Grand Theft Griffin

by Michael Angel

  “She is under a geas, a spell of obligation. She cannot say the name of the caster, nor reveal any details about him.”

  “Then her mind must be under his control,” Shaw said. I heard a note of desperation creep into his voice. “She hath been fooled, controlled, much like Dayna was by the spirit in the stone.”

  Galen shook his head. “I sense no other magic upon her. I am sorry.”

  Holly coughed, flecks of blood spattering her lower beak. “None of us were forced. We chose our path freely.”

  “What of Thundercrack?” I asked gently.

  “He wanted change, the same as us. I tried to bring him into our fold. I told him about your world, about the power we could use to disable the Elders and slaughter them.”

  My mind flashed back to when Thundercrack confronted Holly before the Elders. Now his words made complete. When she had named the Lance Captain a traitor, he had responded ‘You call me a traitor?’ as if amazed that the accusation had come from someone who had said the same things.

  “Thundercrack would not join us. The Captain didn’t want to replace the council so much as he wanted the Valkir to split away from the aerie. When I learned Dayna’s magic pointed to him as the culprit, I decided to kill two wyverns with one blow. I made sure to anger him, then I produced evidence to make him seem guilty. That would bring the Valkir to heel and throw Dayna off our track. I regret his death. I regret all the deaths, save those of the Elders.”

  “Thou hast slain five of my Council brethren, including Elder Ulrik,” Belladonna shot back. “We shall not regret thy death either. Rather, we shall savor it.”

  “Surely you shall.” Holly coughed again, bringing up blood mixed with yellow bile. She strained to make out both me and Shaw with her last working eye. “Now you know the whole truth, father. And you, Dayna. I am sorry. We should have killed you, I see that now. And yet I am glad that we did not. You were a true companion to my sire when I was false. I have lost my offspring, my lovers, and the honor of my family line. Our song is tainted forever. Our saga shall be trod into the dirt like the blood of my young.”

  “Mayhap there is a way…” Shaw murmured. Holly’s head jerked up at that, but the High Elder had not heard.

  “Thy family line shall be extinguished!” Belladonna thundered. “Thou art a false daughter, a false warrior, and a dishonored griffin! No, thou shalt not perish yet, young one! You shall join the ranks of the Skinned Ones the old way. The slow way.”

  Belladonna’s rant faded into the background as so much noise. I heard only Holly’s wheezing breath, Shaw’s soft words, her softer replies. The voice of a father tucking his daughter into bed.

  Shaw spoke as intently as I’d ever heard.

  “What did I tell thee upon thy first-ever flight?”

  Holly let out a breath that rattled in her throat. “You said…”

  Then she nodded, as if she understood something. I looked back and forth between the two, not following along.

  The High Elder droned on.

  “We shall pluck your feathers from your wings!”

  “Father,” Holly whispered. “I’m scared. Please don’t let them hurt me anymore.”

  “We shall gouge your eyes from your sockets!”

  “I shall not let them hurt thee. Thou must look to the sky. I will do what must be done.”

  “Our knives will peel your flesh for days, till you beg us for death!”

  I had a sudden, horrible feeling.

  Holly tilted her head back. A single tear flowed down her face.

  Shaw darted in, grasping Holly’s throat in his beak.

  He twisted, and then pulled.

  He ripped his daughter’s throat out in the blink of an eye.

  Blood fountained from the base of Holly’s neck, the stumps of her carotid arteries spitting blood with the pulse of her still-beating heart. Blood splashed across the side of my cheek, scalding hot. It got in my eyes. It landed in my mouth. Filled it with the taste of rusty iron.

  I screamed. I don’t know if I said anything. Perhaps I just wailed in agony. My mind had gone somewhere else. Somewhere red and dark and full of pain.

  Holly fell to the ground bonelessly. I slumped to my knees, grabbing at her, feeling the slickness of her blood plaster my hands. Her feathers, her fur slipped through my fingers like so much wet cloth. I called out her name again and again.

  A spasm, and Holly jerked her unbroken forelimb up to her neck. Catching the silver chain on one talon she pulled, snapping it. Convulsively, she jammed the pendant into my hand. She squeezed it into my palm, pressing it painfully into my flesh. I held on to her fiercely, felt her talons dig into my skin.

  Then it was over.

  The milky film over her one open eye went blank.

  She was gone.

  Chapter Forty-Five

  I sat at the desk in my study, staring at a letter.

  I tried to read the damned thing, but my eyes kept sliding off the page.

  My chair moaned another creak as I shifted in it, pleading with me to oil it someday. But I didn’t have the will to do it. After all, I lacked the will to focus my eyes long enough to read an official-looking piece of paper.

  That lack of willpower had dogged me all week. I found myself sitting at my desk, staring into space until my stomach told me it was lunchtime. Or until the maintenance crew came by to clean after everyone else had gone home.

  My mind was elsewhere.

  To say that I’d gotten a blunt dismissal from the Reykajar Aerie would be understating things. In fact, I’d been very politely shown the door, and it didn’t matter if said door hit my ass on the way out.

  A rain squall had blown in just as the remainder of the aerie had shown up, drawn by the mass exit of the Valkir Pride leaders and the horrific sounds of battle from inside the Lair of the Elders. Though it had felt like an eternity, the actual fight had taken only a few minutes. Griffins were tough to kill, but they were even better killing machines. I couldn’t imagine how anyone would be able to mop up all the blood that had been spilt that day.

  The rain didn’t prevent Galen from commandeering a couple of the newly arrived griffins. He had them fly through the gap torn in the iron chains and collect the remaining phantom quartz to return to his laboratory for study. Liam worked with the seemingly endless stream of wounded left from the fight. Often, he was only able to dull the pain of a mortal wound.

  Cold droplets fell through the skylight and pelted High Elder Belladonna as she faced me. The Eldest hadn’t come through the battle unscratched either. She held a hind leg stiffly, avoiding putting her weight on it, and a deep slash ran down her shoulder.

  “Thy Fayleene may vouch for thee,” she said with a scowl. “But thy purpose here did indeed wreak havoc upon my people.”

  “I never intended–” I began.

  “Nevertheless, thou hast done what was required of thee: the culprits of the theft have been found. And punished.” She focused on me as best she could with both her normal and wandering eye. “But the price hath been steeper for mine own people than I ever thought possible. Dost thou think it was worth proving yourself right?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, nettled. “Do you think it was worth proving your visions true?”

  Her beak snapped closed. She looked away for a moment.

  “Our two best Prides have been sacrificed,” she moaned. “The Reyka hath been nearly exterminated. The Valkir are now sundered from our aerie. More than half my Council lies here as carrion for the crows to feast upon. ‘Tis a bitter cup to sip from.”

  “True,” I said, though my own bitterness welled up within me. “Yet what did you end up paying the price for? I don’t think it was for proving that your visions were correct.”

  “Then what dost thou think it was for, outworlder?”

  I thought of the life of deprivation that Holly must have led. Griffins were social animals, even more so than humans. To be alone while in a crowd for all one’s life must have been a rare
and singular torture.

  Was it any wonder that Holly turned to the only griffins that showed her kindness and love to sire her eggs?

  “Belladonna, I think you just found out the price of your Council’s rigidity. Of your readiness to force your people to follow archaic rules, to keep their silence. That’s what drove Thundercrack and his Pride to desert you. That’s what drove Holly mad, at the end. I think you need…to consider change.”

  The Eldest’s voice crackled in outrage. “Thou wouldst have me approve of incest?”

  “No, of course not. I would have you approve of the True Born, though. To make sure that they aren’t treated as outcasts. I would have you give your younger griffins more power to determine their chosen directions in life. Perhaps even allowing the younger griffins to join a council originally meant for only the Elders.”

  A scraping sound came from where Belladonna rubbed her talons against the rock wall. “That is much to ask for.”

  “Maybe. But even one of those changes would have stopped all this before it got out of control. Whatever ‘he’ that Holly spoke to could never have gotten hold of her desperate desires if she hadn’t been so embittered.”

  “I shall brood upon thy words,” the Eldest said, straightening herself up as best she was able. “Hear my words in turn: Tell thy king that thou hast fulfilled thy duties here, though at much cost. We shall continue to send our best warriors for the Air Cavalry, but only on two conditions.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “First, that he orders your ‘brush magic’ completed to assess the health of my remaining warriors.”

  I nodded. “He won’t object to that.”

  “Second, that he grants a boon to me, as the reigning High Elder of the Griffins.”

  “Yes?”

  “The boon I request is simple: That he forbid thee upon pain of death from ever returning to Reykajar Aerie. For thy company is unpleasant, and the price of thy lodging is one we never wish to pay again.”

  I flinched as if she’d slapped my face. Belladonna turned her back on me and stalked off.

  The other griffins followed their Elder’s lead. Everywhere I went, they turned their back on me or refused to look in my direction. I sat alone in an out-of-the-way spot for a bit, staring at the pendant Holly had pressed into my hand.

  It looked like a strange flower or seashell at first glance. But the most interesting quality to me was that it had a catch which revealed a secret compartment. The compartment was empty, but it could hold an object roughly the size of my thumb. At least I now knew how Holly had snuck in a crystal shard to plant on Thundercrack.

  Liam and Galen got word of my dismissal and came to join me. They didn’t say much, and I steadfastly refused to shout, to scream, to cry in frustration.

  We walked out of the Lair, emerging at the top of the long downward slope to the griffin border. The way looked rough, tumbled, and all but impassable to me now. But I heard a familiar voice, and I turned to look.

  Shaw sat at the cliff’s edge, overlooking the sea, a fire burning brightly beside him. He chanted under his breath, nodding towards the flames. An iron bar lay with its point in the coals, slowly turning red hot.

  “What is he doing?” I asked softly.

  “An expunging ceremony,” Galen replied. “It is to erase the memory of part of his immediate family. As with most griffin rituals, it is elaborately painful.”

  “Dare I ask what you mean?” Liam put in with a shudder. “The condensed version, please.”

  “The ritual includes the piercing of one’s flesh with shark teeth and bramble thorns. Followed by the burning of flesh with hot iron. Yet, I think the pain he endures will be less than the pain he seeks to escape.”

  “I don’t understand,” I muttered. “Grimshaw told me that dishonor stains an entire family line. It becomes part of the song of that family’s saga, effectively removing it from existence.”

  “Not quite. Dishonor must be formally conferred upon a warrior by the Elders once he or she joins the ranks of the flayed…what the griffins call ‘The Skinned Ones’.”

  That’s right, I realized. Shaw told me that dishonor to a line would only come ‘should such a griffin fall into the hands of the Elders’.

  Holly’s last thoughts had been for her remaining family: Grimshaw. She had said, ‘Our song is tainted forever. Our saga shall be trod into the dirt like the blood of my young.’

  Shaw had replied: ‘Mayhap there is a way.’

  His daughter had understood. Killing her deprived Belladonna of a final victory: destroying Grimshaw’s family name.

  And it had saved Holly from being tortured for hours, even days. It had saved her from an agonizing death. Yet, I had been agonizing over Shaw’s choice to murder her for days now.

  I felt the sudden warmth of Holly’s blood on my face again.

  I got up suddenly from my desk. Pulling back the curtains, I threw open the windows, gulping down the less-than-fresh air of Los Angeles.

  Sometimes, I realized in a flash, If you truly cared for someone, you had to accept things about them you weren’t all that happy about.

  Part of me would never be happy about what Shaw had done. But I had to accept it. I cared for him as much as for Liam and Galen. He’d acted in accordance with his griffin mores, his griffin knowledge. His people weren’t humans in funny eagle suits, nor were they some special effect made for the movies. They had their own alien, but understandable, code of ethics.

  That settled in my mind, I went back to my desk and picked up the letter again.

  This time the contents stuck. And they made me slump back into the creaky desk chair. I’d gotten the results of my firearms certification test.

  Range Performance and Safety: 85/100.

  Written Portion: 25/100.

  Average Score: 55/100.

  The word FAIL was written on the bottom line labeled ‘Result’. It was Lieutenant Ollivar’s handwriting.

  But that wasn’t all.

  The FAIL had been crossed out.

  Underneath, the words CLOSE ENOUGH – PASS had been printed.

  And signed.

  By Deputy Chief Robert McClatchy.

  I took stock of the situation. I’d solved the mystery of the museum theft, if not in my world, then at least in Andeluvia, where it really counted. I’d prevented the assassination of the entire griffin Council of Elders. I’d passed my firearms test. I was off probation and back on the force. And to top it off, all of my past problems with the LAPD had been expunged.

  I would be free to return to duty with the Office of the Medical Examiner.

  I would be free to return to Andeluvia and join Fitzwilliam’s court, once I reported in to him.

  So why did I feel like I’d lost everything?

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Morning sun shone through the leaded glass windows in one of Fitzwilliam’s royal antechambers. As it happened, the window in this room held the pattern of a rampant griffin. I didn’t know if that was an omen, or just plain old irony giving me the middle finger again.

  I paced back and forth, opening and closing the leather-bound folder that held my notes. Providing an unwelcome background murmur was the muffled voices, laughs, and shouts of Fitzwilliam’s noble court. It was lively in there today, and I wondered whether the king would be as bored-looking as the last time I’d seen him.

  If he was, I was pretty darned sure that he’d be a lot more interested after I’d read my report. Technically, it was a group report, but only one of my three additional members were present. Galen stood off to one side, arms crossed patiently. He watched me with growing irritation until he finally made a wry comment.

  “Dayna, should you keep pacing to and fro, I believe that you shall wear out a footpath on King Fitzwilliam’s best carpet.”

  That stopped me, figuratively and literally. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I’m a little nervous. The last time I was in front of the court, I got some rough treatment. And I made yet more
mistakes. The kind that’s starting to worry me.”

  Galen raised a shaggy eyebrow. “More specificity, please.”

  “I mean that I’ve always prided myself on talking my way out of a tough jam. Being fast on my feet mentally, that sort of thing. But lately…it seems like all my quick escapes are coming back with a price attached. And those prices are piling up…in a way that’s going to haunt me.”

  “You refer to the quick solution that ended up sending you to the griffin aerie?”

  “Yes, in part. I mean…outsmarting McClatchy on my probation hearing. Outfoxing him when he found us in the morgue. My pretending to be a conspirator with dark forces, just to get into the aerie itself. It’s like I’m sowing a lot of bad karma, and it’s not going to wait until my next life to bite me in the butt.”

  “I don’t understand many of your idioms, but I believe I follow the main course of your concern.” Galen uncrossed his arms. “Perhaps you are being too hard on yourself. The unexpected happens to everyone. And in unusual situations, the unexpected cannot help but increase in both size and degree of strangeness.”

  “The story of my life,” I sighed. “I just wish that Liam and Shaw had decided to join us. I don’t want us to go in there without everyone’s testimony at hand. Plus, having a Fayleene around still counts for a lot here. I think Liam will help put a damper on the higher-octane jerks that sit up at that table.”

  Galen covered his mouth with a hand, stifling a laugh. “You have a unique way of describing those of the court who show their high spirits. Be at ease. Liam is changing into his ceremonial garb, in order to bring appropriate gravity to our presence.”

  “What about Shaw?”

  The centaur’s face grew serious. “Grimshaw has ensconced himself in the next room over. He has been…emotionally distraught for the past week. Even now, he is in a state of mourning.”

  The thought of my friend in distress automatically moved me to action. I actually took a few steps towards the door before stopping in my tracks.