Discovery: Altera Realm Trilogy by Jennifer Collins Read Free Book Online

of the counter. He didn't seem as scary as tears fell from his eyes.
    Something slammed against the counter, bouncing Syney forward. She shrieked as the clerk ran like hell for the back room, and what Syney suspected was a back door. She felt her heartbeat pick up as she started to hyperventilate. The noises grew louder, so she covered her ears and closed her eyes. Something exerted pressure on her shoulder, and her eyes flew open. She slowly turned to see a long snake creeping onto her shoulder from the countertop. It flicked its long pink tongue toward her. Its long body was made up of red, black, and yellow stripes. Syney remembered something about those stripes being poisonous, or did they mean the snake wasn't poisonous? Ugh, she couldn't remember. The snake started toward her face. That was it for Syney; she needed to get out of there now. She quickly got to her feet, knocking the snake off, and ran for the back door, her fight-or-flight instincts finally kicking in.
    Once outside, she took off straight ahead, into a large wooded area, and kept running. After about ten minutes she slowed down to a walk, mostly because her lungs felt like they were about to explode. She bent over, catching her breath, and stumbled over a large rock. She sat down and looked around. The entrance to the woods was nowhere to be found. Just trees upon trees upon trees. She rolled her eyes and mentally kicked herself. She should have run for the road, although there hadn't been many cars there to begin with. Plus she had no idea what road they'd even been on. She felt tears well up in her eyes. This whole damn thing was a bad idea from the beginning. Going off with people she didn't know—and now there were people who turned into animals, and poisonous snakes out to get her! She was all alone, lost in the woods.
    "Hey, little girl. Where are you?" A faraway voice taunted with a sing-songy lilt. It was female but not Cass. The other girl from the store? So not a person Syney wanted to talk to.
    She heard a twig snap near her and then another. She was being stalked. She had to be quiet, she knew, but as the rustling and other movement around her picked up, she couldn't help it. Her mouth opened to scream just as she was tackled to the ground. Her scream was muffled by the wind being knocked out of her lungs. But everything was OK. All her worries floated straight out of her. She looked into the deep-brown eyes of the wolf and sighed in relief.
    The wolf growled deep in his throat and looked around. They both heard the girl's voice getting closer and stiffened. The wolf got off Syney, and a huge weight seemed to be lifted. She hadn't realized how incredibly heavy he was. Syney rolled onto her knees and stared at the wolf as he looked around, sniffing the air.
    Syney inched closer to him and whispered into his furry ear, "Should we stay here or move?"
    The wolf jerked around to look her in the eyes. He tilted his head to the side, a gesture Syney always had loved in dogs.
    She smiled. "You're the boss," she whispered.
    They both snapped their heads over to a noise in the woods, not too far from them. The wolf stood and nudged Syney. She quickly scrambled to her feet, and the two began to walk through the trees. The wolf stayed close to Syney the whole time, sniffing the air. The girl's voice sounded every so often, but it always sounded farther and farther away. Syney had just started letting her guard down when the wolf stopped, its ears perking up.
    "Do you hear something?" she asked, glancing around.
    A flash of black shot in front of her. The black panther. He must have been tracking them. Syney shrieked and jumped back, but the big elegant cat didn't want her...yet. Instead it tackled the wolf, going straight for its neck. The wolf,being bigger, tossed the panther to the side. The two creatures began to stalk each other, both baring their sharp teeth. Syney backed away from them but couldn't help watching intently.
    The panther finally