Then a little glow of warmth came into view. It darted from one branch to another about twenty feet above me.
“Peek-a-boo, I see you,” I said softly.
The heat source froze behind the branch. Damn it, I didn’t think its hearing would be that good. There was nothing to be done for it now. I’d have to go up after it.
I focused a little energy on my muscles and reached for the branch above me. Pulling myself onto the next higher branch, I stopped and swore under my breath. My hair, which had gotten considerably longer over the last few months, caught again in the dead twigs that made up the space beneath the spruce’s canopy. Bemoaning my lack of forethought, I pulled my head painfully free and gazed up at my quarry.
I’d already followed the little guy up thirty feet of the blue spruce and the branches were getting smaller and closer together. I considered trying to knock it out of the tree, but a force blast strong enough to part the thick canopy would probably kill the damn thing.
I heard chuckling on the ground below the tree. Damn it, Rafe was enjoying this too much. He could have levitated me up the outside of the tree’s branches and I could have reached the little guy without all this work. But no, he had to say it was a training lesson. I didn’t get it. Why did I have to chase this creature through the maze of branches and twigs that formed the interior of the huge spruce? What did this train me on? I should be training on levitating my butt rather than climbing.
I spotted a hard green, seed cone at arm’s length on the outside of the canopy. Reaching over, I plucked it from the branch. Gazing down, I could see the heat source that was Rafe and our familiars about forty feet from the base of the tree I occupied. I tossed the cone through a space in the canopy and triggered my wind tattoo.
Focusing, I pushed the cone down. I wasn’t trying for speed, just accuracy. Gravity would provide plenty of speed. A couple of seconds later, I heard a thump.
“Owe! Son of a bitch. Is that damn thing throwing cones at me?” Rafe hollered.
“I guess so, Boss. Maybe you’d better move back a little bit so you don’t make such a large target,” I replied while trying to keep from laughing.
“I don’t understand why you didn’t want me to just knock it out of the tree. I’d hoped to finish this up tonight, not make a campaign out of the last one of Rowle’s creatures.”
“Because I want to catch it. You said I could. You said it would be a learning experience,” I retorted.
“Yeah, but I didn’t think the little bastard would start throwing things at me,” Rafe groused.
I glanced up. The wyvern hadn’t moved from its current branch. I didn’t want to spook the little guy into flying, because then Rafe was sure to knock it down. I sure hoped the little guy was worth the trouble I was going through. I hadn’t told Rafe just why I wanted to catch it, mainly because I was sure he’d tell me to not be stupid and just let him take care of it.
I triggered my shield tat and shrunk it down to a small cone-shaped form from my shoulders up to just past my head. That would leave my hands free to grip and keep my hair from getting caught in any more twigs. I began climbing again.
The wyvern was obviously watching me approach, but so far, it wasn’t attempting to leap from its perch. I got my foot on a branch that couldn’t be more than three inches in diameter at its base. Spruce, I was quickly learning, is a strong wood and three inches was more than enough to support my weight. But, unfortunately, the rest of the branches above me were even smaller.
Another minute passed and I could hear Rafe complaining to Beast and Maia about my taking all night to do a job I should have finished in a couple of minutes. Boy, he should could act impatient when he wanted to.
We’d been hunting down the dozens of creatures that Rowle had let loose and had escaped Rafe’s flood since November. Rafe thought this was the last one that hadn’t been captured by the National Guard or us. Those were another problem. Rafe was still on the fence about whether to leave them be or put them back where they belonged. That would mean sneaking in to where they were being held at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo and opening a portal to their worlds. I was in favor of letting them stay. They’d already become quite the attraction at the zoo, although several had died from the officials making the mistake of putting some of the more dangerous ones in with ones that were their natural prey. It didn’t matter that they were all here thanks to Rowle, if you put a manticore in the same pen as a sphinx, one of them was going to eat the other.
I’d thought that Beast would have wanted to expatriate his fellow manticores back to his world, but surprise surprise, manticores don’t really like each other. He didn’t care whether they got eaten by a sphinx or not.
I had moved to within reach of the branch the wyvern hid on when it began to move. The damn thing was not going to get away after all the work I’d put into catching it.
It ran out onto
