The raptor was waiting for her.
It was barely the size of a goose, as Quinn had said, and covered in colorful, peacock-blue plumage. It would have been a beautiful bird, had it not been so aggressive. It leapt at her so quickly she never had a chance to scream, much less react. It made a hoarse croaking noise. Then it was stuck in her braids, its weight dragging her over the edge of the ledge. Sasha clung to the rope, wrapping her arms and legs about it and making it sway dangerously. The raptor’s clawed talons came swiftly down, ripping gouges in her exposed cheeks and tender scalp. Sasha screamed but forced herself to stay clinging to the rope. She instinctively swung back at the rock wall, smashing herself and the bird against it. The bird, momentarily stunned, fell further still, its weight pulling at her braids in pure, unrelenting agony.
She began to slide down the rope, the raptor’s weight pulling her down and down. Quinn was calling up to her, but she barely heard. She slammed into his shoulders and he grunted as he took the combination of her weight and the raptor. “Get it off!” she screamed, the weight of the bird yanking her head to one side so she felt her neck must surely break at any moment.
“Hang on,” he said, sounding much calmer than she felt.
She did not care if he had to rip the bird and her braids out at the bloody root, just so long as he got rid of the excess weight. He didn’t, though. He drew his survival knife from his boot and slashed the blade upward, perilously close to her face. She felt her hair give, then the weight of the beast as it ripped her remaining braids loose. It fell, fluttering and screaming to the canyon far below.
“Sasha, look out!”
She’d barely had time to recover when the second raptor—a duller-plumed female—launched itself from the shelf above and aimed for her face. Quinn slashed upward, catching the female with the tip of his knife. It knocked the bird’s trajectory off and it fluttered over their heads and began to fall like its mate, it claws raking over their backs.
Sasha barely felt the pain. She clung to the rope and prayed there were no more raptors. She was whimpering. Whimpering and hurting.
Quinn gasped, wheezing with the exertion of clinging to the rope with one hand and supporting her weight on his shoulders. “Sasha, we have to get going. You’re bleeding.”
She gripped the next knot in the rope and eased her weight off Quinn’s shoulders. “I don’t know if I can go on, Quinn,” she sobbed, feeling foolish. “I just don’t know.”
“You can. You will,” he said, echoing her own words back to her. “Go slow. Take your time. Climb, Sasha. Please.”
She climbed. She was more cautious when she reached the ledge this time.
Fortunately, nothing popped out at her, though she did spot a small aperture in the canyon wall just large enough for a large bird to pass. From within she could hear squabbling not unlike the sound the pterosaurs had made as they ripped one of their own apart. They had very little time, she realized. The moment the colony of raptors smelled their blood, they were doomed.
“There’s a whole next of them up here, Quinn,” she said, sounding just as panicked as she felt.
“Climb, then, Sasha. Just climb.”
She hauled herself up, scrambling up the rope with renewed vigor. Suddenly her wounds did not hurt so much, though she was still bleeding. Above her, perhaps twenty feet up, she saw the dark outline of the tree branches. The sight of it made her cry out in pure ecstasy, kicking rocks and breaking the skin of her knuckles as she scrabbled ever faster toward it like some fabled nirvana. “We’re almost there, Quinn!” she called down, but she received no response.
Her heart, hurting with its own frenetic beating, seemed to skip a beat and go still in her chest. She glanced down and saw Quinn swaying and twisting on the rope as he used his knife to slash at the birds casually climbing up their own rope. Their dexterity was amazing, the way they clawed their way upward utilizing both their giant taloned feet as well as their dwarfed little clawed wings, their tiny reptilian eyes set fast on their prey.
Dear God, Quinn had been keeping absolutely silent in the hopes that she’d make it to the top. Sasha lunged up the rope, pulling herself over the edge and turning sharply to grip the rope in both hands.
She tried to haul Quinn up but he was too heavy. “Quinn! I’m up. I’m up!”
“Not a moment too soon, my dear,” he said, sounding strained as he jabbed at the head of the raptor closest to him.
Sasha climbed awkwardly to her feet, still gripping the rope. “Climb, Quinn, climb!” she cried as she reached around with one hand for their last remaining weapon strapped to her back, the broken umbrella that Quinn had carried downstream with him. She swung it around and tried to jab at the colorful male that was slowly climbing up the sheer face of the canyon wall, but only managed to hit Quinn instead.
“Sasha!” he barked, grabbing the rope with both hands and pushing himself upward a few more inches.
“I’m sorry!” she cried. Then screamed when the raptor leaped to Quinn’s back, its great claws ripping through his tattered frock coat and flesh. Quinn grunted in agony but dared not let go of the rope. Sasha aimed more carefully and jabbed at the bird just as it snarled at her. It got a mouthful of broken umbrella spokes before the impact knocked it backwards off Quinn’s back. Quinn grunted, the back of his frock torn wide open and flecked with his blood.
She extended the umbrella as the other raptors moved nimbly up the rope. “Grab the umbrella, Quinn!”
“I’ll pull you down,” he said through gritted teeth. He lost his grip on the knife and the weapon went sailing past the raptors and down into oblivion. His eyes swam in his head and she was suddenly terrified he might pass out from the pain of his wounds.
“Quinn, grab the bloody umbrella!” she screamed.
He reached up and pawed at it in a sort of delirium.
“Oh, Quinn, please!” she said, leaning down as far as she dared.
He finally got his hand about the end and she pulled, then pulled some more. The raptors were squabbling. She could hear them fighting amongst themselves. She pulled, praying to God He’d grant her just a little mercy, a few more seconds to pull Quinn up. Her feet gave out and she fell down flat on her belly, still pulling, but Quinn was also pulling her to the edge of the cliff. She gritted her teeth and reached back, wrapping her hand around a rangy branch of the tree. She pulled with all her might. She was strong; she could hold him if she tried, if she didn’t give up.
With one final, mighty burst of effort, she pulled and he came, clinging helplessly to the umbrella. He was bloodied and panting like a wild, wounded animal when she got him over the edge of the cliff. The raptors had literally torn strips of flesh from his already scarred back, leaving deep furrows of glittering merlot wounds seeping horribly. She bent down and pulled him into her arms. He grimaced and trembled with the pain and effort of it all.
“Oh bloody hell, that hurts,” he said.
“You scared me to death.”
“I scared me to death too.” He sat up gingerly, looking like he might vomit all over the ground. She wouldn’t have blamed him if he did. “How bad is it?”
“Bad, but I think you’ll live.” She glanced over the edge and saw the raptors still coming, snarling and biting at each other with bloodied beaks, fighting over the bits of Quinn they had ripped loose. It was enough to make her want to vomit herself. “We need to get out of here. Can you run?”
“I think so.”
“Do.”
Several of the raptors had made it to the top of the rope. They eyed her, screaming hungrily, snapping birdlike jaws full of razor-sharp teeth. She scooted back, then turned and scrambled to her feet, grabbing Quinn’s arm.
Together, she and Quinn ran for their lives.
CHAPTER 21
The desert was black and vacant and lonely-looking, like the landscape of the moon or some dead world. Rock formations threw long weird shadows across the dark and almost formless deadpan. Sprays of thin grasses and some sc
raggly weeds clung to the desert floor, but otherwise the abundant greenery of the Valley of Song was missing, along with the constant rains.
Sasha and Quinn fled across the desert, pursued by a half dozen raptors. Under normal circumstance, she would have had no trouble fending them off. But they’d smelled blood—Quinn’s blood—and now they were relentless. They screamed and raced with predatory grace after them. Had they been larger, their strides longer, they would have been upon them in minutes. But they were just small enough that a human could stay ahead of them with a bit of a handicap, which Sasha and Quinn had. They were a few minutes ahead of the raptors, but the raptors were determined to close the distance.
Sasha raced across the deadpan as quickly as she could, Quinn in tow. She could hear them squabbling back there in the dark, each fighting to be the first to reach them.
Quinn stumbled over a rock and fell.
Sasha stopped suddenly, stumbling to her already bruised knees, then rolled to her feet and raced to Quinn’s side. He was bleeding much worse than before, his frock coat soaked through with his own blood. The run must have aggravated his already impressive wounds. He pushed himself up onto his knees and gasped for breath, sweat and blood pouring off his body even as the remnants of his frock coat slid down his arms. “I…can’t,” he said. “I…just…can’t.”
“You can. You will.” She grabbed his arm. “Get up, Quinn!”
“I can’t, Sasha. I just cannot. Please don’t make me.”
“If you don’t get up, I’ll stay here. I’ll let them get me too, Quinn.”
That got him motivated. Letting out a hoarse breath, he climbed shakily to his feet and swayed for one dangerous moment, his blue eyes completely unfocused.
“Quinn!” she shouted, grabbing him in an effort to steady him on his feet.
The raptors screamed.
Sasha turned, still clinging to Quinn, and prepared to face them.
That’s when She stepped out of the dark.
CHAPTER 22
The night was silent and almost airless. Empty.
And then, like a ghost, suddenly She was standing there, staring at them.
She was bigger than Sasha remembered, or it was only the emptiness of the desert making her seem that way. She was also gaunt, as if she’d been eating little, her bones sharp, her skin covered in sores and parasites. Flies swarmed her and crawled across her eyes. She’d been traveling hard, Sasha realized. Following them relentlessly for hundreds of miles. There were battle scars, both old and new, covering her head and neck, and the eye that John had shot out was egg-white and running with a black tarry substance. The other was yellow and hate-filled, seeing them and rolling, appreciating well what it was she was seeing.
Opportunity.
Revenge.
Sasha feared her. Sasha pitied her. She wanted She healed, and at the same time, she wanted She dead. She would never feel safe again until She was destroyed.
Sasha moved to block Quinn and the gigantic Ceratosaurus closed in on them. “I’m sorry! We had no choice!” she screamed in a hoarse voice, brandishing the useless, broken umbrella, her last and only weapon.
The Ceratosaurus stopped, swaying on her feet. She breathed in and out, in and out, slowly, steadily, hoarsely. She looked weak, on the knife-edge of collapse. And so evil and motivated that Sasha knew she could do it. She could run them down and consume them, despite the masses of flies and parasites eating her alive. And she would. She would follow them the length of this desert, to the ends of this earth, if need be. The great beast lowered its head and bellowed, its sickeningly rotten breath loosening the spare contents in Sasha’s stomach. She took a lumbering step toward Sasha, her lips trembling upward in a grimace of broken, rotten black teeth. There was no pity in her eyes, and no escape.
Ironically enough, it was the raptors who saved them. They burst from the dark, swarming foolishly over She’s feet and leaping at her pebbled grey hide, biting at her like excited fleas. The birds, oblivious to her size, immediately began ripping small strips of flesh away and consuming them. She reared back and screamed, shattering the night with her agony, her cry amplified to nightmarish intensity by her nasal horn.
Sasha cowered, grabbed Quinn’s arm and tugged. “We have to go, Quinn. Now!”
Quinn staggered a moment at the sight of the great creature writhing and biting at the little birds ripping at her, then turned to look at Sasha. His pale eyes seemed to clear and he nodded.
He let her lead him on.
CHAPTER 23
She was following them.
They had only managed to jog a couple of miles when it became obvious they were being followed.
She had thrown away all stealth, Sasha realized. She wanted them to know they were being hunted.
Sasha urged Quinn on. He was being an incredible trooper, her Quinn. Despite his injuries, he had done a marvelous job of keeping up with her. But even Quinn had his limits, and from the look of him, he had finally reached them. She knew she was going to have to make a decision for both of them soon, either stand and fight She, or find shelter.
The earth trembled slightly as She shortened the distance between them.
Sasha thought again of that face, that mask of mindless fury on a creature that no longer lived for its own welfare but only for revenge. The face masked in blood from the raptors she had so savagely disposed of. She decided on shelter.
Ahead loomed the outline of a butte. She thought—hoped—that perhaps they’d find some caves there and started steering Quinn in that direction. Most of the buttes in this area were home to hundreds of small apertures. She only wondered if they’d be able to find one before She found them.
“Sasha, my dear,” said Quinn, limping along at barely more than a trot beside her. “You look lovely in the moonlight. So fae.” He shook his head like he was casting off buzzing flies. “I don’t think I can manage anymore.”
“Stay with me, Quinn. We’re almost safe.”
Ahead loomed the rock wall of the butte. She pushed Quinn on, searching frantically for an opening. Behind her, she could practically feel the hot wind steaming from She’s bloody mouth, carrying with it carrion and death. She dragged him along the wall until she found a serviceable entrance. Unfortunately, something hissed and spat at them from within, gazing out at the world with vapid yellow eyes. She moved on, tugging Quinn along.
Behind them, She breathed hoarsely, snorting into the cold of the desert night.
The next cave she came upon looked almost too large, large enough for a small elephant to crawl into, but they were officially out of options. She dragged Quinn inside, and mere seconds later a much larger shadow filled the cave entrance, snorting and growling as it tried to wedge itself inside. Sasha held her breath, but She was simply too large.
She and Quinn scrambled to the back of the cave and collapse in the dust and rocks. Quinn fell against her like a dead thing and she held him and prayed they’d figure some way out of this predicament.
CHAPTER 24
Sasha dampened a swath of Quinn’s shirt in a small pool at the back of the cave and applied the cold, wet material to his back, wiping away some of the blood. He grunted but hardly reacted at all. The water was icy; it would help staunch the bleeding. Or so she hoped.
“Does it hurt very much?” she asked. It was a stupid thing to say. Of course it hurt. But she needed to keep Quinn with her. Otherwise, his sense wandered.
“Not so bad I cannot handle it,” Quinn answered. He lay on his stomach on the floor of the cave while she applied the improvised cold compresses. He must have sensed her unease because he added, “It’s nothing I haven’t experienced in the past. My father…he liked the martinet. Did you know you can entirely flay a horse alive with a martinet, if you try?”
Sasha grimaced. His father beat him. The old Lord Quinn had beat his son with what was probably the most painful flogger ever evilly devised by a human mind. Years of abuse had left scars on his son’s body as well as his soul.
“Do you know I’m actually rather numb there?” Quinn rested his cheek against the stony floor, closed his eyes, and shook with a number of tearless sobs. “Oh, Father…”
Sasha knelt down beside him and stroked his hair until the moment of weakness passed and sense returned and Quinn’s powerful sense of will began filtering back into his eyes again. His body grew still and he looked utterly sick and exhausted.
With the wet strips of cloth she worked on binding his wounds as best she could and trying to prevent, or at least stave off, infection, though she knew her work was inadequate. Quinn needed medical attention and she had nothing to help him. Then there was nothing more she could do except help to ease him up. He flinched when his back encountered the wall of the cave. She listened to the despondent drip of water from somewhere inside the cave and just looked at him. He looked pale and gaunt and there were feverish dark circles under his eyes. She didn’t say as much, but she had a terrible feeling that if they didn’t get back to London soon, Quinn would likely die of his wounds.
Planet of Dinosaurs, The Complete Collection (Includes Planet of Dinosaurs, Sea of Serpents, & Valley of Dragons) Page 26