Page 78 of Been There Dragon That
A wave of turbulence shook the plane for a few seconds.
Jeff messed with some controls and peered out the window on his left. Then looked to the right very suddenly, like he’d seen something that made him nervous. His hands tightened on the stick, turning his knuckles white.
Rylee turned her head and peered out the window on her right. She could see patches of snow-covered land, puffs of clouds, and blue sky.
Nothing that indicated anything was wrong. No flocks of birds. Nothing.
The plane shook again.
Wrath? Could it be?
Jeff slammed his hand against the console, rage and worry seeping from him like sewage from a leaky drainpipe. It poisoned the air and made Rylee wish there was a way to press an eject button for her seat.
He bent and looked out the window on his left again. Then to the right.
The plane jumped hard, and Rylee felt weightless for several seconds. The plane was sinking straight down, giving the feeling of falling like she was trapped in an elevator with no brakes.
Then the plane stopped falling. It stopped like something caught it.
A flash of black swept by her window, and an unearthly roar of anger she recognized and welcomed to the very depths of her soul shook the plane.
Wrath.
Jeff was unbuckling his seatbelt. He was looking at her. He had a gun in his hand.
Then the plane split apart.
Just broke into two pieces.
She screamed, except no sound came out. Panic clawed at her like a wild animal. He’d come for her, but all she could see was an angry dragon. And the plane had been torn in half.
Jeff clung to the back of the pilot chair in the front piece of the plane. A giant claw encircled the cockpit. A huge black-scaled claw with talons as big as her whole body. Jeff was yelling at her and waving the gun, seething and infuriated. Like he wasn’t in a plane that had been ripped in half. More like he was throwing a temper tantrum that his toy had been stolen.
And then the next moment, that part of the plane was flicked away. And Jeff along with it.
Just gone.
Tossed away at ten thousand feet like trash.
She thought she would feel something, but all she felt was relief.
Her chair creaked and groaned and then broke away from the other piece of the plane. The dragon was holding the back of the plane in another claw.
The chair rotated as she fell, and she could see the whole dragon for the first time. He hung in the sky like he owned it. His massive wings and powerful body were magnificent and breathtaking.
The rush of icy wind stole her screams. She closed her eyes against the pain. She was still trapped in a chair with her hands tied behind her back. Except the chair was hurtling toward the ground like a missile.
Another roar tore through the loud sounds of the wind in her ears. She couldn’t open her eyes. The wind hurt too much. Then another roar. And another.
They weren’t the same dragon.
Their voices were different.
Then something snatched her out of the air. Her head whipped back and forth from the momentum, and then she wasn’t falling anymore.
It was dark.
The chair was lying on its side. She was on her side and her face was against something … warm. And she was still moving, but it was controlled. And somehow, she was shielded from the wind.
