Clarissa

I stepped forward the moment I caught the warning look in Dylan’s eyes. I wasn’t fast enough. His knees buckled, and I caught an arm, but he was all dead weight.

He went down, nearly pulling me with him.

“Dylan!” Oh no, not now…

“What’s wrong? Is he okay?” Lilly came to my side, and I caught an expression on the other girl’s face I had never seen on her before: pinched and worried.

“I think so. Help me get him on his back.”

Lilly caught me watching her. Immediately, her expression went hard again. Like a mask sliding over her face. When she spoke, her voice was derisive, “Did he actually faint?”

Yup, this was the reason why Dylan wanted to keep his blackouts to himself.

I shook my head and pressed my fingers to Dylan’s neck like I had seen doctors do on TV. It was hard to tell, and I might have been pressing too hard, but I thought I felt a pulse.

“He’s going to be fine,” I said loud enough for Merlot and Ben to hear. Hard truth: If Dylan wasn’t okay, we couldn’t do anything, and it was important the younger kids didn’t get upset.

Something slammed upstairs. More glass shattered. By the sound of it, there wasn’t going to be any windows left in the house.

“Move him to the back of the room, just in case,” Terry said. He hadn’t budged from his spot in front of the door. He looked brave like that. Ready to defend us all in case the griffins broke through.

But thanks to him, we had nowhere else to run. No other choice but to stand our ground.

“How are we supposed to move him?” Lilly snapped at her cousin. “He weighs like two of us.”

“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “He’ll come around in a couple of minutes.”

Wrong thing to say. Lilly’s dark eyes fixed on me. “How do you know?”

“Give him chocolate,” Ben piped up from the back. “Phillip Renner from my class fainted one time, and Miss Browning gave him chocolate because he was hypa—No. Hypoglac—”

“Shut up,” Terry gestured to the door with the point of his rifle. Nothing had banged against it since Dylan fell, but the message to keep quiet was clear.

I didn’t care.

“Don’t you tell him to shut up.” In a flash, I was on my feet. My knee twinged, but I ignored it. The urge to smack Terry was too strong. I wanted to grab his rifle away and beat his pretty face in with it.

This is your fault. This is all your fault, and if we die here, I swear I’ll make sure you go first, I wanted to say. But I knew if I let those words out I would loosen the reins on my anger and that… that wasn’t a good idea.

After all, an hour ago I’d beaten a griffin to death with a railroad tie.

Terry couldn’t have known that, but he blinked at me and his shoulders loosened. There was real regret in his eyes, which took me by surprise.

“I’m sorry, okay?” he whispered, just loud enough for me to hear. When had I moved so close to him? “I know I screwed up, but we can’t fall apart right now. I’ll guard the door. Keep my cousin safe for me, all right?”

I took a deep breath. Red faded from my vision, and I realized my hands were balled into fists. No, it wasn’t all right… Or maybe I was overreacting. I never used to get angry like this. What was happening to me?

I turned away.

From her spot at her brother’s side, Lilly watched me warily.

Not knowing what else to do, I picked up the bat Dylan had dropped and stood nearby. Just in case.

An uncomfortable silence fell over the room, broken by thumping our heads and griffin hunting cries. I picked out at least seven different voices in the house. Only a small percentage of the ones I’d seen outside. Those were probably busy fighting over the bodies on the porch.

Eventually the noise toned down to squabbling griffinish chitters. They had found food, or were done fighting each other and were eating the loser. Or a little of column A and a little of column B, as my mom used to say.

“Are they going to leave?” Merlot asked, breaking the silence. Baby Jane had fallen asleep while chewing on the corner of a blanket. Even from across the room, I saw tear tracks down the baby’s face. She was going to be thirsty and grumpy when she woke up. A grumpy baby was a loud baby. That was going to be a problem—

Dylan sat up with a gasp.

“Have a nice nap?” Lilly asked. She stood, exchanging places with me as I knelt by Dylan’s side.

“Are you okay?” I touched his forehead. No fever, but I knew he had been without water for too long. Why had I let him do that to himself?

Dylan’s dark gaze darted around the room, confused, until he focused on me. The answer on his face was clearly ‘No’, but he nodded and sat up.

“I’m fine,” he mumbled. Then he let out a long breath and put his head in his hands.

I rested my hand on his shoulder. “Dylan?”

“I’m fine,” he repeated. “Headache.”

“You are such a woman,” Lilly scoffed, and turned to join Merlot, Ben, and the baby on the other side of the room.

I don’t know why I expected Dylan to react—Some of the things Lilly said were outright cruel, and if Ben ever spoke to me that way I wouldn’t let it go—but Dylan didn’t even blink.

“Can you fight if you need to?” Terry asked.

“Yeah.” Dylan reached to grab the pool stick laying nearby. His fingers shook.

I bent close and whispered, “Did you have a vision? With your mother?”

He took another deep breath and nodded very slightly. His eyes were haunted.

What did she tell you? I thought. What did you see?

* * *

I figured it was evening when the griffins started shrieking along with the setting sun. I never noticed it before, but it was a different kind of cry than the noises they made while hunting. A longer call, more drawn out. Still creepy, though.

As we listened, hunkered down in the basement, the voices moved away. I think the griffins liked to roost up in trees. Not inside houses, thank God. There weren’t any new thumps, scratching, or any other sounds from overhead.

After two straight hours of silence, we unlocked the basement door.

It wasn’t easy. It took Terry and I working together to shove the door open. Even with my knee bothering me, I could still throw my weight around. One of the huge thumps we’d heard had been an armoire knocked down the stairs. It landed against the basement door. From the claw marks on the other side, it might have even saved us.

Edging the door open, I listened in the stairwell for breathing or feathers mantling, or anything else that suggested an animal the size of a horse was waiting to pounce.

That was one thing in our favor. Griffins were noisy.

Nothing.

Terry had the gun, so he went out first. I followed with Dylan behind me. Everybody else trooped after.

The kitchen was in splinters. Sharp claws had raked open the cabinets and what was left of the counter tops. Open jars and plastic food containers were spread all over the place. Some had holes large enough to be made by sharp beaks. The refrigerator was knocked over, and I didn’t even want to look at the pantry. The open door told me enough.

Most, if not all the food, was gone.

Ben bent and held up a feather the length of his forearm. Pure white, it glowed dimly in the dark. For an insane moment the feathers under my shoulder itched in sympathy.

Baby Jane made a soft wail. Ben was the one who took her from Merlot’s arms, offering to change the diaper for once. He was a good kid.

I moved to the living room. The couches were upended, and stuffing from the cushions was spread everywhere. A big gooey splotch told me the griffins pooped like regular birds, too.

Up above, the stars glittered coldly through a large hole in the ceiling. It went straight through the roof. How in the world did they do that?

There had been several griffin bodies on the porch outside. Now, the porch was clear except for scattered feathers and a few stains of blood.

Our food was gone. Our shelter, the one place where we could be kind of safe, was ruined.

I kicked something—I couldn’t see what it was—but it clattered and startled Merlot into turning around.

“Sorry,” I muttered. Then we both jumped as what was left of the back door slammed shut.

“I think that was Dylan,” Merlot muttered.

I hesitated. I wanted to know exactly what he saw—was there a cure?—but he probably needed to process. “Give him a minute, then I’ll get him.”

“Okay. Oh, hey look.” Merlot let out a huff of a laugh and bent to yank something free from the wreckage. It was Lilly’s white board, now warped from being knocked down and stepped on. “At least this survived.”

The light from the stars streaming in hit the board unevenly, dimming out Lilly’s precise handwriting in a glare in places and brightening it in others.

The word ‘trees’ stuck out at me, and ‘griffins’ and ‘fire’.

“Wait a minute.” I stepped forward and took the board from her. I held it between my hands. The little foil stars decorated Lilly’s bullet points in order of weirdness. My eyes jumped to the bullets with the most stars.

The griffins. The trees. The weirdly burnt corpses (one looked like a mall mannequin, I’d remembered thinking), the girl Merlot saw who couldn’t breathe. She’d gurgled.

The last one didn’t fit in with the half-theory that had come to my mind. But... you couldn’t breathe if you were drowning. If your lungs filled with water...

Water.

“That’s it,” I said, looking at Merlot. “Or, at least part of it. Look.” I turned the white board back to her and pointed at the griffins. “Air.” I pointed at the trees. “Earth.” The burnt corpses. “Fire.” And, finally, the girl who couldn’t breathe. “I bet anything her lungs filled with water.”

“The... four elements?” Merlot stared at the white board. Then, at me. “I guess... Maybe? But what is it mean?”

“I don’t know.” And just like that, my bubble of elation popped. “But it’s a connection, and I’m sure it means something. Go find Lilly and tell her. Maybe she’ll see something we can’t.” Merlot made a face at that, and I smiled. “I’ll get Dylan.”

* * *

Limping out of the house (stupid knee), I found Dylan down on the beach, ankle-deep in the lake and cupping water into his mouth.

“Hey,” I said. “You okay?” He didn’t look it. He was pale and the skin around his eyes was tight.

“Can’t get the taste of sea-salt out of my mouth,” he said.

“What?”

Dylan shrugged, cupped another mouthful, and spit it to the side.

“I think I figured something out,” I said, and nearly bursting with excitement, I told him about the white board, and what I thought it meant.

As usual, he didn’t reply right away. He straightened and looked out across the black lake. “That makes a sort of sense.”

“It does?” I hoped so.

“The Greeks thought the elements represented balance. And in the vision my mother told me... Well, she said a lot, but she called the griffins the unbalanced ones.”

“So, you talked to her?” I couldn’t take it any more. I had to ask. “What did she say about a cure? Did you tell her about my feathers?”

Again, Dylan hesitated. “She didn’t say, directly. She wants us to go to the house in Big Sur. She calls it Sanctuary, and said the griffins couldn’t get in. There is a cure for those who have not succumbed—No I don’t know what that exactly means,” he added before I could ask. “But Clarissa... I think I was wrong. That wasn’t my Mom. She—it had my mother's shape, but...”

“What do you mean? Who was it, then?”

“I don’t know. Coyote?” He laughed without sounding amused. “He’s supposed to be a shape shifter, right?”

“What?” I had no idea what he was talking about.

He shook his head and let out a breath. "She said we need to get there before June 21st.”

“Oh, that will be easy to remember.” I tried to smile. “That’s about a week after my birthday.”

He blinked. “Really?”

“Yeah, and if we’re gonna get all mystical, it’s also the summer solstice.” I normally didn’t pay attention to those things, but, again it was around my birthday.

“Huh. But she also said—Well, she only let me ask three questions, and she only half-answered most of it, and told me some other stuff—”

“Dylan,” I said, resting my hand on his arm. “How about you start from the beginning.”

He flashed a smile. “Okay.” He then went on to tell me about the air hangar stuffed with food, his mother's warning about magic ‘reentering the world’, and the fact we had to get there to live.

It was kind of a lot to take in.

“Well.” I straightened my shoulders. “I think we should go.”

His gaze locked onto me. “I agree, but... Clarissa, I don’t know for sure if the tide pool can do anything for you.”

I shrugged as if it didn’t bother me. It had to be a cure. I couldn’t let myself think otherwise. “Doesn’t matter. We need to get out of here. Now. Tonight. Or else Terry will convince Merlot and your sister that it’s a good idea to camp out at a neighbors house, or patch up our own. We’ll never leave.”

I’d been thinking about it on and off since the Turning, but tonight was a wake-up call: We couldn’t stay in the Tahoe basin. Eventually, the food would run out. After the summer was over and the real winter began, there would be no grocery stores to buy fresh food, no warm heater to curl up in front of when it was blowing snow outside. Only the frozen cold, impossibly deep snow, and hungry griffins.

Besides, I thought, This was where mom died.

Dylan moved to face me. “But what if what I’ve seen isn’t real?” he spoke low and quick as if afraid someone was listening from the bushes. “What if we get there, and the airplane hangar is full of junkie car parts instead of food, and I’m just crazy?”

“I don’t think you are,” I told him. “But even if you’re wrong... Dylan, we barely got out of that basement today. That house is like a pressure cooker. What happens the next time Terry wants to blow off steam? He needs a goal to focus on. He needs hope. We all do.” I met Dylan’s eyes. “I’m willing to believe in you and what you’ve seen.”

He looked down. “I’m not comfortable telling anyone about my visions. I don’t want to lead them on, or set myself up as some kind of... shaman or seer.”

“We won’t have to,” I promised. “Let’s talk to Terry about that airplane hangar.”

* * *

“My pops?” Terry said, rising from a crouch to stand with his arms crossed.

We’d found him in his own bedroom—or what was left of it—digging through a pile of debris for clean clothes.

A griffin, or maybe a couple of griffins, had busted their way through the walls between Terry’s room and Lilly’s, next door. The bed frame was broken, and what was left of the mattress was covered in dust and drywall. A heavy, oily scent of manure was thick in the air. I made sure to watch my step as I came closer to him.

I tried to play it cool. Maybe sweeten him up a little. “He lived next to the ocean, right? You said you had a boat?”

"Yeah, a sweet Lazzara-eighty. Not that it does us any good." He scowled and kicked at a loose flap of drywall. "Why?"

Time to be blunt. “And he had a whole airplane hangar stuffed with end-of-the-world-supplies, isn’t that right? Dylan and Lilly's mom's idea.”

Terry stiffened, looked past me to Dylan, and back again. “Yeah, I remember them working on that before I came here. So?”

I heard Dylan let out a long breath. It sounded like relief. One small bit of evidence to prove he wasn’t hallucinating.

But I was annoyed. Terry had given Dylan a lot of grief over that video. But he’d been warned, too, in his own way.

“So?” I repeated. “Why didn’t you say this before? We can’t stay here.”

Terry shook his head. “Because it doesn’t matter. We can get everything we need way closer than Big Sur. There is a freakin’ Walmart across town—”

“If it hasn’t burned in the fire,” I reminded him.

Terry was stubborn. “Then we’ll go to other houses. There’s only six of us, counting the baby. It’ll take ages to go through what this town still has to offer.”

“We don’t have ages,” Dylan said quietly. “We don’t even have a few months.”

That stopped Terry cold. He turned to his cousin. “What, now?”

Dylan took a deep breath, almost as if gathering himself. “I’ve been... thinking about what my mom used to tell me. A lot of it didn’t make sense. I was just a kid. But she was always on about June 20th... The summer solstice?”

I winced. That had sounded super awkward. Dylan was a terrible liar.

But Terry had lost all the expression on his face.

“Your father told you something about the summer solstice, too, didn’t he?” I asked.

Terry said nothing. But his eyes said yes.

"Did he call it a sanctuary?" Dylan pressed.

"Who cares what he called it?" Terry demanded.

Time for a new track. “Look,” I said. “We can’t live off canned food forever.” I couldn’t, especially. Unless it was canned meat. “Why not live by the ocean? We could fish, maybe figure out how to farm a little.”

“Big Sur’s four hundred miles away,” Terry said flatly.

“We’re not walking there. We have two cars.”

“And we need to leave soon.” Dylan’s voice took on a firmer edge.

“Why?”

Dylan hesitated, and I could practically see him gather his confidence. He looked directly at his cousin. “Something tells me it’s now or never. I’m sorry, I can’t explain it to you.”

“Now you’re starting to sound like your mother,” Terry said, but it wasn’t quite a ‘no’. His shoulders slumped, and he spent a long moment gazing around what was left of his bedroom.

"She believed in magic," Dylan said. "What do you think the griffins are?"

"What aren't you telling me?" he said, looking between us. I wasn't sure I liked the suspicion in his eyes.

Dylan hedged. "It sounds insane…"

I jumped in. Time to lay it out on the table. "Whatever's going on…. Whatever's happening, Terry. It's not logical. It's magical."

"Don't let Lilly catch you saying that."

I wasn't going to let him dissuade me. "Terry," I said firmly. "If there's an explanation, a way to stop it… maybe even a cure. It might be there."

"What? Anti-griffin serum?" Terry could be flakey but he wasn't an idiot. He looked at Dylan. "You're talking about that video with the tide pool?"

"Maybe," Dylan muttered looking down.

Terry pinched his lips together , but he wasn't outright laughing at the two of us. There was a flash in his eyes. It looked like fear.

After all, he was the oldest out of all of us.

“Fine,” he said at last. “You want to go live by the ocean, Clarissa? Fine. Whatever is waiting for us there can’t be worse than here, right?”

* * *

With Terry proposing that we go to the Big Sur house, even Lilly didn’t an objection. Merlot tended to go along with the rest the group, and Ben followed my lead.

We didn’t have much time to prepare. Most of what had been usable in the house had been eaten, shattered, or just ripped apart by razor-sharp talons. The clocks were knocked off the walls, but Terry’s wristwatch said it was already one in the morning. Sunrise wasn’t for hours.

We loaded up the Toyota truck and the sedan. The amount of unopened cans we managed to find wasn’t enough to fill the sedan’s trunk. We threw in changes of clothes, diapers from scavenging neighbor’s houses, jugs of water from the lake treated with iodine we’d found at the Norris’s, and extra bedding into the truck. The remaining guns and ammo were split between the two vehicles.

And that was it. All of our lives, packed easily in two cars.

I drove the sedan, Dylan took the truck. Terry sat shotgun next to me and kept giving me long looks. I think he wanted to apologize again for what happened.

Well, if he really felt sorry, he could make it up to me by not being an idiot on the road. He was a good guy. I just wish he wasn’t so impulsive...

Whatever. It was time to go. Drawing a long breath, I let myself take in everything that had happened tonight: We were really leaving Lake Tahoe. Maybe, I would never see it again.

Bye Mom. Wherever you are—whatever you are—I hope you got out of here, too.

“Clarissa,” Ben piped up from the back seat. “Promise not to get in a car accident this time?”

I smiled. “I promise.”

“You’re going to love the ocean, little man,” Terry said. He always knew how to cheer up Ben. “I’ll teach you how to fish.”

“Awesome,” Ben said.

Terry caught my eye and smiled. Despite myself, I grinned back. In the rear view mirror, I saw Dylan behind the wheel of the truck. He was ready to go, waiting on me.

I started the engine. Big Sur or bust.