8:8
Dropping back around the corner Siobhan and she had barely cleared, Kim flicked her wrist, calling a fireball into existence in the palm of her hand and illuminating the path behind them. Her “damn!” was instinctive, popping out of her subconscious as the creature came ambling down the long path towards them.
What approached didn’t resemble some cartoon beast, features hairy and large but with the hint of something charming or endearing. No. The thing ambling towards them on cloven hooves looked something like Kim might imagine a satyr would look if it was dragged out of a punishing underworld or possibly a dark fairy landscape. It had to be, oh, nine-million feet tall. Okay, slight exaggeration. Maybe. But, its head nearly cleared the top of the hedges and they had to be, at a rough guess, twelve feet high. If its horns didn’t curl back along the curve of its head and then flare out to sharp points, reminiscent of a ram’s horns if a ram’s horns twisted and gnarled like brambles they would definitely have cleared the top of the walls. Maybe they were brambles, maybe they weren’t horns, maybe Kim brains wasn’t really parsing the fine details what with it stuck on a gibbering track of “ahhhuhhhahhhmotherfucker!”
The head the horn, bramble, horn-things curved around kind of resembled a dog’s. Maybe. If the snout and eye region of the dog was shaved back to where fur burst untamed and fierce in profusion along the jawline and brow ridges. Pointy ears that could have been a wolf’s? A goat’s? Maybe a… no not a goat’s… Again, fine details not really working their way out of her brain. Pointy. Largely naked with just a fuzz of hair softening their line. Large, jutting out in the negative space where the horns made an arch as they curve down before thrusting back up and out.
“Well, that’s a face only a mother could love.”
Siobhan snorted at Kim’s instinctive statement even as her fingers went to the potions on her bag strap.
The teeth in the hairless muzzle were big. They were really big. And they looked sharp. And Kim could see all this in the light of her flame as the thing – Beast? Gryphon? – drew closer, apparently completely undeterred by the standard “fire bad” that most creatures internalized.
“Fuuuuuck!” she whimpered as she swayed back to avoid the sweep of a large, hairy, clawed hand. It came so close she had zero problems seeing that it retained something like human shape, if not human proportions, though the vaguely human fingers were tipped by sharp claws at least two inches long. Really sharp claws. Like, too sharp for the basic profile which should have indicated claws closer to a canine’s or possibly that of a large cat, blunted at the tips. Those claws, coming too damned close to her face for her liking, were sharp and hooked, like a house cats. Only, you know, if a house cat would leave a gouge in the wake of its swipe instead of a scratch.
It was a testament to the bulk of the creature’s – whoa totally nekkid, thank you clumps of hair growing in the usual places, though, yeah, not quite enough to hide that the creature was definitely male and for Kim to inwardly wince in sympathy for any female he turned his interest towards. Baby’s arm! Baby’s arm! – form that the ground literally quivered with each strike of its cloven hooves. No, really, the earth at its feet compressed, like it was heavy foam rubber forced to give beneath the bulk of the creature. Kim could literally feel the earth giving ground to the thing.
Frantically Kim reached out to the earth and pushed it to recede more beneath the footfalls. Earth, the least likely to listen to her either because it was stubborn as fuck – really, it was – or because she talked to it least – because it was stubborn as fuck and also because its sense of humor, and its habit of opening holes under her, didn’t really make her laugh – took a moment to respond. But then, like it was affronted by the way it had to cede ground to anything or anyone, the earth beneath the creature fell away, forming mini-sinkholes beneath each hoof.
The creature’s upper lip – muzzle, lip? – curled back, really throwing its exacto-knife teeth, closer to a snake’s than a canine’s, into prominence as its forward movement ceased abruptly. Its pause as it looked down at its feet, hoof deep in the earth, gave Kim time to thrust out her arm across the width of the path and shove Siobhan back behind her.
Her inarticulate, gibbered “arrrahhhuhhh!” seemed to speak just fine to those further down the path. Almost instantly Dempsey was throwing himself in front of Kim and Siobhan, shield out. And not a moment too soon as the Beast slash Gryphon slash creature that would now have pride of place in Kim’s nightmare’s pulled one hoof and then the other out of the holes around them and lunged forward.
Earth, on its own because no way was Kim taking credit for directing it, opened beneath his forward hoof, messing with his balance and stealing a good chunk of force from his lunge.
“Move!” Ivan yelled, rushing forward with sword drawn. Kim, sensibly despite being knocked pretty senseless by the sheer ugh of the Beast, dropped against the hedge wall to give Ivan room to move in front of her. Ben came up fast behind him, daggers drawn.
Gwen pushed up next to Kim, her frown flickering in the green phosphorescence of the alchemy torches.
“What you got?” Siobhan snapped.
“Confusion. Anger. Fear.” Gwen shook her head like a wet dog, sending her hair flying. She pressed her fingers to her temple. “Anger. Rage. Uh, hunger?”
“Can we communicate with him?”
“Uh,” Patti asked as she came up behind Gwen and then craned to look beyond Dempsey, Ivan, and Ben, “Why?”
“Because if we can communicate with him maybe we can convince him we’re here to help?” Siobhan’s suggestion was met with a grunt from Gwen.
“I’m not sure there’s any communicating. He’s…”
“Are you trying?”
“I’m not a telepath!” Gwen’s snap, almost foreign to her sunny nature, spoke to whatever it was she was getting off the Beast. “Best I might be able to do is calm him down but I’d need to touch him. I don’t want to touch him!”
“Uh, yeah,” Patti’s eyes grew wide as she got a real gander at the creature. “Smart!”
The beast didn’t seem inclined to give them a whole lot of time to debate the best course of action. While Siobhan, Gwen, and Patti were spitting ideas back and forth the Beast pulled itself out of what might have been a small patch of quicksand opened beneath its feet and smashed itself into Dempsey’s shield.
Abe came up behind Gwen. “Maybe I can-”
They reached out with their darkened right hand, fingers splayed on the air. Then they curved the fingers into a claw and their expression went very, very intent. They drew in a hard breath and curled their fingers into a loose fist. And then something invisible hit them, bending the fist and their wrist back and sending then stumbling back to fall on their butt in the dirt.
“Ow.”
Dan reached down a hand, grabbing Abe’s and yanking them back to their feet. Once they were steady, they turned back to look at where the Beast was battering against Dempsey’s shield which he’d activated so now it was filling the darkened path with an iridescent white glow that managed to cast the Beast’s face in an even more horrifying light. Where Kim’s flame softened it, like firelight did, the intense white light of Dempsey’s shield really made the hairless muzzle, curling bramble horns, and the completely and utter madness in yellow eyes with vertical pupils really pop.
“Son of a-” Patti uttered, rearing back and instinctively dropping a hand to cup around Sass’s house.
“Hungry,” Gwen said.
“Angry,” Abe added. “Really angry. Like an overwhelming amount of anger. There’s no drawing it off. It hits like a hammer.”
Kim turned and frowned at Abe. “That’s what you tried to do?”
Abe gave a short nod.
“Damn! You’re a badass!” Kim lifted her hand, palm out. “Don’t leave me hanging.”
Abe looked at Kim’s hand and then tentatively reached up and smacked it with their unmarked left hand.
“I’m guessing that means you can’t do anything to it?” Kim asked.
Abe shook their head, then slanted a look at Dan. “I don’t think even with Dan’s help I could.”
Siobhan shoved a hand through her hair, knocking her flower wreath askew before righting it. “I don’t want to hurt him. He’s a victim.”
“I think,” Ben called back, wincing as the Beast hit Dempsey’s shield hard enough to drive him back several steps. “He really wants to hurt us.”
“Make a decision!” Dempsey’s yell cut off into another grunt as the Beast slammed his shield again.
“We’re thinking!” Patti yelled back.
“Think faster!”
Prairie slid up behind Ben and looked over his shoulder at the creature battering Dempsey’s shield. “I don’t think we are going to reason with it.”
That said she pulled her daggers out, ducked around Ben and darted forward to smash the pommel of one dagger into the leading hoof of the Beast. The Beast reared back on its good hoof, redirecting its attention to the one Prairie had whacked. Its upper lip curled back, revealing more of its dagger teeth in a look that might have been comically confused if it wasn’t in a face no one wanted to see poking out of their closet in the middle of the night when they had their sheet pulled up under their chin and their wide-eyed gaze searched the darkness.
Ivan, seeing Prairie throwing herself into the fray lunged around Dempsey, sword drawn back to deliver a blow. Prairie threw herself sideways across Dempsey’s feet to brace herself in front of Ivan and slow his lunge. “Blunt force! Knock him out if you can!”
Ivan cast a real quick glance down at Prairie, a lot of ‘what the fuck?’ in the look, then adjusted his elbow so instead of swinging forward with his blade he dashed the pommel of his sword against the creature’s shoulder, shifting its weight to the hoof weakened by Prairie’s pounding and sending it stumbling.
“How do you knock that out?” Ben hollered even as he darted forward to do a one, two, punch combo into the Beast’s largely hairless torso. The highly-defined abs displayed in all their non-haired glory, like some ridicunkulous suitcase – no way was that a sixer – were apparently not for show because while the Beast grunted, lightly, at Ben’s assault it didn’t seem to do any damage. It sure didn’t slow down the claw he sent swiping in Ben’s direction.
“Whoa!” Dempsey’s lunged forward, bringing his shield around in an underhand swing and then reversing it to block the Beast’s swipe on the horizontal. He dipped down under the force of the blow, nearly coming to his knees.
Prairie rolled to the right slightly, enough to brace her back against Ivan’s legs. This gave her the leverage she needed to rear up and slam the pommel of her dagger into the lower portion of the creature’s knee cap. The blow either dislocated the knee or did enough damage that the creature’s leg folded in the direction of its movement. Unable to sustain its weight on the folded leg, the creature toppled sideways towards Ivan and Prairie.
In the moment between hitting the knee and moving to avoid the falling weight of the Beast, Prairie looked up at Ivan with sky-blue eyes sharp with intelligence and barked in her best nurse-take-charge-voice, “Hit him!”
Ivan reared back. “Where?”
“The vestibulocochlear nerve!” Reading Ivan’s frown of confusion, Prairie corrected, “Behind the ear, about two inches down!”
As the Beast dropped to its elbow directly in front of Prairie and before it could right itself, Ivan dropped an elbow vaguely where Prairie directed. The creature’s eyes rolled back, showing the whites around the yellow, and it slumped to the ground.
Ivan was quick to jump up, pulling his arm from contact with the hairless stretch of the Beast’s neck. “Damn. Need to remember that.”
Prairie rolled to her back and smiled at the sky. “I’m glad that worked.”
Ivan frowned. “There was a chance it wouldn’t?”
Prairie lifted her delicate shoulders from the ground then dropped them back down in an effusive shrug. “Maybe?”
Ivan looked at her cross-eyed, then shook his head and grinned. “Do you need help getting up?”
“I don’t need help,” Prairie said, meeting Ivan’s eyes then giving a small grin, “But I could use help.”
Ivan grinned again and shook his head, mock sad, then reached down a hand. Prairie grabbed it and Ivan pulled her up with enough force that she gave a little hop and went airborne for moment.
“Whee!”
Dempsey lowered his shield and massaged the shield arm with his other hand while staring down at the slumped Beast. “What’s the plan for this guy?”
Ivan squinted down at the creature. “Did he just twitch? I think he just twitched.”
Prairie looked down, head cocked, expression fixed. “I think he twitched.”
“Crap!” Ivan dropped to his knees next to the fallen Beast. “We have to get him out of here.”
He slid his hands under the Beast’s shoulders and tried to stand up, before toppling back on his butt under the weight of the creature. “Bad boy is pretty compact. Gonna need a hand. Or four.”
Dempsey shifted his shield to his back, securing it on a strap, then crouched next to the creature. “Where?”
“Eh?” Ivan shrugged. “Maybe the torso?”
“I’ve got the legs,” Ben said, stooping to wrap his arms around the Beast’s legs near the knee. “Ugh. Gah. Glad I’m wearing a jacket. Dude is… Yeah-”
“Gross?” Gwen supplied moving to loom over the fallen Beast and the men attempting to lift him.
“Yeah,” Ben nodded, “That’ll do.” He looked to Dempsey and Ivan. “On three?”
“Wait,” Prairie said, insinuating herself between Ivan and the Beast, “I’ll get his head.”
Once Prairie had the creature’s head in her hands, showing far less reluctance than Ben had despite her bare skin being in contact with the creature’s skin and fur, Ivan said, “Three” and they all straightened, lifting the Beast between them.
“Damn,” Dempsey muttered, “Heavy.”
“Yep,” Ivan nodded, “Let’s get him out of here.”
With that said the four in contact with the Beast shuffle walked down the path towards where they’d entered the maze.
“I don’t know which is worse,” Dempsey muttered as he hitched the Beast higher against himself, “his hairy ass or his junk.”
“His junk,” Ben offered. “Definitely his junk.”
“Stop talking about his junk,” Ivan said, sparing a glance for Prairie. “Prair, don’t listen to that stuff.”
Prairie looked up at Ivan in what might have charitably called an eye roll. “I’m a nurse, Ivan. I’ve seen junk before.”
“Do not-” Ivan shifted to move out the door into the rose garden, leaving the night shrouded maze and stepping into the bright sunlight, “Nope, no talk of junk.”
Prairie carefully cradled the Beast’s head as she stretched her stride to match Ivan’s longer tread. “I can talk about junk.”
She giggled at Ivan’s, “Nope. No. Not happening. Uh uh.”
Ben had just cleared into the sunlight with the Beast’s – Gryphon’s – legs when one began to twitch.
“Uh,” his mutter joined Dempsey’s exclamation of concern as the abdomen around which Dempsey’s arm wrapped kind of shimmied. “Crap. Move faster!”
Picking up on the urgency Ivan began to double-time it. It was all Prairie could do to hustle and keep up and Gryphon’s head got a jostling in her hold. Or maybe that was…
Oh, yeah, that was… Gryphon opened his yellow-Beast eyes, curled back his hairless Beast lips, and snarled. Despite years of training and dealing with people coming into the West Wing full of drugs and delusions and managing to retain her cool through all of them, Prairie gave a sharp squeak and her hands flew out and away from Gryphon’s head. This set off a chain reaction starting from Ben losing his hold on a leg that reared back to deliver a full on ding-dong ring-a-ling cloven hoof kick to Ben’s head to Dempsey, unable to maintain the weight with Ben suddenly knocked on his ass, releasing his hold on Gryphon’s midsection, and ending with Gryphon doing some kind of awesome kip mid-air that set him down on his hooves some three-feet distant from where Ivan stood, his hands cupping air where two mikros before Gryphon’s hairy shoulders had been.
“Uh!” Dempsey muttered.
“Ah!” Ivan cried.
“Rawrrrrrrrr!” Gryphon, uh, roared as he shook out his long arms and curved his razor clawed finger paws before throwing his arms out, thrusting his chest back, lifting his muzzle to the sky and let loose a cry that was equal parts torment and rage and an additional helping of “fuck my life”.
“I think I just pooped a little,” Gwen muttered to Kim from the maze’s threshold which they’d just reached.
“Think?” Kim replied, gulped, then snapped out both hands, flames forming in the palms.
Siobhan clasped her hand around Kim’s arm, nearly getting her own palm full of flames for her effort. “We can’t hurt him.”
Kim gestured wildly with both hands, the movement emphasized by the fire flaring in her palms. “Ah!”
Patti poked Gwen in the back, driving her out of the entry so she and Siobhan could rush through. Once she was in the daylight Patti clenched her hand on the strap of her punch shield and lifted her cudgel to the level of her shoulder. “I can pound him though?”
“Yes,” Siobhan nodded vigorously, her wide-eyes on the sight of Gryphon in all his large and naked glory. “Wow.” She shook herself and added, “Yes. No! No! We need to try to talk to him.”
Gwen paused in rearing back her plunger, mid-lunge and whipped around to look at Siobhan. “Really?”
Siobhan gulped and nodded more briskly, enough that her flower crown slid to the back of her head. “Yes. Really.”
Gwen goggled, then made a broad gesture in the general direction of the Gryphon Beast. “Eh?”
Abe, coming up in the rear with Dan, said real quietly, their gaze trained on Gryphon. “I don’t think words are going to work.”
“We have to try! He’s a victim. We have to,” Siobhan broke off, blinked rapidly, then continued, “We have to try.”
Ivan, Dempsey, and Ben had fallen back to form a rough half-circle outside of the range of Gryphon’s swiping claws. When he stomped forward once, twice, with his cloven hooves they fell back one step, two, three. Five. Maybe five. Their legs were not as long as the Beast’s. Luckily they were faster, so that gave them a slight advantage in dodging and jiving to stay clear of Gryphon’s slow swats.
“I think he’s still dazed,” Prairie said, standing slightly behind Ivan and to the right so she could look around him at Gryphon. “If we are going to do something we should do it quickly.”
“Okay,” Siobhan turned to look at Dan. “Any thoughts?”
“Why look at me?”
“Because…” Siobhan flailed her hands at about rib height, movements bordering on frantic. “I don’t know. Words!”
“Tell him a story?”
“Sure! That works! Story!”
Dan stepped forward and Abe followed by his side. They looked up at Dan quickly, then slowly lifted their ink-darkened right hand towards the Beast then nodded to Dan. He gave a short nod in return then focused on the Beast.
“Once upon a time-”
The Beast stopped his forward stomp, cocked his head in Dan’s direction, and then curled his lips back on a spectacular snarl.
“There was once a very rich merchant, who-”
That’s as far as Dan got before the Beast let out a bellowing roar that literally blew the short hairs on Dan’s forehead back. Next to him Abe’s mop of hair flew out, a nimbus around their head that moved on the hot breeze of the Beast’s breath.
“Wow.” Abe’s eyes went wide enough they took up all available landscape in their expressive face.
“Uh,” Dan dug deep, pulling up the first words from ‘Gryphon’, “Gryf checks the piece of paper in his hand, looks up at the -”
Gryphon gave up trying to remove chunks from Ben, Ivan, and Dempsey, pivoted with more grace than you’d expect from a cloven hoof, and came stomping towards the maze with arm cocked and the claws of his raised paw spread.
“Bad choice! Bad choice!”
It was unclear if Patti’s words were directed at Dan or herself as she flung herself forward and punched her shield towards Gryphon. When his paw hit the shield it literally picked Patti off her feet. Kim barely managed to extinguish the flames in her palms and call up a gust of air to slow Patti’s fall, causing Patti to hit the ground with only enough force to bruise the crap out of her ass – thankfully, not really, though it was a near thing – as opposed to knocking the air out of her lungs.
Dan and Abe braced themselves behind Siobhan and Kim – Dan with his crossbows raised and Abe with their left hand raised, knuckles out, cupped palm towards their chest – but it was clear by their expressions they didn’t know what action to take, what with the directive to not hurt Gryphon they were pretty much hamstrung.
Kim stooped down and hooked her hands under Patti’s armpits, dragging her back a second before Gryphon stomped her into the ground. From behind Gryphon Ben called out, “well, crap,” and then Gryphon was swaying forward as Ben came cannonballing into Gryphon’s back. Ben reached around, closing his arms as far as they’d close around Gryphon’s midsection, which was to say there was at least four inches of space where his fingers didn’t meet.
Gryphon pivoted on one hoof, head going back over his shoulder as he sought Ben’s position. This caused Ben to go flinging out with the force of the spin, his legs flopping and dragging along the ground before kicking out like the tail on a kite. Luckily he had a decent grip on Gryphon’s torso, though his hands did slide a bit on the nearly-hairless abdominals, so he didn’t go flying off completely in the opposite direction of Gryphon’s spin. His head did bob a bit and his curse when he had to smash his cheek against Gryphon’s bare side was one for the books.
Dempsey came in from the side, swinging low with his shield and making solid contact with Gryphon’s lower legs. Seeing as Gryphon was midspin, with the majority of his weight on his planted hoof, the hit knocked his balance off and he started careening towards the ground. Seeing this Ben threw his weight forward and locked his legs around Gryphon’s upper legs, pulling them together and further messing with Gryphon’s stability.
“Ahh!” Gwen yelled, coming in from the back and making hard contact with Gryphon’s neck with her plunger.
This served to catch his flailing attention and he snapped his neck around to stare at her with a combination of menace and confusion in his yellow eyes.
“Uh, Prair?” Gwen yelled, falling back and taking a stance with plunger reared in the air like a baseball player at the plate, “Where am I supposed to hit?”
Prairie bobbed her head about, eyeing the taut tendons of Gryphon’s neck. “Lower. Behind the ear and a few inches down.”
Meanwhile while Prairie was directing Gwen in the correct way to knock someone’s block off, Gryphon fell to the ground, Ben still clinging to him with the determination of a barnacle. For his efforts he ended up with an arm pinned between Gryphon’s squirming form and the ground. That was going to leave a mark. A big mark. Ouch. Yet, he tenaciously held on, heaving his weight forward to keep Gryphon unbalanced and partially pinned to the ground.
“Any mikro now!” He grunted and spat some of Gryphon’s fur out of his mouth.
“Got it!” Gwen lunged forward and brought her plunger down hard against Gryphon’s neck, aiming for the back of the ear. It was clear she hit her mark as Gryphon let out a pitiable moan, his eyes rolled back to show the white again, and he slumped under Ben’s weight.
“Little help here?” Ben lifted his head from Gryphon’s side and wrinkled his nose.
“Uh.” Ivan approached and crouched next to Gryphon. “You need to undig your fingers from his ribs.”
“Like that’s easy. Cramping!”
Prairie dropped to her knees next to Ivan and reached her hand towards Ben’s. “Is it your right or left that’s locked?”
“Uh,” Ben wiggled the fingers of his left hand, pulling them back from Gryphon’s abdomen. When he tried to do the same with the right, the hand on which his arm was still pinned beneath Gryphon, they barely twitched. “Right.”
“Okay. I’m going to slide my hand into your palm.” Prairie rubbed her hands together then did just that. “This would be better if I had a needle, but I may be able to release it with pressure.”
No sooner had she said this than Ben’s fingers snapped back forcefully, like a rubber band popping.
“There we go.” Prairie smiled and settled back on her heels. “Now we should move Gryphon as quickly as we can towards the exit if that’s what we want to do?”
She tipped her head to the side to look at Ivan as she asked the latter.
“Yeah. That’s still the plan.” Ivan moved towards Gryphon’s head, then eyed Ben. “Can you get out from under him so we can get him on his back?”
Ben took zero time to assess that. “That would be a solid no. But, I can do this.”
This being releasing the grip of his legs so he lay as relaxed as one could lie relaxed with what had to be hundreds of pounds resting on his leg and arm. “Can you roll him forward?”
Ivan eyed Gryphon then positioned himself at the creature’s back. “Dempsey? Can you get the pelvis region.”
Dempsey gave Gryphon a look that involved a lot of tight lip and attitude, but moved to do just that. Once he was in position Ivan said, “Put your hands in that area and when I say push we’ll roll him forward.”
Dempsey placed his hands on Gryphon’s lightly haired lower back and rolled his eyes at Ivan. “Any mikro now.”
“Okay.” Ivan planted one hand between Gryphon’s shoulder blades and the other on his shoulder then said, “Now.”
Together Ivan and Dempsey rolled Gryphon forward. Prairie hurried to brace him from the front so he flowed gently onto his chest instead of smacking face first into the grass. Siobhan hurried forward and grabbed Ben’s shoulders, yanking him back and away from Gryphon. She started to stumble back onto her butt but Gwen got in behind her and bolstered her.
Once Ben was clear of Gryphon Siobhan left the disposition of their target to Dempsey and Ivan who were quietly directing each other in lifting the supine form of the Beast, instead focusing her attention on Ben.
“Any injuries?”
“Besides being crushed under that?” Ben made a vague gesture to where Prairie had just moved to grab Gryphon’s lower legs while Dempsey and Ivan took up the former positions at his waist and shoulders.
“Yes.” Siobhan’s tone was droll. “Besides that.”
Ben rolled to his feet then rotated his shoulders before stretching first one arm and then the other forward and across his torso. “Hurt everywhere.”
“That I can fix.” Siobhan popped loose a cure-all from her bag strap and held it out to Ben who wasted no time in popping the top and quaffing the mixture. Almost instantly the ashen tone of his skin took on a healthier color.
“He’s twitching!”
Ivan’s call had Gwen snapping her head in the direction Ivan, Dempsey, and Prairie were moving as fast as their legs could carry them and hundreds of pounds of unconscious Beast. A quick look at Siobhan garnered a chin jerk in that direction, all the direction Gwen needed to scurry in that direction and carefully put her hands under Gryphon’s head.
Her “ugh, yuck, gross,” carried. Despite that she cradled Gryphon’s head with all the care a mother gave its baby, her hands steady though her face kept flinching.
“Doing what I can to keep him under but he’s really resisting,” she called, “If we could move faster?”
Siobhan, Kim, Patti, Dan, and Abe hurried to keep up with the others, with Ben following slightly slower behind, as they carried Gryphon through the rose garden and towards the door in the castle wall they’d entered through.
“Do we assume he’ll come out of it once he’s out of here?” Kim asked.
“If not we’ll figure it out then,” Siobhan replied.
“Won’t work.”
At Dan’s comment Siobhan flicked a look over her shoulder at him. “What won’t work?”
Dan jerked his chin towards the door Ivan and crew were approaching.
“Why?”
Abe stared in that direction with unfocused eyes. “Because he’s still part of the story.”
With her attention on Abe and Dan, Siobhan stumbled over the corner of one of the raised beds. Patti cupped her elbow, keeping her upright.
Siobhan frowned. Flicked a glance at Kim, who shrugged. “I think he might be right. I don’t see what they do but-” Kim squinted in the direction of the door. “don’t you have a feeling that something isn’t done? Something in the air.”
She tipped her head back to look at the sky and nearly tripped over a rosebush. Patti snatched out her other hand and steadied her. Then Patti stiffened, blinked, and words from Something in the Air by Phil Collins flowed from her lips.
Siobhan went still, then turned her gaze on Patti. “Patti? Is there something we need to know?”
Patti shook her head. “No. Just,” she shrugged, “lyrics came to my head.” She frowned, cocked her head, appeared to listen to something the rest couldn’t hear. Then she looked down at Sass, who had shoved their upper body out of the window of their house and was craning to look up at Patti. There was silent communication, or something, between them, then Patti shook her head again. “Not Magick. Just lyrics.”
Siobhan released a breath she hadn’t realizes she was holding. Not that she wouldn’t welcome Patti’s Magick giving them a message if a message was needed, but boy she really was hoping they didn’t need it. Please, she sent out in the world, make this an easy one! Yeah, the corner of her mouth ticked upwards, like that would happen.
At the door now, the group stopped. Ivan shifted so he could cradle the weight of Gryphon’s upper half in a single arm, then grabbed the latch on the castle door and tried to lift it. Siobhan and the others in the rear reached them just as Ivan cursed. “It doesn’t move at all. It might as well be a solid part of the door.”
“Yep,” Dan remarked, the closest to “told you” he was likely to go.
“So, what should we-” Dempsey’s question cut off as Gryphon gave a mighty kick that flung Prairie into a rosebush, then air kick flipped out of Dempsey’s hold, slipping from Ivan’s looped arm and landed both hooves firmly planted on the grass and his lips curled back on a sneer.
Gwen, left holding air, fell back against the castle wall. “We need to run. I mean, now!”
She made this statement as Gryphon flung is arms out, claws extended, fell back onto one leg, and began to whirl, doing a transformed human’s rendition of a blender blade. Dempsey didn’t have time to flip his shield off hit back and into position so he just danced out of the way with more grace than anyone would expect of a guy his size. Fear made a dancer of many a person.
The Tasmanian Devil had nothing on Gryphon. In fact Gryphon had something on that cartoon character being he was bigger and had longer claws and seemed real determined to ginsu knife the crap out of everyone in his range. Like this was not a tantrum. This was mayhem given human(ish) form.
Patti squared up in front of Siobhan and Kim, shield out. Dan and Abe formed up behind Siobhan and Kim.
“Anyone have anything?” Siobhan called out.
“I’ll try a binding,” Dan offered.
“To what purpose?” Kim watched as Ivan, Dempsey and Ben made a triangle around Gryphon with Dempsey. Dempsey said something and the shield he held before him began to glow, drawing Gryphon’s attention and buying Ivan time to strap on his shield gauntlet and unfold it to its full circumference. She narrowed her eyes on the configuration, then turned to Dan. “If the door is closed what’s the use of holding him?”
While Dan chewed that over Prairie and Gwen shifted around behind the perimeter formed by Dempsey, Ivan, and Ben. Prairie chewed her lip and craned her neck, examining Gryphon from cloven hoof to the bush of hair bursting around his head in a mane. Gwen held her hand out and she had a look of concentration on her face but if she was doing something with her Magick it was hard to tell as Gryphon didn’t hesitate or flag in his attempts to clock someone with his swinging arms.
“Here Beastie, Beastie, Beastie!” Ben darted in and poked Gryphon’s shoulder, darting out of reach of the arm Gryphon threw at him.
“Damn it, Ben,” Kim muttered, then raised her hands to around rib height out at her sides, fingers splayed, then made a sweeping gesture, turning cupped palms upwards and pulling her arms in while exhaling a loud breath. A sharp breeze whipped the hairs on Gryphon’s legs then picked up the longer bush of hair doing somewhat of a job of concealing his naked groin.
“Whoa!” Both Ivan and Dempsey averted their eyes as Gryphon’s proportionate male anatomy was revealed in all its considerable glory.
“Whoa!” Gwen’s utterance held a wealth of appreciation where the guys’ was more a ‘damn, not enough bleach’ “whoa”.
Neither Gwen nor Dempsey and Ivan really had much time to be awed or threatened by the display as the breeze became a wind and the wind picked Gryphon up to float about a foot from the ground.
Kim made a washing machine swirl with her palms and her breath went puff, puff, puff. Gryphon began to twist, twist, twist in time until a small whirlwind was spinning him slowly in the triangle of space between Ben, Dempsey, and Ivan.
“Figure,” puff, “something,” puff, “out,” puff, Kim panted. “Only,” puff, “so,” puff, “much,” puff “breath”.
Siobhan lunged to brace her hands against Kim’s back as she swayed with the last puff.
“The answer doesn’t seem to be get him out,” Dempsey yelled, gritting his eyes against the dirt that the wind lifting Gryphon flung at his face.
“Yet,” Dan said.
Shifting to keep her hands flat on Kim’s back, Siobhan turned her head to look at Dan.
“The story isn’t finished.”
“Okay.” Siobhan wet her lips. “How do we finish it?”
Dan shrugged. “Don’t know.”
“Woooooo.” Kim swayed, her eyes losing focus and sending a sense of urgency through Siobhan.
“Fine.” Siobhan shifted her attention over each of the members of the group. “We split up.”
“You said splitting up bad,” Gwen said in a voice with little color.
“I think he’s going to continue to chase us and we’re going to waste our time keeping him busy. If there’s something we’re missing we need to find it and that means splitting up so he chases some of us and others search. Dan?” Siobhan turned her attention to the taciturn man. “Get ready to bind him when Kim drops him. It won’t hold but it will probably hold long enough for us to get out of his reach.”
Dan nodded and reached into his vest pocket to pull out a notebook. Eyes still on Siobhan he began running his thick finger tip down the edge of the paper, stopping at a particular page and flipping the page open to it.
Siobhan focused back on Kim whose pants were getting weaker. “Kim, get ready to drop him.”
Kim turned bleary eyes on Siobhan and gave a wobbly nod.
“Search team?”
“Me,” Ben called from Gryphon’s far side. “Traps.”
Siobhan took this to mean in case of traps, made sense. Kim’s back started heaving under Siobhan’s hand. Time was about up.
“Ben, me, Kim, Prairie, and-” She snapped a look at Abe. “Abe, can your Magick do anything to slow him?”
“Maybe?” Abe’s answer was timid but maybe had to be good enough.
“Patti on search. Abe, Dan, Gwen, Ivan, and Dempsey on distraction.”
“Got it!” Ivan called back.
Dempsey extinguished the glow in his shield and strapped it on his back. “Set.”
Abe eyed the slowly spinning Beast, bit their lip, then nodded. “Okay.”
Dempsey gave a sharp nod then looked at Gwen who was clearly flagging. “We’ve got this.”
“Okay.” Siobhan looked back at Dan, “On three.”
She tapped Kim on the back. “On three.”
Kim shook her head, blinked slowly, and clearly forced her eyes to uncross.
“Three!”
Kim flipped her palms down and swept her arms out, like pushing aside clothes in a closet. The wind spinning Gryphon abruptly stopped, dropping him to the ground. Before Gryphon could get his hooves under him Dan snapped out, “Sex is full of lies. The body tries to tell the truth. But, its usually too battered with rules to be heard and bound with pretenses so it can hardly move.” Looking up from the page he focused on Gryphon where he crouched in preparation of rising, intent in his hard stare, “We cripple ourselves with lies. Jim Morrison.”
As soon as the words left Dan’s lips Gryphon’s limbs seized, arms going to his sides and hooves clunking dully as they snapped together.
Dan closed the book, shifted his attention to the group around Gryphon and snapped, “Go!”
And they went, Ben darting from Gryphon’s side and making a beeline for the entrance to the maze, Prairie quickly falling in behind him, arms pumping. Patti clapped her hand over Sass’ house and ran hard for the maze. Kim shook herself and started after them, passing Dan as he shoved his book back into his pocket and strode forward to join the group around Gryphon. Siobhan spared one last glance for the others who ranged around Gryphon, their eyes assessing his bound form.
Ivan turned and looked at Siobhan. “Go. Soon as the bindings seem to stop holding we’ll take off. We’ll buy you as much time as we can.”
Siobhan spared one last look for each of her friends, then gave a sharp nod and took off for the entrance of the maze.
Enter The Woods 