Chapter 11 Fly
Fly
“Caden! Thank God, you’re back!” Landry cried as she came out from behind a large boulder at the base of the mountain. “Are you okay? You’re bleeding!”
“I’m okay,” Caden assured her. “It looks worse than it is.”
Blood had seeped through his shirt and made long stains that ran down his arms though the wounds were no longer actively bleeding. The stinging in the wounds had stopped when he was halfway to the mountain. Now there was only a faint ache.
Landry stopped a few feet from him. Her hands lifted and lowered as she clearly wanted to help him in some way but she didn’t know how.
“Did you kill the Werewolf?” Ross asked, peeking his head around the boulder.
More heads appeared over the boulders surrounding the mountain base. Faces that were still pale and pinched with fear had slightly hopeful looks on them now that he had returned.
“It ran away,” Caden said.
“Ran away?” Jasper stepped around a boulder. “Really? Just ran away?”
“We fought.” Caden gestured to his wounded arms. “I won. He decided he didn’t want to see what happened next.”
Caden felt like he was exaggerating a little bit, but Jasper had his hackles up.
Yet he had gotten the creature to run from him.
But now that he knew that they could be hurt here--perhaps badly hurt--he felt a little less sanguine about facing down anymore.
There was another roar from up above. Caden’s head snapped up towards the peak that was hidden in the clouds.
“We need to get to Raziel,” Caden said.
“Uh, how? You expect us to fly?” Jasper scowled at him.
Gone was the smooth talking southern charm. Gone was the brave--or stupid--belief that he was bullet proof. Jasper reminded Caden of someone who had finally realized that life could knock one down and now they feared to get back up again.
“Gena?” Caden called to the girl he had saved from the Werewolf.
She bounded up, no longer looking afraid. In fact, she was beaming ear to ear and came over to him eagerly.
“Thank you so much for what you did! I was a goner for sure if you hadn’t stepped in when you did,” Gena gushed.
“You’re more than welcome, but I actually called you over to tell everyone what you were able to do,” Caden told her with a smile.
“Oh! Right!” She beamed and turned to face the group. “In real life I have asthma. Like really bad asthma. I can’t walk very far let alone run. But you guys saw me sprint here.”
“You were like a blur,” Harvey said and there was a touch of admiration in his voice.
Gena bounced on her toes. “I know, right?! It was so awesome. Well, Caden explained to me that we don’t have bodies here. We don’t have our physical ailments so we don’t have those limitations any longer.”
“So…” Landry lifted an eyebrow, “you expect us to--”
“Fly up the mountain,” Caden finished for her. “Or at least jump high and grab hold of it.”
“But you got hurt by the Werewolf,” Landry said slowly as she pointed at the drying blood. “So if we fly or jump and fall--”
“We need to not fall.” Seeing everyone’s alarm, Caden quickly added, “Just to be safe, you know. Actually, I’m thinking that maybe only a few people attempt this or maybe… only me. And the rest of you stay here. I’m the only one who needs to talk to Raziel and--”
“Hell, no!” Jasper was practically shaking. “For all we know, you’ll go up there and leave us.”
“He came here to save us,” Landry argued.
“No, he didn’t. He told you he came here by accident. I’m not trusting him. If you all want to stay down here like trusting sheep then fine,” Jasper said. “But I’m going up.”
Caden stared at Jasper for long silent moments. “You know, I’ve always found that people suspect others of what they would do.”
Jasper glared at him.
Caden turned back to Landry. “So Jasper and I are going up.”
“And so am I, because I’m worried that Jasper is going to try and throw you down the mountain,” she said.
Caden opened and closed his mouth before finally saying, “You have a point.”
Harvey and Ross also chimed in that they, too, would go as their sister was going. Landry just shook her head and let out a huff.
“So concerned about me now after you involved me in a plot that nearly got me life in prison and did trap us in the Spirit Realm,” she said, but there was a faint smile on her lips as if she was glad for their caring.
“We’ve said we’re sorry, Landry!” Ross moped.
“She’s going to be mad for a long time,” Harvey sighed.
Landry leaned in and whispered, “This is such an improvement. No talk about how evil Shifters are and how we need to rise up. Since they admitted they wanted to be Shifters it’s like they can sort of see how big of assholes they’ve been.”
Caden quirked a smile. “Jasper doesn’t seem to have learned much though.”
“He’s been a poisonous little flower since we got here,” she snorted.
“I should amend that. When we first got here, he was certain it was all a terrible mistake and that we’d be bonded with our Spirits soon.
Then he became dejected as no one came and nothing happened.
Then he raged at how he had been betrayed.
But it actually seems to me that the Behemoth betrayed everybody. He wasn’t special.”
“No, he wasn’t,” Caden agreed. “It told some of the Faith that they would be able to bring more Spirits into the world, but I don’t think it mentioned they would all be enslaved to it or that the human souls would be kicked out of their bodies.”
“No offense to your mom, but I think some of those Faith people would have been fine with kicking the human souls out,” Landry told him and shuddered at the memory of her former conspirators.
“We’ll deal with all of them when we get back,” Caden assured her.
She nodded. He tried not to think about how difficult that might be. If it was even possible.
“Okay, I think I see a path up,” Caden said as he surveyed the mountain in front of them.
“You really think we’re going to fly up there? I don’t know if I can do the Jedi mind trick of believing I can actually do that,” Landry admitted with a frown.
“Yeah, I’m not sure either. I wasn’t very good at flying at first even when I was in Dragon form,” he said. “But there looks to be a path that curves upwards and then there are ledges going all the way up. I think we jump from one to the next.”
Landry gave him one of those famous looks that indicated she was more than a little skeptical.
“No bodies here, Landry. We can do whatever we imagine we can do,” he reminded her.
“Right. Okay, you go first,” she said and gestured towards the mountain path.
Caden nodded and he started jogging up it. The path was a switchback as it threaded its way up the mountain’s side. Landry and her brothers followed him with Jasper in the rear. With every roar from Raziel, stones tumbled down the side of the mountain and he felt the vibration of those cries.
Will Iolaire be with Raziel? It should be, but I don’t think Iolaire is, Caden thought.
It wasn’t just that he couldn’t picture the lair in his mind with the two Dragon Spirits intertwined, he couldn’t feel them. And the timber of the roars from Raziel was terrible to hear. It was the deepest mourning. Anguish. Loss. Confusion. Caden set his jaw and moved faster.
The path thinned out and it was time to jump or fly. Caden looked up. About twenty feet above him was a ledge. If he could catch the lip of it, he could easily pull himself up on top of it. It looked deep enough for him to stand and jump for yet another ledge above it.
“Twenty feet,” Jasper remarked.
The Humans First leader had slipped around Landry and her brothers to stand next to him.
“You don’t have to come, Jasper,” Caden remarked. “If you can’t do it.”
“Can you?” Jasper asked evenly.
Caden went back to looking up at the ledge. He imagined flexing his legs and flying up there. He’d catch the edge and… Jasper jumped. He grabbed hold of the edge and pulled himself up. He was looking over it at Caden, grinning.
“Coming?” Jasper asked.
“I can’t believe he did that,” Landry growled. “He shouldn’t have been able to.”
“He’s got a good imagination, Landry,” Ross said.
“He believes anything is possible,” Harvey pointed out as Jasper jumped to the second ledge.
“Well, if Raziel sees him first, he’ll be turned into a charcoal briquet,” Caden remarked.
He drew in a deep breath, flexed his legs and jumped!
He soared past the first ledge. His arms pinwheeled as he frantically sought something to grab hold of.
He saw the second ledge where Jasper was standing.
He reached for the ledge and missed. But an arm shot out and grasped him.
Caden grabbed hold of it tightly. He had stopped falling. He looked up in Jasper Hawes’ face.
“If you die, we all die,” Jasper said and reached down with his other hand to help haul Caden up.
Caden couldn’t hide that his legs were trembling underneath him when he was finally safely up on the second ledge. He sank down onto the stony ground with his back against the mountain. Jasper didn’t comment on that.
“Is everything okay?” Landry called up, her voice echoing.
“Yeah, everything’s fine,” Jasper said back. “Just give us a minute.”
Caden frowned. “I don’t get…”
“Don’t get what?” Jasper asked when Caden had stopped and simply shook his head.
“I don’t get you,” Caden finished. “You’re acting like your ego’s been crushed and I’m the enemy just a little while ago and now you jump up a mountain and save my life like you’ve got all the confidence in the world.”
Jasper shrugged. “Can’t a man be and feel all those things?”
“I guess. But at the same time?” Caden asked.
“Definitely at the same time. Confidence and uncertainty. Anger and generosity,” Jasper said. “Don’t feel bad. Most people don’t realize that they can have two diametrically opposed ideas in their heads and form their actions.”
“I see,” Caden said, not sure he did.