Her Werewolf Hero. Michele Hauf
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a trek to China or Australia.
It didn’t matter where she landed on the map. Wanderlust had officially settled into Kizzy’s soul.
“Ma’am?”
She was pulled from her musings fifty feet from the forest’s edge by the man walking toward her. He wore one of those panama hats tilted jauntily over one eye. Canvas pants tucked into high-laced combat boots, and a plain short-sleeved T-shirt stretched over remarkable pecs. Though he’d called out to her, his attention was riveted to something he held in his hand.
He looked mid-thirties. Dark hair swished to his shoulders. A beard and mustache framed his jaw and mouth. Whatever held his attention, he seemed to be using a guide for which direction to walk in. Perhaps doing a geocache, as her father loved to do. The city had a geocaching club.
He was probably harmless. Yet she wielded her camera as a shield before her chest. “Can I help you?” she asked.
“I’m not sure.” He stopped ten feet from her and looked around, stretching his searching gaze for a long time across the playground area. Whatever he held in hand glinted with a beam of sunlight. She had probably guessed right about the geocaching. Could be tracking it with GPS on his phone.
Overhead, a dark shadow skimmed the sky, and she glanced above him. Those were some big birds.
“Ah, shit,” the man said. He tucked what he was holding into his pants pocket and turned to her. Panic brightened his blue eyes.
And Kizzy squinted to better sight the birds. They were bigger than vultures, which she rarely saw here in Minnesota. They looked...the size of dogs. Big dogs.
Seriously? “What the hell are those?”
“Harpies,” he said quickly and grabbed her by the arm. “Into the woods. We can lose them there.”
“What?” She struggled against his grasp, but he’d managed to seize her wrist and tugged her across the mown lawn toward the line of pine trees. “I’m not going with you!”
“And how will you get away from them?”
“Away from them?” She glanced up to the sky. Harpies? No way. Those were...mythical beings. And much as she believed—
One of them dove toward her.
Suddenly lifted from the ground, Kizzy was tossed over the man’s shoulder as he ran toward the woods.
She couldn’t scream. She should but did not. A curious fascination overwhelmed fear. She reached for her camera, banging against the man’s back, and tried to get a shot even as she was carried off by a stranger into the dark forest.
“What are they, really?” Kizzy asked as the man set her down but wouldn’t let go of her wrist. He tugged her into the thick brush and trees. Cockleburs brushed her ankles, and she wished she wore longer pants than the capri jeans. She put up a hand to block her face from stray branches that whipped into her face.
“Harpies,” he said. “Come on!”
Yes, that’s what she thought he’d said.
A harpie was a mythological creature. Half bird, half man or woman, or some such. She had read about them. Had even written a blog post about them, accompanied by a photo she had taken of a blurred raven high in the sky. Gray cloud streaks had remarkably thickened its body, granting her a photograph with just enough about which to speculate.
A half man, half bird? It didn’t get much cooler than that.
Yet behind her, something screeched like her worst movie nightmare. So Kizzy forced herself to follow as her mysterious rescuer tugged her farther into the woods. The camera hung around her neck. Taking pictures could wait. Right now she needed to steer her guide out of the sticky, thorned stuff.
Dodging the bramble and brush the best she could, she called, “There is a path to the left!”
“I see that. They are taking it.”
“Oh. Then go right!”
“Doesn’t that lead back toward the park?”
It did. And it would give her an opportunity to break from this guy and run for freedom. Because if it was a choice between harpies and some weirdo intent on luring her deeper into the forest, she wasn’t sure which was better. She wasn’t stupid. Nor would she allow fear to cloud her judgment. He looked safe enough, but what defined safe?
On the other hand. If they lured the creatures back toward the park, the children and their parents could be in danger. Had they seen the harpies? Had someone called the police? What could the police do but stare in wonder as she had?
The whisk of wings brushing overhead tree leaves set her heart to a thunderous pace. Her breaths gasped, not so much because she was exerting herself—picking through the brush did slow their escape—but, okay, she was a little scared. The flying creatures were bigger than dogs. And there were three of them.
Their pace had slowed. She needed to pause and get a picture. Never before had she an opportunity like this. Those creatures were exactly what she’d hoped to capture on film! And the light in the forest was perfect. The red/orange sun crisping around the edges of the tree canopy would define the wings for sure.
Having released her wrist, the man stalked five paces ahead of her, forging a path as he stomped fallen branches. Kizzy stopped and lifted the camera to her eye. Trying to focus through the tree trunks and thankful the zoom lens was still attached because she generally used a prime lens. She tracked one creature, snapping repeatedly. If she took a hundred shots she might end up with a handful of good ones.
“What are you doing? They are after you!” He tried to grab her wrist again, but she kicked toward his shin. He dodged swiftly, and she missed. “Don’t you understand?”
“What makes you think they are after me? I was doing fine, enjoying a nice stroll in the park, until you showed up!”
“Is that the way of it?” He gestured with a splay of hands. “Fend for yourself!” He turned and loped off, tracking through the brush to the right.
And Kizzy saw the dark shadows trace the ground and felt the chilling sweep of wings overhead. She may be brave, but she wasn’t stupid. “I changed my mind!”
Her day had morphed into an Alfred Hitchcock movie on testosterone. And she wasn’t about to become bird food.
She stuffed the camera into the bag at her hip. Tramping over the loamy, leaf-covered forest floor, she stumbled on a fallen log and caught her hands against a wide tree trunk frosted with moss. While normally she’d inhale the scents of nature, all she could smell was her anxiety.
One of the birds lunged toward the man in front of her, and he shot it with some kind of arrow. From a small device that looked like a pistol yet it hadn’t made a sound when it had fired.
Like a small crossbow? Who was that guy? And what fairy-tale chase had she fallen into? Robin Hood had always been her favorite, even the Disney cartoon fox version of the hero held an appeal.
Carefully, she crept closer to him and witnessed him take out another of the harpies with the arrow-shooting pistol. When the final harpie swooped over her head, she ducked and loosed a necessary scream.
“Stay there! Low!”
Clasping her hands over her head, she followed directions, cowering against the base of an oak tree’s gnarly roots. Heartbeats racing, she was suddenly thankful that if attack by crazy birds was her fate, at least she had some kind of rescuing hero who wielded a worthy weapon on her side.
So she would trust him. Because right now he offered her best hope.
She observed him watching the circling bird. Lean and tall, his biceps and pecs flexed beneath the gray T-shirt as he tracked the remaining creature with the hand-sized