Page 28 of Bound to the Griffin
The flight carried us higher then, over the frozen creek and up the slope where the warlock lived. His house loomed out of the snow like something caught between a dream and a threat—glass and timber rising in jagged lines against the pale sky. Even covered by snow and surrounded by torn tree limbs and debris, it looked like something out of a magazine: too fancy, too artistic, too city-perfect.
I tightened my arms around Jackson’s feathers. The memory of Thorne’s sharp tongue and colder eyes was enough to put a chill in me that had nothing to do with the weather. Still, I knew why we were here. Jackson carried the whole town on his back, and no matter how unpleasant Thorne was, he was part of it. And me? I was along for the ride. If I was going to be part of Jackson’s life and part of the town, I’d better get used to it.
He was already outside when we landed, waiting on his porch as if he’d known the exact moment we’d arrive. Thorne looked different than the last time I’d seen him, bundled in expensive winter gear: jeans, heavy boots, a parka with the hood shadowing his pale face, but his voice was the same sharp rasp. “Took you long enough. I’ve been waiting.”
Jackson shifted in a shimmer of golden light, his griffin body dropping away from beneath me. He hadn’t done that before; he’d always let me dismount after the landing. I yelped when my body was suddenly free-falling, even if it was only a couple of feet. But before I could splash face-first into the thigh-high snow, he caught me around my waist and hauled me upright.
Before I could catch my breath, he was pulling me close. Not the steady, professional touch of the sheriff doing his rounds, the focus on his job, not on coddling me. No—this was different. His arms locked around me, possessive, protective, as though he could shield me from the way the warlock’s eyes followed me. Jackson didn’t step forward, either. He just stood, rooted in the snow, and let Thorne come to him.
“Everything okay here?” he asked, his tone steady but edged. The question was the same as the one he’d asked the doctor and the young wolf we’d checked in on, but the tone was verydifferent. “You’ve got power, running water? Do you need help clearing this drive?”
Thorne brushed it off with a flick of his gloved hand. “That’s not important.” His eyes snapped to me, dark and piercing. “Did she sleep there? Did she sleep at the house since we last spoke? Did you sleep there during the storm, when the veil was thinner?” He asked that last question of me, pinning me with that gaze, his voice urgent and sharp.
The words landed like ice in my gut. Veil? Thinner? I didn’t understand, but something about the way he said it made the hair on my arms rise. Unease coiled into panic, twisting tight. He wasn’t just asking because of the storm; he knew something, and whatever it was, it wasn’t good. My mouth went dry. I opened it to answer, but nothing came out.
“What the hell are you talking about?” Jackson’s voice cut through, sharp and demanding. His arm tightened around me as if he could protect me from whatever sinister thing the warlock knew. “Explain,” he demanded, not asked. A curt order that sounded whiplash-cruel, but probably came from the same fear I was feeling.
Thorne tilted his head, studying me like a specimen under glass. “I think I know what her dreams meant. And if I’m right, it’s dangerous—especially to humans.” My eyes snapped to Jackson’s at the same moment his met mine. The same thought slammed into both of us: Evan. He was the one who’d stayed in the B&B. He’d been alone, and he was very much human.
“She wasn’t there,” Jackson said quickly, his voice tight with the same relief part of me felt. Thank God it wasn’t me, but eventhough Evan was an asshole, I doubted he deserved whatever those shadowy nightmares entailed. Nobody deserved to have dreams with claws and teeth like those. “The B&B did have a human guest,” Jackson added.
Thorne’s face went grim, his jaw tightening. “And the burglar? Did you find him?” I really hoped the dreams and the break-in weren’t connected, but what if they were? We should have never let Evan stay, but where else could he have slept? Jackson’s couch? The very idea made me want to laugh and hurl at the same time. That would have been terrible, but would it have been safer?
“He vanished during the storm,” Jackson said, briefly outlining the situation of the burglar under guard. How they’d hoped he’d lead them to his boss. Nobody had expected a human to go out in the storm like that, and all of us wondered if he had even made it, or if that criminal was lying frozen under a snowdrift somewhere right now. Not to be found until the thaw set in.
The warlock didn’t even blink. His lips curled into a curse, muttered so low, the snow itself seemed to recoil from it. Then he shouldered a heavy satchel I hadn’t noticed until now. Vials clinked inside, faint light shimmering at the seams. “We need to hurry,” he said flatly.
Jackson didn’t waste time. He helped Thorne dig a snowmobile out from the garage, muscles straining as they pulled it free of its icy tomb. Thorne swung onto the machine with surprising ease, revved it, and shot down the hill toward town, snow spitting in his wake. He didn’t even say goodbye, didn’t say where he was headed either, but I had a feeling I knew anyway.
Jackson shifted again in a sweep of feathers and fury. I climbed onto his back, fingers curling into warm plumage, my heart racing faster than the storm ever had. Together, we launched into the early morning sky, chasing after the warlock, chasing after answers I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear. Filled with worry for an ex I never thought I’d worry about again.
It was fully turning from night into morning when we swept low over the forest and landed in the B&B’s backyard. The gentle cover of snow here had been replaced by a huge snowdrift—higher than my waist—that soaked my jeans as I slipped from Jackson’s back. He’d sunk in as well, paws going deep, tawny fur growing dark with wetness from the snow melting against his pelt. It was a huge pile of snow contained by the rickety fence, swept into odd curls and peaks like it was cream whipped stiff.
The B&B was dark and silent, which wasn’t a surprise—Evan liked to sleep in—but it still felt wrong, off. The roar of the snowmobile came, sputtering to a halt just outside the fence. Thorne didn’t wait for an invitation to leap over it, satchels clinking, body sinking deep into the snow. He cursed again and kept that up as he crossed the yard to our side.
“Not good, this is not good,” he said, shaking his head, dark eyes flashing. It might have been my imagination, but it felt like shadows were writhing and crawling behind his back. The snow had gone oddly smooth in their wake, leaving no trace of the trail the warlock should have made through the deep snow. That was not natural, and I couldn’t tell if it was part of the nightmares that had plagued me, or something to do with the warlock himself.
I felt the shadows cling to my mind, whispering. Thorne was right, it seemed closer, more at the surface. The urge to turn around and walk into the forest was overwhelming, and I was quite sure it had nothing to do with wanting to run away. No, this pull was like a hook behind my belly button, drawing me somewhere, tofindsomething. Someone, perhaps, the voice that called to me, the nightmarish creature not shaped quite right from my dreams.
“In what direction did you say the cabin was, where the burglar hunkered down?” I asked with a dry mouth. It caused Thorne to swear again—like a sailor—all foul words that twisted in his crisp, fancy accent. He knew exactly where my thoughts had headed. Mutely, Jackson turned to look over his shoulder and pointed. None of us said anything. It was right beyond the B&B. Had that place been affected by this… shadow too?
My hand trembled when I pulled out my key to unlock the back door. Jackson was right at my side, his hand at the small of my back. Though I could see that it wasn’t there, in this morning light it even felt a little like he’d cupped a wing around my shoulders, sheltering me. My fingers were clumsy inside the borrowed mittens from Kess, so I pulled one off so I could get my key into the lock. It didn’t turn. Confused, I turned to look up at Jackson, and his expression turned grim as he reached over my head to touch the panel with a light shove. It swung open.
A crash sounded from deeper inside the B&B, like glass breaking, followed by a rough voice moaning. Evan was the only one who should have been inside, but that sounded nothing like him.
“Step aside,” Jackson said, and for the first time since I’d met him, he drew the gun holstered on his hip. He was the consummate professional then, weapon at the ready, hand going to the radio on his shoulder to reach out to Drew. “Wait outside, Gwen. Better yet, go to Mikael’s diner down the street and wait there.” Then he went inside, but he said nothing to Thorne, who brushed past me to follow him in, bag with vials and strange-smelling things clinking against his hip.
It could be my imagination, but it felt like the dark inside the kitchen swallowed both men. I could not see them or hear them as they went around my kitchen table and headed down the hallway, deeper into the house. This was the other shoe dropping—the side of all this mystery and magic that was dark and dangerous. Seeing men shapeshift into fantastical beasts and primal wolves had been awesome, exciting, even fun. This? This was not fun at all. Fear crawled up my legs, tingled along my spine, and I felt paralyzed. Do I follow them in and disobey Jackson, wait here, or run down the street to the diner?
Chapter 24
Jackson
I crossed the threshold with my gun drawn, stance tight and steady. The kitchen came first, and I cleared it the way I’d been taught years ago: corners, shadows, doorways. They were all empty, quiet, eerily so. The house always creaked and groaned, but those noises seemed absent.
Thorne moved behind me, silent and steady, like he’d been trained to sweep a house, just as I had been. He was unarmed, but he didn’t need a weapon anyway. Fire lived in his hands, and while I respected that, I’d rather not have Gwen’s B&B reduced to a cinder pile if things got heated.
The house should’ve been full of morning light by now, but something about it felt wrong—dimmer, thicker. The silence was sharp in my ears, broken only by a faint scraping sound from somewhere deeper inside. It wasn’t a sound that came with the house, something else. Everything felt so muffled and thick that it was hard to pinpoint where the noise came from. Above? Below? Both were valid options.
