Chapter 7
“N ow just a second,” Paige said as the harpy wrapped her fingers around Paige. She squatted before launching herself into the air with a shrieking battle cry.
“Paige!” Dewey called after her. He flitted around in the air, trying to avoid another harpy’s grasp, but lost the battle.
Wind blasted her face as the harpy’s massive wings propelled the forward. The ground sped past below them in a dizzying array.
They sailed along like a bird of prey before the harpy banked sharply to the left. She crashed through a thicket of leaves and landed on a thick branch.
Paige gaped around at the village floating above the forest floor. Bridges and stairs connected massive nests in the nearby trees. Another harpy landed near her captor, cocking her head as she stared at Paige.
Her captor lunged toward it with a loud caw.
The two pecked at each other, fluttering their wings.
Her assailant drove the other bird away.
She settled her riled feathers back into place and side-stepped across the branch to a rope bridge.
She tottered across it toward a large nest. After hoping inside, she tugged a cage closer and swung the weaved wooden door open.
She shoved Paige inside and slammed the door closed, tying it shut with a vine.
The harpy let go of the cage, and it swung high above the ground, twirling and wobbling.
“Oh,” Paige groaned as she whirled wildly. She clung to the sticks making up her new prison and squeezed her eyes closed, hoping the act settled her stomach.
Her belly turned over again as she twirled in the opposite direction. Her lips tugged down into a frown, and she swallowed hard as bile crept into the back of her throat.
Another violent pivot forced the food she’d eaten early to make a nasty reappearance. She coughed and choked as she vomited, the foul liquid splattering onto the ground far below her.
The swaying slowed, and she settled back into a seated position, leaning against the cage’s wooden bars as she pressed a palm to her clammy forehead.
“That was disgusting,” a snarky voice said.
Paige snapped her eyes open and searched the area around her. She found Dewey dangling in another cage nearby.
“Dewey!” Paige called, pulling herself up to her knees. The motion caused the cage to lurch. She plopped back onto her haunches, bracing herself.
“Stop moving. I don’t want to see you puke again.” He stuck his purple tongue out with a disgusted grimace.
“So sorry my vomiting grossed you out.”
“It did,” Dewey said. “Nice job getting us caught, by the way.”
“What?” Paige cried. “I did my best! Those things are huge. We didn’t stand a chance.”
“If you would have paid attention when Devon and I tried to warn you.”
Paige let her jaw hang open. “Me? If you and Devon wouldn’t have acted like idiots and made up lies, we would be happily on our way to your parents’ village now.”
“Oh, sure, sure, blame us because you thought there were tree mages in the rainforest.”
“I didn’t say tree mages. That just sounds stupid.”
“Well, so did what you said,” Dewey answered, crossing his arms.
“Fine!” Paige shouted, matching his stance.
“Fine!” he yelled back and spun away from her.
Paige puckered her lips and stared down at the bottom of her cage. She fiddled with her glasses as she forced herself not to say anything to her fellow inmate.
“Hey, Paige?”
She raised her eyes, finding him staring at her through his bars. “Yeah?”
He wrinkled his nose. “I’m sorry.”
“Me, too,” she said.
“Let’s not fight. We’re in enough trouble as it is.”
“I know. We need to figure out a way out of this.”
“Yeah,” Dewey said, with a nod. “And fast. Before she eats us.”
Paige shook her head, glancing around the village. “Why does this stuff keep happening to us?”
“Because we’re terrible at stuff?” Dewey suggested.
Paige glared at him. “We’re not that terrible.”
Dewey shrugged. “I mean, I doubt Drucinda’s ever been in a harpy pen.”
“Please don’t bring up her name. My stomach just settled.” Paige tugged against the woven branches forming the bars of her cell. After a few attempts, she puffed out a breath. “Can’t budge ’em.”
“No, I doubt we will. Harpies are excellent weavers.”
“Can you chew through them?” Paige asked.
Dewey screwed up his face. “Ew, no. I’m not a dog.”
“You’re kind of close to it.”
Dewey’s teal features turned purple, and he glared at Paige. “Really?”
“You’ve got big teeth!”
“You’ve got a pretty big set, too. Why don’t you chew through the bars.”
Paige wrinkled her nose. “Fine!”
She bit into one of the sticks before she leaned away from it. “Ow, these are hard as rocks.”
“Probably treated,” Dewey said.
“And you let me bite it,” Paige retorted as she sank onto her haunches again and crossed her arms. “I could have hurt my jaw.”
“Serves you right for calling me a dog.”
“I did not call you a dog. I said you were dog-like with big teeth.”
Paige sighed, covering her face with her hands. “We need to stop arguing and figure out a way to get out of here before we get eaten.”
“We’re stuck here, Paige. Face it. We’re going to be dinner for a harpy.”
“We’ve gotten out of more than a few tight situations before. We can do it again.”
“You and what army?” Dewey said, plopping down to sit. “I’m going to hang out over here and try to relax for my last few hours on Earth.”
Paige slumped to the side, propping herself up on her hand as she tried to work out a solution. Her brow furrowed, and she shot a glance at Dewey. “Where’s Devon?”
“Probably long gone. Slipped into the wilds of the jungle, where he’ll live out his days eating berries and communing with the jungle animals. He’ll grow a beard and still be impossibly handsome. And his abs will be even more ripped than they are right now. And then he’ll–”
“Paige!” a voice hissed.
“Shh,” Paige said, hushing Dewey. “Someone called my name.”
“Yeah, okay, sure they did.”
“Paige!” the voice called again.
“There it is again.”
Dewey sat up, wrapping his paws around the bars of his cage and staring at her.
“Hello?” Paige called out.
“Down here,” the voice answered.
“Who is it?”
“It’s me, Devon. Who else would it be?”
“Devon!” Paige shouted.
“Yeah,” he breathed. “Keep your voice down. We don’t want to attract any attention.”
Paige searched the ground below her, causing her cage to wobble. She blew out a shaky breath as she tried to stabilize it. “Where are you?”
“Here!” he called.
Paige spotted movement near the base of the tree that held them. Devon waved a hand from around the thick trunk.
“Oh, Devon. Am I glad to see you,” she said, shimmying around to face him.
“That’s a first,” Dewey added.
“You need to help us. We’re trapped up here.”
“Can’t you break the bars?” Devon called.
“No,” Paige said, with a shake of her head.
He flicked his gaze to Dewey. “Can you chew through them?”
Dewey heaved a sigh, his face turning purple again. “No, Chiseled Chin, I can’t.”
Devon held his hands up in mock defeat. “Just asking.”
“You need to find a knife or a machete or something,” Paige said. “Then we can hack through them.”
“Right. Uh, okay,” he said, glancing around the village. “I’ll try. Might take me a while. Are you sure you can’t break them?”
“Just go find something, Devon,” Paige snapped, with a shake of her head.
“Okay, I’m going, I’m going.”
He disappeared around the tree’s trunk.
Paige collapsed back onto her haunches again, with a sigh. “I guess now we wait.”
“Yep. And hope he finds something soon.”
Paige drummed her fingers on her thigh. “I really hope he finds something to get us out of this.”
“I don’t know,” Dewey said with a shake of his head, plopping back to lay on his back.
“Why?”
“I mean, come on, Paige, look at him. He’s all looks. Plus, he’s a top feeder, born with a silver spoon in his mouth. He’s hardly scrappy. He’s just not built for this.”
“Seriously?” Paige crinkled her brow as she adjusted her glasses. “He seems kind of resourceful. I mean, he orchestrated a car crash to kidnap me.”
“It’s all an illusion. He has the illusion of being capable. It’s the chiseled jaw and carefully trimmed stubble. It screams capable. But sadly, I think you’ll find he’s just a pretty face. There’s nothing–”
“I’m back,” Devon called, puffing from his efforts. “I found a knife and a machete. Which one do you want to try first?”
“Just a pretty face, huh?” Paige asked as she rose to her knees and glanced down at her choices. “Uh, the machete looks like a sure bet, but I’m not sure how I’ll get it. It’s pretty big. So, maybe the knife.”
“Okay,” Devon said, with a nod. He wound his arm back as he shifted his gaze to her. “Catch.”
“What?” Paige squealed. “No! Don’t do that. Do not throw a knife at me.”
“I’m not throwing it at you. I’m throwing it to you.”
“I can’t catch a knife. Are you crazy?”
Devon stared down at the knife in his hands before he offered her a confused glance. “Well, what do you want me to do?”
“Pretty face. Told ya,” Dewey said.
Paige gave him an icy glare. “You’ll have to climb up here and hand it to me or saw through the bars yourself.”
“I can’t climb up there. These lower branches won’t support my weight.” He tugged on one, and it bowed to the ground easily.
“Run up the tree,” Dewey offered.
“What?” he asked, crinkling his brow again.
“Get a running start and scale the tree.”
Devon stared at him with a confused expression as she slid his eyes side to side. “Ahh.”
“Just fly. Go beast mode and fly up.”
“Oh, right. Yeah. Okay, that might work.”
Paige shook her head as she sat back on her heels. “I can’t believe I have to think of everything.”
“Sorry, I’ve never been in this situation before,” Devon said as he prepared for his transformation.
Dewey shot a pointed glance at Paige. “Told you. Richie Rich hasn’t struggled a day in his life.”
“I mean, I wouldn’t say that,” Devon shot back.
“Will you two stop bickering? I’d like to get out of here before our harpy friend returns and kills us.”
“I don’t think she’s our friend, Paige. In fact, quite the opposite.”
“I know that.”
“Then why did you say it?”
Paige huffed out a sigh. “Never mind. Let’s just focus on getting out of here.”
Below them, Devon completed his transformation and stretched his wings as his long fingers curled around the machete handle.
He flapped them, rising from the ground in a lazy dance before he finally hovered at their height.
He reached out, using a claw to snag one of the bars of Paige’s cage, and swung the machete toward her.
It whacked into one wood bar, splintering it. Paige scrambled back, drawing her knees to her chest as she tried to stay as far away from the swinging blade as possible.
“Wow, that’s…frightening,” Dewey said.
“Tell me about it,” Paige answered as Devon cracked another blow against the bar, hacking halfway through it. “This is the worst rescue ever.”
Devon grunted at her, tilting his noseless head and glaring with red eyes.
“Sorry,” Paige said, “just keep going.”
With two more swings, he hacked one bar in half and moved on to split another.
“Paige,” Dewey called, “try to bend that bar back and snap it to create an opening.”
“I’m not bending anything back while he’s swinging a machete at the bar right next to it.”
“Just trying to speed things up.”
“You speed it up when he’s hacking apart your cell,” Paige answered, with a frown.
Devon hacked through another bar and moved on to a third.
“I think one more should do it,” Paige answered. “I should be able to get out through that opening. Move on to Dewey after this one.”
Devon nodded with another grunt and finished hacking the other bar in half. He spun to fly across the space separating them when a shadow blotted out the sun.
“Uh oh,” Paige said as she tried to bend back the thick branch.
The shadow crossed again, and a screech sounded. The harpy dove toward Devon’s beast form, slicing at his wings with her claw.
He whipped around, snarling and showing his fangs. She fluttered away, lining up for another pass at him. She dove down toward him as he slashed the machete. The action caused her to veer off before she could claw him again.
She flapped her wings, rising up and letting out a screech. Within seconds, two more harpies flocked toward her. They dove toward Devon, slashing at him.
He zipped to the side, avoiding one of them, but the other caught his wing, piercing it. Red blood sprayed in the air, and he dipped toward the ground. He fought to stay up, beating one wing hard, but with the other wing hurt, he plummeted toward the ground, landing in a heap in his human form.
“Devon?” Paige called, grabbing hold of the bars and peering through them.
He rolled onto his stomach and rose to stand, reaching for the machete. The original harpy kicked it away from him before she stalked toward him and snatched him from the ground. She flew into the air and placed him in another cage, letting it swing out toward Paige and Dewey.
After eyeing her other two prizes, she launched herself off the branch near her nest and fluttered away into the village.
“Well, that’s perfect,” Dewey said. “Good going, dimples. Now we’re all trapped.”