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TOO LATE, JAZZ realized she could have avoided the deep plunge into the frigid swirling stream. She could have hovered before she broke water.
However, suddenly she found herself caught up in a human moment.
As the rushing stream pulled her along, she found herself tossed and flung about. She hit a few smooth, algae-covered rocks as the raging river took her downstream.
The current was strong, and she was temporarily confused; however, as the water’s force began to ebb and she felt the current’s pull lighten up, she realized she could jump shift out of the river and find some dry land.
She swam for a few moments as she tried to regain her senses and saw a grassy slope up ahead. With something of an effort, she jump shifted, landed on her butt, and stayed there as she recovered from the experience.
She knew that she had, somewhere in her new mind, the skill to blink her clothes and shoes dry, but just as she tried concentrating on this, something else caught her attention.
She cocked her head as she watched the water in the middle of the narrow river begin to part. “Huh,” she said out loud.
She froze in place for a fraction of a minute as she watched a red, horny, glaring thing that looked much like a prehistoric creature rise partially out of the river. Then she saw the little arms and then the talons—it was an oversized prehistoric raptor!
Its pin-like eyes took a sweeping gaze of the surroundings. Those eyes were cold, and suddenly its gaze was directly on her. It was as though it smelled her presence. It was as though she could hear its tiny brain say ‘food’, just as she watched it take a flying leap.
It was no more than ten feet from her.
She didn’t wait for more; she jump shifted.
However, in her panic, she did not calculate where she was jumping to, and she hit a tree with a force that left her on her butt.
At her back, she could hear its thunderous clumping over brush and small trees, so she jump shifted again. It still came at her. She wasn’t getting far enough away!
Okay, she told herself, hover—hover high!
She was pleased with herself when she accomplished this and found that she was well out of its reach. Then a swooshing sound through the tree tops caught her attention.
The next thing she knew, she was dangling in the air, flying, held in the talons of what looked like a prehistoric and a hairless vulture the size of a Cessna plane!
“So not good,” she told no one in particular.
Chapter One
AN ASSORTMENT OF things could bubble up in one’s mind as one dangles from the talons of a prehistoric and flesh eating, Pterodactyl-like creature.
Oddly enough Jazmine Decker looked down at what was a lush green landscape and said, “The universe is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.” This quote by Eden Phillpotts was one that her mother had been fond of. What she actually heard in her head, and made her center her concentration on, was the fact that she was now quite capable of saving herself.
She may be in the talons of a giant flying beast, but her Trevor had taught her the skills to escape.
She could see that the landscape was changing faster than she could take it all in. She would have to make a decision fast. Yup, time to leave.
She shifted out of the sharp talons and just before she landed in the thick of the green mass of tall wheat grass below, she hovered with a smile on her face as she gave herself a pat on the back.
The feeling of accomplishment however, was short lived as an Anaconda lifted itself high and slithered through the air to come face to face with her.
Screaming was her first reaction. The entire jungle vibrated with the scream that came out of her mouth.
Her next and instinctive reaction was to lift off and hover higher—much higher off the ground. “Never going to touch that land down there again,” she told herself out loud, and once again attempted to mind link with Trevor.
Nothing.
Jazz remembered the pendant around her neck. It had to work. It had worked in the year 1816, so why wouldn’t it work now?
Hovering well above the huge anaconda that had not given up on her and had curled into a coil ready to spring, she took the pendant in her hand and murmured the ancient spell that had been handed down from mother to daughter.
She waited and then a swirl of black mist opened up onto a bright yellow aura and as suddenly as it had arrived, it was gone.
She thought she heard the Queen’s voice whisper just before the aura vanished, “…be patient.”
She couldn’t be sure it was her voice, and frowned with frustration. “What is the good in having this charm if you can’t get through to help me?” She asked the Queen, but she did not receive a reply. She shook her head and sighed heavily.
She was going to have to shift again and again, until she could find a place to set down and shield herself.
However, suddenly a strong swish of wind blasted over her, and once again she found herself dangling from a determined Pterodactyl’s talons.
