Chapter 31
John
Frigid wind whipped by the cliff, swirling around him. After he’d seen everyone back to the hotel last night, he’d gone back out and sat on a park bench, looking out at the darkness and thinking. He’d tossed and turned when he did finally turn in, rising again early this morning.
Now he stood at the edge of the world, it felt like, looking out into the abyss as flying creatures gathered overhead to participate in a three-cairn—or whatever—training session led by a mysterious and intensely powerful creature that wasn’t completely gargoyle.
What else he was, nobody knew. They also didn’t seem to care.
Not about his past, and not about Nessa’s, or Austin’s or Jessie’s or John’s.
He felt the danger approaching from behind. His pack had learned never to do that. This convocation had no such qualms. Then again, he no longer attacked first, and asked questions later like in his youth.
The phoenix, a shorter woman of Asian descent, stopped beside him wearing a purple muumuu. He’d seen a great many of those this morning, all worn by the convocation and heckled by the resident gargoyles.
“You don’t have wings.” She looked at him expectedly.
He nearly checked to make sure he wasn’t wearing a cape. “No.”
“You are standing very close,” she said, pointedly looking at the ground between his toes and the edge of the cliff. “If you fly off, you’ll die.”
The words sounded like a threat, but the tone didn’t quite match.
He kept his face blank. “Yes, that is very likely.”
“Unlike me, you don’t come back to life.”
Was it a threat? He didn’t know if he could take a phoenix, but he’d certainly give it a go.
Remembering what Tristan had said the night before, he rolled with it. “This is true. Must be nice to have the assurance of not really dying.”
“Oh, I die.” She nodded adamantly. “It really hurts, most of the time. I hate doing it. But it’s not forever, you know what I mean?
Also, I have wings. I can shift mid-fall.
You? A gust of wind would blow you off the edge.
You’d flap your arms and flail, but eventually, you’d go splat. You wouldn’t come back from that.”
His eye was twitching. He still couldn’t tell if it was a threat or not. The increased adrenaline was making his head spin. It wasn’t as easy to roll with it as he’d originally thought.
“Correct,” he said, feigning calm.
“Right. So maybe you should move back from the edge so you don’t go splat.
” She put up her hands. “Hollace said you were a past alpha, and I shouldn’t tell you what to do because you wouldn’t listen, but this is just pointing out the obvious.
Jessie would be awfully sad if you fell off the cliff, that’s all. And Ulric said it might get windy. So.”
Her eyes flicked to the edge and back to him again.
A grin pulled at his lips. It wasn’t a threat, at all. The opposite, she was concerned for his safety. Moreover, she was worried about how his death might affect Jessie. He’d grossly misjudged her. Comically so.
The smile almost bubbled into laughter, and he took a large step back. “How’s that?”
She judged the distance, about five feet, and then the wind howling past. She shrugged. “From there, you’d at least have a fighting chance.”
“That’s all we can hope for, in the end.” He was joking, but she nodded solemnly.
The chuckles broke through.
“Why are you here, by the way?” he asked before she could step away. “Why are you signing on to help with this mage thing?”
She put her hands into the pockets of her muumuu and swished the garment around. “These are great for air flow, by the way. You should get one.” She hesitated and then gave him a poignant look. “If you want.”
His chuckles grew.
“I signed on to help Jessie,” she continued. “She summoned me. I felt her need, and I answered. When I answered, she met the challenge—Austin Steele did, actually, but that counts—and gained my approval. I’m doing what I agreed to do.”
“Help her.”
“Yes.”
“But not Austin?”
She pulled a hand free and used a finger to reach through her glasses, where there didn’t seem to be a lens, to rub her eye.
“Helping her is helping Austin Steele. Helping them is helping shifters and the magical world at large.” She tilted her head and looked up at the sky.
“Helping them is helping restore stability in the magical world. I’m not much of a philosopher, but that seems about right, doesn’t it?
One group—the mages—have too much power. That can’t be allowed.”
Thunder rolled across the sky.
“Oops.” She gave him a sheepish smile. “I’m late. Tristan said I could blast the resident gargoyles if I didn’t kill them or sever any limbs. Indigo said she’d help so that I could go a little wild. The Guardians deserve it, honestly. I better get to it.”
She stripped off her muumuu, handed it to John, shifted, and launched into the sky. Her fire warmed his face as she took off, trailing after her.
A phoenix. He had just talked to a phoenix and was about to watch that legendary creature participate in a routine training. His sisters would not believe the turn his life had taken.
Another presence grabbed ahold of his awareness, this one not dangerous. Not at present, anyway.
Nessa walked up wearing a warm coat and fuzzy pants. Her hair, highlighted by the sun in golds and reds, was hanging down along her beautiful face. Her bloodshot eyes and the sluggish way she moved indicated she was feeling the effects of last night.
He remembered her confessions to Tristan, and the pain that had laced every word. The haunted way she had laid bare her past. It could’ve been him recounting some of the life he’d endured. Some of the experiences he hadn’t created but had been forced to handle.
And you chose, and choose, to be a hero.
He hadn’t felt like a hero at the time, but his sisters would say he was. His pack.
“I came out to watch the training and saw you standing here on your own.” She took a sip of something steaming in the mug she held between her gloved hands.
“How’re you feeling?”
She scoffed. “Like I got run over by a truck. I didn’t want to ask Jessie or Indigo to heal me before the battle.”
“Battle?”
She did bunny ears with one hand. “Training. It’ll probably get rough. Jessie seems very sweet, but then that gargoyle gets involved and she…isn’t so sweet.”
He slipped his hands into his pockets. A comfortable silence fell between them. The sound of wings rode the breeze, and then a beautiful, sparkly pinky-purple creature rose into the sky. Light trailed its movements.
“Is that…” He furrowed his brow, looking at the wings. They were almost dainty in comparison to the enormity of the gargoyles, especially as she got closer to the biggest of them all, Tristan.
“Jessie, yeah. Pretty, right?”
He nodded. Very. “Can’t fly as fast, I take it?”
“No. Nor for as long. She has to get help. That’s one of the things outside gargoyles look down on her for. Her team flies her around, essentially. You’ll see. But it’s a small price to pay for what she can do with magic.”
The companionable silence drifted between them again.
He let it lengthen as certain movements from Tristan’s wings elicited sound.
The gargoyles took shape in the sky, almost forming little pods within a larger web structure.
John could immediately discern what Tristan was going for and marveled at the organizational dexterity.
“Have you ever seen gargoyles battle?” she asked him.
“No.” Another wave of gargoyles came in, this faction clumsy by comparison.
“They’re fun to watch, graceful when they soar and bank, but then they ram into each other, and it’s so incredibly brutal.” Her lips formed a smile against the edge of her mug. “It’s cool.”
Tristan’s wings made different sounds, directing the newcomers, but these didn’t seem to be getting the idea. Most of them were bigger than the convocation’s gargoyles, and probably faster fliers, but they weren’t as well trained. They didn’t have the discipline.
“Tristan came from another cairn, right?” John asked.
“Yeah. We did a raid on them a month or so ago—it’s like a mock battle with no casualties.
Kinda like what this will probably become but they won’t steal anything after.
Jessie made a show of knocking them out of her way, and then Tristan and his team hammered them.
Hammered them.” Her smile was jubilant and her body language conveyed pride.
“They made that cairn leader eat his words after all the crap he’d talked about Jessie and Tristan. ”
She explained that Tristan’s mysterious past made him seem less reliable in gargoyle culture, which reduced his status. Jessie was the same.
“Except he had status with that other cairn leader, right?” John confirmed.
“Yes. And somehow didn’t after he’d left.” She rolled her eyes. “It’s all bullshit, this status thing. I get the merits of stability within a cairn, or pack for that matter, but the politics are so obviously dragging Jessie down. She has to break through that glass ceiling.”
“Austin does, too, but in a different way,” John murmured. “Same sort of politics, there.”
“Bullshit,” she murmured again.
And they were doing all of this to help others. They were going through all this hassle, putting themselves out there time and again, getting talked about or laughed at, to create a safe place for magical people at large. It was noble. Selfless.
“I thought I knew all there was to know about the shifter world,” he said. “My sisters never mentioned a mounting threat. I feel like I suddenly don’t know anything at all.”
A burst of magic rocked the sky. It cut through John and thrummed up his spine. It seemed to say pay attention.
He froze with the sheer power of will it took to resist that command.
“Was that Jessie?” he asked.
“Yeah. Tristan couldn’t get Gerard’s gargoyles in line so she’s taking over.”
More bursts of magic thrummed now, not as potent, all with directives.