it dying on the operating-room table and having to have her heart massaged back to life. She hadn’t been in the mood for dating. Sex? Always. But she wasn’t sure she could trust a man beyond a one-night bootie call.
Unless of course they happened to look like Jared Padalecki or Jensen Ackles.
She’d once thought a man could complete her. Probably all women had that thought at some point in their lives. But thankfully her mother, merely by example, had proven to Kizzy that the best relationships are not needy or demanding but rather a shared experience that thrives thanks to the independence of one another. And never balks at the partner’s need to explore anything meaningful.
In Kizzy’s case, what felt meaningful to her was to travel. This trip to Minnesota had been a gift from her parents. Really, though, she much preferred traveling Europe. And who knew? Maybe she’d grow richer in a few more years and could afford a trek to China or Australia.
It didn’t matter where she landed on the map. Wanderlust had officially settled into Kizzy’s soul.
“Ma’am?”
She was pulled from her musings fifty feet from the forest’s edge by the man walking toward her. He wore one of those panama hats tilted jauntily over one eye. Canvas pants tucked into high-laced combat boots, and a plain short-sleeved T-shirt stretched over remarkable pecs. Though he’d called out to her, his attention was riveted to something he held in his hand.
He looked mid-thirties. Dark hair swished to his shoulders. A beard and mustache framed his jaw and mouth. Whatever held his attention, he seemed to be using a guide for which direction to walk in. Perhaps doing a geocache, as her father loved to do. The city had a geocaching club.
He was probably harmless. Yet she wielded her camera as a shield before her chest. “Can I help you?” she asked.
“I’m not sure.” He stopped ten feet from her and looked around, stretching his searching gaze for a long time across the playground area. Whatever he held in hand glinted with a beam of sunlight. She had probably guessed right about the geocaching. Could be tracking it with GPS on his phone.
Overhead, a dark shadow skimmed the sky, and she glanced above him. Those were some big birds.
“Ah, shit,” the man said. He tucked what he was holding into his pants pocket and turned to her. Panic brightened his blue eyes.
And Kizzy squinted to better sight the birds. They were bigger than vultures, which she rarely saw here in Minnesota. They looked...the size of dogs. Big dogs.
Seriously? “What the hell are those?”
“Harpies,” he said quickly and grabbed her by the arm. “Into the woods. We can lose them there.”
“What?” She struggled against his grasp, but he’d managed to seize her wrist and tugged her across the mown lawn toward the line of pine trees. “I’m not going with you!”
“And how will you get away from them?”
“Away from them?” She glanced up to the sky. Harpies? No way. Those were...mythical beings. And much as she believed—
One of them dove toward her.
Suddenly lifted from the ground, Kizzy was tossed over the man’s shoulder as he ran toward the woods.
She couldn’t scream. She should but did not. A curious fascination overwhelmed fear. She reached for her camera, banging against the man’s back, and tried to get a shot even as she was carried off by a stranger into the dark forest.
Chapter 2
“What are they, really?” Kizzy asked as the man set her down but wouldn’t let go of her wrist. He tugged her into the thick brush and trees. Cockleburs brushed her ankles, and she wished she wore longer pants than the capri jeans. She put up a hand to block her face from stray branches that whipped into her face.
“Har
pies,” he said. “Come on!”
Yes, that’s what she thought he’d said.
A harpie was a mythological creature. Half bird, half man or woman, or some such. She had read about them. Had even written a blog post about them, accompanied by a photo she had taken of a blurred raven high in the sky. Gray cloud streaks had remarkably thickened its body, granting her a photograph with just enough about which to speculate.
A half man, half bird? It didn’t get much cooler than that.
Yet behind her, something screeched like her worst movie nightmare. So Kizzy forced herself to follow as her mysterious rescuer tugged her farther into the woods. The camera hung around her neck. Taking pictures could wait. Right now she needed to steer her guide out of the sticky, thorned stuff.
Dodging the bramble and brush the best she could, she called, “There is a path to the left!”
“I see that. They are taking it.”
“Oh. Then go right!”
“Doesn’t that lead back toward the park?”
It did. And it would give her an opportunity to break from this guy and run for freedom. Because if it was a choice between harpies and some weirdo intent on luring her deeper into the forest, she wasn’t sure which was better. She wasn’t stupid. Nor would she allow fear to cloud her judgment. He looked safe enough, but what defined safe?
On the other hand. If they lured the creatures back toward the park, the children and their parents could be in danger. Had they seen the harpies? Had someone called the police? What could the police do but stare in wonder as she had?
The whisk of wings brushing overhead tree leaves set her heart to a thunderous pace. Her breaths gasped, not so much because she was exerting herself—picking through the brush did slow their escape—but, okay, she was a little scared. The flying creatures were bigger than dogs. And there were three of them.
Their pace had slowed. She needed to pause and get a picture. Never before had she an opportunity like this. Those creatures were exactly what she’d hoped to capture on film! And the light in the forest was perfect. The red/orange sun crisping around the edges of the tree canopy would define the wings for sure.
Having released her wrist, the man stalked five paces ahead of her, forging a path as he stomped fallen branches. Kizzy stopped and lifted the camera to her eye. Trying to focus through the tree trunks and thankful the zoom lens was still attached because she generally used a prime lens. She tracked one creature, snapping repeatedly. If she took a hundred shots she might end up with a handful of good ones.
“What are you doing? They are after you!” He tried to grab her wrist again, but she kicked toward his shin. He dodged swiftly, and she missed. “Don’t you understand?”
“What makes you think they are after me? I was doing fine, enjoying a nice stroll in the park, until you showed up!”
“Is that the way of it?” He gestured with a splay of hands. “Fend for yourself!” He turned and loped off, tracking through the brush to the right.
And Kizzy saw the dark shadows trace the ground and felt the chilling sweep of wings overhead. She may be brave, but she wasn’t stupid. “I changed my mind!”
Her day had morphed into an Alfred Hitchcock movie on testosterone. And she wasn’t about to become bird food.
She stuffed the camera into the bag at her hip. Tramping over the loamy, leaf-covered forest floor, she stumbled on a fallen log and caught her hands against a wide tree trunk frosted with moss. While normally she’d inhale the scents of nature, all she could smell was her anxiety.
One of the birds lunged toward the man in front of her, and he shot it with some kind of arrow. From a small device that looked like a pistol yet it hadn’t made a sound when it had fired.
Like a small crossbow? Who was that guy? And what fairy-tale chase had she fallen into? Robin Hood had always been her favorite, even the Disney cartoon fox version of the hero held an appeal.
Carefully, she crept closer to him and witnessed him take out another of the harpies with the arrow-shooting pistol. When the final harpie swooped over her head, she ducked and loosed a necessary scream.
“Stay there! Low!”
Clasping her hands over her head, she followed directions, cowering against the base of an oak tree’s gnarly roots. Heartbeats racing, she was suddenly thankful that if attack by crazy birds was her fate, at least she had some kind of rescuing hero who wielded a worthy weapon on her side.
So she would trust him. Because right now he offered her best hope.
She observed him watching the circling bird. Lean and tall, his biceps and pecs flexed beneath the gray T-shirt as he tracked the remaining creature with the hand-sized crossbow. His footing sure, he turned at the hips, a graceful predator. Aiming, one eye closed, a twitch of his finger released the trigger. The bird screeched and dropped out of the sky, its wings snagging the leaves and landing...right beside Kizzy.
She swore and scrambled over a tree root and toward the man. But then she stopped. She had no reason to be afraid of a dead creature. And, holy Hannah, it was a creature!
She pulled the camera out of the bag, and—
“Oh, no.” He slipped his hand into one of hers. “No time. More could be coming. I made clean shots, straight through the hearts. They’ll dissipate to feathers in minutes. No worry of cleanup, thank the gods. My truck is this way.”
She followed him, regretting only that she hadn’t time to snap a photo, but thinking that she had tons of questions that he would answer before she let him get away. Maybe. The urge to flee from him was also strong.
At the forest’s edge, which was about two city blocks away from town, he paused and searched the sky. But a few streaks of pink and gold lingered from the setting sun.
“All clear. Come on!” With her hand still in his, he raced across the grassy lawn toward the curb where a black Ford truck was parked.
“I can get home on my own,” she said, her voice wobbling as his pace did not let up until he’d reached the vehicle. But really? She’d head back into the forest first with hope of getting a picture before the creatures turned to a heap of feathers.
“Absolutely not.”
Controlling much? So she’d forego the questions. A sudden nervousness urged her to run from him. Forget about the awesome creatures lying dead in the forest. This man might be the one she should fear the most.
When he opened the passenger door and waited for her to get in, Kizzy took a moment to really gaze at his face. Wide-set blue eyes didn’t look at her so much as keep her in peripheral view as he scanned the sky. A thick beard hugged his square jaw, and an equally dark mustache stretched down to the beard. He still wore the hat. How he’d not lost it while racing through the forest was beyond her. The whole outfit gave him an Indiana Jones vibe.
With a paranormal bent? He knew about those harpies. Had come armed to take them out. She’d be a fool to run off without questioning him.
“Who are you?” she asked. “Or maybe the better question should be what are you?”
“Bron Everhart,” he said, his attention averting to the sky. “There’s more!”
She looked over her shoulder in the direction he pointed. Holy Hannah, there were more. Flying toward them. She gripped the camera. “Why are they after us?”
“I was tracking...” He shoved her at the shoulder. “Get in. I’ll explain as we drive. I want to lure them away from the town. And if they continue to follow the truck, then I’ll know it’s you they’re after.”
She hadn’t a chance to protest that maybe it was him they wanted. But Kizzy didn’t need a shove to get inside the truck. Stand her ground and refuse the crazy man’s assistance? Or get inside the vehicle where she had a metal frame and glass to protect her from the weird flying things?
She climbed up and pulled the door shut. The driver’s door slammed a second later,
and the ignition fired up.
“I don’t understand why harpies would come after me,” she said as the truck pulled away from the curb. “I’m not anyone. I’m just a photographer. Yet, how cool were they?” she said with an incredulous tone. “I mean, I believe in faeries and vampires and have always dreamed of seeing some kind of creature some day.”
“Vampires, eh?” He shifted into Drive and cast her a head-shaking smirk as he turned the vehicle away from town.
“Just take me home,” she said quickly. Then she could hop on her bike and return to the forest. “I’m staying in an apartment in the middle of town. It’s a couple miles that way.”
“And lure them into the city? And give them the location of where you’re staying?”
Put like that it didn’t sound like a smart thing to do. Her eagerness to get a good photograph of the myth was making her foolish. She had to think of others. Would the harpies risk flying into the town? She didn’t have any weapons. And while she took risks to get the perfect shot, she wasn’t a danger seeker who would stand at a cliff’s edge peering over.
“Bron? Is that what you said your name was?”
“Has been all my life. Buckle up.”
She did so, unstrapping the camera bag and setting it on the floor. She pulled the camera off from around her neck and turned to track the harpies through the back window.
“Put the camera away,” he insisted. “The last thing the world needs is evidence of those bastards’ existence. I’m surprised they are so blatantly out in this realm.”
“Yet you know about them? You’re familiar with birdmen?”
“Harpies. They can be male or female. And, yes, they are real, if that’s what you’re asking.”