Total pages in book: 109
Estimated words: 101379 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 507(@200wpm)___ 406(@250wpm)___ 338(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 101379 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 507(@200wpm)___ 406(@250wpm)___ 338(@300wpm)
Vasily sat up from the couch and joined him in a good glower. “Unbunch your panties and get over here. It’s not that bad.” Vasily turned his attention back to Luka and flashed him a grin. “We can narrow the area. Move the bottom line up. I don’t think we were as far west as Peru or Ecuador.”
Snatching up the pen again, he erased the first line and redrew it so it hugged Colombia’s most western border.
“For the other line, move it west. Drop French Guiana and Suriname. No! Get rid of Guyana, too.”
Luka followed his instructions, redrawing the second line to make a smaller cone.
Oh, that was much better. The flight path had narrowed to a large chunk of Brazil, Colombia, and Venezuela.
Dimitri huffed and dropped onto the sofa near Vasily. One booted foot thunked on the coffee table in front of him that was littered with magazines and wads of crumpled paper. “Okay, that’s better. Sort of.”
“What do you mean ‘sort of’?” Luka snapped. He shoved out of the rolling desk chair and marched over to stand near the TV screen with his hands on his hips. “That’s way more manageable.”
“Except for the fact that ninety percent of that is fucking rainforest!” Dimitri waved one hand at the map. “A flyover is only going to get us the lakes we can see that aren’t covered by the canopy. The only way we’re going to catch the hidden one is to go in on foot. It’s a lot of area to cover. Not to mention the magical creatures that call the rainforest home. I’d rather not stir up a bunch of boitatas and stompers if we can help it.”
Okay, so maybe that was a good point. The magical population near the Sousa Clan had gotten accustomed to dragons moving through the area. He wasn’t looking to disturb everything within the Amazon. That only drove them into the human populations and caused no end of problems.
“Do you remember anything else?” Dimitri asked.
Vasily glared at the screen while Luka swallowed down a sigh, wishing he could be of more help. But even after listening to Vasily describe the dream, he couldn’t recall a single fragment from his own. Things the dragon said sounded familiar, but he had nothing new to add.
“Not really. It was a weird sensation. I was flying in my human form. Everything was moving so fast, and it was so green below me, but I couldn’t tell how fast I was traveling or how far we’d gone.”
Dimitri grunted. “Because you’re not accustomed to flying as a human. Or maybe because dreams tend to warp things.”
Footsteps echoed down the hall a second before Sam popped into the tracker meeting room, a furrow already drawing his eyebrows together as his eyes swept over the three of them and then stuck on the map. A map that had his discovery in a big red circle.
“Do I even want to know what’s going on?” the archaeologist demanded as he pushed his glasses up on his nose. From the look of it, he had just stepped out of the shower, his brown hair still damp.
Dimitri tipped his head toward Sam and called out, “Vasily and Luka’s dreams are being haunted by the same guy who says they have to find him to save him.”
“He’s not haunting us. He’s not a ghost. I don’t know,” Vasily grumbled. “The man is trapped somewhere and he’s been appearing in our dreams for the past several months.”
Sam stared at Vasily for a second and then directed his gaze at Luka, one brow lifted in question.
Luka shrugged. “I don’t remember my dreams, but I talk in my sleep. The stuff Vasily describes from his dreams sounds familiar.”
“And we’re sure this isn’t, like, an evil mage trying to get you to free him from imprisonment?”
That got Dimitri to sit up and completely twist around on the couch. “What the…Have you been hanging out with Nikki again? That sounds like a very Nikki thing to ask.”
Crossing his arms, Sam sniffed and gave a one-shouldered shrug. “A little. A bunch of the mages got together last night to welcome the Burkhard mages who’d just arrived. Nikki was telling stories about their time with the old Jaeggi Clan.”
Nikki was…interesting. They were a bubble of bright energy, but they should also come with a warning that things tended to explode around them. Frequently.
Vasily pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. “No, this isn’t some rogue mage or dragon or whatever telling lies. It’s a man. A handsome man who looks to be in his thirties with shaggy, longish brown hair and warm chestnut brown eyes. A nice voice too. Friendly and inviting.”
“Excuse me? Is there anything else going on in these dreams besides a little flying?” Luka demanded.
Vasily could tell Luka was teasing, so he gave it right back. “You mean to tell me you didn’t get to go skinny dipping with him in your dream? Is he flirting with you too?”