Page 30 of Bound to the Griffin
The pull was back. It tugged at me from the tree line, subtle at first, then sharper, gnawing at the edge of my thoughts until it was almost unbearable. As if something were beckoning me into the woods, promising I’d never come back out. It was exactly like in my dreams, exactly like that time I’d sleepwalked in my socks out here.
Jackson had been right, this was no time to be heroic. I turned on my heel, forcing my legs toward the diner like he’d told me, even as every instinct screamed that I was already too exposed. Part of me felt like I was betraying the guy I loved by leaving him behind in that house, where darkness tried to get its hooks into you through your dreams.
My boots crunched in the brittle crust of snow, my legs heavy as I waded through the deepest parts. The storm had stripped the world down to white and silence. Then I froze. A figure stood at the corner, just as I rounded the side of the house. Familiar, unwelcome. He was a little stooped with age, bundled up tight against the weather, and his hooked nose was red from the cold. He was unmistakable, even though we’d only met once—to sign the deed to the B&B. “You?” I blurted, my stomach dropping. “You sold me a dud, what the hell are you doing back here?”
Not that I’d ever call the B&B a dud now that I’d lived in it, shaped its interior, and seen the potential that was truly there. Not now that I’d earned the welcome of the town and discovered a home in it I never thought possible. A home I knew I hadn’teven been looking for, because I didn’t know it existed. Gnarls and shadows, creepy dreams and all, I still wanted to stay, because of the people and Jackson.
It was Halver in all his old, suspicious, small-minded glory. He was the last person I ever expected to see here, but I suppose it shouldn’t come entirely as a surprise. After all, he had to be the guy who hid the money in the wall, and why would he leave that behind? Not unless he felt like he had to. And he wouldn’t come back for it unless he felt the same way.
His eyes flicked nervously, the way prey animals do before a predator strikes. It made my skin itch, expecting trouble, and then the predator arrived. It was a tall man dressed in black weather gear, a knit cap on his head that partially concealed his features. Older, perhaps in his late fifties, but still in shape, still fit as far as I could tell from beneath his parka, though he was not particularly tall. He stepped around Halver, a gun in his hand, and his lips curling into a laugh with no warmth in it. “The money,” he said. “We know you found it. Hand it over.”
My pulse hammered in my throat, and fear curdled in my stomach. This was a very real and very tangible threat, not something as bizarre and unfathomable as the whispers in the shadows. Halver wouldn’t even meet my eyes, his parchment-like skin white as snow and deep bruises of exhaustion sitting under his eyes. This was a man terrified, possibly one who had lived in fear all his life. He wet his lips, then gave me a beseeching look. “Do as he says. Don’t mess with the Chicago mob.”
“Mob?” The word tumbled out of me before I could swallow it down.Chicago mob, he said, and it made me uneasy when Iconsidered that it was my home turf, the place I’d grown up in. Was that a coincidence or not? It didn’t go over well with the guy in black, who, I had to assume, was the burglar Jackson had been after. He had a gun, and I was pretty sure there was a crowbar in his other hand. The guy was a regular cliché, but that didn’t make him any less dangerous.
Halver nodded, and even in this cold, there was sweat slicking his brow. “Yeah. Mob,” he said, and his eyes turned flinty, hard. “You don’t cross the mob. I should know.” He twisted his head once to gaze at the so-far-silent black shadow standing between me and the safety of Main Street. Had no one seen them? In a small town where everyone was always watching, surely someone had to have seen the stranger with the gun?
There was no help coming, though, not yet. They forced me back toward the backyard and further out of sight. The snow bit cold at my ankles, the sharp morning air filling my lungs like knives. I hoped that Jackson had finished his sweep of the B&B with Thorne, that they’d come out the back and see this. But the kitchen door remained shut, the house silent, like it was holding its breath.
Then something changed in the atmosphere, not a creeping, slow unfurling of danger. This snapped through the air like a whip, nothing like the darkness that had invaded my dreams here, and yet very much the same. It cackled past my head, unseen but felt, and I flinched as pain fiercely blazed through my temple. Both men staggered mid-step, their faces slackened, eyes going flat and blank, like dolls left in the attic too long. The pull from the woods slammed into me, harder now, irresistible. It dragged at my bones, made my teeth ache.
“No…” I whispered, but my body leaned toward the trees, even as I fought it. I was not like them, already in its thrall, already possessed by the urge to obey. That didn’t matter. They grabbed me—Halver rough at my arm, the burglar shoving me between my shoulder blades—but their movements were wrong: puppet-like, jerky.
“Jackson!” I screamed, craning my head over my shoulder and digging my heels into the snow. It flew up in a cloud of powdered spray from the struggle, but their grip remained iron-strong, impossible to break. Halver might be an old man—seventy, if not older—and the burglar was no spring daisy next to me, but their grips were implacable, our forward pace inevitable. “Jackson!” I screamed again, clawing, bucking, fighting anyway, if only to delay them.
“Shut up,” Halver muttered, though there was no fire in it, no will of his own anymore. A flat voice to go with his flat-eyed look. There was no point, anyway, Jackson hadn’t heard me, and the silence in the backyard beyond my labored breathing was eerie and terrifying. Not natural, and Iknew, even though I had no evidence, that something was making my screams go unheard.
The woods should have been glowing with the pale wash of morning light, the bright sunrise after the storm. The moment we stepped beneath the pines, it was night again. A heavy, smothering dark. I blinked, confused and scared, and my eyes began to adjust, picking out trunks against black, a faint glitter of stars overhead, and the paler scrape and swish of branches like fingers clawing down at us from the sky. It wasjustlike the dreams.
Then it rose.
At first, I thought it was a tree, until it moved. Bark, moss, and twisted limbs knit into the rough shape of a man, but taller, stretched unnaturally, arms too long, fingers dragging furrows through the snow. Its body rattled and shook like dry branches in the wind, withered and leafless, a parody of life. The air around it curdled, foul and wrong, steeped in a hunger that prickled against my skin.
It didn’t speak aloud; it didn’t appear to have a mouth it could use for that. It didn’t need to; its voice slid into my skull, jagged and cold.You’ll do.My body lurched toward it, my feet scraping through snow. It wasn’t just Halver and the stranger dragging me now; my own body was betraying me, making me lurch toward that horror with painful, staggering steps.
“You will feed me. Restore me. Sustain me. And through you… I will eat the griffin too.” The voice said all of that with such evil satisfaction that it made me want to vomit, made me want to run and hide so badly, and yet, I was trapped.
“No!” I shoved back, thrashing against Halver’s iron grip, against the burglar’s shoving hands. My limbs were going numb, sluggish, as if the cold had burrowed under my skin, the way the wet snow was melting against my jeans. My heart thudded slow, heavy. I forced the words through my teeth. “You can’t have him. You can’t have me.”
The creature’s head jerked, a faceless roar tearing through my mind. The sound made my knees buckle, but it broke something, too. It gave me a crack of air, a moment of willpower. That brief respite let me draw in a deep breath, expanding my lungs, reminding me of life and brightness and good things as the oxygen tingled through my veins.
“I said no!” I shouted. My own voice echoed in the shadowed woods, frail against that darkness, but it was mine. With more strength, I demanded, “Leave me alone!” It might have been my imagination, but it felt like my body was my own again.
The thing recoiled, rage shaking its frame like a tree in a storm, and then the storm came. The sky tore open with a shriek of wings. Jackson descended in a blaze of golden feathers, griffin-eyes burning, talons outstretched. The ground shook as something massive and gleaming burst through the trees—a dragon, its scales catching what little light there was and scattering it like molten gold, shredding the dark with every stride.
Halver went down in a heap. The burglar crumpled, Luther, a blur of motion faster than thought, slammed him aside before scooping me up into his arms. Snow flew around us as wolves howled, a chorus that rippled through the woods; the clash of beasts echoed somewhere beyond sight.
I clutched at Luther’s shoulder, trembling, my breath coming in ragged gasps. The thing had wanted to devour me, but it wasn’t getting me. Not while my people were here, not on Jackson’s watch. I knew he’d come; I knew he wouldn’t abandon me.
The world changed in a blink. One moment, the woods pressed close and black as ink, the creature’s hunger gnawing at the edges of my soul. Dark consuming everything around us like a greedy maw stretched wide. The next, there was snow glare, a wide street, and cold air I could breathe again.
Luther set me down in the middle of Main Street, and I swayed on shaky legs. Behind me, the forest still loomed, but then—like smoke whisked away by a sudden wind—the darkness snapped, retreating all at once. The shadows bled backward, unraveling, until nothing remained but morning light and the faint glitter of frost on branches.
It was only a sliver of woods I could see over the top of the B&B’s side gate, leading to the backyard. The empty house on the other side leaned crookedly toward the B&B. Still, it was enough to see the glimmer of golden scales, an impossible number of them, covering an impossibly large beast. A dragon, my mind supplied, gasping it silently into the cold morning air, the clean air. And feathers, pale and brown and golden, tawny fur. All so pretty and warm and light after the inky black.
I couldn’t look at it long because he was there. My griffin came careening out of the sky, wings beating a hurricane into the quiet town. He was fury, he was gold, he was mine. Then the light caught him, wrapped him, and he wasn’t a griffin anymore, he was Jackson. Shifting mid-stride, he was radiant in a way that had nothing to do with magic and everything to do with him.
Before I could even think, his arms were around me, crushing me to his chest. His breath was hot against my hair, his voice rough and ragged in my mind and in my ear. “You are safe. It’s over. I love you, my mate.”
