Enjoy an Exclusive Excerpt from...

RIDING HER DRAGONS

What is that?

Monica narrowed her eyes at a patch of blue sky that appeared...what was it? More solid? But why? How could that be? How did the sky get thicker?

Continuing to stare, she kept her attention locked on the area of darker blue. Was it moving? She followed its movement and noticed something else. The patch of darker blue shimmered.

The sky's shimmering?

She'd never seen anything like it. Slowly, she pulled the camera out of her pack and brought it up, her gaze searching the sky through the viewfinder. More than likely, nothing unusual would show up on the photograph, but as she'd learned early on in her self-taught photography lessons, seeing the object through the viewfinder could be a lot different than what she'd see on the uploaded jpeg file once it was loaded onto a computer. She'd had more than one surprise-good and bad-after checking out a photo with software.

Her focus stayed squarely on the shimmering sky. Click after click. Photo after photo. She took one step forward and then another. And another.

Suddenly, the shimmering moved so quickly that she couldn't pan the camera with it. Yet how could sky move? "Damn." She turned, her full concentration on the sky, intent on staying up with the shimmers.

Was it a UFO? Or had the sun gotten to her without being hot?

She took another step and turned at the same time. In the next instant, her heart lurched into her throat as she realized her mistake. Her body wavered, teetering over the edge.

Oh God.

Gripping her camera to her chest, she fell over the edge of the cliff.

I'm going to die.

Thoughts of her mother and her brother flashed through her mind. Sadness overwhelmed her as she stared at the sky. Any second now, her body would slam against the rocks below, bones broken and blood flowing out of her.

The stones of the cliff as well as the greenery growing out of the side of the rock wall rushed past her. She saw a crooked branch that stuck out from the cliff's wall, its gnarled limb reaching leafless fingers toward the sky. Seconds felt more like minutes, delaying the inevitable.

Suddenly, her breath was knocked out of her when a hard force wrapped around her body and roughly stopped her descent. She sucked in a breath as the vise around her tightened. Clutching the camera, she couldn't react, couldn't move. Instead, she watched, her mind not really working, as her body was lifted higher, past the stone and greenery, past the gnarled branch.

I'm going upward.

She couldn't comprehend what was happening. Couldn't imagine how her body was defying gravity. The iron grip around her supported her torso as her legs dangled out of its hold.

Before reason could return, whatever had her in its clutches brought her back over the cliff's edge and gently lowered her to the ground. She lay on her back, her camera still held against her chest, all but forgotten, her breaths coming in short pants, her heart racing, and her pulse pounding in her ears.

The air above her still shimmered. Now that it was closer, it was much larger, the width of it stunning her. Whatever had wrapped itself around her loosened its hold on her.

She let out a huge breath as her mind struggled to comprehend what had happened. "What's going on?" she whispered as much to the shimmer as to herself.

Did she hear something? A low chuckle? Yet it had sounded like a growl, too.

Then she saw it. The shimmer that had darkened the sky grew even more solid. For only a moment, too short a time for her to be sure, she saw the outline of... something.

Yet what she'd seen didn't make any sense. What she'd seen couldn't possibly exist. She had to be hysterical, in shock. Yet she knew in her heart that what she'd seen was real.

"A dragon?" This whisper was even softer than the previous one.

The moment passed all too quickly. In the next second, the dragon, then the shimmer, was gone.

She lay on the ground for several minutes, unable to coax her trembling legs and arms to work. Rational thought warred with the sight her eyes demanded she'd seen. Questions and thoughts whirled as she tried to understand.

Dragons don't exist.

But it was a dragon. I saw it.

Click HERE to get your copy.
(Purchases from Bookstrand.com can be downloaded to Kindle.)

Did you miss the first five Dragon Love books? Click HERE.