She cleared her throat, excitement gleaming in her irises. “Let’s just say… we were rather stupid to try to shoot you before.”

Ben

I tried to keep calm. River being absent from her cell didn’t necessarily mean that something bad had happened to her. It could simply be that the hunters had wanted to examine her.

Still, I couldn’t shake my nerves as I hurried out of the courtyard and went in search of her. I didn’t know where to start looking. She could be in any one of these buildings, and the longer I spent looking for her, the more time it was going to take for me to get someone here who could help her. Searching for her was in this sense stupid, but I found it hard to fight my protective instinct and not at least verify her location before I left. The many hours I’d have to spend journeying back would be all the more torturous if I didn’t.

Thankfully, I didn’t have to search for too long. Several corridors along from the courtyard, I spotted her walking with a woman in a lab coat. River looked okay on a cursory glance, even if rather flustered and frustrated. They walked past me, and as they wound around a few corners, I followed them back inside the courtyard until they reached River’s cell.

“I’m feeling hungry,” River said to the woman before she left her alone in the room. “I don’t need blood, I just eat regular human food. Could you get me something? And a bottle of water would be good, too.”

The woman gave her a brief nod. “I’ll arrange for something.”

With that, the woman clicked River’s door shut and turned on her heel, disappearing out of sight along the veranda.

River blew out a breath and plopped herself down on the bed. Her hands resting over her lower stomach, she stared blankly up at the ceiling. I wondered where the hunters had just taken her and what they had done to her.

But now I had to leave. Reluctantly, I tore my eyes away from River and swept out of the cell. As I emerged in the center of the courtyard, I didn’t take a right turn toward the exit, like a normal person would. Instead, I drifted off the floor and headed upward, toward the glass ceiling. My body passed through it and out into the icy world beyond. Snow had begun to fall heavily, and the sky had clouded over.

Scanning my surroundings, I tried to gain a sense of direction and remember which way the ocean was. It couldn’t have been all that far away, based on the length of the helicopter journey. I rose in the sky until I was high enough to see the mass of water far in the distance. If I had any luck, that would be the Pacific Ocean.

I was about to begin hurtling toward it at full speed when something directly beneath me caught my eye. A shiny black Hummer was trundling up the slope toward the parking lot. Since I’d arrived in this place, this was the first car that I’d spotted in motion. Despite my urgency to get a move on, I drifted down from the sky, closer to the vehicle.

It wasn’t so much the SUV itself that interested me, but rather the container that was trailing along behind it. It looked like a rectangular box and was covered by a large beige canvas wrapping. It could’ve just been food supplies, or new equipment… but then two men wearing heavy coats and black boots stepped out of the vehicle and walked to the container. They knelt down beside the trailer and released the hooks that were holding the canvas in place.

With one strong tug, the two men hauled off the covering to reveal… What is that?

The rectangular container turned out to be a cage, and within the cage was a creature that made my jaw fall open.

It was a small creature, about the size of a pony. Its smooth back was coated with golden brown fur, as was its long winding tail, and hind legs. They looked like those of a lion. While its head and front legs—which were in fact talons—belonged to some kind of carnivorous bird. And now I glimpsed wings—heavy, feathered wings, that appeared to have been bound together against its back to prevent it from flying.

As strange as it looked, I realized that I recognized this beast… It had all the features of a griffin— a supernatural creature that I’d never seen before in the flesh, and had only read about in books.

So griffins really do exist.

But how did the hunters find one? And what are they doing with it?

The griffin clacked its razor sharp beak and let out a loud screech—extraordinarily loud for its size. One of the men hurried back to the truck and, opening the back door, pulled out a blow gun. There was a sharp needle at the tip of it, and when the hunter aimed the weapon through the bars, the needle shot out and wedged itself into the creature’s neck. The griffin cawed again, by the sounds of it more out of anger than pain. Its legs staggered and gave way.

One of the men climbed onto the cage and reached its roof. He bent down and opened a hatch before sliding himself down inside the bars. He grabbed what looked like a sturdy, leather muzzle from a hook within the cage and fastened it firmly around the creature’s hooked beak. Then the hunter who’d remained on the outside pressed a green button at the side of the cage, causing its back wall to shudder and lift open. The second man joined the first within the cage. They grabbed the griffin by a thick collar that was bound around its throat and tugged it out into the snow.

By now, the beast had become too weakened by whatever drug the hunter had shot at it to fight back, and even its shrieking had become more subdued. Still, it remained conscious enough to plant one foot in front of the other as the two hunters dragged it to the nearest building.

I ought to be in a desperate hurry to leave this place and reach the ocean, but as the hunters pulled that creature through the revolving glass doors, I simply couldn’t hold myself back. I promised myself that I would stay here no longer than five more minutes just to see where they were taking that griffin, and followed them into the building.