And less than a meter behind her, a huddled monster that, at any moment, might decide in its alien brain to leap up and crush her to death between those mighty jaws.

If I die out here . . .

No one would care. No one would race immediately to her aid.

Why didn’t I bring Clarice?

Call that laughable. Her servant might be trained in close quarters combat, talented when it came to disarming an assailant or breaking a person’s neck. What use were those skills against a quetzal?

Falise fought a shiver, closed her eyes, feeling sick to her stomach. She didn’t dare glance over her shoulder at the huddled quetzal, suffering instead to believe that if she ignored it, it might ignore her.

“Coming to the conclusion you made the wrong decision?” Kylee asked where she stood at the wheel, piloting them over a tree-thick mesa that rose tall above the forest. They were skirting tree-clad mountains that gave the timbered heights a rugged look.

“What makes you think that?” Falise ground her teeth, irritated by her fear and Kylee’s apparent ability to read her despair.

“Those pheromones you guys use really give you away.”

“Most humans can’t smell them. Let me guess. TriNA?”

“Yeah, and every muscle in your body is quivering. You’re pretty good with the expressions, but you’re leaking fear.”

“Wonderful.” Falise took a deep breath. “What happens if we have a power failure? Have to land in these trees?”

“We do our best to drop down through the branches, causing the least amount of disturbance. Once we set down on the roots, we grab our shit, fling the door open, and get as far from the truck as we can.” Kylee pointed at the mountain they were skimming past. “We head for the slopes. Climb for the high ground. Look for outcrops of rock.”

“That doesn’t sound so bad.”

Kylee gave her a look. “Then you don’t have the first clue. The roots are going to engulf the airtruck and crush it. We’re going to be climbing over a squirming mass of them. One wrong foothold, a missed sidewinder, slug, or bunch of brown caps, not to mention a flock of mobbers, and we’re dead. And this is treetop terror range. Like the one that got Mom and Mark. And there’s other things, different predators we’ve never seen but that I know.” She tapped the side of her head. “Quetzal memory. Our only real hope is Flute.”

“How’s that?” Falise dared a wary glance back at the cowering quetzal. Yellow and black patterns were running like a broken movie across its hide, and those tightly clamped eyes hinted of terror.