They camped in a cavern of the volcanic range they had utilized the first time they’d traveled this way. The remains of their past campfire were still there, and Quinn had only to add to it and spark a flame. As he slipped into the back of the cavern to refill their waterskins from the underground pool they knew was there, Sasha checked on Toby. He was still weak from his days as a prisoner of the Sen, and she couldn’t help but feel responsible for him. She brought him a waterskin, made him as comfortable as possible before the fire, and promised him that Quinn would soon return with food.
Toby took her hand and pulled her down so she was facing him. He looked at her with his handsome, sun-bronzed face, his wavy dark hair and warm buckskin brown eyes. It was the face of the boy she had grown up with, but it was also a man’s face. The face of the man she had once wished to marry, if only society would let them. She expected to feel a little pulse running in her throat at the warm touch of his hand, but something had changed between them. “Thank you,” he said. He still sounded hoarse, exhausted, but he was almost well again.
“You should really thank Quinn. He’s the one who smoked the Sen out.”
“Perhaps I misjudged him.”
“We both did,” she said, and it sounded more solemn than she’d intended. She was changing, she realized. Becoming harder, more resolute, more pragmatic. And she knew now, more than ever, what she wanted. Home. Safety. And someone to break the chain of long, lonely years. Quinn no longer accused her of acting like a child. She hadn’t felt like a child in some time, she realized.
It seemed like years since they’d landed here, in this primordial world.
Toby watched her intently. “Sasha…remember when I told you I had something to say? When you first returned with Quinn?”
She did not want to hear this. “Yes,” she answered cautiously.
“All the days you were gone…it left me thinking. I realized how much I’d missed you. And how free this world really is.”
Sasha swallowed. Her throat was suddenly dry despite the water she had drunk.
“If we stayed here, we could be free. Really free.”
“Stayed here?”
“Have you thought about it?”
She didn’t know what to say. The only thing that came out was, “But if we stayed, I’d miss Papa.”
He thought about that. “You would, wouldn’t you?” He smiled, a little.
“Yes, of course.” She stood up. He released her hand, inch by inch. “I should see if Quinn needs help with dinner.”
After they’d eaten the fish that Quinn had caught, and the berries that Sasha had picked, they turned in early. There would be more walking in their future and Quinn wanted to make an early start of it, when the day was still cool. Sasha had learned to cushion her head on her own hair, and the sandy cavern floor wasn’t nearly as uncomfortable as it had been in the beginning, or she was toughening up, which was a distinct possibility.
She had a strange, disorienting dream of trying to find her way through her Papa’s gardens, except that they seemed to stretch in every direction, bordered on all sides by thick, impassable hedges. There seemed to be no way out. She ran down one twisty-turny corridor of hedges after another, searching frantically for some escape until she saw him. Her Papa was seated on a gazebo that looked like a painted white island amidst a sea of tall golden grasses. He was watching some enormous African elephants wandering past.
“Papa!” She raced up the steps of the gazebo as she had when she was a little girl and her father would sit out in the garden in the evenings and smoke his pipe. He used to say, “Jump, little Sasha!” And Sasha would jump at him and he would catch her and hold her on his knee.
“Little Sasha,” Papa said in welcome and held out his arms to her. It was so good to see him again! She flung herself into his arms and he lifted her up with a laugh before bringing her down for a kiss. She looked down into his eyes and realized they were the vast, all-consuming blue of African skies, not brown like her own. It was Quinn who held her, kissed her. She wondered how she could have made such an obvious error, but right at that moment an elephant made a terrifying trumpeting noise.
Sasha sat up in the cavern. She was lying on the floor, blanketed by Quinn’s frock coat, and she was awake and feeling vaguely mortified by her dream. It was improper, indecent…and so very real. But underlying her shame was a sense of fright. The trumpeting noise had been real, she realized, long and mournful and threatening, much like a hunting call in the night, only darker, like some vast, angry creature was weeping.
Suddenly her heart was in her throat and her whole body was shuddering with a light, cold sweat. She climbed stiffly to her feet, pulled Quinn’s coat close, and moved cautiously to the mouth of the cave. There was only the plains darkness to greet her, the dead blackness of a primitive world with no candles or lanterns or electric lights of any kind, a world full of chittering, crying noises that she was almost used to. Almost. Newton made a tsk-ing noise like she ought to go back to the fire and ducked behind her ear.
Someone touched her from behind and she nearly jumped out of her skin. She whirled and almost didn’t recognize Quinn beside her. It was more by scent that she recognized him. Quinn smelled of jungle and flowering life. It clung to his skin like cologne. She touched her heart. “Oh dear God,” she whispered savagely, “you gave me a fright!”
“Then you should be more observant,” he said.
“I know,” she answered.
Quinn liked to laugh at her, to challenge her. But not tonight. Some moments passed in an awkward silence. Then he took her hand and pulled her aside and said, “You should stay away from the entrance at this time of night. Something might scent you.”
“Something already did,” she said, her heart fluttering in her chest, but for an entirely different reason. She stepped back so her back was to the wall of the cave and the darkness cloaked her completely. Quinn followed, still watching her with interest…and appetite. He cupped her chin, moved his roughened thumb across her lips, and bent to kiss her. He did not ask her permission, but she found she hardly cared. The familiar, comforting feel of his rough cheek sparked something deep inside of her, and she tugged on him, pulling him flush to her body. He kissed her hungrily like he was starving and she food. He breathed into her.
“I love those little catlike noises you make,” he admitted almost shyly.
She made those little catlike noises for him. He kissed her lips and chin and eyes and even her hair, gathering great swaths of it up in his fingers and inhaling her scent as he did so. He said in a breathless little hush, “I’m still very cross with you, Sasha Strange.”
“Yes,” she answered. “I want you to be cross with me, Quinn. I want you to be most cross with me.”
He laughed then, a soft rumble she could feel deep in his chest. She wished she could see him laugh. He almost never laughed. Suddenly she felt tears welling up. She sniffed at them, grateful for the almost absolute darkness. In the dark he couldn’t see her crying like a little girl. “I’m sorry,” she told him, clinging to him. “I am so sorry. I should have trusted you wouldn’t leave us, Quinn.”
He held her close, stroking her hair as he contemplated her apology. “Ah well, trust is earned, is it not, little Sasha?” He cupped her cheek, kissing her with all the hunger and desire he felt. He was very cross with her, so cross that his hands wouldn’t stop moving over her, touching her delicately through the tattered remnants of her debutante dress, and he kept flicking his tongue over her teeth in a most delightfully wicked way. She held him, sliding her hands down his long slim back. She could feel the ugly scar tissue there, old scars from beatings he’d received from his evil father. She held him, hoping to comfort him. She wasn’t afraid. She trusted him, truly. And wanted him fiercely. The realization startled and frightened her.
“Sasha…” he said cautiously as her hands glided over him, enlivening him. He sounded concerned, though his hands and lips never stopped moving.
; A faint bellow echoed out over the plains and made them both hesitate. She leaned back against the wall, listening carefully, though her heart was thudding too loudly in her chest for her to hear much of anything. In the dark, the cry had sounded so vast. “Listen.”
“It sounds like a hunting call. A large predator.”
“She?”
“Or a creature like She.”
“What if it is She?”
“It cannot be. It simply cannot.”
“Why not? You said the death of her husband would destroy her. I heard you.”
Quinn swallowed, his throat working. Suddenly he looked uncomfortable. “The loss of her mate could have changed the boundaries of her territory. She could be looking for a new mate.”
“Or she could be looking for us.”
He fell silent at that.
Sasha fingered the large claw around her neck, a gift to her from Quinn when they had first killed She’s mate. “What if she’s hunting us, Quinn? What if she hates us for killing her husband? Maybe he was her great love.”
He snorted. “She’s an animal, Sasha. She has no concept of…what are you proposing, revenge? That’s rubbish.” He looked at her sternly, the mood broken. “Let’s get some sleep. We have a long trek ahead of us.”
CHAPTER 5
The following day they reached the coast of the vast inland sea where Quinn and Sasha had killed the Ceratosaurus. The moment Toby saw it, his face alighted with wonder—it was Sasha’s understanding that he had never seen such beautiful, sugary white beaches or clear, aquamarine waters before, having spent most of his early life in the filthy heart of London. He immediately threw off his rucksack and rushed down the beach to the water’s edge. The morning tide swept in, wetting his boots.
Sasha likewise dropped her provisions and raced after him, but for an entirely different reason. She was terrified he would throw all caution to the wind and dive headlong into the warm, beautiful, beast-infested waters. She reached him just as he was pulling off his boots. “Toby, wait!”
“What is it?”
She pointed out to sea where some enormous whale-like beast was breaching a few hundred feet from shore. Toby stared in wonderment and terror, sitting on the sand with one boot on and one off. Were it simply a whale, he might have looked merely amazed, but it sported jaws like a crocodile that the beast snapped reflexively at the open air as it rolled its bulk in the water before diving back into the cool, dark depths of the untamed sea.
“What…is that thing?” Toby cried.
Sasha shielded her eyes from the relentless glare of the sun. “That’s what I was trying to warn you about. I believe it’s some form of plesiosaur.”
“Another dinosaur? There are dinosaurs in the seas, too?”
“It’s not a dinosaur. It’s a marine reptile…”
“It looks like a dinosaur.”
Quinn had finally joined them. He dropped his pack on the sand, but kept his homemade javelin close at hand. “So, boy, can you tell this is no mere swimming hole?” he joked, smiling grimly at Toby.
Toby glared at him but said nothing in return.
CHAPTER 6
That night, they camped in one of the many sea caves that dotted the coastal cliffs. Sasha chose the one where she’d first found Dr. John Ulysses’s chalked letter on the wall informing any English-speaking passersby that he was following the coast. Toby read the missive about how he was traveling to the possibly mythical “Valley of Song,” thought by some to be a holy place, a deep river valley that experienced unusual weather patterns. It was Sasha’s secret hope that John had found it, that perhaps he was even now working on a way to manipulate the winds to produce the proper vibrations needed to open a gateway home.
Toby examined the small, cramped script. “Dr. Ulysses is your friend?”
“Yes,” she answered.
“Muk talked about him, but he didn’t have much good to say about the bloke.”
“He did trick Muk into letting him go.” As they stood in the shallows and watched the sea lapping at their feet, she pointed out the place where She’s husband had died, torn apart by gigantic sea reptiles. She had filled Toby in on most of the details of their little adventure the day before, as they crossed the plains, though she’d left out a few details, like the things that had gone on between herself and Quinn. Toby wouldn’t understand. In fact, she wasn’t entirely sure she understood. “John is a very smart man,” she said.
“Smart enough to get us home?”
“I hope so.” She was hoping to catch up to John despite his three-month head start on them. Of course, it was possible she would never find him, especially if he’d run into trouble. She shook her head. She couldn’t think that way. John was alive. She had to believe that. She and John were their only hope for finding a way home. The two of them together had built the Tuning Machine, the device that had brought them here in the first place, and she had a feeling that only the two of them working together could get them home.
After they had eaten the fish that Quinn had caught, and refreshed their supply of water, Sasha went down the beach for a walk. Quinn was concerned about hidden dangers, but none of the larger animals could walk on the soft sand without sinking, so she had a certain level of protection, she figured. But to be on the safe side, she took her javelin. After weeks of being chased by giant predators, she had learned that there was no such thing as paranoia, only perfect awareness.
It felt good to be alone, to think. Staying well ahead of the tide, she knelt down in the sand and used the point of the javelin to draw some blueprints for her machine. She frowned over the drawings. It had taken her months of hard labor to build the Tuning Machine in her father’s conservatory, and she’d had almost everything she needed at her fingertips. In London, anything could be bought or sold. There was no way she could reproduce her Tuning Machine under these primitive conditions!
She angrily struck out her drawing and stood up. She looked toward the evening tide, the sea wind tearing at her long hair and biting through the remnants of her dress with its salty little teeth. Something was struggling amidst the rocks of the shoreline only a few hundred feet away. Newton began chittering excitedly in her ear. She reached into her pocket and offered him a berry. Setting him down on some rocks, she started toward the shoreline, trying to keep an eye on the vastness of the ocean in case predators were swimming just offshore.
As she drew near the rocks, she thought she recognized the creature as a smaller species of marine reptile. It was seven or eight feet long and had oily grey skin like a seal. It looked like a species of long-necked plesiosaur. In one of the many science periodicals she’d read, paleontologists referred to plesiosaurs as looking like “a snake threaded through a turtle,” and that was very much what this creature resembled, though this plesiosaur seemed to be quite young. She watched it flounder amidst the rocks it had become hopelessly moored upon.
She stopped a few feet away from the creature. It looked at her with big, dark winsome eyes. Its flippers beat helplessly against the rocks. She had to remind herself that it was a prehistoric creature, a potentially dangerous animal. But in that moment, she felt a certain kinship with it. She was as trapped here as the plesiosaur. She reached into her pocket, extended her arm, and offered it one of Newton’s berries.
The plesiosaur snaked its head out awkwardly, its sleek, cold grey snout brushing her fingers as it inspected the berry. It jaws yawned open remarkably wide and Sasha saw a lot of small but very sharp glistening teeth. She wondered if this wasn’t a very bad idea, then the plesiosaur snatched the berry and swallowed it. It looked at her again and flapped its flippers against the rocks.
She offered it another berry.
“Sasha? What are you doing?”
She turned to find Quinn hurrying toward her, his javelin in hand. He tested its weight as he bore down on the plesiosaur, a keen, disgruntled look on his face. Sasha turned to intervene, grabbing his arm before he could plunge the javelin into its throat.
“Quinn, stop! It’s only a baby!”
“A baby that intends to eat you, my dear.”
“Quinn, no!” She gave him a narrow-eyed, surly look, an expression she had borrowed from the man himself. “If you kill this plesiosaur, I shall never speak to you again!”
Quinn offered her a half-smirk. “Now you know that isn’t true, Sasha. You’ve tried in the past and it hasn’t worked out at all.”
“I shall try harder!” She held his arm in an effort to restrain him and create a wall between him and the plesiosaur, which had started making alarming lowing noises. “And you’re frightening the baby!”
Quinn, looking angrier than ever, dropped his javelin. Sasha released her hold on his arm and he took that moment to snatch her by the shoulders, lift her off her feet, swing her around, and deposit her a safe distance from the shore.
Planet of Dinosaurs, The Complete Collection (Includes Planet of Dinosaurs, Sea of Serpents, & Valley of Dragons) Page 11