Page 27 of Leda's Log

“Whatever—whoever—is doing this to us, they’re ping-ponging us through time,” I said.

A streak of orange lightning flashed across the expanse, then slowed to match the truck’s speed. A dragon-like lizard was running alongside us. Seven more giant lightning-fast lizards surrounded us. One of them slammed its spiked tail against the truck, and the vehicle jumped like it had hit a massive pothole. The wheels slammed down on the road again, the impact nearly throwing me from my seat. Another lizard readied its tail to hit us, but Nero spun the truck away from the beasts.

“I’m not sure we’re traveling through time at all,” Nero said.

Gigantic metal men were charging at us. They ran so fast, their feet were on fire.

“Those are supposed to be wolves,” Nero said. “That’s not how this really happened.”

But what wasreal? It felt like nothing was real anymore. It felt like someone had shoved the last few years of my life into a blender and cranked it up to full power.

The metal giants weren’t men anymore. They were mechanical wolves, a hybrid nightmare somewhere between reality and fiction.

I drew my guns and fired at the metal wolves. But for every wolf I hit, two more joined the fray. They spilled out of the Fire Mountains like a river of flames. I was going to run out of bullets long before the mountains ran out of monsters.

I felt a fluttery sensation in my stomach, a precursor to the next dizzying wave that would catapult us into another time and place, another mismatched montage of different memories from different moments of my life. Each new jolt spiraled us more and more out of control. Each one made less and less sense.

“You’re right,” I told Nero. “We aren’t traveling through time.”

I jumped out of the truck and sprang into the air. Angel wings burst out of my back, as bright as an orange sunset. I hovered over the monster horde, my wings beating hard. My mind was finally crystal clear.

“Stop,” I commanded the monsters.

And they stopped.

“Be gone,” I said.

And they disappeared.

I flew back to the ground, landing on the hood of the truck. Nero had parked it in front of the entrance to the Fire Mountains.

“No, I think I’d prefer something a little more peaceful,” I said, snapping my fingers.

Then the burning volcanoes were gone, replaced by a quiet lake. Waterlilies floated on the surface. Owls hooted in the distance. A refreshing breeze cooled my cheeks.

“How are you doing this?” Nero asked me. “How are you changing everything?”

“This place,” I said, turning, indicating the ever-shifting landscape, “it’s not real. It’s…well, I’m not sure what it is exactly. It’s kind of like a dream…and yet not a dream. And just like in a dream, once you know it’s not real, you can take control.”

I clapped my hands, and my cat appeared in front of me.

“The pen,” Nero said, his eyes sharp, his voice serious. “It must have drawn in some of that inter-dimensional magic from our adventure at Storm Castle.”

“Yeah, that’s what I was thinking,” I agreed. “And now we’re in some wacky recreation of the past, born from our memories, formed out of our thoughts at the exact moment we touched the pen and set off this spell.”

“The question is:whocast the spell?” Nero said.

“I don’t know, but we can totally find out. We can control this place, Nero. That means we can make it reveal the person whoput us here.” I rubbed Angel behind her ears. “Oh, you like that, girl, don’t you?”

Nero watched me, amused. “You know the cat isn’t really here, right?”

“Angel and I share a special connection. We’re bonded by magic. That means she’s as much here as we are.”

“Yes, but herbodyisn’t here,” he said as I rubbed the cat’s sides, nice and rough, just as she liked it. “So she can’t truly enjoy what you’re doing.”

“Shall we test out just how much we can enjoy ourselves here?” I suggested with arched brows.

He chuckled, dark and tantalizing. “Come on, Pandora. Let’s find the evil mastermind who trapped us here.”

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