WingSpan (Taken on the Wing Book 1) (13 page)

“Bad angel!” Jenn gasps as Feather grabs Blondie by the wrists and pushes her toward the back door.

“Not in my house!” Mark shouts and Blondie stops struggling with his sister though she looks just as angry. He has Jenn sandwiched between his chest and the wall and she struggles to see as Blondie’s shrieks and
holy shit
her wings disappear outside.

Feather closes the door and for nearly a minute there’s nothing but heavy breathing, Blondie’s fading cries and the smell of canned salmon.

“Talon?” Feather approaches cautiously.

Jenn looks up and her heart pounds even harder when she sees his eyes have gone completely black. She’s unable to retreat further into the wall so she lets her knees go, hoping to find escape below but he takes her elbows and holds her up before resting his lips on her forehead.

“Talon?”

He takes a deep breath and blinks. Jenn watches with a mix of relief and horror as the whites return to his eyes.

“Talon, you need to take her before Arden,” Feather says. She rests her hand on Mark’s shoulder and his muscles relax as she gets his attention. Whatever is coming from Feather isn’t the same rancid and desperate arousal that came from Blondie. It’s much more intimate and much less threatening. Jenn wishes Feather would touch her like that; reassure her that this is just another Oxycontin induced nightmare.

“Arden,” Feather repeats. “Before Torrent gets you both before Sher.”

“You shouldn’t be in the middle, Feather,” Mark takes a hand off Jenn to hold Feather by the back of the neck and she seems to calm down like he did at her touch. Jenn on the other hand feels more and more confused.

“I won’t be,” Feather smiles. “I promise.”

Then she brushes her fingers under Mark’s chin, pushing it up like Terry used to, and dashes out the door.

“Are you alright?” Mark asks.

Jenn can only nod. Three Oxy’s was a really bad idea but at the time the pain was too much.

“Where’s your phone?”

Mark thrusts her bag at her then gathers up the empty cans, filling them with water in the sink. No sooner does she have the phone out than he takes it and dials making his own phone ring. After a few seconds he ends the call.

“Am I in trouble?”

Mark glances at her. “Yes.”

“Why?”

“You attacked Torrent on the street last night… the bad angel.”

“I imagined that.”

He doesn’t answer. Instead he grabs his wallet and keys from the counter and stuffs them in his pockets.

“I need some things for the trip,” Mark gives her a stiff hug. “Do
not
leave the house and call me if anyone comes here. You’re safe inside.”

It takes nearly five minutes for him to warm up the pickup and drive away but Jenn already has her bag packed. She’s in trouble for sure if she’s seeing angels even when she’s awake.

After double checking she has everything she calls the cab company and asks for Ambrose.

“Jenn?” Mark yells inside his empty house. “Shadow?”

Fuck.

The small set of human prints on the walk tells him she’s gone but he still hopes. If she walked away then it wasn’t with Torrent. A prisoner her size would have been carried off. He’d only been gone ninety minutes for supplies and now he has to find her before anyone else does.

Mark weighs his options.

A call to the bus depot tells him he’s missed her by only half an hour. He could outrun the bus and catch her in Edmonton but if she’s gone to the airport she could be a long way away.

It’s clear there’s a gap in Jenn’s knowledge of what she is though it’s hard for Talon to believe. Talon first took wing around seven years old. How could she be thirty and not know what a gryphon looks like? Even if they grew up alone, it would have been difficult to ignore sprouting wings.

If Torrent brings her before Sire Sher and Jenn can’t prove her royal blood her punishment will be severe. A month on hands and knees is nothing.

Torrent can ask for her throat.

Jenn’s phone goes right to voicemail so Mark plays the hunch she’s taken the bus and it’s off to preserve the battery for the long trip to Vancouver Island.

Of course she’d answer. She’d never turn it off to ignore you.

It’s all he’s got.

Mark packs and transfers the supplies from the pickup to the rig as it warms up. The clutter of food, water and survival gear for two gnaws at the last of his patience as he pulls out but he doesn’t have another minute to waste satisfying his gryphon need for order.

He’s got six hours to try and put the pieces of Jenn’s life together; to try and find some way to explain it to her.

Last night it became clear her gryphon and human identities are far from connected. Shadow’s strength is balanced with Jenn’s ability to feel weakness like the balance between Talon and Mark. It’s like she’s belatedly going through gryphon puberty; erratic behavior, emotional withdrawal and one side of her personality in denial of the other. Like Jenn’s denial of Shadow even though when Shadow is dominant she sees Jenn for what she is like a loving parent and an immature child.

But this, running off at the sight of a gryphon and calling her an angel, tells Talon it’s more than denial of her real self. He doesn’t know anything about the pills she took and can only guess what combination of perceived hallucination and fear made her flee.

“I should have said ‘I love you,’” he whispers as he pulls onto the Yellowhead Highway.

Shadow can only be descended from a magical royal blood line. It explained her ability to build a barrier to keep Torrent out.

Talon has never known true fear in his life until now and he’s scared shitless.

You’re going to need everything you’ve ever learned to get her out of this,
his inner gryphon tells him.
She attacked a royal and has no way to get herself out of it.

If he can’t find Shadow, she’s dead.

Chapter Twelve

The Jasper diner has a vegetarian section on the menu. Jenn learned on the trip to Mark that the further she got from Vancouver Island the harder it was to explain no meat on the burger. Or at least that’s how it felt; more likely it was simple exhaustion making it harder to even picture what she wanted, much less put it into words.

Jasper, known for its ski resorts, is cosmopolitan enough that she could eat in the diner every night for a week without having the same meal twice and she can prove it. After abandoning the trip home she settled into a hotel unable to run any further from Mark or get any closer to where he was probably waiting for her in Parksville. Jasper seems closer to him anyway which doesn’t really make much sense.

The ride to the bus a week earlier had been uneventful. Jenn enjoyed Ambrose’s teasing and claimed it took so long to find Mark that she ran out of vacation. But as she waited, ticket in hand, her uneasiness grew. It’s not just the angels she fled from. She has a sense she fits with him, disturbing hallucinations and all, and she’s not sure she’s ready for it. Or him, to be more precise.

As the driver opened the big bus door and started taking tickets, Jenn returned to the counter to get her money back and ask directions to a mall and a hotel. The next day she found four inches of new snow where Mark’s rig had been so she took her disappointment to the bus depot and caught the twelve-thirty westbound.

In the diner her phone sits next to her placemat as it has at every meal, still off as she tries to get the nerve to call him. She decides to call Mark from her room and go wherever he is whether it’s west to Parksville or east to Saskatoon.

Who are you kidding? You’re too chicken to even power it up.

You bet I am.

“Shadow?”

Jenn ignores the woman’s voice, dismissing it as the clutter of sound in the busy restaurant, and doesn’t look up until she hears it again.

“Hey, remember me?” Blondie asks, grimacing as if she waits for a loud noise. She chews her lip with discomfort as Jenn pushes her seat a little further away. “Damn, yeah.”

“Hi,” Jenn allows. The woman looks different. Dressed like any ski tourist she fits in better than Jenn in spite of the neon pink headband covering her ears. Jenn hasn’t seen neon since she was little. The gold is visible inside the collar of her jacket.

“I was wondering… well, I understand if the answer is no and I’ll beat it but I thought if maybe I picked up dinner we could, well, have some girl talk if it’s okay,” Blondie heaves in a lung full to recover from her rambling request.

“Sure,” Jenn agrees. The woman is part of Mark’s life after all and Jenn is starved for information though it feels more like high school gossip than anything else. Did you see what he was wearing? Did you see what I was…

“I’m Swift,” Blondie offers her hand.

Jenn accepts it as Swift takes the seat across from her. The waitress moves in with a second menu as if she were waiting with it.

“Hold mine until my friend’s is ready,” Jenn asks the waitress and Swift seems to be a little more at ease. Swift barely glances at the menu before ordering a double burger with extra bacon and a glass of beer.

“The bracelet is pretty,” Swift puts her hand out. “Mind?”

Jenn doesn’t and offers her wrist to the tall woman. Swift inspects each diamond as she turns it around Jenn’s arm.

“Talon?”

“Yes,” Jenn admits. The silence that follows makes her wish she’d told Blondie to shove off.

“Look,” Swift confides. “I just want you to know where I’m coming from. Talon was mine for a long time and it wasn’t my call to end it. It was his. I didn’t understand until he was with you that it was really over and I reacted badly. He’s really gone from my life.”

“I understand,” Jenn offers because she does. “I lost my brother a couple of years ago and most days I’m stuck in the moments that followed.”

“Oh no!”

“I guess that’s why my trip home stalled out here in Jasper.”

“Talon is worried sick about you,” Swift says. “I don’t know you, Shadow, but I know him. He’s putting all he’s got into finding you.”

Jenn can only nod and looks at her phone; the life preserver she keeps pushing away. Nothing waits for her at the apartment other than missing Terry. She’s just as silent to Mark now as she had been in the hallway and it was hurting him again.

“I guess I’m still protective of Talon,” Swift explains, getting her cutlery out of the way for their plates as the waitress puts their food down. “No meat?”

“Don’t eat it.”

Swift raises an eyebrow and wipes ketchup from her chin with the back of her hand, leaving her paper napkin rolled around her cutlery. Are her nails longer than they were a minute ago?

“You need to call him,” Swift insists. “He went through Banff looking for you and I took Jasper. Feather is waiting at his house.”

“I guess you win,” Jenn says. “You’re right, Swift. I want him to know I’m okay but I’m not sure I can talk just yet. I feel like such an ass for splitting.”

“Idea?” Swift offers. “I’ll call Talon and say I saw you going into a hotel. I know wherever he is he’ll drop everything and come here. Go freshen up. When you get back he’ll be on his way and we’ll celebrate with dessert.”