THE JOURNEY BACK TO the portal between worlds was brief compared to the long, winding car ride from the farmhouse.
Human roads seemed to be full of traffic and pointless diversions. The sky, in comparison, was a vast and mostly empty expanse that we were able to traverse quickly. Our only company was the strange metallic machines covered with blinking lights—the humans’ airplanes. Because we were carrying human women, we had to fly far lower than those airplanes, instead of high above them where we would normally choose to travel.
At the altitudes Lucian, Stavrok and I normally flew, these women would not be able to breathe.
It made things slightly trickier on the way back to the portal. We had to fly extra-fast, to avoid detection from the humans below us and ensure that anyone seeing
