5. Chapter Five
The dragon peered at Linorra from behind the stone cottage. He wasn’t as large as some dragons, but to her, he was as big as a mountain. His scales were a beautiful rainbow of colors, and his eyes glowed like embers. Fine tendrils of smoke escaped his nostrils, and his talons were black and wickedly sharp. He didn’t quite fit behind the cottage, but he continued to hide all the same. Linorra approached him with caution, holding her hands up as a sign of friendship.
We hiked for a couple of hours downhill, away from the mountain. It was a fairly typical jog for me, but I was exhausted from the previous night’s journey and had trouble keeping up.
I tried to memorize our path. If I could get back to the portal and figure out how to activate it, I might be able to jump back in and ride home. Had Psycho Snow White opened the portal to this place or was it spontaneous? Even if she hadn’t activated it, she knew it was safe to travel through, so she must have knowledge of it. If there was knowledge to be had, then I could get it somehow.
And if we ever see her again, we’re going to bear spray the crap out of her, Evilina thought. I growled a little, in complete agreement with her for once. Since going through the portal, my evil alter ego lived so close to the surface that I could no longer separate our thoughts.
I might need to become her to get myself out of this mess.A shiver of foreboding swept through me at the thought. God, what would happen if I couldn’t get rid of her afterward?
The farther we went, the more certain I was that I was somewhere else. The trees looked the same, but the terrain was different. It was rockier, with less underbrush, making it easier to hike without a path. The air was a little crisper than it should be, with less fog, although that was changing as we lost altitude. I pulled out the GPS that I had randomly stuffed into my pack before setting out to look for Rogue, but it wasn’t getting a signal.
The mountains at our backs were way too big and way too snowy. As we walked away from them, the ground leveled out and giant ferns grew in clusters at the bottoms of the redwood trees. Small forest creatures scuffled noisily beneath the feathery leaves but didn’t show themselves.
I heard no birdsong. The lack of an avian choir in the background set my teeth on edge. My mind flashed to the memory of a Steller’s jay soaring over my broken body, its deep blue wings and black head supernaturally vibrant. I wondered if I would ever see that exquisite bird again.
We came through a large grove of trees and made our way across another grassy glade. The grass was taller than I was used to, reaching up to the height of my shoulders and fanning out at the top in a bouquet of fluffy wheat-colored seeds.
More than once I saw what looked to be a grasshopper, but instead of green, it was yellow with brown stripes and, shockingly, was the size of a rabbit. Rogue darted into the grass chasing the thing and it shot out like a champagne cork. I must have squeaked because Aaron looked over his shoulder and glared at me. When he saw my stunned expression, his face morphed into something like mystified annoyance.
“Sorry,” I said, lowering my eyes. Sheesh. Can’t a girl be surprised by gigantic prehistoric insects around here? It’s not like I screamed and ran.
Other than occasional glimpses of discontent, Aaron did his best to ignore me. We hopped over two streams, one of which was rather robust and had a giant log stretched across it. A nearby stump looked like it had been struck by lightning and was charred to a craggy spike.
Just as I reached the other side of the log on the far bank, I heard that same scuffling noise I’d heard in the ferns before, now coming from underneath me. I hurried my steps to pass the sound, then was appalled to see a hairy green spider the size of a housecat scuttle from underneath the log only a foot behind me. It moved with lightning speed, then stopped dead in the middle and reared up on his hind legs as if to bar my passage back across the log. Before I could register what I was looking at, it spit something in my direction.
I threw my arm up and jerked away in time for the substance to hit my elbow and the right side of my button-down shirt instead of my face. It sizzled as I hastily scrambled away from the spider, yelping in surprise and almost tumbling off the log. I stared back, ready to sprint away if it came after me, but when I felt a stinging through the sleeve of my shirt, I tore it off in a panic, forgetting all else.
Luckily, the spider did not follow. It only dashed underneath, presumably to continue its supporting role as troll under a bridge. Still looking behind me, I smacked into Aaron, who had turned back to see what had happened. He grabbed my shoulders and held me still.
Already jumpy, I instinctively pulled away, but his grip was like a steel vise, and his hands were so hot that I thought the spider venom was burning me again. Once my brain caught up to the fact that it was Aaron who’d grabbed me and not a monster, I stopped struggling and stared up at him. That’s when I noticed it wasn’t just his hands that were putting off heat. His whole body radiated a heat that even a person in the throes of a high fever couldn’t manage. Whatever this man was, he wasn’t like any human I’d ever met.
Aaron glared at me, his ice-blue eyes flashing. He shook his head as if I were an unruly child who needed discipline.
“You make too much noise,” he growled. “Walk quieter.”
His attitude was really starting to get under my skin. I gave him a withering glare, but he didn’t notice. He just released me, glanced down at my newly uncovered tank top, and turned back to walk again.
“Okay,” I muttered to myself, “I guess we can talk about that fucking acid-spitting troll spider later. No biggie. I see those all the time.” Asshole. I kicked a rock, and it hit him in the back of a leather boot. “Oops, sorry,” I said. Yes, I tower above all others in my maturity.
He glowered at me over his shoulder, then continued onward. What was I doing following this dude? I mean, I was in the middle of nowhere, on a strange planet or in another dimension or something, with a giant, super-mean bear guy who might crossbow me to death at any time. That’s if the troll spiders didn’t get me first. I had to be demented to follow this man. And I had just kicked a rock at him. The whole thing was just so preposterous. Thinking about it made me giggle.
What’s next, little green men?I squinted up at the sky as I walked. Nothing would surprise me right now.
I bet they have enormous cockroaches here,Evilina commented.
A violent shiver ran through me. “Gah!” I hate cockroaches more than anything in the universe.
Aaron stopped abruptly and faced me. I was still looking up and almost ran into him again. He towered over me, unamused. I backed up and bit my lips together to keep from giggling. Rogue looked up at him, his tongue stuck out to the side in a doggy smile.
Aaron looked down at the dog and sighed. “What have you gotten me into?”
Huh?
Aaron looked like he was about to scold me again but then froze, looking up over my shoulder. A sudden, intense heat, even hotter than before, flowed off him and hit me in the face. I flinched away from it and tried to back up, but Aaron grabbed my upper arm, pulled me toward him, and dragged us both to the ground. I landed on top of his arm, which wound around me and pulled me against him. Our chests pressed together.
For a panicked second, I thought I had miscalculated my RTA, but he wasn’t even paying attention to me. He was craning his neck to see through the grass. He looked at me, saw that I understood the situation, and loosened his grip. I gently pulled his hand from my forearm.
When I touched his hand directly, an aggressive shiver ran through me, followed by a dizzying rush of heat. I had the uncomfortable feeling of piping hot water flowing through my body. It started in my chest, moved into my arms, then streamed out through my hands to my fingertips. Shocked, my hand clamped down of its own accord, and a flood of emotion struck without warning.
Fear and hope coursed through me in equal measure, followed by confusion, loneliness, resentment, and a dozen other emotions I could barely identify. They were like my feelings, but more insistent than anything I’d ever felt and so fierce that they threatened to sear the inside of my skull. My vision swam, and I sucked in a breath, then released a pathetic whimper.
Aaron jerked his hand away, and the feeling abruptly vanished. He stared at me, his ice-blue eyes so wide that the color absorbed my whole attention as I stared back, panting as if I had just run a race. He leaned back cautiously, his face reflecting what I knew but didn’t want to believe. Those feelings weren’t mine. They were his. Something inside me had latched onto him and rushed in. I had connected to him and felt his emotions, and what I found was mostly pain.
I blinked away a tear, swallowing hard. His eyes searched mine, though I couldn’t guess what he looked for. I knew he was afraid of something out there, but the bulk of his torment was old. He was a man who had endured something terrible, had stayed the course, and now felt a hesitant hope which balanced precariously atop years and years of grief.
“So much grief,” I whispered before I could stop myself. His blue eyes glistened for a moment then went flat. “I’m sorry,” I said and averted my eyes. I didn’t know what I apologized for, but it felt crucial. Embarrassed, I pulled away from him, and he let me.
Rogue whined, but he wasn’t paying attention to us. I glanced back at Aaron for direction. His gaze dropped to my mouth, then quickly away. He stretched to see through the grass, but whatever he’d seen must have vanished because he stood, silently scanning the clearing.
“Come on, we’re almost there,” he said. “We need to hurry before the fog completely blocks our ability to see him.”
“See who?” I asked.
Aaron walked past where I still lay on the ground, hesitated, then backtracked to stand above me. “The dragon,” he said. Then, warily, he held his hand out to me. Heat still radiated from him, but it was more subdued than before.
I considered his hand for a moment, indecisive, then shuddered and sat up without his help. I hugged myself across my stomach to steady my nerves. I wanted to be brave, but I just wasn’t. It was all too much. I was lost and at the mercy of a stranger. I had no choice but to follow him, but I didn’t know where we were going. For all I knew, he could be leading me to his murder cabin, where Kathy Bates waited to break my ankles. I was feeling some kind of weird super-empathy crap. God only knew what the hell that was. And now, dragons.
My throat tightened. I squeezed my eyes shut. I shouldn’t let this guy see me cry.
Rogue pressed himself against my shoulder, and I opened my eyes to see him scrutinizing me like a worried older brother. My vision was blurry, but no tears fell as I reached up to scratch the back of his neck. I steadied my breath.
You can do this. At least there’s no cockroaches.
I ground my teeth and took Aaron’s hand. There was no rush of feeling this time. Instead, I got only the impression of confusion with something buried beneath that. Distrust, for sure. Very loud distrust. And shame, maybe?
Huh.
He nodded. “Maybe you won’t be completely useless,” he said and turned away again.
Wow, this guy really is a dick.
I huffed out another breath and followed him. Rogue trotted closely next to me, his tongue sticking out the side of his mouth and his tail wagging, as happy as a kid on Christmas. I scowled down at him.
“What are you so freaking happy about?” I asked.
I swear, he made a sound like, “Ri ron’t row.” Despite everything, it made me laugh. My Roogy-Roo. At least I had him.
Aaron turned his head back to glance at Rogue. His blue eyes crinkled a little at the corners.
Now we’re getting somewhere,Evilina and I thought.
That’s when the dragon struck. It appeared above Aaron’s head like a Klingon warship, which is a pretty apt comparison given that it looked more like a pterodactyl than the standard mythical dragon I had expected.
Its flight had been completely silent, but Aaron had somehow sensed the creature. He jumped backward and fell hard. His stumble was all that kept the thing from plucking out his larynx as it dive-bombed him. Aaron threw his arms up, but the dragon was too fast and clipped his forehead with one talon. Rogue jumped back, too, knocking into me so hard that I was thrown backward. Rogue stood over me, growling viciously at the creature.
The dragon swooped over Aaron, landing between us. Smoke rose from its nostrils. Its eyes, focused on Rogue, were as big as my fist and glowed a bright orange red. It was a mass of sinewy crimson as it stalked the snarling dog, his long tail whipping back and forth like an agitated lion. It didn’t have any teeth that I could see, but its beak didn’t look like it needed any. I was fairly certain that if the thing got to me, it could crunch my head off like a Blow Pop. As it approached, it opened its beak and made a coughing sound reminiscent of someone trying to start a lawn mower.
“Holy shit!” I gasped, scrambling to get up and run away. Rogue didn’t allow it. He crouched over me, pinning me down. It was a good thing. The creature’s throat exploded with a wet thwack, and it crumpled to the ground, rolling a couple of times before flopping down a few feet away, still thrashing.
Rogue and I were sprayed with scalding hot blood as it convulsed. The blood spattered my face and I screeched, wiping it off desperately with my bare hands. The dragon flailed weakly a few more times, then went still.
For a moment, all was quiet except for the thudding of my heart. Then, for the first time since I arrived, a bird chirped somewhere in the distance. Rogue finally stepped off me and cautiously circled the thing. I wobbled into a sitting position, shaking violently and hyperventilating.
I had tried so hard not to cry, and I had really done well considering the circumstances, but I couldn’t hold it in anymore. Crying isn’t always about being distraught. Sometimes crying is just a generic way of releasing stress. I cry when I’m upset, sure, but I also cry when I’m pissed off and, apparently, when I’m attacked by a dragon.
Aaron walked up to the creature cautiously, holding a scrap of cloth to his forehead. Blood dripped into his right eye, down his cheek, past his chin, and into his previously well-kept beard. The front of his tunic displayed a sizable splotch of it, as well. His brow furrowed, and the corners of his mouth pulled down.
“That was my last bolt,” he grumbled, crouching down by the thing. “Dragons.”
When Aaron had called it a dragon earlier, I had imagined something very different from this birdlike animal. It was about the size of a horse with a body covered in red iridescent scales and a bright orange crest that ran from the back of its head all the way down to its tail. Its wings were covered in multicolored feathers and ended in a single hooked talon. It was gorgeous, other than the pool of dark red rapidly expanding beneath its head.
That had been an amazing shot, especially with an eye full of blood.
Aaron noticed the state I was in and rose from his crouching position. He walked over to me, peering down, once again reminding me of how massive he was.
“Are you hurt?” he asked.
My face stung like it had been splashed with spider spit and a little had gotten in my eyes. My vision had blurred momentarily, but it was already clearing. I brushed away my tears and willed myself to stop crying. “I’m fine,” I lied, wiping snot from my nose with my muddy tank top. I wasn’t sure if that was better or worse. “Why was its blood so hot?”
“It vomits fire,” he said simply. “Its whole body is hot. That’s why I used my last bolt on it. It was about to cook you for dinner.”
I nodded, my face tight. “Makes sense,” I said, getting to my feet.
“It’s been stalking us since before Rogue and I found you. They’re pretty easy to kill if you can get them before they vomit on you. Especially if they’re small like this one.” His face was more or less neutral, but those wrinkles at the corners of his eyes had reappeared.
I narrowed mine. “You think this is funny!” I accused.
A small smile finally invaded his face, and he said, “Well, it’s my turn.” It was slightly disturbing to see him smirking with a face smattered with blood, but I was too annoyed to care. “You really are from over there, aren’t you?” he asked.
“Over there? Why? Because if I was from over here, then fire-vomit would be normal?” I asked, gesturing to the downed dragon.
“Yes. At least, outside of Neesee it is,” he said, watching my face. I wondered what he was looking for.
“Neesee,” I repeated. “That girl said she was from Neesee.”
“What girl?” he asked, narrowing his eyes.
I shrugged because, as always, I had forgotten her damned name. “She was taller than me with black hair to here.” I motioned to my neck. “She had very, very red lips and stupid yellow pants.” He nodded as I spoke. “In my head, her name is Psycho Snow White,” I added.
“Did she have a man with her?” he asked.
I shook my head. “No, but she didn’t need any help. She picked me up and threw me into the . . . the . . .” I felt ridiculous saying the word “portal” out loud. Portals are not real. I looked over at the dragon. It was possible I needed to reevaluate my belief system.
“Bridge,” Aaron said. My eyes flicked back to him. He was no longer smiling. “That’s what they call it.”
“Bridge? Do you know how to use it?” I asked, almost whispering the question.
He didn’t answer right away. He reached up to my chin, turning my head to examine my cheek. His skin was rough, but his touch was surprisingly gentle. I could feel him through the contact and was struck, once again, by a feeling of grief. The subtle whiff of hope I had sensed earlier was gone, fallen from its perch. “No,” he said finally. “I was hoping that you could help me with that.”
I clenched my jaw, pulling my face out of his hand. He lowered his arm, frowning.
“Is that why you’re helping me?” I asked.
He sighed loudly, then turned and stalked over to the dragon, bending down to pick it up. “Not exactly,” he said.
I was about to push further into this line of questioning, but at the sight of Aaron heaving the giant creature up by its tail and slugging it over his back, I couldn’t help but squeal, “Holy crap! That thing must weigh half a ton! How in the hell are you lifting it?”
He turned back to me, a vertical line splitting the space between his eyebrows, right next to the gash above his right eye. “It’s only two-fifty, maybe less,” he said.
“Two hundred and fifty pounds is heavy.”
“Pounds? What are pounds? No, two hundred fifty kilos.”
I lifted one eyebrow. “I have no idea what that means.”
Aaron shrugged, then turned away. Blood trailed behind him from the dragon’s pierced neck, dribbling a circle of dark red dots. A few clumps of nearly black, clotted blood squished out.
I wrinkled my nose. “Bleck,” I said. “It’s basically a big dead bird, isn’t it?”
He snorted. “You’re in no position to judge.”
I looked down at myself. I was covered in dried mud, blood, and snot. My hair was absolutely disgusting, as were my hands. I’m pretty sure I had smears of mud across my face, intermingled with second-degree burns. I looked like an extra from a bad zombie movie. I groaned, wondering if they had showers in this world. Aaron was already walking away.
“What are you planning to do with that thing?” I asked, hurrying after him.
“I wasted a bolt on it,” he said. “The least it can do is provide us with a meal. Come on, my cottage is just over the next hill.”
I looked down at Rogue. He had his doggy smile back on, but I noticed that his whole face and chest were covered in dragon blood. His nose looked raw.
“Oh my Roogy-Roo, are you okay?” I bent down to examine him more closely. His fur had protected his chest and some of his face, but he had burns around his eyes and nose and inside his giant Dumbo ears. “Oh, Rogue, does it hurt, buddy? When we get to where we’re going, I’ll clean you up and put some ointment on your face, okay?” He wagged his tail. It seemed like I was more upset by the burns than he was.
I stuck out my lower lip, kissed the top of Rogue’s head, then stood back up. Aaron had paused to watch our little interaction. He had a strange look on his face.
“What?” I asked.
He shook his head, which I understood to mean “nothing,” then he continued walking.
The dragon’s dead eyes, having lost their vermilion glow, stared up at me dully from behind him, daring me to follow.