Monster (Gone 7)

Shade ran straight at the disaster. She ducked beneath a stumpy, turning rotor, leaped atop a crumbling wall, paused for a millisecond to aim, and threw herself through the air. She landed hard against the nearside door of the helicopter, hands scrabbling for purchase, one foot finding a skid, fingers finding the door handle.

She yanked the door open, swung into the helicopter’s cockpit, started to grab the pilot, saw he was still buckled in, and unsnapped the seat belt as the glass bubble of the cockpit smashed into crumbling brick. Masonry was pushing its way through the glass. In a heartbeat the pilot would be dead.

“Hang on!” she yelled at morph-normal speed, which of course the pilot could not possibly understand.

Shade grabbed the pilot by his jacket with one hand, grabbed the doorjamb with the other, and shoved off blindly, backward. The pilot flew out of his seat even as Shade saw a wooden beam pierce the glass. The beam was driven so hard into the pilot’s seat that it pushed all the way through, tearing stuffing and springs out of the back.

But the pilot, like Shade, was flying backward through the air.

The fall was at normal speed, so Shade had time to wrap her arms around the pilot and twist in midair to take all the impact on her back. She hoped she was strong enough to take it.

W-h-h-u-u-u-m-m-m-p-h-h-h!

The landing seemed to take forever, but that did not lessen its impact. She had fallen only twenty feet, perhaps, but still the wind exploded from her chest and she lay dazed for a long while—perhaps three seconds in real time—before she could suck in air. The pilot lay on his back atop her. She rolled him away. He was dazed but breathing.

Hell yes: superhero! Shade thought.

“Are. You. All right?” she asked, noticing that she had ripped his jacket to shreds.

The pilot was not in the mood for conversation. He was more in the mood for incoherent, babbling terror.

A pillar of dust and smoke rose from the crashing helicopter, and then something Shade almost did not recognize: the sound of an explosion, a single loud Bam!, and then a protracted roar as fuel ignited.

A piece of steel flew like a scythe toward the stunned pilot. Shade snatched it out of the air.

In the meantime one of the CHP had turned and run in pure animal panic. The other one was emptying his reloaded pistol at Knightmare, but the creature barely noticed him.

Shade glanced left and saw more CHP lights coming. But what were they going to do that these doomed patrolmen had not already tried?

For only the second time in her life, Shade was suddenly, and without training or preparation, on the verge of an actual, physical fight. And Knightmare was many times more dangerous than the vandals in the cemetery.

“I really wish I prayed, because now would be a good time,” Shade buzzed.

Shade retrieved her castoff barbed wire and launched herself at Knightmare. She loosely tied one end of the barbed wire around one leg, then ran in a tight circle, looping the wire five times around Knightmare’s legs before she bounded away to a safe distance.

Knightmare tried a step. She could actually watch the dull emotion form on his face, the puzzlement, the worry, the frustration, the fear, as he fell, tripped by the wire.

He would break free in seconds, but for Shade a few seconds was a long time. Long enough for her to snatch the pistol from the patrolman’s hand just as he’d slammed in a fresh clip. There was no time for her to register the fact that she had never held a gun in her life before this moment. She ran, bounding, and leaped atop the downed monster. She aimed the gun at his right eye and . . .

Blam!

This time it was her bullet she watched. It was her bullet that flew harmlessly past Knightmare’s eye.

“Damn!”

She jumped closer to the eye, which was slowly focusing, dark circles within still-darker circles. From a distance of three feet she fired again. This time the copper-jacketed slug plowed into the eye. It dimpled the surface, like a marble dropped on Jell-O, but then the Jell-O exploded outward, the vitreous black goo displaced by the bullet entering the membrane.

It was like watching a water balloon filled with ink explode in slow motion.

Shade jumped clear and now the Dark Watchers seemed almost to be singing, but in discordant tones, as though disagreeing with themselves. The attention was intense, distracting. She panted hard, limbs all leaden, heart pounding like it was trying to break through concrete. The exhaustion was utter and it gutted her. For a moment she could only stand as her head swam and her stomach wanted urgently to be sick.

Knightmare snapped the barbed wire easily, just so much thread to him. He roared in pain, roared and clapped his claw hand over his face, roared and swung his sword around, trying to hit his nearly invisible foe.

Shade had hurt him, but not fatally, not by a long shot. One eye was a black stain, but the other one still worked.

Justin DeVeere might be a violent psychopath, but he was no fool. With a quickness of mind that worried Shade, Knightmare saw his best shot. He turned and bounded away, each stride carrying him two dozen feet, straight toward the lighthouse.

The lighthouse was on a small man-made hill. A set of stone steps led up to a surprisingly grand porticoed entryway and a narrow door through which Knightmare barely squeezed sideways.