Crash Morph: Gate Shifter Book Two (42 page)

I felt Jazzy tense. She looked around and although she was higher up than me, being on the seat where I was more or less kneeling on the car floor, she tried to lift herself higher, probably trying to see past the hood of the car.

“No,” she said. Fear touched her voice. “No...I don’t see him. Did he leave?”

“I think he got thrown from the car,” I said.

“Where?” she said, her voice still afraid. “Would he just leave? Run away?”

I opened my mouth to answer, when another voice cut me off, from right behind me, on the other side of that broken and hanging door.

“No,” the voice snarled, sounding like a rabid dog. “No, he didn’t leave...
cunts.”

I froze, even before I’d turned my head.

I already knew, somehow, that he still had the gun. Glancing back at him, I raised my hands off where I’d been working at cutting through Jazzy’s seat belt. I still held the bloody shard in one of my handcuffed hands.
 

When I finally glanced back, Evers didn’t look so hot himself.

Blood ran down from under his hairline, covering one side of his face. Small pieces of glass had embedded themselves in his forehead and pitted the skin of his neck above the suit jacket. The jacket itself was stained with blood and dirt, making me think he’d been thrown from the car after all. He held his side with his free hand, and I could tell from his face he was in pain, despite the fury that eclipsed his expression.
 

He looked pale now, instead of red-faced like before, but his hair was damp with sweat and the fury in his eyes had turned into something a lot less sane.
 

He looked like he’d snapped, honestly, like a rabid dog about to bite.

Either way, I knew I didn’t have a lot of time.

I waited for him to reach for my wrists, leaning closer in the process. He took his hand off his injured side to do it, still gripping the gun...

When I swung my handcuffed hands back and up, hitting him hard under the chin with my balled fists, the heavier eyebolt and the metal of the cuffs themselves.
 

I moved sideways as I did it and half-fell out of the car.
 

I kept my balance...barely, half on my feet now and leaning on the broken door. I came the rest of the way out of my crouch and moved forward, right as he swung the gun up again. Before he could aim it at me, I slammed him again with the handcuffs and the now-swinging eyebolt. My arms landed hard on his hand and wrist that time. I forced the gun down even as it went off, the sound echoing loudly inside the car.
 

Evers didn’t let go of the gun, so I hit him again, swinging my arms around with all of my weight. I got him full in the face with the eyebolt that time, and hit him with it again before he could recover, whipping it around and really putting my waist into it.

That time, he went down.

His fingers loosened, too, and the gun disappeared somewhere under the car.

I didn’t wait. I was past taking chances.

Once he was down, I used the heel of my foot to stomp on his throat.

Evers’ baby-blues bugged out like two marbles, even as his cut hands and fingers clawed uselessly at his own throat. He gasped for air like a beached fish, and I kicked him again in the side, then in the crotch, if only to buy myself time. Looking around for something heavier to hit him with, I found a good-sized rock, which I hefted in both hands, again having a déjà vu to that fight in Nik’s home dimension.

I didn’t wait that time, either, but hefted that thing up awkwardly with the cuffs and slammed it down on his head.

Full-on, yeah. Probably homicidal, even.
 

But I wasn’t taking any chances.

Once I was relatively sure he was down for the count, I looked for the gun.

I had to crawl halfway under the car to get it. It was hard with the cuffs, and with my ankles still tied together. By the time my fingers wrapped around the handle, I was panting, adrenaline causing spikes of panic in my whole body, pooling in my gut like battery acid.

I gripped the gun tighter...

Then a big hand wrapped my ankle.

I let out a cry.

The guy was like something out of a horror movie...something that couldn’t be killed.

But I couldn’t think about that, either.

He yanked me out from under the car, holding my ankle in a death grip.

Kicking and trying to fight him off, I twisted my body around under the car as he brought me back out into the sunlight. When he did, I saw him standing there, grinning at me with bloody teeth, my ankle gripped in his hand where he’d bent over to grab me.

I heard Jazzy scream, even as I grew aware of the silence around us otherwise. I didn’t know if it was in my head or what, but I couldn’t hear Razmun anymore...or the other dinosaur-like lizard who’d been fighting him out in the middle of that field.

All I could hear was Jazzy screaming...and the panting, gasping breaths of the psycho who now gripped my ankle like it was some kind of lifeline.

My eyes were filled with his face again. Blood ran down it in a thicker stream, dripping over his eyebrows and onto his cheeks, smearing over his mouth even apart from the bloody teeth. His eyes stared into mine like some kind of animal.
 

He yanked on my ankle again, harder that time, straightening as he did it, and I twisted the rest of the way to my back, protecting my face with one arm as I left the protective undercarriage of the SUV. I didn’t let go of the gun.

When I cleared the bottom of the car entirely, I fired.

I just lay there for a moment afterwards.

I ended up firing two times more after that first one, but the first shot was what would be burned into my brain.
 

I’d hit him in the face, enough to erase most of his nose and one of his cheeks. I’d forgotten about the armor-piercing bullets, but I think it would have shocked me, regardless.
 

The second two shots got him somewhere in the chest.

By then, he was already falling to his back.

He swayed first, before he fell. I remember that, too.

I guess I must have been in shock, because like I said, for what felt like a long couple of minutes––but likely was only a few seconds––I didn’t move. Panting, still gripping the gun in both of my cuffed hands, I stared up at the darkening sky, fighting to pull my mind back on line, to think. I continued to hold the weapon up, aimed at nothing now.
 

Then a voice reached me.

“Dakota,” it said.

It was calm, almost firm.

I blinked, but I could still only see the blue sky overhead. I also saw one cloud, tinted with orange and pink, but I couldn’t quite wrap my head around it.

For a long moment, I only stared up at that sky.

“Dakota,” the voice said again.

I turned my head, and saw a shadow standing there. I didn’t move as the shadow approached, nor when it bent down, somewhere near my feet, and appeared to be doing something. Something to whatever lay there, on the ground. I heard the rustling of clothes, then what sounded like a soft metallic clink...like keys.

A few minutes later, the shadow returned.

It knelt right next to me that time, bending over my head and upper body. I watched numbly as he moved, catching hold of my wrists. I was still holding the gun when he did something to the handcuffs there, using the pieces of metal I’d heard clinking together before. Keys, my mind reminded me. I watched as he spun the pointed end inside the small lock.

I watched as those cuffs opened.

Then Nik moved down to my ankles, and did the same thing.

Exhaling, I met his gaze when he glanced back at me that time, feeling my mind click back on line, all at once. I dropped the gun on the dirt next to me, and laid back on the grass.
 

“Nik,” I said, my voice close to a groan. “That better really be you this time.”

“It is me,” he assured me.

He didn’t need to tell me that, though.

Not only did he not have a bloody hole in his chest, like Razmun, but I could see him there, in his eyes. Maybe I could even feel him through the lock link between us. Either way, I believed him without question, and something in my chest relaxed even further.

“Razmun?” I said, still lying in the patchy grass and dirt.

“He escaped,” Nik said calmly. “I would have chased him, but I heard a gunshot, so I came here instead.”

I nodded, wrapping an arm over my eyes and sighing again.

“Gantry?” I said.

“On his way,” he assured me. “Are you all right, Dakota?”

I removed my arm, looking up at his worried face. For the first time, I realized he was completely naked, and covered in cuts and bruises, pretty much from head to foot.

“Nik,” I said, feeling a weird combination of relief and frustration. “What happened to you?”

“I will tell you all of that,” he assured me. He glanced up then, towards the open door of the car. “I think they are very confused. The young humans,” he clarified.

I laughed. I couldn’t help it.

Even so, it was the thing to get me to drag my sorry ass off the dirt and back onto my feet. I couldn’t help wincing and gasping as I did, holding my ribs with my free hand as I gripped the car door with the other, looking inside the dimmer interior.

“You both all right?” I asked them.

Two pairs of round eyes greeted me, the pupils nearly swallowing the color of their irises. They both looked pale, in shock...but I noticed they barely looked at me at all. They were staring at a very naked Nik instead, as if looking at a ghost. Realizing they’d seen “Nik” get shot in that farmhouse by Evers, I smiled at them reassuringly, then clicked my fingers in front of their faces, trying to get them to focus on me.

“Hey,” I said, gentling my voice that time. “You both okay? Not hurt are you?”

My words appeared to distract them at least.
 

They looked down at their own bodies, then at each other’s, as if trying to answer my question. I looked them over, too, and decided they were probably in pretty good shape, despite the bruises, the cuts on their faces, necks, arms and hands from flying glass, and the near-inevitable visit to the psychiatrist that would follow for both of them after this little jaunt.

In the short term, I needed them to chill about Nik.

“This is my friend, Nik,” I explained, still using that gentle and patient voice. “He called the cops for us,” I added. “And the other guy is dead, so I think we’re okay.”

“What about the dragons?” Hilary blurted, still staring at Nik as though he might try to eat her. “What happened to the dragons?”

I shook my head, drawing a blank on that one. I glanced at Nik.

“They ran away,” he told her calmly, standing next to me as if being in a field stark naked at dusk with a dead serial killer, a female P.I. and two kidnapping victims was the most normal thing in the world. “They won’t be back,” he added. “...Not tonight.”

I looked at Jazzy and saw her eyes narrow at Nik.

She was definitely the smarter one of the two, but I knew there wasn’t much I could do now, but let their stories come out in the wash.