They had maybe four hours left before the gate closed. And She was out there in the desert, waiting for them both to venture outside. Sasha could feel her in her bones, at the back of her mind, an insistent shadow as somber as the Grim Reaper himself.
“So here we are,” Quinn said, trying for levity.
Sasha smiled. There was nothing else left to do. It was either smile or cry, and she was tired of crying. She moved to sit across Quinn’s lap and rest her head on his shoulder, carefully trying not to apply pressure to him or aggravate his wounds.
“Do you regret not staying with Toby?” Quinn asked very seriously. He reached up and pulled her tight against him, probably tighter than he was comfortable with. But if his wounds pained him, he didn’t show it. He buried his face in the side of her neck.
“No, of course not.”
“Really.”
“I chose you, and you chose me, Quinn. That’s what Naja said. And Naja was right.”
“The great huntress.”
“That’s right.”
“But I’m a bit of a disappointment, yes? Not such a great hunter…”
“Quinn, you’re perfect. You’re beautiful and funny and sincere. I love you.”
For once he had nothing sarcastic or self-effacing to say. She glanced up and saw his head was bowed as if he were trying very hard to control his emotions.
“Quinn…”
He raised his head and pushed himself back against the wall as if the friction and pain were tools to clear his head. He looked at her with steady, dark eyes. “Do you mean that?”
“Yes, of course.”
His hands tightened almost painfully around her. “I would do more than die for you, Sasha. I’d kill for you.”
“I know that,” she said, blinking away the tears that threatened to erupt in her eyes.
“I love you, my darling.” He cupped the back of her head and kissed her, a slow and very sweet kiss that left them both breathless. He said, his voice a hoarse whisper near her ear, “I want to live in my old decaying house in Africa with you and raise children and live and die there with you by my side.”
“Yes,” she answered simply. “We’ll do that, Quinn. We’ll do everything.”
He sagged and she felt her heart flutter. “Quinn…”
“I’m all right. Only not feeling so well.”
“You’ve already started to fever.”
“I’m fine. Not fevering. Not yet. I would know it if I was. I did the first time I saw you.”
“Oh, Quinn.” She leaned up and placed a soft kiss on his cheek.
“We need to get home, Sasha,” he said, sagging back against the cave as if there was no strength left in his body. “It’s terribly important. We can’t die here.”
“We’ll never get past She.”
“We should try. She could stay here for days or weeks, until we die.” He thought a long moment, seeming to struggle with it. “How far are we from camp, do you think?”
“Maybe five miles. Maybe more. I don’t know!”
“If I distracted She, could you run that far without stopping?”
A sudden terror seized Sasha. She leaned back and looked up at him carefully. “I won’t leave you.”
“Sasha, She cannot follow us both if we go in separate directions.”
“Then I should lead her away! I’m stronger than you right now. I’m not as injured.”
He looked at her with enormous feeling, his hand moving to brush her tangled, half-undone hair out of her eyes. “It has to be me, Sasha. There’s no question of that.”
Now she was angry. She wanted to strike him, to scream at him. “No, it does not! I can do it. I can outrun her. I’m not afraid!”
“Sasha…”
“Please, Quinn!” she sobbed. She rested her head on his shoulder and cried. She did not care if that made her seem weak.
He held her, comforted her, and finally he spoke. And she hated him all the more because his words made perfect sense. “You must have considered the consequences of what we have done. You must have entertained, even for only a moment, the idea that we might have a child between us.”
She sniffed as his words seeped into her. It had crossed her mind many times, actually, and, she was ashamed to admit, she was most hopeful, despite their precarious living conditions and the almost constant danger of this world. She would be proud to carry Quinn’s child, to nurture him, to see him grow. And if—when—she returned home, she would happily face London society a pariah, she and her illegitimate child. She’d go to live in a nunnery, if necessary. It would be preferable to living alone.
But she was honest with Quinn. He deserved that, at least. “I don’t know if I’m strong enough to let you go.”
“But are you strong enough to reach the gate, Sasha? Are you strong enough to raise our child back home, if there is one?”
She nodded. “Yes.”
“It will be very difficult. More difficult than surviving on this world, likely.”
“I know.”
“Well then.” He gently eased her out of his lap and climbed shakily to his feet. For one bad moment, Sasha was certain he would topple over, but he recovered quickly. He looked down on her, his eyes dire and loving all at once. “Would you like that, to raise our child, my darling Sasha?”
She could barely see through the veil of her tears. “Yes. I would. I’d call him Isaac after Sir Isaac Newton, and he’d likely be very stubborn like me, and probably very ginger like you. My Papa was ginger when he was younger, did you know that? I’m a ginger in disguise.”
Quinn laughed, a nice sound, and drew her up and into the circle of his arms. “Yes, actually, I knew that about Albertus.” And then he grew serious. “I love him like my brother, Sasha. He is and will always be my best friend.” He swallowed hard and continued. “He is the executor of my estate, so when you get home, you convince old Albertus that all I have should be yours, the estate in Africa, my flat in London. Everything. Will you do that for me?”
Sasha shuddered. He was telling her goodbye. But she would be strong, because that was what Quinn wanted. “I’ll tell him.”
“Will you go to Africa? Will you claim the estate, you and our child?”
She nodded once, dourly. “Yes.”
Quinn smiled then. “It will be good to know that my house will see some happiness, finally.”
“I won’t be happy without you.”
“Try, Sasha.” He drew her close, sank his hand in all her tangled cornrow braids, and kissed her, gently, thoroughly. She put her arms about him for a moment and held him close, kissing him, trying to memorize everything about the moment, everything about him. The time was both long and much too brief. Finally, she let him go and he moved stiffly toward the entrance of the cave. He shrugged his whole body and she could see him loosening up, preparing to run. He took a deep breath. He wasn’t well, but he could do it, she knew. He was going to run, he was going to save her from the dragon, the way he’d always wanted to. She…and the child they might have between them.
“Quinn.”
He turned to look at her. “Yes, Sasha?”
“I’m sorry I hit you with that log. In the beginning. I should never have done that.”
“I love you too, my dear.” He touched her cheek in farewell. Then, straightening his shoulders, Quinn stepped outside the cave.
CHAPTER 25
She came barreling out of the dark, bearing down on them like a locomotive, just as she had expected. For a moment Sasha froze. She found herself unable to react as she watched the enormous creature charge them like some nightmare shade, kicking up dust and rocks, her gigantic head lowered and swaying back and forth like a pendulum, her greasy black jaws agape.
Then Quinn, clutching John’s broken umbrella, ran straight at her.
She hesitated a moment, no doubt confounded by the small creature with the gall to run at her instead of away from her. But Quinn was resolute. He did not flinch. He reached her in seconds, ducke
d under her head, took the broken umbrella in both hands, and plunged the ragged tip deep into her belly. She bellowed, twisted her head to follow him, and snapped. Quinn rolled out of the way of her giant slavering jaws. Sasha flinched when she saw his back take yet more punishment as he rolled across the rocky ground. Then he was on his feet again and ducking behind her, making She lumber around to follow him.
Now was her chance, her only chance.
Ripping her attention away from Quinn, Sasha ran. She ran crying and sobbing, but even still, she ran. She ran for herself. But mostly, she ran for Quinn and the child they both might have conceived in this hostile world.
Ahead loomed the open, unchanging desert, the buzzing insect life, the long, formless shadows that could be anything. She ducked and zigzagged, trying to imitate the behavior of the smaller nocturnal dinosaurs, hoping to go unnoticed by most of the desert creatures. It was the longest five miles of her life, and she recalled almost nothing about it afterward. She knew she ran into through night, through webs of buzzing insects, over rocks and small, dry ravines. She knew she ran and stumbled and fell and clambered to her feet and ran some more. But she had few memories of the time. She ran, not wanting to look back, not wanting to think at all. She just ran and ran until she realized the grade of the earth was changing, that it sloped downward toward the valley below. She ran into the rain and the wind and didn’t find it at all refreshing. She ran, crying and stumbling until she recognized the distant pinprick light of a camp and realized she was almost there, almost home.
She ran toward the light. She let the light consume her.
“Sasha!”
At first, it was a dim echo of a cry that the wind blew away. Then, as she neared the camp, and the sputtering fire the rain was quickly putting out, she heard John more clearly. He had stayed behind to tend to the fire. He stood near the copse of trees where the gate was located, signaling to her with his bow. Sasha sobbed and put everything she had left into it as she ran toward him.
“Sasha, did you find Quinn?” John asked. He was standing there impatiently, the pack on his back, practically leaping from foot to foot. He had his bow gripped securely in one hand, and a pterosaur lay crumpled nearby, the rain washing its blood away into the earth.
She ran right into him and sobbed. It was answer enough.
John steadied her. “I’m sorry, Sasha. I am so sorry.”
“We have to go, John,” she panted breathlessly. They had perhaps a half hour left, maybe less. “Did you get the gate open?”
He nodded. “And stabilized. But the wind is starting to change.”
She grabbed the bow out of his hands, snatched at a quarrel in the pack on his back, turned and fired blind at the shadow looming close. The pterosaur that had been silently descending upon them was deflected when the quarrel struck its wing, wheeling off screaming into the night. “We have to go now, John.” She grabbed him by the sleeve and together they crashed through the tall grasses just as more birds began to turn and head in their direction.
Ahead she saw the spinning of the sails and the gloomy ghostlight of the gate. It shone in a brilliant blue cone over the dais, small insects buzzing all about it. At first, she thought they were the huge prehistoric insects she was no so familiar with; then she realized they were flies and other tiny insects that did not yet exist in this world. She never thought she would be so happy to see insects from earth flitting in and out of the light! John saw too and was elated. He pointed at the dim outline of the bustling daylit streets surrounding the Palace of Westminster. “I always wanted to visit London,” he stated happily.
They raced between the sails and leaped to the top of the dais. At that point, Sasha pulled John up short. “Give me your quarrels.”
“What?”
“Your quarrels!” she screamed into the wind and rain drenching them both. “Give them to me!”
John unhooked the pack of quarrels from his rucksack and Sasha took them, dumping them unceremoniously like pickup sticks at her feet. “What are you doing?” he demanded to know.
“I’m going to wait for She,” she said. She turned to look at him, at the expression of disbelief on his handsome, sunburned face. “Goodbye, John,” she said and forced a smile. Then she pushed him, hard.
John stumbled backward, weighed down by the pack on his back, a pack that no doubt held his notes, bits of bones, and plenty of other impractical things that he could not be parted from. Wonderful things that would change the face of paleontology forever. He stumbled and fell back, vanishing into the light.
Sasha was alone, except for Newton, who had leaped first to the dais, then to her shoulder. He put his cool nose to her ear.
She lifted John’s bow and prepared a new quiver, eyeing the sky keenly for pterosaurs. If Quinn was alive, she knew he’d be headed this way, toward the light of the gate. And she would be ready.
CHAPTER 26
She was coming.
Sasha heard her long before she sighted her fuzzy dark outline lumbering through the grey morning rain. She took a deep breath and stilled her thudding heartbeat. So far, the birds had left her alone, no doubt too afraid of the weird, unnatural light from the gate to approach, and dissuaded by the torrents of rain. But She was not afraid. Sasha sensed the rhythmic thumping of the earth as She lumbered toward her. She felt nothing. She was numbed, resolved. She raised the bow, sighted down her target, fully prepared to kill Quinn’s killer…but suddenly something came out of the rain and grabbed her.
She screamed and fought, almost dropping the bow, then realized it was human, whatever it was, and familiar, and it was hugging her and holding her tight in a big, wet, squishy embrace.
“Quinn!” she screamed, for a moment so overwhelmed by his sudden appearance that she started to sob in pure, unadulterated joy. She clutched him and clutched him tighter, and without saying a word, he clutched her back, so hard she could not breathe for a moment.
“Sasha,” he said in her ear. “My darling. You waited.”
“You made it,” she said, sobbing against his neck. “You made it…”
She was almost upon them. In all the excitement, Sasha had momentarily forgotten about her.
But Quinn had not. He let Sasha go, took the bow and quarrel from her, turned, and fired blind as she had fired blind earlier, at the pterosaur. He fired just as the great beast lunged at them, her acrid breath blowing over them both like a hot desert wind. The quarrel hit her nasal horn, bounced along the side of her face, and struck her good eye.
She roared in agony and stumbled to the ground just outside the circle of sails, kicking up a windstorm of dust and rocks.
“Bugger it,” said Quinn, as if surprised he had hit her. He turned and smiled at Sasha…then pushed her right into the light.
CHAPTER 27
Like in the beginning, there was darkness and a carnivorous wind that seemed to rip at her with giant teeth. Sasha felt herself tumble over and over, felt the storm rip at her clothes and hair. She did not know which way was up, assuming there even was an up, and so all she could do was fold her arms about herself, squeeze her eyes shut, and hope for the best. Like in the beginning, the journey seemed to last forever. It seemed to last seconds. There was a bright light and a tremendous rush, and suddenly a cobblestoned street was rushing up to meet her. She hit it hard on her side and rolled until she hit the curb of a gutter. She sat up and immediately dodged to one side as a coach roared past her, spraying her with stagnant gutter water as the driver drove his horses on with a bullwhip.
In another life she would have been enraged. Now she was only relieved.
She stood up and looked around in wonder at the familiarity of the narrow, cobbled streets twisting this way and that, the rearing brick buildings, the vendors hawking their wares in the streets, the coach-and-fours passing her on every side. The stink of close-packed humanity was enough to make one’s hair curl. It was the most wonderful thing she had ever smelled!
She stepped down off the curb and in
to the street, and an old woman on the corner, holding a basket, offered her a small, half-rotted apple, thinking she was a beggar by the look of her clothes. Quinn was heading toward her, looking as bad as she, she imagined. The moment she spotted him, she raced toward him. He opened his arms and she jumped. He caught her expertly and swung her round, right there in the crowded street, while she laughed and cried and sobbed like some lunatic let loose from an asylum. Others looked at them in curiosity or pity, but she did not care. She had Quinn, and they were alive, and that was all that mattered.
Planet of Dinosaurs, The Complete Collection (Includes Planet of Dinosaurs, Sea of Serpents, & Valley of Dragons) Page 27
