Alien Dragon's Spawn (Dragons of Arcturus Book 1) Page 3

  Now completely exposed, Katrine and Nora were dragged backward too. Holding onto each other for dear life, they were swallowed alive.

  CHAPTER 4

  The first thing Katrine noticed as she came to was the taste of ashes in her mouth. The second was Nora’s voice calling her name, her palm gently patting her cheek.

  “Katrine! Katrine wake up! Oh please, wake up!”

  She caught her friend’s wrists to stop her slapping, sat up, and opened her eyes.

  “I’m awake, Nora. I’m…”

  Katrine’s voice trailed off as she took in their surroundings, and the recent events came rushing back to her shaken mind—the tension in the control room, the sudden rift in the fabric of space time, the violent wind pulling them through.

  Whether she had been knocked unconscious from falling or simply as a side effect of passing through the rift, she was unsure, but one thing was clear:

  They weren’t in Nevada anymore.

  She and Nora were sitting on the ground, which was formed of coarse, dark, volcanic sand. All around them lay scattered broken debris from the control room—shattered work stations, shards of Plexiglas, swirling papers.

  Farther off in the distance stood shadowy forests, and beyond that rose sharp, spiny-looking mountains like black teeth, pointing toward a sky boiling with clouds of smoke. The wind that ghosted over Katrine’s face and tousled her sandy hair was hot and smelled of burnt things—campfires, charcoal, brimstone.

  Yeah, definitely not Nevada.

  Was it even Earth?

  That question upped the tempo of Katrine’s pulse and sent a strange, queasy feeling twisting through her belly. As far as she knew, the only place on Earth that even remotely resembled this landscape was Iceland, and this place felt way too hot to be Iceland.

  “Katrine, what do you see?” Nora asked in a trembling voice.

  As best she could, Katrine described their surroundings and watched as her friend’s face gradually reflected the same growing dismay that she herself was feeling.

  “Where the hell are we, Kat?” Nora asked.

  Katrine shook the sand out of her hair, “I don’t know.”

  “Is it…is it Earth?”

  Nora’s mind was following the same train of thought as Katrine’s. The fact that neither one of them could answer that question did not bode well.

  “I don’t know…”

  What Katrine did know is that there was no point in sitting on their butts any longer. Wherever they were, the climate was not the most hospitable, and there was no telling how much time was left until nightfall. They needed to find shelter, and fast.

  Raising herself up, Katrine brushed the sand from her jeans and lab coat, then offered her hand to Nora.

  “Come on, I’ll help you up.”

  But Nora simply shook her head and winced in pain. Beneath the cuff of her dark trousers, Nora’s ankle was swollen and red. Katrine immediately kneeled to inspect it without touching the obviously painful spot.

  “Shit. Is it broken?” Katrine asked.

  “I don’t think so,” Nora answered, her voice tight with pain. “Just twisted. But it hurts a lot.”

  “Will you be able to walk if I support you?”

  Nora nodded, and Katrine scooped her arm under her shoulder carefully lifting her up. After a bit of work, they were both standing, Nora propped on her one good leg and leaning her weight into Katrine.

  “At least you don’t have to carry me, right?” Nora said, managing a brave smile. “You’re probably wishing I had taken it easy with the pizza these past few months.”

  “Bullshit,” Katrine said, adjusting to better support Nora’s weight.

  She would have gladly carried her friend if she had too. But the question was, carry her to where? She had no clue where they were, and therefore no clue where they should be going.

  “So, what now?” Nora asked.

  “I don’t know. But we need to find some kind of shelter. There’s no telling when it will be dark, but I don’t want to be stuck out in the open when that happens.”

  “Are you worried about…”

  Nora didn’t finish the sentence, and she didn’t have to. She was thinking the exact same thing as Katrine.

  Animals. Life forms. Predators.

  Katrine was still holding out hope that they were on Earth. After all, the atmosphere, while tinged with the hot smell of burning, was still breathable. They were still alive. Perhaps they had been transported to some obscure volcanic island in the Pacific. And if they had somehow been carried away to another planet, the odds that they would encounter animal life seemed slim. On the other hand, however, there were trees in the distance, which meant this place was not devoid of life altogether.

  Whatever the status of the local fauna, Katrine didn’t want to find out about it the hard way. They needed to find someplace safe where they could reconnoiter. And right now, those trees in the distance seemed like their best bet.

  “Come on,” she said to her injured companion. “Let’s try for that forest over there.”

  But before they had taken three steps, a sudden, sharp cry made them both nearly jump out of their skins.

  “What was that?” Katrine gasped, her pulse racing.

  Nora, with her keen sense of hearing, was able to answer that question first.

  “It’s Blair.”

  There came another cry, and this time, when Katrine turned in the direction of the sound, she saw that Nora was right. Running toward them across the sandy landscape, her tan sweater and slacks smudged with dark ashes, was Blue Mesa’s resident psychiatrist, her arms flailing wildly as she approached. Katrine waved in answer.

  “Oh thank goodness I found you,” Blair wheezed as she stumbled up to them, placing her hands on both their shoulders. She noticed the way that Nora was leaning on Katrine for support. “Are you hurt?”

  Nora nodded. “My ankle.”

  Without hesitation, Blair took up position beneath Nora’s other arm, helping to support her.

  “Where are the others?” she asked.

  Blair’s face was darkened with soot, and there were clean stripes on her cheeks where tears had run down. It was only when she saw those marks that Katrine became aware that she had been crying too. She could taste the bitter flavor of tears in her mouth, underneath the pungent, charred essence of the air.

  “I don’t know,” Katrine answered ruefully. “We thought we were the only ones.”

  They looked around the area, but there was no sign of Petra or Mei. Nora and Katrine called the other women’s names several times, but they were only answered by wind and echoes.

  “Where…are…we?” Blair asked, spacing each word out between gulps of air as she caught her breath.

  “Don’t know that either,” Katrine said. “But we can figure all that out after we’ve found someplace to hide.”

  The muscles of Blair’s throat worked up and down as she swallowed.

  “Hide from what?”

  As if on cue, a blood-curdling screech pealed across the sky overhead. All three women froze and holding their breath, they tilted their faces up, toward the source of the sound.

  A dark shape was swimming in the depths of the smoke swirling high overhead. The dark billows served, perhaps mercifully, to obscure the thing’s exact shape, but two details were clear.

  It had wings, and it was enormous. A hundred times bigger than any bird.

  Katrine and Blair watched in silent amazement and Nora listened as the shadow moved on, flying toward the mountains at the horizon. Whatever that thing had been, it had not noticed them, or if it had, it wasn’t interested. But now two of their questions had been answered.

  They were no longer on Earth.

  And they were not alone.

  CHAPTER 5

  Katrine dug into the pocket of her jeans, dragged out her smushed pack of cigarettes, and fished one out. It was half-flattened and bent into a zig-zag, but it was unbroken and still smokeable. She lit it,
took a long, much needed drag, slouched back against the wall of the rock hollow where she and her companions were now hiding.

  The shelter was a shallow cavity at the base of a large volcanic boulder just inside the edge of the forest. Huge, crooked trees unlike anything Katrine had seen before loomed overhead, their dark limbs swaying against the smoke-clouded sky.

  Katrine exhaled a stream of pale smoke, enjoying that old familiar burn in her throat.

  She inspected the pack. Even though it was the least of her worries at the moment, the smaller problem of her tobacco supply served to take her mind off the more pressing issues for a moment.

  Ten. She had ten flattened cigarettes left. She would have to ration them. Make them last. Once this pack ran out, that would be it.

  Then again, she probably wouldn’t live long enough to run out.

  Beside her, Nora groaned. Blair had taken off the blind woman’s shoes, and she was now inspecting her swollen ankle, which had taken on an angry red hue. Though her professional training was as a psychiatrist, she had some first-aid experience. She palpated the swollen joint gently.

  “How does it feel?”

  “It fucking hurts,” Nora grunted through clenched teeth.

  Katrine knew that her friend was in pain, but she suspected the edge in her voice was partly due to her dislike of Blair. Now was not the time for petty differences, however. They were stranded on an alien world, and if they didn’t work together, they were going to die.

  So far, they had managed to get along well enough, all things considered. But the trek across the sand to the edge of the forest had taken nearly two hours, and sharing the weight of Nora’s injured body had made Katrine weary.

  Her stomach rumbled, and a hollow feeling panged at her insides.

  The effort had made her hungry too. She had expended a lot of energy already. They all had.

  Even more pressing, however, was the matter of hydration. The air in this strange world was heavy and hot. Katrine’s skin was greasy with sweat. She could practically hear it spilling out of her pores. She had taken off her lab coat, and her blouse was soaked through. It was so sweltering, Katrine was tempted to strip down to her underwear.

  They could survive for days without food if they had to, but water…

  Katrine took another long drag from her cigarette, tried to focus on the smoke, the warmth of it in her throat, the mentholated tingle on her tongue, and the faintly sweet residue it left behind.

  For the hundredth time in the past two hours, the events that had brought them here ran through Katrine’s mind, and a feeling of guilt settled in her belly like a heavy iron chain.

  This was all her fault. She was the reason they were in this situation.

  Okay, that wasn’t completely true. Petra had been too ambitious about going ahead with the experiment. She hadn’t listened to Nora’s warnings. But Katrine could have stopped it if she had just backed up her friend in the control room. Instead, she had been daydreaming about dragons.

  Blair’s voice beside her startled her out of these thoughts.

  “It’s not broken,” Blair was speaking to Katrine, having moved beside her. “But it’s a really bad sprain. We can keep it elevated, but without ice it’s going to take days, maybe even a week before she’ll be able to walk on it. And even then she won’t be able to go far or she’ll injure it again.”

  Katrine glanced over Blair’s shoulder to where Nora was sitting, clearly struggling to mask her pain. Her face was filmed with sweat.

  “We can’t just sit in this little cave for a week.”

  “I’m not sure what other choice we have, Katrine.” She used her shirt to wipe away her sweat.

  “Well, just waiting around to die from hunger or dehydration is pointless. We need to find water and food.”

  Katrine crushed out her cigarette in the sand next to her and got to her feet, brushing off her thighs and butt.

  Blair stood too. “Okay, but I’m coming with you.”

  “No,” Katrine said shaking her head. “You need to stay here with Nora.”

  “Kat, I’ll be fine,” Nora said, but the rasp in her voice made it clear that she was not.

  Katrine, however, was determined.

  “Look, I won’t go far. I’ll stay close enough that you can hear me if I shout. And I’ll be very careful.”

  “Katrine,” Blair insisted. “We have no idea what could be out there.”

  “Exactly. But let’s say I run into something—an alien dinosaur—well it’s better if it’s just one of us, right? It’s not like two of us will be able to fight it any better than one. It just means two of us would get eaten.”

  The other two women looked at her with wide eyes.

  “I mean, that’s just a hypothetical example, right? There’s no reason to even think that there’s anything dangerous out there.” The image of that shadow in the sky swept through her mind, but she pushed it away. “But there is a very real and immediate danger that we are going to die of thirst if we don’t find some water soon. I’ll be back in half an hour, I promise.”

  She started to walk away, not wanting to give the other women a chance to debate her any further. But she had only taken two steps when Blair caught her arm.

  “Katrine, listen, this situation is not your fault, okay? There’s no need to do this on your own. If we just—“

  Katrine roughly jerked her arm out of Blair’s grasp. Heat traveled up her neck and into her face.

  “I never said it was my fault, so you can save the psychiatric bullshit, Doctor. This is about survival.”

  Blair’s eyes widened at Katrine’s biting words. Her expression transitioned from shock to hurt.

  “Just watch Nora,” Katrine said in a milder tone. Then she turned and strode off into the wilderness.

  CHAPTER 6

  Despite her fear, Katrine had to admit that the forest had a certain alien beauty. The trunks of the dark trees curved sinuously upward, their limbs tangling and knitting into a canopy of leaves and needles that blocked what small light came from the smoky sky. But within the shadows between the ancient-looking trees, a soft glow was provided by luminescent mushrooms and strange dancing lights like fireflies. The air carried a sweet spicy scent of evergreen sap, but this was mingled with the ever present stench of burning.

  And then there were the sounds. Rustlings and crunchings from the shadowed depths.

  Katrine paused, listening carefully. She couldn’t tell if there was something out there or if it was just the groaning and creaking of the trees.

  The heat was stifling. Sweat beaded around her hairline and in the crevices of her body. She had already unfastened several buttons of her blouse, and now she undid one more, letting it fall almost completely open. There was no need for modesty, and she was on the verge of stripping down to her underwear in an attempt to cool off.

  She fished out another cigarette, lit it, and trudged on, making sure to leave clear tracks in the sandy soil so she could easily find her way back.

  Katrine felt bad for the way she had spoken to Blair a few minutes ago. She now realized that the bitterness of her harsh words had come from surprise and embarrassment that Blair had been able to read her so easily. Was she really that transparent? Her sense of guilt, her feeling that this whole situation could have been avoided if she had just spoken up in time—that’s exactly what lay behind her decision to go look for water and food on her own.

  Now that guilt was compounded by the way she had snapped at Blair. Katrine decided she would apologize when she went back to the hideout.

  And she needed to return soon. It had been nearly fifteen minutes already, and it would take her that long to retrace her steps.

  She would be returning empty-handed.

  So far, she’d seen no sign of water, though there must be something if there were trees growing here. And as far as food, the only possibility were those glowing mushrooms, but those could be poisonous.

  Anything could be poisonous, for t
hat matter. This was an alien world, after all.

  She had let her friends down again. More heavy chains settled in her hollow, hungry belly.

  Her mind felt blurry from exhaustion and stress. God, she would give anything for a cup of that terrible Blue Mesa coffee right now. Anything to give her a much-needed boost of energy.

  Out of habit, her hand went to the pack her in her pocket. She paused, remembering that she needed to ration, then went ahead and fished out a cigarette anyway. Her unsteady fingers fumbled with her lighter as she struggled to get it lit.

  Katrine stopped.

  A new smell was drifting through the warm air. Not the evergreen aroma of the trees or the underlying odor of burning that seemed to pervade the whole planet. No, this was different—a pungent, almost goatish musk.

  Something rumbled beside her. A low, rolling growl that sent cold shivers up Katrine’s backbone. For a long moment, she stayed frozen in place. Then, ever so slowly, with her bent, unlit cigarette dangling from her lips, Katrine turned toward the source of the sound.

  Her heart stopped.

  Earlier, when she had mentioned an alien dinosaur to her companions, she had been joking. The joke hadn’t been funny then, but it was even less so now. The thing crouching in the shadows was no dinosaur, but it wasn’t all that far off.

  A saber-toothed tiger.

  The creature’s body was massive, twice the size of a Siberian tiger, its taut muscles covered in a sleek black pelt. From the middle of its face, four round eyes glared at her with focused intensity. A pair of white fangs protruded like ivory scimitars from its black lips.

  Katrine’s stopped heart jolted back into action, as did her feet.

  Part of her knew that it was a bad idea to run from a predator—and there was no doubt that’s what this thing was—but that part of her was not in control now. Katrine was running on pure adrenaline, and her feet were moving of their own accord as her flight response kicked into high gear.

  Her cigarette tumbled from her lips as she bolted. From behind came an angry, high-pitched feline snarl and a heavy thud as the giant cat pounced on the place where she had just been standing.