MAGNOLIA
The world is talons and wind and the shriek of metal being peeled apart like a sardine can.
I slam both feet on the brake.
The van bucks. Tires lock. The smell of burning rubber floods through the shattered windshield along with a blast of pine-scented night air and feathers, so many feathers, tawny and barbed and whipping across my face as the creature on the roof slides forward from the momentum.
Its talons carve four parallel trenches through the ceiling, showering me in curls of shredded steel and bits of insulation that look like dirty snow.
The van screams to a halt sideways across both lanes.
I am gripping the steering wheel so hard my knuckles turn white. The engine sputters. Stalls. The headlights cast crooked beams into the trees at the road's edge, illuminating nothing useful, and above me the griffin shifts its weight and the entire frame groans like a dying animal.
Then Dash moves.
He doesn't open the door. He kicks it. One massive leg pistoning outward with the kind of force that belongs in demolition work, not vehicle egress.
The door launches off its hinges, spinning into the dark like a rectangular frisbee, and crashes into the tree line with a sound of splintering wood and startled birds.
Cool.
That was my only passenger door.
Dash rolls out of the gap, shoulder-first, hitting the asphalt in a tight combat tuck that carries him five feet before he's already on his boots and rising.
The van rocks from the sudden loss of his weight.
The griffin's massive head swings toward the movement, that bone-pale beak catching the glow of my one surviving headlight.
Its eyes are gold and wild and rolling with panic. Not hunting eyes. Cornered-animal eyes.
Oh no.
"Dash, I think it's scared—"
He's already on the hood.
One second he's standing on the road. The next, three hundred and eighty pounds of formal-wear-clad Orc launches onto the crumpled hood of my delivery van, and the front suspension collapses with a gunshot bang.
The griffin screams. Dash screams back. His is lower, guttural, a sound that vibrates in my sternum and makes every hair on my body stand at attention.
He grabs a fistful of the beast's chest feathers with one hand and wraps his other arm around its thrashing neck.
The griffin's wings snap open. Full span.
Twelve feet at least, each one, and they hammer the air with enough downdraft to blow the rearview mirror clean off the windshield frame.
Papers from my glovebox cyclone through the cabin.
Receipts, napkins, an old parking ticket, my insurance card, all swirling around my head like the world's most boring confetti.
The van lifts.
Two inches. Three. The griffin beats harder, talons ripping free of the roof one by one with sounds like tent stakes being yanked from frozen ground.
Dash's weight keeps it from gaining real altitude, but the creature bucks and twists and slams him sideways into what's left of my windshield frame.
Glass fragments spray. His tuxedo jacket tears across the back with a sound like a sail giving way in a gale.
I fumble for the door handle. Shove my door open. Fall out onto the asphalt on my hands and knees. The road surface is still warm from the day's heat and bites into my palms with embedded gravel.
The griffin drags Dash off the hood.
They hit the road together. The impact cracks the asphalt.
Literally cracks it, a spiderweb of fractures radiating from the point where Dash's back meets the ground with the full weight of a panicked mythological apex predator on him.
His tusk catches the light. His arms are locked around the griffin's neck in a chokehold that would snap a telephone pole, and the beast's hind legs, lion legs, massive and clawed, scrabble against his torso.
The armor-silk holds. Grimshaw's enchanted fabric takes the raking claws without tearing, though the friction sparks like a struck flint in the darkness.
"Stop!" I'm on my feet. "Dash, stop, it's not attacking, it's displaced!"
He doesn't hear me. Or he does and the information doesn't register through whatever combat protocol has seized his brain. The griffin's beak snaps at his face. He jerks sideways. The beak gouges a chunk from the asphalt where his cheek was a half second ago.
I grab a handful of roadside gravel.
Throw it at his head.
Small stones ping off his skull. He blinks.
His gold eyes find me across fifteen feet of dark highway, and for one heartbeat he looks like something from a war painting.
Pinned under a monster, suit shredded, scarred arms flexing, breathing hard, blood from a shallow cut on his forehead running into his left eye.
"It's scared! Look at its eyes. That's not a predator hunting. That's a juvenile. It probably got separated from its flight and panicked when it saw our headlights."
The griffin wails. Close up, away from the terror and the wind, the sound is pitiful. Young. Lost.
Dash's grip loosens one degree.
His gaze flicks from me to the creature's rolling golden eyes. Back to me.
"You want me to release a griffin. On a public highway. In my good suit."
"Your good suit has claw marks and road rash. I think we're past worrying about the dry cleaning bill."
The griffin bucks. Dash's head cracks against the asphalt and his jaw tightens but he doesn't flinch.
The creature's wings beat twice more, weaker now, and a gust of displaced air rolls across the highway and hits me with the smell of ozone and wild animal musk.
Feathers drift through my headlight beam like autumn leaves.
Then I hear it.
Engine. Behind me. Coming fast.
Headlights sweep around the curve a quarter mile back, high beams bouncing off the tree line.
Then a second set right behind the first. Late-night highway traffic, barreling toward a sideways bakery van, a girl in a vintage dress standing in the road, and a full-grown griffin pinning an Orc in a destroyed tuxedo to the center lane.
I am already running.
My flats slap the pavement. I throw myself into the driver's seat, crank the key.
The engine catches on the third try with a consumptive rattle that sounds terminal.
I wrench the wheel hard left and stomp the gas.
The van lurches forward, dragging something metallic underneath the chassis that screams against the road in a shower of orange sparks.
Probably my muffler. Possibly my entire undercarriage.
The first car's horn blares.
I yank the wheel right. The van swerves across the oncoming lane and my remaining headlight sweeps over Dash and the griffin like a lighthouse beam.
They're rolling now, a tangle of feathers and green skin and shredded silk, and I'm going to hit them, I am absolutely going to flatten my rented mercenary on a state highway three hours before my sister's rehearsal dinner—
I cut the wheel again. Hard. The van tips onto two wheels.
Cups, sugar, my emergency roadside kit, everything in the back cascades to the left side with a crash.
For one impossible second I am balanced on the passenger-side tires, the driver's side floating, the steering wheel useless in my hands.
The first car screams past on my left, horn dopplering into the night.
Wind rocks the van. The tires slam back down.
My teeth click together hard enough to taste copper.
The second car.
Its headlights fill my mirrors. I can see the driver's face, mouth open, hands white on the wheel.
I gun the engine and drag the van forward ten feet, fifteen, giving them room to swerve around the carnage behind me.
They do. Barely. Their side mirror clips my bumper and explodes into plastic shrapnel that patters against my broken windshield frame.
Then they're gone. Red taillights shrinking into the dark.
I throw the van into park and my forehead drops against the steering wheel. My hands are shaking. My whole body is shaking. The sugar bag in the back has burst and the cabin smells like my bakery and burning rubber, which is a combination I never want to experience again.
Behind me, on the road, the griffin screams.
I twist in my seat. Through the empty windshield frame I can see them.
Dash has gotten on top now. He's straddling the creature's back, one knee planted between its shoulder blades, both hands locked around its beak.
The griffin thrashes. Its tail, a lion's tail, thick and tufted, whips against his legs.
Its talons gouge trenches in the asphalt. Dash holds.
His hands move. Fast. Practiced. He rips the silk necktie from around his throat with one sharp pull and loops it around the griffin's beak in a single fluid motion, yanking it tight, crossing it twice, knotting it with the efficiency of someone who has tied up things far more dangerous than a juvenile griffin.
The beak clamps shut.
The creature goes still.
Not unconscious. Its flanks heave with rapid, panicked breathing. Its golden eyes roll. But without the ability to snap, without its primary weapon, the fight drains from its body like water from a cracked bowl. It slumps against the asphalt. One wing extends awkwardly to the side, trembling.
Dash holds the position for a five-count. Ten. The cut on his forehead has painted a dark line down to his jaw. His tuxedo jacket hangs in ribbons from his shoulders, and one of the enchanted silk panels on his chest has been scraped to a raw sheen that catches light like polished metal.
He stands.
Grabs the griffin by the scruff of its neck and one hind leg.
Lifts it.
The entire creature. Four hundred pounds of mythological predator, hoisted off the ground in a single, dead-weight heave.
Dash's arms cord with effort, every scar on his forearms standing white against the dark green of his skin. He walks it to the roadside ditch in six heavy strides and drops it into the tall grass with a muffled thud.