Emerald Gryphon: A Paranormal Shifter Romance (Gryphons vs Dragons Book 1)

by Ruby Ryan

  I waited another heartbeat, felt the dragon's fire exploding into existence behind me, and then I took my leap of faith.

  My legs passed through licking flames, the heat more intense than I could have imagined. And then I was falling into open air, nothing there but the looming ground. I flailed my arms for support, much good that did me, and waited for my fate.

  And then Ethan was there.

  He soared across the space, a blur of green, just as I fell into it. I struck his body hard and grabbed clumps of feathers in my hands, and although the momentum knocked him sideways he recovered and glided away from the house and above the treetops of the forest.

  It worked!

  Ethan flew parallel to the ground while I adjusted my grip, pulling up toward his neck to grab onto the gold collar with the emerald set inside. It pulsed even more strongly than the totem in my pocket, the source of Ethan's power. Something that needed protecting.

  "Let's get out of here!" I yelled.

  No, Ethan shot back, brimming with stubbornness. I will not run. I need to end this now.

  I turned to look back at the house. The dragon craned his neck to watch us soar away, fury in his emerald eyes. And farther back, at the base of its long neck, was a similar gold collar to the one I currently held, with an identical emerald glowing with power.

  I leaned close to Ethan's gryphon head. "We have to destroy that emerald!"

  I've been trying, he sent me back, exasperated at the situation. Easier said than done.

  The house began to collapse, a silent implosion from our vantage. The dragon stood as best as he could, then beat his way into the air, wings working slowly and steadily to lift his massive body.

  Ethan circled above, watching. Are you holding on? he asked.

  "Yep."

  He maneuvered himself until we were directly above the dragon, then flapped his wings to remain in place. The dragon tried to climb at an angle, to keep us in his sight, but Ethan adjusted our position so we were always directly above. This required the dragon to tilt his head vertical, like some stupid angry goose honking at the air.

  Slowly, Ethan rose, keeping the dragon at a safe distance.

  This infuriated the dragon; he let out smaller grunts as he climbed, and his anger came off him in waves like heat. He puffed flames at us harmlessly, impatient at the delay. Now that I was with Ethan, he had no choice but to pursue. He didn't want us to get away after he'd been so close.

  We climbed, and climbed, and climbed forever. Soon the ground was so far below that I couldn't look, lest vertigo take over.

  I could tell Ethan was exhausted; beyond feeling it in our bond through the totem, I could sense it in the muscles of his back. Each beat of his wings was less smooth than before, the motions becoming jerky and pained. He couldn't do this much longer.

  But neither could the dragon, which still climbed after us. The vertical effort was sapping more energy from him than Ethan, and I could feel my mate biding his time, ignoring his own exhaustion as the moment neared.

  Soon. Soon. Almost... NOW!

  My stomach flew up into my throat as Ethan allowed himself to plummet straight down. His wings were mostly folded, but the tips stuck out while he guided our fall. Suddenly it looked like the dragon were shooting toward us, then next to us, our perspective warped from the fall. He tilted his head slowly to follow us, obviously caught off guard, disbelief shining with the fury in his eyes.

  Ethan burst open his wings at the last moment. My stomach fell back into place as we hovered in place above the dragon's wings.

  Right next to the base of his neck, where the emerald collar was. It gave off a high-pitched noise in the air, and shimmered with untapped power.

  Ethan tilted his wings, reared back, and rammed the gemstone with his beak.

  Power exploded from the emerald like a bomb, ripping the feathers in my hands and sending me tumbling backwards off his body. I caught one final glimpse of the dragon's emerald, black fractures spreading away from the center, and then I fell.

  My stomach lurched, but settled within seconds. I was now a skydiver without a parachute, limbs splayed flat while I fell from the sky. The wind screamed in my ears painfully, and pulled tears from my eyes to slide across my face.

  The ground spread out below, so distant it barely seemed to move; I could pick out the entire forest, with a speck of black smoke that must have been the house, with the road and even interstate in the far distance. But the ground began to grow, imperceptible at first but with rapidly growing speed, which matched the rising panic in my chest.

  I was falling to my death. I was going to hit the ground, and die, and that would be the end of everything.

  A strange calmness came over me in that moment. I knew what was going to happen, could see my doom rising toward me like a freight train, but I accepted it. There was nothing I could do. I was powerless.

  And there was freedom in that, in a way. The freedom from choices.

  Peace.

  It'd only been a few days, but it felt like Ethan and I had been running from the dragon for years. A constant presence in the back of our heads, making it impossible to enjoy the special bond we shared.

  A burden and a curse.

  But now, in that moment while falling to my death, there was no more running. No more waiting for the dragon to catch up to us. The fight was here, and it was over, for better or for worse.

  I closed my eyes, and savored the time I'd had with Ethan, and waited for the end.

  JESSICA!

  I heard him in my head before sensing his body, a comforting shape falling next to me. I opened my eyes to find him diving hard, the wind slicking back the feathers of his face. He moved sideways until he was underneath me, slowing himself as I gently landed on his back.

  The reality of everything crashed onto me. I'd been falling from the sky... and I'd accepted it! Now that there was safety, a way to survive, my previous calmness felt like madness.

  "I take it all back! I want to live! Save me!" I shouted, watching the ground rise rapidly.

  Calm down!

  Ethan spread his wings, a few inches at a time, resistance growing the more he extended them. Finally he shot them open the rest of the way, the force burying my face into the feathers of his back, and the rough bristles felt better than any down comforter.

  I peeked up to see that we were still high in the air, at least a thousand feet above the trees. It'd felt like we had just barely leveled out in time. My pulse pounded against my temple like a drum.

  I twisted to look above.

  The dragon roared in the air, more high-pitched than before. A scream of pain as he writhed around, wings beating chaotically in the sky. Beams of green light shone through the emerald on his back like lasers, splitting the sky into segments. And then the dragon was falling, roaring with pain as he picked up speed, desperately trying to beat his wings, but they didn't beat with synchronicity and the result sent him into a rolling, looping tumble.

  Ethan and I shared a funereal mood as we watched him plummet, pitying the beast in its agony rather than feeling victorious.

  It struck the ground next to the smoldering house with immense force, sending the trees swaying and kicking up a great cloud of dirt. For a moment I thought he was dead, or knocked out from the blow, but then he began shrinking before our eyes, growing smaller and paler, wings transforming into hair and skin covered with ink. And then he was a human again, nude and helpless and still.

  "Is he alive?" I asked as Ethan kept us hovering in the sky.

  A shape came running from the side of the house--to my shock, Sadie had somehow survived the fire. She bent over him, movements almost tender, her care for him obvious even from our vantage.

  I mentally kicked myself. That psychopath chased me with a baseball bat and knocked a door down with an ax to try to kill me. Let's not get too sympathetic, Jessica.

  And then she was lifting him, which should have been impossible based on their weight difference, but
I quickly saw that the dragon was able to stand on his own feet. With an arm around him Sadie helped the dragon over to his truck, guiding him into the passenger seat before hopping in the driver side. The engine gargled to life, and then the truck was making a U-turn and driving back down the dirt path to the main road.

  "Let's go," I said, patting Ethan's neck encouragingly. "We can't let them get away."

  Let them go, he said simply, and began to descend toward the house.

  I gave a start. "Do what now? They kidnapped me! An even if we ignored that, he tried to kill you! A few pecks with your beak and we can pop their tires and call the cops!"

  But Ethan didn't answer, and kept descending toward the rising smoke of the house until we were mere feet above the ground. And the feathers pressed against my body began to disappear, receding into Ethan's flesh along with the wings themselves, and his eagle's head shrunk and change to skin and hair and then, before I could think about it, I was holding onto a human in a piggy-back ride.

  He fell the final foot to the ground, absorbing the shock with his knees. I let go and slid off of his nude body, casually letting my hands slide down his back and butt.

  Hey. A girl's allowed some leeway after a near-death experience.

  Ethan let out the longest exhale I'd ever heard, then fell to his knees on the ground.

  "Ethan!"

  I knelt beside him, putting a cautious hand on his back. He clenched his eyes shut, and then finally began breathing again, gasping like he'd just come up for air.

  He looked at me and smiled. The fatigue in his eyes was immense.

  "I can't stay in that form forever," he said, barely more than a whisper. "It's... draining, after a while. Near the end there it was tougher and tougher to maintain my gryphon form. I feared I wouldn't be able to hold on, and we'd shift back while we were thousands of feet in the air."

  He shuddered, and the thought made me shudder with him. I wrapped my arms around his body to let him know it was okay.

  We crouched on the ground like that for a long while, simply holding one another while we processed what had happened.

  Ethan pulled away first, kissing my hair before standing. I thought about making a joke about his exposed package, but nothing clever came to mind. Plus it seemed inappropriate just then.

  "Now what?" I asked instead.

  Ethan stared at the house, which was no longer on fire but still smoldered with black smoke. But it was as if he weren't really staring at that, but at something beyond it, something only he could see.

  "There's something here," he said.

  28

  ETHAN

  I'd felt it when I first arrived at this place, before fighting the dragon, but I hadn't quite recognized it then. I thought it was Jessica I sensed inside the house. The thought of her in danger had dulled my senses.

  But now that it was over, and she was by my side, I could feel it.

  It pulsed similar to the totem, a heartbeat without a heart. But different, too. Sharper, more dangerous.

  More powerful.

  That scared me. What could be more powerful than a fucking totem that turns men into beasts?

  But I knew it was there, and I knew it pulsed for me.

  "There's something here," I said.

  Jessica frowned. "Like, another dragon? One of his brothers?" She looked around with alarm.

  I grabbed her hand to calm her. "No. Inside the house. Do you not feel it?"

  "Oh." She paused. "What's it feel like?"

  If she couldn't sense it now, then there was no use describing it. "I don't know. But it's in there."

  Jessica jerked her head with remembrance. "Hey. Yeah! There's a chest inside, in the den where they tied me up. The dragon was angry that his girlfriend brought it here." She looked sideways at me. "He was angry that she would bring it close to you."

  I didn't understand why, but I smiled.

  We waited for the smoldering remains of the house to die down. I found some clothes in my car and pulled them on while Jessica gave an exaggerated pout, but she relented when I offered to stay naked if she did the same. Then we sat on the hood of the car and watched the sun crawl across the sky and the smoke begin to fade.

  When it looked safe enough, I approached the front door. Or at least where the front door had been. I grabbed the first wooden plank within reach, testing the pile as it came away.

  It wasn't hot to the touch, and nothing else collapsed around me, so I tossed the board aside and grabbed another.

  The work was slow. Jessica began helping without saying anything, starting in at another angle. Piece by piece we dug through the rubble, carving out a space into the area which had been the den, and all the while whatever was inside pulsed, waiting for us.

  It was night by the time we reached it. A heavy wooden chest like Jessica had described, with iron handles and a padlock as big as a hamster. I prodded it with my shoe.

  "I can't believe it's not damaged," Jessica muttered. I began to nod, then stopped. Somehow it wasn't a surprise at all, even though the wood should have burned. It didn't seem strange.

  Not after everything we'd been through.

  We each grabbed a handle and carried it out to the car between us. It wasn't heavy, at least not with mass. But its importance was something we could both feel.

  And when I went to test the padlock, it fell open as if it had never been locked at all.

  "Maybe the fire loosened it," Jessica offered, but we both knew that wasn't it.

  With trembling fingers I opened the lid.

  The bottom of the chest was filled with long, stringy hay, the musty smell instantly familiar even to a city Systems Administrator like me. There was no other padding, just the wooden walls and the internal iron bands of the chest.

  On the bed of hay rested a sword.

  The blade was two feet long, double-edged and with a blood groove down the middle. The hilt was plain and practical, a few inches of jutting metal above the grip, which was brown leather. The pommel was an ornate octagon, skillfully wrought by the blacksmith with something resembling a Celtic cross set inside.

  The sword pulsed at me, demanding I pick it up, and before I could think to do anything else, I did.

  The grip felt perfect in my hand, the weight just right. I held it up to show Jessica, and her eyes went wide.

  "What's that glow..."

  She was referring to the green light coming off the grip. I felt an indentation in the leather, so I held the blade with my other hand and turned it over carefully.

  Set inside the grip were six gemstones in a vertical line.

  A rectangular emerald.

  A round sapphire.

  A teardrop ruby.

  An oval onyx.

  A triangle amethyst.

  And at the top, a square diamond.

  But the emerald glowed alone, giving off light the others did not possess.

  Emerald. Like the totem. Like me. Like the dragon.

  "Six gemstones," I whispered. "Six brothers." I knew it, the way the dragon had known it.

  "What does it mean?" Jessica asked.

  I didn't know. I had some ideas, but for now I knew how precious this sword was. That I had to do everything in my power to keep it safe.

  Holding it like a newborn baby, I gently placed it back inside the chest and closed the lid. Wordlessly, Jessica helped me lift it up into my car's trunk.

  "I don't know about you, but I'm starving." I strode across the clearing to the spot where I'd shifted, where the torn remains of a pair of jeans and shirt were scattered. I found my wallet and cell phone in the pocket, and transfered them to the ones I was wearing.

  Jessica smiled. "I could eat."

  29

  JESSICA

  We drove in silence down the abandoned Louisiana road.

  Calm, happy silence.

  Our victory was almost anti-climactic since the dragon and his psycho girlfriend got away. That they were still out there somewhere, ready to try to kill
Ethan once again, gnawed at the back of my mind. But he didn't seem to care, so I didn't bring it up.

  A victory was a victory, even if it was just for now.

  It took half an hour to drive to the nearest town with a Motel 6. We ordered three combo meals--yeah, that's right, three, that's how damn hungry we were--from the Waffle House next door, and took them up to our tiny $45 per night hotel room.

  We'd eaten half the food before we were sated enough to talk.

  "You know, it would have been more useful if a bazooka were in that chest," I said around a mouthful of bacon. "Swords aren't exactly state of the art weaponry in 2018. Just saying."

  That pulled a smile onto Ethan's face, and the sight filled me with glee.

  "He's still out there," Ethan said, but the smile didn't fade. "I can feel him, the way I could before."

  "Can he shift into a dragon? After you blew up his emerald collar, or whatever?"

  Ethan shook his head. "I think he can. Well, I mean, I don't really know. But it feels like he still can. I damaged his emerald, fractured it, but I think he's only wounded." He nodded to himself, confidence growing with each word. "I'm certain he'll be back when he's healed up."

  "That sounds like a problem for future-Ethan," I said, stealing a phrase I'd heard him use before. "You should let that guy worry about it."

  "I couldn't agree more."

  I looked over at the chest. We'd brought it inside, not trusting to leave it in the car. "So, those gemstones."

  "Six of them," he nodded. "Six gryphon brothers."

  "Which also means six dragons," I added.

  "Sounds like it, based on what the Emerald Dragon said."

  "But only your gemstone was glowing. The others were dormant."

  He blinked as if he hadn't thought about it. "Yeah?"

  I finished chewing on a bite of pancakes. "Why? Because you were the one to find it? Because you defeated your dragon? Because emerald comes first alphabetically out of all the gems?"

  Ethan chuckled. "Ahh yes, alphabetization. The most important factor to mythical creatures." Then he pointed at me. "Amethyst and diamond come before emerald, though."