Christmas chimera, p.3
Christmas Chimera, page 3
She sounded quite serious, and Colton murmured, "Yes, ma'am," as he checked his seatbelt. He noticed her casting him a sharp look, and held up a hand placatingly. "Not sarcastic. You're the pilot and I'm taking your orders."
Jo exhaled and nodded once, anger fading from her expression, though the tension remained as she turned her attention back to the flight. She flipped a radio switch, speaking on another channel, which meant Colton could barely hear her. Then she flipped another switch, trying again, and after a moment cursed again, loud enough to hear even before she came back to the in-flight channel. "Mountains are blocking the signal. I can go up to try to get clear of them, or I can just try to go around. I'm inclined to go around."
"You're the pilot," Colton said again. "I trust you."
Jo nodded a second time, and for the next several minutes the only sounds were the wind and propeller and Colton's occasional yelp when they hit a pocket of air and dropped or rose dramatically. To his relief, the corner of Jo's mouth twitched upward with each of those yelps, so at least he wasn't distracting her, or making things worse, but even his chimera was making little meep! sounds in his head as they rose and fell.
This would be fun if it wasn't a storm, Colton told his beast gently. We've played in air currents lots of times.
But I was doing the flying then!
Colton couldn't argue with that, although he could and did say, Jo knows what she's doing.
I know, his chimera wailed, and then, as they hit another air pocket, went, MEEEEP!
Jo's radio crackled and she switched to another channel, listened briefly, responded, and then came back to their headset connection. "Good news, they've got our location now. Bad news, for a minute I thought maybe I could route south, but Helena's getting thundersnow, too, and I can see more lightning up ahead."
So could Colton: it was actually incredible, bright flashes turning the clouds purple and electric blue from within, and the snow around them swirling in unexpected illuminated bursts. "So…?"
"So we're on track for Great Falls. I just wish there was a way around the thundersnow." She banked the plane away from the lightning ahead. They immediately hit another air pocket and bounced, causing her to swear, but not with alarm, just irritation. Colton's chimera meeped again, and he had a hard time not echoing it. It was less worrying to be the person in charge of the flight, when bumps like these were felt.
"We're not far from the edge of the mountain range," Jo muttered. "Once we get past the updraft and out over the flats it should smooth out. Sorry about this."
"Definitely not your fault," Colton said. "Kind of mine, in fact."
She tossed him a brief smile. "Not unless you're some kind of weather god."
Colton could feel his chimera trying to decide whether being able to fly made it some kind of weather god, and said, No, much to its disappointment. Aloud, but not worried, he said, "Believe me, if I was a weather god, I would put this fancy light show way out of striking distance—"
And that was as far as he got before lightning struck the plane.
CHAPTER FOUR
Somewhere in the chaos of making sure they didn't die, Jo kept thinking, I just said this never happens, as if that would make lightning un-strike the Cessna and keep the propeller turning.
There were a lot of other thoughts going on, too, all of them much more urgent: trying to restart the prop, trying to keep the plane level, which was nearly impossible with no power and the winds they'd run into, trying to think of what she knew about the terrain they were almost certainly going down in, trying to see through the blowing snow and clouds, wondering how far they'd be blown off course in the time it took to crash land, hoping for a glimpse of a mountainside meadow she could bellyflop the plane into. But interspersed with that was just outrage: this almost never happened. Not to small planes. Lots of things did happen to small planes, sure, yes, but not lightning strikes.
Apparently the gods of small planes and lightning strikes hadn't gotten the memo today.
They broke through the clouds, and the fact that it was still daylight down there almost surprised Jo. She'd known it was, obviously, but the thunderous grey snow clouds had kind of become her entire focus, and she'd forgotten that they'd left at eleven-thirty in the morning.
Daylight and not snowing would have been a lot more helpful, but even daylight and snow was enough to tell her that there was not a convenient meadow anywhere. Just trees and mountainside. Jo whispered, "Dammit," and then cursed again as yet another attempt to restart the prop simply failed. She tried to keep her voice calm for the next part, though: "I think we're going down, Colton. I'm sorry."
She dared a glance at him and found, to her surprise, that he didn't look frightened. That was something: she was scared as hell.
"Can you land without killing us?" he asked rather thoughtfully, all things considered.
"I'll put it down in the trees but it's going to be hoping for the best."
"Then I have a solution," he said, still thoughtfully. Calmly, even. "You're going to have to trust me completely, though. How much time do we have?"
"Three minutes. Maybe four."
"That's plenty of time," Colton said. "Grab whatever gear you think we'll need on the ground. We're going out the door."
A protest broke from Jo's throat. "I can't just trash my plane! Do you know how much these things cost? I have to at least try!"
He gave her a very quick smile. "That's your concern? I say we're going out the door and you're worried about crashing the plane?"
"I haven't gotten to the part where we don't have parachutes or the height we need for them anyway!"
"What am I saying," Colton breathed, unbuckling his seat belt. "You fly. I'll get the cold weather gear."
"You buckle right back in right now, mister!"
"I'll help you pay for a new plane," he called over his shoulder as he crawled into the back. "I figure I'll owe you at least that much. But I'm going out the door in ninety seconds."
Jo let go a string of curses the likes of which she pretended she had never heard, and did her damned best to keep the plane level while Colton climbed around getting a variety of cold weather gear. She tried the radio twice in that time, but it was fried, along with most of the other electronics. It felt like forever before Colton squeezed his way back into the cockpit, now laden with a remarkable number of bags which made squeezed back in the operative term. Jo couldn't help staring at him. Glaring, maybe. "What are you doing with those?"
"Honestly, I'm not quite sure what's going to happen. I've never tried this with this much stuff before. Jo," he said more urgently as the wind caught them and nearly flipped the plane, "I can get us out of this alive, if you trust me. Do you?"
That was a ridiculous question to ask somebody he'd known for about an hour, Jo thought. You could like somebody in an hour. You could think they were hot, as Colton Drew undeniably was. But trust? Trust took time, or was an active choice that she wasn't sure could exactly be called trust.
And yet, looking at Colton's dark eyes and serious face, Jo knew that for some reason, she trusted Colton completely. Literally with her life, as it turned out. She nodded, and a huge smile of relief flashed across his face. "Thank God. Okay. I need you to unbuckle and put your arms around my neck." He turned away from her, so she could grab on from behind, in between the various bags he was carrying. When she had, he turned his head back toward her a little. She could almost see the corner of his mouth crooking in a smile, but she was so close, it was hard to.
He did smell good, just like she'd imagined he would, back at the airport. He smelled wonderful. Which was probably not what she needed to be thinking just then, seconds before they were apparently going to throw themselves out of a perfectly good airplane without a parachute.
Except the airplane wasn't perfectly good: the engines wouldn't start again, the propeller wouldn't catch, and the trees were starting to come up very fast now. "This is going to get very, very weird," Colton said in that same strangely calm voice. "I need you to hold on no matter what, because I won't be able to catch you again if you don't. Okay? Can you do that for me?"
Jo croaked, "Yeah. Yeah, I promise. I'll hold on. Let's do this before I lose my nerve."
"Good plan." Colton shoved the door open against the howling wind and threw himself, with Jo attached, out into the blowing snow.
The plane soared along past them, speeding on its original trajectory toward the trees. Jo swallowed a scream, aware that her mouth was right next to Colton's ear. It was so cold, and they were so high up, and she was, Jo realized, about to die.
Then Colton Drew changed in her arms, and all of a sudden she was hanging onto the neck of a huge beast whose wings snapped out, catching the updrafts, and banked away from the crashing plane toward safety.
Jo screamed after all.
She didn't let go, which she thought took considerable aplomb, because Colton's—Colton's?—neck was at least three times as big around as it had been, and also very furry. Hairy. She wasn't sure whether a mane was furry or hairy. Either way, her face was full of mane and Colton's neck was much bigger and somehow she managed to think those things while fall-gliding through the air and screaming like a screaming thing.
After what seemed like both a very long time and not very long at all, she stopped screaming, partly because her throat was getting sore and cold, and partly because they weren't really falling. They weren't flying, either, but they definitely weren't falling, and that made it somewhat less terrifying.
No less confusing, but less terrifying.
The controlled descent took them through buffeting winds and blinding snow, over treetops in wobbling circles. Tears leaked from Jo's eyes because of the cold and wind, but she didn't dare let go to wipe them away. Instead she buried her face in Colton's mane—in Colton's mane?!?—and waited to land.
The plane crashed before they did, a huge breaking explosive sound that made Jo jerk her head up again. Fire and smoke billowed in the distance, and she wailed at the loss of her livelihood. She could have brought the plane down more smoothly. Probably. Probably, she thought again, and hid her face again as they glided closer to the earth.
A few second later Colton landed. Jo's eyes opened at the gentle impact, and opened wider as Colton opened his mouth in a huge roar of protest as the snow gave way and he sank to his chest. Jo fell off his back, which was harder than it sounded: it turned out that wings on four-legged animals were not conveniently placed for dismounting. She managed anyway, sank into the snow herself, then lurched to her feet as Colton sprang away with light, leonine grace, and landed chest-deep in the snow again. He turned to face her, shaking snow away, then sat, wings folded neatly, and his brown gaze obviously worried as he met her eyes.
Jo swayed, staring across the tiny clearing at him. The very tiny clearing: a big…winged-cat-thing with extremely fancy horns…could land in it with room to spare, but there was no way she could have brought the plane down in it, even if she'd seen it. She wrenched her gaze away from Colton and looked up the mountain: smoke still billowed up there, but the fire seemed to have already gone out, thanks to the heavy snow covering everything and the way it was still coming down. They'd landed quite a long way from the crash site, and she wouldn't know until the weather cleared whether there would have been any chance of finding a mountainside meadow she might have landed semi-safely in. She doubted it, though. Especially in the time they had, in the weather, in…everything. Which meant…
Her gaze flinched back to Colton. Back to the big, big, very big actually, winged-cat-thing with fancy horns. Horse-sized. He had a lion's face which was at least at the height of Jo's own, and she was not a short woman. Quite a regal lion face, really. His whole front was very lion-y, down to his feet. Except he had the most magnificent horns, like a Dall sheep, ridged and curving backward over his pale blond mane. They were ivory, the shadows in them dark gold. And behind them were…wings. Leathery bat-wing type wings of pale gold, just like the fur of his body was. Deadly claws at the wingtips were the same color as his horns. He was altogether fantastic, and altogether impossible.
Jo wet her lips, and hoarsely, said, "You saved my life. Thank you. I…what?"
Colton—it had to be Colton, she'd been hanging on to him when he changed into that, but it was also hard to imagine it was Colton—Colton exhaled heavily, like he'd been waiting for her to finish examining him, and changed back into an incredibly attractive human man carrying five bags of cold weather stuff. He took a breath, obviously preparing to explain, and Jo said, "Wait!"
Colton froze, eyes wide and questioning.
"Change back."
Colton looked left and right, just with his eyes, and then, without asking why, changed back into the lion-bat-thing.
The cold weather gear he was carrying disappeared.
Jo stared. "Again."
The lion-bat-thing did the same left-to-right examination of the world, then turned back into Colton.
Carrying five bags of gear.
Jo thrust a finger at the bags. "Where did they go?"
Colton froze again, then cautiously spread his arms and looked down at himself before huffing a quiet, relieved, "Oh. It worked. Thank God. I wasn't sure I could carry all that."
"How could you not carry it, you're huge! But where did they go?"
"They…things I'm…carrying, or rather, wearing…shift with me. Usually. Just. I wasn't sure that much would. Usually it's just…my clothes…" Colton sounded unbelievably nervous and somewhat embarrassed, although Jo wasn't sure what he had to be embarrassed about. Nervous, though, that made sense, because he clearly had a great whacking huge secret that he'd just been forced to reveal to her, and he was probably worried she would murder him or turn him over to the authorities for dissection or something.
"I'm not going to murder you or turn you over to the authorities for dissection or something," she said a bit wildly. "I mean I don't see how I could anyway, you're a giant cat-lizard thing with wings and you'd just bite my head off if I tried but I'm not going to so it's okay?"
"A chimera. And I wouldn't. But thank you." Colton still sounded nervous, but also amused and relieved, now.
"You were carrying me," Jo said, her voice rising now. "I didn't change into…you." Her eyes widened. "Oh my God. Did I? I don't think I did. Did I get absorbed?"
"No! No, God, no! No! Clothes! Glasses! Bags! Hats! Not other people or animals or living things! Just—stuff."
Jo briefly but seriously considered fainting, but it was a snowstorm and a crash site and there was no fainting couch around, so she settled for swaying a little. "Okay. Okay, good, because that would have been a bit much. Too much. A chimera? Is that even real?"
A little silence followed, broken only by the soft muffled hush of snow falling on snow. Then Jo cleared her throat. "I mean…aren't chimeras mythological?"
The same little silence followed, although the corners of Colton's mouth were twitching now. "So the question here isn't 'how can you turn into an animal' but 'is that animal even a real thing?' That's better than I hoped for, honestly."
"Well, you—I—" Jo waved her hands in the air. "I can see it's all real! I just! You know! Chimeras!"
"Are even more unlikely than shifters in general? I can understand that, yes." He lost the fight to keep his smile tamped down, and grinned at her across the little clearing. "There aren't a lot of us. Mythological shifters, I mean."
"Are there a lot of shifters?"
"More than you'd think." Colton glanced around, then looked back at her, still smiling. "We can talk about it as we—what? Walk out of here? Wait for help? What's the plan? I've never been lost in a plane crash before."
"Neither have I," Jo said tartly as she dug her phone out of an interior pocket. It told her what she expected it to, and she held it up to show Colton. "No bars. Coverage out here isn't great, so I'm not surprised."
He nodded, and she took a breath, looking back up the mountain toward the wreck. "There's not going to be a search team until after the weather's cleared. My last landmark was Broken Tooth. Big mountain. Jagged like a broken tooth," she explained. "But that was before the thundersnow, so we're…we're probably right on the edge of Cascade County, by now. I live in Cascade, for God's sake. If it was clear, I'd recognize where we are. Dammit! I'm sorry. This shouldn't have happened."
"If it was clear," Colton said gently, "it wouldn't have happened. You said thundersnow is rare, and lightning almost never strikes small planes. It was a freak accident, Jo. I don't blame you at all."
"I don't know why," Jo said furiously. "I certainly do."
Colton looked at her a long moment, then waded across the snow, and, to Jo's complete surprise, enfolded her in his arms.
CHAPTER FIVE
For a heartbeat, Colton thought he'd made a terrible mistake. One of several, starting with revealing himself as a shifter, although he hadn't seen a way out of that, and Jo Talbott seemed to be adapting to it pretty well, all things considered. But she stiffened when he drew her into a hug, and he thought maybe he'd pushed it much too far on so little acquaintance.
Only then, after the space of a breath, she shuddered and put her arms around him in turn, hanging on hard. Even in the cold and wind, she felt warm as she clung to him, although she let go after a minute and stepped back, breathing erratically. "This isn't the time for blame games anyway," she said with an obvious effort to steady her voice. "We need to find shelter, and on one hand, it's probably smart to stay near the crash site because it's biggish, but on the other, it's still snowing and if it keeps up the site could get pretty well buried. And on the third hand we could be just a few miles from a road anywa—oh!" Her eyes widened. "Can you, I don't know, fly out and see?"
