Page 27 of Lion's Share
He checked the time stamp.
9:47.
So, only a few minutes ago, probably right after he’d left Sidney’s house and had headed for home.
The stones’ glow increased, again straining the white balance on the laptop’s screen. Had he ever seen that otherworldly gateway shining this brightly?
He didn’t think so, although he had to admit he’d only seen the portal twice before, both during the same moon phase.
The moon….
It was only a few days past full, waning toward its dark phase, which would happen at the end of the month.
So why was the portal opening now?
Because it was all out of whack, to use a completely unscientific description of the current situation. Something seemed to have destabilized it to the point where it sure seemed as if it appeared whenever it wanted to…or whenever some unknown force compelled it to materialize in the woods outside Silver Hollow.
Ben scribbled the time stamp on the notepad he always kept by his computer, knowing he’d want to ask both Sidney and Marjorie if they’d experienced a power outage or noted a surge in electromagnetic readings around that same time. From what he’d been able to tell, the energy of the forest seemed to spread out in waves, sort of like ripples moving out from a stone dropped in calm water, but they still should have noticed something around the same time.
But he didn’t have time to think about that, because now the footage was showing a magnificent creature moving through the portal, more than six feet tall and with the head of an eagle and the body of a lion and huge wings, its feathers and fur the same golden-umber shade.
Holy shit.
Was that…a griffin?
It sure looked like one to Ben. His studies in cryptozoology had led him to research all sorts of mythological creatures, so of course he knew what a griffin was. However, looking at a medieval tapestry or a simple line drawing definitely hadn’t been enough to prepare him for what one of those legendary beasts would look like in the flesh.
The griffin stumbled into the clearing and glanced around, clearly disoriented. Well, that wasn’t too strange; crossing over into a different world had to be just a little confounding.
A shimmer approached through the woods, one Ben didn’t think had anything to do with the glow of the portal or the magical plants that surrounded it.
No, that white gleam was the unicorn, coming into the clearing from the opposite direction from the spot where the griffin had appeared.
Annoyingly, the trail camera footage didn’t have any sound, but he saw how the unicorn lifted its head and reared, and he guessed it had probably let out a commanding neigh.
Was it trying to warn the griffin away?
The lion-eagle turned immediately, and its enormous wings beat at the air, making all the glowing plants and flowers bend in the breeze those wings generated. In response, the unicorn reared again — and then charged.
Even though this encounter had happened several minutes earlier and Ben knew there was nothing he could do to change the outcome, his breath still caught. Who would come out on top in this clash of the titans? The unicorn was nimbler and faster, but the griffin had sheer bulk on its side — and those wings.
It rose into the air, breaking a few branches in the process. The unicorn stopped directly under it, horn pointed toward the griffin’s belly, and reared and neighed once more. Immediately afterward, the creature’s mouth opened…Ben wondered if it roared like a lion or keened like an eagle…and then flew off deeper into the woods.
Was it truly afraid of the unicorn, or did it just want to get away before one of them did something they regretted?
Hard to say, since he had no idea how those creatures’ minds even worked.
The one thing he did know was that a griffin and a unicorn were loose in the woods.
Slowly, he got out his phone. Yes, it was now after ten o’clock, and he normally would never reach out to anyone at that hour unless it was an emergency…but if this latest sighting didn’t constitute an emergency, then he didn’t know what did.
“I saw it last month,” Sidney said. Luckily, Ben had caught her before she’d started getting ready for bed, so she’d hurried over to his cottage as soon as she got the call. “Or at least, I saw a griffin, although I can’t say for sure whether it was this one.”
He swiveled in his chair to stare at her. She’d sat in the spare seat while he’d navigated on the laptop to show her the footage of the griffin and the unicorn, and their knees were almost brushing. Unfortunately, there wasn’t anything terribly intimate about this meeting.
“And you didn’t think to say anything?”
She crossed her arms. Sometime before she’d left her house, she’d pulled on a UC Davis sweatshirt as a shield against the chilly, damp night, and right then, she looked as if she could have been back in high school, with even the faint cosmetics she usually wore now gone. Ben wondered if his call had caught her right after she’d washed her face.
