the yoke” and let Cessna’s version of a steering wheel go.
Ian grabbed the yoke when Ashael closed his eyes and raised his hands. I didn’t have time to ask what he was doing before his power blasted out. My eardrums ruptured from the sudden, explosive pressure shift. Ian ground out a curse I could no longer hear as blood ran from his ears, too. Still his hands remained rock steady on the controls.
Light exploded ahead of us, flashing in simultaneous bursts of colors that looked like lightning coated in rainbows. A tunnel formed amidst the dazzling display, showing a glimpse of something large and dark on the other side. Ashael opened his eyes and grabbed the controls from Ian with one hand. The other was still aloft, pouring more power into the tunnel/temporal anomaly/whatever it was. Then he steered us right into the circular kaleidoscope.
The small plane shook so hard, the metal sounded like it was screaming. I was tempted to scream, too. The plane couldn’t take more of this without coming apart. I had to clutch Silver to keep him from hitting the roof from how violently we were thrown around. Still, my head bashed against the plane’s side panel until I saw and tasted blood.
Suddenly, the dazzling flashes of color ceased, revealing a calm sky with a moon casting silvery beams on the ocean and island beneath it. The island was almost entirely taken up by the tall, imposing mountain I’d glimpsed from the other side of the tunnel. The punishing turbulence stopped, too, but my sigh of relief turned into a gasp when Ashael pointed us right at the mountain and increased speed.
“You see the big mountain in front of us, don’t you?” Maybe he was temporarily blinded from all those flashing lights . . .
“Yes,” Ashael replied, proving my ears had healed enough to hear again.
“Then why are you aiming for it?” I demanded.
“No one likes a backseat driver,” was his airy response.
That was it. If we lived, I was committing fratricide—
We passed through the mountain instead of smashing into it. That’s when I realized it was glamour designed to stop anyone from seeing the real island. A glance out the window now revealed a generous stretch of beach, lots of trees, and several buildings I could only glimpse before Ashael dropped the plane down and circled back, aiming for the beach.
I didn’t bother telling him sand was too soft to land on. For all I knew, it wasn’t sand at all. It was probably a runway glamoured to look like ordinary beach sand—
The plane landed hard, wheels ripping off right after tearing into the soft terrain that, yep, was sand, which I found out when it blasted through the broken windows while the plane was flipping end over end. Metal and glass also took turns pelting me, and I hit my head so hard, I was briefly knocked unconscious. When I came to, I was upside down, clutching Silver so tightly in my arms, he whimpered.
I let Silver go. He scrambled out of the nearest smashed-open window. The side door next to me suddenly tore free, revealing Ian. Blood dripped from multiple cuts as he bent to rip my seat belts off. He caught me before I fell out, ignoring my protests that I could walk. He refused to put me down until we were several meters from the smoking plane, which Ashael was now slowly crawling out of, too.
“This is your idea of her arriving here safely?” Ian asked in a blistering tone.
Ashael flicked a line of blood from his forehead once he was free from the wreckage. His cuts finished healing by the time he replied, “We’re all fine, are we not?”
With that, the plane caught fire. Ian gave it a pointed look before replying, “Oh, right as rain,” with scathing sarcasm.
Dammit, my luggage was about to burn! My head still rang from what had probably been a skull fracture, but I managed to pull a swath of water from the ocean and splash it onto the plane. The fire turned to smoke as the water doused the flames.
“Don’t!” Ashael said, sounding appalled.
“Salt water in the engine is the least of your concerns,” I replied, then stopped when all the water began streaming out of the plane and back into the ocean.
My eyes narrowed. Ashael wanted to play that game, huh? I pulled more water toward the plane, only to have it slam back down into the ocean so hard, it foamed.