Monster (Gone 7)

Worse than his quickness was the simple fact of his size. She wasn’t going to stop him by stabbing at his ankles. She had to be able to inflict more damage than that. She had to be able to cripple or even kill the creature.

The shark Shade Darby supplied an answer: the eyes. She could try to blind it, just as she had destroyed one of Knightmare’s eyes. Unfortunately, this thing’s eyes were in a head that was now way, way up in the air.

A leap?

Could she make it? And could she land somewhere safe?

She backed up and took a run that quickly turned into great, bounding steps, like a high jumper approaching the bar, culminating in a leap.

It was like nothing she had done to this point. It was the next best thing to flying. But her first leap missed the head and instead landed her feet first against the massive chest, from which she could only rappel away, turning a neat somersault in the air before landing hard enough to knock the wind from her.

Shade lay stunned on the concrete, sucking for air that would not come. She glanced up just in time to see the devilish eyes focus on her, see her for the first time.

“You!” the monster roared. That single comprehensible syllable coming from the fire-breather was surprising. But then, in a voice that sounded huge and clotted and yet was understandable, he said, “I believe I have the pleasure of speaking to Shade Darby!”

Shade blinked. What? It knew who she was?

“How. Do you. Know. My name?”

“I thought you might be here,” the monster said, dribbling fire like random punctuation. “Something my new friend Drake said. At first I didn’t catch it, but then I knew: They want us here. They’ve been guiding us here!”

“What. The hell. Are you. Talking about?”

“We are their playthings,” the monster said, sounding almost regretful. “Smile: you’re on TV!”

“Go away,” Shade said, suddenly acutely aware that she had no clever banter for this situation, no cocky Spider-Man bon mots to toss out. “I will. Stop you.”

“Will you, Shade Darby? Will you? But of course, you have to try, don’t you? Ah well, we must strut and fret our hour upon the stage, eh?”

He vomited fire at her. She backed away, still puzzling out how this creature could know her name. She backed away just quickly enough to avoid the edge of the fire as it crept toward her.

Fast enough . . . but too distracted to look behind her as a thick whip, bone and oozing flesh, wrapped itself with speed to match her own around her waist.

CHAPTER 23

Late to the Party

THERE WERE NO longer guards on the gate at the Port of Los Angeles by the time Dekka and Armo arrived. The gate was wide open and cars were racing out. People, too, dockworkers and folks in short-sleeve white shirts and ties, running in panic.

Dekka noticed a police officer running and shedding his gun belt, as if he was quitting the force right at that moment.

“Looks like things started without us,” Dekka said.

A pillar of smoke like something from a tire fire rose from the dock, boiling into the blue sky, almost obscuring the Okeanos tying off to the dock. The Coast Guard held position in the channel, the cutter’s deck lined with sailors pointing.

“What the hell is that?” Armo asked, his mouth near Dekka’s ear. Dekka was creeping the Kawasaki forward against the tide of fleeing workers, coming around to a clearer view.

Dekka pulled off the scrunchie she’d used to keep her dreads from slapping Armo, shook them out, and said, “That is big trouble, that’s what that is.”

It was massive, a black jigsaw puzzle over a core of blazing orange fire. Its head was reptilian, like a Komodo dragon’s, but no snakelike tongue tested the breeze. Instead, liquid fire dribbled from a cavernous mouth ringed with teeth like black diamonds.

“Damn,” Armo said. “What the hell do we do with that?”

Dekka said nothing for a full minute. She had told Peaks she wouldn’t be his soldier. She had said her war was over. An

d yet, when Armo had suggested coming here because here was where the Mother Rock would be, she had agreed.

Why?