Headlines & Hydras

  Terra Haven Chronicles Book 2

  Rebecca Chastain

  Contents

  Copyrights

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Epilogue

  Author Note

  Also by Rebecca Chastain

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Now Available

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, dialogue, places, and incidents either are drawn from the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, locales, or events is entirely coincidental.

  * * *

  Copyright © 2021 by Rebecca Chastain

  Cover design by Yocla Designs

  Author photograph by Cody Watson

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  www.rebeccachastain.com

  * * *

  All rights reserved. In accordance with the US Copyright Act of 1976, scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without permission of the author constitute unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. If you would like to use material from this book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained from the publisher. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights.

  * * *

  Mind Your Muse Books

  PO Box 374

  Rocklin, CA 95677

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  ISBN: 978-1-7344939-1-7

  For Mac Fu,

  I miss you every day

  1

  A rapid hammering jerked me awake. I seized a fistful of air element before my bleary vision cleared. I shouldn’t have let my guard down. It’s too dangerous—

  The familiar sight of my apartment punctured my panic. I was home. Safe. My escape from Lunacy Labyrinth hadn’t been a dream, though the horrors I had witnessed there haunted me in my nightmares.

  Breathing deep, I released my magic and fought free of knotted, sweat-damp sheets. Pain flared through my thighs and biceps, and I bit down on a groan. After mending the cuts and scrapes I had received yesterday, the healers had claimed doing more—like soothing away the soreness of strained muscles—would have overtaxed my exhausted body. Allowing those muscles to relax overnight had only invited the stiffness to root deeper.

  A fist pounded the balcony door again, hard enough to rattle the whole wall. “Are you awake?” Mika asked, her voice muffled through the door.

  “I am now,” I grumbled.

  Normally I appreciated living on the second floor of a large Victorian house, renting a room connected to my best friend’s by a balcony.

  However, my best friend normally didn’t wake me at dawn.

  Grunting with each step, I hobbled to the door and opened it.

  Mika burst into my room, haloed in morning sunshine. I shielded my eyes as I staggered back to my bed, slumping onto the edge. She followed, too fast for my tearing eyes to track. Her long strawberry-blond hair hung loose, still snarled from sleep, and she hadn’t bothered to change out of her striped pajamas or put on shoes. Oliver trundled into the room on her heels, his sinuous dragon body casting a red glow across the ceiling as the sun refracted off his glossy carnelian scales. Despite the gargoyle’s stubby legs, Oliver’s head now cleared my bed, and I hoped he was close to done growing. If he got much bigger, he wouldn’t fit in our tiny apartments.

  “Is everything all right?” I asked before I spotted a copy of the Terra Haven Chronicle clutched in Mika’s fist. My heart sank. I scooted back on the bed and drew my feet up in front of me, wishing I could crawl under the covers and avoid this conversation.

  “Is this true?” Mika spread the paper open and waved toward the black-and-white print beneath a picture of a firebird. “Are you the Airstrong heiress?”

  “I . . .” My thoughts scattered when Mika lifted her gaze to mine, the pain of betrayal glistening in unshed tears.

  I hadn’t wanted Mika to find out about my family like this. I hadn’t wanted anyone to find out, period. I had chosen to leave behind my parents’ world and their upper-crust lifestyle in favor of making my own way. With their blessing, if not their understanding, my parents had freed me from the expectation of assuming responsibility for their international shipping empire and allowed me to pursue my passion as a journalist. Doing so anonymously had been my decision. I had wanted to make sure I succeeded on my own merit, not because someone owed my parents a favor. It had taken years of scraping by before I landed a junior journalist position at the Terra Haven Chronicle. Now, just when I was starting to get noticed by the editor in chief, my nemesis, Nathan, had taken it upon himself to out me to the world in his front-page article.

  “Your real name isn’t even Kylie,” Mika said, her voice soft. “It’s Harriet, isn’t it?”

  I flinched. I hated my first name and loathed hearing Mika use it. It had been bad enough to see it printed in the paper. Grayson daughter, Harriet, has been operating seemingly independent of her parents’ business under the alias Kylie Grayson. I would never forget the line—nor forgive Nathan for writing it. The article should have focused solely on the recovery of the missing firebirds and the destruction of Lunacy Labyrinth. However, my parents’ shipping company, Airstrong, had been the business responsible for the firebirds’ transportation. Having the firebirds discovered in the possession of the Airstrong heiress—another deplorable quote from the article—had given Nathan the opening he needed to slander me to the world.

  Keeping my voice neutral, I said, “Kylie is my preferred name. My full name is Harriet Kylie Grayson.”

  “You used an alias—”

  “Not an alias,” I said, hating that Mika was quoting Nathan.

  The paper crinkled in her fist. “You lied to me about your name.”

  “I didn’t lie—”

  “Stop parsing words with me. You lied by omission.” Her words landed between us, the vulnerability in her expression cracking and anger seeping out. “You let me believe you were someone you’re not. What else have you been lying about?”

  “Nothing. I swear.” I leaned forward to stand, but she didn’t give me enough room. “I wanted to tell you. I just . . .”

  “Let me guess. You couldn’t find the right time in the last half decade.” Mika spun away, pacing in the limited space, stepping over Oliver without seeming to notice the gargoyle. Confined by the tight room, she about-faced and bore down on me. I fumbled for the right words to make her understand, but her glare silenced me. Reversing course, she paced away from me again. Oliver hopped onto the love seat and curled his slender tail out of the way, his wide eyes tracking Mika. He reached a paw out to her when she stomped close but withdrew it when she didn’t acknowledge him.

  Golden light bounced across the walls as Quinn dropped from the roof to fill the doorway, worry etching his feline features. Sunlight slanted across the gargoyle’s broad lion shoulders and glinted off his long wings. Quinn’s citrine body sported an alarming number of clear quartz patches, a testament to all the injuries Mika had healed. Navigating the blood-magic ruins of Lunacy Labyrinth had been harder on Quinn than it had been on me, and I resolved not to complain about my own soreness.

  Against my will, my gaze dipped to Quinn’s everlasting seed. It hung from a cord around his neck, ugly and brown. Thanks to our adventures in Lunacy, it had evolved into its current shape, though maybe devolved was more appropriate. The original artistic ebony knot of a snake biting its own tail had transformed into a fist-size mess that resembled a muddy, half-melted, half-exploded pinecone. Staring at it made me woozy. Quinn had used his one question to ask the everlasting tree how he could best help me, which was why I tried not to let on how unnerving I found his seed’s new shape. Especially since saving my life had been the catalyst of his seed’s evolution, whereas initiating my seed’s transformation had nearly killed us both, and its current shape pointed toward even greater danger.

  A bundle of elements coasted through the open door, drawing my attention from Quinn’s seed. The tight knot of magic curved in the ubiquitous lines of a message sphere, but the magical signature—the texture of structured fire and steady winds underlying the spell—was unmistakably my boss’s. Expecting the sphere to settle into my message bowl, I nearly levitated when it dropped to pop in my face. Editor in Chief Dahlia Bearpaw’s brusque voice spilled out, as loud as if she were standing in the room with us.

  “Ms. Grayson. My office. Now. Don’t make me wait.”

  My stomach flipped. Nothing good could follow that tone.

  “Did she know?” Mika asked.

  I sho
ok my head.

  “So it’s not just me.” With Quinn filling the balcony doorway, Mika’s pacing space had become confined to a few steps, and she stopped to glower at me with her hands on her hips.

  “I understand why you’re mad,” I began.

  “Oh really? Please enlighten me, Harriet.”

  My teeth clenched, but I forced them apart. “I should have told you, but honestly . . . it wasn’t important.”

  “It . . . it wasn’t important?” she sputtered. Her hands twisted the hem of her shirt, her eyes bright. “Because I’m a commoner and it doesn’t matter what I think?”

  “That’s not it at all,” I protested. “Mika, please—”

  “What is all this to you?” She swept a hand to indicate the cramped apartment, with its secondhand furniture, faded curtains, overflowing hamper, and claustrophobic bathroom. Or maybe she included the entire low-income neighborhood beyond the curtains in her gesture. “Is this some sort of elitist rite of passage? See how long you can slum it? Now you’ll return to your ‘peers’ and regale them with tales of living among the pitiable poor?”

  My explanation withered on my tongue. I shoved to my feet and pointed at Mika. “This is the other reason I never said anything! I knew how judgmental you would be.”

  “I’m the one to blame for your lies? That’s rich. Very full spectrum of you. I didn’t ask you—”

  The house’s wards broke, the magic popping against my eardrums as it shattered. Something heavy crashed into the roof, rattling the whole house. I ducked, my hand flinging out to find Mika’s.

  The rafters creaked and popped. Breath held, I stared at the ceiling, straining to see through solid matter. Mika’s fingers clamped a vise around mine. The Victorian’s roof had endured extraordinary strain in the last half year from the weight of five growing gargoyles roosting nightly along its ridges, but their movements never made this kind of racket. These steps sounded wider, more scratchy, like a dragon or a—

  “Harpy,” I whispered, my muscles locking in a wave of terror. The stench of sunbaked feces and carrion oozed into the apartment, confirming my words.

  Zipporah had found me.

  Quinn whimpered. I jerked my gaze from the ceiling.

  “Get inside,” I hissed, frantically motioning him forward.

  Mika backed up to give Quinn room to squeeze into the apartment, and I half fell over him in my rush to close the door behind him.

  How had Zipporah figured out where I lived? Did she know I didn’t have her payment? Was she here to collect anyway? The only item left on the bartering table was my life.

  I rubbed sweaty palms down my cotton shorts and glanced around for inspiration—or for an escape. I didn’t fool myself into thinking we were safe inside. The bay windows were cloaked by curtains, disguising our movements, but once Zipporah figured out where I was, those panes would be no barrier against her talons.

  “What’s going on?” Mika whispered.

  The answer came from above. “Kylie Grayson, show yourself!”

  “Where are Anya, Herbert, and Lydia?” I asked Mika, listing Quinn and Oliver’s littermates, who also frequented our rooftop.

  “They went to the park before dawn.”

  “So no one’s up there?”

  Mika shook her head, and I let out a tight breath.

  “Why does a harpy know your name, Kylie? What are you mixed up in?”

  I bit my lip, debating if we had time for an explanation. “I made a bad decision and—”

  “Little girl, I can smell you inside,” Zipporah called. “Come out, or I’m coming in.” She screeched the last words loud enough to echo through the neighborhood. If my landlady hadn’t been woken by the house wards breaking, she was awake now—along with everyone else in a three-block radius.

  “We can’t let her find you,” Quinn said.

  “I think it’s too late for that.”

  “She hasn’t seen you yet.” He nosed me toward the apartment’s front door, which opened onto the upstairs hallway of the Victorian. In a few steps, I could be downstairs, protected by the bulk of the enormous house instead of one thin layer of rafters and shingles. But as much as I longed to flee, I didn’t let him move me.

  “Don’t make me wait!” Zipporah shouted. “I’m not in a patient mood.” Claws raked across the roof, the deafening swipe tearing apart shingles and timber. The pictures on my walls rattled and crashed to the floor. I flinched, eyes darting to the ceiling, expecting to see the harpy’s claws puncture the roof. The wood held, but it wouldn’t take much additional abuse before Zipporah burst through.

  Grabbing Mika’s shoulders, I gave her a shake so she would focus on me. “Go. Get downstairs and take Oliver and Quinn with you. Make sure everyone stays inside, even Josephine.” I had a horrible vision of our middle-aged landlady rushing up to the roof with a broom and a handful of questionably legal repellent spells, thinking she could chase away a harpy as easily as she did the occasional gang member who thought to cause trouble on our street. Zipporah would flatten her without a second thought.

  Mika allowed herself to be pushed a step before she firmed her stance. “What are you going to do? You can’t go out there.”

  I couldn’t stay inside either. Zipporah was fully capable of tearing the roof off a house, and even if I was all right with allowing the harpy to destroy my home—my rented home—there was nowhere I could hide that she couldn’t find me. Running was out of the question, too. She was faster, had an aerial advantage, and could brush aside any spell I cast with depressing ease. But most important, I couldn’t allow Zipporah near Mika or the gargoyles. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if they were hurt because of me.

  “I’ll get Grant,” Quinn said.

  Zipporah tore into the roof again, ripping a chunk free with an earsplitting screech of shattering boards. A shadow flashed past the drawn curtain; then the lumber hit the cobblestones below with a resounding clap.

  “There’s no time.” I braced myself and eased open the balcony door.

  The foul odor of excrement engulfed me, and I wavered. My debt to Zipporah was straightforward: I acquiesced to a favor of her choosing or I died. At the time I made the foolish bargain, my choices had been the same—owe her or die on the spot. I had envisioned all kinds of frightening requests Zipporah might make, but none came close to her horrifying demand that I bring her the Chiefmaker, a deadly, blood-magic artifact last seen inside Lunacy Labyrinth. She had even gone so far as to toss me into the hellacious ruins. Neither of us had expected me to survive. Yet here I was, empty-handed but alive.

  How was I going to convince Zipporah not to kill me?

  On watery legs, I crept onto the balcony and peered past the roof awning. The harpy filled the sky, her oily wings spread, every glob and crust of filth caking the undersides of her giant bird body intimately visible from this angle. She faced the opposite direction, one clawed foot braced on the roof’s peak while the other gouged a hole through the shingles.

  I pulled a thick ward of earth and air around myself. The magic came easily, enhanced by Oliver and Quinn. The gargoyles’ natural ability to boost the elements in others gave me twice my usual strength, and I added extra layers to my protective ward. It did little to reassure me. Zipporah had proven she could rip through my gargoyle-enhanced wards before, but I couldn’t step outside without at least the illusion of protection. I glanced down at my thin cotton pajamas. I might as well be naked for all the protection they would afford, but I didn’t dare take the time to change.