Family Ties

by Katrina Kahler

  “Good points,” I said. “It’s still cool to be flying in public though!”

  A man below us was sweeping the sidewalk in front of his house. He raised a fist and shouted, “Hey, Rowf, you’d better not even think of pooping on my yard again!”

  Rowf looked down, “Don’t worry, George, my man, that was an ancient last time!”

  “It had better have been!” George grumbled.

  “See, we have old grouches too!” Rowf told me.

  We flew over the downtown area, a place loaded with restaurants and people. Rowf sniffed the air.

  “Any whiff of Jimmy’s mom?” I asked.

  “Not yet, there are a lot of really nice scents here though! I love flying over here!”

  My senses started to tingle. That usually meant something bad was about to happen. I turned to see an arrow flying towards us. Reaching up, I caught the arrow in my hand. I snapped it in two.

  Behind us, I spotted two giant hawks flying towards us. Each of the hawks was being ridden by what appeared to be men made of straw. The two strawmen had bows and arrows and seemed very determined to shoot us down.

  Rowf spun around to face the flying strawmen. “Straw hunters,” he explained to me. “Back in the day, magic vampire hunters used to conjure them up to fight vampires. Figures they’d pop up right after I got the scent of James’ mom!”

  “Wait, you have her scent?” I asked.

  “Yes, down below at Patty’s Pizza Parlor. They really do have the best pizza in town. But the scent of the pizza made it trickier for me to pick up Jimmy’s mom’s scent.” Rowf pointed to the two hawks and their strawmen passengers. “Let’s take care of these strawmen and then let your family, friends, and Sasha know where we are!”

  “I can’t believe we’re being hunted by scarecrows,” I said. “This may be one of the weirdest moments of my life! And I have a pretty weird life!” I told Rowf.

  “We’ll take em out and compare lives afterward,” Rowf told me, zooming towards the hawks, dodging arrows as he flew.

  “What's the plan?” I asked.

  “You are part tiger, right?” he asked.

  “Yeah…”

  “Tigers are big bad cats. Right?”

  “Yeah, Rowf…the point, please?”

  “Well, most birds are pretty scared of cats!” Rowf said, ducking and dodging arrows.

  “Wow, those scarecrow hunters are pretty lousy shots!” I said.

  Rowf smiled. “In their defense, they do have buttons for eyes!” Rowf told me.

  “Good point!” I smiled.

  We drew closer to the birds and their riders. A couple of arrows actually whizzed by my shoulder.

  “Of course, the closer we get, the better chance they have of hitting us,” Rowf commented. “Like they say, even a broken clock is right twice a day!”

  “Do they talk?” I asked Rowf.

  “Do you see any mouths on them?” he asked.

  Looking across, I saw only straw where their mouths should be. Obviously, these things were just animated by some sort of magic. This made what I was about to do, much easier.

  I dove off Rowf’s back towards the two hawks. Using my mind to propel myself forward, I imagined being lighter than a feather and letting the wind help me glide towards my target. Gliding over, I landed on the nearest hawk. It flapped its wings wildly, trying to force me off. I let my fangs and claws out. The scarecrow hunter turned to me, aiming its bow.

  The thing about the bow and arrow is that they don't make a very useful weapon up close. I swatted the bow out of the scarecrow hunter’s straw hands. Its eyes dropped down. I could tell it was sad, even though it didn’t have a mouth to frown with.

  “You think you’re sad now?” I said with a laugh.

  I dug into the scarecrow’s middle with my claws, pulling out all of its straw stuffing. Without its straw innards, the scarecrow hunter flopped over, unable to move.

  Growling at the hawk, I gave it an order. “Be a nice birdy and land on the ground now, so nobody else gets hurt!”

  The hawk flipped upside down. Okay, I could have handled that better. I started falling to the ground. I concentrated once again on making my body lighter. I started to float towards the ground. The fall certainly wouldn’t harm me now. Only now I felt angry that the bird had done that to me. Plus, falling like this, there was no way I could catch the bird. Not to mention that one of the hawks still had a rider that continued to fire arrows at me.

  Rowf flew underneath me, positioning himself so I would land squarely on top of him. I plopped back down on Rowf’s back and looked up at the two hawks.

  “That didn’t work out like I had hoped,” I told Rowf. “So much for hawks being afraid of me…”

  “I didn’t finish my statement,” Rowf said. “Most birds are scared of cats, but giant hawks aren’t. Those things are afraid of nothing!”

  “Oh, I guess I leaped before you spoke,” I said jokingly.

  “Well, you did manage to take out one of the hunters, which makes what we are about to do easier,” Rowf said. He turned his tail and headed back towards the hawks.

  A couple more arrows came our way, but I caught them and snapped them in two.

  Flapping his wings like crazy, Rowf moved in closer to the hawk that still had a scarecrow hunter on its back. The hunter drew back his bow and fired at us. I caught the arrow, but this time, instead of breaking it, I spun the arrow around. I whipped it like a dart back at the hunter that was aiming for his bowstring. The arrow split his bowstring, making it useless and also making him harmless. He bent over, sulking.

  “The hunters are now useless!” I told Rowf.

  Rowf nodded as he continued towards the hawks. “Good! Of course, now the hawks will go into hunter mode!”

  Sure enough, the hawks started dropping down on us, their talons opening and closing quickly, creating a weird clicking sound. The hawk that no longer had a scarecrow on its back approached us first.

  “These guys mean business,” I said.

  “Actually, they are girls!” Rowf corrected.

  They closed in on us.

  “These gals mean business!” I corrected. I could feel the gusts from their wings beating down on us. The force of the wind grew stronger and stronger as they drew closer.

  “Ah, Rowf, not to complain, but shouldn’t we be trying to avoid these big bad birds of prey?” I asked him.

  Rowf hovered in place, letting the birds come closer and closer. “Nope!” he said firmly.

  “Do you have a plan?” I asked.

  “Yep,” Rowf answered calmly. Meanwhile, the birds just kept getting closer.

  “Does the plan involve us getting shredded by hawks?” I asked.

  “Nope!” the big flying dog said, his wings beating faster.

  The birds were so close that I could smell them. They somehow smelled like angry chickens.

  “I like birds as much as the next kid, but this is getting a little too close for comfort!” I told Rowf.

  “Don’t worry; angry birds can only hurt pigs!” Rowf said.

  “I don’t think that’s true!” I told him.

  “I know one thing that is true!” Rowf said.

  He exhaled on the two flapping birds. The two birds dropped from the sky, spiraling down toward the ground.

  “Angry birds or not, they can’t stand up to dog breath!” Rowf stated proudly.

  “Impressive!” I said, watching the birds crash to the ground, landing in a pond by the park.

  “Being the good guy, I positioned myself, so my breath would knock them out and drop them into the pond!” Rowf said, heading down to the pizza parlor. “Let’s get down there and save your boyfriend’s mom!”

  “He’s not my boyfriend. He’s a boy and a friend,” I said. “There’s a difference.”

  Rowf grinned. “If that’s your story, I won’t argue. But one of us is wrong!”

  Nina Note: Man, flying on Rowf was pretty darn cool. Scarecrow hunters might look creepy, but
they are worse shots than storm troopers, and even easier to take out. Yeah, those hawks had nasty potential, but even they didn’t stand a chance against dog breath.

  Chapter 12: The Search

  Having taken care of the hawk and their riders, Rowf and I landed next to the tiny pizza parlor. Nobody on the street batted an eye over a girl on a flying dog landing next to them.

  I few people smiled at us. I heard a couple of people whisper, “That’s her, the girl who’s half vampire and half weretiger!”

  Ignoring the comments, Rowf and I walked up to the glass door of the pizza place. A short woman in a white chef’s apron and hat, turned the open sign to closed. “Sorry, we’re closed!” she said through the door.

  I opened the door. “We’re not here for pizza. We’re here to talk!” I said firmly.

  “What she said,” Rowf said.

  The woman backed away from us, never taking her eyes off us. “We have nothing to say,” she insisted. “We’re just humble pizza makers.”

  A large man, also dressed in a chef’s apron and hat appeared from a back room. He clutched a large carving knife and fork in his hands. “We have nothing to say to you except…No pizza for you! Now, out!”

  “We don’t want pizza,” I replied slowly.

  “Wait! Why not? We have the best pizza this side of Italy!” the man said.

  “Yeah,” the woman said, shaking a fist at me.

  I could smell the fear in these two. I could also sense they were hiding something. Plus, now they were angry that I didn’t want to try their pizza; which, BTW, they didn’t want to offer to me anyhow.

  I pointed at the woman and spoke in my sternest voice, “Look, we’re looking for a lady, and we’re not leaving until we look around to see if she’s here!” I said.

  “You used ‘look’ a lot in that statement,” the woman said.

  “Plus, do you see the woman you are looking for anywhere?” the man asked. “No you do not!” he answered before I could say anything. “Therefore, she is not here. Unless the woman you are looking for is invisible.”

  “Well this is Transylvania,” Rowf said.

  “The woman is not invisible, but we haven’t searched your entire building,” I argued.

  “This is a pizza parlor, not a place to meet people!” the man insisted.

  “Wait, you can’t meet people for lunch or dinner here?” I asked.

  “You know what I meant!” the man shouted, smoke spurting from his ears. “Now, get out, you half vampire, half weretiger!”

  I crossed my arms. These two were either hiding something or didn’t like me because I had mixed heritage. Either way, I felt pretty upset with them.

  “BTW,” the woman said, “we have nothing against the weretiger side of you; we just don’t trust vampires.”

  The man rolled his eyes. “Bonnie, why did you tell her that?” he shrieked.

  “I didn’t want her to think we were prejudiced,” she said.

  I frowned. “You live in the country that has the most vampires in the world!”

  “Why do you think we work and live in a pizza place where garlic pizza is our specialty? It’s great for the regular humans but keeps the vampires away.”

  “That is so wrong,” I said. “On many levels. The garlic thing is just an old fairy tale…”

  “No actually, T-Vampires hate the taste of garlic,” Rowf said. “It’s a regional thing.”

  “Okay, you have me on the garlic thing, but I’m still not leaving until I look around!” I said.

  “You’re trespassing on our property! We will call the police!” the man said, taking his cell phone out of his pocket.

  “Good, and we will tell them you are refusing to serve us,” I said.

  The man pointed at Rowf. “Well, he is a dog…”

  “A talking dog who loves pizza and is also very popular around town!” Rowf replied. “Your business will take a hit if people learn you don’t want to serve me!”

  I’ve had a lot of strange conversations in my day. It kind of comes with the territory when you are me. But this one, this one took the cake, or should I say the pizza pie.

  “Okay, I’m done playing nice with you!” I told them.

  “Young lady, if this is nice, I would hate to see you being rude!” Bonnie said to me.

  “Well, you are about to see rude!” I said. I let myself transform into a mix of human, vampire, and tiger. “Now, I suggest you let us look around!” This time, I growled.

  “If that’s how you are going to be…” Bonnie said, grabbing the carving knife from Bo’s hand. She fired it at me like a hunter would throw a spear.

  I ducked. The knife embedded itself in the wall behind me.

  “Drat! You are a fast little one!” Bonnie shouted. “Your turn Bo!”

  Bo popped off his chef hat, revealing a big bag of flower on his head. He took the floor and tossed it at me. Reaching out with my claws, I slashed the bag into pieces. The good news was, I stopped it from hitting me. The bad news was, I coated myself and Rowf in flour. We both started coughing on flour dust.

  “Girl, you just fell for one of the oldest tricks in the book!” Rowf told me, waving off some dust with his tail.

  When the dust cleared, we saw that Bo and Bonnie had left the room. We heard a clanking sound in the back room.

  “You know, for vampire hunters, I thought they’d be a little smoother,” I said, heading towards the sound of the clanking.

  “Don’t let their looks or actions or words fool you,” Rowf said. “They are cunning vampire hunters.”

  I raced into the room. I felt a rope wrap around my leg. I was pulled up into the ceiling! I hit the ceiling with a thump. I dropped down, dangling upside down from a rope trap connected to a ceiling fan.

  “See!” Rowf said. “I guess it could be worse; the fan could be spinning…”

  Using my claws, I sliced through the rope and dropped to the ground. “Okay, now I’m mad!” I said.

  I didn’t know if I felt madder about falling for the rope trap or them thinking that this would stop me. Taking in my surroundings, I realized we were now in some sort of storage room. Shelves covered three of the walls. The other wall had a big thick metal door. A sign above the door had a sign that said…Cold Room Storage.

  Walking towards the door, I told Rowf, “I’m pretty sure I know where they went.”

  Grabbing the door’s metal handle, volts of electricity shot through me. My body shook for a second or two from the jolt. Releasing the door handle, I could feel my hair standing up straight. I smelled smoke. I felt reasonably confident that smell was me.

  “That looked like it hurt,” Rowf said.

  “It just made me madder!” I told him. “Which in this case is good!” I said. I glared at the door. I concentrated on pulling it open with my mind; my angry fired up mind. The door shook and rattled. I kept my attention locked on it. I squeezed my fists. Heck, I even squeezed my toes. The door cracked up and fell apart. I grinned.

  “Impressive,” Rowf said.

  Walking into the cold room, we found it certainly was cold. More shelves lined the walls; only these shelves were coated in ice. I could see my breath, but no signs of Bo Clyde and Bonnie.

  “There has to be a trap door in the floor,” I said. “There’s always a trap door in the floor.” Stomping my feet down hard, I walked around the room listening to the sound my foot made when hitting the ground. If there were a door underfoot the sound would be different. But each step made the same solid plop sound.

  Rowf sniffed the wall on the left. “Yum, the pizza sauce they have frozen in here smells good!” he said.

  “Rowf, stick with the program!” I replied.

  Rowf turned to look at me. “I can do multiple things at once. I may not be Lassie, but I am a pretty darn cool dog.” He laughed. “Get it; I’m cool cause we’re in a freezer.”

  “Yeah, I get it,” I told him.

  Rowf pointed towards the far corner of the wall with his nose. “Al
so, that spot on the wall has fake shelving.”

  Walking over to the spot Rowf pointed to, I noticed he was right. There were white shelves on the wall, but these shelves were empty and weren’t covered with ice.

  Touching the middle shelf, I could tell it was movable. I pushed the shelf into the wall. The wall popped open, revealing another metal door. I started to reach for the door. I smelled my hair still smoldering. Concentrating on the door, I thought of using my mind as a giant log or battering ram to smash the door open. The door blew open.

  I walked into a big room filled with computer equipment. There, in the middle of the room, anxiously backing away from us, were Bo and Bonnie. They had Pam Chaser tied to a chair.

  “Look, guys, let’s end this now before somebody gets hurt!” I said in my meanest voice.

  The two pizza chefs looked at each other and groaned. “My, she certainly is persistent…” Bonnie told Bo.

  “Yes, she is,” Bo agreed.

  “I told you guys that,” Pam said, standing up. Pam pushed a button on the chair.

  Looking up, I saw a big net falling down on Rowf and me.

  Nina Note: Okay, now this was annoying. I really hate it when the person you came to rescue, traps you in a net. I pretty much figured out by now this entire thing was a setup. It was a really nasty setup to trap me. Man, this was certainly going to put a crimp in my relationship with Jimmy. It’s like…‘Jimmy I really like you, but your mom keeps trying to capture me…’

  Yeah, hard to build a relationship around that. Well, hard but not impossible. I liked Jimmy a LOT. I guess it wasn’t his fault that his mom thought of me as a threat to humans. I wasn’t. Not unless a certain human made me angry, very angry. But trying to put myself in her shoes, I could see why she might be concerned about me; why she wouldn’t want me to be going out with her son. Heck, my own mom wasn’t thrilled with the idea.