Page 20 of The Hidden
My gryphon cuts hard to the right, away from Zeph, and we pick up speed. I’m not sure how I know, but she wants him to chase her, and as weird as I think that is, I light up with giddy satisfaction as we speed over the water in our best efforts to break the sound barrier.
“Fuck yeah, Pigeon,”I hoot in encouragement as she shows me just what we’re capable of. We move like lightning through the air, and certainty thatthisis what we’re meant for whips through me and fills me with freedom and happiness.
I can feel her preen with my appreciation, and I laugh, which creates this odd chuffing sound in my chest. It’s like my gryphon and I are separate and yet also the same. I’m not sure how to wrap my mind around it, but I can feel her independently from me, and yet we both have the ability to control the same body. I’m tempted to see just what I can do with these wings, but an image of my hand being slapped like a naughty toddler about to touch something dangerous flashes in my mind.
“Did you just…?”I trail off for a second.“Pigeon, can you talk to me?”I ask her in awe, and I swear to fuck I can feel her roll her eyes. My shocked and manic laugh fills my head, and that strange little chuffing sound starts up again in my chest. I can’t lie, gryphon laughter is fucking adorable. I suddenly feel bad for all the names I’ve called her and just how pissed I’ve been. Then I remember exactly why I’ve been so pissed, and the frustration comes surging back.
“If you can hear me and talk to me, where the hell have you been this whole time?”I demand.“I’ve needed you,”I add, neither of us missing the hurt that tints that thought. A flash of my mother’s ring pops up in my mind. It’s replaced by an image of our reflection in the water, and then I’m overwhelmed by the pain we felt when we smashed into the ground.
“You were hurt?”I ask, as it dawns on me that just because I seemed to escape that whole crash unscathed, it clearly didn’t mean that she did.“Fuck, I’m an asshole,”I confess, and that chuffing noise starts up in our chest again. I smile.“Are you laughing at me, Pigeon?”I demand playfully, and then guilt bubbles up in my chest again.“Shit, I keep calling you Pigeon which is probably rude. Do you have a name?”
Warmth fills me, and I get the odd impression that she likes the name Pigeon. Satisfaction breaks open in my chest at that thought, and I can’t help my surprise.“You like the name Pigeon?”I ask, just to be sure I’m reading this correctly. A feeling that feels like excitement but a little different fills me, and it takes me a second to wrap my mind around what my gryphon is trying to say. “You think it’s cute?”I voice as I’m trying to work it out. As the words leave my mouth, my gryphon fills me with satisfaction again. I laugh, and then an image of a sparrow pops up in my mind.“You think sparrows are cute too?”I query, not sure I’m following this strange way of communicating.
She sends me a mental picture of Zeph as a gryphon, black as coal everywhere except his eyes and a touch of gray on his beak. It takes me a minute to figure out what Zeph and a sparrow have to do with each other, and then suddenly I recall that Zeph whispered that to my gryphon when she started to wake up that day by the hot springs.
“You like it when Zeph calls you sparrow,”I confirm, and my gryphon preens.“You know he’s saying that in the same asshole way I was calling you a pigeon, right?”I inform her, not at all impressed with Zeph the way she clearly is.“I fucking knew it’s been you this whole time,”I chastise, finally confirming once and for all where the feelings of attraction have been coming from. It’s not Stockholm syndrome that’s fucking with my hormones, it’s without a doubt her.“I hate to be the one to tell you this, but your Zeph lust passed the line ofdesperate creeperweeks ago. It’s not a cute look Pigeon.”
Ryn’s face pops up in my head like a slap.“Of course you want them both,”I grumble.“Why wouldn’t you line up for the two-for-one asshole sale? What the hell are you going to do with both of them?”I scold like some out of touch parent. An image of one gryphon mounting another rises up in my mind, and it takes me a beat to figure out what it means.“For fuck’s sake, Pigeon, keep the gryphon porn to yourself, thank you very much. And just so you know—not that you’ve asked me or anything—but getting it on with those assholes is not happening.”
A growl rumbles out of my chest, and I’m sucker punched with intense anger.What the hell?I barely get the thought out before I feel her start to recede.“Pigeon, they’re dicks! Didn’t you see what they did to us, how they treat us? You should want more for yourself than a couple of cocky assholes.”My heart to heart falls on deaf ears as she continues to pull away from me. Apparently, she likes inconsiderate assholes. I suppose she wouldn’t be the first girl to have questionable taste like that.
I realize too late what happens when Pigeon retreats. One second, I’m soaring through the sky like a missile, and the next, I’m going down.
Motherfucker!
My wings, feathers, talons, tail, beak, and fur all seem to get sucked back into me. If I wasn’t suddenly pissed and diving into yet another free fall, I’d comment on the fact that shifting intomehurts a hell of a lot worse than shifting into a gryphon.
“Pigeon! Are you fucking kidding me? Get your ass back here right now!”I shout in my best angry-mom voice. Nothing happens. “This petty fucking bird!” I scream, but the wind rushing past me steals the angry words away. I fall through the misty white of a low hanging cloud and try not to panic at the sight of the water I’m about to slam into in about thirty seconds if I don’t do something. I spot trees in the distance and realize I’m almost to the other side of this massive lake. Man, how fast were we flying?
“Pigeon, please!”I plead, but she’s unfazed by my begging or the possible fall to our death. I decide if I were really going to die from this, she’d probably step in, but that does little to calm my fears about how badly this is going to hurt.
Focus, Falon! You can do this. When you laugh, she does. You can control that body too; you just have to figure it out.I focus on my wings. They’re the most vital equipment to stopping my fall, I’ll get them first and then try for the rest. I do a mental clap like I’m in a team huddle and someone just shoutedbreak.I close my eyes and do my best to ignore the looming water and the wind whipping past me. I start a steady chant ofwingsin my head as I focus on my back and recall something Ami said. “It feels like an extra sense almost, something I can tap into whenever I want, just like I can with my other senses.” His voice replays in my mind. Even though he wasn’t talking about shifting per se, I decide the same theory should work...maybe...hopefully.
A telltale tingle starts at the base of my spine and starts to move up toward my shoulder blades. I whoop with excitement as I will my wings to spring from my back. I spread them carefully, slowing my fall until I catch a perfect current and shoot up and forward. I fly by my own power, aiming for the tree line that’s crawling closer in the distance. I flap my wings to gain speed, playing tag with the wind as I glide, drop, and rise again.
“Take that, Pigeon!” I scream triumphantly into the breeze. I reach the water’s edge and soar happily over the tops of the trees on the other side of the lake. “You can shove that temper tantrum right up your a—”
Something slams into me from above. It drives me down fast toward the forest, and I fight futilely against it. A growl rumbles through me as I struggle, but Pigeon doesn’t even stir, no big surprise there. I twist and catch a peek at black feathers and a gray and black beak. I can’t see Zeph’s golden honey eyes, but I have no doubt that’s who I’m dealing with.
What is with these fuckers always trying to take me out when I’m going for a leisurely wing flap?
“Get the fuck off me,” I growl as I struggle against his strong hold, but nothing I do stops him from taking me down with him.
He swerves and dodges trees and their limbs, and I feel like we’re in some fucked up video game where we’re moving too fast through the terrain, and a tree is going to pop up at any moment, and we’ll go splat as a hugegame overpops up on the screen. I find myself chanting, “No game over,” as Zeph navigates us through the obstacles. I stop struggling, not wanting my efforts to cause me to splat myself against anything currently flashing by us. Zeph seems like he’s trying to slow down, but there’s not enough room for him to spread his wings out and angle them so that he can achieve that. I picture the flaps on an airplane and how they work, and I quickly realize that there’s not enough room for Zeph to engage his flaps.
He gradually gets lower to the ground, and I get the impression that he’s looking for a good place to crash land.
Fuck, this is going to hurt.
Two seconds after that thought goes through my head, Zeph suddenly flips us over, and we smash into the forest floor. He takes the brunt of the first hit, his back smashing into the soil and foliage. My back smashes into his chest, and the feathers there do nothing to cushion the blow. The air is knocked out of my lungs, and Zeph tries to hold me to his chest as we skid through the soil and trees. We slam into a small tree, and I’m wrenched from Zeph’s hold as he’s forced to a stop, but I keep flying forward.
A much larger tree stands in the path of my trajectory, and I can practically hear the splat as I crash into it. One of my wings crunches against the smooth trunk of the tree on impact, and an audible snap rings through me. If I had air in my lungs, I would scream from the pain. I slide down unceremoniously to the base of the tree and gasp for breath. My lungs fill, but I quickly realize what a mistake it is to try to breathe too deeply, as a stabbing pain shoots through my chest. I pant through the agony, certain my ribs are broken, my shoulder is fucked up, and I’m pretty sure I broke a wing.
I lie with my cheek pressed against the cool dirt cocooning the roots of the tree and blink through the shock and hurt. I really need to figure out this whole landing thing, because I’m over the smash and stop I seem to be doing all the time. Bare feet tromp into my line of sight, but when I try to lift my head to see who it is, agony shoots through my neck, shoulder, and wing. I rest my head back where it was, content to let the mystery of the owner of the feet remain a little longer.
“Falon, can you hear me?” Zeph asks, panic bleeding out of his voice, and he drops down in front of me. “Be okay, be okay,” I think I hear him whisper chant, but it’s hard to be sure through the ringing in my ears.
Zeph brushes my hair out of my face, and I get a clear line of sight to the huge cock hanging between his crouched thighs. I stare at it shamelessly for a couple of seconds, the soft shaft dangling from a nest of black curls, and I have the sudden urge to see if it feels as squishy as it looks. Since blinking is about the only movement that doesn’t hurt right now, I’m forced to keep my hands to myself.
