“Mmm-hmm.”
Mmm-hmm? How about a thank you! “Even big, bad FPD warriors require help every once in a while,” I prodded.
“Is that so?” Grant finally turned to look at me, his expression oddly smug.
“You used my magic like a crutch. You wouldn’t have made it halfway . . . alone . . .”
His self-satisfied smile widened as I trailed off. Despite the steep climb, he’d barely broken a sweat. I might have attributed his restful appearance to his phenomenal physique, but I was in pretty good shape myself, and the climb had worn me out. With the cyclone requiring all of the magic in the link to hold it at bay, he should have been tired from his magical exertions alone.
I crossed my arms and tapped my right foot, suspicion sparking irritation. “Did we even need to link?”
“What do you think?”
I thought I wanted to wipe that arrogant expression off his face. Why hadn’t I questioned how heavily he’d leaned on my magic? He was a captain in the FPD; unaided, he should have been more than a match for that storm.
“You used me!”
“You broke your promise to stay in the forest.”
“I never made any such promise!”
Grant tilted his head, and I could practically hear him replaying our conversation. “No, you were careful not to promise, weren’t you?” He refocused on me, and I flinched under his hard-eyed glare. “You don’t give a damn about my orders, and you’ve proven you don’t trust my judgment. Since you insisted on coming along, unwanted, why should I have wasted my energy protecting you?”
I sputtered, a dozen rebuttals snarling together on my tongue.
“I could’ve gotten the weapon from the harpy with only one favor.” Furious heat broke through his stony mask, and he leaned close, pitching his voice low. “Now it’ll cost one from each of us, unless we get lucky. You should be grateful I saved my energy, because you’re going to need my protection against the real danger.”
“Maybe I wouldn’t need your protection if you hadn’t stolen all my magic.” I wanted to scream, but I matched his volume, reminded that even though we couldn’t see Beldame Zipporah, she could be listening to our conversation from atop her nest.
“Even when you’re at full strength, you can’t overpower me. What could you possibly do to protect yourself if the harpy attacked you?”
I glared at him. Nothing I could say would help my argument.
Grant slapped a small item into my palm. “Swallow this. We need to get moving before she sics another attack cyclone on us.”
I examined the packet stamped with the FPD’s logo, my hands shaking with indignation. “What is it?”
“A pick-me-up. I can’t let you confront Zipporah in your current state.”
“Maybe you should have thought about that before you decided to teach me a lesson,” I ground out.
“I did. That should tide you over.”
I longed to throw the packet at his face; instead, I ripped it open and shoved the tiny tablet into my mouth. It began to dissolve instantly, releasing a brackish, bitter flavor across my tongue. Swallowing convulsively, I forced the tablet down, not breaking my glare from Grant.
“Let’s go.” He turned and began to climb through the woven branches of the nest without waiting for me.
A tingle of energy spread from my stomach outward, chasing away the weariness in my muscles. When I reached for them, the elements leapt to my grasp. Still, my legs wobbled when I climbed the first protruding trunk, and I paused to give my muscles time to steady. A feather gleamed at eye level, and I tugged it free on a whim, cutting my fingers on the sharp shaft. Pinching the feather gingerly between the thumb and forefinger of my opposite hand, I shook away the sting of the cuts while I twisted the feather in the sunlight. The shaft shimmered with a metallic gleam, and the individual hairs comprising the vanes protruded like the slender tongs of a metal comb. Individually, they were so weak I could snap them off, but collectively, they formed an edge as sharp as a chef’s knife. Tugging my journal from my bag, I carefully closed the feather inside it, feeling braver for making a souvenir of the harpy’s former weapon.
Grant waited for me, all traces of anger replaced by his stern captain’s mask. The moment I caught up, he resumed his climb. I followed close, using the same foot placements and handholds as Grant, and did my best to avoid putting my hand in any dried feces or scratching myself on half-rotten branches. We couldn’t climb directly up the face of the nest and were forced along a circumlocutory route that took us out over the drop-off. Peering straight down at the sun-scorched clearing beneath the nest shot a tingle of weightlessness through my limbs, and I clutched my perch for balance against a wash of vertigo. When I had scanned the horizon for the spriggan, I hadn’t been paying attention to how high we’d climbed. From this vantage, the massive oaks of the forest below us looked as small as shrubs. If I lost my footing, the drop would kill me.
After that, I spent less time worrying about accidentally touching poop and more about my purchase on the interlocking branches.
When we finally reached the lip of the nest and straightened, I gagged and clutched Grant’s arm to stay upright. Layers of feces and carrion filled the deep nest to the brim, overflowing down the far side, and flies coated the air. I cast a quick eye over the copious remains, searching for human skeletons and trying not to see the maggots writhing like animated puss in the rotting meat. I didn’t spot any telltale skulls, but I could see only the top layer.
The harpy herself was missing.
At the back of the nest, a deep cavern tunneled through several large boulders, and the sunlight didn’t penetrate more than a foot into its mysterious depths. Nevertheless, I leaned forward, heart pounding in my ears, squinting to catch my first glimpse of Beldame Zipporah.
This is how it must feel to stand at the precipice of a dragon’s den.
“Do not, for any reason, touch your magic,” Grant whispered, his lips barely moving. “Do not do or say anything to attract her attention.”
His upturned gaze focused on the top of the rock pile, not the cavern, and I followed his line of sight.
If the harpy had been perched at the pinnacle earlier, she would have been visible from the ground; she was that huge. Her eaglelike body stood as tall as a human, the individual golden-brown feathers of her wings longer than my arms, the leathery toes of her feet thicker than my thighs. Atop this massive body, her human head protruded, an eerie, alien meld of woman and avian predator. When her rapacious stare locked on me, adrenaline flooded my system, and it took all my willpower not to scramble back over the edge of the nest and flee down the mountain.
Releasing an earsplitting cry, Beldame Zipporah launched from her perch, a stream of excrement splattering the rock behind her. She flapped twice and circled the spire, her wings filling the sky, her massive body blocking out the sun. Twisting midair, she dove for us, talons extended.
Grant’s hand brushed mine, stilling me when instinct insisted I cower and hide. On quaking knees, I held my ground. At the last second, she flapped her wings and bent her legs, sailing so close overhead that her tail feathers missed Grant’s forehead by inches. The wind of her passing whipped my hair into my face, but my fear-locked limbs held me rigid. If she had wanted to, she could have wrapped her long claws around Grant’s broad torso and had room to spare in her grip. She could have grabbed us each, one human per foot, and tossed us from her nest without straining herself. My heart knocked against my chest and a fine tremor scuttled from my spine to my fingers.
Grant didn’t so much as flinch.
Zipporah landed on the rim across from us, hopping around to face us. Her stench punched the back of my throat and clogged my esophagus. I’d gotten a close-up view of the harpy’s underside caked with her own fecal matter, and her wings stirred an even worse odor from the depths of the nest. Bile crawled up my throat, and I swallowed it back down.
The nest, which had seemed spacious moments earlier, shrank to
claustrophobic dimensions. Trapped atop this mountain, cut off from any means of escape or any place to hide, we were vulnerable, and Zipporah knew it.
7
“An FPD air elemental and a . . . Did you bring me a child?” The harpy cocked her head from side to side in predaceous curiosity, the movement more reminiscent of a bird than a human. Darkened by sun, with tiny ears, a sharp nose, and piercing eyes that missed nothing, Beldame Zipporah exhibited little trace of humanity. Short brown hair slicked her scalp and trailed down her neck to meet the feathers on her back, but her chest remained grotesquely bare, sun-damaged leathery flesh stretched across her prominent breastbone, with two unsightly deflated folds of skin in place of human breasts.
“It’s been far too long since I savored the tender flesh of an infantile human. My dear man, you must require an extraordinary gift from me.”
I didn’t shift under her scrutiny; I couldn’t. If I moved, my legs would buckle, even if I was almost certain she was playing off my fear. If she ate humans, I would’ve heard about it.
Unless no one had been left alive to bring the tales to Terra Haven.
Pain cracked down my dry throat when I attempted to swallow, and I wished I could take a deep breath to ground myself. I’d been confining myself to shallow inhalations, and even then, the omnipresent putridity coated my tongue.
“A spriggan threatens the forest,” Grant said, not reacting to the harpy’s taunts.
“Have you come to rescue me, human?” Zipporah snickered.
“I came to barter for Landewednack dragon’s breath.”
She lifted hairless eyebrows. “You’re on the wrong continent.”
My heart sank. She didn’t have it. We’d come all this way and had done nothing but waste time. How much land had the spriggan ravaged while we’d been scaling this mountain? And worse, how would we stop it without the dragon’s breath?
Grant crossed his arms, unperturbed. “Which is why I’ve come to you,” he said.
“And if I don’t have it?”
“Then you must be an impostor, and I’ll chase you from this nest, earning the real Beldame Zipporah’s gratitude.”
The harpy stilled, holding Grant’s gaze. Then she threw back her head and cackled. A breeze ruffled her scalp, exposing downy feathers rather than human hair. “As tempting as it is to let you try to expel me from my home, I must confess I do possess the dragon’s breath.”
My knees weakened with relief, and I locked them so I didn’t sag.
Zipporah leapt into the center of the nest, her nimbleness shocking for her size, and I startled. Her eyes snapped to me, a predator’s excited gaze drawn to my fear-based reaction. When she exhaled, the rancid odor of rotten carrion rolled over me.
She flared her wings wide, the tips extending beyond the edges of the nest and the long feathers draping to the filthy basin, forming a wall in front of us. Along the arms of her wings, sunlight glinted on metal-sharp feathers, the likes of which had attacked us in the cyclone. The rest were normal eagle feathers, if an eagle had ever grown over five feet tall.
Eyes watering, I held my breath. I yearned to back up, but the drop-off hung a few steps behind us. She’d corralled us at the precipice, and all she had to do was hop forward to shove us to our deaths. I chanced a glance at Grant, for reassurance and guidance. Even he looked small standing this close to the harpy, but he remained relaxed, with no visible magic prepared.
“If I traded the dragon’s breath to you, I would be defenseless,” Zipporah said. “How do I know you won’t trick me and wait until the spriggan has destroyed my nest before you kill it?”
“My name is Grant Monaghan. If you’ve heard of my deeds, you know I am a man of my word, and I promise to protect you.”
Zipporah shivered dramatically, releasing a noxious wave of body odor before she folded her wings. “A human driven by honor and duty. Lucky me.”
When her peculiar gaze locked on me, my body stiffened.
“And you, child? Are you the gargoyle healer I’ve heard runs around with the FPD now?”
A thrill of alarm skittered through me. She meant my best friend, but how had Mika attracted the attention of Beldame Zipporah? Had it been my own stories in the Chronicle about her? The last thing I had intended with those articles was to draw sordid attention to my friend.
“I am Kylie Grayson, a journalist with the Terra Haven Chronicle.”
“Interesting.” Zipporah’s smile revealed surprisingly human teeth, though so dirty they matched her tan skin. “Why are you here?”
“Because she’s nosy, like all reporters.” Grant’s tone held an admonishment for me. In my haste to distract Zipporah from Mika, I had revealed more than necessary about myself.
Grant tugged a coin pouch from his belt. From the way its sides bulged, it contained more than two months’ rent. “Name your price.”
Zipporah hopped backward with a flap of her wings. I dropped to a crouch to maintain my balance against the buffet of wind, straightening just as quickly and wiping my filthy hand on my pants, trying not to think about what I had touched or why it had been slimy between my fingers.
“I don’t want your money,” Zipporah said. “I want something more precious. I want a tiny piece of you.” Her gaze roved suggestively to the crotch of Grant’s pants, and she wriggled bald eyebrows at him.
“No games, Beldame Zipporah, or I’ll leave. There are other ways to eliminate a spriggan.”
The harpy cackled again. “Aren’t you a tough one, Captain?” She emphasized his title, revealing she knew more about Grant than she had let on. His gray uniform with the elemental icon at the collar identified Grant as a member of an FPD squad, but nothing in his apparel specified his rank. “I’m sure you are used to getting all the best jobs, so I will accept your payment in humility and muscle: I will give you the dragon’s breath once you’ve cleaned my nest.”
I surveyed the sloppy heap, dismayed. It would take Grant hours to clean it. In the meantime, the spriggan would be devouring everything in its path, including the dryads and their trees.
Grant surprised me by beginning negotiations instead of rejecting her offer. He haggled over the definition of the nest, refining it down to only the parts within the wooden frame, not the cavern, and nothing beyond the rim of the nest. He stipulated that he would only remove bones and feces, not dirt, dander, or other matter deeper in the framework of the nest, nor could she add anything else to it as he worked. I never would have thought to negotiate those details, and Zipporah seemed disappointed that Grant hadn’t been caught in her open-ended trap.
“Kylie will assist me—”
“No.” Zipporah cut him off, her tone losing all traces of affability. “The deal is with you alone or you have no deal at all.”
Grant pinched his lips together and nodded.
“Come, newspaper child. Let’s get out of the way so the distinguished captain can get to work.” The harpy used the tip of one wing to point toward the cavern.
I didn’t need to see Grant’s warning look to recognize the need for caution. I didn’t want to leave his side. I definitely didn’t want to go into the foreboding cave without him, but I made my feet move. Any delay could be costing a dryad its life.
Stumbling my way around the edge of the filthy nest, I gave myself a mental pep talk. This will all make a great story. I’ll have details no journalist at the Chronicle has ever obtained about Beldame Zipporah. This is exactly what I’d hoped for.
But no matter which way I twisted my perspective, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was walking to my own doom.
8
Zipporah hopped to the cavern entrance, forcing me to stumble into the darkness. Tears leaked from my eyes as the stifling combination of excrement and rot amplified each other in the stagnant air. I wished I could use my arm to cover my nose, but I wasn’t sure if doing so would offend the harpy. I squeezed to the wall, my nose slowly numbing and the urge to vomit receding.
Behind us, Grant fo
rmed shovels out of air and began tossing layers of offal and bones over the edge of the mountain. I waited to see if Zipporah would protest, but she nodded approvingly at his disposal methods.
“I keep the dragon’s breath in the back,” she said.
Leaning close, she spread a wing around me and hugged me to her grimy body. The metallic feathers along the arm of her wing bit into my neck, a sharp pain letting me know she had drawn blood. When she exerted pressure, I had no choice but to stagger deeper into the cavern with her. She took dainty steps, her head bobbing back and forth like a chicken’s, her wing alternately cutting into me and backing off.
I wanted to run, but even if I could escape her long reach, I had nowhere to go in the dead-end cave. The best I could do was outpace her to avoid having my neck lacerated by her sharp feathers. The sun’s bright rays receded, step by step, and I stumbled over items I couldn’t see and didn’t want to identify. Gradually, my eyes adjusted, aided by the soft glow of a few candles. They illuminated the back of the cave where unexpectedly smooth oval walls swelled twice as wide as the tunnel, all lined with handcrafted shelving from filthy floor to jagged ceiling. Hundreds of marvels adorned the shelves, each placed neatly beside the next with no particular importance given to any single item. Expensive copper chains of a kludde collar lay next to a chipped porcelain squirrel figurine that wouldn’t have sold for more than a few pennies. I scanned the hoard of items for the dragon’s breath, realizing only then that I had no clue what it looked like. It could have been any number of objects, including the three-bladed sword on the bottom shelf or the scythe etched in Scandinavian ruins on the far right or the coal-black wyvern figurine holding a lit candle—and I wished Zipporah would point it out to me so I could collect it and leave the cavern.
Zipporah herded me into the center of the room and stopped where her body blocked the exit. “We haven’t discussed what you will give me in exchange for the dragon’s breath.”
Deadlines & Dryads Page 6
