Crash Morph: Gate Shifter Book Two

by JC Andrijeski

  Staring back up at Razmun, that brief hope at seeing Nik died in my chest.

  Worse, my mind couldn’t help spinning around the fact that Razmun was here...and Nik wasn’t. Nik, who I’d been unable to raise on the implant for what had to be over an hour. Probably longer, really, given that I’d fallen asleep.

  I couldn’t think of any scenario where those disparate factors, coming together the way they were, constituted good news for me or Nik.

  “Come, Dakota,” Razmun said. Walking towards me, he motioned towards me almost impatiently that time. “We haven’t time for your tearful emotions, I’m afraid. I’m on a bit of a tight schedule...perhaps we can play catch-up in the car, yes?”

  “Where’s Nik?” I managed.

  His hazel eyes grew colder. “You’ll find that out, soon enough.”

  Staring up at the grim mask of his face, I couldn’t find words to ask what I really wanted to know. I wanted to know if Nik was dead, if Razmun had killed him. I wanted to know, but I also didn’t want to know at all.

  So I only lay there, not asking, but thinking of nothing else except how to ask.

  Razmun continued to approach until he towered over me.

  Well, all three of us, really.

  Stopping only a foot or so in front of my face, he leaned down in one fluid movement. I barely flinched as he grabbed hold of my cuffed wrists. When he yanked me up to my feet in a single, hard pull, however, I remembered something else.

  He wasn’t human.

  Unlike Nik, Razmun also had zero motivation to pretend he was.

  He held me up briefly, breaking even less of a sweat than the European had when he dragged me off the back seat of that car. Razmun continued to dangle me until I had my balance once more on the thin carpet. Then, bending swiftly, he used some kind of cutting tool, something I didn’t recognize, to break the chain holding my ankles together.

  He straightened almost before I realized what he’d done.

  Then, as I watched, Razmun’s face and body rapidly transformed back into those of Nik. My reaction must have showed on my own face, because the close up view of Nik’s mouth smiled at me. The light green eyes flickered over me in the same pause.

  “You miss our Nihkil, don’t you?” he murmured. “Worried about him, perhaps? I suppose you should be, under the circumstances. Still, it is touching, Dakota. Truly. I had forgotten just how fond the two of you are of one another...”

  I felt my fear turn into something closer to hatred.

  I fought out the image I knew he was deliberately trying to plant in my mind, of Nik dead on the carpet of that back room in Misty’s Boom-Boom Room. Some other, more logical part of me intervened.

  “You wouldn’t kill him,” I blurted. “You still need him for the gate.”

  Nik’s face smiled at me again, but I saw none of the real Nik in that smile, either, or in the look in his now deep black eyes. Razmun didn’t bother to answer me. Instead, his fingers gripped my arm tighter, and started dragging me towards the door.

  I weighed options as I followed the iron grip of his fingers.

  I only hoped he’d leave the girls here.

  Even as I thought it, Razmun turned his head, glaring at Jazzy and Hilary.

  “You two,” he growled, threatening them with his eyes. “Come with me. Or I’ll kill your friend. And then I’ll kill you...in horribly ugly ways. You don’t want to try running from me, I promise you.”

  Realizing he could turn into anything he liked to capture them, I hesitated, not sure what to do. If Razmun were human, I would have told them to run, that their chances were a lot better if they tried to escape now, especially with Razmun distracted with me.

  As it was, yeah...I hesitated.

  I glanced over my shoulder.

  Jazzy and Hilary were staring at Razmun like he was some kind of horror movie villain. It occurred to me only then that they’d seen him transform. They might not fully believe what they’d seen yet...much less understand what it meant...but they’d definitely seen it happen, well enough that both of them looked to be in some level of shock.

  Razmun’s human form was a good inch or two shorter than Nik’s, for one. He also wore black hair now, and his face had shifted to the oddly-perfect symmetry of Nik’s, versus the more human-looking lack of symmetry of Razmun’s regular human form.

  I had to assume Razmun had built his base human form so that he would blend better, given that he masqueraded as a human on Palarine for years.

  Over forty years, if what Nik had told me was accurate.

  He’d also had more control over that than Nik. Unlike Nik, Razmun hadn’t been born in a human form. Nik had, so he’d had less control over how his base form solidified. It was the real reason he looked slightly different than a lot of humans, or so he’d told me.

  Something else hit me, even as I thought that much.

  Razmun had walked in here wearing the distinct features of Nik. That meant, whatever Razmun had done out there––meaning outside that farm house and wherever else––would get pinned on Nik. Well, assuming anyone who’d seen it survived...and would testify to that fact if asked, either to the mob guys or the cops.

  So yeah, Razmun had framed Nik already, most likely.

  Just like he had me with those bombings.

  All of that ran through my head in the handful of seconds it took to get us out through the door of that cement cell and into the comparatively brighter light of the hall. I was still struggling with what to do. I knew I couldn’t outrun Razmun, not like I might have, if I had my legs free when I ran into those humans. I knew Razmun likely planned to use me to force Nik to do something he wanted...likely something to do with the gate.

  I don’t think I’d felt quite as low about me and Nik’s chances of surviving this as I had at that moment. Meaning, I don’t think I’d felt so helpless before then, or so out of ideas on what to do. I knew other morph would probably be waiting for us outside. I knew it was probably too late to get Gantry out here to stop this. Hell, I knew Gantry might not even be able to stop this, even if he was here. He probably didn’t have the firepower to take down a big group of shape-shifting morph...not without getting the government involved.

  So yeah, I felt pretty low. The feeling only got worse as I staggered down the hallway towards that bad-smelling kitchen, Jazzy and Hilary now walking in front of me.

  Even so, that wasn’t the worst part.

  The worst part came about three seconds later.

  As Razmun, Ledi, Lars Falk...or whatever name he might go by these days...dragged me into the blindingly bright lights of the kitchen, I found myself scanning options even more frantically. Jazzy and Hilary probably consumed my thoughts the most about then. Razmun growled at them to go through the door to outside, and I knew they probably figured they had no choice but to obey...but now I tried to decide again if I should tell them to run once they got through that door. Maybe I could even trip Razmun up a bit. Slow him down.

  But neither of those two could even drive, so far as I knew.

  I couldn’t decide which thing would make their chances better for survival.

  Before I could decide that, I stepped past the edge of the last kitchen counter, and another shadow intervened. That shadow loomed even bigger than Razmun’s, both taller and with a wider bulk. It appeared out of nowhere, moving fast––too fast for me to track what it was doing until the motion was nearly complete.

  By then, the gun had already risen.

  I watched as it took aim at the center of Nik’s–-Razmun’s––chest.

  I watched in a paralyzed, frozen moment of nothingness, aware on some level of what was happening even as another part of my mind fought to act. A thick, muscular hand tightened around the handle of that gun before I could move.

  A single finger yanked back on the trigger.

  Fire exploded out the end of the gun in the same slice of time.

  It happened too fast for me to do anything. The bullet slammed into Razmun’s
chest, twisting and exploding out of the replica of Nik’s back. It took about ten times the volume of flesh, blood and bone coming out as it had going in.

  Even standing in front of him, my face and neck got splattered.

  The fire of the gun and the explosion of flesh from Razmun’s/Nik’s back happened seemingly in the same instant. So did the splatter of blood, temporarily blinding me, even before his body flew away from mine with the force of the shot.

  Razmun didn’t fall so much as get thrown. Still gripping the chain between my wrists, he jerked backwards so fast that I couldn’t get out of the way. Thanks to Gantry, I know a little bit about what happens to a body when it gets hit with an armor-piercing bullet.

  It’s not pretty.

  Knowing that also didn’t help me much.

  The next thing I knew, I was on the floor, panting, a coppery taste in my mouth and nostrils as I stared down at the replica of Nik’s face. Feeling his chest move under me, even as I struggled to get off him, I found myself thinking it was a miracle he wasn’t dead, and wondered if he would be, if he were human. Looking back over my shoulder then, I stared up at a different face, one that featured prominently in all of my worst nightmares of the past few weeks.

  Michael Evers grinned down at me, his blue eyes as cold as metal.

  His thick fingers rearranged themselves on the automatic pistol he held, what looked like a Beretta. From his face, he could barely contain his delight at seeing Nik lying bleeding on the stained linoleum. Or me lying more or less helpless on top of him.

  “Who’s the badass boyfriend now, bitch?” he said to me.

  He lowered the still-smoking gun.

  Without taking his eyes off my face, he began advancing on where I lay.

  I watched him approach, trying to make my mind work...trying to even catch up with the reality of the events of the last few minutes. I knew I’d try to fight him. I knew I’d fight him with my last breath. I also knew I was injured, my wrists were still cuffed together, and Evers had a gun. I also happened to know...from personal experience, no less...that Evers could fight. He’d nearly kicked my ass in the alley that night, even when I had my hands free.

  So yeah, I understood the basics, even then.

  I was well and truly fucked.

  Like, for real.

  17

  Doing Things the Hard Way

  When I next opened my eyes, I found myself sitting on the back seat of a car.

  Maybe even the same car I’d woken up in before.

  I was sitting up this time, though.

  Cuffed to the door like before. No hood. My ankles cuffed to something under the seat in front of me. Or maybe something on the floor.

  Blinking my eyes, I fought to focus, realizing I was still stunned.

  It wasn’t the same car, I realized, looking around.

  The seat was newer, for one thing. Also, it smelled different. Not quite that new car smell, but some kind of freshener, like maybe the SUV had been detailed recently. Looking down, I also realized that my wrists had been cuffed not to the actual handle of the door, but what looked like a custom-installed, steel eyebolt that lived just under the handle. The location of the bolt pulled my body into a somewhat strange angle, which explained why I’d been passed out, slumped over my own lap, versus leaning into the back seat of the car itself.

  I still sat more or less upright.

  The seatbelt helped.

  Looking down, I realized that the eyebolt wasn’t even that obvious if you were just sitting in the car normally. Staring at it, I wondered if Evers ever had to explain it to someone before. Someone normal, that is. Someone not a serial killer.

  Knowing him, he had some glib response.

  I looked to my right, away from the window.

  Jazzy Jiāng and Hilary Fontaine sat next to me, slumped into one another and appearing to be passed out. They also had seatbelts on, but no handcuffs. Instead, the seatbelts appeared to be locked with padlocks. They also each had those plastic tie cuffs on their ankles and wrists.

  I had some memory of a smell. Maybe chloroform, maybe something else.

  Maybe I just assumed chloroform, since that seemed to be the serial killer drug of choice.

  Or maybe I’d just seen too many movies.

  I fought to make a sound, then put it together that Evers had gagged me. Tight. My mouth was forced open by the gag, in fact, so no chance of working it out past my teeth. I couldn’t even get a good angle on biting it, and it felt like a strong cloth of some kind. My jaw hurt, both from the unnatural position and from trying to chew on it, I imagine.

  I kind of remembered him hitting me.

  Maybe my jaw hurt from that, too.

  He hadn’t belabored it, from what I could recall. I’d taken those hits more as a warning, or a reminder maybe, versus any kind of true warm up to the main event.

  On the other hand, he hadn’t done much to try and contain his glee. Glee at having me handcuffed in his car. Glee at killing what he thought had been Nik. He’d grinned at me more than a few times, and although I kept my mouth shut, knowing anything I said would only make things worse, for them and for me, Evers took the girls with us, anyway.

  I didn’t protest that, either, knowing it would only make him happier.

  Then again, like a lot of people like him, I imagine, he seemed to have a kind of sixth sense around what I didn’t want him to do.

  He hadn’t seemed to know that “Nik” was actually Razmun, though.

  It was a slim hope, given the silence on that front, but I held onto it anyway.

  I also couldn’t help but hope that Evers not knowing that Razmun had been masquerading as Nik also lent credence to Nik being alive. Meaning, if Nik had been killed back at Misty’s, chances were, Evers would know that already. He wouldn’t have bought the Nik costume Razmun wore...or gloated so intensely at the thought of having killed him with a bullet to the heart. I figured Razmun had Nik somewhere, most likely.

  Of course, with Razmun dead, that didn’t help me much.

  I wasn’t blindfolded this time, at least.

  Then again, Evers seemed not at all worried by the possibility that I might survive this little jaunt, which reminded me it was a slim possibility, at best.

  Given the gags on all three of us, as well as the tinted windows and separation panel from the driver’s area in the back seat of what I now identified as Evers’ brand new, black, BMW SUV, (license plate BIGBOY6, if I remembered correctly from Gantry’s report), I supposed he didn’t have to worry too much.

  Well, depending on how far he planned on going.

  Knowing Evers, he likely believed his tremendous good fortune extended to busted tail lights and flat tires, as well as getting off for attempted murder and felony sexual assault. He was definitely one of those guys who thought he was born under a lucky star of some kind. Really, he seemed to think he was invincible.

  Hell, maybe he was. Maybe psychopaths had their own version of a guardian angel.

  My ribs hurt like hell by then, although I was leaning more towards “cracked” than “broken” at that point. Strangely, I felt more focused, despite having been drugged. More than I had in that meth farmhouse. Definitely more than the last time I’d found myself cuffed to a car door.

  I wasn’t alone now, so maybe that was part of it.

  I also knew who had me. I knew Gantry had this license plate number, and that if he lost sight of both Evers and me, which he likely had by now, then he’d probably call in the big guns pretty damned quick. I only hoped it was quick enough.

  Plus, the guy who had me...was only one guy. A steroid-sized, psychotic guy who hated my guts, liked killing women and just shot someone dead at point-blank range right in front of me––but, yeah. One guy. It was an improvement over a small army of shape-shifting aliens. Barely.

  I moved around subtly in the seat, trying to get a sense of my range and watching Evers in the rearview mirror. I could move. A little.

  Not enough to do
much with it, however, especially with my ankles cuffed to the chair in front of me. I tried to move my legs and feet subtly, but Evers’ eyes flickered to the mirror when I did it, presumably because I’d jerked on his chair. There wasn’t much give there, anyway.

  He only grinned at me in the mirror, obviously still getting off on having me tied up.

  “Morning, beautiful,” he said, smiling over the partition between the front and the back.

  I didn’t answer.

  I tried the implant link again, but no luck. Wherever Nik was, I chose to believe he’d been knocked unconscious, not that he was bleeding out somewhere I’d never get to in time.

  I looked at Jazzy and Hilary, who were still knocked out. I wondered if I could use my teeth somehow to get off one or both of their gags. I wondered if it would do any good, if I did.

  Jazzy turned then, blinking at me with bleary, half-focused eyes.

  So their drugs were wearing off, too.

  That was good. Conscious was always better than unconscious, when it came to risky escape plans. It hit me again that we had a rapidly closing window to get out of here before we were dead. I had no doubt whatsoever that Evers would kill both of the teenagers, if only to get at me. I was fighting to think through my still drug-fogged head when it hit me...my options were really damned limited. Really, I could think of only one.

  I slammed my shoulder into the glass of the window next to me.

  I saw Evers look back. That time, his eyes narrowed.

  “Dream on, bitch,” he said, his eyes still holding that predatory look. “How stupid do you think I am? You really think I’d leave you enough room for something like that?”

  I didn’t answer.

  Looking at the window, I realized he was right. I was pulled too low to get at the window with my shoulder. That eyebolt contraption saw to that. So did the padlocked seatbelt. My knee or elbow were out of the question, for obvious reasons.

  One option left.

  I slammed my head directly into the glass, doing it before I could think about it much.

  Next to me, Jazzy let out a shocked shriek through her gag. It was quiet from the gag, but I still heard it, even through the daze of probably giving myself a concussion. Pausing while I let myself recover from that first hit, I gritted my teeth and did it again.