15
SAM
It was a bad idea.
I knew it deep inside my bones, instinct as much as a conscious thought. This was a bad idea. It wouldn't work. It would blow up in our faces.
But what other choice did we have? She was right that the cops could come knocking on my door at any moment. My Accord still sat a few blocks away, near the scene of the now infamous gryphon-dragon publicity stunt. They'd run the plates. The lab address would come up. And then they'd be searching for the dozen or so employees who worked there.
We both needed to get out of dodge.
Plus, there was another reason. The totem. When I told Ezra she couldn't come, it was like I could feel the stone pulsing angrily. Defying my comment. It remained that way, hot and raging, until I'd finally relented.
For whatever reason, I needed to keep Ezra near me.
Which, honestly, was what I really wanted.
Selfishly, I wanted her by my side. She was a thief, and a stranger, and had a personality as blunt as a butter knife, but oh my God was I into her. It was like the excitement of a first date, and third date, and telling someone "I love you" all rolled into one bundle of emotion. I knew it couldn't last, but for now it was incredible.
Besides, she was the only person who knew about my ability. I didn't want to deal with that terrifying reality alone.
We finished our tacos and took an Uber to the lab. I could barely remember the list of equipment Thomas wanted me to bring; even though our phone conversation was that morning, it felt like days ago. I grabbed what I hoped would be enough to make Thomas happy. Then we raided the equipment locker and found winter clothes that fit Ezra: Under Armor leggings and long-sleeve shirt, waterproof ski pants and jacket, a balaclava and a hat and goggles. The hiking boots we had were several sizes too large, but we fixed that by pulling three sets of double-wool socks on her feet first.
"I feel like the dough boy," she said, voice muffled through the mask.
"If you want to dress sexy, you're welcome to it. Just don't cry to me when we're on the mountain and your fingers turn black and fall off."
She didn't complain after that, and we spent the next half hour loading equipment into one of the lab vans.
"We'll tell Thomas that you're one of the interns sent up from Boulder," I said when we were an hour outside of Denver on the interstate. "You're an electrical engineering major."
"I'm good hotwiring cars and swapping out the electronics on stolen TVs," I said, "but I don't think I can fake being an engineer."
"You won't have to. Thomas is... possessive with most of the equipment. He barely lets me do anything but haul equipment."
"Great."
"If anyone asks any questions, you can tell them your specialty is car electronics, or something," I said. "You seem like you can make up something on the spot if need be."
"Yeah, sure."
"This project is to set up an array of radio dishes," I explained. "They'll be used to scan for radio signals in space."
"The top of a mountain seems like a dumb place to set those up."
I grinned the grin of someone who was about to explain something they found interesting. "That's the thing about radio waves: they're affected by moisture. Specifically, moisture in the air and atmosphere. The higher we go, the less interference there is between us and space.
"And not only that," I continued, "but the dryer a place is, the better. One of the largest arrays is in the Atacama Desert in Chile."
"But there's snow everywhere," she said, pointing to the terrain along the side of the road. "That doesn't seem very dry."
"Oh, it is," I said. "Snow isn't necessarily indicative of moisture. Did you know Antarctica is one of the largest deserts on earth?"
"Woooow."
"So yeah, a place like the Atacama Desert is ideal, but an array up here will suffice for the radio astronomy they're doing."
"Huh." She stared out the window at the snow on the side of the road. I didn't think she was listening, which annoyed me.
I tried to shake it off. I was just worried about my job. Thomas would be pissed I was late, especially if I'd forgotten any of the equipment. And I didn't think he'd appreciate me bringing along an intern. He didn't adjust well to deviations from a plan. He was the kind of guy who liked to know things well in advance so he could let the information simmer.
Beyond worrying about work, it was tough to focus with the dragon in my head.
I could feel him there, in the distance. Somewhere on the other side of Denver, thankfully, a safe amount of space between us. And he was still wounded from our fight, which filled me with strange pride. Even so, his presence unnerved me. Distracted me. Like a loose thread in my coat tickling the back of my head. I wanted to yank it out.
When my work on the mountain was done, I'd have to deal with him. I wasn't looking forward to that.
Stop it, Sam. I needed to worry about work, first. One thing at a time.
The GPS guided us away from the state highway and onto a mountain road. It wound up toward the Rockies with steady switchbacks, the van engine rising in pitch with the altitude.
"I've never been somewhere with mountains," Ezra finally said.
"Really?"
"Yep. East coast, west coast. Chicago, for a while. But never real mountains like this. They're incredible." There was wonder in her voice as she craned her head to look straight up. I'd thought she was bored when I was giving her instructions, but she was too distracted by the views! The sun setting on the other side of the mountain cast everything on this side in a mystical twilight glow.
"We take it for granted, living in Denver. But you're right: they're incredible."
For a while I watched her admire the terrain, a smile on my face. Then she caught me looking, and I returned my eyes to the road.
"So I've got a question," she said.
"Shoot."
"Your tattoos."
"Yeah?"
"Well, don't take this the wrong way," she said. "But you don't seem like the kind of guy to cover both arms and half his chest with ink."
I stared straight ahead, embarrassed.
"See? That's what I mean. You're blushing right now."
"Am not," I said weakly.
"You've got tattoos of skulls with roses for eyes, and a ram's curved horn, and leaves covering a vine," she insisted. "Those are just the ones I picked out earlier, when I was admiring your body. Hell, in the airport I thought you were some gang member!"
I shrugged. "Nope. Just a regular old astronomy engineer."
"You really don't see my confusion here?" she insisted. "How those two things don't jive together?"
I shrugged awkwardly. "I mean, I've always been a shy guy. I was a nerd in high school, and didn't get into exercise until I was in college."
"...and then?"
"And then," I said, "I got drunk with my buddies and woke up the next morning with a tattoo."
Ezra barked a laugh. "Somehow I doubt you got half your body inked in a single night."
"It was just a tiny heart on my bicep." I paused as we drove around an especially tight corner of the switchback. "My buddy, Orlando, got the same thing but on his calf. And as embarrassed as I was at first... it was strangely freeing. Some way of expressing myself I'd never considered, in a way that was easier for an introvert. So I went back, and had the artist design an old English crest around the heart, like a shield. Then I got a skull inked above that, wearing a crown. And it just spiraled from there."
I shrugged, and Ezra didn't say anything, so I spoke into the vacuum of silence.
"Soon I was spending my biweekly paychecks from my internship at the tattoo parlor. It became routine. I was still shy everywhere else, at parties and in class and at my internship, but the tattoos were a silent way of being more outgoing. It made people treat me differently. In a good way."
"Huh," Ezra said.
"You probably think I'm nuts," I mumbled, shaking my head in embarrassment. I'd never told anyone this before. "It's stupid, I know..."
"No, I get it," she said, putting a hand on my arm. "I think it's beautiful."
I smiled at her. Even if she was only being kind, it was a kindness I appreciated. A vulnerability that I didn't mind exposing her to.
I tried to think of an excuse to change the subject, and a question popped into my head from earlier. "What was around my neck?"
"What?"
"When I was a gryphon earlier," I added. "You rode on my back and held something that was around my neck."
"Ohh. It was like a collar! And there was a sapphire in it that was this big." She made the outline of a softball with her hands. "To match the one on the totem."
"A collar." I thought about that. If the gem on the totem could transform me into a gryphon, what would happen if someone touched the one on my collar?
Or worse, what would happen if they destroyed it?
"How much longer?" Ezra said. "I'm burning up in all these layers."
"GPS says twenty minutes."
"Twenty sweaty minutes," she grumbled.
*
Ezra sighed with relief when we finally reached the point where the road curved over the mountain and began to slope downward. But then she frowned as I pulled aside, tires crunching down a snowy path that ran along the ridge of the mountain in the darkness.
I reached the end, parking next to an identical van, the one Thomas had driven. We hopped out, and Ezra looked around at the trees and night sky. "This is it?"
I pointed at a snowy path marked by poles with LED lights. "Our build site is another 500 feet that way."
"Oh. That's not so far." She squinted as if she could see the camp in the distance, but I shook my head.
"No, sorry. I meant 500 vertical feet. It'll take us half an hour to hike up there at night."
Ezra stared at me like I was making a bad joke.
The equipment was compartmentalized into individual packs that could be carried like backpacks, so Ezra and I strapped two of them on and began the trek to the camp. Even with the path illuminated by LED poles every ten feet and the snow packed down, it was slow going in the dark while carrying a load. Every step had to be slow and careful, feeling for purchase before taking another. The wind howled across the ridge and stabbed my cheeks, so I pulled up my hood and tightened it until the world narrowed to a circle directly in front of me.
Honestly, it felt good to be up here. Secluded on the mountain doing my job. Away from everything else. Even the cold was a comforting annoyance, familiar and normal. The stars were brilliant specks of light, too many to count, more light than darkness once your eyes adjusted.
Ezra was having a tough go of it. Since her boots didn't fit perfectly they kept slipping, and once she slid off the path so quickly that she was forced to turn the motion into an out-of-control jog until she rammed into a tree off the path. She laughed it off though, and to her credit didn't complain about the cold.
My legs were just falling into a groove when the camp appeared ahead.
The PUT-PUT-PUT stutter of the generator was almost drowned out by the wind, but the smell of gasoline gave it away. The camp was positioned on a flat plateau straddling the ridge, thirty feet wide. A wide radio antenna had already been set up in the farthest corner, and next to it were two tents: a small one-person tent, and another large enough to stand up in. The latter was filled with light, and the silhouette of a man was cast on the wall.
I dropped my pack of equipment on the ground, and Ezra followed suit, before unzipping the tent.