18. Gross. #2
With a single beating of my wings, air currents flung me aloft.
I opened my beak and let loose a screech before searching the docks below for Ben and Breckenan.
I spotted the pair diving through a maze of shipping containers along the pier.
I dove in their direction, tucking my wings close before swooping out of the dive and streaking upwards.
Determined to be the one to draw first blood, I angled for the back of Breckenan’s head, buzzed past Ben’s ear, and raked the bastard with my talons, scraping the sharp tips against the hard bone of his skull.
My prey staggered and shrieked.
I zipped upwards, banked, and prepared for another dive.
Breckenan darted into a narrow row of containers, forcing me to gain altitude to follow him from above. An older man in dark clothing with graying hair waited down the walkway, and when Breckenan reached him, the newcomer waved his hand.
Darkness enveloped the area below and Ben vanished from view.
I screeched my fury.
My father echoed my cry, and he dove before flapping his wings and striking at the swirling miasma. An eruption of sunlight and fire burst forth, shattering the inky void and leaving behind bubbly motes of purple and black energy.
Those faded, leaving a smoky haze in their wake.
Ben staggered to a halt, shaking his head to clear it while our prey fled deeper into the port city.
The rage over having to choose between safeguarding Ben and putting an end to Breckenan burned within me. A still and quiet part of me recognized the truth: should I stop to attend to my friend and my husband’s right hand vampire, many more might suffer or die.
Hoping for the best but preparing for the worst, I chased after the two who fled through the container stacks, gaining altitude for a better view of those I pursued.
The narrow pathways between containers wouldn’t save them.
Nothing would, not now.
Later, I would grovel to Ben for making the difficult decision of leaving him to recover on his own. First, I would eliminate Breckenan’s associate; if his summoned darkness could knock Ben out of the fight for any period of time, he was a threat.
Some problems were easier to solve than others.
I waited for the pair to come to an intersection, one large enough for the dock machinery to pass through. I dove, focused my attention on the man’s brown eyes, and aimed for his face.
Blind men screaming in agony couldn’t concentrate enough to work their vile magic.
My talons sank into his soft flesh and scraped against bone. Just as desired, he screamed, flailing about. While tempted to stab him with the curved tip of my beak, I beat my wings and took to the air.
Breckenan spat curses and lunged for me.
My father swooped in, and like me, he pumped his wings so he could bring his talons, larger than my entire body by a notable margin, into play.
The vampire yelped and backpedaled.
Then, as Breckenan was wise, he left his companion and fled.
My father wasted no time, and with a single strike, drove his beak through the top of his prey’s head and waited for the body to slump to the ground before taking to the air once more in pursuit of the man who’d ruined so much of my life and had undermined my father’s hopes for my future.
I hesitated long enough to check on Ben, relieved when my husband made his appearance.
Together, Ben and Emerick would be fine, giving me the freedom to continue my hunt and bring about the end of my living nightmare.
Upon realizing we hunted him from the ground and the air, Breckenan attempted to shapeshift to escape us.
His transformation into a rat, a rather large one with a patchy coat, would have reduced me to fits of hysterical laughter any other time.
How appropriate that his other form be that of a rodent, a vermin scuttling through the docks.
I wondered if he remembered a brood of cats hunted him, for both Emerick and Ben had taken on their fur coats to join the hunt. I questioned what magic was afoot, as both of Ben’s dinosaur bones and Emerick’s Bible floated after the pair.
My new weapons had shifted with me, and I was aware of them as a soothing warmth among my feathers, waiting to be brought forth again to strike our foe.
Unfortunately for Breckenan, his size barred him from scampering under any of the containers, nor could his paws get purchase on the metal. He darted down the street, heading for the city proper.
I followed, and the first time he made the mistake of venturing into the open, I swooped, caught him in my talons, and carried him skyward, hauled him about fifty feet up, and dropped him for the joy of listening to him squeal.
His preternatural nature spared him from death upon smacking into the asphalt, much to my disappointment.
The impact staggered him, and screeching, I went for him again.
After the third such drop, my husband and Ben caught up with us. My father observed from the edge of a nearby shipping container, fluffing his feathers.
The two panthers hissed and swatted at each other, likely trying to claim rights to finish off the dastardly rat.
As they dawdled and my father settled in to observe, I swooped down, caught Breckenan yet again, hauled him over the bickering cats, and dropped him. The rat beaned Ben on the head.
In the time it took me to wing my way to my father and land, Ben had captured the rat in his mouth and shook his head much like an alligator whipping the life out of its supper. Some vile magic kept Breckenan alive, and he screamed.
I questioned why he didn’t transform, which might buy him a few more minutes of life.
My father preened my feathers, taking care with the tip of his beak, which could skewer me from skull to tail feathers with little difficulty.
After a few moments, he transformed into his human shape, sitting on the edge of the shipping container while staring down at my husband and Ben.
“I wonder how long the necromancy imbuing him will last before it breaks and he perishes.”
I wondered, too. As hands and the ability to speak English would come in useful, I concentrated, finding the process of shifting out of my avian form even trickier than leaving the warm comforts of my feline shape.
Much like my father, I sat on the edge of the container, peering down. “What are we wagering?”
“Two weeks,” my father replied. “Should I win, I shall spirit you away on a family trip so you can see places of significance for the family. You can even bring that man of yours should he be incapable of lasting that long without you.”
I snickered at that. “He’s incapable. He struggles when I leave to have myself an early evening snack of miscreant.”
With a smile, my father leaned forward for a better view of Ben toying with the rat who’d caused us so many problems. “It is as it should be. I believe he’ll last perhaps ten minutes before they figure out how to break the shield protecting his life.”
Those ten minutes would be an eternity for Breckenan, well deserved as far as I was concerned. I considered Ben, who’d finished treating the rat as a toy to whip around and had dropped him to the ground with a paw pinning him down. The tips of his claws dug into the rat without piercing his flesh.
“Forty-five minutes,” I guessed. “And not only do we go on a family vacation, we send Ben on a vacation, preferably with his new lady.”
“I can pay for his honeymoon should he be blessed with a bride should you win. And where will we be going on our family vacation?”
“Somewhere rustic, simple, and disconnected from the rest of the world,” I requested. “I could use the peace.”
“I know just the place. Now, which one of us shall be the victor?”
I checked my phone, chuckling at the absurd number of texts I’d received in the past thirty minutes. I opened the stopwatch feature of the clock app and pressed the button. “We’ll find out soon enough.”