Airborne (3 page)

“I’d help you if I could. But I don’t have it.”

“Then show me. And I’ll leave. Or are you planning to rot to death in there?”

She struggled to draw her shaken nerves together. “Okay.” She announced at last. “At least talk to me so I can find my way out of this forest.”

Brushing her fingertips over the tree, she stepped carefully to avoid protruding roots. In her last kicks of summer, she’d opted to wear a pair of thong sandals. Knowing she just needed one misstep and a firm knock into a rock to be in serious pain, she moved slowly.

“You have my word, I won’t hurt you. I just have…temper problems.” He admitted the last part as an afterthought.

Avery could have hysterically laughed. Temper problems? Is that what they called psychotic rages now days?

“In fact, my only intention here is to get what I’ve come for and leave you in peace.” He kept talking and she focused on following his voice.

The moon came out again, and it lit up the clearing in front of her. Mason stood in the center and behind him was the steps back up into the dormitory and back home. Happy to see it, she rushed forward but only managed to catch a root and stagger. Hands flailing in the darkness, she threw herself off balance. Hitting the ground, she kissed the dirt. Avery couldn’t get up quick enough. Only she, in the presence of a psychotic raving man, would still be clumsy.

A shadow fell over the ground. Glancing up, she saw him towering above her. With deliberately slow and gentle movements, he offered a hand.

“Uh hi.” She greeted him meekly. Already too close to him to escape again, she didn’t fight it.

Crawling to her knees, she nearly handed him her right hand—her dominant hand—before realization made her switch it out. Lightning fast, he snatched her right wrist mid-motion before she could properly offer him her left hand. Wrapping his long fingers around her right wrist, he yanked her up in one swift effective movement. The quick motion jarring, old adrenaline spiked again and she pulled away from him. He held her wrist with a steel grip.

“Wait. What happened to you?” He demanded to know.

The bandage had already come loose from her rough fall and the black bruise peeked out from beneath. The moonlight made it glow. She gave a stubborn yank on her wrist.

“Lemme go. Lemme go or I won’t show you.” She hissed, still attempting to tear away from him.

Frowning, he released her but beckoned her to keep her hand up. After giving him a sufficient suspicious glare, she unraveled the bandage in a few quick rotations. To her surprise, the mark had grown worse over the daytime. Instead of the charred black that covered the side of her palm, the black had turned purpleish and reached from her heel to her thumb. She grew sick looking at it. Mason didn’t shy away from it. Tentatively reaching out, he brushed his thumb over the mark. Something under her skin abruptly pulsed in response. Jolted by the sensation, she yanked her hand back into her chest.

Three

“Look, I’m sorry if I picked it up, and I’m sorry if I broke it. But believe me, I don’t have it anymore.” Avery said.

She might as well have been talking to herself. Mason wasn’t listening. Shortly after his cryptic declaration, he’d fallen into a silent thought train that left his green eyes staring at nothing and his hands wringing. Worry seeped off of his taunt body but none of his agitation was directed toward Avery any longer.

Even though the situation had calmed remarkably, Avery still didn’t trust it. She trekked back towards the stone stairway and created a berth between them. The clearing just outside the building’s emergency exit was far from being in the wilderness, but she was beginning to feel the effects of being outside too long. Without a jacket, it was getting cold and without real shoes to traverse the rough ground, she’d beaten her toes bloody.

“I know you don’t have the actual pendant.” Mason said suddenly, earning her full attention once again.

“You believe me?” She double took, surprised.

“I believe you don’t actually have the glass pendant. But you don’t understand.” He marched a few steps forward, and closer now, he lowered his voice as if someone in the woods could hear them. “That pendant was an amulet, and that amulet was very special. It was filled with magic.”

She stared at him blankly, waiting for the punch line. When it never came, she shook her head and stepped back.

“Are you nuts?” She asked carefully. She eyed her exit, one quick sprint up steep stairs and though it was dangerous, she certainly wasn’t going for the woods again. He didn’t make any quick movements so neither did Avery.

Instead, he slowly raked his hands through his mop of brown hair and let out a frustrated growl. “It makes sense doesn’t it? The amulet broke from the fall and when you picked it up then that magic inside of it then jumped straight into you. How else do you think I tracked you all the way to this god-forsaken place sixty miles north of nowhere? The magic in your body left me a trail.”

She let the words process for a full minute. His expression didn’t waver once while waiting for her reply. Humoring herself, she reasoned it aloud.

“You still lost me at the magic part. I mean...magic. Do you really believe that?” She spoke delicately too, waiting for him to flip out again anytime.

Mason gave her a long look and then in a sudden flurry of motion, he tugged his oversized parka off. The fabric dropped to the floor, forming a puddle at his feet, and then she was able to see something white twitch behind him. That something white spread out on either side of his body in the next second. She’d known his coat was unusually heavy for late fall, but now she understood that it had been hiding something. Wide angel wings, made up from thousands of short feathers, now surrounded him.

“Uh. Bird?” She pointed dumbly, unable to form a single coherent thought more.

“Harpie.” He gave her a glare that could have killed. “You don’t need to understand. You need to come with me.”

Still in shock, she forgot about her getaway plan, and walked towards him. Avery then circled around him needing to see the entire phenomenon in detail. He twisted to face her a few times until he let her behind him, groaning from deep in his throat.

“This is… unreal.” The whisper left her before she realized it. The moonlight cast a hearty blue glow on them both and let her see clearly.

Hands tentatively reaching out, she lightly brushed her fingertips over the feathers. Stiffer than they looked, they were still soft. She could feel the hardness of bone over the arch of his wing. He wore a shirt so she couldn’t see how they were directly attached to his skin, but Avery didn’t need any more convincing. His wings were hot, twitching, and very very real.

“You’re a harpie. Like a legit harpie.” She put a hand on her forehead while still having trouble wrapping her mind around the concept.

He nodded again.

“I thought harpies were actual birds.” She thought of the pictures from her mythology books. Most were small white creatures with beaks, long feathered abdomens, and talons. The man that stood before her was just that—a man.

She studied him head to foot, one last time. She’d known him to be tall, but that fact combined with his long lanky limbs suddenly took on a new significance. His entire body stature, most importantly his broad shoulders, must have been used to balance out the weight of his wings. His thin body probably kept him light to fly. His nails were a little sharper than they should be too-- not just for a man but for any human.

“Hardly. Harpies have naturally become more humanoid in recent centuries to blend in with bloody humans.” He snapped the last part, tilting his chin up with a blast of superiority.

“And you have bad tempers.” She remembered, absolutely ignoring his attitude now. With some effort, she recalled her old school lessons on Greek mythology. “Harpies are notoriously bad tempered. We even derived the term harping from them...uh you.”

She used to draw her mother as a half-human half-harpie nagging about her homework. Of course, even that version of a harpie came nothing close to the one that stood before her now.

“You believe me now?” He asked dully like she’d just caught up with the news flash.

Catching his eyes, she paused.

“You were serious about the magic?” Letting out a gasping breath, she shook her head. “No way. This just isn’t real. This just doesn’t happen.”

“Well then I have a rude awakening for you. You, in your human curiosity, picked up a harpie amulet and became the home to harpie magic. Now believe me or don’t, but it’s the truth.”

She opened her mouth to speak but couldn’t think of any words. Her mind finally grasped the full situation. Unable to control her twisting facial expressions, she turned and faced the woods. Her right hand itched at the revelation. The black smudge she’d gotten back in July still marred her palm like she’d burnt it yesterday. That combined with the unbelievable evidence that stood a few feet away left her reeling.

After moving closer, he reached out and touched her hand. The jolt of warmth made her flinch. He wrapped his fingers around hers until he pushed her palm closed and hid the black mark. It hardly felt reassuring. His rough skin stung, and he squeezed her hand too tight.

“Come with me, and you’ll be fine.” He said.

Abruptly, his wings snapped open. He used his grip on her to twist her around quick enough to make her dizzy. From there, she saw his wings clearly. Almost over ten feet they nearly touched both the tree line and the staircase.

“What are you doing?” She gasped.

His wings began to flap. The dirt kicked up and the wind dropped the temperature. His long arms looped around her waist and he pinned her to his broad chest. His wings caught enough speed to begin to lift them from the ground.

Ignoring her completely, he kept his grip tight. The ground disappeared below her feet. Just an inch up, the cloud of dust nearly made the rest of the world disappear.

“Stop it, you stupid pigeon!” She screamed.

Arms abruptly going lax, he let her go. Unbalanced, Avery fell back and landed on the ground painfully hard. She didn’t complain though. Adrenaline still pounding in her veins, she used the opening to run towards the stairs. His large wings made it impossible for him to fly without a clearing so she dashed up to the top step where there was no space. The dust fell away revealing his face. Lips drawn back, he glared at her sharply.