Deadlines & Dryads

by Rebecca Chastain

  The panic I’d been holding at bay shuddered through me, scattering my thoughts.

  “You already agreed to give it to Grant,” I hedged.

  “Yes, but I did not agree to give it to you. Are you volunteering to stay here?” A hungry glint lit Zipporah’s eyes.

  I wiped sweaty palms against my hips. “What do you want?”

  “You have nothing to give me. You’re too scrawny to be of use for anything physical, and your magic is pathetic. The only thing you have to offer is your life.”

  Her curled foot shot forward, punching me in the solar plexus and knocking me to my back. The feces-encrusted floor broke my fall, but my head cracked against something hard, and my brain jarred inside my skull. My vision doubled. Before I recovered, Zipporah slammed her foot atop my gut, pinning me in place. Her back talon curled into the ground between my calves, two of her long front toes confined my upper arms, and her thick middle toe arced to rest its talon tip against the hollow of my throat. Instinctively, I clutched the talon and heaved, but my hands were too small to encircle the steel-hard claw, and I couldn’t get any leverage with my biceps restrained. She crooked her toe. The sharp prick of her talon puncturing the delicate skin of my neck took a moment to penetrate my alarm, and I froze.

  Frantic, I cycled through every spell I knew, seeking one that had a chance of freeing me faster than Zipporah could kill me. I came up blank. Any fire I could ignite, she could extinguish. Any punch of air I threw at her, she could dissipate. Her magic far outstripped mine, and even if I’d had the physical strength to grapple with her, a single flex of her toe would decapitate me. No one, not even Grant, would have been fast enough from this position.

  “I . . . I have a camera. In my bag.” My voice trembled. I had no money, and my half-used journal wasn’t worth the paper it was printed on. The camera was my sole bartering option.

  “A camera? Do you think your life is worth so little? Or are you insulting me by claiming Landewednack dragon’s breath, the only known weapon against the spriggan, has so little value?”

  “It’s precious to me. I would be bereft without it.”

  “Do better,” Zipporah barked.

  My brain burbled with half-formed thoughts, terror a pounding pressure inside my skull. When I swallowed convulsively, the tip of the talon nicked my throat again. “I can write a story about you! I can make you famous.”

  Zipporah leaned down, compressing my stomach and chest, making it impossible to inhale. The harpy snapped her teeth in my face, and I flinched despite myself.

  “There is no value in fame,” she said. “Besides, I don’t need more noxious humans crawling up my mountain.”

  A trickle of blood ran down the side of my neck. Black spots dancing in my vision, I wracked my brain for anything I could say to save myself.

  “An answer,” I croaked.

  “What was that, dearie?” Zipporah asked with false concern.

  When she eased the pressure on my chest, I blurted, “Any question you ask of me, if I know the answer, I’ll give it to you.”

  The harpy straightened and cocked her head this way and that as she considered my offer. “I accept.”

  She stepped off my chest, and I sucked in a deep breath, undeterred by the atrocious aroma. She crowded close, preventing me from standing, but I was too busy reacquainting myself with oxygen to care.

  “I will take my answer another time, Kylie Grayson. You will be in my debt.”

  Dread sank into my bones. At some point in my future, this vile bird-woman would ask me to reveal a secret, any secret—the name and locations of the gargoyles, the identity of a protected informant, some personal detail that she could use against me—and I would be compelled to give it. I had promised her too much, but I’d had nothing smaller with which to bargain. Zipporah knew she had gotten the better part of our deal, too, and her cackle echoed in the cavern.

  She sidestepped to peruse a shelf, and I struggled to my feet in time to see Grant storm into the cavern.

  “Don’t worry, Grant Monaghan. Your reporter is unharmed,” Zipporah said without glancing in his direction.

  Grant stopped, but he didn’t turn back to cleaning the nest until I waved him off. I wouldn’t have called myself unharmed, but it was too late for his assistance. I had already made a deal with the harpy.

  I brushed the stinging hollow of my throat, and my fingers came away bloody. The cut wasn’t much deeper than the scratches her wings had made on the back of my neck. None were life-threatening, but I worried about infection. Even so, I didn’t dare use my magic on a self-cleaning spell while in the harpy’s den; I couldn’t predict her reaction, and I certainly wasn’t going to ask for her permission.

  Zipporah shifted items on the shelves, using articulating claws that protruded from the bend of her wing. Hardly longer than my fingers, the skeletal digits forced her to wriggle and flap her wings as she rummaged through her treasures. I tugged my shirt over my nose and panted through my mouth.

  “Ah, here it is.” She stooped to collect the dragon’s breath, her bulky body preventing me from getting a look at it. When she straightened, she tucked her mutant fingers and the spriggan weapon out of sight, folding her wings against her body.

  I turned to leave, but she slashed the blade of her wing in front of me, thwarting my escape.

  “You’ll wait here, child.” She crowded into the tunnel in front of me and hunkered down, eyes tracking Grant outside in the nest.

  I sidled to the wall, as far away from her as I could get, and silently urged the captain to work faster. We couldn’t get off this mountain soon enough, and not just because the dryads were depending on us to deliver the dragon’s breath. I was beginning to forget what clean air tasted like.

  Grant worked methodically, only looking up every few minutes to check on me. His exertions pulled the fabric of his uniform tight across his broad shoulders and defined his thick arm muscles when he added brute strength to his elemental endeavors. Zipporah observed him, unblinking, a repulsive leer contorting her sharp features.

  “Mmm, I love it when men strut to impress me,” she murmured, as if Grant were putting on a show for her benefit.

  I shuddered and hugged my arms around my body.

  It took Grant more than an hour to clean the nest, and when he heaved the last of the filth over the side, the woven wooden bowl dipped twice as deep as before. Though he had completed the task far faster than I had predicted possible, impatience wrapped tight around my already tense nerves. The spriggan could have destroyed acres of forest while Grant labored, and it would destroy even more before we reached it. Grant must have felt the same urgency, even if he didn’t show it. If there truly had been another way to kill the spriggan, as he had bluffed earlier, he would have taken it.

  Grant marched back into the cavern before the last of his elemental weaves dissipated, not stopping until he had subtly placed himself between me and Zipporah. She strutted down the tunnel and we followed. Grant curled his fingers around my bicep, his grip gentle but firm, and guided me into the open air and sunlight. I blinked against the harsh light and gulped untainted oxygen. Soundlessly, he urged me along the outer rim of the nest to where we had first climbed up. The moment we had the dragon’s breath, nothing would stand between us and our departure.

  Zipporah took an obnoxious amount of time examining every crevice and cranny for anything Grant might have missed. Impatience jittered through my body. Knowing the harpy would further tarry if she sensed my eagerness to leave, I suppressed the urge to bounce, but my toes tapped a frenzied pattern inside my shoes.

  “I can find no fault,” Zipporah announced an interminable ten minutes later. She flared her wing, the creepy claw-hand unfurling from within the sharp feathers to reveal a small pouch no larger than Grant’s coin bag and equally lumpy.

  I squinted at the tiny object. I’d assumed the dragon’s breath name was symbolic, a trumped-up label for a specialized blowtorch or inextinguishable sword. The misshape
n pouch could have literally held nothing more than the exhalation of a dragon. I’d never heard of anything like it.

  With a deft flick of her sharp digits, Zipporah tossed the pouch to Grant. “Our trade is complete,” she announced.

  The moment Grant’s fingers closed around the pouch, the harpy dug her talons into the nest, spread her wings wide, and flapped, adding air magic to the wind of her wings. A concussive wall of air slammed into us, lifting us from our feet and catapulting us over the drop-off.

  We plummeted through empty space, flailing toward the sharp boulders far below.

  9

  Arms and legs windmilling uselessly, I stretched a solidified plane of air below us, hoping to slow our plunge. I might as well have spread a handkerchief beneath us and expected it to halt our free fall.

  Grant thrust a balance of the elements at me, and I instinctively grabbed hold, drawing on his electrifying power. The moment the link stabilized, Grant seized control. Pain seared my mental pathways as he ripped every particle of magic I could hold through the link—and then more.

  The sheet beneath us thickened, strengthened, and grew fire-laced turbines on the underside, pushing upward. We slowed, but not enough. The cleared, sunbaked soil rushed toward us. We wouldn’t hit the rocks; Zipporah had launched us far enough that we would splatter against the flat ground instead.

  Thick veins bulged in Grant’s beet-red neck as he strained to extend the sheet of air, curling it down around the edges like a huge umbrella, and I screamed as the elements tore through me.

  I don’t want to die!

  I yearned to squeeze my eyes shut, but terror pried them wide. We’d drifted over the forest, and the blanket of green canopy crystallized into clumps of individual trees, then into a sieve of thick branches, the details of my final resting place clarifying with terrifying speed. Grant altered the magic sheet, thickening it on my side as he loosened his white-knuckle grip on my bicep.

  He was going to try to save me at the expense of his own life.

  Blindly, I clutched his wrist, my agonized scream morphing into a denial. I opened myself wider to the elements, my vision tunneling as I shoved magic into the link.

  Beyond Grant’s shoulder, Quinn rocketed around the harpy’s mountain, wings blurred as he strained to reach us. The first branches whipped past. He wouldn’t make it in time—

  Quinn’s enhancement burst through me like a thunderclap. Elements exploded from Grant—air and earth encasing us, fire and air fortifying the sheet beneath us, air and water layering into thick cushions on the ground—his weaves so fast they seemed to spring into existence fully formed.

  A millisecond later, we smashed into the elemental cushion, fell through it, and crashed into concrete-hard dirt. Stunned, I lay facedown, unsure if I could move, unsure if I was even breathing. Grant had slowed our descent to half our original velocity, but hitting the cushion of air and water had still felt like landing atop a pillow from a two-story drop.

  I sucked in a breath, choking on dust. The movement broke through my shock, awakening a cascade of pain down my body. Coughing, I tested my fingers and toes, surprised they all worked. My knee throbbed, protesting the shift of my tendons. My ribs chimed in with pulses of dull twinges.

  I reached for my link with Grant, bolting upright when I didn’t find it. He lay on his back, eyes wide open, several feet from me.

  Oh no.

  What had he been thinking with that fatalistic heroism? I tried to recall the shape of the landing cushion, but it had happened too fast. Had he made it large enough for the both of us?

  I scrambled across the twig-strewn ground and peered down at Grant uncomprehendingly. He stared up at the canopy, his teeth bared, his body convulsing . . . with laughter?

  “Grant?” I croaked.

  His dark eyes swiveled to me. Dirt shadowed the crow’s-feet bracketing his eyes, accentuating the amber flecks within his brown irises. I’d never noticed quite how long his lashes were before.

  The first hiccup of noise escaped past his lips, then another.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  “That wasn’t half as peaceful as birds make it look.”

  I gaped at him. He chuckled harder.

  “Did you hit your head?” I asked.

  He patted my hand, too overcome with laughter at his own atrocious joke to speak.

  My arms gave out, and I fell back to the dirt, relief and a body’s worth of aches mingling with disproportionate irritation. Why had I bothered to be worried? The captain was so dense he probably could have survived the drop without any magical assistance.

  Closing my eyes, I ran an internal check on my body, gently manipulating my joints and confirming that though nothing was broken, my body would be an unsightly maze of bruises tomorrow.

  Quinn coasted to the ground, landing heavily and running the last few feet to crouch between us, sticking his worried face in mine.

  “Thank you, Quinn. You saved our lives.” I patted his cheek weakly.

  Grant snaked a forearm around the gargoyle’s neck and pulled him close to plant a kiss on his forehead. Quinn tumbled against the large man, beaming. I rested a hand on his wing, reassuring myself we were all alive and safe.

  “I can’t believe Zipporah would—” I stopped myself. Tossing us out of her nest fit her reputation. I had known what I was getting myself into when I’d insisted on accompanying Grant—or I had thought I’d known.

  My gut squirmed. I’d barely survived my first encounter with Zipporah, and my debt to her ensured this wouldn’t be the last time she and I would cross paths.

  I pushed upright but remained seated, not yet trusting my legs. Fidgeting with the hem of my shirt, I glanced at Grant, then away, stumbling over my words. “You were right. I should have listened to you and stayed with Quinn. I shouldn’t have followed you.”

  He burst out laughing, and this time his full-bodied mirth burned my ears.

  “If that was your version of an apology, it needs work,” Grant said when he caught his breath.

  I glared at him. I had been going to thank him for saving my life, but the man was smug enough already.

  Grant sat up, shifting the half-grown gargoyle with ease. “So next time you’ll trust me when I tell you something is dangerous?”

  “I never doubted you.” Did he honestly think I’d give him a definitive answer to such a loaded question?

  Grant shook his head. He stood, then helped me to my feet. Straightening jarred my bruised ribs and sent sharp pangs through both knees. I tightened my expression, refusing to show my pain. Insufferable or not, Grant had done everything possible to save us; it would be petty to complain about aches when I was alive.

  “What did Zipporah extract from you?” he asked.

  My gaze bounced to Grant’s and away too fast. “Extract? What do you mean?”

  “The harpy had you pinned to the floor. She didn’t let you live out of the goodness of her shriveled heart.”

  I didn’t want to admit to Grant how badly I had messed up. I had already admitted he had been right to try to forbid me from going with him to see Beldame Zipporah; I didn’t need to give him additional leverage to use against me the next time he succumbed to the urge to order me around. Besides, the deal had been made. Confessing my mistake wouldn’t change the outcome.

  Grant waited, pinning me with his serious captain’s eyes, his gaze saying he could see right through me and any possible lie I might try. I wasn’t fooled. He might have been the most powerful warrior I had ever met, both in magic and muscle, but even he couldn’t read minds.

  “A story,” I said, holding his gaze. “I offered to write about Zipporah in the Chronicle.”

  “She accepted that?”

  “My head’s still attached, isn’t it?” My pulse pounded in my throat, and I bent to brush off my pants, using the excuse to gracefully break eye contact.

  The caked-on crud from Zipporah’s cavern had fused with the forest soil, and my hands didn’t make
a dent. I reached for the elements, prepared to douse myself with a powerful cleaning spell, but the moment I touched air, pain lanced through my skull. Groaning, I released the magic and clutched my head.

  “You’re going to want to go easy,” Grant said, and only his sympathetic tone curtailed my sarcastic comeback. I hadn’t known it was possible for my brain to feel tender.

  When the agony subsided to a dull pound, I said, “We can’t wait; we got the spriggan to— The dragon’s breath! Did you see where it landed?” I spun in a fast circle, searching the ground for the tiny pouch.

  Grant held up his hand, revealing the pouch safe in his palm. I sagged, bracing my hands on my knees, relief robbing me of my voice.

  “What happened up there?” Quinn asked.

  “We made a deal with Zipporah.” Grant tied the dragon’s breath to his belt, cinching it tight.

  “Why did she try to kill you?”

  “Because I’m an idiot and I didn’t negotiate safe passage off her mountain,” Grant said.

  Quinn continued to pester Grant with questions. I had known the gargoyle enjoyed accompanying me on my various investigative outings, but I hadn’t realized how much he had picked up. As adroitly as any Chronicle reporter, he teased the who, what, why, and how details out of Grant. I listened with pride as I tentatively stretched my magic and body. Maybe Terra Haven would have its first gargoyle journalist soon. The thought made me smile through the pain as I layered water and air together, gradually increasing the power of the weave until it strengthened enough to remove the worst of the excrement from my hair and clothes. When I finished, I cycled through the elements, testing my limits. The tenderness subsided with gratifying speed.

  Grant cleaned himself off with an efficient spell, then had me hold still while he swept the lacerations on my neck with a disinfecting blend of fire, wood, and water. I gritted my teeth against the burn, blinking rapidly so I wouldn’t cry.

  “Thank you.”

  “Can you link?” Grant asked.

  “Are you going to pull your weight this time?”

  He widened his eyes, quirking his lips to expose his dimples in a practiced look of innocence. “I promise,” he said with mock gravity.