Embrace (The Gryphon Series) (7 page)

“Thanks
a lot.”  I scooped up the tray and balanced in on the palm of my hand as I rounded the counter. 

The knot in my stomach
disagreed with Sophia’s confidence that I wouldn’t regret this.  

CHAPTER 8

The next night’s patrol up into the mountains was all kinds of awkward due to how incredibly peeved Gabe still was despite my attempts to make amends. I caught a branch a split second before it impaled my eyeball.  He intentionally allowed it to snap back at my face.  Kendall, with her sweet nature, easily forgave me and we hugged it out.  Gabe told me where I could shove my apology.  Maybe I had been somewhat out of line with the things I said, but he had been lying to me for
months
.  Therefore I’d had about all of his nasty attitude I could tolerate. 

“Don’t worry about that branch, Gabe.”  I sn
apped.  “I got it.  Thanks.”

Gabe halted. 
He kept his broad back to me as he let out a low, menacing growl. 

I put my hand on my hip and shined my flashlight at him.  “Oh, I don’t even think so!  I don’t care how big and bad you
think
you are, you’re not gonna growl at
me
.” 

His
head whipped around.  The light from my flashlight reflected off of his yellow cat eyes.  That sight wasn’t new to me, yet it still gave me chills. 

“Demon.”  He rumbled
in a barely human tremor, then fell to the ground in a low crouch.  His clawed hands dug into the dirt as his back arched in preparation for his change. 

A rush of air behind me and Keni’s wings were deployed.  She
and I scanned the landscape in front of us with our flashlights.  Trees.  Light fog.  Rocks.  The occasional critter, but no demon.  Then—not twenty feet in front of us—the brush rustled.  A black shadow darted past us. 

“Did you see that?”
I followed it with the light, but it vanished before I could catch up. 

Before either of them could answer
, a shrill cackle echoed through the night.  The shapeless form flew by in another pass.  We spun to follow it but again failed to get a glimpse. 

“Where’d it go?”  Keni’s feathers tickled my shoulder as she curled her wing protectively around me.  “I lost it.” 

Pebbles kicked up as the demon skidded to a stop in front of us.  Like matching spotlights our flashlight beams captured the creature.

  Kendall giggled and put her wings away.

Gabe paused in the early stages of his transformation, stood up, and reverted back to human.

  I screamed for all I was worth
and dropped my flashlight.   

Before us stood a gruesome, two-foot tall hobgoblin
with green wart covered skin that hung off its tiny frame.  Long, wiry black hair draped down passed the snarling, spitting creature’s itty, bitty shoulders.  With beady little eyes, a snout for a nose, and a mouth full of shark-like teeth this thing was straight out of my worst nightmares.   

“Aww, it’s kinda cute!” Kendall gushed
and bent down to extended her hand to it like it was a friendly pooch. 

Then it charged.  Its tiny legs blurred as it sped toward us with snapping jaws.  I flew onto Gabe’s shoulders like a cat up a tree.  Kendall released her wings just in time to lob the hobgoblin back where it started.  That didn’t slow it down.  It hopped right back up and ran at us again. 

“Get off me!” Gabe ordered, but couldn’t shake my death grip from around his neck.

“NO!  Not until you get rid of it!” I screamed.  “Turn into a lion and eat it! Or shred it!  I don’t care,
just make it go away
!”

Once again, Kendall hit it like a well-served tennis ball and sent it careening through the air.

“What do you need
my
help for?”  Gabe asked in what I considered to be an overly mocking tone, as he grappled to pry my arms and legs off of him.  “You’re the “chosen one” and I’m just your
sidekick
.  Seems to me you should be able to handle this all on your own, oh-mighty one.”

“Gabe!  Now is not the time to get into this!”  I pleaded as I clung to him like a
frightened koala bear.  “Just kill it!”

“No.”  While I couldn’t see his face, I could hear the smirk in his voice.  “I think now is the
perfect
time to talk about this.  You need to admit that you need both of us.” 

The demon
whizzed past Keni.  I squealed and squeezed my eyes shut as Gabe casually punted it away from us.  “I need you!  I need you!  Please!  Get rid of that thing!”

“Now apologize for calling me your sidekick.  That was very offensive.”

“You’re not my sidekick!”  I whimpered.  “You’re my sentry!  Which is mythical, and heroic.
Please make that horrible thing go away
!”

“And you’ll never take us for granted
again, right?”

“Oh, for the love of all that’s good and pure!  Yes!  I’m an awful person that took you for granted
.  It’ll never happen again!” 

“Good.”  Gabe relented.  “Now climb down
, and I’ll take care of the toddler-sized demon for you.”

Just as I attempted to scale my way down my building-sized brother, the mini-goblin
zipped at us again.  I screeched, lost my hold, and thudded to the ground.  Right into the path of the incoming two-foot terror.

Yelling “Celeste look out”  was all Gabe and Keni had time to do.

In utter panic, I brought one arm up to shield my face and held the other out to block the attack.  With my eyes clamped shut I tensed for the moment when those gruesome teeth would shred me to the bone. 

No shredding, biting
, or nipping of any sort came.  Nothing did. 

“Uh, Celeste?”  Keni
’s tone was a question mark.

“What?” 
I squeaked my response through a locked jaw, but didn’t dare open my eyes. 

“I think you got a new power.”

That was the last thing I expected to hear.  Hesitantly, I pried one eye open.   The hobgoblin hovered over the ground, suspended in midair.  Its teeth gnashed angrily.  It kicked its hooved feet at nothing.  But it remained suspended.  I relaxed enough to open my other eye.  When I lowered my hand slightly, the goblin went down.  Hand up, goblin up. 

I gave a giddy little laugh, then turned to gauge Gabe and Kendall’s reactions. 
In the process I dropped my hand without thinking.  Hearing teeny feet scurry in my direction, I whirled back around.  With a girlie yelp, I waved my hand and the miniature demon went sailing through the air.  It slammed into a tree trunk with a sound like a watermelon being cracked in half.  This time it fell to the ground in a heap, and stayed there. 

Kendall crinkled her nose and turned
Yoda green. 

Gabe
held his hand up for us to hold our positions—as if we had any desire to see—while he crept over to investigate. “It’s nothing but black ooze now.”  His eyebrows disappeared into his hairline as he glanced up at me in surprise.  “You killed it.”

“
Yay?”  

His face
folded into a frown as he left the dissipating remnants of the demon and rejoined us.  “Ya know the caliber of demon the Army is sending after us just isn’t what it used to be. Whatever happened to panthers and dragons?”

“
Totally.”  Keni agreed with a sympathetic pout.  “I feel bad for that little guy.”   

“
What
?” I screeched as I brushed pine needles off my backside.  “That was without a doubt the scariest thing I’ve ever seen!”

Gabe gave me a playfully shove. 
“Then I guess it’s a good thing you got that new power when you did. Otherwise it would’ve devoured you one eensy, weensy bite at a time.”

My eyes bulged.

“Look on the bright side, Cee.”  Gabe laughed at my terror.  “The tiny little demon helped us work through our issues.  You should thank him.”

Thank him
for making me apologize to my jerk of a brother who had been deliberately deceiving me about his icky relationship with out feathered guide?  Nope.  The tree thunking was the correct response. 

CHAPTER 9

“This is you.”  A paper was shoved in my face as I squatted behind the counter refilling the container of plastic coffee stirrers.  Unbeknownst to those around me I was using my new telekinesis to put back any stray straws that fell.  That came to an immediate stop with the arrival of the paper waver.

I gave the
flier a cursory glance.  It was a black and white picture of a cute girl about my age, but that was where the similarities ended.  “No, it’s not.  She looks nothing like me.  For one thing her hair’s doing that cool flippty-doo.  I could never get mine to do that.” 

“I don’t mean it’s actually you.”  Sophia groaned as if my idiocy weighed heavily on her.  “I mean it
could
be you.” 

I peered at the picture a second time, trying to figure out where she was going with this.  “Soph, that’s a missing person poster.
  You threatening me?”

“No
, silly!”   She leaned over the counter to talk to me. Her long braid dangled down like a rope between us.  “I’m just trying to show you that stuff like this,”  she nodded to the paper, “can happen at any time.  You never know what the next moment of life is going to hold.  You could walk out of here tonight, step off the curb,  and get hit by a bus.”

“Is there a point to this uplifting tale?”

“My point is that you have to embrace life!”  Her hands curled in the air like she was gripping an invisible basketball.  “Before you end up a cautionary tale like that poor girl.” 

I stared down at the
flier.  The girl was pretty in the wholesome, girl-next-door kind of way.  Not overly made up, or trying too hard, just a natural beauty.  I scanned the details typed below her picture.  Her name was Katherine Miller, she’d been missing for a month.  Fear curled its way into my veins.  It was illogical to worry that every crime or tragic event that happened anywhere close by was somehow connected to my calling, but I couldn’t help it. 

“What happened to her?” 
Trepidation of the answer dropped my voice to a whisper. 

“No one knows.”  S
ophia shrugged. Her eyes reflected the sadness of the situation.  “She went to NCC,  but still lived with her parents.  The night she went missing she met her regular study group in the library, but left early when she got some mysterious phone call.  No one’s seen her since.”  In a flash, the weight of the tragic story vanished and her normal exuberance returned.  “But that is exactly why you have to learn to live a little, before it’s too late.  Like by having your first lesson in talking to boys!”  

“My
first what?  Ah, crap.”  The deal I’d made with her came back to me like a punch in the gut.  I stared into the cabinet like a plausible explanation to get me out of this was going to magically materialize in the back of it.  “That’s what all this was about?  Soph, I really don’t think this is a good idea.  I’m at a point in my life where dating is more hazardous than helpful.”

She held her hand up
and made it move like a chattering puppet.  “Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.  Say what you want.  We had a deal.  I picked a guy for you to talk to.  Now you’re gonna sashay your fanny over there and be the very definition of charming and beguiling.” 

“Shows what you know.”  I grumbled under my breath.  “I don’t even know what beguiling means.”

“You finally picked one?”  Becca asked as she rang up an order.  “Where?”

I flopped down on the floor cross-legged.  It may have looked to others like I was pouting because I didn’t want to do this.  I saw it as staging a one gal sit-in against the flawed idea society forces on us that all women should seek to be part of a couple.  “Geez, Soph?  You told our boss?  Was there a press release, too?  Maybe a blurb in the campus newspaper?” 

Sophia rolled her expertly shadowed eyes, then slid backward off the counter.  She must have pointed her “target” out to Becca, because our manager’s mouth fell open.  “Uh…isn’t that kind of like throwing her to the lions?” 

I
glanced over to the swinging door about six feet away that led to the breakroom.  If I was really stealthy I could crab-crawl the distance to it, then with a boost of superspeed make it out the backdoor before either of them knew I was gone. 

“
What?” Sophia’s voice rose as she justified her pick.  “He seems perfect!  All broody and sensitive.  Not to mention incomprehensively hot.”

Melissa’s
sensible shoes squeaked across the wood floor as she leaned over the counter to grab some napkins.  “He looks like a player to me.”  She commented offhandedly and sauntered away.