Planet of Dinosaurs, The Complete Collection (Includes Planet of Dinosaurs, Sea of Serpents, & Valley of Dragons)

by K. H. Koehler

  “Leave me alone!” Sasha pushed past them both and walked away.

  CHAPTER 20

  Near morning, Sasha had turned things over in her mind a million times. Her anger hadn’t cooled, but it had gone from a rolling boil to a low simmer. She still felt sick to think of what Toby and Naja had done. She was trying very hard not to think of the world as a bleak, unhappy place full of ugly, untrustworthy people. She knew that wasn’t true, but at the moment it felt true. The ongoing mental tug-of-war had left her frightened and exhausted, and she had never felt so alone in her life, even amidst friends. Especially amidst these friend. But at the same time, she had to look at the practical side of things as Quinn himself would. She needed Toby to help her tow Quinn ashore, and she needed Naja to act as lookout in case the Moja returned or Bolaja appeared. She had to bite her pride, swallow it. She had to work with Toby and Naja or Quinn was going to die.

  She peered out to sea. In the grey, pre-dawn light she could just make out a group of Moja canoeing out toward the rocks, their place of sacrifice. Wedged between the big, dark, painted braves sat Quinn, looking hunched and tired and small from the long night of relentless ceremony. Wiping the worry and hurt from her heart, Sasha turned to the two people standing at nervous attention behind the boulders. She looked them in the eyes and said, “All right.”

  They didn’t look happy. They did look relieved.

  Together, they waited impatiently as the Moja dragged Quinn out of the canoe and marched him up a slippery stair of rock. Quinn was no longer fighting the men. He was probably frightened half to death of slipping and falling into the ocean, and having his hands bound together behind him wasn’t helping in the least. He simply let them guide him along until they reached the largest, most jagged outcropping of rock standing at least twenty feet high. There they untied his wrists and slipped them into crude manacles permanently affixed to the rock via long handmade chains.

  “I wonder if the Moja even belong in this place,” Sasha said, more to herself than to anyone.

  Toby, standing beside her, said, “What do you mean?”

  “The chain and manacles the Moja use look almost medieval,” she said. “And the canoe design is similar to the ones that natives in North America build. Yet the Moja cannot even construct permanent shelters. I wonder if it isn’t possible the Moja are descended from displaced people like us.”

  “You mean they came from our world?”

  “Maybe,” she said. “A small handful of people may have…slipped sideways into this world long ago. That may be why they know how to construct chains and canoes.” She shook off the thought. It was an interesting theory, but she didn’t have time for such speculations. The Moja warriors were scurrying like frightened children to get off the rock and back into their canoe. They paddled madly back to shore, practically leaping out of the water.

  The tribal leader moved to stand in the shallows and raised a great conch shell to his mouth, releasing one long, low note that sounded too much like an animal in distress for Sasha’s liking.

  “The chief is calling Bolaja to feed,” said Naja. “He sent my brother and mother to Bolaja.” Her voice sounded low and pained. “I will not let hunter Quinn be taken as well.”

  “I’m sorry,” Sasha said. She had to force herself to sit still and wait until the Moja began to retreat from the shore, so frightened of their god that they did not even want to witness his arrival. Naja muttered something in her own language, bowed her head, and drew some sacred symbols over her heart. It sounded like a prayer of deliverance, and the sound of her words made Sasha’s skin prickle as the knife-edge of fear scraped down her back.

  As soon as the Moja had vacated the beach, the three of them started down, with Naja on lookout. She’d warned that Bolaja, whatever he was, could swim fast, so the moment Sasha reached the shallows, she kicked off her boots, scouted for immediate dangers, and, finding none, dived straight into the shockingly cold seawater with Toby not far behind her. She surfaced long enough to take a deep breath, then dived back down into the cold silence of the sea. She knew she didn’t have much time, and the rock that Quinn was chained to seemed endlessly far away. Swimming under the water was far faster than cutting through it.

  “Sasha!” Toby called breathlessly from several yards away, trying desperately to keep up with her. She’d always been the stronger swimmer, and she didn’t have time to wait for him. She kicked and clawed at the water, and each time she raised her head, the rocks were a little bit closer. But along the way, something bumped her leg—and it wasn’t Toby, who was still lagging far behind. She stopped kicking and simply tread water, trying to hold very still. Something cold brushed her leg again and she jumped, feeling her heart climb all the way up into her mouth. She wondered if it was Bolaja. She wondered if it was something worse...

  Then Dotty broke the surface of the water and swam in a tight circle about her, chattering excitedly like a seal. Sasha was immediately relieved. “Dotty!” she said and grabbed hold of the plesiosaur’s neck. “Dotty, Quinn!” She pointed, hoping the creature would understand in some arcane way. “We need to swim to Quinn!”

  But Dotty chattered and started swimming in the opposite direction, which only made sense, Sasha supposed. Dotty knew to swim away from danger. “Oh Dotty,” Sasha said, letting her go. She dived back under the water and started clawing her way toward the rocks again. The hour was getting late and she had to get to Quinn, with or without Dotty’s help.

  It seemed forever before she reached the rock and started scrabbling up the rough wet side, desperately seeking purchase anywhere she could. The sea seemed to be getting darker, choppier, and she was deathly cold by the time she reached the top where Quinn was chained. The moment he saw her, he seemed to come alive and started pulling desperately at his chains. “Sasha? What are you doing here?”

  She raced up to him and flung her arms around his neck, hugging him tight. “I’m saving you, silly man.”

  “What took you so long? I waited all bloody night…”

  She kissed him. That shut him up. He tasted like salt and sea. She freed his survival knife from her belt with a smile. “Won’t be but a moment.” She went to work on the manacles, which were made of crude metal that had simply been bent around Quinn’s wrists with incredible strength. They were weak from use, but not yet at the breaking point. Sasha hoped to change that.

  Quinn watched her. “You know, my dear, this is doing absolutely nothing for my male ego.”

  “Oh shut up,” she said as she concentrated on bending the steel without accidently stabbing Quinn with the blade of the knife.

  Toby had finally reached them and was pulling himself up the rock. “Sasha!” he cried, pointing frantically off toward the horizon.

  Sasha stopped to glance up, her heart back in her throat. Not far off, perhaps a quarter of a mile, an enormous wake was headed their way as a gigantic creature cut through the water, zeroing in on the rock.

  Bolaja was here.

  CHAPTER 21

  “Sasha, I really must insist that you go now,” Quinn said. He sounded amazingly composed as he watched the sea creature heading their way. “It really is too late.”

  She ignored him. She jammed the knife into the little space between the manacle and Quinn’s wrist and kept prying at the slowly weakening metal.

  “Sasha…”

  “I’ll go when you’re free!” she said sternly, her panic mounting moment by moment. The wake was growing closer by the second. She started smashing the weakened manacle against the rocks, putting everything she had into it. “I wish you’d be less argumentative.”

  “I am not argumentative.”

  “Yes, you are.”

  “No,” he argued, “I’m not.”

  She gave a cry of victory when she felt the metal give and the manacle fall away from Quinn’s left wrist. But just when she thought there might be a chance they’d all live through this, an enormous wave came up and slapped them all. Bolaja was close, almost u
pon them. She started frantically on the second manacle.

  “Sasha,” Quinn said, his voice unusually calm and demanding.

  She turned to look at him.

  He was smiling, though his eyes were deadly serious. He put his free arm about her waist and drew her close to him, all the plains of his body familiar as they pressed against her. He slanted his mouth against hers and kissed her deeply, tracing the seam between their lips with his tongue. “I love you, Sasha,” he said, moving his hand around until it finally came to rest at her wrist, where he deftly liberated his knife from her. “Remember that, my darling.”

  “Quinn…” she began, stunned speechless by his words. She clung to him even as they were both sprayed with sea foam from the slowly building wake. She would not let him go. If she had to die here, so be it. She would die with him.

  Quinn looked beyond her to Toby. His face was resolved, peaceful. “Take good care of her, boy,” he said. “I care very much about this girl.” Then, still smiling a little, he pushed her hard, backward, off the rock and into the ocean.

  Sasha screamed.

  CHAPTER 22

  “Toby, let go!” she said, trying to wriggle out of his hold. But Toby, who had dove into the sea seconds after her, had an iron hold on her. He was trying to drag her back to shore on Quinn’s orders, but every time he pulled on her she twisted in his arms in an effort to make him release her. “I’m not leaving Quinn!”

  Toby put his mouth very close to her ear. “It’s already here, Sasha. There’s nothing more we can do.”

  “No!” she screamed. She kicked at him, almost managing to get free, but it was futile. They were both picked up and flung halfway back to shore by an enormous wall of water as a creature as vast as a whale breached like a mountain before them—a mountain that bellowed with a voice like thunder. Sasha screamed, and then the ocean sucked them under and the world became nothing but light and darkness and silence and terror. Sasha kicked, but she had no idea which way she was swimming; she could only hope for the best. She searched for light and swam in that direction.

  She broke the surface seconds later—it felt like years—and gasped for breath. Toby sprang to the surface beside her, and for that, at least, she was grateful. They were both now closer to shore than to Quinn and she could see the creature looming over him clearly. It looked like a giant, primeval crocodile. “What in bloody hell is that?” Toby cried in horror.

  She shook her head in disbelief. The creature seemed to be some form of pliosaur, a short-necked plesiosaur and one of Dotty’s distant relatives. “Dear God,” she gasped, watching the gigantic creature snap at the open air before sinking back into the sea. Quinn was busy working on his second manacle with the knife, trying not to look, trying not to panic, she knew.

  Dotty, frantically circling them both, gave her another friendly bump. Sasha grabbed hold of the plesiosaur’s slick neck, wrapping her arms tightly about it. “We have to help Quinn, Dotty,” she told the creature, whispering close to its ear. “You’re the only one who can do it.”

  “Sasha, what are you doing?” Toby demanded to know, trying to snatch at her.

  As if spurred by her words, Dotty started sprinting toward the rock, though her whole body shivered with fear and Sasha could see poor Dotty’s big black eyes flickering nervously in her head. Sasha held on, letting Dotty tow her on. They were cutting so quickly through the water that Toby would never be able to catch her now. She prayed Dotty didn’t lose her nerve. She could never swim fast enough to get there on her own.

  The sea was very still around them, too still. Sasha had a terrible fantasy of Bolaja circling beneath them, then streaking upward to consume them both whole and alive. The thought made her whole body break out in a cold sweat. The journey seemed endless and nightmarish.

  Bolaja resurfaced, but it was again near the rock. Possibly the beast was attracted to the color red, and maybe that was the reason the Moja sacrificed their red-hairs to the creature. It snapped wildly at the open air around the rock where Quinn was crouching, still working slowly and awkwardly on the manacle. But the creature’s neck was too short to give it the angle it needed to bite its intended target. Bolaja’s enormous, pointed jaws could only snap at the tip of the rock, chipping off a large chunk that knocked Quinn’s chain loose. Still cowering, Quinn slid sideways off the rock and into the sea.

  “Quinn!” she shouted and started to kick, hoping to direct Dotty toward the place where Quinn had gone under, but Dotty had other ideas. With a cry, she broke away from Sasha and swam directly toward Bolaja, so fast that Sasha couldn’t stop her. With a cry of her own, Sasha dived—there was nothing else she could do. She swam just as fast as she could, trying to keep an eye out for Quinn, but the dark green waters were so stirred with debris it was nearly impossible to see.

  She surfaced and glanced around frantically, but there was nothing to see. Gasping, more panicked than ever, Sasha dived again, hoping to spot something…anything. Then some huge thing grabbed her around the middle and she screamed and swallowed what felt like a gallon of seawater. She kicked, half expecting to feel prehistoric teeth piercing her flesh, but the pain never came. She kicked and swam and struggle, dragging herself to the surface, and it was only then she realized a choking, half-drowned Quinn was attached to her, his arms wrapped so tightly about her ribs she could scarcely breathe.

  The moment they were up, Quinn heaved water all over her—which, by her estimation, was the second time he had thrown up on her. “Quinn,” she said, and turned to face him, trying her best to support his weight above the water. He looked miserably half-drowned and about as terrified as she had ever seen him. “Quinn, are you all right?”

  He choked again and clung to her. “Dandy…” he said, not sounding dandy at all.

  “I’m going to try and swim us back to shore,” she told him, “but you’re going to have to let me breathe, please.”

  “Yes, of course,” he managed, slowly releasing his deathgrip on her.

  Before she could orient herself and aim for shore, another wave him them, almost capsizing them. Twisting around, she was able to confirm what she feared—Bolaja was sinking back under the surface of the water. She had just started to wonder how they would ever outswim that monster when Dotty surfaced again. She chattered excitedly and surrounded them in a whirlpool of frothy water as if they didn’t already know they were in terrible danger! “Dotty!” Sasha shouted. “Dotty, run away!”

  This time she obeyed. She whimpered and swam off…right toward Bolaja.

  “Oh Dotty,” Sasha said, feeling her heart sink inside of her. She bit back the desire to cry and turned back to the task at hand, the one thing she was capable of doing. Gripping Quinn around the shoulders, she began backstroking them toward shore as quickly as possible. He was cumbersome, and it was difficult to keep them both afloat, but she was saved Toby joined them and took much of Quinn’s weight off her. Together the two of them towed him along until they’d reached the shallows. There Toby took over, pulling Quinn ashore, allowing Sasha to rest in the ankle-deep water and look back.

  The only thing that had kept Bolaja from following them was Dotty. She was swimming in beautiful, slick circles around the beast, which kept breaching and clapping its enormous jaws at the tiny plesiosaur. Dotty wheeled in and out of the waves, sometimes leaping ten feet into the air. Finally, she turned back toward the sea and streaked off, as fast as an eel. Bolaja immediately gave chance, his mountainous body cutting deep into the water as he dived after her. He was bigger and much faster than Dotty. Sasha watched, heart pounding and mouth as salty and dry as sand as Dotty surfaced for the last time, mewling in fear. Then Bolaja’s huge jaws came up beneath her and clamped shut. Sasha waited, eyes burning, breath stuck on a sob.

  Bolaja dived, then surfaced a moment later and flung Dotty’s bloodied carcass high into the air before catching it between his teeth and disappearing under the waves for good. Seconds passed and the water stilled as if nothing had transpired. As if
nothing was there at all. Sasha, sitting in the shallows, bowed her head, put her hands over her face, and wept.

  CHAPTER 23

  She was tired, worn to the bone, and she wanted to go home. She didn’t feel like a huntress. She felt like what she was—a ragged little girl who wanted someone to hold her and make things right. It was such a relief when Quinn lifted her into his arms and carried her ashore. She couldn’t have walked if she needed to. She put her arms about his neck and rested her tearstained face on his soaking wet shoulder. As Quinn turned, he came face to face with Toby standing in the shallows, looking on with concern. He immediately stiffened and she could feel him bristling all over. “Don’t touch her,” he said, his voice a threatening growl. Toby grew absolutely still. Quinn pushed past him and strode with her in his arms toward the beach cooking under the early morning sun.

  When they had gotten as far from the shoreline as possible, Quinn set her down in the soft, warm sand. He held her close and let her cry until she was all washed out. “All these tears for a bloody dinosaur.” He sounded exhausted, as worn and finished as she felt. And then he reconsidered. “Or is it a marine reptile?”