The Last Griffin

by Wendy L. Koenig

  She looked deep into his eyes. “I love you.”

  “And I love you.” He smiled. “But you don’t really need me anymore.”

  There was something in the way he said it that caught her attention. His eyes had a sad, fearful look to them. She said, “I’ll always need you. You complete me.”

  He crushed her to him, and she thought she saw the glimmer of tears before he buried his face against her neck.

  Chapter 48

  It took three days for Tony to return. Brian reveled in his time alone with Olivia. For the most part, he kept her busy in the tent with him, making love. In between bouts of passion, they attended to a few chores. He built a woodpile while she kept a fire pit burning. They threw wet rags on a laundry line and let them dry stiff. Brian sprinkled water on the tent roof so it would sun-bleach a little. When the water dried, he tossed some dust up there for good measure. He coached Olivia in her practice and helped her score the earth with deep gouges. To an observer in a hurry, the tent would pass for a two-week-old residence. To Brian, it felt like heaven on earth.

  Eventually, Tony’s truck traveled down their road, gravel popping under his tires. When he climbed out, he wore no coat and his shirt sleeves were rolled up. It seemed to be a new woman-charmer look for him. “Word is they’re gathering together. There are quite a few from other families. They should be here within a few hours.”

  Brian turned to Olivia. “Okay. A few last comments. Everything you do has a consequence. Especially because you’re a griffin. Don’t run on just instinct. Think. Make choices. Everything matters. Also, capitalize on the reputation of the griffin. Don’t let them push you around.”

  She nodded. Her position was to stay put near the tent as bait, naturally. She hoped to reason with these bear people. Not that Brian expected it to work. He decided to stay with her, deviating from their initial plan. He couldn’t be talked into a more advantageous position; he wanted to be close by her for when she needed him. Shaking his head, Tony took a position on the ridge above with a telescoping rifle. As a tiger, he could jump directly down the side of the cliff and be at the tent in an instant.

  The bears and their entourage didn’t even try to hide their approach. Trucks rumbled down the dirt track, kicking up bits of rock and mud. It sounded like an army approaching, but it was only three vehicles: a silver Ford and two black Chevys. There were eight or ten burly guys in the back of each. Most were dressed in flannel shirts. Brian wondered if they, like Tony, thought it made them look tougher. The lead truck, one of the black Chevys, stopped about fifty feet from the campfire where he and Olivia sat waiting.

  The other trucks halted farther back, and the big rugged men got out. They spread in a semi-circle around the tent. He didn’t see any guns, which didn’t really surprise him. Like most shifters, these guys seemed to believe their brute strength gave them the greater advantage and would solve everything. Olivia had Tony’s .357 tucked into the left front of her belt, in plain sight. It was a quicker cross draw right next to her hand than fighting to pull the pistol from behind her back.

  Carl Hall walked toward them with a younger man, his son, Brett. The elder Hall was tall and broad of face and body with scarce hair and thick forearms. Brian had never seen him up close before this. Based on his 400 years, this man looked closer to 1000 or just a touch over. Hall said something to his son, who stopped.

  Brian and Olivia stood and made sure the pistol was visible. It caused Hall a little hesitation, and he progressed slower.

  Without preamble, he began. “Have you changed?”

  Brian let Olivia run the show. The whole thing was about her, after all. She nodded. “But, I’m not like those before me. I’ve mastered it.”

  “It can’t be mastered.” He stopped—waiting to see her next move, Brian guessed.

  “See that man on the ridge with the rifle?” She pointed at Tony. “If I couldn’t handle this beast, he’d be dead now. I’m saying it because it’s true. I’m not that type of griffin.”

  “There’s only one type of griffin. And it’s best off dead.” He started to change to bear. His snout elongated a little, his face broadened even more and his clothes tightened with bulging muscle. Brian let loose with a deep snarling growl, and Olivia dropped her hand to the butt of her weapon. Slowly, Hall’s man form emerged from the bear again.

  She said, “It seems to me you’re the dangerous one. There’s no good outcome here. I’m a crack shot, as is the man above. I guarantee you’re going to end up dead. So is that young fellow back there. Think hard on your course of action here. I just want to be left to live my life in solitude.”

  “For now. But what happens when you come into town for supplies? Or if you want some city life? You’re a danger to us all. And, by the way, you aren’t the only ones with guns.” As if on cue, three of Hall’s men revealed shotguns that they’d tried unsuccessfully to keep hidden behind their backs.

  “Fine, but like I said, you and that boy behind you will end up dead. And I bet he has plans of raising a family someday.” Olivia pulled the gun and trained it on the kid. Brian grinned.

  The broad man in front of them shrugged. “What do I care? He’s an idiot.”

  “You may believe that, but I’ve noticed you keep him close to you. Now why do you suppose you do that?”

  Hall roared his anger. His face filled with his desire to change fully into bear warring with his desire to protect his boy. Tony’s rifle went off with a sharp crack from the ridge and a spray of dirt and rock scattered at the younger Hall’s feet. The three men with shotguns snapped their weapons to their shoulders. In an instant, the leader whirled with his hands in the air, staving off any gunfire.

  When Hall had his group under his control again, he turned back to Olivia. “Remember our conversation. We’re not the only shifters who want you dead. Almost everyone does. We’ll all be watching you, Griffin. None closer than I. Someday, I’ll be back and you’ll be extinct.”

  With that, he pivoted sharply and strode back to his black truck, circling his hand above him, telling his men to leave. He climbed in his vehicle, slammed the door, and drove away with his men. Brian and Olivia stared after them. Their little meet-and-greet plan had gone well. Relief welled within him. He’d been expecting a fight of some kind.

  Olivia rolled her eyes and dropped her voice to its deepest range. “‘I’ll be watching you. The only good griffin is a dead one.’” She laughed at her paraphrase, but it filled Brian with worry.

  He said, “He’s right. It’ll never be over. Bears see themselves as the saviors of the shifter world. Throughout many legends, they’re known as symbols of courage and sacrifice. And fear is a powerful motivator, especially to those types. Plus, he’s got a personal vendetta against griffins. And you’re the only one in his sights.”

  She sighed and said, “Unless we send a clear message. You know, ‘This valley is my territory, and I won’t bother you if you stay away from here.’”

  He shrugged. That was something Brian didn’t really believe could solve anything. If he was right, then there would be no end to Hall’s persecution of Olivia…ever. They stared at the retreating trucks.

  Tony jogged up to them. “I heard that. Fighting should be a last resort. Fear is a powerful motivator, and they’re filled with it. Any violence here is a path that leads only to more bad things happening. Let’s try to think of something else.”

  Just as he finished his statement, the three of them heard the sound at the same time. A truck door had shut somewhere in the direction Hall’s group had gone. He must have changed his mind. That could only mean that shapeshifters prepared to attack.

  Chapter 49

  As the woods ahead of them filled with shapeshifters, Tony said, “Pick your positions.”

  Brian nodded to the left. Olivia didn’t answer, her choice of sky obvious. She changed to the other her. The now familiar bone ache of pain gripped her, and she slowed her transformation. Her new and, so far, favorite sweatshirt ripp
ed into pieces and fell to the ground around her feet. Brian had already become the wolf. His always beautiful eyes looked golden in the noonday light. He nuzzled her, took the .357 in his mouth, and then glided into the depths of the trees on the left side of the valley. The white tiger was gone, taking to the shadows on the right. She launched into the air and tried not to circle Brian as he loped to an advantageous spot. He didn’t need her to give away his location.

  Honestly, she wasn’t too worried about Tony and Brian; she figured most of the bullets and attacks would be aimed at her. But, it worried her that their adversaries had only shown three guns. They wouldn’t be making such a gutsy move of backtracking for an ambush if they didn’t have more firepower and more shifters than those that had been seen. It meant Olivia would have to fight in the air while dodging bullets. The upside was that the bear clan might accidentally hit some of their own people too. Or they’d be afraid to shoot for that reason.

  Sure enough, from out of the trees, at least a dozen birds of prey launched at her. The griffin inside her pulled, wanting to be in control, but she’d been training in aerial combat and she was ready. She rolled and brushed off enemy talons while slashing with her beak and hind lion claws. She seemed to be pretty good at this fighting-while-flying thing. She tumbled a golden hawk, two crows, and an eagle from the sky. That left a moment of empty space around her. Even as shots rang out from below, she tucked her wings and plummeted. One of the bullets stung her left haunch, but the rest missed.

  Swooping low like a stealth jet, she grabbed two human forms with guns, one in each bird claw. Before they could think to shoot, they met the same fate as the bird shifters. As she was circling for another descent, a squadron of birds, mostly hawks, but a few crows and one long-plumed phoenix, engaged her. They fought like most raptors: swooping and pulling away at the last minute to expose their claws. A few dove from above, pecking and seeking to force her down to the ground with their combined weight. The beautiful long-tailed phoenix came too close to Olivia’s head, and she twisted sideways putting them belly to belly, fighting and plummeting toward the ground. The other birds saw their opening and bore down on her, several holding her wings in their beaks.

  The strength of the griffin amazed her as she killed and dropped it, hoping it wouldn’t be reborn immediately; she didn’t want those claws back in the fight. Olivia contorted her body and reached for one of the birds holding her wings, a huge bald eagle that she killed, letting it fall.

  They were maybe twenty feet from the ground. Two more birds bailed from the task of causing her to crash. It was the only opening she needed. She beat her wings with such ferocity that the motion loosed the remaining three crows and, as she rose, those birds were driven straight into the dirt and stone floor of the valley.

  She’d had it with reacting; it was time for action. She wheeled around and took off after the last few birds. Their speed was no match for hers. They dipped, angling toward the remaining riflemen. That was fine with her—she’d just take a few of them with her too. She followed the birds closely, but stayed a bit above them, sheltering herself from the guns below. A large caliber rifle boomed and one bird she’d been shadowing, some kind of fisher hawk, crumpled and dropped.

  Chapter 50

  Brian loped in an arc around the left flank of Hall’s men. He currently ran in his wolf form, but, once the fighting started, he’d bounce back and forth from this one to the werewolf as needed. He stayed close to the rock face of the cliff Tony had stood on earlier with the rifle. Between it and the gray coloring of the aspen trunks near it, he was fairly camouflaged. The warm sun sent shadows to stripe his path, hiding his movement. He paused at a cubbyhole in the cliffside and pushed in the .357 with his long lupus mouth. Just in case.

  Tony had circled to the right with the rifle. He would stash it near him for easy use in emergency. Olivia had hidden a shotgun in the tent. She probably wouldn’t need a weapon though. Additionally, there were four other firearms cached around the valley. These were for last resort. If they started with them, Hall’s men could keep them in a standoff forever. Thinning the ranks, therefore, was the first order of business.

  Rifle fire came from the center of the valley, near the river. He changed course and moved deeper into the trees, away from the rock face and toward mid-valley. He started to see, hear, and smell other shifters. A lot of other shifters. He smelled a couple in man form too. Whether or not they were shifters remained to be seen. Brian was betting they were something big and not stealthy, making it easier to remain quiet in the human form. Perhaps a mammoth or even a sea creature of some kind. The trees were thick there, clustered in groups of dark firs, spruces, and pine interspersed with the always present aspen and a few tall, slender cottonwoods.

  He came across a man with a big game rifle, creeping around a wide blue spruce. Brian attacked his adversary. The hunter’s strangled cry brought two others, both bears. Even as Brian finished off the rifle-toting man, he changed into the werewolf. His long, hooked claws reached for one of the other shifters, a large black bear which he neatly killed without suffering much more than a clubbing to his shoulder.

  A sleek, black panther joined the second bear, a young grizzly. Neither approached him and Brian assumed they were waiting for backup.

  He closed in on the pair. The panther backed away. But the young bear stood its ground. As he and the bear grappled, the panther circled them, trying to get behind him. Brian matched the big cat, maneuvering the grizzly to stay constantly between them. The bear sought to envelope him in its arms, to crush him, but Brian stepped out of range. The creature fell away and joined two more black bears that lumbered onto the scene.

  That was when the panther attacked from the side. With a bellow, Brian reached with his opposite hand and flung it at the bears. Without giving his attackers time to recover, he attacked the injured bear. Within seconds, it dropped to the ground.

  The panther retreated. The other bears hung back. Brian became aware of a musky reptilian smell. Keeping an eye on the cat and other newcomers, he glanced around, but saw nothing. Just then, a thick gray rope as broad as his arm dropped from the tree branches above. While he struggled to remove it, the snake wrapped around him, effectively pinning his arms to his sides, squeezing.

  He had to get free! But each time he moved, the python tightened its grip. The two black bears and cat were joined by yet another grizzly. They continued to watch his struggle to free himself. He had no doubt they’d try to finish the job the snake had started. He shifted to full wolf and, for an instant, the loops of snake flesh were loose enough for him to escape them. He squirmed free to face the growing menace.

  The ground around him darkened in shadow and sharp talons closed around his shoulders.

  Chapter 51

  A particularly large American eagle snatched up something from the ground. As it rose into the air, Olivia saw it had a dark shape squirming in its claws. She recognized the long torso, tail, and snout of a wolf. Brian. She exploded into speed, seeing red.

  The three of them reached the narrow gorge that produced the bottleneck at the end of the valley. The river there was high and seething with tension from the forced containment of the water. Pieces of snow and ice clogged its movement and bobbed like ships on a storm-fed sea. She was just about on the eagle when it dropped its burden into this maelstrom. Brian disappeared into the floating ice and snow and then tumbled down the waterfall into the deep chasm and pool.

  Olivia dove after him, wings tucked against her sides, neck stretched toward her love. With no hesitation, she angled toward the pool and plunged into the gelid waters, peering in the murk for Brian. She couldn’t find him. He was nowhere. Perhaps she hadn’t seen clearly. He could be hung up on a rock somewhere above. Frantic, she rose out of the water and flew up the outside of the falls. She stared through the curtain of water at the rock face behind, close enough to it that her wingtips grazed the frigid water. He wasn’t there. Reaching the top, she was about to bank and
search the surface of the falls again when she heard Tony cry out in Bengal form. She hesitated. He was in trouble, whereas Brian, wherever he was, was away from the fighting for the time being. With misgivings, she turned and shot toward where she’d heard Tony. Her heart was tearing apart to leave her beloved.

  Be safe, Brian.

  Chapter 52

  Still in wolf form, Brian plunged into the icy waters. Miniature bergs of ice bobbed against his head as he surfaced. For a brief second, he saw Olivia racing toward him, wings pinned against her sides like a rocket. Something hard hit him in the temple: an ice chunk or a tree limb. He went under. Groggily, he tried to paddle to the surface again, but the flotsam above him was too thick, too close together. His feet scraped a hard ridge of rock: the lip of the waterfall.

  Then he felt the world drop from beneath him. The water fractured and he fell. It seemed like forever that he plummeted. Though he was dizzy, some part of him knew to take in a deep breath. Almost a full half of what he sucked in was water. Then he hit the pool below. Though he opened his eyes, he saw nothing but brown roiling murk. The power of the falls crushed him to the bottom and scraped him across it until he reached the perimeter of the pool. He found himself under a shelf in the rock wall there, the tidal force holding him in place. He was, in effect, in an underwater cave.

  Brian’s lungs felt near bursting and the water he’d inhaled burned like gasoline. The cold slowed his actions, even with his hyper-metabolism. How much longer could he last? He scrambled his wolf paws against the eroded rock that surrounded him, but found no purchase. His human form, though imbued with nearly as much strength of his other forms, was inadequate to breach the eddy that held him trapped. His werewolf form had the reach and claws to get him out. The change would exhaust the last of the oxygen in his lungs, but shifting was his only chance.