by JJ Jones
She could only understand part of what they were saying, but it sounded like they were arguing. Corvin wanted them to deliver something, whatever it was sounded dangerous, and no one in the trio could quite agree on what was the best way to move it.
Already, Clarissa had enough information to confirm what Abel needed, but she lingered for a while longer, just to get more information about whatever it was that Corvin wanted them to
deliver. If it was something dangerous, it seemed like it would be in the best interest if Clarissa got as much information about it as she could.
After fifteen minutes of crouching on the shelf, she turned her recorder off, tucked it back into her bag, and began to make her way back in the direction she had initially come from. They were still talking, but it sounded as if they were arguing in circles about whatever they were supposed to be delivering, so it seemed like a safe bet that Clarissa didn’t need to hear their conversation out until the end.
She stayed low to the ground and crept along slowly until she made it to the other end of the shelving unit, and only then did she get to her feet and retreat towards the bay door again at as brisk of a walk as she was willing to manage, still worried about her footsteps drifting through the warehouse regardless of how quiet she tried to be. She had never been a particularly paranoid person growing up, so really, it was astounding just how quickly she could pick up the habit once it seemed like it might be beneficial.
Only once she was back outside did she text Abel to let him know that the gryphons were the ones he was looking for, and she leaned back against the building to wait. Back pressed flat against it to make it as hard to spot her as possible, she kept her attention turned towards the warehouse, listening intently. If any of the gryphons inside were going to come barreling out
unexpectedly—and she didn’t know why they would, since it stood to reason that if they hadn’t noticed her while she was inside then they were even less likely to notice her while she was
outside, then she didn’t want to just be standing out in the open and she didn’t want to be
taken off guard.
Not that she really expected she would be able to do much if one of them decided it was a good time to go out and stretch his legs, but she felt better if she at least tried to ready herself to flee or hide.
Not even two minutes later, Abel landed in front of her with enough force that she could feel it in her feet, and Marjorie galloped up just a few moments later. Already, Clarissa could hear raised voices from inside the warehouse, and she could hear footsteps rapidly approaching the bay door. Despite that, she stayed right where she was as Marjorie attempted to herd her away from the building, nudging at Clarissa with her nose and poking her delicately with the side of her horn.
It became apparent readily enough that Clarissa wasn’t going anywhere, and Marjorie’s ears folded back against her head in irritation as she let out a sigh that was more of a blustering snort, shaking her head briefly as her sides expanded and then narrowed once again. Regardless, she didn’t press the matter any further, instead simply deciding to stay close at hand.
Unlike paranoia, stubbornness had always been one of Clarissa’s strong points, and she was well accustomed to using it.
A moment later, a pair of gryphons burst out, and neither was quite what Clarissa expected. True, they were both made up of bird parts and cat parts, but neither one looked like any part of an
eagle or a lion. Other than the general outline -- the general guidelines of ‘part bird, part big cat’ -- neither one looked much of anything like the storybook descriptions.
The larger of the pair looked like a tiger from the shoulders back, and his front and wings looked like some sort of dark grey falcon, sharp and angular and irritated, with his wings partially spread and his feathers rustling in his annoyance. The smaller of the two, though neither of them could really be called small, looked like a snow leopard from the shoulders back, and his front and wings looked like a pale owl. He clicked his beak and made a low rumbling noise, his head
lowering as he bobbed it from side to side for a moment. His tail lashed back and forth behind him, and his paws and talons flexed, claws digging at the ground.
Marjorie stepped forward, planting herself in front of Clarissa like some sort of living shield. Just in case something went wrong, though Clarissa dearly hoped that wouldn’t be the case.
Reluctantly, the gryphons calmed under Marjorie’s glare. Whether it was because they figured she would win or because unicorns were simply good at calming others down, Clarissa wasn’t sure, but she was glad for it regardless.
The third gryphon emerged a moment later as the other two parted to let him past, and he still looked like a human. He was a strangely generic looking man, neither tall nor short, neither pale nor tan, neither ugly nor particularly attractive. The best Clarissa could settle on was that he was rather man-shaped, and his face was rather face-shaped, with tawny brown hair slicked back away from his face, dark eyebrows, and dark brown eyes.
“You are not Corvin,” he observed, and he sounded less like he was surprised and more like he was accusing Abel of something. As if Abel had tried to trick them somehow, rather than just showing up in the open, right there to be confronted and to have a discussion with, calm and about as unthreatening as he could be while still being a dragon.
(Admittedly, his presence alone did carry a certain amount of weight, but Clarissa was going to say that wasn’t exactly his fault, nor something that he could help.)
“I am not,” Abel agreed easily, and he settled lower to the ground, until his chest rested against it in much the same way he had when he first took Clarissa for a ride. To look less imposing, Clarissa realized with a start. It was strangely easy to forget that he was trying to minimize the damage he had to do when it looked like some sort of standoff was taking place, but she
supposed that sort of mindset was inevitable when they kept talking about war amongst magical creatures. “I’m simply here to make a deal with you. You may call me Abel.”
None of the gryphons seemed convinced, but when presented with a dragon and a unicorn, there was little they could do other than simply listen to what Abel had to say. The perks of being large and imposing; even when well-meaning, it did tend to make things go just a little bit more smoothly.
“Gaspard,” the leader of the gryphon trio sighed, sounding like he was conceding defeat. He made an expectant gesture with one hand, waiting for Abel to begin to explain his deal.
Much like last time, Abel explained what he knew would happen if Corvin got his way. And while they seemed to at least find it compelling, they weren’t convinced in the same way Mr. Bergeron had been. Gaspard did not leap to renounce the other dragon’s ways. His eyebrows rose slightly when Abel finished explaining what the horror show would be, as if he was waiting for something else.
Seamlessly, Abel tried another tack. Tipping his head to one side, he pointed out, “With all that Corvin wants to achieve, soon enough he will need more help than you can give him.” He paused for a moment, letting those words sink in. “What do you suppose he will do with you when that time comes? You can’t honestly tell me you think he’ll keep you around out of some sense of sentimentality.”
There was silence for a moment after that, until Gaspard looked away, almost seeming reluctant as he did. Still, he didn’t concede so quickly. No one liked admitting they were wrong, after all. Especially when the stakes were high and could end in death.
Even knowing that, Clarissa wanted to shake him, because how could he not see that even if he behaved perfectly and did everything Corvin asked, he would still become irrelevant and be cast aside in time? It was plainly obvious, but he didn’t want to acknowledge it, as if he could just tuck his head under his wing and pretend that all would be well so long as he stayed in line.
But she couldn’t be too annoyed with him, she supposed. She had considered simply ignoring the entire situation herself, after all. It had been so
tempting to just pretend nothing was going on, write her article like normal, and eventually go home. And if she could change her mind then she didn’t think Gaspard was entirely hopeless, either.
(That was something she wasn’t particularly inclined to considering people to be, frankly. Hopeless. No one was truly hopeless. There were people who had fallen too far to be reached, of course, but she had to believe that if someone had offered a hand to them before they fell quite so far then they would have been able to climb back up.)
Abel straightened up slightly, making himself larger as he pressed the point further. “Will you try to fight him?” he wondered silkily. “I don’t think that will go very well. He could turn all of you into drumsticks. All at once if he wanted to.” The other two gryphons began to shift uncomfortably, but Abel paid them no mind. “Or will you grovel and scrape when you realize the time you might be replaced is fast approaching, to try to stay in his good books? That won’t be a proven method, of course. He may very well try to get rid of you anyway, and he would feel no guilt about it.”
He let that statement stand for a moment, staring down at Gaspard placidly. He meant no harm, but the implication was clear; they all knew what he was capable of and what he could do if pressed, in the same way that they all knew what sort of man Corvin was.
(And what was it about Corvin that had attracted his followers to him? Clarissa couldn’t help but wonder. Was it simple fear? Or was it misdirection? Had he somehow kept it hidden just what sort of a man he was until after they had already fallen into step with him, or had he simply steamrolled them into place? She hadn’t actually met Corvin—cowering silently in the same room as he didn’t count, after all—so she couldn’t even guess at which seemed more likely.)
Slowly, Gaspard sighed, and he reached up to pinch the bridge of his nose between two fingers until he dragged his hand down his face. It was a supremely tired gesture. “Fine,” he agreed, folding his arms over his chest. “You get your way. But how, exactly, do you plan on keeping Corvin from noticing anything?” His eyebrows rose slightly. “If we simply refuse to go along with him anymore, it will not go well for us.” His tone turned slightly expectant as he pointed out, “After all, you are the one who pointed out that he wouldn’t hesitate to get rid of us if we weren’t helpful to him anymore.”
Abel was silent for a moment before he cocked his head to one side. “Start with an inspection. He can’t store anything in the warehouse, or your trucks, if everything is going to be inspected and inventoried. For the time being he does still need your business, so there isn’t much he can do about it, and that offers time to think of a more permanent solution until we have everything figured out.”
“Until Corvin is out of the way,” Gaspard translated blandly, evidently not in the mood to beat around the bush. He wasn’t part of their game and he wasn’t going to pretend that he was. “You do not need to sugarcoat anything here.”
Abel nodded once in acknowledgment. “Fair enough,” he agreed, not sounding particularly bothered about the matter. “Does that work for you?”
“For now,” Gaspard conceded at last. “I trust I can let you know if we run into any problems?”
“Of course,” Abel agreed. “Corvin might be willing to throw everyone under the bus to get what he wants, but I don’t plan on doing things his way.”
Gaspard huffed out a laugh, though it didn’t sound particularly pleasant. As if he didn’t quite believe that Abel could win, but he was willing to humor him if it meant he got out of the crossfire himself.
“Good to know,” Gaspard offered, before he glanced to the other two gryphons. At some point, they had ceased their pacing and sat down out of the way, though they got back to their feet once Gaspard’s gaze landed on them, readying to leave for the evening. Gaspard turned his attention back to Abel.
Abel and Gaspard stared at each other for a moment longer before Gaspard transformed as well, turning into a bizarre combination of cougar and vulture. He gave his head a shake and turned to click his beak at the other two, and all three of them launched themselves into the air with a hop.
They hovered in place over the ground for a second before the trio turned and winged into the sky, eager to put some distance between themselves and the interlopers who had suddenly made their lives so much more complicated.
Perhaps it was a talent of Abel’s, Clarissa mused to herself with some amusement. Considering her own life had been rather ordinary before she let him walk into it, and once he did, any sense of ordinary very rapidly disappeared.
It wasn’t until the gryphons were just dark, distant specks in the sky that Marjorie and Abel turned their attention to Clarissa and Abel wondered, “Are we ready to get out of here?” even as he was already lowering himself towards the ground.
“Ready,” Clarissa confirmed, just a touch too eagerly as she climbed onto Abel’s back again. Marjorie whickered gently in amusement at her enthusiasm for flight, before she wheeled about on her rear hooves and then took off straight into a gallop.
Clarissa wrapped her arms around Abel’s neck just in time for him to launch himself into the air, and though he didn’t get anywhere near as high as he got the last time, the view was amazing all the same. The flight felt too short before Abel was once again landing, and Clarissa had to scramble down from his back to let him transform in a hurry before anyone spotted him.
They waited for a short while on the sidewalk in front of his townhouse, until they heard a sound like bells and Marjorie came galloping off a side street. She gave her head a quick shake before transforming as well, and she looked at Clarissa and Abel thoughtfully for a moment before she mused, “You know, this has been going better than I had expected it to.” Despite the words, she didn’t actually sound particularly surprised by the turn of events, but rather she simply sounded quietly pleased.
“Love the vote of confidence there,” Clarissa returned dryly, and she snorted quietly when
Marjorie swatted her lightly with one hand.
“You know that’s not what I was getting at,” Marjorie scolded her lightly.
Abel cleared his throat. “No cat fights,” he instructed simply. “Not in front of my house at least. I’m not going to hide being a dragon just to get reported for disturbing the peace, instead.”
“You are such a buzzkill,” Marjorie sighed, pouting carefully for a moment.
“I would’ve won,” Clarissa informed the two of them, and Marjorie nodded along earnestly in reply, conceding the battle.
(It was such an easy sort of camaraderie. It honestly left Clarissa a little stunned. From both of them, considering she was more than a little in awe of them both. Because really, attracting the attention of one person as incredible as Abel and Marjorie could be passed off as a fluke or an accident. Attracting the attention of two, and in such a short amount of time, had to be no less than divine intervention. It seemed impossible that it was simply on her own merits. Not that she planned on saying that out loud, of course. She was aware of when she sounded pitiful.)
Abel rolled his eyes and cleared his throat again. “Do we need anything else?” he asked, looking back and forth between them both. “Are we good for the night?”
“I’m pretty sure we’re good,” Marjorie assured him. “So, I’m going to head home and get some sleep before it gets too late for me to bother. You two should probably do the same.” The look on her face suggested she had her doubts about that happening.
Clarissa could feel her face beginning to heat up, but she didn’t reply to confirm or deny
Marjorie’s suspicions. Either way, she was pretty sure nothing was going to happen that night. Between breaking and entering and espionage, Clarissa was worn out, and mostly she just
wanted to go to sleep.
(For a moment she had to wonder if she and Abel were really that transparent before deciding that the answer was yes, they probably were. Considering the incident in the park, she supposed they wouldn’t exactly be winning any subtl
ety awards, but she was more than happy to trade all of her subtlety away in exchange for phenomenal sex.)
Abel scoffed and waved Marjorie away. “Shoo,” he insisted, waving her off once again. “Go be crass somewhere else.”
“Fine, I will,” Marjorie sniffed primly, before she turned down the side street once again. She called cheerfully, “See you soon,” and then a moment later they could hear her trotting away.
With a slow sigh, Abel turned towards his door and led the way inside. Only then did Clarissa realize that the window had been replaced, and she leaned over to peer through the glass, as if she was going to see something different from usual. As expected, she just saw the sidewalk in front of the house, and she turned away to follow Abel up the stairs and into the bedroom.
She stripped down to her underwear and stepped into his bathroom, where she showered off the grime of the evening. She hadn’t thought to bring any pajamas with her, so she just put her