Otherworld Challenger. Jane Godman

of his eye Jethro saw Vashti trade blow for blow, giving as good as she got. He felt an oddly proprietorial sense of pride in her. That was until she opened the passenger door. At that point any pleasure he might have taken in her accomplishments turned into instant fury.

      “What the hell are you doing?” She couldn’t hear him, of course. A series of expletives aimed in Vashti’s general direction burst from Jethro’s lips anyway. Somehow it made him feel better.

      A torrent of icy air rushed into the cabin. At the same time Vashti caught hold of Jethro’s arm, turning his attention to her. Hold me. She mouthed the words at him.

      “Are you out of your fucking mind?” Amorous encounters in midair might be an exciting proposition in some situations. Not this one.

      Even though she still couldn’t hear him, Vashti seemed to get the gist of that question. Shaking her head impatiently, she tugged at his arm again. Iago, doing what he did best, had given up on traditional methods and had begun to shift from human to animal form. Within seconds, in addition to the turbulent, swirling wind inside the cockpit, they had a snarling leopard. This would make a great story to recount to other pilots over a few beers. If he survived to tell it.

      His teeth already chattering wildly with the cold, Jethro grabbed Vashti’s upper body, hauling her close and pinning her to his side with one arm as he did his best to steer the plane with the other.

      Catching Iago unawares before the sorcerer had fully shifted, Vashti clung to Jethro’s arm as tightly as she could, using both feet to kick the snarling leopard toward the open passenger door. Predictably, the cat didn’t go without a fight. Gripping Vashti’s right calf with its claws, it was about to close its teeth on her ankle when she launched into another kick with her left foot. Pushing back against Jethro with all her strength, relying on him to keep hold of her, she caught the leopard full in the face. Releasing her with a guttural cry, there was nowhere for the cat to go except out the open door.

      Another kick from Vashti sealed its fate. As he began to free fall from the plane, Iago shifted briefly back into his own form. Swiftly, he changed again, stretching out his arms to become a soaring eagle. For a moment or two he flew ahead of the plane, then, wheeling nonchalantly away, he took a different course and disappeared from view.

      Moving out of Jethro’s hold, Vashti slowly altered position until she was slumped in the passenger seat. Her movements were weary and uncoordinated.

      Jethro wasn’t sure if the change in her manner was caused by cold, shock or the injury the leopard had inflicted on her leg. The priority had to be to try to get that door shut so he could find out. It was not going to be an easy task. His hands were numb on the controls, his facial muscles stiff with the effects of the glacial temperature. The frigid air was turning his labored breath to vapor in front of him. He couldn’t hear anything in his headphones and he doubted his own ability to speak coherently to air traffic control even if he was able to make contact. His brain was stubbornly refusing to process the information on the tracking system in front of him. There was no way he was capable of landing this bloody thing with neither his hands nor his brain working properly.

      How long did they have in these conditions? Jethro had no idea. He was flying as low as he safely could. There was still nowhere to land. His pilot’s training had covered a number of emergencies, but nothing like this. Stories of doors flying off or being deliberately damaged merged together in his befuddled mind. But his door was intact and still there. Flapping wildly, but firmly attached. He just had to find a way to get to it without letting go of the controls. If he could hook something around the door handle, maybe he could pull it closed. His whole life was a series of long shots. As shots went, this had to be one of the longest.

      Tapping Vashti on the shoulder to get her attention, he mimed what he wanted her to do. She stared back at him with wide, uncomprehending eyes. He tried again. Something flickered into life behind the blue blankness of her eyes. The sidhe ring of fire began to blaze brighter. Her gaze dropped to his waist. Then, to his relief, she nodded.

      At first it seemed Vashti’s fingers wouldn’t work as she tried to undo Jethro’s belt. With painstaking slowness, she managed to get the buckle open. Jethro lifted his hips up from his seat so that she could slide the belt out through the loops of his jeans. More agonizing minutes ticked away while Vashti struggled to make a loop in the end of the belt. Once she was done, she nodded at Jethro.

      Catching hold of her by the waistband of her pants with one hand while he once again flew the plane one-handed, he watched out the corner of his eye as she leaned as far out of the open plane doorway as she could get. The strain of holding on to her was almost too much for the numb muscles of Jethro’s right arm and, as Vashti angled out and tried to loop the belt around the door handle, he once or twice almost lost his grip on her. Finally, on the sixth attempt, she got the belt around the door handle and, battling against the wind, pulled it closed. Instantly the tornado that had been tearing through the cockpit died away.

      Slumping into her seat, Vashti picked up her headphones. “So—” her teeth were still chattering like castanets as her voice sounded in Jethro’s ear “—if flying is the safe option, tell me about a day in the life of a necromancer.”

      * * *

      The gouges in the flesh of Vashti’s right calf were deep and bloody. Her black jeans hung in ragged strips below the knee on that leg and she winced as Jethro swabbed the wounds with a sterile wipe.

      “Serves you right.” Now that they were safe on the ground, he seemed determined to fire a series of grim questions and allegations at her. “What the hell possessed you to open that door?”

      “I thought it would be fun.” From the scorching look of fury on his face as he glanced up from his task, Vashti gathered he was not in the mood for humor. She sighed. “I knew Iago was about to shift into something deadly. I was all that was stopping him getting to you. Opening the door and pushing him out seemed to be the only way to get rid of him.”

      Was it her imagination or did his expression soften ever so slightly? It was still stony, just perhaps not as granite-edged as it had been. “You were lucky he chose a leopard. You’d have lost this leg if he’d decided to become a tiger instead.”

      “I think his choice was dictated by the space available. He didn’t have room to shift into anything bigger.”

      They were still inside the plane. Jethro had insisted they weren’t going anywhere until he’d taken a look at her leg. Having cleaned up the scratches, he was now searching through the first-aid kit he kept on board the plane.

      “I need to put a temporary dressing on your leg. When we get to my house, I can take another look and decide if you need to see a doctor.”

      “I’m fine.” It felt strange to have those big, capable—surprisingly gentle—hands on her flesh.

      “You won’t be if these cuts get infected.”

      “How far are we from your house? Tell me we don’t need to do any more flying.”

      He grinned and she thought how much smiling suited him. It took that hard edge off his looks. She wanted to tell him to do it more often, then she remembered they didn’t have that sort of relationship. It was strange how sharing a plane journey with him and a leopard had made her forget that Jethro was almost a stranger. And an antagonistic one at that.

      He returned to his task, his fingers deft as they placed sterile dressing pads over her wounds and bandaged them in place. “No, just a motorbike ride followed by a short boat journey.”

      “Now I know why you were so angry about the distance from the portal to your home.” Vashti remembered Cal’s question—“Do you have to go home first?” And Jethro’s brusque response—“Yes.”

      She wanted to ask him more. Like, “Why, when time is so important, are we starting our journey here in Maine?” She suspected, since Cal, who was his friend, had gotten the almost-silent treatment, she wouldn’t fare any better. No doubt about it. The man was an enigma. “I didn’t realize it meant you had to travel from one end of the mortal realm