Crash Morph: Gate Shifter Book Two (38 page)

“There’s at least one more Russian,” Jazzy said. She looked at her friend. “The blond guy. Remember? He’s shorter,” she explained, looking back at me.

“Anyone else?”

“The bearded guy,” Hilary ventured, her voice more tentative than Jazzy’s had been. She looked at her friend, as if for verification. “You know...the kitchen guy.”

Probably the cook,
my mind interpreted.
 

“Have you seen a tall, blond guy here at all?” I said, still trying to look between the two of them, despite the awkward angle at which I lay. “Blue eyes? Kind of psycho?”

Hilary immediately winced, enough that I could tell she’d run into Evers.

“He took Marla,” she said, her lower lip trembling once more.

When I looked at Jazzy, she nodded. “He had another guy with him,” she added.

“Another Russian?” I said.

Slowly, Jazzy shook her head, as if still thinking. “No,” she said. “He was just a regular white guy. Like from Seattle. He didn’t talk like the guy you meant...the one from Boston or whatever. He sounded like he was from here.”

I nodded, calculating in my head. That might be Razmun, but I doubted it. Razmun didn’t sound like he was from Seattle. Anyway, I knew they probably hadn’t seen everyone, locked in here, but what they had seen still gave me something to go on.

“Nik?”
I ventured into the link.
“Nik! Are you around?”

 
I didn’t hear anything in response.

I tried talking to the girls for awhile longer after that, but I didn’t learn much more.
 

From what I could tell, they’d seen at least eight or nine people total, all men.
 

The European and the Boston guy from the van. The cook. The other “Russian,” who was shorter. Seattle guy. Evers. They gave me a rough description of two others who’d brought them food. Apart from those guys, they’d only seen people like them, meaning girls who’d been locked in here for a time before someone came and took them away.
 

So maybe ten guys in total worked out here on a regular basis?
 

Eleven or so other women, including Hilary’s sister, Marla, had passed through here in the last few weeks. Most of those had been from the modeling show, too, Jazzy said. Half had been teenagers, half women in their twenties, “like you,” Jazzy told me.

Eventually, I ran out of questions.

Between every bout, I’d try getting an answer out of Nik again, but he never responded.

My body started to shut down a bit, probably a mild case of shock from the injuries and adrenaline and whatever else.

In any case, somewhere in that, I dozed off.

I only really knew I’d dozed off, however, when a loud bang woke me up.

My eyes opened in a flash.

A jolt of fear ran through me when I realized I’d fallen asleep. I instantly tried to calculate how much time had passed. I looked to the door, then my instincts had me looking back over my shoulder...not in the direction of the sound, but in the direction of the light.
 

There, in the corner of the room, I saw Jazzy and Hilary huddled, wide-eyed over the crappy electric light with its loose wires.
 

The orange glow lit the bottoms of their faces weirdly, and they looked both overly young and overly old for their fifteen years. It hit me that they’d never be the same after this. Well, probably not. At the very least, their view of the safe parameters in their suburban worlds had been irrevocably altered.

I looked back at the door when I heard shouting.

I heard feet running down the hall not long after that.

Then I heard gunshots.

Most of them were outside, on the other side of the old farmhouse walls. Some might have come from the kitchen, too.

More shouting followed, along with another crash from outside.

That time, the noise was a lot louder. In fact, it felt and sounded like something large and heavy had slammed into the side of the house, maybe not far from the concrete walls of our cell. The impact trembled the carpeted floor under my butt, hands, legs and arms. It made me wince, even as a fire ignited in my chest, filling me with relief.

“Nik,” I muttered.

He’d finally come.

That, or Gantry. Maybe both of them.

Either way, I’d spoken the name aloud, almost without realizing I’d done it. Well, not until Jazzy answered me. She spoke louder than me, raising her voice to be heard over the increasing intensity of sounds on the other side of the door. Which meant she had better than decent hearing, because those noises were getting a lot worse.

“Who’s Nick?” she said, half-shouting from her corner of the room.

Another volley of gunfire erupted outside the house.
 

I pressed to the floor, motioning towards them urgently with my cuffed hands.
 

“Get down!” I said, shouting that time. “Get the fuck down!”

I flattened my body to the thin carpet, rolling over on my stomach again and grimacing against the pain in my ribs. I started to crawl across the carpet towards them, writhing my way closer to where both girls huddled, straight-backed against the walls.
 

“Get down!” I snapped again, motioning more violently with my hand. “Now!”

That time, Jazzy looked at me.
 

The deer in headlights look didn’t leave her face.
 

Well, not right away. Something must have penetrated when she saw my expression, because life sparked back into her eyes, right before she grabbed ahold of Hilary and brought her down to the carpet. They both landed on their hands and knees, so still well up off the floor, but it was the right direction at least. When I reached them, I grabbed Jazzy’s wrist and yanked her the rest of the way down, hard enough that she let out a surprised sound, right before she face-planted into the carpet.

She didn’t fight me, though.

Grabbing Hilary’s wrist, I yanked her down, too, a few seconds later.

Another volley of shots broke out. I winced and ducked as I heard the shots plink against the walls outside. That time, I found myself happy about the concrete walls. They were aiming high so far, and not at us, but I saw a few holes in the upper part of the walls, so I knew it wasn’t concrete all the way up. Pressing my side against the wall, I continued to hold Jazzy’s wrist, and noticed that she didn’t let go of Hilary, either.

Slowly, the gunfire started to pull further away.

It also grew less frequent.

I focused on counting shots and directions, and decided there were only three shooters left now. Then two.
 

Finally one.

An explosion of bullets left what had to be a semi-automatic rifle––probably an M16 from the sound, or something similar––then abruptly cut off. The ricochet slowly tapered off a few seconds later. It sounded almost like the person continued firing even as they fell, or maybe as the gun fell, or maybe as both fell at the same time.

Either way, all of a sudden, after those last stuttered breaths from the gun, it got quiet.

Really quiet.
 

I knew this, because all of a sudden I could hear all three of us breathing again. Panting in fact, from where we lay flush on our bellies on that crappy, puke-green carpet, inhaling mouse turds and whatever else might be hanging around that musty, thin smudge of floor covering.
 

I also remembered how much my cracked and/or broken ribs hurt inside my chest.
 

I was trying to decide if I should get the two girls to pull me off the carpet and help me so we could get out the door...when that door suddenly slammed open.

My eyes jerked in that direction.

Staring up, my heart lifted briefly when I saw the tall, broad-shouldered form standing there. Nik’s face stared back at mine, his eyes a pale blue, shining at me even with his features in near-shadow from the light shining from the hallway behind him.

Then, even as I felt myself start to relax, my lips curl into a smile, that face transformed.

The features melted, changing in front of me.

Within seconds, a new, different face looked down at me instead.

Ledi.

Well...Razmun.
 

Some part of my mind still attached that face and body to Ledi, the person I’d met on Palarine, the one who had been Nik’s friend. And my friend, too, really.

I fought with what I was looking at, trying to deny it in some way, or maybe just make it mean something different.

When he spoke, the last flickers of that hope faded.

“Hello, Dakota,” he said, smiling wider.

He spoke Pharize, one of the main human languages from Nik’s home.

I recognized the voice, the tone, the inflection...the accent...the lilt at the end of my name. All of it. More than that, I recognized Ledi in his eyes and expression. I didn’t see anything at all of Nik in him now, even apart from the change in his features.

Somehow, just those two words drove it all home.

“...My heart hurts at the disappointment on your face,” Razmun said then, his irises melting rapidly from that light blue to a darker hazel, the color I remembered on him from Palarine. He gave a strange sort of bow, still smiling. “...And I apologize for misleading you into thinking your love had rescued you. I could not afford to have anyone here recognize me as I walked in. No one who might live to tell the tale anyway...” he added, looking at the two girls on the carpet next to me. “But I didn’t want to mislead you any longer than necessary, Dakota, dear...for I knew you would quickly surmise I was not your precious Nik.”

I swallowed, glancing at the two teenaged girls huddled on the musty carpet next to me.

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.