by A Corrin
Stroking his beard, Peter gave us his report. “Just days ago, at oh ten hundred, a trio of Rankers gathered on this beach. They were water types. Water-proof cloaks, lithe bodies, and they spoke by means of dolphin-like clicks and whistles.”
“But what were they doing?” Kayle asked, looking between the soldiers’ legs at the ocean.
“I’m getting to that. Two of the trio went over to those trees and shaved off the bark until they had created two smooth planks of wood. Using these boards, the pair of Rankers floated out onto the water and dropped an object I couldn’t make out into the depths. The last Ranker was sitting on the sands of the shore, facing his companions. He was playing a complicated tune on some panpipes. I believe he was summoning something to guard the item. When the song was finished, those on the water rushed back to the beach and burned their boards, disposing of the ashes.”
“What do you think the object was, sir?” a marine asked.
Peter turned to gaze thoughtfully at the sparkling sea and replied, “A clue. The Rankers’ reinforcements don’t know the location of the Ranker base, and the Rankers have no clear means that we know of to reach or even locate all of their potential allies individually. They’re trying to take advantage of King Brody’s death to gather in secret and swell their numbers. Like Michael told us, these clues have a dark spell cast over them, meant to call to their allies, to draw them in. I think that, within a month, the Ranker reinforcements were going to retrieve it, and it would lead them to the next clue, and so on, through places of dark power, in a chain that would eventually end with the revelation of their master plans and the location of their base. Then whatever monsters have chosen to ally with the Rankers would know where to go, and the Rankers would have their army.” He added more quietly, “Just as King Brody had said they would.”
Mariah sat up. “So if we were to get it first…”
Kayle flicked his lighter harder than was needed, and the flame burst into fruitful life, making me jump. He seemed to get some enjoyment out of that and clapped the lighter closed. “We would scare them sh—”
“Kayle?” Peter’s brows popped up patronizingly, and Kayle tightened his lips. My mouth—er, beak, as I guess was the case—twitched. You had to admire the fellow’s spirit.
“Have you ever surfed before, Jonathan?” Peter asked.
“Yeah,” I replied a little proudly, glad I could contribute. “Yeah, I’m pretty good at it.” I’d had the privilege once of going to California with Tyson and his family and getting a crash-course in surfing. After a fair few times of getting a lungful of sand and scampering out of the water like a pansy—Tyson constantly teased that there were sharks—I’d gotten the hang of it.
“Well, let’s hop to it! We don’t know when the Ranker reinforcements could come!” Peter clapped his huge hands together. He looked down at me and the other two kids. “Mariah, Kayle, Jonathan, come with me.”
The warriors parted to let us through. Peter led us toward the jungle. He and the other two transformed into griffins and studied some trees, at a loss as to where to begin. Using his shoulder, Peter leaned against a tall, thick tree and pushed into it, feet braced and wings tightly tucked in. With a few great creaks, the tree toppled with a thud into the sand, quaking the ground. Without saying a word, he paced speculatively around the trunk. When he had found a good spot, he carved an oval into the bark and set to work.
Chapter Nine:
I Make Out with a Monster
What would normally have taken several hours to create by hand, Peter finished in one and produced a semi-long, crude surfboard. Within forty-five more minutes, using the same pattern as the first, Peter had made another. By now, almost the entire tree was used up. In close to another hour, while Kayle and Mariah dozed and I fought to empty my mind of the questions and concerns parading through my mind like a circus, Peter had scraped out a board longer than the other two and handed it to me.
“Wait, what?” I asked. I’d assumed they wanted me to give them a few pointers, maybe some coaching on how to get started—not to get out there with them!
“We’ll need you out there with us, just in case, so we’re close enough to protect you. Just until you can take care of yourself,” Peter explained, and I once more found myself watching his beak move. It was so weird—almost like talking to a freaky pet-store parrot with a large vocabulary.
I dragged my eyes up to his piercing silver ones and suggested frantically, “Uh, wouldn’t it be safer on land?” I didn’t know what the hell kind of monsters the Rankers might have summoned to protect their “clue,” and it wasn’t like I knew how to fly or fight. I may have looked like a griffin, but at the moment, I felt like an overgrown dodo bird.
Peter’s eyes flicked to where the squadron stood looking back at us. One of the men waved.
We all turned away again, and Mariah said in a hushed voice, “We can’t trust them all yet. Not everyone has really had a chance to prove their worth. If we had time to interrogate them and do cross-references, we would, but, of course, we don’t, so you’ll have to have faith in us instead.”
“There is a griffin code of honor,” Peter said proudly. “The three of us pledged to protect you.”
I glanced at Kayle in disbelief. He was pointedly preening his ebony feathers. I didn’t want to look like a coward, so I relented.
Peter put his talon on the last board and said to Kayle, “Stay on the beach and watch the squadron. If any enemies come, you know what to do.” Kayle’s beak almost moved into a smile. His ear tufts swept back, the tips slightly curled like devil horns.
Tapping the decimated log that had once been a tree, Peter said, “Burn the remains, and this time control it!”
Kayle broke into a sheepish grin. Hmm…inside joke? I wondered. I didn’t know if I wanted to hear the story behind that or not. Kayle galloped over to the soldiers, and the rest of us pushed our boards along in the sand until we were knee deep in water.
Mariah and Peter changed into humans and sat on their boards, their feet dangling in the water. I struggled onto my own, inhaling some salt water and gagging, my soaking pelt clinging to me. My legs dangled over the sides, and I rested my beak on the wood, waiting placidly for what came next.
Mariah looked amused, tracing the grains in her board, and said, “I thought you said you were good at this.”
I defended my dignity. “This is a lot harder when you have four legs, muscle mass equal to a grown bull’s, and wings the size of Dumbo’s ears.” I teetered dangerously far to the left, and my right wing automatically extended to balance me. It worked, and I was able to lay flat again.
“Who’s Dumbo?” Mariah queried, loftily splashing her fingertips in the ocean. I shot her a surprised look.
“The baby elephant…you know…from the Disney movie? Do you not own a TV?”
For some reason, Mariah looked offended at this and turned her gaze away, features crestfallen.
Peter braced himself. “Here comes a wave.”
We all hunched forward shakily, and the others pushed through it while I positioned myself to ride over it. Having my wings open seemed to help, so I spread them a bit, the long pinions touching the water. Having wings felt awkward. They were built like an extra pair of arms that came out behind my shoulders.
The wave carried us over and through, and we were able to relax before the next set. Peter and Mariah were already soaked, but at least they looked confident. I always got a little nervous when I couldn’t feel the sand beneath my feet, hovering over the crushing watery pit that was the ocean. I was glad humans were created with the ability to swim.
“Some friends of Garrett’s jumped me in the park the other day,” I said tentatively. “They almost hurt Nikki, my girlfriend, and they kept talking about breaking me. Were they Rankers too?”
Mariah and Peter exchanged grim looks.
“Sounds like something a
Ranker would do,” Peter admitted. “They’d want to break your spirit, turn you into that Dark Griffin I mentioned earlier. And what better way to do that than hurt those closest to you?”
“Can you describe the people who attacked you?” Mariah asked.
“Only the guy in charge. He had the same voice as a guy I’ve had nightmares about. But that’s not possible. The guy in my nightmares is dead in real life.”
“Certain Rankers possess different powers,” Peter explained. “Some can mimic your worst fears, some can craft particularly powerful nightmares, some can work subtle manipulations on weak-hearted folks and convince them to perform dark acts or speak cruel words.”
“Have you seen his true form?” Mariah pressed. A fish the size of a football with trailing sapphire-blue fins and what looked like tiny trees growing on its back flitted through the shade under her surfboard and vanished into the turquoise depths.
“No, I don’t think so. But in my dream he has these shark-like teeth and black eyes.”
I shivered, feeling the feathers on my neck and shoulders lift up like hackles.
“Hmm, maybe a gargoyle Ranker,” Peter speculated. “One of the more powerful types. Let me know if you have any nightmares about him while you’re here, Jonathan. Now that you’re in the dreamworld they can do a lot of damage if they get to rootin’ around in your mind.”
I nodded, but I wasn’t too pumped about sharing nightmares about my mom getting murdered with total strangers.
“This is about where the object was dropped,” Peter said, after we drifted a little further. He pointed straight down next to him. “We need to be careful. The enchantment that was cast with the song from the panpipes can be either offensive or defensive dark magick. We’ll need to be able to improvise on the fly as we figure it out.”
“How do we get the clue, then?” Mariah asked.
Peter shrugged. “Jump in.”
Ironically, just as he said that I slipped and one of my talons plunged into the water. I lashed my tail and leaned to the other side, flapping my wings, tugging myself back onto the board. I almost fell off the other side and squashed my front half tight against the board, my rump in the air, using my hind legs to brace myself. I took a few deep breaths, then felt shivers steal over me as the water soaked beneath my feathers in tickling streams. An instant later, something stirred the water’s surface about three leaps away.
The three of us grew rigid, watching the horizon, scanning the spot where we’d seen the water disturbed, waiting for some great calamity to strike. I expected a kraken’s tentacles to sprout from the depths, or maybe the saurian head of the Loch Ness. (I remembered from Peter’s book that neither creature was very nice.)
Instead, I saw rapid flashes of color just beneath the water’s surface.
“Whoa,” Mariah murmured, eyes big.
The colors were getting brighter as whatever they belonged to came closer to the surface. They were moving so fast, I could only make out random features: a long arm, tendrils of silky black and blonde and red and brown hair, lithe bodies.
Then came the music.
It didn’t really have a tune, but it was melodious all the same: a soothing croon, an inviting pitch, a lullaby-like song with indiscernible words. My eyes blinked slowly. I felt so comfortable...like I could totally sleep right there on the ocean and everything would be just fine…
I heard Peter shout, “Sirens!”
Hmm… Sirens were bad, right? But why? If only my head wasn’t so foggy. Would the others mind if I just let them take care of the situation? I was content to lie there and let the music lull me to sleep. I sighed contentedly, tilting my head and tail side to side in time to the music. I couldn’t remember ever being this completely relaxed.
I looked behind me at the beach. Everyone in the squadron except for the Amazonian women was swaying in time to the music. One man took a few steps forward with his arms longingly stretched toward the water. Kayle frantically ran over and herded him back among his fellows, proceeding to pace in front of them like a Rottweiler. Why? The man could do as he wanted, right?
I had started to sway as well.
“What are you doing?” Mariah asked me. Ew. Her voice was totally different from the beauteous, angelic ones below me. I shook my head, frowning.
“I feel weird,” I was able to say drunkenly.
She turned to Peter and shouted, “Those filthy temptresses have him under!”
So what if they did? Of all the people on the beach and in the water, she was one of the only ones not at all affected by the music. Even Kayle and Peter were ignoring things pretty well, despite shaking their heads every now and then as if to dislodge a bug.
I yawned and watched one siren swim beneath me, studying me with her gem-blue eyes. We exchanged smiles and she playfully brushed my hind paw with her hand. The contact sent a thrill through me, like someone had zapped me with a cattle prod. But in a good way.
Mariah leaned over and pulled painfully on the short feathers on my side. “Snap out of it!” she cried.
I growled at her, and my eyes flashed red. Mariah leaned away from me. “This is not the time, Jonathan!”
“He is still more boy than griffin!” Peter said, and he actually sounded worried. “Fight it, Prince!”
For some reason, the word “prince” swept away some of the fog in my brain. I blinked hard and felt something vibrate in my chest. Was it a growl? A purr? Could I do that now? I giggled at the thought, still feeling a bit loopy and detached from what was happening. But I tried to ignore the music and stood up again.
“Does anyone know what to do?” Mariah shouted.
“They can only be defeated if you run them through with a water-based tool,” Peter said. “We need a trident or a harpoon...”
“A surfboard is a watery tool...” I slurred. My tongue seemed too big for my mouth.
Peter guffawed and slapped his thigh. “Great thinking!” He swung his arm in a beckoning arc and said, “Let’s get to work!” in a fierce, predatory way.
We split apart and swooped over the next wave. The sirens’ song intensified, and I found myself struggling to ignore it. Angling my board, I aimed for a siren. She was sticking out of the water, watching me with her thickly lashed eyes—which were an almost fluorescent green color.
Closing my own eyes, I plunged forward, felt a dull thud, wetness splatter on my talons, and nothing more. Looking down, I saw that the siren, when hit, had collapsed into a spray of water. It had slicked my board. I slipped and felt myself falling. I caught my reflection in the water and saw that I had tousled hair and skin. I was a human again. Though I was insanely shocked to discover this, I realized that it also meant whatever griffin strength or willpower I’d been using had broken. I had given in to the siren’s call.
The salt water rushed up to meet me. Someone called my name—Mariah? And then I was choking on salty ocean water and trying to get used to my normal body again enough to swim up for air.
My clothes were pulling me down; the water was getting colder the deeper I went. I caught a glimpse of sand far to my right dotted with coral and an object I couldn’t make out. My surfboard was floating above, too far away to reach. I stretched up my hand and tried to grasp at it, but to no avail. Okay, now what?
I kicked my legs and moved up. Oh yeah! Now I remembered. Slowly recalling how to swim, I paddled upward, toward the sun, the sky, the friendlier waters. Maybe a little too friendly.
A young woman blocked the sunlight. Her hair was the color of chestnuts and long enough to obscure most of her body except for a few tantalizing peeks as it drifted like lace in the current. Where had she come from? Where was I?
She swam—seeming rather to fly—down to me so we were at an eye level. I felt my expression go completely blank. I didn’t understand what I was feeling. I reached out for her, and suddenly she put her hands on
my cheeks and mashed her face to mine. A thrill coursed through me. I was hypnotized by her embrace and utterly triumphant that I had pleased her enough to make her want to kiss me at all.
We went on and on like that for what seemed like forever. Little by little, I became aware of an aching burn in my lungs and a stinging pain in my mouth. I tried to break away from this wonderful female, but she held me tighter. I gave in and went on kissing her, ignoring the pain.
For some reason, I was once more getting sleepy. My eyes were swimming with a black mist, and images were popping up in an irritating slide-show fashion in my mind.
I saw my mother holding a Christmas ornament up to my face. I was about two, and I was giggling and reaching up to touch it. Time passed, and I saw my pop coming home soaked in rain with blood on his hands and shirt. My babysitter rushed up to meet him, and as if I sensed their sadness from where I played with my toy trucks on the floor, I burst into tears. I saw me, Tyson, Vince, and Ben racing each other on the playground. I was shrugging off questions about my black eye and challenging the others to a football game. I saw myself running upstairs to my bedroom to collapse on my bed and beg fiercely of a God I hardly knew to take me away and end my misery. I saw myself going to high school, a freshman. Saw Garrett mocking me for my upbringing and watched as I stood up for myself for the first time. I saw Nikki, her face pure and loving.
Nikki!
With a great effort, I ripped away from the siren. Her eyes furrowed in anger, and she bared her teeth. Her beauty seemed to melt away to reveal fleshless bones and a grinning skull with sharp fangs. Her teeth came at my throat, and I threw up my hands to defend myself, closing my eyes tight. Nothing happened. When I opened my eyes, there was a cloud of funneling bubbles in front of my face, and I saw a glint of silvery scales as some fish or other flitted into the darker depths, but the siren was gone.
