The night before, while they lay abed together, Quinn had held her close and asked her what her immediate plans were. It was her turn to feel flattered; not many men were willing to put their future in the hands of their woman. She enjoyed the familiar comfort of his nearness and told him the truth: to move on, to find John. To get home. Of course, they would need to do so soon, before John got too far ahead of them. They agreed it was best to leave today, as early as possible. The thought excited and saddened Sasha at the same time. She knew in her heart that she would never see Toby again. Her friend. Her Toby.
Quinn was waving to her as he made his way up the beach. Between him and the young hunters-in-training they had managed to catch almost a dozen fat fish on a long string. Some of the tribe’s children raced down the sandy incline, chattering excitedly about meeting Amo-Bolaja, the great “god-killer,” and Quinn, laughing, caught one of the boys around the middle and lifted him onto his shoulders, giving him a piggyback ride up the steep incline.
He looked so happy with the children, so at peace. So why were her eyes wet?
“Is everything all right?” Quinn asked, coming upon her. He looked concerned.
“Yes, of course,” she answered, offering him her windburned smile.
He set the boy down and put his arm around her waist, guiding her back inside their wigwam. The space held good memories that made her smile. Last night, Quinn had made love to her here, quietly and ardently, as was his way, while the Moja sang and danced down on the beach and lit their bonfires to the sky. She touched their pallet as she returned to the task of packing. The Moja had offered them a tremendous amount of traveling supplies, homemade weapons and tools for Quinn, and tunics and afghans for Sasha. They would need for nothing in the coming weeks.
“You’re concerned about Toby,” Quinn said, drawing her close against him.
Sasha stopped packing. “Yes.”
“Will you see him one last time?”
She thought about that. Last night the Moja had celebrated, and there had been meat and dancing and festivities in abundance. For a while, the tremendous burden of what he had done had seemed to lift and Toby, resplendent in the robes and mantle of the Great Hunter, looked almost happy, almost young again. She wanted that to be her lasting memory of him, not some sad-faced boy sitting grim and lonely on a seat of power, his face drawn with lines she had never noticed before. She didn’t want to say goodbye. She didn’t want there to be a last time.
Quinn looked uncomfortable in that way he had, like he had unanswered questions.
“What is it?” she asked, looking up at him.
Quinn looked aside, then said it. “Do you regret not being with him?”
She smiled then, truly. “No, Quinn. I have everything I want right here.”
By mid-morning, they were packed and ready to move on. The Moja said John was last seen crossing the plains on his way to the valley region, but since the Moja did not go to the Valley of Song where the “sky demons” lived, they did not know how far away it was. Sasha was almost too afraid to ask about that.
As they said their final goodbyes to the tribe and started ascending the beach, Moja supplies in rucksacks over their shoulders and brand-new Moja-made javelins in their hands, Naja joined them. She was resplendent in her sari and robes, an intricate necklace of small bones and talons about her neck to indicate she was a woman of great influence. Naja was the “First Woman” of the tribe, the woman all the other women would look to for advice. Her hair was braided and beaded, and she had dabbed some crude cosmetics around her eyes, making them look smoky and wise. She smiled. “I will miss you, sister,” she told Sasha. “And you too, hunter Quinn.”
Sasha stopped at the edge of the beach and turned to embrace the woman. “You will care for Toby?”
“I will guard Toby with my life. And I will guide him with it too. This I vow.” She drew back and gave Sasha a long, sad look. “I have wronged you and your man. I will forever be in your debt. I will carry this burden forever.”
“I don’t want you to carry any such burden, Naja. I want only for you and Toby to be happy together.”
Naja smiled. “We will be happy. Toby is a great hunter. We will have great hunters for sons.”
Sasha smiled back. She couldn’t help herself. “Have you taken him yet?”
Naja’s smile grew, beautifully impish. “Not yet. But tonight, yes!” She swiped at the air with her javelin.
After they had parted company, Quinn drew close to Sasha and said, “What in bloody hell was all that about? That taking business? It sounds downright sinister.”
She smiled secretly and reached up to kiss Quinn’s cheek. “Just women talk,” she said.
CHAPTER 27
Sasha and Quinn moved steadily across the plains on the tail of a huge pod of hadrosaur. Newton, who had rejoined them the moment they had stepped out onto the plains, chattered excitedly on Sasha’s shoulder as she fed him berries from her pocket. Hadrosaur weren’t the choicest animals to use as shields, as they seemed to be food for just about every predator around, but they hadn’t encountered any other animal herds in days.
The fifth day out, they camped at the foot of a butte and lit a tall bonfire in an effort to keep the predators away. The butte made for a good camp. There were a number of shallow crevices in the foot of the mountain that made for good rain shelters. Wet weather had been rolling in for days, it seemed, almost like it was following them. That night, as Sasha and Quinn were dragging a young, freshly shot Camptosaurus back to camp, they both stopped dead in their tracks. While they’d been busy hunting, someone had been at their camp. Sasha kept their supplies rigorously organized, but it looked like someone had been rifling through their packs, and some of their travel food looked eaten. In addition, someone had written a message across the foot of the butte in fresh chalk letters five feet tall.
The message read in English:
RUN AWAY!
Together they dropped their kill and turned.
She was nearly on their heels, silently legging it over the plains, over thirty feet of primordial teeth, hunger and rage. Within seconds the Ceratosaurus that hunted them, that hated them, was upon them. She screamed as she lunged at them, her jaws snapping wildly.
Sasha screamed too.
***
VALLEY OF DRAGONS
CHAPTER 1
She screamed in rage, a hackle-raising sound as cutting as a blade being scraped across bone. The Ceratosaurus was over thirty feet long, ten feet longer than her dead mate, and covered in sharp, armorlike grey scales, her massive, oversized head sprouting bony ridges over both eyes and a long nasal bone at the end of her snout. That spike, Sasha knew, was not a weapon. It was to amplify sound in an effort to scare her prey into bolting witlessly at the sight of her. Her mouth was massive, as wide around as a grown man, and her teeth easily six-inches long each. When creatures heard her, they did indeed bolt witlessly. Her head was covered in old scar tissue and parasites. Her yellowish eyes were bloodshot and enraged.
Sasha Strange reflected on the amazing detail she was able to see, then on the utter horror of being able to see it so clearly as She bore done on herself and Quinn. They dropped the young Camptosaurus that Quinn had shot and stood there rooted to the spot for a moment. She hated them, of course; it was Sasha and Quinn who had made her a widow.
It was Quinn who reacted first, pushing her out of the way. Sasha went down hard, a sharp pain in her side that cut off her breath. She had no breath to scream again as She swiveled her head to take him in and lunge.
Quinn cringed. There was no time to run, to even cry out. She opened her massive maw and was almost upon him when the beast shuddered and suddenly stopped dead in her tracks. It took Sasha a moment to realize why.
A quiver protruded from one of She’s eyes. It had happened so quickly that Sasha had missed it. A freshet of stinking liquid burst from her eye, and She screamed. She screamed loud and long, her voice ripping the evening in half and making b
oth Sasha and Quinn scramble away. Quinn grabbed her hand, tight. “Come on!” he said, and together they raced for the butte and one of the many small apertures in the rock wall. The first one they stumbled upon was almost too small, and Quinn wound up pushing Sasha inside and pressing his body over her like a shield.
She’s jaws clacked shut seconds after they’d made it. She pressed her snout to the opening and snorted, instantly coating them in a fine layer of dinosaur mucus. Sasha whimpered and Quinn folded himself down tighter upon her. She nosed into the crevice but fell short by a foot or two. She screamed so loudly that it made the tight little cavern shake and stone and debris fell all about them. She jerked back, a second quiver sticking from the side of her neck. She shook her head, screaming, and trying to claw at the quivers in her flesh.
The unholy sound that She made ripped up and down Sasha’s spine. She shuddered and pressed herself against Quinn. Quinn kept his arms firmly about her and rested his chin on the top of her head. “Please, God,” she whispered, “please, please let it go away.”
And God must have been listening to them that day, because after staggering around a bit more, the Ceratosaurus did indeed wander away, scraping at the bolts protruding from her face.
They waited a full ten minutes before emerging from the crevice. By then, it was full dark, with only the pillar of their campfire to throw any light across the plains of the desert. Insects buzzed in and out of the light, and farther out in the desert, a behemoth bellowed lonesomely.
The Camptosaurus was gone. In some final act of frustration and retribution, She had taken it. But Sasha didn’t mind. She and Quinn were alive. That was all that mattered.
“Those quivers,” said Quinn, turning in a circle and glancing around the desert. Though it was difficult to see beyond the firelight, she knew what he was looking for. She was thinking they had company. The quivers had looked distinctively Moja-made, the tribe of people they had only just managed to escape from with their lives—and only because her childhood friend Toby had killed their leader.
Perhaps the Moja had followed them, or Toby. She was about to say as much when a tall, slender figure stepped in front of the fire—a man she was unfamiliar with. He was in his twenties and tawny like a man at home in the desert, his skin burnt to the shade of a sunset, though his hair and the fringe of the beard on his chin was like daybreak and dusty sunshine. He was dressed in the remnants of a suit of pale kaki, the type that the lords she knew back home preferred during the summer months, though he wore the homemade boots of a man who had spent time among the Moja tribe. The Planet of Dinosaurs wore your shoes out very quickly. On his head of blonde unruly curls he wore what seemed to be a homemade safari hat comprised of stiff reeds.
The man smiled wisely at them both, the firelight catching the silvery string of the bow he carried slung over one shoulder, the bow he had shot She with. “That dinosaur doesn’t like you two very much, does he?” he said. He spoke with a dry American accent.
“It’s a she, actually,” said Sasha, taking a step toward the man as instinct brought them all together. One did not run into many humans here.
Quinn kept his hand on her arm. “Sasha, be careful.”
“You just faced a Ceratosaurus and you think I’m dangerous?” The man laughed. He had a deep, faintly mocking voice that ended on a high note. That was another thing that the Planet of Dinosaurs did to you; it made you slightly mad.
“Sir, in this place, everything is dangerous,” Quinn stated, insinuating himself between the stranger and Sasha. He sounded like his usual self—imperious, cynical. Suspicious. Quinn was practically at home on the African plains, and pragmatic to a fault. This place had been a challenge for him that he had tackled with great relish.
The man smiled. “I suppose you’re right. But I promise I’m not so dangerous, at least to other humans.” He indicated the bow he had shot the dinosaur with. He stepped forward and extended his hand. “Dr. John Ulysses at your service, sir.”
CHAPTER 2
While Quinn fed the fire to make it higher and more fearsome to any night predators passing by, John moved to sit beside Sasha on a fallen log they had moved closer to its warmth. He had a small medical pack with him. With it, he doctored the various scratches on her face and arms. They didn’t hurt very much, but she knew how easily a small cut could become infected in this environment. She let John work.
“So who’s the crabby Englishman?” he asked.
Sasha held very still while John dabbed antiseptic onto a somewhat deeper cut on her forearm. “That’s Quinn,” she answered. “His name is Sirius Quinn.” She didn’t bother to add the “Lord” bit even though Quinn was technically gentry. Titles meant nothing here.
John smiled, his sunburned face well lined but not nearly as old as she had expected. Then again, they had never met until today, though they knew each other very well. She and John had been penpals for just over two years. Together, they had created twin Tuning Machines, one in England, one in the Americas. Both had managed to transport them to this primeval world. John studied Quinn carefully. “Is he your beau?”
“Why do you say that?” she asked.
“Because you’re blushing furiously.”
That only made her blush some more. There were some things one did not discuss, even with friends. So much had changed since she, Toby and Quinn had arrived here several months ago. Toby had become the leader of the Moja tribe, and had married his First Woman Naja. Quinn and she had become lovers, though she could scarcely believe that at times. She knew her father would be mad with pleasure to learn she and Quinn were betrothed, that they actually wanted to wed. She looked at John, carefully. “He’s the man my father picked out for marriage.” There, that sounded reasonable.
John looked surprised. “Do people still do that in merry old England?”
“Do the Americans not do that?” Sasha asked, fascinated.
John shrugged. “Rarely. Only in the Confederate states.” He smiled. “We back east like to think of ourselves as progressive on that front.” He finished doctoring her wounds and started putting his medic bag back together. “I only ask because he took a great risk in saving you from the Ceratosaurus. He must care a great deal about you.”
Sasha watched Quinn pick up his bow and javelin and start walking the perimeter of their camp, searching for potential dangers. It was true that Quinn never stopped thinking, planning, looking out for her. She would probably have been dead ten times over were it not for him. She turned and looked at John. John was from her world. They had never met before today, but he gave off a feeling of their world, a sense of home and familiarity, books and academia. She almost felt she might cry. “It is good to meet you finally, John.”
John took her hand. He did not kiss it, but he did hold it tight and nod his head over it. “Sasha Strange. It is very good to finally meet you. Though I have to admit you were about the last person I expected to see here.”
She smiled a little at that. She proceeded to tell John her story, how the Tuning Machine had transported her, Toby and Quinn here, about the Sen who had captured Toby and forced her and Quinn to hunt the Ceratosaurus, and how she and Quinn had managed to kill the smaller male and send She, his mate, on a rampage. John examined the small, orangey mammal sitting on her shoulder with great interest, which spurred Sasha to explain how she had befriended Newton. That led her to talk about Dotty, the baby plesiosaur that they had rescued, a creature that had given up her own life to lead a much larger pliosaur away from Quinn while Sasha rescued him from the Moja tribe. Sasha had to stop for a moment to keep herself from breaking down in tears at the memory. She told herself it was silly and ridiculous. She offered Newton a berry from her pocket and told him the rest, how Toby had won a place as head of the tribe, and she and Quinn had moved on, following the notes that John had left chalked in the sea caves.
“You’ve had quite an adventure. I’m certainly glad I took the time to leave those missives, then,” he said. He stood up
and unslung his bow. Sasha instantly went on alert. She turned her head and saw a small, upright dinosaur sniffing around one of their rucksacks not a dozen paces away. It was long and sinewy. It would have come up to her waist, had she been standing next to it, which she had no intention of doing. The second claw on its foot was a massive talon that clicked as it moved, and its beak-like snout was filled with small but very sharp teeth.
Planet of Dinosaurs, The Complete Collection (Includes Planet of Dinosaurs, Sea of Serpents, & Valley of Dragons) Page 19