Page 12 of Avelina

The dragon peered at Linorra from behind the stone cottage. He wasn’t as large as some dragons, but to her, he was as big as a mountain. His scales were a beautiful rainbow of colors, and his eyes glowed like embers. Fine tendrils of smoke escaped his nostrils, and his talons were black and wickedly sharp. He didn’t quite fit behind the cottage, but he continued to hide all the same. Linorra approached him with caution, holding her hands up as a sign of friendship.

We hiked for a couple of hours downhill, away from the mountain. It was a fairly typical jog for me, but I was exhausted from the previous night’s journey and had trouble keeping up.

I tried to memorize our path. If I could get back to the portal and figure out how to activate it, I might be able to jump back in and ride home. Had Psycho Snow White opened the portal to this place or was it spontaneous? Even if she hadn’t activated it, she knew it was safe to travel through, so she must have knowledge of it. If there was knowledge to be had, then I could get it somehow.

And if we ever see her again, we’re going to bear spray the crap out of her, Evilina thought. I growled a little, in complete agreement with her for once. Since going through the portal, my evil alter ego lived so close to the surface that I could no longer separate our thoughts.

I might need to become her to get myself out of this mess. A shiver of foreboding swept through me at the thought. God, what would happen if I couldn’t get rid of her afterward?

The farther we went, the more certain I was that I was somewhere else. The trees looked the same, but the terrain was different. It was rockier, with less underbrush, making it easier to hike without a path. The air was a little crisper than it should be, with less fog, although that was changing as we lost altitude. I pulled out the GPS that I had randomly stuffed into my pack before setting out to look for Rogue, but it wasn’t getting a signal.

The mountains at our backs were way too big and way too snowy. As we walked away from them, the ground leveled out and giant ferns grew in clusters at the bottoms of the redwood trees. Small forest creatures scuffled noisily beneath the feathery leaves but didn’t show themselves.

I heard no birdsong. The lack of an avian choir in the background set my teeth on edge. My mind flashed to the memory of a Steller’s jay soaring over my broken body, its deep blue wings and black head supernaturally vibrant. I wondered if I would ever see that exquisite bird again.

We came through a large grove of trees and made our way across another grassy glade. The grass was taller than I was used to, reaching up to the height of my shoulders and fanning out at the top in a bouquet of fluffy wheat-colored seeds.

More than once I saw what looked to be a grasshopper, but instead of green, it was yellow with brown stripes and, shockingly, was the size of a rabbit. Rogue darted into the grass chasing the thing and it shot out like a champagne cork. I must have squeaked because Aaron looked over his shoulder and glared at me. When he saw my stunned expression, his face morphed into something like mystified annoyance.

“Sorry,” I said, lowering my eyes. Sheesh. Can’t a girl be surprised by gigantic prehistoric insects around here? It’s not like I screamed and ran.

Other than occasional glimpses of discontent, Aaron did his best to ignore me. We hopped over two streams, one of which was rather robust and had a giant log stretched across it. A nearby stump looked like it had been struck by lightning and was charred to a craggy spike.

Just as I reached the other side of the log on the far bank, I heard that same scuffling noise I’d heard in the ferns before, now coming from underneath me. I hurried my steps to pass the sound, then was appalled to see a hairy green spider the size of a housecat scuttle from underneath the log only a foot behind me. It moved with lightning speed, then stopped dead in the middle and reared up on his hind legs as if to bar my passage back across the log. Before I could register what I was looking at, it spit something in my direction.

I threw my arm up and jerked away in time for the substance to hit my elbow and the right side of my button-down shirt instead of my face. It sizzled as I hastily scrambled away from the spider, yelping in surprise and almost tumbling off the log. I stared back, ready to sprint away if it came after me, but when I felt a stinging through the sleeve of my shirt, I tore it off in a panic, forgetting all else.

Luckily, the spider did not follow. It only dashed underneath, presumably to continue its supporting role as troll under a bridge. Still looking behind me, I smacked into Aaron, who had turned back to see what had happened. He grabbed my shoulders and held me still.

Already jumpy, I instinctively pulled away, but his grip was like a steel vise, and his hands were so hot that I thought the spider venom was burning me again. Once my brain caught up to the fact that it was Aaron who’d grabbed me and not a monster, I stopped struggling and stared up at him. That’s when I noticed it wasn’t just his hands that were putting off heat. His whole body radiated a heat that even a person in the throes of a high fever couldn’t manage. Whatever this man was, he wasn’t like any human I’d ever met.

Aaron glared at me, his ice-blue eyes flashing. He shook his head as if I were an unruly child who needed discipline.

“You make too much noise,” he growled. “Walk quieter.”

His attitude was really starting to get under my skin. I gave him a withering glare, but he didn’t notice. He just released me, glanced down at my newly uncovered tank top, and turned back to walk again.

“Okay,” I muttered to myself, “I guess we can talk about that fucking acid-spitting troll spider later. No biggie. I see those all the time.” Asshole. I kicked a rock, and it hit him in the back of a leather boot. “Oops, sorry,” I said. Yes, I tower above all others in my maturity.

He glowered at me over his shoulder, then continued onward. What was I doing following this dude? I mean, I was in the middle of nowhere, on a strange planet or in another dimension or something, with a giant, super-mean bear guy who might crossbow me to death at any time. That’s if the troll spiders didn’t get me first. I had to be demented to follow this man. And I had just kicked a rock at him. The whole thing was just so preposterous. Thinking about it made me giggle.

What’s next, little green men? I squinted up at the sky as I walked. Nothing would surprise me right now.

I bet they have enormous cockroaches here, Evilina commented.

A violent shiver ran through me. “Gah!” I hate cockroaches more than anything in the universe.

Aaron stopped abruptly and faced me. I was still looking up and almost ran into him again. He towered over me, unamused. I backed up and bit my lips together to keep from giggling. Rogue looked up at him, his tongue stuck out to the side in a doggy smile.

Aaron looked down at the dog and sighed. “What have you gotten me into?”

Huh?

Aaron looked like he was about to scold me again but then froze, looking up over my shoulder. A sudden, intense heat, even hotter than before, flowed off him and hit me in the face. I flinched away from it and tried to back up, but Aaron grabbed my upper arm, pulled me toward him, and dragged us both to the ground. I landed on top of his arm, which wound around me and pulled me against him. Our chests pressed together.

For a panicked second, I thought I had miscalculated my RTA, but he wasn’t even paying attention to me. He was craning his neck to see through the grass. He looked at me, saw that I understood the situation, and loosened his grip. I gently pulled his hand from my forearm.

When I touched his hand directly, an aggressive shiver ran through me, followed by a dizzying rush of heat. I had the uncomfortable feeling of piping hot water flowing through my body. It started in my chest, moved into my arms, then streamed out through my hands to my fingertips. Shocked, my hand clamped down of its own accord, and a flood of emotion struck without warning.

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