Monster

  And in Shade’s head the Dark Watchers leaned forward, excited, like spectators at a football game.

  Shade took a step back and then another. The magma creature had not yet seen her. She could still run. Should run!

  But now she noticed something about the creature: the black crust of rock was no longer morphing, it had steadied, becoming what it was now: a sort of jigsaw puzzle of oddly shaped plate armor, like poorly made chain mail. Hard, cooled (though still blisteringly hot) volcanic rock over a core of fire.

  An idea formed in the cold, clear core that in so many ways defined Shade Darby. Terrified, roasting hot, appalled, and overwhelmed, she nevertheless . . . thought.

  Shade raced back to the SUV. Malik had made no effort to leave; on the contrary, he had one foot out the door and Cruz had begun to open her own door.

  The fools are coming to help me? Against . . . that?

  She vibrated to a slowness that was barely tolerable and said, “Get. Out! Run! Run!”

  Then she popped the back door, shoved the gate upward so hard and fast that one hinge snapped and the whole rear door hung by a thread. There she found what she was looking for: the golf bag that had belonged to the owner of the SUV.

  Balls and clubs. She grabbed some of the throwing stars as well, tossing them into a small runner’s backpack, which she slung over her shoulder and then, cursing a blue streak to keep her courage up, zoomed back to the creature who now was nearly at the docked Okeanos.

  She pulled out a club and beat it on the ground until the head twisted off, leaving a somewhat bent, high-tensile-strength shaft with a jagged end.

  Deep breath.

  Insane!

  Deep breath.

  Hero time!

  Gripping the pointy club, she raced straight at the creature, sighted the gap between two hard plates that formed part of his right lower calf, just above where his Achilles tendon would be if he had such a thing, and with all her considerable might, with a power driven by shocking speed, Shade leaped and stabbed the shaft deep into the red marrow. She bounced off the creature and to her relief felt no pain—it was like quickly touching an iron to test its heat.

  Sparks flew but they flew too slowly to reach her.

  The monster was as hot as the center of a volcano, hot enough to melt lead and copper bullets, but it was not hot enough to melt the golf club’s titanium shaft.

  The monster’s next step was a stumble, and while it was still plowing forward trying to catch its balance, Shade grabbed a second club and plunged it into a narrow gap on the top of its opposite foot.

  And then the magma beast . . . fell!

  It fell directly toward a policeman, who stared up, paralyzed with horror.

  Shade ran, grabbed the policeman, and shoved him out of the way, snapping ribs like twigs, but better that than being crushed. Too late she saw a policewoman still in her patrol car, and the magma creature crashed down on her like a rock slide, sending up showers of sparks and smoke. Shade heard a desperate cry, quickly annihilated.

  The monster was fast on his feet, but not so fast at standing up. He disentangled himself from the police car, crushed to half its normal height. A burning hand stuck out from the crumpled windshield. The beast stared quizzically at the two small shafts and pulled them out like they were splinters.

  The beast stood, but even before he was fully erect he opened his mouth and, with a glottal roar that sounded like a hundred men vomiting at once, sprayed forth a gusher of liquid fire.

  Shade backed away quickly as the napalm fell and a pillar of flame and smoke swirled like a tornado around the great monster.

  The creature was fast, not fast enough to catch Shade, but too fast for her to manage as easily as she’d have liked. The fire that blew from that gaping jaw was faster still, forming an obstacle course of melting tarmac and tornadoes of smoke. If she wasn’t careful, she could too easily run into the flame, and she was not at all sure it wouldn’t burn her, however fast she was.

  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?

  Because life as Jean from Safeway is boring.

  “I used to know someone,” Dekka said. “A girl. She died in the FAYZ.”

  “Yeah?” Armo said, puzzled.

  “She died because she went out to fight one too many times. I told her. Everyone told her. No, don’t. You can’t win, Breeze. You’ll die . . .” Tears filled Dekka’s eyes. “But she went. And she died.”

  “So . . . you’re saying we do the smart thing and turn your bike around?” Armo asked.

  “That would be the smart thing to do,” Dekka said. “Look at that thing! That thing belongs in a movie!”

  “Scariest thing I’ve ever seen, and I was at the Ranch,” Armo said with a sigh.

  “That was her grave I stopped at, you know, up in Perdido Beach. ‘None so bold.’ That’s what’s on her tombstone.” Dekka’s voice changed as she said, “You were bold, Breeze. Goddamn, you were bold and brave. And crazy.” Then her tone changed again, hardening. “I loved that girl. I don’t know if she’s up in some kind of heaven watching, but if she is, well, she’d be pretty ashamed of me if I just walked away now.”

  Armo said, “I didn’t know your Breeze person, but I know common sense. And common sense says that thing there cannot be beat by the two of us.”

  Dekka nodded. “I understand. You make your own choices, Armo. I’ve figured that much out about you.”

  Armo laughed. “You understand squat. I’ve never chickened out of anything yet, I’m not going to start now. But hell, look at that thing! It’s like fighting a dragon!” He shook his head in amusement, as though this was all an entertaining joke. “My family goes all the way back to Björn Ironside, a very badass Viking. Tell you what, if old Björn had ever run into a dragon, he’d sure as hell have gone after it.”

  “You’re gonna go die because you’re descended from some crazy-ass Viking?”

  “You’re gonna go die for some girl named Breeze?”

  “I am.”

  “Me too, then,” Armo said.

  Dekka shook her head and laughed. “Well then, white boy, should we get started?”

  “You’re the one driving,” Armo said.

  Dekka gunned the engine and the bike leaped eagerly. They were both morphing before they had cut the distance in half. Dekka glanced around for a safe place to park her motorcycle, realized there was no longer any such thing as “safe,” and simply left it.

  The magma creature spotted her walking steadily toward him, already morphed, and laughed. “Why, it’s Dekka Talent!”

  That caused Dekka to miss a step. How did the creature know her?

  “Don’t you recognize me, Dekka the righteous?” the monster sneered. “It’s your old friend Tom Peaks! Although I think it’s time for a name change. So call me . . . Napalm! Hah hah hah! Napalm! You like it?”

  Of course, Dekka thought grimly. Of course: Peaks.

  “And I have another friend of yours, too!” Napalm crowed. “You can call him . . . Whip Hand!”

  Dekka stopped dead. Armo ran past her, roaring as he ran, but beyond him Dekka saw the one thing more terrifying than Peaks.

  Drake Merwin was squeezing the life from someone who looked like a bizarre cross between a flea, a Power Ranger, and a teenaged girl.

  Armo leaped, sailed through the air straight at Napalm, roaring as he flew, but the brave roar ended abruptly as Napalm simply swatted him aside like a mosquito.

  Every fiber of Dekka’s being wanted to go at Drake. She had hated him for a year in the FAYZ, hated him since, hated him when Peaks had shown her the video, and hated him now, hated his cruel eyes and his chiseled cheeks and hated, above all, the twisting, writhing python tightening relentlessly around the unknown super.

  But Dekka was not new to combat. Dekka was a veteran of many, many fights, many, many battles. She was only nineteen, but she was old in war and she knew Drake was a distraction. Peaks was after the Mother Rock. And that was to be the point of this fight.

  “Armo!” Dekka yelled. “Take out Whip Hand!”

  Armo, lying winded on the ground, heard Dekka. And what he heard from her sounded a lot like an order. Instinctively he rejected it. No one told Armo what to do. No one. He was going after—

  And then Dekka stopped, looked right at him, and said, “Please.”

  Orders? Armo did not take orders.

  Requests? Well . . .

  He threw Dekka a mock salute with his paw and charged straight at Drake.

  “Now, let’s talk, Tom Napalm Peaks, you liar, you criminal freak,” Dekka said.

  She raised her hands, palm out, opened her mouth, and shrieked.

  Instantly Napalm’s volcanic rock shell began to come apart, flakes of stone rained down like hail, and Napalm bellowed in outrage. He opened his mouth and ejected a mass of lava. Dekka’s shredding lacerated the molten rock, sent drops in every direction, but too much got through. A glob of liquid fire attached to Dekka’s forearm, another to her belly. She backed away, batting at the fire, but it stuck to her claws now, and even her higher pain threshold did little to lessen the excruciating, imperative, panic-inducing agony of burning alive.

  Dekka dropped her hands and dodged sideways seconds ahead of a full load of fire that spilled across the ground she’d occupied, spread out in a puddle, and reached the tires of a parked car. The tires melted and burned. The heat of the fire was so intense that the fur on Dekka’s arms singed and curled. Her snake dreads twisted away, sheltering behind her head.

  Armo, looking like some deranged artist’s conception of a polar bear mated with a human, ran straight at Drake, straight at Shade, an out-of-control berserker beast in a furious charge. Drake frowned and tried to jump aside, but in the process he lessened his grip on Shade for just a split second—a split second that was the equivalent of a leisurely ten seconds to Shade. She bent her knees back, dropped through his coiled arm, and then stumbled forward, landing on hands and knees in the liquid fire.

  “Aaaahhhh!” came the mosquito buzz of pain.

  Armo hit Drake like a ton of bricks and sent him skidding on his back. But Drake was quick and, like Dekka, was a veteran of many fights. He rolled to his feet and aimed his whip and . . . And Armo ran straight into him again, an irresistible force, a wild white-furred beast gone absolutely mad, slashing with its diamond-hard claws, biting with steel teeth, pummeling with knees and elbows, a whirlwind of incoherent, insane animal violence.

  “You brought a sidekick?” Dekka said to Napalm. “Me too.”

  Once again she raised her hands, trying to ignore the pain of burns, and again the stony shell began to come apart, to disintegrate. It was like a time-lapse video of a mountain eroding, but still small drops of fire burned Dekka. She was hurting Napalm, but not fast enough, and this time the liquid fire was a flood, a fire hose spreading smoking destruction, Napalm turning his head from side to side. The magma rolled into and over Dekka’s feet and she screamed, an eerie part-feline howl of pain and terror and rage.

  The fire spread toward Drake as well, on his back beneath Armo’s berserker onslaught. Drake dug in his heels and tried to scoot himself away, but like a tsunami the fire swept around him, frying him like a piece of pork fat in a barbecue. Drake felt no pain, but the fire did damage, eating into the sinews of his newly regrown back, melting the meager flesh of his buttocks.

  The face on Drake’s chest howled in shrill hysteria.

  Armo’s knees were in the flames, and if anything could penetrate his berserker madness, that was it. He jumped back, balanced atop Drake, and used him as a launchpad to leap free.

  Dekka was beyond pain. Her feet were melting. Flame ran up the fur that covered her. She screamed in pure panic, screamed, and ran as flame engulfed her, ran as flame rose to blind her, straight for the water, straight toward the Okeanos.

  Water! Water!

  Napalm turned away with a derisive laugh
and with long strides marched, unstoppable, after her, the Okeanos momentarily forgotten in his hunger to annihilate one of the two young women who had destroyed his career and life’s work.

  The Coast Guard cutter then opened up suddenly, spraying Napalm with machine-gun fire.

  To no effect.

  A military helicopter gunship arrived in a rush, tilted forward, a deadly, matte-black insect. It launched a missile that hit Napalm squarely in the shoulder, exploded, and blew smoking chunks of volcanic rock from him, baring a patch of fire like some inflamed scab. Napalm bellowed incoherently, wordlessly, at the helicopter, but did not slow his progress.

  Now the Coast Guard opened up with the Bofors gun. Its 57 mm shells carried less punch than the missile, but it could fire two hundred rounds a minute, three rounds a second, and its aim was accurate. The shells exploded against Napalm’s chest like a jackhammer: Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam!

  Napalm took a step back, took another, and dodged to his left, which placed the Okeanos’s superstructure between himself and the Bofors gun. The shelling stopped.

  Dekka hit the water and was already de-morphing by the time the oily liquid closed over her head. As she changed, the clinging liquid fire was drowned by the water and fell away. She stayed under as long as her wind lasted, then pushed back into the air and began clambering up over sharp rocks. To her intense relief, the burning pain was gone.

  She raised a foot from the water and saw that it was still there, and human once again. But now the memory of the flames consuming her weighed her down, made her hesitate. The Dark Watchers did not like that, not at all, and with urgent silence they cheered her on.

  A burning Armo suddenly splashed into the water beside her. He thrashed and roared until he, too, resumed his normal human shape.