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And just like that, my heart melted.
I caught him in a half hug, one hand clutching his shoulder, the other on the burner cord.
“Never, ever scare me like that again,” I mumbled into his shirt.
He locked his arms around me. “I promise if you promise.”
I nearly laughed, but it was cut off by awhoosh— the next gust of wind.
We broke apart, because it wasn’t over. We were still hundreds of feet in the air — and the storm raged on.
Chapter Twenty-Three
NASH
Over the past few days, I’d dreamed of flying with Erin many times. But not like this.
I wanted to shake a fist and yell that at destiny.Not like this, dammit!
Not in a basket in a storm suspended by flimsy material instead of strong, leathery wings. Hell, even in dragon form, I wouldn’t brave a storm like this.
Just wait till we get our claws on Harlon,my inner beast growled.
That was item two on my agenda. Number one was getting Erin out of this alive.
“So, what’s the plan, Captain?” I asked.
“Landing,” she grunted, studying the storm.
That much was obvious. So why wasn’t she bringing the balloon down? We were a good mile past the power lines now.
“Why not there?” I pointed at a clearing.
She shook her head. “Too exposed.”
I gestured over the wide-open landscape. “The whole damn county is exposed — other than the canyons.” I stopped and stared. “Wait. Don’t tell me you’re going to try to maneuver into one.”
She glanced north, murmuring, “Interesting idea.”
My eyes went wide. No, it wasn’t. More like suicide.
Not that that stopped Erin. She studied the twisted, broken hills. “The wind eddies around the mouth of Boynton Canyon. Maybe it will do the same here…” A moment later, she shook her head. “Maybe not, though. I’ll stick to Plan A.”
My pulse only settled slightly. “What’s Plan A?”
She pointed to a low, rocky ridge and dropped her voice. “There’s a hollow just beyond those rocks. It’s not big enough to land in…”
My heart rate spiked. So the allure was…what, exactly?
“…but it’s big enough to drop into and stay put, if I get the timing right,” she finished.
For all my faith in Erin, that sounded like a bigif. Also, nuances. Diddrop intomeancrash?
I pointed to the clearing. “Wouldn’t over there be better?” It looked a hundred times better to me — but I was a dragon, not a balloon pilot. I could stop on a dime, fold my wings, and take shelter. A balloon remained at the mercy of the wind throughout its entire, sluggish landing.
“No. We’ll get dragged along. Mauled, practically.” She rolled her hands over each other, illustrating what the basket would do — with us in it — if she tried landing there. “The balloon would be wrecked, and we would be lucky to get out alive.”
At that point, the dark, rolling clouds weren’t chasing us any more. They surrounded us like a pack of hungry lions. The dark, swirling masses were so dense, they blotted out everything behind us.
