Monster (Gone 7)

“Suspect vehicle is a light blue Mini Cooper, license plate two-golf-able-tare-one-two-three.”

“Okay, that’s straight down PCH. South. You want to go south,” Cruz said. “South! Not north, south!”

“Floor it,” Shade said. “The cops are too busy to write traffic tickets.”

“Yeah, and maybe the EMTs will be too busy to scrape our bodies up off the freeway.” But Malik accelerated anyway.

“You could run on ahead,” Cruz suggested.

Shade shook her head. “That run to pick up the radio? That about gutted me. And the Watchers were . . . The longer I’m morphed, the closer they feel.”

The purloined radio squawked. The fugitives in the Mini Cooper had run off the road as they tried to veer from the highway and presumably find cover in the lighthouse.

A CHP helicopter passed low over their heads, rotors tilted, moving at top speed. Behind them came the sound of sirens.

“Just a mile!” Cruz said nervously.

“Have you thought about how to beat him?” Malik asked.

“Now it occurs to you to ask? I’m fast and I’m strong and I don’t bruise easily, that’s all I’ve got,” Shade said, her voice pitching upward in excitement and fear.

Malik considered. Then, “You can use the car. This car!” He explained his idea in quick, terse sentences even as they spotted the lighthouse, a stubby cylinder atop low rocks against the gray-and-white Pacific. The land on both sides of the road was gently rolling, hay-colored grass on low hills to the left, hay-colored grass on flatter land to their right, the ocean side.

There was a sign warning of a curve and advising forty miles an hour. The CHP helicopter was circling, taking a wide turn from following the highway to following the access road leading out to the lighthouse. Two CHP cars were already tearing down that access road, with lights and sirens.

Shade figured the heavy guns were coming, the military-level response, but they weren’t here yet, just a distant Mini Cooper, two CHP cars, and a helicopter.

And me, Shade thought: the superhero.

CHAPTER 16

Shade vs. Knightmare

SHADE WAS ALREADY morphing as Malik sent the stolen SUV barreling after the CHP. “Let me out here,” she said in her eerie transformed voice.

Malik for once did not argue and hit the brakes. Shade was out and gone before the vehicle came to a stop, effortlessly leaping from a moving vehicle and feeling a rush of pure joy from that ability. It was a joy that lasted for a half second before the fear flooded back as the Dark Watchers made their presence known.

The access road was less than half a mile long, a heartbeat for Shade. Ahead was the lighthouse compound: a handful of one-story, red-roofed buildings, a network of trails, some windswept trees, an ancient water tower, and the tall, austere, white-painted lighthouse itself.

It was a savagely beautiful location, with waves crashing on rocks and the long sweep of the California coastline to the north and south. Three cars were parked neatly in front of the administrative buildings. The Mini was not so much parked as abandoned. Abandoned and then torn apart, like a steel egg from which a gigantic bird had hatched.

And there stood Knightmare.

A pretty blond woman cowered against the nearest wall and covered her head with pale, bruised arms.

The CHP cars advanced at what to Shade was a ludicrous crawl. The helicopter’s rotors were beating so slowly that Shade could see the individual blades. The woman—Erin O’Day was her name, Shade recalled—was screaming, but the sound was an eerie warble. The creature—Knightmare—stood with claw and sword spread wide in a gesture of defiance. He was massive, not quite twice Shade’s height, and wider still, measuring from sword tip to claw tip.

He tore apart the Golden Gate Bridge!

There was still time to turn around, run back to her friends. Save herself. She didn’t really have to do this, did she?

Run away, run away, live to fight another day.

It was the Dark Watchers! They didn’t want this fight. The malicious glee was gone, replaced by alarm. They feared what she might do.

They fear me!

This realization was like a bolt of steel added to her spine. Knightmare was a monster, a villain, a murderer. And the Watchers did not want him hurt.