Jacko rises on his hind legs and sniffs the air. Then he looks at me and chitters.
“Yes,” I say. “We know there are dropbears, and we’re going to make a run for it as soon as they come for her.”
He eyes the treetops. Malric is still facing off with the dropbear, growling and snapping and sounding exasperated. She’s screaming at him, equally frustrated.
“Come on, dropbears,” I murmur. “Come get your—”
Jacko sounds his alert cry and races back toward Malric. He jumps over the warg, thumping Malric with his hind legs and earning a snap. But Jacko doesn’t seem to notice. He’s leaping at the dropbear.
“Jacko!” I scream. “No!”
The dropbear pulls back one paw, claws seeming to glitter in the near-darkness. I run at them, shouting. Malric lunges, his black form nearly invisible against the dark. Two more dark forms drop from the tree.
No, they don’t drop.
They swoop.
It’s two large, winged shapes, bigger than owls or hawks. I shout and draw my sword as Malric leaps overtop of Jacko and the dropbear, sheltering them. Dain must have already had his bow out when I ran to protect Jacko. He fires an arrow. It’s one with firebird-feather fletching, and it glows like flame through the dark sky.
The arrow hits, and a swooping shape lets out a scream—a human scream. It plummets, and the second one keeps diving. It’s aiming straight for Malric. He doesn’t move. Doesn’t try to go after it. He’s protecting the smaller monsters and trusting us to handle the threat.
I’m there in a flash, sword swinging through the air. It hits the creature at the same time as another arrow. Droplets of blood spray. The beast lets out one of those chillingly human screams, but we are not for one moment fooled into thinking we’ve injured actual people. Every monster hunter knows which flying beast screams like a person.
A harpy.
The injured beast flaps its long wings and disappears into the darkness overhead.
“There will be more,” I say. “They only travel in flocks.”
“I know.”
“Have you ever dealt with them?” I ask, gaze still fixed on the sky.
“Once. A woman came through the forest saying her child had been carried off by harpies. Wilmot thought she was lying. He still went, but he said that harpies don’t ever leave the mountains, and sometimes people say flying monsters made off with their children if there was an accident. That’s what he expected had happened.”
“But it was actually harpies?”
“Yes. The family lived too close to the mountains. They were trappers.”
“And their child…”
“Yes.”
That’s all he says. All he needs to say. I still shiver.
Dain continues. “Wilmot said if he’d known it really was a harpy nest, he’d never have taken me. I was about nine at the time. I was fine, but…”
I don’t say anything. I understand what he means. Harpies are bigger than eagles and, like dropbears, they always hunt in groups. They’ve been known to carry off adults. When I first heard that, I’d scoffed to Jannah, expecting her to join in. She hated misinformation about monsters, especially the kind that incited fear.
Instead, she’d told me that years ago, on a manticore hunt with Wilmot and my father, she’d watched harpies carry off a hunter. Then last year, when we studied harpies, she told me the part she’d left out. My father had wanted to shoot down those harpies. Jannah had feared they’d drop the woman, but Dad knew that was a risk. And he’d said it was better than the alternative. So they’d all tried to shoot the creatures down, because a quick death from a fall would be better than what would happen to the woman when they got her to their nest.
I look at the dead harpy and try not to shudder. Even last year, Jannah refused to tell me exactly what would have happened to that hunter. She didn’t need to. My imagination worked just fine.
The escaping harpy has gone silent, and so has the forest. We keep our guard up, though, watching and waiting. Then I kneel beside the dead harpy, tensed and half watching the sky.
Legend says that the harpy is half bird and half woman. When I’d first seen a picture of a harpy, I’d been offended. Half woman? Half ugly is what they were. Maybe it’s because the scream sounds like a woman’s and the top half is simian.
I find most monkeys adorable. Yes, some are jerks, but they’re all cute. Harpies are a nightmare version, their skin stretched taut over the bone, making their heads skull-like, with beady eyes and tiny ears and protruding fangs. They have four legs, plus wings, and the back legs are birdlike with talons. The front legs are a monkey’s, with five fingers, including opposable thumbs. The tail is prehensile—long, slender and capable of grasping.
“Would you like to examine it?” I say as I rise.
“I did that the last time. It was enough.”
I hand him back his firebird arrow. “Good shot. A clean kill.”
He only mutters about his second shot not doing the same. I ignore that. He’s ducking my compliment, but secretly, he’s pleased.
“We should get moving,” I say. “Does anyone see any more? Malric?”
The warg sniffs the air. He’s been scanning it, and I’m sure he’s been sniffing, too, but now he makes a show of it. A grunt says he doesn’t detect more harpies.
“Dain?”
He shakes his head. “This is a long way from their territory. Even more than the dropbears and the colocolos. It must have been just these two.”
“It could be they were the only survivors, or they split off from the flock to hunt. Either way, we really need to get to the others before dark. Jacko?”
The jackalope pops his head out from under Malric. I praise him for staying there. He’s been getting better—understanding that he can’t fight all the monsters. It’s a lesson we’ve both needed to learn.
I’m reaching out to give Jacko a cuddle when another head pops from the shadows under the big warg. I’d forgotten about the juvenile
