Crash Morph: Gate Shifter Book Two (41 page)

Glass sprayed over the three of us, nicking my face and arms a second time.

It hit me suddenly that, whatever this was, it wasn’t the same animal Nik transformed into that day on the golf course, when he flew us out of there. The golf course creature had looked more like a medieval dragon. This thing looked an awful lot like a Tyrannosaurus Rex.
 

Well, apart from those big eyes and the much more functional-looking front claws and arms. It still ran on powerful back legs, but yeah, the longer I looked at it, the more I realized I didn’t really recognize it, not even from science books.

So definitely not anything from Earth.
 

Also, unlike the dragon, this thing didn’t have wings. Just a long tail, thick at the base for balance where the extra appendage ran up into its powerful hind quarters. The thing tapered sharply about ten feet back, though, eventually turning whip-like at the much narrower end, which stretched out far behind the car, for what must have been at least twenty feet in total.
 

Its head was massive, completely out of proportion to the thinner neck. The teeth looked like glass razors, each one around two feet long and nearly translucent.

He slammed into the car again, and I let out another muffled yell, along with Jazzy.

That time, when the creature rose up higher on its muscular hind legs, I saw a large gash in its back, and a hole in the middle of its chest framed by green lizard blood.

“Fuck,” I muttered, staring up at the thing.

It wasn’t Nik. It was Razmun.
 

Evers hadn’t killed him.

Just then, the lizard ran at the car even harder...hard enough to throw the SUV briefly off the road entirely and into the grass just beyond the dirt shoulder. I noticed only then that other cars were screeching and veering all around us, trying to get the hell out of the way. I have no idea what the other drivers were thinking, meaning about the giant lizard and its whipping tail and long claws...but I knew it couldn’t be good.
 

Evers himself was back to flooring the SUV...which could move, incidentally, given that it was a German engine, after all.

He was a good enough driver to be able to correct for the massive hit to the car, but I knew he couldn’t keep that up forever, either.

I glanced at Evers himself in the rearview mirror again, but that time, he didn’t spare me so much as a sneer. He glared out the window of the SUV, his eyes wide but with fury not fear, his skin flushed bright red and sweaty with that same heat. He seemed to exude hatred and fury from his very skin, staring at that thing out the window.

“You fucking asshole!” he screamed, honking his horn like a crazy person.

I wondered if he had any idea of what he was really looking at...or if he’d just snapped in a fit of homicidal rage and egomania.

When Razmun slammed his head into the vehicle yet again, it dented in the door right next to me even further, and shattered the glass window on the back of the SUV’s hatchback at the same time, sending more glass whipping around us in the wind tunnel of the back seat.

Jazzy screamed long and loud that time, and when I looked at her, I saw that the gag in her mouth had somehow gotten dislodged. Well enough that she managed to spit out most of the rest of it.
 

Looking away from her, I found myself gazing up at that gold, dinner-plate sized eye, even as wind rushed through the window, forcing more air into my lungs. I probably would have screamed again, if it wasn’t for the gag. As it was, I only stared, even as the thing slammed its head into the front end of the car, right into the door where Evers sat.

Evers cursed, once more yanking hard on the wheel as he corrected against a violent skid.

That this was going to turn the car into a crushed can.

Jerking back when the lizard looked ready to slam into the vehicle right near me again, I was shocked when my feet moved with me. I looked down, and realized my ankles had been knocked free of whatever had been holding them to the driver’s chair.

Looking at the bolt where my hands were cuffed in the same set of seconds, I saw that the metal had been bent out of recognition under the door handle. I gave a hard yank and managed to pull the eyebolt loose with my cuffs still attached to it.

Not freedom, exactly, but at least I could move.
 

Even so, being locked to the seat by the safety belt kind of limited my options.
 

Remembering the glass, I scrabbled my newly freed hands over the back seat, looking for a piece big enough that I might use it for a knife. It was safety glass, so crappy as hell for that kind of thing, but I managed to find a piece sharp enough and big enough to grip in my fingers that I could start trying to saw through the nylon strap.

After examining the belt for a few seconds, I decided to cut the band behind the actual lock so I could slide under the shoulder strap along with the one around my waist.

Leaning down, I started sawing, hard, with the piece of glass.

The next time Razmun hit into the side of the car, the glass shard slid sharply to my right, cutting my palm. Even so, maybe because I had a goal now, a real one at last, I went right back to sawing at the strap down by my hip. Blood ran in a slow trickle over my hand, but I managed to keep a strong enough hold on the strap to keep cutting into it.

And I was making progress. Sort of.

The dinosaur hit the SUV again, hard, forcing a hard squeal out of the tires as Evers tried again to correct and failed. The back end of the BMW slid to our right, over the dirt slope of the highway shoulder, and into what felt like a ditch and grass.
 

When I looked up next, we were driving across a field.

“Hurry!” Jazzy said, shouting at me. “Hurry! Please! Hurry!”

I realized she was watching me saw through the belt, waiting for me to get free so I could free her and her friend. Without meeting her gaze, I bent back over the belt, sawing with renewed energy. Wincing and losing my place in the nylon strap when the dinosaur hit the car again, I was about a third of the way through the nylon strap, when a loud screech from outside the car jerked my eyes off the shard of glass.

Refusing to look up that time, I tensed my shoulders and arms, sawing harder on the strap.
 

It was going faster now, maybe because I was past the melted pieces of nylon around the edges of the belt itself.

Another screech got louder outside the car, sounding even more dragon-like. That time, it almost sounded like there were two of them.

Even so, I didn’t look up that time, either, but kept on sawing.

I was almost halfway through the strap now.

I started to think I was going to get the damned thing off after all, when suddenly, Evers slammed on the brakes. The SUV skidded violently, tried to a stop...then tipped off its center of weight and began to roll.

I knew we’d been going fast...faster than was safe, given what was happening outside the car doors. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I’d felt Evers accelerating still more as soon as we entered that flat stretch of field.
 

But I don’t think it really hit me
how
fast we’d been going, not until the car began to roll. I screamed through the gag, flying up as far as the seatbelt would allow, reaching up with my cuffed wrists towards the car’s roof, the glass shard still clutched in my hand.

More shards of glass flew around us, nicking our skin and faces, hammering the top of the car’s roof like crystal rain. Next to me, Jazzy screamed for real, belting out her terror at full volume now that the gag was out of her mouth.
 

Hilary appeared to be in shock again. She looked glassy-eyed, on the verge of fainting as she flew up with me and Jazzy, all three of us stopped by the locked down seat belts before we would have been thrown from the car altogether.

At about the third roll, a ripping sound tore across my hip, accompanied by a jerk, right before I flew out of the cut and ripped seatbelt and slammed up against the roof of the car. I let out a shocked cry, throwing up my hands to cushion my fall, then the SUV flipped again, and miraculously, landed on its tires and stayed there that time.

The door next to me had been broken open somehow, too, popped out by the rolling car and probably the weight and pressure on the car’s frame.
 

It hung dragging the ground now, creaking and swaying lightly, like a broken wing. Staring at it, I found myself glad I’d gotten the eyebolt loose before we rolled. If not, my arms probably would have been ripped out of their sockets when that door wrenched open.

For a long moment, I only lay on the floor of the back seat, behind the driver’s side chair.

Panting, I looked up at Jazzy and Hilary, pretty sure I had a concussion at that point.

Even so, I dragged myself up at once, and miraculously, found I was still holding the glass shard in my hand, so tightly that it had cut my palm for real, and blood ran down my wrist and arm and onto my jeans.

I looked forward first, to see what Evers was doing.

But he wasn’t there.

I couldn’t see him through the open door of the car, either. But the driver’s door had popped open, at some point, too...so I found myself thinking he’d probably been thrown clear once the vehicle started rolling. Or maybe before, if he’d decided to jump.

Indecisive, wondering if I should find him, first, I saw the dragon-thing outside the window and decided I wasn’t going to risk going out there right now. I turned my attention back to my teenaged charges instead. Finding the same connecting point on Jazzy’s seatbelt as I’d cut on mine, I started sawing at the thing with even more energy than I’d used on my own.

Maybe for that reason, or maybe for the better angle, I made progress almost at once, cutting through the first chunk of it in a matter of minutes and then making my way deeper through the plastic-like, nylon-y threads.

I didn’t look up until Hilary screamed.

Once I had, I couldn’t decide if I should be relieved or horrified.

18

Fighting with Dragons

Two of those dinosaur-like creatures now circled one another on that field. I didn’t use the link to find out if the second one was Nik...even then, in some half-conscious part of my mind, I didn’t want to do anything that might distract him and get him killed.

After a bare moment of hesitation, where I watched the two creatures facing off, lashing tails at one another like whips and hissing with those glass, knife-like teeth, I forced my eyes back down and went back to sawing at the seatbelt locking Jazzy to the car.
 

“Hey,” I told her, looking up. She stared down at me with wide eyes. “See if you can get started on hers,” I said, motioning towards Hilary with my elbow, which was also bruised by now and covered in blood, probably from where I’d hit the ceiling of the car.

Jazzy blinked at me, then nodded. Seconds later, I saw in my peripherals that she was feeling over the seat, looking for her own piece of glass to use as a knife.
 

I’d already gone back to sawing at her seatbelt with my own piece of glass.

Even so, I winced and tensed, hearing the crash of limbs outside the SUV, fighting not to look up so I wouldn’t freak out about Nik being hurt or killed.

Assuming that was even Nik.

“What are those things?”

I shook my head, not looking up, noncommittal. Instead of answering her, I asked something else. “Do you see Evers anywhere?” I glanced up, but only just. “The blond guy. The one who locked us up in here...”