Long enough for her to snatch the pistol from the patrolman’s hand just as he’d slammed in a fresh clip. There was no time for her to register the fact that she had never held a gun in her life before this moment. She ran, bounding, and leaped atop the downed monster. She aimed the gun at his right eye and . . .

  Blam!

  This time it was her bullet she watched. It was her bullet that flew harmlessly past Knightmare’s eye.

  “Damn!”

  She jumped closer to the eye, which was slowly focusing, dark circles within still-darker circles. From a distance of three feet she fired again. This time the copper-jacketed slug plowed into the eye. It dimpled the surface, like a marble dropped on Jell-O, but then the Jell-O exploded outward, the vitreous black goo displaced by the bullet entering the membrane.

  It was like watching a water balloon filled with ink explode in slow motion.

  Shade jumped clear and now the Dark Watchers seemed almost to be singing, but in discordant tones, as though disagreeing with themselves. The attention was intense, distracting. She panted hard, limbs all leaden, heart pounding like it was trying to break through concrete. The exhaustion was utter and it gutted her. For a moment she could only stand as her head swam and her stomach wanted urgently to be sick.

  Knightmare snapped the barbed wire easily, just so much thread to him. He roared in pain, roared and clapped his claw hand over his face, roared and swung his sword around, trying to hit his nearly invisible foe.

  Shade had hurt him, but not fatally, not by a long shot. One eye was a black stain, but the other one still worked.

Monster, Chapter 16