I wasn’t stupid enough to take on a phoenix without a lead-lined semitruck, a barrage of tranquilizers, and a group of people I didn’t care if they survived, but the fire hen was doable, especially since I was only going after chicks.
I just had to get them away from their mama.
I got my first tickle from the telltale warble of an adult hen calling out to warn something off of her territory. Like most species, the female fire hen was the one to worry about. The males were generally smaller and really not very domestic when it came to sticking around to help take care of their offspring, but they sometimes hung around for scraps and to live under the dubious protection of a massive fire-shitting, angry, alpaca-tall female. Part of that was the stupid nature of the male bird itself, but mostly it was because a broody fire hen was possibly more dangerous than a full-size dragon. While both could shoot fire out of an orifice, the dragon would be more likely to snap your head off and eat you, where the fire hen would kick the shit out of you, pin you down, slowly cook your liver, and then nibble on it as you eventually bled out.
Luckily I was being paid to do this, because no one in their right mind would even approach the business end of a fire hen much less try to steal a pair of its babies.
There were two chicks—squat black-feathered balls held up by thin, blazingly white legs—digging at the edges of an outcropping when I snuck up on a promising crevice. They were about the size of a kiwi—the bird, not the fruit—and from what I could see, hadn’t quite grown into their fire-starting capabilities yet. Or so I thought.
The slightly larger one twisted about, shoving her head down into her wing to put her ruffled feathers back in place, and I got a really good look at her back end. Her hind feathers were a veritable rainbow of reds, yellows, and oranges. It was a clear sign she’d been a good murder chicken and developed way ahead of nature’s schedule. Her pink eyes were clear, not yet turned to the beady black of an adult, and she’d already picked up on her species’ paranoia, scanning the rocks for predators and protecting the smaller blue-assed male by her side. Chances are they were siblings, but fire hens weren’t known to be picky about their mates. So long as the male was willing to breed more little wildfire chickens, they were tolerated and fed along with any brood she might lay.
“Okay, no sign of momma hen,” I muttered, craning my neck in an attempt to see farther down into the narrow ravine beyond. “Brace yourselves, chickies. You’re coming with me.”
Most people have a glamorized view of Stalkers. Pretty much everything anyone knows is something they learned from movies or vids. Books paint pictures of lone gunmen prowling the prairies and understreets, hunting down their bounties, be they human or creature. There’s never any depiction of long nights slogging through mud holes and dusty caverns looking for a pack of black dogs who’d decimated a homestead or scraping off the remains of a fellow Stalker from your face after they’d been bitten in half by a prismatic dragon. The hero in Stalker stories always rode off into the sunset with a hot love interest and a bag full of money.
Reality never matched up to fiction, and I would bet every last penny I had that no movie or book would ever show the hero of the story tugging on a pair of ruffled floral oven mitts to scoop up a couple of fire chicks.
It was a good look—black jeans, an old blue henley, and orange-flowered frilly gloves barely wide enough to cover my hands, much less reach my wrists.
“And thank fucking Pele for that because I am never going to live this down,” I grumbled, trying to shove my long fingers as far into the thin mitts as I could. “And if Dempsey takes a picture of me coming back with these things, I’m just going to leave the old man out here and he can figure out how to get back to San Diego all on his own.”
The key to grabbing a fire hen—especially a baby one—is to wait until its head is turned. The problem is, like most birds, they tend to shit straight out their rear end like high-powered water pistols. Unlike most birds, their natural defenses are actual flames. When small, along the lines of a butane torch. When fully grown, some have the range and heat of a small red dragon. And the adults were just too freaking big to grab, but some people tried anyway… usually ending up as fire-hen dinner. There’s also the matter of the adults having powerful legs and sharp talons at the end of their hooked toes. They were cute enough when they were small—roly-poly feathered grumpy things easily scooped up if someone were careful and armed with a pair of asbestos tongs. But the adults were larger, more ostrich-shaped, and irrationally mean. I’d seen one go out of its way to bring down a pine tree that somehow pissed it off simply by existing.
I did not want mama bird to see me grab these two chicks, and I sure as hell didn’t want to try to outrun her back to the car.
The male was easy, barely a peep when I grabbed at and tucked it under my arm, but the female—like most intelligent females—wasn’t going to take any of my shit. As soon as my oven mitt closed down on her, she let out a banshee klaxon loud enough to warn Kansas of an incoming tornado. My ears were bleeding by the time I had her tucked under my upper arm, and despite the long sleeves of my shirt, she seemed to find a way to dig through the fabric with her beak and pluck out bits of my flesh.
And to make matters worse, I heard the warning cry of an adult fire hen gearing up for battle.
So I did the most sensible thing I’ve ever done.
I ran.
I was always fucking running.
The species as a whole is pretty, with sleek hematite feathers and multicolored ruffled bottoms. Problem with those feathers, as glossy as they were, they were slippery, and trying to keep hold of the chicks as I ran proved difficult. They slid about, crashing against my ribs and into the crook of my elbow. At some point the female cawed out loudly to her mother, either encouraging the older bird to sever my head from my neck or perhaps cursing her for being so lax in her duties that a lowly elfin was able to snatch her up from their hillside. Either way, their mother screamed back in return, shouting to the heavens what she was going to do to me once she caught me.
Thankfully, I didn’t speak fire hen or I’d have probably run faster.
I nearly lost my footing on the sands as the loam slid away from my foot, and I must have squeezed the female a bit, because a second after I righted myself, she erupted with a warble of hot flames from her rear end, setting a sage bush on fire.
“Odin’s—” My curse was cut off by the sudden drop of the hill underneath me. I hadn’t seen the dip, and by the time I did, it was too late to adjust for it. I went down in a less than graceful tumble across the canyon slope, hitting every bit of chaparral and lava jut along the way.
The male squawked his displeasure when we finally came to a stop against a small boulder, but the female was furious and let loose a stream of orange-tinted flames from her nether regions, practically cooking the sand to glass. She struggled against my arm, pecking furiously at any part of me she could reach. Finding every tender bit of skin she could, she dug and twisted, sometimes going back for a second round on a particularly soft area just to make sure I knew she was pissed.
Their mother didn’t sound too happy either.
Her cries were strident, more pissy than alarmed. She knew she could run me down once I got into the open. I could only hope for a long head start, because once we hit the flat land between the ravine edge and the blacktop road winding through the hills, I was screwed. Once upright, I clutched the chicks closer, not liking the spread of heat running down my ribs. The female was gearing up for another blast, one stronger than the ones she’d already given me, and if I didn’t get the chicks down to the Nova and into the asbestos-lined kennel sitting in its hatch, she was going to turn me into a pile of elfin shawarma for her mother and stupid brother to feast on.