See part one for explanation and disclaimers. Hallmark still owns the characters and I’m still not profiting from this. Hope you’re enjoying this. Still recommended for teens and up for action/violence and mild language. Plus this chapter has some mild sexual content. Very, very mild.

5

If you ignored the stink of oiled dinosaur hide, it would have been romantic being up there in the late afternoon light with Marion, Karl thought. Having her as a passenger on his skybax required Karl to keep one arm across her shoulders to help keep her from falling off as Pterra bobbed and weaved through the sky. He knew very well that Marion had ridden skybaxes enough times to be as qualified as any rider and probably didn’t need his assistance to stay aboard, but hey, rules were rules. If the rules worked in his favor by giving him a reason to be this close to her, so much the better. He’d have to remember to take her flying again after this business with the Tohma Faiere was settled…a sunrise flight around the island would be a perfect set-up for asking her to the Dawn Festival.

Or maybe not…there wasn’t one thing romantic about their current flight to Le Sage’s hideaway. Karl couldn’t flirt or say anything charming when the wind and the thunder of pounding wings carried his words away. Riders relied on hand signals to communicate with each other on a flight for that reason. He couldn’t gaze meaningfully into her eyes while his riding goggles covered half his face. And, even if they were lying side-by-side on Pterra’s back, so close that he was practically lying on top of Marion, he knew romance was way down on her list of priorities at the moment.

As Le Sage’s palace appeared on the horizon, Marion pointed to something on one of its towers. Karl followed her gaze and caught the glint of very pale dinosaur hide almost glowing as it caught the glowing sunset. Barrett’s pterosaur…it could be nothing else. “Dad was right,” Karl said, knowing Marion couldn’t hear him even though her face was inches from his. The sight of the albino skybax spurred a moment of triumph in him. David Barrett was there, all right. Karl had been to the palace enough times to know where the entrance was, and he guided Pterra towards the open courtyard.

Their arrival didn’t go unnoticed. Almost as quickly as Karl and Marion had spotted the albino, the pterosaur spied Pterra soaring towards the castle. It tilted back its head and let out a screech…which startled the hell out of the group of men and women gathered in the courtyard below, drinking, singing, sleeping (or passed out) up until that point. To Karl’s dismay, Le Sage and David were not among them. That would have been too easy. Some of the outsiders peered up at Pterra. A few stood up, the ones grasping mugs and bottles having an especially difficult time doing so. Most of them spared Karl and Marion just one look and went back to whatever they’d been doing before the interruption.

The albino, however, roared a challenge directed at Pterra when she got too close to the palace. The pale pterosaur sprang into the sky. It clearly meant to lead Karl’s skybax away, and he felt Pterra’s muscular back tense beneath him. Her head tracked the albino’s path and she pulled against Karl as he held her back. “Don’t you dare!” he bellowed over the wind. If Pterra didn’t hear, she should sense his command.

Pterra watched the circling albino as it baited her to follow, but---at Karl and Marion’s insistence---she maintained her course for the courtyard with only a brief noise of disappointment. The albino, however, realized she wasn’t following and arched around. He streaked directly towards Pterra. Karl felt déjà vu as the dinosaur sailed past his own mount, doing a fly-by so close that Marion had to grab on to Karl with all her strength to keep from falling off Pterra.

Karl wasn’t waiting for the rotten creature to make another pass at them. Ticked off now, he directed Pterra in almost a nose-dive right down into the courtyard. The albino circled above, seeming uncertain of what it should do, then perched along a wall high above the courtyard and glared down at the intruders.

Karl jumped from Pterra’s back and hurried to help Marion down. “You okay?”

“I’m fine.” Marion glared up at the albino and scolded it. “Now, that wasn’t very nice.”

The albino whuffed. It must have said something to Marion via her empathic connection to saurians, because the human gaped a bit in reaction. “Well, that wasn’t very nice, either!”

“Like rider, like pterosaur,” Karl quipped. He removed his helmet and goggles and surveyed the courtyard and its occupants. Their presence still hadn’t elicited much interest from the foul, smelly group of outsiders. “They could use about a million bars of ‘Lever 2000’,” he observed quietly to Marion, discreetly trying to cover his nose against the smell, “And maybe a flea dip.”

“We want to speak to David Barrett. We know he’s here,” Marion informed the crowd. Several of them smirked or snickered at the order. “I’m not joking!”

Karl raised an eyebrow. “Did we say something funny?” he asked her.

“Never mind them. We know the way.” She started for the corridor that would lead to Le Sage’s private chamber deeper in the hideaway, assuming that’s where she’d find Le Sage and David.

A few particularly vile-smelling fellows lumbered over, arms folded. They physically blocked Karl and Marion’s path. Karl found himself standing eye-level with their broad chests. He leaned his head back to stare up at them. In return, they were frowning down at him. Karl smiled in appeasement, then pulled Marion back a few steps with him.

“Okay, the way I see it, we have two options,” he whispered to her. “Either we count to three and rush them, or you go find Le Sage and Barrett while I hold off her goons with a bar of soap.”

*

He had the sensation of being pulled down a long tunnel towards the Light, but couldn’t remember how he’d gotten there. He had a fleeting memory of grappling with someone---a figure whose image was now shadowy, but David had the impression of someone with short blonde hair, someone who’d been quite determined to strangle the breath out of him. He seemed to recall falling after that, a very long ways, and after that there was no memory of anything but cold and water filling his lungs even as the air rushed out of him.

So, they were true, those stories he’d read about people who had near-death experiences, and they were right---there was nothing scary about it at all. It would have been the easiest thing in the world to walk into the warmth and serenity that emanated from the Light…the easiest thing if not for the voice that echoed around him, distracting him from his destination. The voice babbled about Coca-Cola and Christmas and fights from very far away. David thought he should recognize the voice. It didn’t matter. He ignored the voice and took another step towards the Light. The voice returned, more commanding this time: “Don’t fade on me, bro.”

David hesitated.

“I can’t do this alone,” the voice pleaded.

David actually glanced backwards, into the darkness and cold from which the voice called. He waited to hear what it would say next, but the voice was gone. An eternity passed, and he was about to turn back to the Light that still beckoned.

“…very far away away…” This disembodied voice was different. Female. Authoritative. Familiar. Not to be ignored. “David, come back.”

It seemed quite important that he obey the voice. He didn’t just hear the urgency in her words, he felt it communicated to him almost telepathically. He turned from the light and took one step into the darkness. A bone-deep chill, so cold it was painful, enveloped him at once. It squeezed off his breath like a vice around his chest. David wanted to stop there, to go back to the Light, but it was flickering and fading away, leaving him there in the darkness.

“Come back!” the woman called one more time. David grabbed onto her voice with all his will and followed it. The cold grew deeper, his chest ached horribly, but he followed.

“Open your eyes.”

David did so, but it took forever for his eyes to focus on his surroundings, for his sluggish mind to return to some sort of lucidity. It was dark. He slowly grasped that he was in the forest, lying on the sand, and had not a clue how he’d gotten there. There were sounds of a river not far away…was that why he was sopping wet? Someone had built a fire nearby, but its heat couldn’t penetrate the damp chill he felt. Blurry figures and faces around him very slowly swam into focus. There was a small dinosaur standing a short distance from David, watching with as much anxiety and concern as its reptilian features could convey.

There were human shapes, too, much closer---hovering over him in fact. He focused on them. He thought one of them might have short blonde hair. The other was a dark-haired woman who looked like Mar----

The impact of a powerful blow from an open palm against David’s jaw knocked away the cold, the ache, the forest, the dinosaur, and dream-figures his waking mind identified as Marion and that nerdy skybax rider, Karl Scott. David opened his eyes-for real this time---to find himself again on his back, this time beneath the blankets of a lumpy bed in the warmth of the lantern-lit chambers he knew belonged to Le Sage…

…who was, at that moment, scowling down at him, her gaze as angry as the welt she’d just left on his cheek. Sometime while he was asleep, she’d awakened and pulled on her black and red robe. Le Sage was now perched at the foot of the bed, straddling his legs. She was also removing the meteorite pendant from his hand…its glow winking out at the loss of contact with his palm. He had left that in his coat, how did it wind up in his hand?

“What was the slap for?!” David rubbed at his stinging cheek.

“I really don’t care who you roll around with when you aren’t here, kid, but the next time you use another woman’s name in my bed---even in your sleep---I’ll cut off my favorite parts of that gorgeous body of yours,” Le Sage promised.

“Fair enough.” He pointed to the ‘topian pendant. “Did you go through my pockets?!”

“Have we met? Of course I did…just in case you were lying about not bringing the sunstone with you,” she retorted. “Interesting trinket you got here. Didn’t glow like that for me.” She climbed off his legs and sat on the end of the bed, studying the blue meteorite.

“You should be grateful for that. Put that thing away. It’s more dangerous than it looks,” he warned her. Now that she wasn’t pinning him down, he sat up and was about to climb out of the bed before he realized his clothes were still strewn across the floor, just out of his reach. He settled for leaning back against the pillows and headboard.

Le Sage made no move to put away the stone, still fascinated by it. “Where’d you find this thing? Did you steal this from one of Rosemary’s temples, I hope?”

“Nope. Just found it in an old cave in the inner island during the scalie rampage. No big deal.”

“No big deal? Looks pretty old. I’ll bet the scalie-lovers would pay to get it back.” Her expression turned suspicious. “It’s not one of those rocks that attracts the scalies, is it? ‘Cause if it is, so help me…”

“Will you relax?! It doesn’t do anything, except give you bad dreams.”

Repulsed, Le Sage passed it like a hot potato back to David. Before he could stop it, the pendant landed on his bare chest and began to glow. He batted away the stone before it could put any more crazy images into his mind. It landed on the sheets and the glow winked out.

Le Sage smiled a bit at his reaction. “So, you aren’t lying about that rock. Damn scalie-lover magic tricks. Must be what Rosemary uses to brainwash people into thinking they like it on this sinkhole island,” she complained. “Let’s talk about useful meteorites…if Cyrus’ submarine is resting at the bottom of the bay, then what good is that little sunstone of Marion’s? Boat’s not going anywhere if it’s full of holes.”

David hesitated. This was the part Le Sage wasn’t going to like. “Dane’s the one who found the sub.”

Le Sage looked like she might be physically sick. Her brow furrowed, and when she saw that he wasn’t joking, she all but leaped from the bed and began pacing the room. He watched her carefully, just in case she went for her sword again. “I know you don’t like him…” David began.

She rolled her eyes. “If he’d ever tried to force his mangy little body on you, you wouldn’t much like him either.”

“No argument there. Are you going to give me a chance to explain?”

“Yes, explain why you---of all people---would even consider making deals with that walking pile of dinosaur dung. Or was that someone else I remember Dane beating into a pulp, frequently and enthusiastically, after he brought you into the pack?” Hands on hips, she fixed David with a withering stare. “And explain to me why I shouldn’t just chuck you out the window right now, while you’re at it.”

David grinned at her now. “Who said anything about making deals with him?”

She calmed down, but only a bit. “I’m listening.”

“The way I see it, Dane’s got maybe a quarter of the followers he had before you and Quantro mutinied. That boat probably weighs a ton and it’s been at the bottom of the ocean for what, three months? Dane’s got no way to get the sub out of the bay…but I do.”

She followed his meaning. “That giant lizard stinking up my palace?”

“Be nice. I told you the scalie’s a friend. Between the pterosaur, your pack, and Dane’s pack, we should be able to get the sub into shallow water. It’s going to be a mess, probably got some serious damage when it sank, but nothing your men couldn’t fix.” David knew full well that many members of her pack, hygienically-challenged though they might be---were skilled at working with wood, metal, and rock when the occasion called for it. They had to be in order to put up shelters in a hurry when the pack was roaming during the days of Dane’s command. “So, you offer Dane your assistance--- détente if you will---in exchange for a ride on that sub. He’s not going to have any problem believing you’d let bygones be bygones if it meant getting off the island.”

She mulled that over. “And once we have the sub, what do we need Dane for? He deservers to be bait for the bottom-feeders. My pack does outnumber his pack three to one…”

“That’s the part where he might get a little hinky…”

Le Sage crossed back to the bed and plopped down beside David, lying half on top of him. The devious glint had returned to her eyes. “Trust me, I can distract him from details like that. Dane’s never used the right head for thinking where I’m concerned.”

“That much I noticed. If you get Dane under wraps---I’ll leave that detail to you---I seriously doubt anyone in his gang would have issues with leaving him behind.” David corrected himself, “Except for Payden that is.”

She nodded her agreement. “He’s definitely going to have a problem with it. You have a plan for dealing with him?”

The last he’d heard, Payden was on the opposite side of the island from Gull’s Bay and Zuru, where the submarine and Dane were at the moment. He was probably spending time with some of his children. With any luck he’d stay there with his family while Dane went after the boat. David would rather deal with a dozen Gabriel Danes than one Payden Boreal. Dane hunted dinosaurs to stay alive until he could escape the island. Payden had always told David that--unlike his fellow outsiders---he had no interest in getting off the island. He hunted the dinosaurs with the intention of exterminating them to make the island safe for his children. “You off-worlders believe in the Garden of Eden, Barrett? I do as well. I believe this island is it…we just need to be rid of the serpents,” Payden had justified after one particularly vicious killing of a T-Rex.

“Actually, I was kind of hoping he wouldn’t show up,” David admitted.

“David!”

“I’ll figure it out if the time comes, don’t worry. We’ll leave him tied up beside Dane if we have to.”

She wrapped her arms around him, beaming a bit. “You know, this streak of moral flexibility you’ve developed since you washed up on the island is definitely appealing.” To prove it, she gave him a kiss that made him momentarily forget Dane, submarines, dinosaurs, and the island in general.

“Kiss Dane like that and he may not even notice the submarine’s gone,” David complimented.

Le Sage shuddered in disgust. “I’d rather kiss the pterosaur.”

“From the looks of it, that’d be a trade up.” A new, annoyingly familiar male voice interjected. Le Sage glanced over her shoulder to find her chamber door open and Marion and Karl Scott, flanked by her apparently-useless guards, standing there. The matriarch’s daughter took in the scene and blushed furiously. The guards snickered. Karl Scott glanced at the two outsiders in their very obvious state of undress and made a sour face. He remarked to Marion, “We have got to start calling before we barge in here…”

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