Sighing, she sat down on a log and waited for Quinn to recover. “Why do you drink so much, Lord Quinn?” she asked. It was not that she much cared, but she was curious nonetheless.
He eyed her savagely. “It helps me deal with…things.”
“What things?”
“Loose-tongued, opinionated women, for starters.”
“Lord Quinn!”
Toby gestured at their surroundings. “Could we discuss this at a later time?” he pleaded. “In case you haven’t noticed, we’re in the bleeding jungle! What are we going to do about this situation? Where are we?”
Sasha sighed and clapped her gloved hands around her cheeks. “I’ve no idea.”
“You made the picture, girl!” Quinn shouted. “You said nothing about it being a…a doorway to some godforsaken jungle!”
“That’s all it was!” Sasha insisted, clenching both hands into fists in her lap as her mind whirled to try and make sense of their predicament. “It was only a picture!”
“Obviously not,” Lord Quinn sneered, glaring up at them both.
Oh, she wished she could discuss all this with John! Maybe he would know how they had gotten here, and how they might get back.
“What jungle is this?” asked Toby, using a stick to prod at the remnants of the giant beetle. “Do such things as these live in Africa, or South America?” At least he’d read enough of her books to know where they might be.
“There are no insects like these in Africa,” Quinn insisted.
“How the bloody hell would you know what lives in Africa?” Toby shouted, which set both men off into a new round of arguments.
Sasha felt like screaming and insisting that it was indeed only a picture she’d been making, not some…portal into an unknown jungle world. But Quinn was right. It was obviously more than a picture. People did not fall into pictures. They were not pulled through pictures. But how could this be? She and John had never even postulated such a ridiculous thing! She sniffed. She knew crying would fix nothing, so instead she stood up and stamped her foot for silence. Toby and Quinn, presently involved in a shouting match, barely heard. “Please, stop, both of you!” she cried. “I don’t know where we are, or how we got here. But it’s obvious we’re very far removed from any kind of civilization. And arguing about it won’t help!”
The two men stopped shouting at each other and turned to look at her.
“We’re not in South America,” said Sasha in a softer voice, venturing a few steps into the jungle before stopping. “And I don’t think this is Africa, either.” Palm fronds seemed to embrace her and insects buzzed about her ears. Fecund life was everywhere, but not the type of life she had read about, even in the most exotic places on earth. She touched a flowering vine with blooms of a glowing green color she wasn’t sure even existed on earth. A dragonfly with a wingspan as wide as a bird’s buzzed up to her, then away. “We may not even be in our own world anymore.”
“Is that even possible?” Quinn demanded to know.
“I don’t know!”
“Don’t yell at Sasha, you pompous lout!” Toby interrupted Quinn.
“How dare you…”
They started arguing again, but Sasha hushed them. “Hear that?” she said, raising a hand.
“I hear nothing,” said Toby.
“Yes, exactly.” The bird twitters had ceased abruptly, and the hooters had vanished, leaving the jungle eerily still, with only the irritating, tepid buzz of insects to fill the silence. Sasha waited, holding her breath.
And then, out of the jungle, she heard it for the first time, a sound that would change her life, and the lives of her friends, forever: a deep, nasal trumpeting, like the sound of a child blowing through a conch shell, only much, much louder. It froze all three of them in their tracks and sent a quivering, primal fright crawling down Sasha’s back. She had never heard such a sound before, and, she realized after a moment, she never wanted to hear it again.
She turned slowly to Lord Quinn. “Can you stand?”
“I think so,” Quinn said softly, sounding as cowed by the noise as she felt. Slowly he shimmied up the tree until he was standing in a semi-upright position. His hand went to the back of his head, wincing when he encountered the lump there. “What is that sound?” he said in a hushed tone.
Sasha was trembling all the way down to her slippers. “I think it would be in our best interest to move on.”
“Move on where?” Toby asked, his eyes darting around the jungle with alarm. “Where is there to go?”
“Anywhere.”
The unfamiliar jungle stretched out around them in every direction, as frightening and alien as a dream. But not as frightening as that sound. They started following what looked like a rough animal path cut through the undergrowth. Behind them, the trumpeting sounded again, making their hair stand literally on end. It sounded much closer this time.
“I really don’t care much for that noise at all,” Quinn admitted as the thin limb of a tree whipped him in the face, leaving a red mark.
Sasha struggled as some thorny bushes caught the hem of her gown, for once in full agreement with Quinn.
They instinctively started picking up their pace. Foliage whipped them as they tunneled through it. Something snaked under Sasha’s foot and she jumped, then forged on regardless. She did not like snakes, but she wanted to put distance between herself and that terrible echoing noise. She had to get away from that sound. Toby and Lord Quinn started pulling at the foliage hanging before them like ragged curtains, being less careful about snakes or other creatures and a lot less quiet. Excited insects buzzed into their faces, then away, some gigantic. At first, they noticed them, then they all started concentrating on making more headway and worrying less about things flying into their eyes and ears.
The trumpeting noise sounded again. This time it was almost deafeningly loud and the vibration made the trees shake and the earth tremble under their feet.
“I really don’t like that noise,” said Quinn.
Around them the forest buzzed, birds took sudden flight, and foliage crackled alarmingly as large bodies tunneled through it at panicked speeds. Some large creature like a saber-toothed crocodile broke through the undergrowth to their left and dashed down the animal path, so intent on escape that it didn’t notice them at all. Sasha nearly screamed, only cupping her hands over her mouth at the last moment, which resulted in a mouth full of flies that she quickly spat out. A pair of creatures that looked like reptilian forms of gazelles galloped past them. She saw them only for a moment before they disappeared into the trees.
Again with the trumpet. The sound was on their very heels now, blasting down their necks.
Quinn said something she didn’t catch. “What?” she cried.
“Stop!” He grabbed her by the wrist, pulling her up short so she nearly stumbled. “It’s herding us!” he shouted, and Toby, hearing, slid to a stop beside her.
“What are you doing?” she cried.
“It’s herding us,” he repeating. “That creature is herding us!”
“How can you know?”
“I know.”
The trumpeting was almost upon them, the sound followed by a low, trembling growl that sounded like a thunderstorm was moving upon them, though no cloud was visible in the achingly bright blue sky. “Follow me,” he said and started back the way they had come. “Follow me if you want to live.”
She let Quinn steer her away. She didn’t know why, except he seemed to know what he was doing. Toby followed, but only because he was following her, she knew. Quinn hurried them back down the rough little path they had made. The alcoholic stupor seemed to be lifting and his eyes were suddenly fierce and wary. Before long, he stopped them before a tree with low-hanging branches. “Can you climb?” he asked.
“Yes.” She was slight, and she’d spent a long childhood climbing trees at her Aunt Margaret’s, so it was no trouble at all. Quinn made a saddle of his two hands. “Up you go,” and he bumped Sasha up to the fir
st branch. Toby, who was tall and young, with long arms, swung himself up onto the limb beside Sasha with the dexterity of a monkey.
Quinn had some difficulty. He was wiry but middle-aged, and not as sober as he could have been. He grabbed the limb and slid off. Sasha leaned down and grabbed his sweaty hand. Toby took his other. “Hurry,” he said. “Hurry, please.” Together, they pulled and wriggled him up the tree, no small task; he was heavier than he looked. The three of them took a moment to catch their breath, then went to work on the next limb, scrambling up the tree and into the higher bows as quickly as they could. It was terrible, sweating, grunt-worthy work, but they managed it, Sasha making it almost to the top first.
And good thing too, because within minutes something enormous barreled out of the trees like a huge, living, breathing locomotive, though it was larger than any locomotive that Sasha had ever seen. Its wake was enough to rock their whole tree side to side, and all three of them clung madly to the swaying branches as the monstrous…thing…charged through the jungle in pursuit of the various creatures fleeing through the underbrush.
Sasha started scrambling higher, kicking at branches and snagging her long skirts, tearing them mercilessly as she grappled the branches over her head. She didn’t mind in the least; she had to see what creature had inspired such dread in the whole forest.
“Sasha, be careful!” Toby cried in warning from below, but she ignored his cries. She’d been climbing trees since she was a little girl. She considered herself an expert tree-climber.
After some leg work, she found herself above the tree line where she was finally able to get a good look at the creature dashing through the jungle only twenty or thirty meters away. It was a bipedal creature of over twenty feet in length, in her estimation. It looked robust, with powerful hind legs and an enormous head that swung side to side like a heavy pendulum as it made those ragged trumpeting noises. Its head was broad, bony and almost skull-like, the dark, mottled, reptilian skin pulled taught. Two long, bony ridges topped its eye sockets, with another, longer, bony horn riding over its snout. Its teeth were almost ridiculously large, and armor-like spikes ran the length of its spine and down the long, whiplike tail. Despite its enormous size and considerable girth, it ran with astonishing grace and speed, driving a small herd of smaller animals ahead of it. It reminded Sasha of how lions hunted on the Savannah, according to her zoology books. The big male lions herded prey animals into groups of waiting females, which did the killing almost exclusively. She wondered if Quinn had read the same books.
The smaller animals—they were a mixed lot of tall, thin-legged bipedal reptiles with long necks and ground-hugging, almost mammalian beasts—topped a tall ridge…and there was the second predator she thought might be waiting in ambush. It resembled the first creature, which she finally recognized as a form of predatory theropod called a Ceratosaurus, discovered as fossil remnants in the Americas only a few years prior—her science magazines were certainly useful now!—but it differed in size. This creature, the female, was least ten feet longer, bulkier than the sleek male, with an enormous horned head that looked capable of swallowing a third of her mate in one bite.
Sasha scurried out onto a thick branch to see what the pair of hunters was up to.
The male drove the prey animals on, making those startling trumpeting noises that shook the whole jungle, while the female lunged, opening her enormous, slavering jaws and crunching up at least half of the onrushing animals whole before pouncing on those trying to escape. Her speed and dexterity were amazing for her size. This was nothing like the lumbering prehistoric creatures she had read about in the periodicals.
Sasha shivered, realizing how easily they could have been like those poor animals, gone in one gulp, had Quinn not encouraged them to climb this tree. She wondered how he had known what was to come; he didn’t strike her as the kind of man who followed science journals. Shielding her eyes from the sun, she leaned out further on the branch and watched as the two creatures picked off the escapees, their jaws snapping like giant, bloody animal traps.
Too late, she heard a sharp snap as the tree limb gave way beneath her. Then she was in freefall.
CHAPTER 6
Claws snatched her, digging deep into her shoulders and halting her downward momentum seconds before she would have hit the ground. Sasha screamed. She watched the ground rush up to meet her…then away as she was dragged through the sun-streaked, squalling forest and over the treetops at a tremendously sickening pace. Wind ripped at her hair and clothes, and tree limbs raked her cheeks like cat claws. She glanced up and saw a huge shadow and thick, knobby black claws wrapped tight about her shoulders. She screamed again, punctuating it with a few useless kicks as she was carried away, her abductor angling toward the sky. Then she screamed some more when she realized they were headed straight toward a tall, black volcanic mountain looming just ahead, not that it did much good. The creature that had her simply winged on, oblivious to her terror.
Sasha stopped screaming and closed her eyes as the mountain rushed toward them. She couldn’t bear to see them crash into the side. But after a few tense moments, she felt them angle downward and felt the climate change from hot and wild to cool and enclosed. She chanced a peek and realized they were now traveling down a dark, shadowy tunnel of some kind. Her captor must have flown them right down the chimney of the volcano. The realization didn’t make her feel much better.
The creature carrying her slowed down, making a series of high-pitched squeals that were answered by a cacophony of noises as other dark shapes joined them in an enormous, almost pitch-black cavern. Sasha screamed anew and jerked in the thing’s embrace, trying to unwedge herself from its grasp. It released her at last and Sasha dropped to the dusty cavern floor, so dizzy she couldn’t stand for some moments.
More squealing surrounded her, so loud she felt like her skull was being cleaved in two. Shadows flitted about her, as fast as lightning. She rose unsteadily to her feet, aware that her debutante dress was in tatters, her hair snarled around her face, her face and lips windburned from her flight. She felt weary and sore in a thousand places, like a rag doll all pieced together. Dark shadows wheeled in and out of the spare light, man-shaped creatures with shining white eyes and starbright teeth. She realized there was a very good possibility that she would die now, torn apart by monstrous things she couldn’t see, things that had no name. She might have despaired had she not been so frightened.
Human screams broke her sickening reverie. She turned at the sound and watched two more of the giant flying things skirt by. One dropped a disheveled Toby to the floor, another Lord Quinn. Quinn could not possibly look any worse than he did now, with his suit tattered on his ragged form and his face full of scratches. Sasha felt her heart sink. It was bad enough she was going to die here, in this cavern on this unknown world. But somehow it was worse now that she knew the others had been captured as well. None of them would make it out alive to tell of the things they had seen.
“Sasha?” said Toby, rising shakily to his feet and reaching for her. His face and arms were full of scratches, testament to the fight he had put up as he was carried away by his captor. “Are you all right?”
“Oh Toby.” She hugged him, clutching him tight as he buried his face in the side of her neck. She took some small comfort in the fact that at least she would not die alone.
Lord Quinn swayed to his feet and joined them, his eyes very sober. Together they formed a little circle of protection, their eyes going everywhere around the ancient cavern, watching the tiny, flame-like eyes that watched them all with a primitive hunger that sent shivers down their spines. “What are those things?” Quinn asked.
Sasha bit back her tears, struggling to be brave for Toby. There was nothing in any of her father’s books or in any of the periodicals to describe the creatures that fluttered around them now, their strange, alien forms passing in and out of the spare light leaking into the cavern from the opening far above. They stood as large as men, but tha
t was where the similarities ended. They had dark, befurred bodies, rat-like faces with huge, upright ears, and large, membranous wings that beat chillingly cold air at them all as they fluttered excitedly about the circle of frightened humans. They made low clicking noises, not human, not even animal, but almost like Morse code. Sasha knelt down to pick up a large rock from the ground. The others followed suit. She struggled to keep her terror in check. She had survived the Ceratosauruses. She was a Strange, her father’s daughter. Her father was a huntsman and had been to war, no idyll lord with soft hands and a wilting spirit was he. If she was going to die tonight, she would die a Strange, and she would not make it easy for her murderers.
Planet of Dinosaurs, The Complete Collection (Includes Planet of Dinosaurs, Sea of Serpents, & Valley of Dragons) Page 3
