by Amelia Jade
“No,” he said, his voice gaining strength as anger infused him. “No it does not.” His spine straightened and he left the office behind after thanking the elderly shifter.
Long, powerful strides took him toward the nearest stone circle. Asher barely noticed as the other shifters scattered from his path, not wanting to get on the bad side of a dragon. He vaguely recalled passing by Loran at one point, but even the gryphon wisely kept his mouth shut, though he did give Asher a long, suspicious look.
Asher ignored him.
Foot-long icicles shot outward in a sphere as he shifted, sending several nearby people ducking for cover, lest they risk being impaled upon the missiles. Asher didn’t notice. He wasn’t sure he even felt the change as the frost enveloped him, coalescing into his dragon as his form changed rapidly.
Two beats of his wings and he was into the air. It wouldn’t be until hours later that he remembered how easily he’d taken off, his fastest and most vertical ascent ever. It was a shame it was fueled by anger and betrayal. He winged his way westward, angling in on the ranch-style house that belonged to him.
Talons grated across the rock as he swept in for a landing, starting his change before he even came to a halt. His forward motion never stopped and he walked right up to the back door, unaware of how impressive what he’d just done truly was. Even if he had known though, it was unlikely he would have cared. His anger was up, and he needed to know if it was justified or not.
“Put the knife down,” he said, striding in through the back door without slowing down.
Quinn, just rising from the couch, looked at him strangely as she put the knife—her near-constant companion when he wasn’t around—down on the table and stood.
“Asher, is everything all right?” she asked cautiously.
He snorted. “I don’t know; you tell me. You’ve been here for two weeks now, and you don’t have what you came for. Is that okay? Are you going to manage?”
She reared back, shocked at the vehemence in his tone. “What do you mean? I knew the search for my mother was going to take some time. Why are you being so callous?”
“Why?” he barked with a harsh laugh. He strode over to her bag and opened it, pulling out the camera components. “This is why. You haven’t been able to photograph the ‘exotic wildlife’ in Cadia. To see them in their ‘natural habitat.’” He snarled. “We’re not a fucking zoo, Quinn.”
“Asher, what are you talking about?”
He held up the long lens of her camera in one hand, and started to squeeze.
“I saw your blog. Stop lying to me,” he growled.
She hesitated, and he increased the pressure of his grip. The metal began to protest under the force.
Quinn looked like she was going to protest again. Her eyes searched his, and then she took a deep, shuddering breath.
“Asher,” she started to say, but he shook his head violently.
“Yes or no,” he forced out through clenched teeth. “Did you come here just to win a contest? Did you lie about your mother being missing?”
He looked into her eyes, brown orbs that until an hour ago he had considered to be beautiful. Now though, they filled with tears as she broke down.
“Yes,” she said at last, the sound barely audible. “Yes, but I didn’t k—”
He chopped his hand viciously through the air, cutting her off. He shook his head.
“I don’t want to hear it,” he said. “I have to go back to the Academy now.”
He put the lens back down on the table, all his anger gone. In its place now was a void, sucking up all his emotion. After the night they had just shared, this was not the way he had expected things to happen. His mind was overwhelmed, and he needed to be alone to sort it out.
“Asher, wait,” Quinn said, moving after him as he headed for the back door.
He kept walking.
“Listen to me,” she all but shouted.
His steps slowed slightly, but he didn’t stop. Why he even did that much, he wasn’t sure. Perhaps it was because he wanted it to have ended differently. To have gone along a different path, and so he was desperate for any chance to let that happen. But he couldn’t do that now.
She’d been using him. Plain and simple.
“I may have come to Cadia for that reason,” she said as he moved to the center of a circle. “But that doesn’t mean it’s why I stayed. When I met you, everything changed. I realized that my perceptions of everything about your reality were so different than what I’d been led to believe. That I had been blinded. But you made me see the true world you live in.”
He looked back at her, the change coming over him. Tears streamed down Quinn’s face as she was momentarily obscured by the mist. Her hand flung up to block the icy blast that always accompanied his shifts, and he was thankful afterward that it hadn’t been nearly as powerful as his shift in town. A blow from one of those icicles could have killed her.
“Goodbye, Quinn,” he said, and launched himself forward and into the air, leaving her standing on the grass just outside the circle, red-eyed and with a constant stream of tears on her cheeks, where they dripped onto her shirt.
He felt bad, but it had to be done. Quinn had lied to him, and had tried to exploit his entire species for her own gain.
Asher would be staying at the Academy permanently now. Quinn was on her own.
Chapter Ten
Quinn
She watched his snow-white form disappear into the sky, eyes stinging as she continued to shed tears until he was gone, no longer even a speck in the sky.
“Asher,” she said softly, hanging her head in shame.
He was right to leave her, to abandon everything they’d begun to form between them. There was no way she could blame him for that, and in no way did she plan to try.
Quinn had come to him under false, and very insulting, pretenses. Then, she had continued to keep those up out of fear, even after realizing that he wasn’t what she had expected. There had been several points where she could have told him the truth, and while they probably would have fought and he would have been upset, they might have actually worked something out.
But because she, in her stubbornness—and her fear, and her shame—had kept her mouth shut, she was now in this predicament. Asher wouldn’t come back. His final words had made that clear. He was going to stay away, and she was to go.
Back out there, into the wilds of Cadia. To the border, where she would have to sneak through it on her way out, or hope that any shifter that caught her would be willing to accept that she was lost and in need of a way out. Her less-than-bedraggled form would indicate she might not be telling the complete truth, but it was a solid twelve hours to the border by foot, judging by how far the mountains were in the distance.
By the time she walked that way, it would certainly look like she’d been out there for longer than she had. The afternoon sun was beginning to set, and if she left now, she’d reach there around dark again. That would help lend credence to her story of having gotten lost and not having intentionally tried to enter Cadia.
It was suicide, but Quinn didn’t have any choice. She couldn’t stay here anymore. That was wrong. Just as wrong as the reasons she’d come to Cadia in the first place.
She stuffed some food from the fridge into her mouth and a few other pieces of packaged goods into her pack, and then set off into the wilds, on a beeline course for the mountain. Thankfully she knew her geography, and could tell which two peaks it was she needed to stay between to get home the easiest.
Now all she had to do was avoid any unwanted attention, sneak away from patrols extremely adept in tracking down prey, and ensure she wasn’t killed instantly.
“Walk in the park,” she said with a self-deprecating snort, and set off.
The going was easy at first. There was a trail that passed by Asher’s house, and at one point not too far away it split, one path heading right and the other left toward the mountains. The plains around her would provide no cover, so her best
bet would be to hope that she could see anyone coming from a distance, and perhaps avoid them. Or, if they were in the air, that they would assume she was a human. The trail—calling it a road would be overly generous—was packed down and made her going smoother. She could cover more distance this way.
There was a major thruway suitable for cars over the ridge to the north, but Quinn knew it would be heavily guarded. That’s why she was making for the gap between the next set of peaks. There was no real path all the way through, but as long as the rain stayed away, it would make the going fairly easy on her. Just then, that was all she needed.
Nobody appeared or called out to her as she walked. The mountains grew steadily larger as she approached them. But that didn’t stop Quinn from getting the feeling she was being watched. The sun was setting now, and the sky was darkening rapidly, making it hard for her to pick out any shapes that might be flitting around above her.
Quinn slowed as she approached the tree line, the forest around the foot of the mountains rising up in front of her. To the north, the huge Vallenwood trees rose higher than anything she’d ever seen before. They were magnificent, and she truly wished to be able to explore them, but she couldn’t.
Just like she couldn’t shake the sensation that something bad lurked in the trees.
“You can’t go back now. This is your only choice,” she muttered, and took a step forward.
A branch snapped in the dark of the trees ahead and she froze.
There was the sound of rustling, and then a beast straight from her nightmares walked out from under the canopy.
The clawed paws tore at the dirt as it menacingly came at her. Its wickedly hooked beak snapped at her, clacking together with enough force to show her it could snap her bones easily if it wanted.
“What do you want?” she asked, trying to inject some steel into her voice, to act as if she had a right to be there.
The powerful gryphon looked at her for a moment.
The feathers on its wings shook slightly, and as she watched, they melted back into the membrane of the wing. They folded in on themselves and absorbed back into the body. The transformation continued, the beak retracting until it became a nose attached to a much flatter, human face. The lion fur of its body became smooth skin, and suddenly a man was standing in front of her, leering.
“I knew that dragon shithead was hiding a woman. But imagine my surprise when he abandoned you, forcing you to run for it on your own. Now that I did not expect. But I’m not going to say that I’m upset. Oh no. Now he’s all but driven you into my arms.”
The look on his face told her that that was not a good thing. Quinn wondered if this was the same gryphon who had tangled with Asher and her the night he’d tried to get her out of Cadia.
“I was just leaving,” she said firmly. “He’s not doing anything anymore.”
“Oh, I know,” the man said with a jerky nod. “I know. You’ll be coming with me now.”
Her stomach, already in knots, turned to ice at his tone.”
“I’m going home,” she re-stated, shuffling to the side to try and go around him.
The gryphon shifter moved with her, preventing her from having a clear sight to the forest.
“Not so fast, sweetheart,” he called. “Don’t make this difficult.”
Quinn turned and ran.
Behind her, the shifter cursed and started after her. She had a good head start, and for a moment thought she might actually stand a chance.
Something hard hit her in the back of her calf and pain lanced up her leg. Quinn cried out and tumbled to the ground, rolling twice as the limb gave out under her, unable to support her weight. She immediately scrambled back to her feet, but her calf wasn’t responding. She couldn’t put any weight on it at all.
“All right,” the shifter said as he loomed up over her. “Now it’s time to show you what we do to unwanted humans around here.”
His hand reached out for her, and Quinn closed her eyes, preparing for the worst.
***
This has to be one of the most embarrassing things ever.
The unnamed shifter had dragged her back to the forest, where he’d used some vine to tie her up. Now she hung hog-tied upside down as he carried her through the air in his gryphon form.
The vine was tight, to the point it was nearly cutting off circulation to her hands and feet. She’d tried repeatedly to pull herself free, to no avail. Even if she did, his paws were holding onto the vine, not her. If it parted, she would fall to instant death.
That might be more preferable to what he has in mind before killing me though.
Not that she’d received any sort of description as to what he had in mind, but Quinn knew an evil man when she saw one. Whatever it was, it wouldn’t be pleasant.
She began to struggle with the bonds once more. Perhaps she could throw him off balance, force him to land or something. Anything was better than just staying limp.
Rubbing her wrists together to try and part the vines only left them sore and chafed. Trying the same with her legs didn’t have any more noticeable effect.
Quinn started swinging herself from side to side, hoping maybe the motion would rub the vine against his claws.
To her surprise, as soon as she started doing that the gryphon dove for the ground. He dropped her from ten feet up, and then beat his wings to the sky again.
Quinn cried out as she landed on her back on the firm ground, the wind momentarily knocked out of her. She rolled and lay still until she could once again breathe. Immediately her hands worked the vines free. He might come back any second, and she didn’t want to be there when he did.
A high-pitched scream snapped her head upward, just in time to see the gryphon collide mid-air with another figure. All she saw was a burst of white feathers and a sleek, powerful body, and then the two forms intertwined, making it hard for her to see in the dark.
Judging by the size, it wasn’t a dragon. What the hell was it? Another flying species?
The shrieking noise continued as both animals clashed, and she saw bits and pieces of feathers and other parts of them begin to fall from the sky as they vied for aerial supremacy.
The gryphon’s beak shot forward and closed around the leg of its opponent. The sound of bone breaking was audible from where she stood, and Quinn shivered in distaste. She was not a fan of violence, and the sound upset her stomach easily. The combatants spun in the air, and suddenly Quinn knew what the other animal was.
A Pegasus. A flying horse, although to her surprise, this one had a giant horn on its head that it was using to try and skewer the gryphon, though it kept dodging the attacks. The entire effort between both parties looked clumsy compared to what she would have expected. There was no serene grace to their movements. It was wobbly, off-balance, and incredibly unrealistic-looking.
Could this be what Asher meant by most fliers not being experts?
That didn’t stop them from inflicting horrific damage on each other as she looked on, but she suspected neither of them had much experience with this sort of combat.
The Pegasus got lucky and its horn gouged a huge wound along the gryphon’s side, though it failed to actually punch into it, as the other beast was moving away from the attack.
Part of her was fascinated by the battle, but her mind kept yelling at her to do something.
What? Do what?
RUN, YOU IDIOT. RUN.
Quinn jolted upright, looked around frantically to get her bearings, and then took off. The gryphon had been following the mountain north and a little to the east as it carried her, so now she ran full-speed to the west, trying to get back in amongst the cover of the trees. They were a long way off, but perhaps the gryphon would lose, or be too injured to pursue her.
It seemed unlikely, but she had nothing better to do than hope.
Her feet carried her swiftly, and the sounds of fighting began to fade from her ears.
Then there was a last, high-pitched shriek that ended abruptly
.
Quinn’s curiosity wanted her to turn around, to see what was going on, but fear had a firm grip on her now and she continued to flee, desperate to escape.
At least if they find me now I’m likely to look bedraggled and out of place enough that any of the border guards might believe my story.
A sudden gust of wind was her only warning.
Something came at her from behind, and pain erupted from her left leg. She looked down to see the massive claws of the gryphon rip an ugly gash in her thigh. Blood began to pour from it and she fell to the ground with a cry, the pain slamming into her.
“Oh shut up,” the same voice said a moment later as the gryphon shifted back to human form. “It’s all your fault anyway. If you had just stayed there, I wouldn’t have had to come after you.”
He walked into view, and despite the blazing agony in her leg, Quinn gasped. He looked terrible. A huge cut bled from his side, stretching from his right hip up to his armpit. Another wound trickled blood down his face, and his entire chest and left arm were black and blue, already bruising from hits sustained in the fight.
“It looks worse than it is, but thanks for the concern,” he said with a wink.
He dragged her all the way back to the pile of discarded vines, her blood leaving a trail through the grass, mixing with his as it continued to fall from his side, though it had begun to slow already. Her leg, on the other hand, was still bleeding profusely, and she was beginning to feel light-headed.
The first thing the gryphon did was tie a vine tightly around her leg, and almost immediately the blood drain slowed.
“There, that should keep you alive long enough,” he cackled, trussing her back up with the rest of it.
Quinn was so dizzy by that point that as soon as she was lifted into the air, she passed out.
Chapter Eleven
Asher
Asher paced back and forth outside the Academy building.
He wasn’t due to report until the next morning, so he could easily turn back around if he wanted to and go back to Quinn.
But is that what he wanted?