Baehrly Alive (17 page)

“We have no choice but to trust you,” the skinny nyad with the glasses said uneasily. “But before we do something for you, you need to do something for us.”

I raised an eyebrow. “What do I need to do?”

“We’re taking a huge risk by sharing this information with you,” Hypatia said. “The Resistance has a kind of… well; you could call in an underground railroad.”

I nodded, familiar with the term.

“We have a small group of… refugees that we need to move into hiding. They are being monitored closely—they have… Fae blood.”

I nodded my understanding. With the treatment I had received at the hands of the Council, I suspected that anyone with any Fae blood was being watched closely for any signs of treason—or a strange desire to save the world from a pandemic.

“What do you need me to do?” I asked simply, knowing that whatever it was, I was already committed.

“We need you to help them get to the first ‘stop’ on the railroad,” Hypatia said. “We have to pick a time when they are not being monitored too closely. We have a small window of opportunity—but we basically need them to disappear. Once they are transported to the first destination our other agents will be able to handle things from there.”

I bit my lip. “I will do what I can—but my Magic is pretty unreliable these days.”

Hypatia made a dismissive gesture. “We’ll take care of that. We need someone they’d trust—someone they will be willing to follow into the underground.”

I frowned. “Do I know them or something? I don’t know why someone would trust me that much.”

Hypatia glanced at the others, and then back to me.

This was it—they were either going to decide to trust me, or I was going to be on my own.

“They’re griffins,” she said. “We thought, if anyone could help, it would be you.”

As the story came out more and more, I came to a few realizations.

The biggest one being one of two things: either the Resistance had an inflated idea of what I could accomplish, or I was being set up to fail.

The griffins weren’t just griffins—one of the most terrifying and aggressive Magical creatures in existence—but these happened to be wild griffins.

And they were currently impounded by the Council of Magic at a location where, the Resistance insisted, the Council was experimenting on them.

Angry, sick, wild, aggressive creatures.

Just my cup of tea.

I didn’t have to do it alone, though.

No, I had Nat to help me.

Hey, I would take whatever help I could get.

Nat was that person who seemed hardly even memorable until someone mentioned him, and then there he would be, quietly standing there as if he’d been there the whole time. It was rather disconcerting to turn around and find his gray eyes watching me patiently—his face never giving me any indication of what he was thinking. It was a rather square face, I thought irrelevantly as we tried to plan how we were going to bust a family of wild griffins out without any more risk than we had to. I hadn’t really noticed before, but Nat’s face was made up of strong lines. He looked a bit like Hollywood’s take on a Spartan.

Only, instead of armor he wore jeans and a hoodie.

Enigmatic, I decided, was the perfect word for him. I’d been working with him for hours at a time for almost a week, and I knew absolutely nothing about him.

It was kind of creepy, actually. He could just stand there—perfectly still.

No one stood still like that.

But Nat did.

It actually was starting to bug me—didn’t he need to breathe? Shift his weight?

Blink?

He turned his head slowly toward me, as if he knew I was looking at him. He met my gaze—and held it with no expression on his face at all.

I had to work with this guy?

I was so going to end up as griffin chow.

We didn’t have time to waste, as it turned out—the griffins were going to be moved to a more secure location tomorrow.

We had to act—tonight.

I wondered what they would have done if I hadn’t charged in, demanding to join their club—just let the griffins die?

Was I plan A or plan B? Was there even a backup plan?

I was heading into danger with far too little information. They wouldn’t even tell me where we were supposed to herd the griffins to—they told Nat.

My life was in his hands.

I was pondering on the world clichés as we traveled—by portal and then by minivan no less—to the closest point that the Resistance felt was safe for us. Here I was, dressed entirely in black, in the middle of the night, planning to pull off the heist of the… well, week, at least—definitely the heist of the hour. Did clichés exist because they were true, or did we just blindly slip into their ruts? What if we had just planned to walk in there in the middle of the afternoon and set the griffins free? Wouldn’t that have accomplished the same thing?

Questioning their tactics wasn’t going to endear me to my new comrades. I kept my mouth shut and my head down.

Dang it, wasn’t that another cliché, too?

“I will warn you,” I muttered to Nat as we climbed out of the mini-van and it sped away without even checking to see that we had our kits, “adrenaline brings out the worst in me. I have been known to make the most inappropriate comments in the exact worst moment. I do not know how to keep my mouth shut and I find great enjoyment in reducing the horrible to ridiculous.” I tilted my head at him and jabbed a finger toward his chest. “You’re lucky. I don’t usually come with a disclaimer. Consider yourself forewarned.”

Nat didn’t answer, though he did look in my direction, only the faintest line forming between his eyebrows to show any puzzlement he might be feeling.

And I had thought Donovan hard to read.

Oh, Donovan. It would have all been different if he were still here. This pathway in front of my feet had only come to be because of his loss. We would have found another way, somehow—we would have taken my brother and Gwyn into Faerie ourselves.

But I couldn’t ask Kodi to do any of that. His life was the law. His full existence was based on supporting the creeds of the Council of Magic. It was who he was.

And I couldn’t ask him not to be that, any more than he could ask me to go back and be who I was three years ago—that naïve girl with a thousand crusades and dreams to go by.

I didn’t have any dreams or illusions left and I had let all of my crusades fall by the wayside. I only had one goal now—one last purpose to fight for—one last thing to believe in.

And that was saving Thomas and Gwyn.

Chapter Thirteen

If I hadn’t been so scared, it would have been a glorious night for a midnight walk. The moon was nothing more than the tiniest sliver of light, hanging over the trees. My bear—the expert on the moon—said it was waxing again, no longer waning.

I hoped that was a good sign.

The stars out here in the country, away from all the lights, were bright as gems.

No wonder the ancients had thought they were so close—seeing them like this every night. I could almost believe that they were watching us.

Maybe the old stories were true. Maybe up there, with the stars, Donovan was watching me. I fought the urge to wave. If he was there, no doubt he and my dad were trading Goldie stories.

I hoped they were not too embarrassing.

A sharp stab of pain filled my chest—that I couldn’t be there with them.

Well, soon enough.

“What now?” I asked Nat, following him through a rocky path. I thought we might be somewhere in New Mexico, but they hadn’t exactly entrusted me with that information. At some point, they were going to realize that trust was a two-way street—they couldn’t ask me to risk my life and not at least tell me where I was going.

My frustration made me a little harsher with Nat than I intended to be. I winced as I heard with my own ears the bitter edge to my voice.

When had I become such a harpy?

Nat glanced sideways at me and pointed further up the dirt road we had been dropped off on.

I ground my teeth in frustration. Nat’s reticence wasn’t making any of this easier on me. Why couldn’t he just tell me where we were supposed to go and how we were supposed to spring a pride of griffins instead of making me go crazy, trying to guess what was going to happen next?

A chilly wind hissed over the rather stark beauty around us. The desert air was surprisingly cold for this time of year. I tucked my hands into my jeans, grateful for my dark jacket. Not only was I nearly invisible in the darkness, but I was warm.

Nat showed no sign that he felt the cold at all.

I almost bumped into him when he stopped abruptly and dropped to his knees on the side of the road. He pointed toward a building in the distance—there were lights on all around it—and the large barn-like building that loomed behind it.

I assumed that was where our griffins were being held.

“What’s the plan?” I whispered. “Do we have to fight off the guards or something?” I didn’t have my sword with me, but I did have enough fighting knowledge to defend myself.

Nat shook his head.

I waited for him to fill me in, but, as always, he had nothing to say.

“What’s the big deal with not talking?” I hissed. “I can’t just rush in there not knowing anything about the plan—I’ll just mess everything up. I need you to open up and start communicating with me. What is the deal?”

Nat looked away from me. I sighed in frustration.

“I s-s-s-stutter,” he said, hunching his shoulders a little, as if his confession hurt him.

“Oh,” I said. “Well, I feel like a total jerk now. I’m sorry.”

He shrugged. “Doesn’t matter.” He pointed toward the big barn. “The g…g…g...” He licked his lips and took a deep breath. “The griffins are in there. No guards.”

I nodded. No guards would make the whole process a little easier. This was a rural location, and the griffins being held was hardly public knowledge. I figured that no one would be expecting us.

If we could take advantage of that and not create a fuss, we would have even more time to get our griffins to their safe house—wherever that was.

“This is nuts,” I muttered, as we skirted around the fence to come at the barn from a better angle.

I felt Nat’s eyes flick toward me and wondered if he secretly agreed.

I just hoped I wasn’t being set up.

In the end, it was as easy as walking right into the barn.

“What about cameras?” I hissed, as we slid the door closed behind us.

Nat pointed to himself, so I assumed he had somehow taken care of them.

I was putting an awful lot of faith in someone I had met not that long ago.

I thought I had been prepared for griffins. I had been prepared for a pride—a couple adults, maybe, a couple cubs—something I could potentially manage with an insane amount of luck.

I’d forgotten how much luck hated me.

The griffins, hissing and snapping their wings at us from inside the cage, were all adults.

And there were twelve of them.

“Well, we’re toast,” I muttered. I stepped closer to the cage, to get a better look at what we were dealing with. A flash of claws would have taken half my face off if Nat hadn’t yanked me backward just in time.

“Thanks,” I gasped. “I owe you my life.”

Nat froze and stared at me as if I had said something truly shocking.

I fought the urge to roll my eyes. Who hadn’t heard of that figure of speech? Where had he been living these past, I don’t know, three millennia?

I peered at Nat thoughtfully. Maybe he was actually a reanimated Neanderthal, I pondered. That would explain so much, though I had thought they were supposed to be a lot hairier—and Nat didn’t seem to have any more brow than the average guy.

Nope, he was just… unique.

“How are we going to transport a pride of griffins that we can’t even get near?” I hissed. “No wonder they’re not being guarded. No sane person would even attempt to break them out.”

I gnawed on my thumbnail, studying the creatures in front of us. Ordinaries, for the most part, had mistakenly believed the feline portion of the griffin to be from a lion. In truth, the coats of these griffins had as much variety as domestic cats did—though far bigger. There was no denying that these were stunning creatures—with their sleek coats, striped or dappled with spots—one even appeared to be calico-colored—and their bright eyes blinking at us intelligently from their raptor-esque heads.

Tails lashed back and forth as the griffins studied me in turn. Some paced restlessly, unfurling their wings only to have them strike the bars of the cage.

It was way too small for all of them.

That made my hands curl into fists.

It was bad enough that these were wild animals had been captured. It was bad enough that they were in the hands of people who felt no compunction in experimenting on them, or using them to suit their own ends.