hand. Quoting him. ‘Janie. Bring my boy back. I trust you.’”
Anzu eyes are remarkable. Big Evan was like a beacon, standing on top of a truck in the middle of the road, his magic and his life force a brilliant reddish gold. It was clear that all Anzus knew he was a witch, his half secret even more revealed than he might have known. I half folded my wings and slanted down. There was a vehicle, a garish-painted snowmobile, steam coming from the exhaust, near the truck. I adjusted my approach again just as a flurry of sleet/snow mixture battered down on me. My nictitating membranes flashed closed, changing the world to grays and ochres. A blast of frigid air buffeted me and I raised my wings, flight feathers angled for more drag. Like a fledging learning to fly, I began to tumble. Lost my angle to grab the marble swinging on a macramé strap. The ground came at me fast. Instinctively, my claws outstretched and grabbed the steering handlebar of the snowmobile.
The handlebar gave as my weight settled.
With an unintended squawk, I flapped, flopped, hopped off the handle onto the hood of the small vehicle and gripped a protrusion to keep from sliding off into an ungainly heap in a snowdrift. My eye membranes opened in shock. My claws scored through the paint. “Oopsssh,” I said, blinking.
Big Evan smiled slightly as I caught my balance, but the scent of his worry and fear abraded the air like burning sandpaper. “You don’t have to carry it now.” He climbed down to the snow, landing with a grunt. “Where do you want the tracker?” he asked.
“Tie like jessesssh?” I indicated my clawed foot, holding it into the air.
“Good. Yeah.” Evan dropped to one knee in the snow, his body heat a measurable force in the cold air, even through his winter gear. His hands were heated on my leg as he looped the ties of a small bag around my ankle and knotted them off. “I’ve set it with a soft audible tone. If you get within a mile of my son, it’ll make a faint tinging sound, like a tiny silver bell. As you get closer, the sound will get louder, more pure in tone, at least to your bird ears. No humans will be able to hear it. It won’t be loud enough, I hope, to attract the attention of any daywalking fanghead.”
“Mile high or a mile distant?”
“Think of EJ as being on the ground, centered beneath a large bowl, as deep as its radius. The higher you are, the angle of the reading will be less accurate.” He paused, testing the thong he had tied to my ankle. “I recommend a height of five hundred to a thousand feet above ground.” Big Evan had finished securing the tracker and his big hand rested on my even bigger foot. He met my eye. “If we had been home, we might all be dead. At the inn, we—not you—were responsible for his safety. Losing him is on us. But . . .” Tears gathered in his eyes, fury and fear shifting through behind the tears. “I’ll give you anything. Please save my son. Please.” A tear trickled down his cheek into his beard.
“Yesssh,” I said, discovering that birds couldn’t tear up. “Give me your friendship. Believe that I’ll alwaysssh put you and yoursssh first.”
“So. I’ve been an idiot where you’re concerned. Molly’s always said so.”
Beast leaned us down and touched his hand with my/our beak, then slid our head and neck along his hand, scent marking him.
“You really make it hard to hate you.”
I chirped. Tried to give a snarky bird grin.
It must have translated because Evan raised his bushy brows. “Alex said the proper blessing for this hunt is, ‘May your hunt be bloody. May you rend and eat the flesh of your prey.’”
“People really need to stop quoting Leo to me,” I said. The consonants sounded like sharp tocks, but my words were growing understandable. Mostly.
“We have a dozen hamburgers. They’re cold but they’re yours if you want.”
“Thanks. But I think a deer would suit better.” I had no idea what hamburgers would do to an Anzu digestive tract. I raised my wings, gently dislodging Evan, sending him lurching into the snow. I sat back on my heels and launched myself at the sky, stretching out my wings, angled for lift, and flapped hard, raising myself into the cold air.