Gryphon's Pride Read online

  Gryphon’s Pride

  Gesa’s Menagerie Book 1

  Kaye Draper

  Copyright 2019

  Table of Contents

  Copyright Page

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

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  Chapter 1

  My feet slipped in the muck and I slid further into the green-brown water, grappling with the ugly, slippery water sprite who was trying to make a break across the swampland and into the deeper river beyond. He had frog-like skin, stretched over skeletal arms and legs. It was like grappling with a greased-up tree branch.

  "Fucking...hold...still," I demanded, hooking a clawed hand under his elbow and heaving him back toward me. My poor boots. I'd just bought them with the money from my last bounty and I hadn't had a chance to get them enchanted. Freezing swamp muck was oozing between my toes. My boots would be a ruined mess of wet leather by the time I got out of here. Gods damnit.

  The slick asshole spit on me—a gooey mess that smelled like rotting swamp muck—and slithered away, long bare feet somehow finding purchase in the mud. Completely out of patience at this point, I partially shifted, flinging muddy water everywhere as I launched myself into the air. My right wing whacked a nearby sapling, and I hissed out a curse. My foot connected with his back, and the undine went sprawling, cursing me in some dark fairy tongue I couldn't give a shit less about learning.

  "Stop running, shit-head," I said, dropping down to stand in front of him with an obscene squelch of mud under my ruined boots. "Or next time, I use my claws."

  I didn't want to kill the bastard, but I was wet, smelled like rotted duckweed, and I wanted a beer—or five—in the worst possible way.

  The guy sat with a wet thump, wrapping skinny arms around his legs, his long, dirty hair hanging in straggly clumps around his sharp-planed face. "I don't know what you want, bitch, but I didn't do it."

  I sighed. Typical story.

  I crossed my arms under my chest, hating the feeling of the wet denim jacket I wore plastered over my mud-soaked t-shirt and bra. Should have brought a fucking wet suit.

  My shoulder-length blond hair dripped rivulets of gray water onto my arms and I imagined the hours I planned to spend soaking in a massive jacuzzi and getting shit-faced when this damned job was finally over. "The humans. Where are they?"

  He stared up at me with big, swamp-water gray eyes. "Humans? What humans?"

  I scrubbed a hand over my face and made a get on with it gesture. "Humans. The ones you snatched? Who are you selling them to?"

  He stared at me in confusion. "This isn't about the craneweed?"

  The swamp was quiet as we stared at each other in disgust. A frog croaked somewhere, and something splashed into the shallow water. "Craneweed? You think I tracked you down and chased you through this cesspool for craneweed?" Like I gave a shit if some swampy freak wanted to get high.

  My capture first, ask questions later approach might need some work.

  "I don't know anything about no missing humans," the undine snapped out. But he stayed where he was, obviously as tired of this chase as I was.

  I heaved a colossal sigh, expelling air all the way up from my bones. This whole day had been a complete fucking waste. Thanks to my gryphon nature, I could sense when someone was lying.

  I had the wrong guy.

  Chapter 2

  I slid onto a fake leather barstool and spun to survey the writhing, bumping and grinding crowd. I could see better than any human in the dimly lit place, but the erratic strobes of light and the pounding dubstep were giving me a headache.

  Gods, I hated clubs. Especially this club. The Foxhole was a jarring combination of pretentious snobbery and weird techno bullshit—like a millionaire nerd got bored and decided to build a place where he could mingle with the cool kids.

  I wouldn't be caught dead here, normally, but it was a perfect place for someone to go snatching up human prey. There was a lot of desperation here. People wanting to fit in, wanting attention or wanting to forget—senses drowned in movement and booze...or whatever the current club drug of choice was. Not fucking craneweed, that was for sure.

  I cracked my neck and tried to focus on the dance floor, not on my failed capture. Humans were such easy prey, and this was the biggest club in the area. It was at least possible my quarry would come here to shop.

  My eyes scanned the crowd, looking for the telltale flash of something other. I knew a lot of supes loved places like this. Easy pickings. And there were quite a few of them here, little sparks of life that were a bit more...lively than the pastel auras of plain vanilla humans.

  Like, say, the glowing red spark behind the bar. "Can I get you something, sweetheart?"

  I snorted to myself, the sound lost in the pounding chaos around me. Sweetheart? At six foot three and solid, dressed in well-worn leather and packing enough weapons to supply a small army, I was hardly anyone's sweetheart.

  The voice wrapped around my being like a caress, a light, lilting tenor that should have been impossible to hear over the music. But gryphons have excellent hearing.

  I turned on my stool to find the bartender leaning against the shiny black bar, a sly half-grin lifting one corner of his lush mouth. The grin was probably due to my lack of subtlety in staring at his patrons.

  No one would ever call me pretty. But when I entered a room, people noticed. Mostly it was the primal knowledge of the predator inside me. Sometimes it was just because of the outer evidence of strength. I wasn't someone to mess around with.

  Mostly, people seemed to get that and leave me the hell alone. It didn't deter this guy, though. His grin became even more feral as he flipped his long braid of red waves over his shoulder and glanced behind him at the shelves of liquor. "A sand in your shorts? Pink martini maybe? With one of those adorable little umbrellas?"

  I glared. Fae. Graceful, stunningly beautiful...and snide assholes, smug with their magic and self-proclaimed superiority. You didn't see many of his kind in a mostly human town like New Paradise.

  If this industrial crap-hole smack dab in the middle of the Ontonagon wilderness was a "new paradise" it really made me wonder what a shit-fest the "old paradise" had been. Certainly no place for a snobby, ultra-rich race like his.

  Things had been re-arranged over fifty years ago, when a larger surge of supe awareness began, and the population shifted, divided. Towns like New Paradise had sprung up as a result, when previously unpopulated areas like upper peninsula Michigan swelled to hold people fleeing their old homes for a new, if false, sense of security.

  "Beer," I said without emotion. "Whatever you have on tap that isn't just piss-colored water."

  He laughed, the sound like flowing water over river stones. "Sure, princess."

  The gorgeous asshole pushed away from the bar and walked away to fill a glass at the taps. I might hate the snide fae bastards, but that didn't stop me from looking my fill as he flowed around the other, solidly human, bartender working the far end of the bar. The red-headed fae was slender—no surprise there—with a willowy frame that looked weak but could probably pack an energetic wallop. He had a trim, narrow waist and a gorgeous little ass.

  Not that I was noticing that. So not my type.

  I turned away to survey the crowd off to my right as he approached from the left and slid a glass of dark b
eer onto the counter. "Sightseeing?" he purred in that pretty voice, laced with snark. "What's a big, bad beast like you doing in a place like this?" Fae were as territorial as the pack-animal types of supes, not that they would ever admit it.

  I glanced at him as I picked up the beer and took a swig. Nothing like the real beer at back in clan lands, but better than that watered-down crap everyone else around here seemed to prefer.

  "You missing any of your usual patrons?" I asked, getting straight to the point. I so wasn't here to flirt with a pretty little fae who would only laugh his ass off at my less than feminine wiles.

  The man narrowed his emerald green eyes at me but seemed to consider my question. "Hard to say in this place. Lots of one-timers."

  I stared at him, trying to scent the lie, though it was difficult with magic users. Fae tended to be territorial—a throw-back from when they had been the masters and guardians of their forests—so he should know the regulars and be attuned to whether any of them were missing.

  "Pull the other one," I said, taking another drink. Gods, it was good to be clean and dry.

  He frowned at me, marring that perfect, luminous porcelain skin. "Careful," I advised. "You'll get wrinkles, sweetheart."

  The fae straightened to his full, if diminutive, height and grabbed a towel to wipe the already shiny bar. It was so weird, the classy bar over here, juxtaposed against the writhing disco and glow-stick crowd. "Did you need anything else?" he asked in a simpering tone. "Maybe a snack to go with that beer? Unfortunately, we don't serve raw steak." He blinked up at me from under thick lashes. "A big girl like you must need sustenance."

  I rolled my eyes. "Look. Your kind sees details."

  I ignored the patron a few seats down, who snorted and stood, walking off in a huff. He probably thought I was making a comment on the effeminate red-head's gender preferences or some other trifling detail that humans got all pissy about, but I was commenting on his supe race.

  Supes were out, but most humans were too blind to see anything, so they just assumed we were few and far between. That, and they liked to remain mostly ignorant. Safety in monotony, I suppose. I would never understand how a person could remain almost magically ignorant. "I promise I'm not here to make a scene," I said quietly. "Just getting info."

  I watched the bartender's long, delicate nose twitch at that. Curiosity killed the...fairy. I shrugged, trying to look nonchalant. "Any water types come through here lately?" It was my only real lead on this hunt—the smell of pond water I had picked up at the site of the first kidnapping.

  He took my empty glass and refilled it. When he returned, his long fingers drummed restlessly on top of the bar. "No water types," he said, green eyes intent on mine. "And I was telling the truth about the clientele. I haven't worked here all that long, so they really are new to me."

  I nodded. Fine. No help there. I picked up my glass and slid off my seat to go walk around the club and see what I could sniff out, but those long, graceful fingers wrapped around my wrist, halting me. The fae leaned across the bar, a smirk beginning on his lips again. "I'll keep a lookout for you, hmm? Come back and see me." He winked.

  I rolled my eyes and pulled my arm free. Gods, fae were such smarmy little assholes.

  Cute.

  But smarmy.

  I could feel his eyes on me the entire time I was in the club. Watching. Judging. Probably wondering how women even came in this size.

  For the most part, the clubgoers gave me wide berth. But a few drunk idiots decided to hit on me. I shoved them back out into the crowd without spilling my beer. "Idiots."

  I would break them like twigs.

  Completing my rounds, I set my empty beer glass on the end of the bar, ignoring the sly glance the bartender shot me, and made my way to the door.

  Chapter 3

  My small apartment was, as usual, depressingly empty. I thought about getting a cat or some other furry companion a few times, but I was never sure when a bounty or a job would take me out of town or across the country. Dropping my keys into a wooden bowl that sat on the table by the door, I locked myself into my tiny, stifling sanctuary and leaned against the door.

  I was proud of myself for the life I was building here. I didn't need anyone to rely on. I was tough and resilient.

  That didn't stop the loneliness from seeping in sometimes.

  The little red-headed fae's insinuating smirk flitted through my mind. I hadn't brought someone home for a long time. Glancing around my apartment—from the worn dishwater gray carpet, to the faded 80's wallpaper, I imagined the smooth little fae's reaction to being brought home to all this class.

  Rolling my eyes at my sulking thoughts, I pushed away from the door and went to the kitchen to make myself a couple of barely seared steaks.

  My belly full, and the effects of my earlier drinks completely gone, I sat down at the over-sized wooden table I had stuffed into one corner of the apartment and leafed through my admittedly haphazard notes. I was less of a planner and more of a doer. But even I knew that lack of planning was what often took me on several wrong turns before I finally got my guy.

  I guess that's what you get when a guard who is good at following orders tries to become a supe bounty hunter. Walking out on my clan was the bravest thing I've ever done in my life. But it hadn't left me with many functional skills out here in the non-supe world.

  I ignored the rising tide of rage and pain that came whenever I thought about my fellow gryphons. Focus on work. Move on.

  My current hunt originally started when I was hired to find a missing person—a young guy who volunteered at the local chapel. The priest at the chapel said the kid had been coming to the church nearly every day for a year, but then just disappeared. At first, I thought I was just chasing my tail—the missing guy had been homeless, or damn near, with no family and no one but the priest to say he had even existed. People like that drifted. Maybe he got into drugs or some other trouble on the streets.

  But I was a pushover, so I looked for him. And while looking for him in the underbelly of the city, I slowly realized he wasn't the only one missing.

  These were exactly the types of cases that the supes who were carefully installed in the human justice system would overlook. Hell, even the humans didn't care half the time. There was no one to mourn the missing people and demand they be found, and very little way to figure out where the hell they'd disappeared to.

  I only saw the pattern because I was nosing around homeless shelters and seedy bars. And because my gryphon nature allowed me to sense when someone was lying.

  When I asked about the missing guy from the church, there wasn't much info on him, but people started commenting on how he up and left, just like so-and-so that one time, and huh, wonder where this other dude went....

  It didn't take a genius to realize that the missing humans were either food or merchandise.

  But of all the supes in the area, quietly living among their human neighbors, who had made over a dozen hapless humans disappear? I had tracked a vague scent to the edge of the swamp near the edge of town, after getting a tip that one of the missing humans liked to wander out that way. I thought for sure the undine was my mark. But no.

  Great detective skills on that one, Gesa. Again, I am not a cop. I was a body guard for the mayor back home. It was a position I had been forced into, trained by the rigid gryphon system since I was a kid. It had taught me skills that relied on my physical strength, but not much else.

  In the end, it was those skills that got me away from my family when the people I loved had failed me so completely.

  But, thanks to my one-track upbringing, the only qualifications I had for hunting down bad guys were my superhuman strength and my bad attitude. It was learn-as-you-go kind of gig. But it was the only thing I felt even vaguely qualified to do for a living. Gryphon society wasn't big on training outside your clan-chosen career track.

  I sighed and ran a hand through my thick, shoulder length hair. I'd washed it about five times, a
nd it had returned to its usual straw color. But I swear it still smelled like swamp muck.

  My phone started ringing, jittering across the table as it vibrated, jerking me out of my pity party.

  I glanced at the screen. "Gods damn it."

  Gathering every mental reserve I could muster, I pressed answer and held the phone to my ear. "Hello, Mother."

  "Gesa! Why haven't you answered my texts? When are you coming home?"

  My mom might sound all loving and concerned, but I knew better.

  "I've been busy. And I'm not coming home." Not now, not ever, you heartless bitch.

  She huffed, and I wondered if she had feathers right now. Because I could almost see her crown feathers rising in agitation and her lion's tail whipping around. "Gesa...child, stop this nonsense and come back to the clan where you belong. All you have to do is work through your penance time and all will be forgiven."

  Go back to the clan. Where I could serve out punishment for defending myself. Where I had a nice mid-level enforcer job they had picked out for me and trained me for. Along with a nice gryphon husband to fill my belly with cubs and hopefully make an acceptable female out of me so I could fit in their perfectly defined roles. My claws came out and I tapped the table with them, wanting to gut something.

  "I belong here, Mother." Where I didn't have to fit into anyone's little box. Where there might not always be fairness, but there sure as hell was some semblance of justice. Female gryphons might be encouraged to be strong and bold, but they still had to bow to the males. Had to fit in just so. Strong, but not too strong. Bold, but not too bold.

  "I don't understand why you are being so stubborn about this, Gesa," the thing that gave birth to me said with another huff. "We all do what we can to keep the clan strong. And Gerard is a perfectly acceptable match for you. He's forgiven you for the little incident with the mayor's son, and I'm sure he would be willing to allow you to keep working as an enforcer until the cubs come along."

  I rolled my eyes. Little incident? "Mom. The fact that he has to forgive me or allow me to do anything is the problem!" Fuck that noise.