Tom had seen griffins before, trapped in the pages of dusty old books that had been loving scanned and saved by some archivist decades ago. But those fanciful creatures had been more bird than cat and he was pretty sure they had been much bigger than the creatures perched on the cliffs above him. They were scrawny things, long limbed bodies build for speed and the massive boneless wings collapsed in compact bulges along their backs. Perhaps most disappointing of all was the lack of fur. He’d had his heart set on kidnapping a cute furry baby, not some ugly bundle of gray skin with a few random feathers.

Still, the adults would make a killer pet. He lowered the binoculars and cautiously wormed his way back down the rocks. He’d seen what the jagged black beaks could do to prey and he wasn’t going to risk having to explain to his parents.