WingSpan (Taken on the Wing Book 1) (32 page)

“Ready?”

She hitches her thighs up around his hips and lines up for her shot.

“Glide,” she whispers and in the second his wings are still she startles at the sharp report of the crossbow.

“Shit,” she whispers. “Again.”

A few more beats of his wings to speed up and Talon coasts for another second.

One fewer set of wings pursues and the disorganized flutter of a dead or badly injured gryphon disappears below.

“Oh, God,” Talon can feel her stomach heave and his first thought is anger she’d waste her precious protein throwing up. “I killed her, Talon! Oh, no!”

She slaps the base of his wings, banging the dangling crossbow against his back.

“Spitting fire,” she gasps. “I didn’t…”

“You did or she would have,” he growls. “Keep the crossbow.”

“Okay,” and for a split second their eyes lock as she holds his cheeks in her hands.

“I love you, Shadow,” he promises. “I’ll see you in the sun.”

“Fight your ass off, Talon,” she says as she gets her feet on his hips. “You have my heart.”

Then she’s gone and Talon turns, shifting his hands to claws since he prefers weapons he can’t drop as his first line of attack. He’s confused they don’t both rush around him for Shadow. They do as Talon does, making a tight circle to stay in place.

Talon doesn’t waste any more time figuring them out and bursts into a full-blown charge at the bigger gryphon on the right. They’ve spaced themselves too far apart and Talon has no trouble taking him on before the other can join in. His body position and failure to meet Talon by charging him head on stink of inexperience and invite a hard landing below. As his opponent continues to coast closer, Talon beats higher so gravity can assist in knocking him from the sky.

Talon’s roar drives out the last of his humanity as he bears down on the young gryphon. Everything slows as the cold blooded hunter inside takes over, focused on nothing more than the pulse in his victim’s throat.

His name is gone. His senses are aware of the smaller, more experienced attacker coming toward him but he’ll be too late to stop Talon from claiming his first prize.

It’s over quickly.

Talon knocks his opponent’s knife free with a blow from his bracer and wraps his legs around the male’s thighs. His right fist drives the gryphon’s chin up out of the way and as they roll Talon’s weight pushes him over backward. Both are covered in a red curtain of blood as Talon’s clawed left crushes his opponent’s windpipe up against the inside of his protective collar.

There’s no cry of pain or yell of defiance.

Talon positions himself for his next kill as he drops the dying gryphon.

This one is experienced. Older and weather worn, he draws his lips back exposing a single thick sharp front tooth-plate but it will take more than that to make Talon back off. The black-eyed animal in Talon locks his stare with the shifted black eyes of his opponent for only a moment. Instead of wasting his time trying to figure out where the enemy’s featureless eyes focus, Talon concentrates on his hands. They’re held a little too far back for a frontal assault and he gives away what he plans to do with his bare feet. They’re covered in golden hair and lengthened like a lion’s paws with razor sharp claws spread ready to lay him open.

That’s bad news. The oncoming warrior only needs to hold Talon still to get his feet up and tear him to shreds.

Talon rolls at the last second, turning sideways. His butt hits his attacker just above the knees, a move as effective in the air as on the ground. Even more so. The gryphon’s lower body swings from the impact and his hands are too far back to do any real damage. As Talon passes beneath the slashing claws his dagger bites deep into the exposed calf of one leg and cuts open the other.

With his feet up and head down, the wounded gryphon has no choice but to dive to get enough speed to turn and re-engage. It’s a move Talon hoped to force.

Talon dives faster and they collide again as he wraps his legs around a wing and a thigh. As his pinned opponent screeches in pained frustration, Talon gets both hands at the base of his free wing and with a vicious jerk pushes it up, tearing muscles and tendons and dislocating the big bone.

As his second kill drops to be finished by the Earth, Talon turns toward the main fight. A few shuddering breaths allow him to reclaim some of himself and he shakes his head to knock loose the hunter inside.

He quickly sizes up the situation. Dove and Firn are easy to make out. Their fighting styles are nearly identical and he’d seen enough of Firn on the trip to have a good sense of her. Rapid’s lighter armour is nowhere to be seen and she could simply be below, tangled with another gryphon. A burning above Talon’s knee turns out to be a small dagger driven through the armour on the side of his leg. Cursing, Talon pulls it free. The wound only weeps through the leather and will need attention eventually but not now. Not while he still has a job to do.

There are a couple of Lev’s guard missing as well as many of their opponents. Soar’s out of place laugh reaches Talon as two gryphons position themselves behind an occupied Lev.

Talon swears under his breath. He’s certain no gryphons have passed him so he yells for Lev’s attention and jumps in to the fray.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Shadow kicks off to carry as much of Talon’s momentum as she can. The image of her lucky shot buried between the female’s collar and chest piece won’t go away. The gryphon’s gloved hands immediately dug the little missile free but blood cascaded down both elbows as she did, emptying her body of life as she cast the crossbow bolt aside. Shadow covers her mouth to keep her food down even though it keeps the tumbling dying gryphon in her as well.

She’s too scared to do any more than fly so all she remembers is the sun. The last of the heat she carried from Talon fades and she fumbles, dropping several pieces of jerky as the dangling crossbow makes her arm swing of its own accord. Behind her, Talon sounds confident and she hesitates, circling once in the hope he’s coming but he isn’t. He grapples with one of his attackers before dropping him and going for the second.

She doesn’t look back again.

The sounds of battle fade as she loses the fight with her stomach. A single heave purges Shadow’s meal and she doubles up, compromising the lift of her wings as they involuntarily join her in a head down ball. The icy peak in her path barely hides the sun; both large in the thin air. Its warmth is nothing but cold light and Shadow understands why Talon was so insistent she eat her reserves and gave his up.

Shadow shudders, bitten to the bone by the wind and pulls another piece of jerky from her pocket, losing a second in the process. Maybe the female she shot will be okay, Shadow hopes.

She can’t be okay,
her inner voice chastises.
If she is then she’s after Talon.

Talon roars only once as the grunts and cries disappear completely. The pure animal sound is chilling. She’s terrified by the monster inside him and drives forward, losing altitude in her panic to get away. Shadow spits her half frozen beef morsel in her hand and drops further as she vomits again. The sun bounces from the snow and cloud filled valley below and she keeps her head up to protect her eyes from the glare. It seems to help with the nausea so she sucks on the meat, carefully scraping the thawing surface and forcing the bits down.

Talon should have said they were between lost and hopeless, not Lytton and Hope. A quick inventory says she has only a few pieces of meat left, not enough to get her anywhere significant now the cold has set in. Shadow jams her freezing fingers up under her chest piece and pulls the local geography from a memory. Years before Terry had doubled her around the interior of British Columbia for a cheap vacation between university graduation and her new job in Parksville.

East of between Lytton and Hope is the Coquihalla Highway. Shadow recalls it as the orange hi-lighted line on a map as Terry marked out day three in a new colour. The tang of the ink is nearly real as is the snap of its cap as his hands popped it back in place. To clear her vision, Shadow rubs her eyes on her shoulder but the soothing friction only adds to her mental numbness. The orange of the sun turns grey as weakness reaches her wings.

If Talon hasn’t caught up by the time she gets to the busy highway she’s sure he won’t be coming. And she sure doesn’t have the stamina to wait. Her food won’t last but at least she can flag down a ride.

“Talon,” she pulls out another piece of beef. “Damn you hurry up!”

But her cold lips aren’t enough to keep the morsel in her mouth and as her teeth rattle it falls, slapping against the crossbow when she tries to grab it.

Then another drop in altitude. Shadow’s legs kick as her body tries in vain to make its own heat.

Shit.

With Lev safe, Talon decides he’s spent enough time protecting his mate’s sire. Only one of the two following groups of rogues joined in, hitting them from the north-west. If Talon flew east he would have led them straight to Shadow so he stuck with the guard, eliminating as many of their attackers as he could. The last group is nowhere to be seen but Talon can’t stick around any longer.

“Later,” he shouts at Soar as he reaches around to stabilize the sheath for his short sword and slides the blade home.

“Get out of here,” Soar replies. “And I want to see tails or they don’t count.”

“Same to you,” Talon hollers and with all the speed he can muster he turns toward the sun.

The tingle of his connection to his skyblade fades, uncovering a mild itch around his wrist. It’s nothing like he felt from Shadow back in the eyrie but it’s worrisome. The itch could be from the cold or fear; threat she perceives or fatigue. She was in rough shape when he’d sent her ahead but away from the fighting and with sufficient food she could have kept going for a couple of hours, long past the fifteen or twenty minutes he’d been tied up.

But damn it, staring into the sun hurts like a bitch.

To rest his eyes, he watches the cloud below. The sun has cleared the peak ahead and much of the valley radiates hostile yellow-white light. The spot temporarily burned into his retinas floats on its own, faster and faster as he involuntarily follows with his gaze. He scans every direction for motion with his peripheral vision but there’s nothing; no movement at all.

As he picks up speed, the crack of his crossbow reaches him followed by a weaker echo off the rock around. Talon’s eyes turn to the direction from which it came but the sun smear hides everything except a couple of dark smudges.

A flash of light makes its way through his blind spot and he surges forward to greet the sound of another crossbow shot. Four winged shapes, dark enough to be seen through the last of the sun’s afterglow, fly clear of the clouds and surround his white winged gryphon.

“Shadow,” he calls and one of her stalkers turns but she doesn’t and judging by her uneven flight she’s not listening. In fact she’s barely flying as she rolls to her side with both hands on the crossbow. The two gryphons to her right move and she tracks one to the side. A flash from the crossbow’s last round is followed by one of her attackers grabbing at his leg.

That’s my girl
, he silently encourages as he begins his descent. Pinning one in the leg isn’t enough and he can’t do any more than swoop down and grab her but Soar is only ten minutes behind. He can sprint that far at least.