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Drake’s eyes glittered. He smiled. “My pleasure, you fat black dyke bitch!” Drake ran at her, fearless as ever, stumbling slightly with his limbs not entirely regrown, whip hand already sailing through the air.
They had fought before, back in the FAYZ. But Drake had never face
d this Dekka.
She raised her hands, screamed in his face, and Drake disintegrated, reduced to a squall of bloody bits flying through the air.
In two seconds, he was gone aside from a stain on the dock.
Dekka nodded, satisfied, but not so naive as to believe he’d been truly destroyed. It would, however, take him a while to put himself back together.
And damn, it felt good.
Now Dekka and Armo started backing away, but Dekka found it hard to disengage. Partly her veins were drenched in adrenaline, and that adrenaline was urging her to take one more shot at either Napalm or the creature on the ship.
But there was more to her reluctance to retreat, for the Dark Watchers were not happy with her prudence. Shushed but urgent whispers in her brain egged her on, demanding she fight, fight, fight! It was all she could do to force herself to step back, to take another step . . . and now there was a black kid, face wild, rushing past her to where Cruz knelt beside a stunned Shade Darby.
Then, with a herculean spasm and a crashing, splintering noise, Vincent surged all the way up and out of the wrecked ship, heaved his bulk onto land, once more holding the container aloft like a prize with one red arm, and surged straight at Napalm, who backed away on the dock, leaving flaming footprints behind him.
“Get her out of here!” Dekka yelled to Malik.
Napalm vomited a gusher of magma at Vincent and the red flesh sizzled and smoked, but Vincent did not stop. His flesh burned as he grappled with Napalm, wrapping his massive thick arms around the writhing fire creature. Steam billowed and Vincent’s shrill and very human voice was a long, drawn-out howl of rage, but he did not let go of the living volcano. Slowly, inexorably, screaming incoherent gibberish words, mad Vincent dragged Napalm toward the water by the Okeanos’s bow.
For a heart-stopping moment, the two great monsters wrestled for control, Napalm spraying fire and roaring, Vincent screeching and pulling.
Dekka felt like a mere human watching the gods battle. They smashed and battered each other: Napalm belched fire, Vincent’s poisonous flails stung him again and again, and with each passing second Vincent dragged Napalm another foot closer to the channel.
Now Vincent’s remaining meat puppets rushed at Napalm, slammed into his legs even as they burned, slapped him with their own tendrils, which curled like leaves in a fire.
Then, with the majestic slowness of a falling redwood, both Vincent and Napalm fell backward, banged against the prow of the Okeanos, and tumbled into the water.
Steam erupted in a geyser, searing Dekka and Armo, even as they backed hurriedly away.
Malik was between Dekka and the ship. He had his back to Napalm and Vincent, was huddled protectively over Shade. He was talking to her.
“It’ll be okay, babe, I’m getting you out of here.”
The boiling cloud of steam rolled over him.
Malik did not have a morph. He had no special power protecting him. He was an innocent bystander, a civilian wandering onto a brutal battlefield to protect the girl he loved.
The steam rolled across his back. Blisters rose over the back of his thighs, his buttocks, his shoulders, his neck, the back of his head. Dekka saw his eyes widen in sudden realization.
“Aaaaarrrrgh!”
Malik screamed, an eerie, spine-tingling scream of unbearable agony.
His mouth opened to scream again, but before a sound could come he collapsed onto the dock. He thrust his left hand out to stop his fall and his palm landed in liquid fire. His knees struck right at the edge of the creeping magma and he tried to pull away, but he had lost the use of his left hand.
Malik had taken the blast that would have cooked Cruz and maybe Shade as well.
He shrieked again, an eerie, animal howl, inhuman, like nothing Dekka had ever heard before, the sound of a person in more agony than the human mind could accept.
Cruz jumped up and body-slammed Malik, knocking him clear of the fire, but too late, too late, because a slab of Malik’s skin sloughed and hung like a limp flag from the back of his neck.
Shade had seen it all. She had been looking into Malik’s eyes when the steam hit him. She forced herself to stand, feeling the effects of the poison weakening. She limped after Cruz, crying and de-morphing.
In Cruz’s strong arms Malik bellowed in pain, writhed and heaved. Cruz touched still-burning flesh and dropped Malik, and Shade tried to help her, tried to lift Malik, tried to ignore his terrified eyes, tried to gather him up, to hold him close and somehow put out the flame that still chewed at his flesh, but her arms were too weak, too leaden.
