Baehrly Alive (18 page)

But they hadn’t even been provided the basic accommodations that these griffins needed. Didn’t they know that most of griffin communication involved the wings?

“You know what?” I announced. “I don’t care if you eat me. I’m getting you out of there. No creature should be locked up like that.”

What did I really have to lose, anyway?

“Wait,” Nat croaked, before I could get into range of those claws again.

I raised an eyebrow impatiently. “What are you going to do? Do you have some sort of secret power that I don’t know about that will tame griffins? Because, if you do, that would have been useful information to know.”

Nat ignored me completely. He calmly reached down and pulled his hoodie up until his face was hidden.

He sort of flickered. I could have sworn his shadow grew longer; his hoodie became… a cloak?

I knew that shape. It was familiar.

I had seen it in my sleep every night since Donovan had died.

“Y-You!” It was my turn to stammer. “Who the hell are you?”

The hood turned in my direction—I couldn’t make out Nat’s face under there no matter how hard I tried.

“Thanatos,” he said, simply.

I stepped back, shocked.

Thanatos.

Death.

Nat was Death.

And not just any reaper—not just a gatherer of souls.

No, he was Death. Capital D. The head honcho, the god himself.

“Oh, boy,” I growled. “I have a bone to pick with you.”

Nat had the audacity to make a ‘later’ gesture. He headed toward the gate of the enclosure and just
looked
at the griffins—one long, slow look.

I hadn’t known griffins could look pale.

No one messed with Death.

The big monsters actually fawned on him as he opened the enclosure—rubbing their heads against him, making strange purring sounds as they mobbed around him, each one begging for his attention.

I watched as Nat—no, Thanatos, stroked the offered heads and backs. He put an arm over the back of the biggest of the pride males and leaned his head close.

Next thing I knew, he was sitting astride the beast.

“The d-door,” Thanatos stuttered. At least he hadn’t been making that part of his identity up.

I obediently pushed the heavy barn doors open. The griffins pushed past me. I half expected them to bolt off into the wild, but they kept their beaks shut and their wings furled.

Apparently, Thanatos could talk to animals, too.

How nice for him.

A griffin nudged me from behind, nearly knocking me over. I whirled around to face it—it was another one of the larger griffins—a male with black stripes along his white body. The feathers of his head and wings were white and silver.

He was rather striking, even in the slight light of the sliver of moon we had to see by.

“R-r-ride him,” Thanatos commanded.

I glared at him. “I get motion sick,” I told him. “And I’m afraid of heights.”

He didn’t say anything. He just looked at me.

I rolled my eyes. “Fine. I guess this is the only way out of here, huh?” I frowned at the griffin, wondering how to get up on something that big—without becoming lunch first.

I could have sworn the griffin rolled his eyes and sighed, too. He opened his wings—careful not to knock me over with them—the span of those things was incredible. The griffin bent down low, low enough for me to clamber awkwardly onto his withers.

“There once was a lady from Niger…” I murmured as the griffin straightened up again and followed Thanatos’s steed out of the barn and under the sky. The griffin’s head tilted back toward me at my words and I swore the rumbling sound he was making was laughter.

Great. I was hitching a ride on a predator with a sense of humor.

I just hoped that, if he was laughing, he wasn’t planning on a Goldie-snack after the flight.

If he was going to eat me, I preferred that he do it before we attempted any flying.

There was nothing on a griffin to hold onto, I realized with dismay. I grabbed onto handfuls of fur at the nape of his neck as the griffin lunged upward, his wings beating hard.

I didn’t want to know if we had made it into the air. I closed my eyes and leaned as close as I could to the griffin’s head without falling off or letting go.

It was horrible—worse than I had ever imagined—at least until my ride leveled off—supposedly at a higher altitude, I wasn’t about to check—and started to glide.

I gagged and swallowed hard.

“Don’t throw up on the nice griffin,” I whimpered. “Don’t throw up on the griffin.”

I heard the griffin squawk in agreement.

If I threw up, I was pretty sure I would be doing it in free-fall, not all over his beautiful fur.

Fair enough. I couldn’t say I wouldn’t do the same thing in his place.

The one time I actually dared to peek out from behind my hair, the stars were racing past at a ridiculous pace.

Griffins were Magically fast. I wondered how far we had come.

I felt a familiar tingling and lurch and knew we had crossed from the ‘real’ world into the Middle Lands—a place caught between the planes of Faerie and the Ordinary world. I’d only been there once before—when I’d been attacked, along with the rest of my family, by a soul-sucking ghost.

Good times.

If anything, it felt like we were picking up speed. I shouldn’t have been able to breathe, but actually, I didn’t feel jounced around or anything. I figured we were going faster than the speed of sound, but as far as my body could tell, we were out for a nice jaunt.

Griffin Magic, I figured. I needed to figure out what griffins liked and make sure that my pal here got a big reward. He was making this experience as nice for me as it possibly could be.

Not that I was ever going to enjoy flying.

I felt us begin to spiral downward. I opened my eyes just a crack to take in the scenery.

We were just outside the oily-looking bubble that was the beginning of the barrier between Faerie and the Middle lands.

It was Wild Magic, I knew, that had been bent and forced to surround Faerie—sealing it in and us from it—the Magic that had no form, had no purpose other than pure, chaotic power.

It made my bear snuff and the venom in my soul buzz in response. This place was full of Magic, but this wasn’t the kind of Magic that I needed to heal my brother. He needed clean, pure Magic.

If I tried to heal him with this stuff—who knew what he could become.

That is, if it even worked.

The landing was surprisingly graceful—my big guy was light on his feet. I slid gratefully to the ground and hesitated—would the griffin be offended if I tried to hug him?

Would he be offended if I didn’t?

He made the decision for me, rubbing his face against my chest. That wicked, curved beak came within inches of my face. He paused, his huge eye staring into mine for a brief moment before he padded off, right into the Wild Magic, where the rest of the pride was already waiting for him.

I had the feeling he kind of liked me.

The feeling was mutual.

With the griffins gone—I was left standing with Death in the Middle Lands.

“We need to talk,” I told him, folding my arms across my chest.

He nodded once, briskly, I thought.

“What do you want with me?” I’d heard of being angry with Death, but this was getting ridiculous. Why had he been hanging around, pretending to be a Witch—or whatever it was that the Ouroboros members thought he was? Was Death actually stalking me?

“I don’t want anything at all.” I couldn’t see his face under his cowl to be able to tell his expression. His voice was flat and toneless—other than the occasional stammer-- offering me no clues, either.

“I don’t believe that for a second,” I snarled. “Everybody wants something. An ancient god doesn’t just start hanging around for no reason.”

Death paused for a long moment, unmoving, unspeaking. I thought, perhaps, he didn’t even have to breathe.

“How—,” he said at last—just when I was starting to think that he was never going to speak. “How does a person become how you are now?”

How I was? I assumed he was referring to the scarred and battered soul, not the blond curls and black eyes. “Bad luck,” I said dryly. “Really bad luck.”

Nat stepped toward me. Before I could even squeak in protest, he put his hands on my shoulders.

The world around us kind of oozed away.

And we were in a strange place.

I figured it was his… home, for lack of a better word. It wasn’t really what I would have expected of Death. The room I stood in the middle of was rather cozy, with a fireplace and more bookshelves lining the wall than I could count. The furnishings were an eclectic mix of ancient and modern—as was the lighting; candles and oil lamps scattered the room, though the candelabra above seemed to be electric.

Interesting.

I wondered what happened if Death didn’t pay his electricity bill.

Thanatos pulled back his hood and Nat reappeared. He glanced up, taking in what I was staring at, as he pulled off his gloves and settled himself into a big chair. I noticed that his cloak had reappeared as a hoodie.

“Solar power,” he explained.

Well, that made sense.

Kind of.

Why was I standing here wondering how Death got electricity?

“You took everything from me,” I said, trying to make my voice as conversational as I could manage. “I want to know why—why are you stalking me? Why are you taking everybody that I love?”

Nat pressed his lips together. A frustrated line appeared between his eyebrows.

Good.

“I’m not stalking you,” he said haltingly. I could tell that his stutter got worse when he was flustered—as he obviously was now. “Your husband—I had no choice. I’m not taking them from you.” He dragged his hands through his hair—the first human gesture I had seen him make.

The last thing I wanted to feel toward this monster was sympathy.

“Take a deep breath,” I told him. “That helps.” I found a pitcher of some kind of wine—at least, that’s what I thought it was—and I poured him a tumbler. He downed it in one jerky motion.

“You are like me,” he said, at last. This time he was able to speak without stuttering. I could tell it took an effort, though. “Your soul—you are not living, you are not undead, as you have a soul… you are
un
live.”

Part of me wanted to protest that I was nothing like him. Whatever this unlife or unlive business was—I wanted no part of it.

But, he was finally talking. I wasn’t going to interrupt him until I knew what I needed to know.

“You are like me,” he repeated. “I was the only one, and then I… felt your soul. I watched you—because I wanted to know what it was that made you like me—why no one else ever has been.”

“I’m a Witch,” I told him. “I was bitten by a were bear when my soul was half out of the body—which kind of warped all that Magic and soul stuff in me. Then I got bitten by a lot of vampires—like… well… a lot. Over a third of my soul is tainted now. I guess it’s just a matter of time before I become a vampire altogether.”

Nat set his cup down abruptly, making the room rumble in echo. He hunched his shoulders at the sound.

For Death, this guy was super jumpy.

“I can heal you,” he announced. “Well… kind of. I can make it so the poison doesn’t spread—that it will stop where it is. You won’t die; you won’t change any more than you have already changed.”

I frowned, wondering what he knew that I didn’t. All I knew that had changed was a sensitivity to light I hadn’t had before. Something told me there was more to the conversion than I had realized.

I could live with that.

But I couldn’t live with being healed by the being who had murdered Donovan.

“Why did you kill Donovan,” I asked quietly.

He didn’t pretend to misunderstand. “I took him,” he said. “Most would not see me. Maybe it is because we are the same.”

I really wished he would stop saying that.

“He was suffering,” he said. “He was hurting. I gave him peace.”

“But why did he have to die at all?” I demanded. “You can’t tell me that you weren’t there the night before—I saw you. Why did you have to take Donovan?”

Nat looked straight at me with those clear gray eyes of his. “You had six months. He knew this. He said as much.”

I stepped back as if he had slapped me across the face.

What was it Donovan had said? Something about borrowed time?

I stared at Thanatos as his meaning became clear to me. I didn’t want to hear it—I didn’t want to know.

“I wasn’t supposed to save him,” I whispered. “He was supposed to die—there in the woods—six months ago, when he was shot. Did… did you do that? You let me save him?”

Nat hesitated, and then nodded.