by Zoe Chant
“No.”
“You didn’t have any problem when I shifted. Was it because you were expecting it?”
“Yeah. I figured you would.”
“So you can handle adrenaline, but not surprises.”
“Right…” She saw what he was getting at. “Oh. I should start expecting to get shot at any second now, right? And for Jager to suddenly appear.”
“Also for any kind of weird shifters to attack. One of the wizard-scientists turned into a four-headed dragon.”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah. Also, since the wizard-scientists are involved, expect some kind of magical attack.”
“Like what?”
Ransom spread his hands. “Could be anything. Just… expect the unexpected.”
That seemed daunting. On the other hand, she hadn’t been raised in a crime circus of shifters for nothing. Not to mention that her entire childhood had been the opposite of stable.
“Expect the unexpected,” she murmured to herself. “Jager suddenly appearing. Four-headed dragons. Magic. Darts. Bigfoot. Ransom becoming a hellhound. Anything.”
A tomato-shaped sign loomed ahead. She briefly thought of losing any possible pursuit by ducking into Tomato Land and blending into the crowd, then remembered that it was closed for the night.
“Look out!” Ransom shouted.
Natalie had taken her gaze off the road to look at the sign. It was only for an instant, but when she looked back, Jager was standing in the middle of the road, aiming a gun directly at the car.
She swerved. The car spun out, fishtailing. She fought for control, all the while bracing for the impact of a gunshot. She had a brief moment of terror, and an even briefer moment of relief when she saw that Ransom was clutching the puppies tight to his chest.
There was a sudden hard jolt. The puppies yelped, and Natalie was flung forward. Her seatbelt caught her before she could hit the steering wheel. Then she was dangling somehow. She couldn’t make sense of her tilted perspective.
“It’s all right.” Ransom’s calm voice settled her fear, even while her confusion remained. “We went into a ditch.”
Once he’d explained what had happened, everything she saw made sense. The car was tipped forward, with the front end in a sandy ditch and the rear wheels off the ground. Both she and Ransom had been caught by their seatbelts and were suspended by them. He was still clutching the puppies. None of them seemed to have been hurt. Even the Mustang didn’t seem badly damaged, but it was very thoroughly stuck.
“Where’s Jager?” She looked all around, but she saw nothing but the side of the road, the highway, the mountains, and the sea. And the sign for Tomato Land, of course. They were lucky she hadn’t hit that. “I don’t see him anywhere.”
Ransom tried to look past the squirming puppies he held. “He must have teleported again. I don’t see him, and I’m not getting any ‘immediate danger’ signals.”
Heidi gave a sharp bark and vanished, reappearing outside the car.
“Go, Wally,” Natalie said. “Go to your sister.”
Wally appeared beside Heidi.
“Don’t move,” Ransom said. “I’ll get out, and then I’ll get you out.”
“Actually…” Natalie slithered out of the seatbelt and landed lightly on her feet beside the car. “Here. Put your hands on my shoulders, and your left foot right here…”
He followed her instructions. When she unsnapped his seatbelt, he was able to jump to the ground. “I forgot. This is much more your kind of thing.”
“I can’t believe you forgot already that I jumped into the driver’s seat. Or were you too busy dodging darts to catch that?”
“No, no, I saw it. I only wish I hadn’t been dodging darts, so I could have enjoyed the entire thing. You were amazing.”
“So were you. You were so quick, and brave, and I finally got to see your hellhound! Wow, was that not what I’d expected.”
“What had you expected?”
She shrugged. “A greyhound with little red devil horns?”
Ransom gave a startled laugh. “What did you think of the real thing?”
“It was awesome. In the old sense of the word. I felt awed. It was like seeing a wild tiger in the jungle. It’s a predator that could kill you in a second if it decided to, but it’s beautiful, too. Breathtaking. Only the hellhound was more than that. It was… unearthly.”
“But it didn’t shock you.”
“No.”
“Or scare you?”
She took his hand. “Ransom, it was you. There’s nothing about you that scares me or horrifies me or repulses me.”
The sun had gone down, leaving only a fading blue-gray light. She could see him swallow, and a shine in his eyes that might have been tears.
“Thank you. I wish…” His voice cracked, and he swallowed again. “I wish you could believe in yourself like that.”
She wasn’t sure what he meant. There was nothing about herself that she found frightening or horrifying or repulsive. But he kept on looking at her with those sad eyes of his—with those eyes that, for a while, hadn’t been sad at all—then sighed and looked away.
He spotted something on the ground and stooped to pick it up. It took her a moment to recognize it as part of a cell phone. “You don’t still have yours, do you?”
She shook her head. “I lost my purse at the beach.”
“We have to get to somewhere safe… Safer, anyway. We’re completely exposed here.”
“Tomato Land,” said Natalie. When he turned to stare at her, she said, “I’m serious. It’s big, it has lots of hiding places, and between us, we could break into any of them.”
His incredulous expression shifted to agreement. “You’re right. We’d have a much better chance in there. And if Jager doesn’t show up again, we can wait till morning and then borrow someone’s phone when they open.”
They walked the short distance alongside the highway, then cut across the Tomato Land parking lot. There didn’t seem to be any real security beyond a chain link fence. They climbed the fence, and the puppies teleported through.
Tomato Land was a very different place after hours. The light was rapidly dimming, and the buildings were only vague, dark shapes. They looked ominous, like haunted houses. The vines twining over the entrance looked like snakes.
Expect anything, Natalie reminded herself. Jager. Giant opossums with twelve heads. Purple toads with devil horns. Flying—
A set of floodlights came on. Natalie was startled, but not shocked; Ransom’s hand leaped to his hip, then dropped when he found no gun.
“I think they’re on a timer,” she said.
“Well—that’s good. It’ll be harder for anyone to sneak up on us.”
Natalie wasn’t so sure. The floodlights were harsh and white, casting pools of light that only deepened the shadows around them. If anything, they made what she could see of the deserted Tomato Land even eerier. The knife-shaped Viking ship hung motionless, like a sword some giant might stoop to snatch up at any moment, and the tomato vine water slide looked like an immense cobra rearing up over a well of darkness.
Expect the giant snake slide to come to life, she told herself. Expect that tentacle-shaped shadow to suddenly grab your ankle.
A hand touched her shoulder, and she let out a strangled shriek.
Ransom yanked his hand back like he’d been burned. “Sorry!”
Natalie giggled, a little hysterically. “No, I’m sorry. I was trying to expect anything, and I think I overdid it.”
She was about to explain what she meant, but he said, “Did you feel like everything was alive and watching you?”
“Was that what the enhanced intuition was like when you first got it?”
He nodded. “Tomato Land after dark is giving me a bit of the same feeling. I’m trying not to let it get to me.”
“I can’t believe we survived a car crash and a teleporting enemy and getting shot at, and we’re getting creeped out by a water slide.”
He gave her a wry smile. “Are you regretting every horror novel you’ve ever read? Because I sure am.”
“No, I’m not,” she said firmly, averting her eyes from a gently bobbing blow-up tomato worm. It was moving in the breeze, that was all, not of its own accord. “Because now I know what not to do in a creepy amusement park at night.”
“Don’t go into the basement,” said Ransom.
“Don’t eat the candy,” said Natalie.
“Don’t investigate the weird noise.”
“Don’t strip down to your underwear to investigate the weird noise.”
“And whatever you do…” Ransom paused, and they both finished, “Don’t go near the clown!”
They laughed, and her tension eased. As they ventured farther into Tomato Land, she remained alert but didn’t jump at every moving shadow. Ransom moved with the cool competence that she suspected was a holdover from the Marines, wary but not hypervigilant.
“Where do you think would be a good place to hunker down?” she asked.
“The bomb shelter would be the most defensible,” he began.
“Ransom, no. That hits ‘don’t go in the basement’ and ‘don’t lock yourself in with the creepy animatronics that are definitely going to come to life and grab you.’”
He chuckled. “I was going to say, ‘but too easy to get trapped in.’ One of the stalls would probably be best. Let’s check them out.”
They stepped out of the pool of light they were standing in and into the shadowy area of the stalls. Natalie went ahead of him to inspect the locks.
“Get back!” Ransom shouted. “Back to the light!”
Startled, she whirled around. He snatched up Heidi, who was snuffling around at his feet. And that was all that either of them had time to do.
The shadow they stood in rose up from the ground. It covered her feet and legs, tight and clinging and cold and utterly unyielding, pinning her where she stood. Ransom too was caught, trapped in shadow from the waist down.
“Ransom, shift! Your hellhound might be strong enough to—”
But he was shaking his head. “I can’t even hear him, let alone reach him. This stuff seems to stop powers from working.”
“It’s not touching Heidi,” Natalie said.
Quickly, Ransom ordered, “Heidi! Go somewhere safe!”
She vanished. But Wally had all four paws mired in shadow. He stood there struggling and yelping frantically, unable to teleport away.
“It’s all right, Wally,” Natalie called, feeling like the world’s biggest liar.
She couldn’t reach him, but he calmed down at the sound of her voice. At least, he stopped yelping and started whining. Ransom was too far away to touch either of them, and she didn’t see Heidi anywhere.
“This has to be the wizard-scientists. Or it could be Jager, I guess. But the Ultimate Predator powers aren’t usually this…” He made a vague gesture.
“Trashy horror novel?”
Ransom managed a smile. “Yes. Exactly.”
A woman stepped out of the shadows. She looked about Natalie’s age, with long blonde hair and pale eyes, wearing a white coat embroidered with black symbols. It was open at the front, revealing what looked like a bodysuit but was darker than any cloth could be, dark as the fur of Ransom’s hellhound. With a shudder, Natalie realized that it was probably made of shadows.
“Ultimate Predator powers aren’t this powerful,” said the woman. Then she turned her back on Natalie and addressed Ransom. “Greetings, Dark Knight. My name is Elayne.”
“My name is Ransom.”
“Not for long. I have an offer for you. An offer… and a new name. Better than that, a new identity.” Elayne looked him over with a sharpness that unnerved Natalie. It was an expression that she’d often seen on Ransom’s own face, when he was talking about something that interested him and that he knew a lot about.
He was silent, watching her with equal intentness.
Just studying his enemy, Natalie told herself. Figuring her out, so he can rescue us all.
“I know how you’ve wished you could erase your past,” Elayne went on. “I knew how you’ve wanted to get rid of parts of yourself. I can give that to you. I can take away everything about you that you hate, everything that causes you pain, and give you something new.”
“Really.” His voice was flat.
He’s stalling, Natalie told herself. He’s inviting her to talk so he can gather information.
She wanted to believe that. She had to believe that. After everything that they’d gone through together, after the new relationship he’d forged with his hellhound and himself, surely he wouldn’t throw it all away in order to exist without pain.
But a voice within herself, dark as the shadows that bound her, said, Wouldn’t he?
And then, Isn’t that what you’ve been doing?
She shied away from that thought. There was no time for it, anyway. Elayne was speaking again.
“I can take away your pain,” Elayne said. “I can silence your hellhound.”
His head jerked up sharply. “What makes you think I’d want that?”
“Your hellhound is you. And I know all about you. I’ve studied you like a textbook or a book of spells. Everything you’ve done speaks of how much you hate yourself. So I can guess at what sort of things your hellhound says to you. Join me, and you’ll never hear its voice again.”
“You can really do that?” Ransom’s face and voice were open and raw, like they’d been when he’d told Natalie about his hellhound, or about the enhanced intuition project, or high school. Or that he loved her.
He’s conning her, Natalie thought fiercely. He’s using real feelings for a false purpose, to make himself sound convincing. It’s a classic trick.
She tried not to think that he’d never been able to do that before.
“Yes, I can,” Elayne assured him. “And I can do more. Every bit of pain you feel, I can take away. I know your powers don’t work right. I know they hurt you. I can fix that. I know there’s been a sadness in you, all your life. I can take it away. I know you lie awake at night tortured by guilt. I can take that away too. Everything that hurts you will be gone. You can’t imagine how free you’ll feel without it.”
Elayne sounded so honest. So reasonable. Natalie had never hated anyone so much in her life, not even the fake foster parents with the big, beautiful house.
But Ransom didn’t look like he hated her. He looked at Elayne the way Natalie must have looked at the fake foster parents when they’d promised her a family and a home.
Natalie longed to shout at him not to listen. She wanted to tell him that Elayne was a liar, like the fake parents. If Elayne really could take away his pain, she wouldn’t do it in any way that he’d want. It would be like when he’d tried to destroy his hellhound, only worse. She’d cut away his pain and his self along with it, leaving him an empty shell.
Natalie wanted to tell him that so much that she had to bite her lip to keep herself silent. The sharp coppery taste of blood was her reminder to herself to trust him. If he was conning Elayne, he had a plan and she had to play along. Ransom was smart—Ransom was brilliant—and if he wanted her to chime in now, he’d have found some way to signal to her.
“What about Jager?” Ransom asked abruptly. “He talked to me, too.”
Elayne nodded. “Yes, Jager and I made a deal. We both want you, so we decided that the only fair thing was to allow you to choose. He made you an offer, but from the way you arrived here, it seems like your answer was no. So now it’s my turn.”
“Jager didn’t offer me anything. He threatened me. You’re the only one making an actual offer. And I have to say… it’s tempting. If I take it, what do I have to do for you?”
Natalie recognized the greedy gleam in Elayne’s eyes. Ransom was playing her. Elayne was a mark, and he had her on the hook. The eagerness in her voice was unmistakable as she said, “You didn’t ask what I’d do with your pain, or how I’d take it f
rom you. I can wall it away from you, so you don’t feel it yourself but can project it into others. It will become your weapon that will drop your enemies—our enemies—in their tracks. All I ask of you is that you join us. You will be the first of our Dark Knights, and your name will be Despair.”
He was silent for a long time. Then he said, “I accept. Get rid of this stuff.”
He waved a hand at the shadows, encompassing Natalie and Wally as if they were completely unimportant.
Elayne’s greedy gleam intensified, but it was joined by a cunning that Natalie didn’t like at all. “Excellent. There’s just one little thing we need to settle before our deal can be sealed. It’s the matter of your guttersnipe girlfriend and the gone dogs. Where’s the other one, by the way?”
Ransom’s gaze flickered to Natalie, and she knew, with as much certainty as he felt when he knew, that her time to speak had come.
“Heidi’s gone, like you said,” Natalie told Elayne.
“That’s what they’re called, Natalie. They’re ‘gone dogs.’ Gone, like ‘not there.’” Ransom’s voice practically dripped with condescension. If that didn’t convince Elayne that he didn’t care about Natalie, nothing would. To Elayne, he said, “I don’t know where the other one went. It takes off and comes back all the time. It’ll be back. What were you doing with the magical animals, anyway?”
“You’ll learn that and much more when you become Despair,” replied Elayne. “First, I want proof of your commitment.”
“Sure.” He made an awkward movement, as if he was trying to walk away, then glanced down at himself. Apologetically, he said, “Er, I’m still stuck.”
Elayne started to raise her hand, then caught herself.
Dammit, Natalie thought. That was so close!
Elayne made a complex series of gestures with both hands. “There. You can walk now. Move slowly, or you’ll lose your balance.”
Ransom cautiously lifted one foot. The shadows stretched between his sole and the ground, as if he was stuck in black tar. He gave a shudder that Natalie was certain wasn’t part of the act.
“Proof of commitment,” repeated Elayne. “Don’t harm the gone dog; I have plans for it. Kill the woman.”
