Endangered Ch. 11

Wind-whipped foam and icy water glanced off the surface of her shield, bucking violently into her. She barely cleared the top of that monster wave, her lower body splashing against it as her wings battled for purchase.

Gasping at the chill of arctic seawater across her front, Nyx dove downwind into the valley of the trough, regaining what airspeed she could in a desperate attempt to stay out of the water's deadly grasp. Perhaps most insulting was the stinging of bitter salt in her tail-eye. Blinking sourly, she tightened her grey tail around the haft of her dory, bracing it up between her wings, so the spear-tip jutted above her head. She must look quite comical she thought, some archaic warrior attempting to joust the storm.

Flying with her armour and weapons was burdensome to say the least. To do so in such weather could yet be the end of her. And for what? A pup of barely two decades who somehow reeked of ancient power.

Low she skimmed along the trench between the huge waves, dodging the crest of a several-ton chunk of ice that tumbled sluggishly down the slope of the swell. Instinctively mimicking the greatest of seabirds, she let the wind push her along. Skimming just above the surface allowed her to take advantage of the ground effect and the extra push of air trapped beneath her wings.

At the first slackening of the howling gale, she angled upward and flapped for dear life. The dense, salty air fought her for every inch of altitude, but she'd stolen its speed and now cashed in for the height she needed to get back on course.

To be downed in that thrashing, glacial water would mean almost certain death. When dawn came, and she turned to stone, she would sink like one. Her formidable strength and resilience wouldn't save her from the crush of depth when night returned. If she sank deep enough, out of the sun's reach, she would slowly dwindle and starve on the muddy, dark seafloor. The sun must be only a few hours away now, too. Putting that depressing thought out of her mind, she instead turned to berating her carelessness.

Thanks to that spell of mooning, when she reached the continent across the straight, she would somehow have to clean and oil every inch of her gear. Corrosive salt could not be tolerated. The beautiful, mithril chain of her long-shirt would be the worst, for she didn't have a convenient bath of oil to dunk it in. Her molded cuirass, greaves, plumed helmet, gauntlets and reinforced leather skirt would all require time with a cloth, but nothing compared to the arduous task of cleaning chain if rust set in. Still, the lightweight armour allowed her to fly into battle, and that mobility had proved the bane of her enemies before. Leaving it all behind hadn't even been considered. It was all she really had of her previous life, and they were the tools of her trade.

Finally, after fighting the storm for every foot of progress for what felt like hours, a faint light grew in the gloom. Nyx dared not hope too much, it could be a lost fishing boat or some warning beacon indicating the presence of treacherous rocks. With soaring relief, she swooped low across pounding surf and over a bleak scattering of snow-covered huts.

She left the sad little village behind without further thought. Turning southward, she streaked over the windswept tundra coast, hunting for a place to roost. A blubbery animal would also be a welcome find, she could certainly use the sustenance, and the fat might protect her equipment in a bind.

Ever onward she would fly, resting by day, until she found the great city of Denver where her unsuspecting dragon waited. There would be a reckoning, and Aphrodite willing, she would find new reasons to live. Her aeon in hiding was over.

***

"You're lucky you can make these orbs absorb radio waves," Hailey looked down through the invisible floor of their magical transportation at the grey and green of the city below. "This has to be some of the tightest airspace in the country. It's incredible to think this is even possible, we crossed half the country in less than two hours. You're really going to have to start taking care about flight paths. Some people will notice the mysterious sonic boom too and... Chris?"

"I'm concentrating," he murmured, his sharp eyes barely making out the detail of a particularly green little rectangle next to a large building far below them. "Ready? Here we go."

In the instant he dropped the transparent orb sheltering them from the bitter, cold air ten thousand feet above the White House, Chris slipped them into the Ether. Before they fell more than half a foot, he jumped onto the otherworldly lawn of the Jacqueline Kennedy Garden.

That grey landscape of shadowy outlines was not its usually empty self.

Chris lunged aside, pulling Hailey with him as something wooshed inches overhead with an angry squawk. Off balance, he stumbled forward, brushing against the ghostly presence of a tall hedgerow that bordered the garden.

"Aaargg!" he bellowed in agony as the shadow somehow lacerated deep gashes down the left side of his body. Chris tumbled backward on to the sickly-looking lawn, clutching at his wounds even as his eyes caught a glimpse of movement. In the hedge, something dark wriggled in ecstasy, retracting its bloodied, glass-like blades deeper into the shrubbery.

Hailey screamed, shrill and high as he groaned in pain. She fixated on the crimson weeping from four deep razor-like slices. It was a nightmare, his purple aura pulsing bright in his leaking blood.

Wide-eyed at the sight of so much of his own life-stuff, Chris got a hold of himself and sat up. Gingerly his left arm rotated so he could inspect the clean, steadily flowing cut just above his elbow. It throbbed, and he could feel three more shouting to make their presence known. On his calf, his thigh, and thankfully across one of his ribs. It hadn't slipped between, so far as he could tell.

"Jesus that hurts, what the fuc..."

Something chittered excitedly above them and began a trilling alarm cry. They both looked up to a brown, leathery creature clinging to the ghostly facade of the President's residence. It looked like a flying mouth.

The little monstrosity was completely naked. Wrinkled, fetid skin stretched taut across sinew and bone and bat-like wings. It didn't have a head, per se. Its thrashing tail led to a footlong torso dominated by bulging flight muscles. That beige body just ended in a salivating maw and four yellow, elongated teeth that gnashed with pincer-like, independent twitches. There were no eyes, no snout, no ears, just a ravenous mouth ready to gnaw their bones. Still, it was somehow pointed right at them.

Chris forgot about his wounds as the hideous thing flapped its tattered wings, attached to the vertical shadow-wall by the wicked hooks at the end of four stumpy, skeletal legs. It bounced itself in a frenzy, all the while making its terrible, screeching racket. It almost reminded him of the rooster back on Jethry's farm, clucking and fussing to draw the hens in when he'd found a particularly tasty morsel to share in the course of his scratching.

That comparison proved far too apt, as they heard the cry taken up by hundreds of discordant, eager voices in the dark branches of the surrounding trees.

"Chris lets get out of here!" Hailey cried, tugging at his good arm, trying to pull him up off the diseased grass.

The shrieking stopped.

They both froze instinctively. It was only because Chris was in the process of clawing his way to his feet, that he saw the black, squiggling parasite worming its way up the side of Hailey's calfskin boot.

Branches rustled, and the flapping of hundreds of unseen wings taking to the dark air suddenly whispered in their ears. Chris flicked the thing off of Hailey as he tottered upright in growing panic. Adrenaline rushed into his arteries as he saw the first of the creatures winging in toward them from every direction. He stared in shock, leaking his precious blood into a pool of joyously thrashing black leeches that lurked in the grass.

Hailey whimpered in abject fear, breaking from his side to dash toward the building. That snapped him out of his disbelieving stupor. Splitting up was about the worst thing they could do.

"Hailey, no!" He dove after her with an outstretched hand, ignoring the pain lancing up his side. Catching just the tail of her coat, they tumbled back onto the parasite-ridden grass. She was sobbing in terror now, but he managed to pull her to his chest and turn to keep an eye on the flock.

The creatures were upon them. The flying vanguard was much faster and stealthier than Chris would have thought possible. The first few sets of outstretched, motile fangs were less than a second from his throat. He did the only thing he could think of, dumping them unceremoniously back into the Norm.

They lay gasping, blinking up in into the cold, spitting rain, catching their heaving breath.

"Get up," Chris ordered after a few seconds, struggling to his knees as he began searching for any trace of parasitic hitchhikers. "Get up and strip."

"Chris, what was that?!" Hailey held her hands over her eyes as she tried to stop crying.

"I have no idea," he groaned, his voice sounding deadened and shocked even to himself. Already he'd pulled his hoodie over his head, and was unbuttoning the blood-soaked shirt beneath. His eyes darted suspiciously across the now perfectly manicured lawn, searching for squirming movement.

In the back of his mind, he wondered what was going on in the Ether right now. It didn't bear thinking about, their shadows were no doubt being torn at by a thousand furious, shrieking mouths.

"Hailey, get up. There were some sort of leeches in the grass. Go get on the path."

"Leeches?!" Hailey shot up like a startled rabbit, scurrying off the lawn like it was a pool of lava. "I'm out, I'm fucking out!"

"Not near that hedge!" he shouted the warning, pulling her up short until he could make his way to her side. "Stop running away like that, there's something in there."

"Sorry," Hailey sniffled, taking his offered hand. Through the branches of a tree that must have housed dozens of those flying... things, she looked up at the tall, curved face of that iconic building. "I'm freaking out. We're going to be in even more trouble now."

"We'll be fine, I think. Did I tell you about the time I got an anti-nuke missile fired at me? Got a job out of that little stunt."

"You're not helping."

They cautiously made their way to the closest path, and Chris started checking the rest of his clothes for determined parasites. He ended up removing his shoes and pants, paranoid that the squiggly things had crawled into delicate places.

"Oh my god, look at this thing, it's disgusting." Sure enough, just below the hem of his boxer shorts, one of the worm-like things was latched to the back of his thigh. It was tough, rubbery and strong when he prodded it, rather than squishy. Very carefully, he pulled at the end which wasn't busy sucking his blood. It writhed mightily, sucking and injecting something that burned, jolting him into giving up. "Ouch! The fucker."

"I'm going to be sick if there's one on me," Hailey's voice rose as she watched him try again. "Chris, tell me there isn't one on me!"

"There probably is," he said honestly. "I should be able to burn it off, but this isn't exactly the most discreet place to start a magical fire."

Giving up on Ether-leech for the moment, Chris inspected the wounds on his left side in the overcast light. The cold and wet didn't bother him one bit after what they'd just escaped. Never had he imagined the Ether could be so openly hostile. He'd heard it could be dangerous, sure. Wraiths, ghouls, people getting trapped in there and dying from the magical drain. That sort of thing. This just seemed so... insidious.

"You're still bleeding pretty badly." Hailey poked gently around the wound on his rib. The slowly flowing streams of clotting, darkening red mixed with the light rain to spread wetly down the muscles of his tummy. "What did it?"

"I don..."

"Don't move!" The voice spoke with the authority of a long career spent in law enforcement.

Chris sighed. He'd really hoped to sneak in and find the President in the Ether, thereby avoiding this exact situation.

"Hands above your head. Slowly."

Hailey let out a little squeak and jumped close against his chest, her body trembling once again as footsteps approached from behind him. He could hear more of them now that he was listening, thundering across the lawns from several directions.

"It's alright," Chris spoke calmly, looking directly into Hailey's scared blue eyes, trying to impress that she benefit from his words as well. He began slowly raising his hands, but couldn't get the left one up all the way. "We're here to see the President. My name's Christopher Baryst, we're expected."

A fit, middle-aged man in a dark windbreaker came into his peripheral vision, pistol trained low but directly at them.

"Hands up, miss."

"It's okay, Hailey, do as he says," Chris soothed as she tentatively raised her arms. He was thankful that the secret service agent seemed experienced enough to recognise Hailey's fright and quit with the shouting. "We're going to be just fine."

A younger fellow came running up the path behind Hailey.

"Nice one, Rogers. Where the hell did they come from?" he panted, holstering his weapon and quickly moving in close to grab Hailey's wrists.

"Don't touch her." It came out of his mouth almost as a hiss, promising death even though he hadn't twitched a muscle. The dragon lunged under his skin, on edge from their encounter in the Ether and ready to spring to Hailey's defence.

Both agents took a wary step back, and the man's gun was back in his hand in short order.

"On the ground!" ordered the newcomer.

"No."

"Do it, shithead!"

"Call President Falconer. Tell him you're trying to arrest a dragon." Chris took the calculated risk that these men, who guarded the president, after all, would probably know about Beings.

Hailey's eyes told him she wasn't going to handle anything else just now. He prayed she was smart enough to know that making a break for it now was an even worse move than before.

"I knew it," Rogers muttered, taking a further two steps back, aiming his pistol at Chris' head this time. "Paul, get a hold of the President somehow would you?"

"You're not serious?"

"Look at him, man. He showed up out of thin air. Radio the guys on personal detail, ask if he's expecting a Christopher Baryst."

"Thanks for that, Rogers," said Chris. He gave the agent a cheeky grin as his colleague grudgingly tapped a few messages into his phone. "Do you think I could relax a little? There's a leech on the back of my thigh, and I don't want him getting any ideas about crawling higher if you know what I mean."

"Shut it," Rogers barked, but took a half step to glance at the back of his leg, really taking in the rest of his injuries now that the initial rush was calming. "Jesus... you're all fucked up. Okay son, you two can relax a little but no sudden moves."

They waited. The freezing droplets falling from the sky thickened, pattering down on the bare skin of his shoulders. They provided sweet relief against the throbbing heat of his cuts. Terrified though Hailey was, he couldn't help notice the way the rain bounced onto her blonde hair. The fine strands resisted at first but were quickly becoming saturated. Wet-haired Hailey with frightened eyes tugged at his heartstrings. He wasn't going to let anything else bad happen to her today, not one thing.

"I don't fucking believe it," Paul muttered, turning toward the White House to the sound of a commotion.

"Stand down! Stand down!" The President himself came running down the steps from the oval office balcony, hollering as he came. To his flanks, four upset-looking, suited agents escorted him out into rain.

Robert Falconer was a lean man, with a slightly hawkish nose befitting his family's namesake. His black hair was sliding into grey with the sort of grace that had helped swing a good portion of undecided female voters his way. He was obviously in good shape, running across the wet grass in his fine navy suit, uncaring of the inclement weather or the prospect of dirtying his perfectly shined shoes. His eyes darted across Chris' bloodied side even as he and his men came to a halt in front of their little gathering. "Put those damn guns away. Chris, what happened?"

Chris lowered his arms thankfully, uncaring of his pain or state of leech-induced undress. He wrapped Hailey up in a hug against his non-bloody side.

"I... Sir," Chris looked up, not knowing how best to explain what had happened.

"Let's get inside," Robert gestured for everyone to start walking back toward the imposing white building. "It's the damn White House lawn, someone with a camera is going to be paying attention. What is it? Were you attacked?"

"Sort of, I don't know how to put this politely," Chris admitted, noticing that the agents had surrounded them as they walked and were hanging off of every word. "Your house is riddled with magical vermin."

"You're serious?" The president's groomed eyebrow fell back into position as he realised the lad wasn't joking.

"I was trying to make an inconspicuous entrance, but they very nearly got us in the Kennedy Garden, Sir. Still got some leech-thingys on me to prove it. And there's a big flock of meat-eating devil-chicken-crab-bats living in all your nice trees. Well, in the Ether anyway."

"I think they might be shrikes," Hailey spoke quietly from underneath his arm, events sweeping her along and loosening her frightened tongue. "I sort of remember the description from a scary story one of my aunts told me."

"A shrike? I thought that was a kind of bird?" the President wondered.

"It is, Sir." One of his men answered before trotting back to collect Chris' discarded clothes.

"Huh, and you must be Hailey? The young woman who's caused such a stir."

"I'm the stirrer, Sir. Hailey just taught me how to hold the spoon."

The President's eyes narrowed as they started up a set of steps. He wasn't used to anyone taking such a flippant tone with him these days, but it was sort of refreshing.

"Well alright then," Robert paused, glancing around warily before they went inside. "Not all of the NASA folks are here yet. We'll sneak you up to the family rooms and let you clean up a bit before they arrive. I can try to find you something to wear but it's not going to be easy. Do you need a doctor? Michelle told me you can heal yourself very effectively."

"I should be okay, thanks Sir." Chris looked at his arm again, the bleeding was slowing.

"This conversation you promised better be worth it, Chris. Alright, I've got to go explain to two congressmen why I ran out of our meeting like I'd been stung by a bee." The President chuckled evilly. "Rogers, you found them, take them up to the second floor and look after them. Get them whatever they want, and for God's sake, no one mention this to my wife!"

***

Annabel was wallowing in the perfect state of drowsy relaxation as she lay on the couch. Immi snoozed too, sprawled on top of her, blue cheek resting on the meager pillow of her right breast. The warmth, weight, and closeness of her friend probably wasn't helping her own state of wakefulness. She'd meant to do some reading, but the book was so heavy and her eyelids so droopy. They'd been so busy here at home or at the chef's academy last week.

Combined with yesterday's worry on two fronts, she was exhausted. Her brain refused to settle into true sleep though, chasing its own tail around in circles.

She still wasn't sure how she felt about Chris' unannounced visit to the Moon. Immi was, of course, full of ideas for 'punishments' that inevitably wound up with her tummy packed full. It was an interesting conundrum though. She'd been mad as hell when Petra and Claire had explained that he was missing. Combined with the news about Radek, she'd been terrified. But that part wasn't his fault.