The Storm
Three Months After Hers to Keep
As far as Greta was concerned, she never had enough time to herself.
She’d lived in Las Vegas’s most exclusive and notorious sex club, La Petite Mort, for most of her adult life and somehow now lived somewhere even more chaotic—the Reyes Compound.
They made a lot of demands on her time, and on her healing talent.
Mostly she didn’t mind, but every once in a while, she had to get out of the city and away from people.
“You’re going to leave your phone on, right?” her best friend Beam said through her earbuds as she parked in the empty lot at the trailhead to Lee Canyon.
Greta chuckled. “No, I’m absolutely not leaving my phone on. Completely defeats the purpose of unplugging for a few days.”
“What if you fall and break your ankle?”
“Then I’ll heal it. I am a life witch, after all.”
On the other end of the line, Beam scoffed. “Well, what if you get lost?”
“I’m actually hoping I will get lost—that would be a nice change.” It had been much too long since she’d spent a stretch of alone time in the woods. She hoped to find some remote areas where it was dead quiet.
“You’re so weird.”
“I’m not the one who’s taken up with a satyr,” Greta shot back without missing a beat.
She would never stop giving her friend shit for that one.
Now that she’d gotten to know him and had seen for herself how devoted he was to Beam, Talon was no longer her least favorite paranormal in Clark County, and she could joke about it.
Beam huffed. “If I have to identify your body, I’m going to be so pissed at you.”
“I’ll be fine.” Greta got out of the car and took a deep breath of clean air. “If for some reason you don’t hear from me by noon on Sunday, call Karma and have her send the boys out to look for me.”
“Sunday? That’s four freaking days!”
“Love you and I’ll talk to you Sunday.” She hung up and shut off her phone before the return call she knew would come.
After tucking her now quieted phone into a pocket, she hefted her carefully-balanced pack up onto her back and fastened the strap across her chest. She glanced over the map at the head of the trail, committing the intersections of the winding paths to memory.
There was a waterfall she wanted to see, but she was hoping to get there by the most roundabout route possible.
The sign prohibiting open campfires wasn’t a surprise in this dry climate, but it was a disappointment—she’d have to make do with her small propane stove to warm up her meals rather than the real thing. She set off with birdsong for company and a big smile on her face.
Greta stayed on the main trail long enough to find the first intersection, then she veered north on a less-traveled path.
She hadn’t seen a single person. It was outside of the busy season for sure—thus the appeal of coming out here now—but she’d figured she would run into some people.
But like the parking lot, the woods were empty of human presence, and she was glad for it.
She tipped her head back to look up into the boughs of the pines above her when she paused for a drink.
Clouds were starting to gather, and the upper branches were shivering as the wind picked up.
She’d glanced at the forecast before leaving home, and it had mentioned a chance of rain, but she’d assumed that was unlikely.
This was the high desert—storms usually blustered and then moved on without dropping any precipitation.
She hadn’t even bothered to bring the rain cover for her pack.
In retrospect, that might have been a mistake.
Now that she’d stopped moving, she was getting chilly.
After checking her compass to make sure she was still headed in the right direction and taking one of her protein bars out, she set off again.
The woods here weren’t cluttered with ground cover, which was nice.
It meant she could meander off the path a bit when the mood suited her, and she did frequently to inspect plants or animal prints that caught her attention.
Once when she stopped, there was something large moving through the trees, but she never caught sight of whatever it was. She sang “Don’t Get Me Wrong” by The Pretenders for a while, in case it was more menacing than a deer. The forest grew quiet around her as her voice rose.
When, to her shock, heavy drops of rain started to fall, she was descending toward what she thought was the floor of a canyon.
She wasn’t sure which canyon, but she hoped once she got to the bottom, she might be able to figure out where she was, depending on whether there was water there.
There were few places water ran from the foothills in this area.
She paused to pull her jacket out of her pack when she started to get cold, as the rain showed no signs of stopping. It was fleece, meant for a cool and dry overnight and not waterproof, but she hoped that covering her bare arms would help a bit.
A shiver crept up her spine, and she wasn’t sure if it was the temperature or the fact that she’d felt like someone had been watching her for the last hour or so.
She hadn’t caught sight of anyone or heard voices, so she assumed some animal was following her, maybe hoping for a free meal once she made camp for the night.
Thunder boomed in the distance. Greta frowned up at the sky. Seriously? The day she finally got out of the city, it decided to rain cats and dogs. It was just her luck.
She debated hunkering down until the squall passed, but she had to figure out if this was the canyon that led to the waterfall that had caught her eye, so she kept moving downhill.
The weather got worse and worse, and so did the traction.
She slipped more than once trying to make her way to the canyon floor.
When she reached the bottom, the wind was howling through the canyon, and she could barely see an arm’s length in the sheeting rain. She had never, in all her time in the desert, seen it pour like this.
Greta pushed on through the wind, trying to get to the other side of the canyon floor. Still, the rain kept coming. While there was no water at the bottom of this canyon, she started to worry that it might be an arroyo based on the dry creek bed carved at her feet.
She tried to pick up her pace but managed to lose her footing more often without any idea if she was making headway.
The sodden ground under her feet gave way, and she slid down the rise she’d been struggling her way up.
In a panic, she reached for a branch as she crashed into it.
Pain in her ribs stole her breath, but she hung on rather than falling all the way back down.
For exactly three seconds. And then the branch cracked, and she continued her slide to the bottom of the ravine. She caught the movement of rushing water out of the corner of her eye as she flailed for something to grab on to. She was in deep trouble if she couldn’t manage to stop herself.
A strong limb locked around her waist, and she was yanked up, her bruised ribs protesting.
She stared back in horror as racing water filled the canyon.
Dark wings beat at the edge of her vision, and she was pulled upwards again.
Whatever held her barreled through the forest at a speed Greta could barely track.
She flinched when she was sure they would ram face-first into an enormous tree, but they veered at the last second.
Greta looked down at the scaly, green tail that held her.
She squeezed her eyes shut and tried to remember the prayers one of the well-meaning foster families had attempted to teach her, because she needed something to keep her mind off the peril she was in.
She wasn’t foolish enough to believe that whatever sort of creature had scooped her up was harmless—she knew too much about the dangers of the world.
She set her hand on the tail wrapping her waist. It was rough and reminded her of a snake’s body, especially the way that it wrapped around her so tightly she was afraid it would cut off her ability to breathe at any moment.
It was definitely a creature of profound magic—lifeforce pulsed under the scaled skin.
And something with wings, too? She tried to sift through her knowledge of paranormal beings to figure out what held her, but with the distraction of flying at ridiculous speed, she couldn’t bring up anything that fit.
She risked a peek to see that they were racing at the level of the treetops. Even if she had been counting to determine how long they’d been flying, there was no way to say how quickly they were moving. It seemed very fast.
They suddenly swooped low, and she had to shut her eyes again or she was likely to lose her protein bar.
As it was, her stomach lurched as they plummeted to the ground.
Greta braced herself for a hard landing, but it never came.
Instead, they glided to a gradual stop, and she was left panting for breath without her feet even touching down.
She opened her eyes and looked around. The rain was still pouring, but they were under the cover of the trees now and somewhat sheltered. The creature that held her lowered her slowly until her hiking boots met the earth once more.
Greta stumbled at the sudden return of gravity, and the tail around her stomach tightened for a brief, heart-stopping moment—just until she regained her balance—and then unwound.
She turned around to face her rescuer, wiping the sodden mess of her hair out of her eyes. He was immense, seven feet tall, bigger with his wings, which rose above him to shield him—and her—from the rain. Huge, dark wings with feathers that looked sharp enough to cut glass and a slight green sheen.
The thing that had been wrapped around her waist was a green tail covered with scales that was thicker at the base than one of her thighs and six feet long. It moved constantly, even while he was still, in a way that reminded her of a cat.