"You are insane. There is no war!" My legs burned, trying to keep up with the guy on a meandering forest path. I considered running again. This guy was crazy, but then, I couldn't explain the guy's inability to see us. We were right there, under his nose.

A sarcastic chuckle escaped his lips, as if he could hear my thoughts. "Suit yourself, but remember, people are looking for you. The Guild of The Primal Cross knows about you, and they know you didn't die in that hospital as they ordered."

"The Guild of what?" I swear this guy was smoking something.

"The ones that tried to kill you. They are part of a secret organization that thinks they are protecting the humans from our kind. We are not a threat."

Secret organizations, human clones, and doctors wanting me dead all scrambled inside my thoughts, killing the conversation.

He strode down a trail, passing between sheer rock faces and crisscrossing tree roots. It was hard to keep up, so I stopped.

He kept walking, and escape was still a priority. I turned around slowly and walked back in the direction I had come from.

I looked over my shoulder to see if he was following. The guy could make himself invisible, but I still heard the rustling of his footsteps in the direction I came.

I made a run for it.

Tall trees and thickets whizzed past me, and layers of dead leaves and twigs crunched underneath my feet. My foot struck a rotten log. I fell forward, hitting the ground. Pain seared through my palms, and my knees were probably skinned. A shriek escaped my lips as thin, biting vines pulled me off the ground by my ankles, hurtling towards the treetops.

Now the forest is attacking me!

The hauling came to a stop, and a burning sensation exploded from my ankles. Vines twirled around my feet, encircling my skin and squeezing tight. Creeping plants attacked like angry, slithering snakes curling around my body.

"Help!"

Moss slapped over my lips.

Eugh!

The vines squeezed harder. I couldn't breathe. I kept squirming, refusing to give up getting back to my parents.

Drake's footsteps stumped on the ground.

My heart stammered. I didn't ask to be different; I didn't want a life running away from some secret cross organization, and I didn't ask to be this idiot's prisoner.

I rotated in the air and a guy with floppy brown hair and green eyes leaned with folded arms against a fat, burly tree. He wore the same ops uniform as Drake.

"Drake didn't kid when he said she was feisty." A second man with a dark face, piercing blue eyes, and dreadlocks came closer as I grunted. He had a posh British accent.

"Aye, lose a lass, Drake?" Floppy asked in a Scottish drawl.

"I'm done." Drake's voice came from behind me. "If she wants to leave, let her leave."

Hanging upside down, rotating slowly, Drake came into view, walking away. A migraine brewed, as all the blood flooded to my head. But not as much as my ankles and body where the vines cut into my skin.

Indistinct mumble came from Drake's direction and both men laughed as I circled my way back to them.

Floppy came into view first. "Thir's nothin' wrong with a bit of feistiness, Drake."

"Get her down, Mav," Dreadlocks ordered.

Mav lifted his hand, and the vines cutting into my skin retreated, slithering back to their proper places. I fell with a thud on the ground. An ache rushed up to my back and head.

"Oops, sorry." Mav stood over me and smiled. He gave me his hand and hauled me onto my feet.

A deep, roaring growl behind us shook my core.

The two men jumped and looked down the trail and back at each other. Mav lifted his hands again. Angry vines twirled around my wrists and feet, locking it tight against my body. I lost my balance and fell. My eyes closed, ready for the impact, but it didn't come.

When I opened my eyes, I hovered above the ground.

My mouth instantly went dry, as my mind couldn't process any of this. Drake's footsteps neared, and then he jumped over my body and kept running.

"Let's go!" Dreadlocks barked, and I flew behind him and Mav.

"What the hell is this?" I cried, and vines twirled around my face, covering my mouth. It tasted like dirty pencil shavings.

I grunted. These men are barbaric.

Trees flew past me as I glided inches from the ground. I barely missed the pine cones dotting the floor like spilled trinkets. I came to a stop.

Mav, Dreadlocks, and I took cover behind the thicket near the colossal tree where Drake hid.

Growling came from my left side. I turned my face and looked through an opening between two bushes.

A group of people wearing camouflage gear came into view. Massive black guns were dangling from straps around their shoulders.

Huge tents covered with nets formed a Military Post. Army trucks and SUVs stood in rows next to the tents.

They were definitely secret organization troops and busy trapping something so strange. I could hardly believe my eyes.

A colossal net covered a beast. It looked like a lion. It growled ferociously at the guys trying to hold on to the net. I stared at enormous wings that tried to flap free. Lions didn't have wings, and they didn't have ram horns either. What was that thing?

A tail tried to push itself free, and my eyes grew bigger. On the tip of the tail was a giant stinger, like a scorpion.

"Pull harder on your end. Be careful of the stinger." One command came through, easy to hear from behind my shrubby blind.

"The griffin is somewhere near. They are always together," another yelled.

The griffin? The only griffin in my head belonged in a fantasy world.

"There are way too many agents," Mav whispered.

"We can't just leave Lindy. Where the hell is Brooke?" Drake's voice hissed.

Who the hell are Lindy and Brooke?

Drake grunted and swooped in my direction with his hands out, ready to strangle me.

Mav's hand pulled him back. "Easy, big guy."

"They wouldn't have trapped Lindy if she stayed put." Drake pointed at me.

"Hey, you were adamant about saving her life, remember?" Dreadlocks replied, keeping one eye on the situation in front of us.

Say what?

Drake grunted. "And how I regret that."

"We need a diversion," Mav said.

"Fine, I'll create one," Drake whispered. "Don't wait for me. Just get to the compound. I'll meet you there."

He was ready to get up when Dreadlocks pulled him back. "Be careful."

Drake nodded and moved fast before he vanished.

I looked at the beast struggling and growling under its entrapment. My stomach turned as I kept staring at the beast. This couldn't be real. Still, the aches and pain pulsing from my body told me it was. My eyes saw every inch of the creature and heard every growl it made. I couldn't stop looking at the giant stinger that tried to free itself, not to mention its colossal wings. I wanted to barf, but the retching would give us away and I held it in, which was just as disgusting as the actual deed.

Mav came closer. "Tis world is no' what it seems. Please take my word when I tell ye we'll answer all yer questions later. Yer life is in danger. Can I trust ye to keep quiet and stay put?"

I heard the truth in his words and nodded.

I didn't know how Drake would create a diversion. I felt terrible about how I kept trying to evade him as the danger of this situation finally sank in.

The troops struggled to keep the strange creature ensnared.

The same high-pitch whistle from last night screeched in the distance. Mav pulled me up and shoved me into a hollow tree.

"The Griffin!" barked one of the military men.

"Stay put, Lass." Maverick's eyes blazed with warning. "Dinnae be afraid."

I nodded, and he lifted his hand. The vines poured into the tree and pressed against me, covering the opening. The light faded and a drowning darkness took its place.

I could hear the dull sound of drones in the air as faint commands ordered a portion of the military to follow whoever was in charge. My heart pounded. It became darker as the leaves and vines still crept into the hollow space, protecting me from the outside. Then it finally stopped.

I couldn't move. My neck tensed and my palms sweated.

Calm down, Sophie! Deep breaths, you can do it.

I closed my eyes. My body relaxed as I inhaled and exhaled deeply through my nose, while vines still covered my lips.

I kept thinking about the griffin. I remembered seeing fantasy art of Griffins. What did they really look like?

The growls and roars of the beast filled the air outside of the tree once more. People yelled at each other and one man shouted, "Contain the beast."

My heart thumbed inside my chest, and I tried to concentrate only on my breathing. Nothing helped as a suffocating fear tightened my lungs. Come on, Soph, deep breaths.

Men screamed as if possessed by demons, and a roar of water drowned their cries.

My eyebrows knitted. We were far from the ocean. I hadn't heard the gushing of a stream or river close by, but that was the sound of rising water.

"Brooke," Dreadlocks yelled, and the sound of a great splash made me jump.

The screams abruptly ceased.

"Change back, now!" Dreadlocks' voice ordered.

Change back? More questions filled my mind.

"Maverick, free the girl."

The creeping plants and leaves retreated from the hollow space in the tree, and light seeped through. The vines slithered away from my body, loosening my ankles and arms. Even the vines that twirled around my lips to keep me from screaming disappeared. I was completely free, but the need to escape was far from my mind with everything I had just witnessed. Guilt arose for what I had done to that poor semi-giant.

My hands softly wiped over my body to remove the residue that was left from the moss. I climbed out of the hollow tree and l looked back at the military.

Bodies laid on the ground.

"Don't look." Dreadlocks' order came a second too late.

My gaze snapped to the floor as frightened tears pooled in my eyes. It was real. All of it was real.

"We need to go after Drake." A female voice came from my right. A girl with ram horns protruding from her hairline sat on the ground, pulling on clothes.

I frowned as I kept staring at her horns, but I remembered what Drake had told me, that even seeing things in his world wasn't a good sign. I shifted my gaze from her horns as the girl pulled on a black sweater. She already wore black pants like the others.

"Drake can take care of himself. We need to get to the compound," Dreadlocks said.

"He is all alone," the girl with the horns hissed. She braided the one side of her dark blonde hair with fast tucking, before tackling the other side.

"As I said, Drake can take care of himself," he sneered. "We already veered too far from the plan."

She glared at me with amber eyes. They were almost as gold as Dr. Bryanston.

My eyes shifted back to Maverick, who kept his gaze on me. A second girl with white pixie hair and clear blue eyes stood next to him as the girl with the horns grunted and mumbled incoherently.

"What is your name?" Dreadlocks finally asked.

"It's Sophie. Sophie Emerson," I answered in a shaky voice. My hands trembled from the adrenaline and confusion. A headache pulsed softly behind my eyes.

"Sophie, this is Brooke, and you already met Maverick."

The girl with the white pixie hair, next to Maverick, waved as a soft curve tugged in the corner of her lips. Maverick gave me a lopsided smile.

The girl with the horns walked past and shouldered me out of the way.

She turned around and pointed her finger at me. "If anything happens to Drake, it's all your fault."

"Lindy," Dreadlocks barked.

I stared at the girl, whose back was ramrod straight as she stomped away.

My gaze snapped to the net that trapped the beast far below in the Army camp. There was nothing below it now. The net lay on the ground. I looked at the girl again. That was Lindy? She was the beast.

That was what Dreadlocks meant by changing back.

She was a shapeshifter. Shapeshifters didn't exist. Humans with horns, cat ears and tails jumping into my mind. They were all shapeshifters.

Maverick touched the bottom of my jaw and closed it. His lips curved as he humphed and walked in the direction Lindy disappeared.

Brooke followed Maverick.

Dreadlocks walked toward me. "My name is Alex. Running away wasn't smart, Sophie. It could easily cost Drake his life. So let's hope that when we reach the compound, he is there."

End of the sample. You can find the full story on Amazon KU under the Sphere of Spirit. I hoped that you enjoyed it. Thanks for reading.