And they don’t sound happy that we’re here.
But exactly where the hell are we? Is this some sort of?—
“Get buckled in!” Kharon demands, his voice cracking with fear I’ve never heard from him before. He grabs his wife and newborn baby—still wet with afterbirth and wailing—off the floor and buckles them onto the bench wall.
Before he can even get the buckle fully cinched, something massive bumps against the helicopter from outside.
The impact sends me flying across the interior, slamming into the opposite wall with enough force to knock the air from my lungs.
“Thing!” Layden shrieks from the cockpit, using some name I don’t recognize. “Get us the hell out of here!”
“I don’t know where here is!” Kharon shouts back, panic clear in his voice.
“Your kid brought us here, and you’re the only other realm-jumper I know. So get us all out of here before whatever the fuck is out there decides to eat us for dinner and you spend a thousand years boiling in its intestines!”
“Fuck,” Kharon curses—something I’ve never heard him do. He clutches his freshly born daughter tight with his center pair of arms, protective and fierce. With his other four hands, he grabs hold of the helicopter wherever he can, his dark skin beginning to glow.
Runes start spewing from his hands, covering the helicopter both inside and out in a protective shell of white-blue light.
I watch in awe, finally managing to buckle myself in with shaking hands right as we jerk roughly again—harder this time, the whole helicopter tilting violently to one side.
I look toward the back ramp.
And my blood turns to ice.
A gigantic, reptilian claw—each talon as long as my entire body—has gotten hold of the helicopter’s tail section. The scales are black and ridged, gleaming wetly in our lights.
“Faster!” I cry, clinging to the belt straps so hard my fingers ache.
“I’m going as fast as I can!” Kharon shouts, sweat pouring down his face as more runes stream from his hands.
The baby in his arms starts crying—loud, lusty wails of a healthy newborn.
And then runes begin to pour from her tiny waving fists too.
A bright stream of white-blue light explodes from the infant’s hands, shooting out the back of the helicopter until another massive pearlescent mirror looms in the darkness ahead of us.
The light is enough to illuminate what’s around us for just a moment.
And I seethem.
Huge beasts with enormous flapping wings that span hundreds of feet. Scaled bodies as large as buildings. Long, serpentine necks. Clawed feet. Eyes that glow red in the darkness.
Holy shit.
I can barely breathe.
Are those?—?
Are thosedragons?!
TWENTY-ONE
HANNAH
“Turn it around;we have our way out!” Ksenia yells, one hand clinging to Kharon’s arm while the other clutches her wailing newborn against her chest.
Layden doesn’t hesitate. He swings the helicopter around in a sharp banking turn, the whole aircraft tilting at a sickening angle. The backend is heavy—dragging—from our extra passenger still clinging to the entrance ramp with those massive claws.
