The Conduit (The Gryphon Series Book 1)

by Stacey Rourke

  Really? Sweaty, twitchy Keith? “Okay, you kissed. Then what?”

  “He was the first to notice. He looked down and screamed. I didn’t understand why. He pushed me away and fell. At first I thought we had somehow moved to the edge of the porch, and he’d stumbled off the edge. But then I looked down. I was floating.” Her questioning eyes probed mine, looking for a logical explanation to this impossible scenario. “How is that possible, Celeste?”

  “I don’t know, Keni. I honestly don’t.”

  “It only lasted for a second … then I came crashing down. Keith was petrified. He ran inside and locked the door behind him. He looked at me through the glass like … like I was a …”

  “Freak?” Gabe’s harsh interjection startled me. Not just because I hadn’t heard him enter the room, but also because of the sharp way he spit the word out. Hostility brewed just below the surface, barely contained.

  Kendall either missed the tone or ignored it. “Yeah, like a freak. I feel so bad for him. He was terrified. I don’t know…what happened? How did I…?”

  I hugged my baby sister tightly. If I hadn’t been so slow to put the pieces together, Kendall wouldn’t have had to endure this. This was my fault. “I’m so sorry,” I muttered.

  “You should be sorry,” Gabe hissed, his voice pure venom.

  I made no attempt to hide my exasperation as I shot back, “What is your problem, Gabe? Do you have something you wanna say?”

  “You bet I do. Why don’t you tell Kendall the truth? Or are you completely incapable of that anymore?”

  “What exactly is it that you think I’m withholding?”

  “That you know exactly what’s going on,” he snarled through gritted teeth. My heart momentarily forgot to beat. He knew. I didn’t know how much. But judging by the way he was pacing, it was enough to make him fume. “I just figured it out. That’s why you’ve been acting so weird lately. But instead of clueing us in on what was going on, you left us out to dry. Oh, but not before you took a minute to accuse me of doing drugs. Plenty of time for that fun little conversation.” His body language dared me to challenge him.

  My mouth fell open to say … what? I couldn’t deny it. He was right. I hadn’t even thought that his recent growth could be mystical, but it had to be. My chin fell to my chest. “I don’t know much yet.”

  Kendall’s head whipped back and forth between Gabe and me. “What are you guys talking about?”

  “Kendall and I have turned into freaks. What about you? Are you a member of the freak brigade?”

  “Wait! You can do weird stuff, too?” Kendall perked up at the idea that she wasn’t the “lone freak.”

  “Yes. Try to keep up!” Gabe snapped.

  I grabbed my sister’s hand to comfort her, and then fixed my gaze on my pushy brother. “I can feel people’s emotions, and I think I may be able to alter what they’re feeling.”

  A smug smirk spread across Gabe’s face. “Doesn’t that put a fun twist on this story. You could even feel the confusion and stress we were going through as we…” he struggled to find the right word “…changed. Still, you said nothing.”

  I jumped up off the floor, stood on my tiptoes, and went nose to nose with my monstrous brother. “What did you want me to say, Gabe? That night I came home from the woods covered in blood, should I’ve told you that the real reason I fell was that I saw a feathered woman in the clearing? And that she told me stuff was going to start happening to all three of us. What do you think you would’ve said if I had done that?”

  “You still could’ve given us a warning …”

  “What would you have said?”

  His mouth snapped shut. The fire in his eyes simmered down to embers. “I would’ve told you that you were crazy.”

  “Exactly. Truth be told, I thought I was. So I didn’t feel inclined to announce it to the world. And just so you know, I just put all the pieces together tonight.”

  Gabe rubbed the back of his neck. Even a casual motion like that caused his giant pecks to dance. “I was just looking for someone to blame. Sorry. But, you can change how people feel? Really? That’s kinda cool.”

  “Hold on a second!” Keni scrambled off the floor. “Feathered woman? Feeling people’s emotions? What the heck is going on?”

  Gabe’s head jerked in Keni’s direction. “Can’t you use your voodoo to calm her down or something?”

  “I’m not real sure how I did it the first time.” I shrugged.

  “I don’t need to be calmed down!” Kendall stomped her foot. “What I need is for you two to tell me what is happening and why I am suddenly able to float!”

  I didn’t know how to explain it, especially when I really didn’t understand myself. To the best of my ability, I started at the beginning and laid out the whole story of my experiences over the last week. I ended by declaring that to find answers we needed to find the bird-woman.

  Gabe peeked into my backpack, taking inventory of what I’d packed. “It took you this long to figure all that out? Little slow on the uptake?”

  “Definitely, yes.”

  “That’s sad,” he taunted. “So, we need to go back to that spot in the mountains and look for her. When do we go?”

  “Tonight. After Grams crashes for the night. We’ll head up to the clearing. Hopefully, she’ll be there.”

  With resolute nods, we all agreed.

  “Wait, I have a question.” Kendall plopped down on her bed and grabbed her big stuffed zebra, Mr. Hoofington, that she’d had since she was four.

  “Just one?”

  “To start with.” She looked up at Gabe as he zipped my backpack. “You didn’t say what you could do.”

  “In addition to this…” He made a flippant gesture at his new, alarming frame. “I’m wicked strong.”

  “Cool.” She picked a fuzzy off Mr. Hoofington and cocked her head to the side. “Wait. In addition to what?”

  Now it was Gabe’s turn to look puzzled. “What do you mean ‘what’? This!” He extended his arms and pointed blatantly at himself.

  Kendall sucked in a shocked breath. I bit down on my lip to stifle a laugh. “Holy crap, Gabe!” she exclaimed. “You’re huge!”

  “You both suck,” he grumbled.

  CHAPTER 12

  Extended cab or not, all three of us crammed into the front seat of my truck. Uncertainty made togetherness mandatory. As we piled out into the deserted parking lot, I eyed the entrance to the path. It seemed more menacing at night. Billowing trees arched up over the entrance with a few ragged branches jutting down. It looked like a fanged mouth, like the hungry jaws of the mountain were eagerly awaiting the opportunity to swallow us whole. I wiped my suddenly sweaty palms on my blue jeans and moved a little closer to my brother and sister.

  Gabe grabbed the backpack and pulled out both flashlights. He tossed one to Keni and the other to me. Of course I missed and mine went skittering to the ground. Keni clicked hers on to help me find mine, while Gabe tried to wrestle his gargantuan arms into the normal-sized backpack. Light retrieved, I watched the comic relief my brother was unknowingly providing a little longer than I should have before I had mercy and held out my hand for the bag.

  He threw it to me and huffed. “Stupid, tiny bag.”

  Together we faced the mountain.

  Keni shifted antsily on the balls of her feet. “I’m like, pee-my-pants scared right now.”

  “Aw, come on, Keni!” Gabe grinned as he draped his bulky arm around our little sister’s shoulders. “It’s a pitch-black mountain range, filled with savage, wild animals. One of which could be a man-eating panther. What’s to be afraid of?”

  Keni’s eyes popped. Even in the moonlight, her complexion paled noticeably with dread.

  I kept my voice as calm and soothing as possible. “Kendall, he’s kidding.”

  Gabe released Keni and shoved her playfully toward me. “No, I’m not.”

  “Shut up,” I hissed at him. I caught my sister’s face in my hands and made her loo
k me in the eye. “We’ll be fine. And if we do run into any animals, Gabe is with us. So we have nothing to worry about.”

  Gabe expanded his chest in full meathead bravado. “That’s right, ladies, the G-Man will protect you.”

  “Actually, I meant that any carnivorous animals would much rather eat you, in all your meatiness, than us.” Gabe scowled. But I got a giggle out of Kendall.

  She filled her lungs with a deep inhale and nodded. “All right. Let’s go.”

  Gabe led the way with his wide gait and determined strides. I turned my head to hide my nervous gulp from my sister, then I followed him. Keni brought up the rear, sticking so close to me that she stepped on my heels repeatedly.

  The foliage on the path hung thick and heavy and prevented the moonlight from poking through. Darkness enveloped us. I could only see as far as my flashlight beam allowed. Yet Gabe stayed out in front, sans flashlight.

  “Hey, Gabe. Why don’t you let someone with a flashlight lead?” Or better yet, take the flashlight and let me stay safely in the middle of the pack.

  “That’s all right. I don’t need it. I can see fine.”

  I raised an eyebrow at that. Improved night vision too? And the freak traits just keep on comin’.

  The nighttime hoots, calls, and screeches of the nocturnal forest animals were creeping me out enough that I was relieved when Keni piped up…at first. “Hey, Cee, with that ability of yours, can you read my mind?”

  “No, it doesn’t work that way.”

  “Quick! What color am I thinking of?”

  “I have no idea; I’m not a mind reader. I’m empathic, not psychic.”

  “Do you, like, know what the winning lottery numbers are going to be?”

  “Nope.”

  “Can you tell me if I’ll get the role of Maggie the Cat?”

  “I don’t know the future, Keni. Sorry.”

  “Could you do something that would, like, completely alter what’s going to happen in the future?”

  I stopped and spun on her. “What? That doesn’t even make sense! Anyone could do that. It’s just about emotions, that’s all.”

  With one hand on her hip and her interest in this matter obviously waning, she asked, “So, what am I feeling right now?”

  I didn’t even open the channel but went for the obvious. “Nervous and scared.”

  “Well, duh,” she tsked. “Your ability’s dumb. I can float.”

  I didn’t mind the nighttime forest noises as much after that. Twenty minutes later, we arrived in the clearing. We were welcomed by the moonlight that glistened off the brook.

  “You two have a seat over there.” Gabe nodded in the direction of the fallen tree. “I’m gonna make a fire.”

  Keni and I watched him get a small campfire going. We gathered around it to fight off the night chill and watch for the bird-woman (I really hoped she had a name so I could stop calling her that).

  “Hey, Gabe,” Keni mused as she twirled an oak leaf between her fingers, “how’d you find out that you were super strong and not just big and lumpy?”

  Gabe laughed and stretched his long legs out in front of him. With his back against the downed tree, he laced his fingers behind his head. “It was last week. I was on the bench press, lifting with the team during practice. No matter how much weight I slid on the bar it felt like nothing. I stacked more and more on until I ran out of weights. Still it didn’t even challenge me. That’s right about the time the steroid rumors started.”

  “Naturally,” I commented.

  “It got weirder from there.” Gabe gazed into the fire, a smile tugging at his lips. “The guys on the team wanted to know how far back I could push the tackling dummy by myself with four guys standing on it.”

  “How far did you push it?” Kendall asked.

  Gabe hesitated. “All the way down field, from end zone to end zone.”

  I called him on his loaded pause. “And..?”

  “And more and more guys kept jumping on.”

  “Exactly how many were on it, Gabe?”

  He tried to sound sheepish, but couldn’t conceal his beaming, macho pride. “The entire team.”

  “The entire team!” Kendall and I chorused.

  “Yep.”

  “Were they freaked out by it?” Kendall asked, ever the compassionate one.

  “No,” he snickered. “But I don’t have to tell them things twice during practice anymore.”

  “Maybe we all play it a little bit more low key from now on,” I suggested.

  “Easy for you to say. You’re used to living in the shadows.” Gabe’s statement was rude, but he had a point.

  “Even so.”

  He shrugged off my words and turned to Kendall with a wry smile. “I have a question, Keni.”

  She eyed him warily. “What?”

  “Keith was your first kiss. That right?”

  “Yeah. Why?”

  “You kissed a guy and then floated? Geez, can you imagine what would happen if you let him get a little boobage?” His eyes widened in mock alarm. “Lasers might shoot out of your eyeballs. You could completely eviscerate the guy.”

  Gabe let out a loud guffaw while Kendall spun on me. “Could that actually happen, Cee? Did your little birdie friend say anything about laser vision?”

  I whipped a pine cone at my brother’s head. “I didn’t really talk to her as much as run screaming from her. But, no, she didn’t mention laser vision. Ignore him.”

  Keni latched on to the sleeve of my sweatshirt. “With all the other strange stuff going on, it could happen! You can’t say for one hundred percent sure that it won’t!”

  “No. You’re right. I can’t.” I peeled her grip off my sleeve and patted her hand. “For the time being you should probably stick strictly to hand holding.”

  “Yeah, that’s probably a good idea.” She enthusiastically agreed.

  I was internally patting myself on the back for simultaneously calming my sister down and talking her out of any ill-timed kanoodling when a light appeared from within the mass of trees in front of us. I sprang to my feet, my heart rate in overdrive.

  “She’s here.”

  Gabe and Kendall rose, and the three of us walked to the edge of the clearing. The illumination drew closer. We instinctively backed up. The vegetation in front of us parted and out she stepped. Six wide, unblinking eyes gaped at her. Her form had changed from the last time I saw her. She looked…angelic. Glowing ivory wings fanned out behind her. Her ankle length gown was comprised of golden feathers. Dainty white feet poked out from under it as she stepped onto the grass. The feathers on her head had been replaced by waist length, auburn waves that cascaded down her back. Her skin and features were that of a porcelain doll, yet the irises of her eyes were still the yellow of the eagle.

  “You’re beautiful.” Gabe marveled and blushed bright red.

  “Thank you.” Her voice and grammar were practiced perfection. She extended one arm, sleeved to the wrist with flaxen feathers, to hand me my satchel that I had dropped at our first “encounter.”

  “I believe this belongs to you. Your drawing is quite good. I hope you are not bothered that I looked at it.”

  “No, it’s cool,” I squeaked. My hand shook as I accepted my satchel. “What…or, uh…who are you?”

  “My name is Alaina. I am here to guide you.”

  “You know what’s happening to us?” Gabe asked.

  Alaina lowered her head in a regal nod. “I have the answers you seek. It is my job to prepare you for what is to come.”

  “And what is that?”

  A dark shadow seeped into Alaina’s avian eyes and creased her otherwise unblemished forehead. “War…against an evil man and the army he has created.”

  Gabe gave a flippant snort. “Lady, I hope you’re packing an Uzi under those wings if you think we stand a chance against an entire army.”

  The smile she graced him with caused my big brother to omit an audible sigh. “When the time comes, you will ha
ve all you need to fight and to win.”

  I was cold, tired, confused, scared, overwhelmed, and I kind of had to pee. My patience was wearing thin. I crammed my hands into my pockets and tried to keep the snarkiness out of my voice as I asked, “How about a little less cryptic and a little more information?”

  Those golden eyes locked on me. “You are absolutely right. Too much time has been wasted. It is time for each of you to embrace your destiny.”

  CHAPTER 13

  “To know what is to come, you must first know what has been.”

  Alaina pulled a small, black velvet drawstring sack out from within the folds of her feathered gown. Gabe, Kendall, and I were seated around the campfire while she stood. “That story takes us to the green, sprawling hills of Ireland in the 17th century—the bloodiest time in the history of Ireland. Civil wars tore the country apart and ended lives. An evil ex-soldier by the name of Barnabus chose to take advantage of the chaotic carnage by assembling his own army to challenge the governing power, the English Commonwealth. He was able to recruit roughly two dozen men, yet that was nowhere near enough to accomplish their goal.”

  She poured what looked like silver sand onto her palm and sprinkled it into the campfire in small, circular motions. The flames rose up in response, licking high up into the night sky. “They targeted small, insignificant villages, stormed tiny settlements, and demanded that the males of all ages join their army. When any man refused, he was forced to watch as his family was brutally killed. If men dared band together in refusal, their entire village was torched and the remaining residents slaughtered. Whispers of these massacres reached my own village.” At the mention of her village, the silhouette of it appeared within the red and orange flames. Gabe, Kendall, and I leaned in and stared in astonishment at the small, plank-board-sided homes that could clearly be seen against the backdrop of the fire. “At word of the potential threat, our men made makeshift stands on the four corners of our town and kept watch at all hours. What happened next you need to see for yourself.”

  A loud trumpet blast came from the scene within the flames. Men, women, and children, all clad in sleepwear, scrambled out of the tiny homes.