“Wolf creatures?”
He glanced at her and raised a brow. “They looked wolflike, but bigger, and nastier.”
Aria’s knowledge of human realm critters was seriously lacking. Wolf sounded familiar, something to do with the Dire’s evolution, but the information eluded her. She shrugged. “I have no idea what a wolf is, but they’re called Dires. How do you know they went that way?”
He shook his head. “I can feel them. Or what remains of them. They left a trail, but it won’t be easy to track.”
Aria glanced again toward the cleared path through the trees. “As opposed to the road. Which, I suppose, would be far too straightforward.”
Nikolai regarded her warily. “If you want to lose your trackers, don’t take the obvious path.” He glanced down at Lucas on the steps. “But you do not need to come with me. Those that hunt me—they might help you get home, if I leave you two here.”
Aria’s eyes narrowed. “Who is hunting you?”
His eyes skittered away from her. “I don’t know their names. But they are my people.”
“Why are they chasing you?”
He swayed from one foot to the other. “Now, it is because of what I have done. But from birth—my mother said not to let them find me.”
Okay, that led to loads of other questions. But no way she was going to let him head off on his own. Not until she had some answers.
“We’ve been through this. You’re stuck with me, at least for now.” She grimaced at the thicket he wished to lead them into. “Just wish I could get this cursed collar off. Then we could fly over all this instead of pushing our way through.”
His brows lifted. “You can fly?”
“Yeah. I’m a Dragon, remember?”
“Not all dragons fly.”
She stared at him. “You know of dragons that don’t fly?” What the hell was he babbling about?
“Komodo dragons do not have wings. We do not have them in the Kalahari, although we do have some pretty big monitor lizards.”
Aria had never heard of a Komodo dragon, but she had a sudden inkling he might be comparing her to something that would result in a temper tantrum. She gritted her teeth. “Can you carry Lucas through that?” When he nodded, she added, “So where are we going, other than just for a stroll in a swamp?”
“There is a town not far from here.” When she arched a brow at him, Nikolai added, “The natural rhythm is disrupted by a dense gathering of the same types of life. Maybe a day away? Not sure. We could head there for a start. Get supplies.” He paused. “Should we look for another one of those doorway things? Could it take us back to Earth?”
“Gateway. Maybe. It’s a place to start, anyway.”
“Will the town have one?”
Aria shrugged. “Some do. We can check.”
Her shrug sent a jiggle across her breasts. For a moment, Nikolai’s gaze seemed riveted, then his eyes slid to hers, and his cheeks flushed. He rather rapidly picked Lucas up again, and hurried off the steps, striding across the small patch of scraggly grass to where the forest began.
To say there was a trail through the forest was a stretch. If the fleeing Dires passed through here, they must have used their claws and leaping ability to do so. A minute into the damp and dense mess, Nikolai shifted Lucas’s unconscious form over one muscled shoulder so that he could use his hands.
It was tough going as they clambered over and through. Even unburdened, and with her fingers and toes adorned with her talons, Aria couldn’t keep up with him. The ground was, indeed, bog. Her scaled boots sank as though in quicksand. When she clung to branches to pull them free, the earth released her with a slow, tortuous sucking sound.
Following Nikolai, she learned to stay on the horizontal trunks as though they were a haphazard boardwalk. The battle’s draining effects extended about three hundred yards into the forest. Beyond that, it resumed its normal, thriving self.
“I’ve never seen trees like this before,” she commented as she climbed over a horizontal branch bigger around than Nikolai. “They’re growing so densely. How do some of these even get enough light?”
“The leaves that reach the light provide for those that don’t.” Nikolai gestured to the forest as he moved gracefully through the trunks and branches. He seemed to know exactly where to put his feet. “Most of what died near the building was all one root system, spreading with multiple trunks to create a large selection of the forest. We have moved among another, now, a sister tree, so closely related it can graft to those nearby. Their roots are all connected beneath the ground.”
Aria paused on the branch. “Have you been here before? How the hell do you know that?”
Nikolai glanced her way, a rapid flash of pale gray beneath dark lashes. “I can feel it. There are only a few individuals.”
