The Last Griffin

by Wendy L. Koenig

  Hall stared at her. “This isn’t the way to get answers.”

  “Sure it is. Just ask Tanya and her coworkers. They gave me answers. They told me where to find you.” Carl’s mouth dropped into a grim upside down V, but still he said nothing. She tugged Brett closer.

  Carl Hall’s big square face paled at the threat to his son. He held up his hands, warding off her anger. “Stop! We don’t know anything about the wolf. Arlene dropped him off the ledge. If anyone did anything with the body, it was her. We didn’t touch it.”

  Arlene had to be the American eagle.

  “Arlene is dead. So is Tanya. You’d better come up with a better story than that.” This was it, the moment where Olivia either chose to destroy everything or to walk away, seeking other venues for answers. Tony was willing to leave these murderous bastards alive if they left him and Olivia alone, no matter what they’d done in the past. Brian would have agreed. But she wasn’t tiger or wolf. She was griffin. And she wasn’t inherently evil, but, by these people trying to kill her because of the griffin’s reputation for having a thirst for blood, they’d forced her to the cusp of becoming what they feared.

  The memory of Brian’s voice echoed in her head again. It matters.

  Tears blinded her, and she knew then what he and Tony had tried to teach her. What she did mattered. She mattered. It took until now for her see that if she continued her current course of action, she would become nothing more than what these people claimed. They would be justified in their stance. As much as she wanted revenge for her lover’s death, she couldn’t keep killing. Yes, she was a griffin, but she didn’t have to be what these people’s fear decreed.

  Olivia let Brett slide out of her grasp.

  Hall’s jubilant grin was all the warning she had.

  Chapter 58

  Brian slunk out of the shelter. The weather was decidedly cooler than when he first woke. He had no idea which way to go, but he remembered Hunter’s brief nod to the west when he spoke of the battle that was supposed to have happened six days ago. Whether his captor had been telling the truth remained to be seen, but west was as good a direction to travel as any. If he missed the valley, he eventually might find a road to civilization. He may not remember anything recent, but he remembered Tony. A quick phone call to him would clear all the cobwebs out of his brain.

  Assuming the battle was real and Tony had survived it.

  Hunter’s lean-to hadn’t been at the bottom of a valley, as Brian had assumed, but actually was located on an abandoned road along the west side of a mountain. Fine red grit covered the surface of the road, interspersed with rock the same color and dark green cacti with thick yellow spines. For the first time, he considered that Hunter might not have been alone. He hadn’t heard any other voices, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t an advanced guard.

  Heading west took him up the mountain. Urgency drove him. But urgency for what? He slipped through the shadows of the cottonwoods, aspens, spruces, and firs in the waning daylight until he felt confident no one else had been watching the shelter. Then he flat out ran, but he kept watch for enemies and plotted escape avenues as he moved.

  When he topped the ridge, he caught the scent of water. A lot of water. Eagerly, he loped down the east slope. It was brighter there; the setting sun fired the rocks, boulders, and trees with a reddish gold hue. The deep strum of falls reached his wolf ears. He could feel the vibrations in the rocks beneath his feet.

  Would anyone be hanging around? Would Tony still be here, looking for him? He didn’t see anyone, but with shapeshifters, a person could be hidden anywhere. Then again, it could all be a lie.

  He reached the valley floor. Sunlight no longer reached that part of earth, and it was as dark as night. The river flowed wide and high, fat from a thaw. He sat on his haunches and thought about that. December didn’t normally have a thaw. But, there was often one the second or third week of January. If the battle had been truly almost a week ago, it really was sometime in January. If it was the regular January thaw, that meant he’d lost almost a full month of memories.

  What had happened during that time?

  He rose and followed the river, skirting wide where it flooded its banks. He picked up a lope again. His injuries hadn’t had a chance to stiffen, but they still hurt. He pushed the thought of them out of his mind. They’d have to wait. Fear for Tony and for what he’d forgotten, now more than anything, governed his speed. Something had happened. Something terrible. He could feel it lurking at the edges of his thoughts. But, when he reached for it, it disappeared.

  The waterfall was only twenty minutes up the river. The amount and force of water coming over the lip of the cliff above was simply staggering. Brian couldn’t even begin to figure it. It thundered into the tidal pool below, drowning out all other sounds. A thick mist covered everything, almost like a gentle rain. He growled as it matted his fur.

  Hunter had said he’d been thrown into the deep pool. He eyed the whirling current, thick with branches and foam. Only his werewolf could have survived that. He was damn lucky to be alive.

  He gauged the cliff side and decided there was no path for him to climb up as wolf. He could do so as human or werewolf, but it was slower than going around. He stayed as the fast traveling wolf and retraced his steps until he came to a traversable path back up the mountainside.

  It led him to a second vale above the falls. Here, the river was even wider and completely out of its banks. Most of the broad gorge floor looked like a river delta with stream grooves and channels that branched around newly formed islands. The individual tributaries tapered to the deep single channel as they neared the lip of the falls. Occasionally tall cottonwoods broke through the surface of the water, like sentinels or lighthouses.

  He traveled the eastern edge of the valley, against the mountainside. A hint of a memory tickled his mind of another similar trip. He couldn’t remember why, or when, but he thought he’d been wolf and had been carrying something in his mouth. It was possible that he might remember more if he walked that very same path. First, he would need to find a way across the water.

  He continued upriver until he reached a place where the overfull water had split into two narrow channels. He began hopping from island to island. Most were soggy, as if they’d been underwater recently.

  Landing on what he thought was one such island, he sank through into the chill water. Scrambling his legs, he finally found a tangle of submerged branches below. They shifted, but held. His head was just barely above water. When he changed position to look for solid earth, his perch sank. Water filled his nose and he lost his footing. The current swept him away.

  It was only by luck he’d landed in a tributary that joined quickly with the main channel. When the two met, the strength of the main channel pushed him to the side onto a small hillock. From there, he fought to gain purchase on higher ground. Finally, he pulled himself out of the water. Shaking from the effort, he lay on the rock and grit for a few moments to regain his strength. That urgent feeling that had pushed him all evening built again from somewhere in his hidden memories. Soon, he stood and continued his island hopping, more carefully this time. He quickly learned to tell the difference between fake land and bona fide earth by watching the islands for a moment. The fake islands bobbed occasionally. Such a simple way of telling, yet he’d somehow missed it because of the drive within him.

  The night was full upon his little part of the earth. The sky had filled with clouds and the temperature was still steadily dropping. It smelled like snow. About halfway through his journey across the valley, and once past both deep channels, he happened to see something moving on an island down river from him. He changed direction. As he came closer, he saw it was the remnants of a tent that had been moored between two of the few stout cottonwood trees at that end of the valley.

  Landing on that island, he saw a partial stone circle from a fire pit that had been washed away. The tent itself was mostly gone, taken by the force of the water. Tatters we
re all that remained.

  When he sniffed it, he smelled his own scent. So, Hunter had been telling the truth. He had been here. He moved closer to the tree on the south side of the rope securing the tent. He smelled…Olivia.

  The power of his returning memories was strong enough to make him stagger against the cottonwood’s wide trunk. He slumped to the ground. Just before he passed out, he saw Olivia’s beautiful face in his mind.

  Chapter 59

  Through her peripheral vision, Olivia had been watching the panther creep slowly along the filthy wall of the bar, pausing when she looked his way. He wasn’t more than five feet from her, crouched low, tail whipping and legs bunched beneath him. When she let Brett go, she’d hoped that was the end of it. She didn’t want vengeance, not anymore. She just wanted to be left alone.

  At Hall’s triumphant grin, a black streak launched at her. She sped through the rest of the transformation into her griffin form and met the panther head on, gasping at the torture of the change. The pain clouded her reasoning and, as a result, she found herself with a snarling, writhing jungle cat biting for her throat and two bears clubbing at her head. Those who had remained human stood at a distance, even the ones armed. She saw more than one pistol pointed at her. Keeping the bears between those guns and her, she grappled with the cat.

  She had hold of his body with one talon, supporting her upper body with her other eagle leg and staying low to protect her underbelly. One of the bears leaned in too far, swung too close to one of her wings. She beat her wing against his arm and he twisted around to the wall and slid to the floor, roaring in pain.

  Suddenly outnumbered, the second bear stepped back and she heard one of the guns fire. The bullet tore through the panther and into Olivia’s shoulder, numbing it. Feeling the panther go slack, she threw the black body toward the cluster of men with everything she had. The minute he was loose from her, she launched onto a pool table. There was barely room for her head, but it afforded her better reach, especially now that she was injured. The group of men split into three.

  About half of the guys, some in the process of changing to their alternate selves, ran out the back or the front of the bar, forgetting they had guns. She saw that Carl and Brett were among them. The remaining shifters split into two groups and fought on, but it wasn’t much of a match. They were unsure without their buddies to support them. Their boss had abandoned them. She had no heart for the fight, and she let them escape one-by-one. Those that didn’t, she sought only to injure. Still, a few went down without their heads or intestines. She took another gunshot in the side.

  When the last man slipped out the door, she shifted to human and stopped at the sink behind the bar to wash her wounds. None of her injuries seemed life-threatening, but she still couldn’t move her arm and she felt a stitch in her side when she turned. She felt a bit light-headed too. She’d have to get her injuries looked after. She dried herself and searched behind the bar for what she knew must be there: a camera recorder. The camera, itself, was hidden between a couple of bottles of aged whiskey high on a shelf in front of the mirror. Contrary to the outcome of most movie bar fights, the mirror was still intact. She grinned.

  Tony would be arriving any second.

  Finally, she found the recorder, pulled out the DVD, broke it into little pieces and slipped out the front door. Grabbing the shirt from the fallen bouncer, she left.

  Somehow, she felt responsible for Brian’s disappearance, hence his death. Maybe he’d still been alive, hung up on the rocks, when she’d abandoned him to assist Tony. She blamed Tony a little too. But not much. It really was almost entirely on her. She kept thinking that if she knew what happened, she’d be able to let go. Maybe. Still, in spite of her best efforts, there were no answers.

  It was only six days after the battle and Brian’s death. She’d killed so many people that she couldn’t count them anymore. Even the blinding violence failed to stop the desensitization of the seething rage within her. She was becoming numb, spiraling down to what surely must be her own death. In this fog, she found herself at Brian’s old house near Marquis Park. She broke a window in back and wandered his home, touching the things he loved. She stumbled on a half-completed sketch of her lying on his couch from the night he’d guarded her. Even then, he’d later told her, he’d loved her. Now she saw it. She felt the first stirrings of any emotion other than fury. The blood didn’t belong here. She went upstairs, showered, stitched, and wrapped her wounds. Then she dressed in his clothes, rolling sleeves and cuffs and cinching the belt.

  When she came back downstairs, the mess was almost more than she could stand and she began picking up things, setting them right. It was when she picked up the chessboard that the dam inside her broke and sobs wrenched out of her. She clutched the game pieces to her chest. How could he be gone? “Brian, what will I do without you?”

  She sat and cried like that for what seemed hours. Eventually, she heard Tony come quietly through the back door with a key she supposed Brian had given him sometime in their past. She somehow managed to stifle her sobs and wipe her tears away, but when she saw him, she started all over again. He came and sat beside her, holding and rocking her for she didn’t know how long.

  Eventually, the storm of tears subsided and he said, “I thought you might come back here.”

  When she didn’t answer, he asked, “Did all that killing help?”

  She shook her head. “I still don’t know anything. I have to find out what happened.”

  “And kill more? Did all those deaths make you feel better? Did they fill the hole inside you?” His voice turned hard, and he sat back, away from her. “Did they bring Brian back to life?”

  She turned and stared at him. She could have told him she’d only killed in self-defense at the bar and she would have let everyone escape, but it didn’t matter anymore. He could think what he wanted of her: she no longer cared. Damn him for saying the only thing, short of her own death, that would stop her from seeking the answers she still needed so desperately. Now her voice took its own hard-edged turn. “No.”

  Brian wasn’t coming back. She would be alone forever, and she couldn’t stay here, in what had been the center of his life. It just hurt too much. She’d have to find somewhere else. She clutched the chess pieces in her hands and let her gaze roam the room, trying to memorize every detail. Brian’s sketches filled the walls. The Guilin Mountains. China. She scrambled to her feet and headed to the back door, still clutching the chess pieces.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Away. Goodbye, Tony.”

  Chapter 60

  When Brian woke, it was snowing. Fat white flakes blanketed his fur, and the night sky was thick with the falling crystals. The snow hadn’t been coming down for long; none had accumulated on the ground.

  He closed his eyes again and yawned. It was a deep, satisfied yawn. He remembered everything: finding Olivia in her apartment, the hospital, guarding her, and training her as a griffin. He traced Hall’s continued attacks through his memory and the reasoning behind them. He found no blank spots, no empty hours.

  It felt good to be whole again.

  Now to find Olivia and Tony. He got to his feet, noting that his injuries had grown stiff during his sleep. They would loosen as he ran. He looked out over the valley. He didn’t smell either Tony or Olivia, so they had either died and Hall cleaned them out of there, or they were alive and had left. If they had gotten away, they wouldn’t have stayed in the valley. They would have gone back to the hunting cabin.

  And that was exactly where he’d head. He began island hopping again. The water had receded, exposing the islands by about two feet on each edge.

  The night was still young, and he had his memories back. He paused on a tiny grit outcropping no bigger than a surfboard. It probably hadn’t been above water an hour ago. He lifted his nose high and sent a long, pleased howl into the night. It was answered almost immediately by a she-wolf high on the southern ridge behind him.

&nb
sp; He smiled to himself and resumed his journey. After being in China, he’d spent many, many years as just wolf. He’d never taken a mate as one though. The real wolves could smell the strangeness on him and shied away. But the females had always answered his calls, until they got close. Human women also left him, whether they knew his secret or not. And as for shifters, none of them wanted a lone wolf.

  Still, even the mates he had taken had never made him feel like he had when with Olivia. With her, he was invincible, yet a slave to her happiness at the same time. With her, he could be himself. Completely. He loved her no matter what she did, no matter what she became. That she was a griffin only meant they could be together for the rest of their very long lives.

  The hunting cabin was just over the ridge. He chafed at his slow pace, but he didn’t want to land on a floating debris pile again. The few seconds it took to watch for bobbing had saved him from a dunking a few times already.

  At last he stood on the final island. Ahead of him was the edge of the valley. This one was a long jump, but he’d done a few of them already and knew he’d be fine. He watched the shoreline, but nothing moved. Just as he launched, he saw the unmistakable bobbing of a floating debris pile at the edge, right where he’d intended to land. He flattened his body, trying to get more reach, but to no avail. He landed with his hind end sinking through the flotsam. The current wasn’t deep there, but it was strong and it sucked at him, tugging him into it. He leaned forward, shifted to the werewolf, and dug his claws deep into the sandy grit. Slowly, he pulled his back half out of the current and fell to the ground.

  Rolling onto his back, he stared up at the sky. The falling flakes looked like stars dropping from heaven. Olivia would find that sentiment funny. She’d laugh, but would join him in the fantasy. It was one of the things he loved about her. She could set aside everything and join him no matter where his mind wandered. And as an artist, it sometimes went pretty far afield.