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.

Monster, Chapter 26