“The creature that killed Mom and Mark,” Kylee said.

“The treetop terror.” Vartan unconsciously took a step back from the rim.

“Or one just like him,” Kylee announced.

“What’s that mean?” Falise asked, unsure what a treetop terror was.

“Means we’d better be about finding that downed shuttle.” Kylee told her. To Vartan and Shyanne, she said, “Thanks for the help. But my advice? Until Dek and I can get back with the airplane? You might want to steer clear of the forest.”

“Yeah,” Vartan told her. “That thing took enough of us last time it was around. Meanwhile, keep in touch. We’ve got the radio back on PA’s frequency. I’ll let Two Spot know that you’ve got a lead on the shuttle and which way you’re heading.” He paused. “Kylee? If you get into trouble out there, there’s not much we can do to help you.”

“Yeah, I know.” The girl’s gaze was fixed on the distant treetops, their image hazy and wavering in the growing heat.

“Come on,” Kylee told Falise, turning, as if physically tearing her gaze away from the forest off to the east. “Let’s go see if we can find your general before he’s skewered and pulled up into the trees.”

“Skewered?” Falise tried to keep pace with Kylee as the girl’s long legs ate the distance between them and the airtruck. Flute was trotting beside them, and to Falise’s amazement, kept rotating one eye to look back the way they’d come.

“Yeah, skewered, and then eaten.”

Chapter 52

  52  

Kylee flew the airtruck north, curving around the tree-covered slopes of the mountain. More precisely, it was an old volcano, one of the many that had followed in the wake of the asteroid’s impact way back when. Eons of weathering and erosion, not to mention the constant conflict between the trees, had worn the cone down, left a rounded and humped massif covered with varying depths of forest depending upon the thickness of the soil mantle.

Falise kept a hand on the crash bar in the dash, watching flocks of colorful four-winged creatures as they rose above and then dove back down into the canopy. Scarlet fliers, Kylee had called them. And then there were larger flying things that at first hearkened back to pictures she’d seen of pterodactyls. Until she got a good look at them. Call them flying tetrahedrons? No, that didn’t work either.

She glanced back. Flute had once again curled himself into a ball, eyes closed hard, the fear colors and patterns back. Seeing the big quetzal so vulnerable almost made it sympathetic. Almost.

Falise noted, “Was it just me, or is there some underlying tension between you and the cannibals?”