“No!” Shade cried in a millisecond buzz.

  But Knightmare was too high and the helicopter was too low and the sword arm smashed into the whirling blades, which shattered and came apart, hurling jagged steel in every direction.

  Then the sword’s arc cut into the top of the helicopter and down through the passenger space. Shade watched in horror as the blade sliced down through the body of a patrolman, down through his shoulder, down through his chest, out through his hip.

  The helicopter crashed into one of the administrative buildings, bashing in the red-tile roof. Shade saw it all in slow motion with exquisite detail: the tiles flying, the stucco crumbling, the rotors shattering, the pilot struggling with the stick, mouth open, starting to scream . . .

  Am I fast enough?

  Shade ran straight at the disaster. She ducked beneath a stumpy, turning rotor, leaped atop a crumbling wall, paused for a millisecond to aim, and threw herself through the air. She landed hard against the nearside door of the helicopter, hands scrabbling for purchase, one foot finding a skid, fingers finding the door handle.

  She yanked the door open, swung into the helicopter’s cockpit, started to grab the pilot, saw he was still buckled in, and unsnapped the seat belt as the glass bubble of the cockpit smashed into crumbling brick. Masonry was pushing its way through the glass. In a heartbeat the pilot would be dead.

  “Hang on!” she yelled at morph-normal speed, which of course the pilot could not possibly understand.

  Shade grabbed the pilot by his jacket with one hand, grabbed the doorjamb with the other, and shoved off blindly, backward. The pilot flew out of his seat even as Shade saw a wooden beam pierce the glass. The beam was driven so hard into the pilot’s seat that it pushed all the way through, tearing stuffing and springs out of the back.

  But the pilot, like Shade, was flying backward through the air.

  The fall was at normal speed, so Shade had time to wrap her arms around the pilot and twist in midair to take all the impact on her back. She hoped she was strong enough to take it.

  W-h-h-u-u-u-m-m-m-p-h-h-h!

  The landing seemed to take forever, but that did not lessen its impact. She had fallen only twenty feet, perhaps, but still the wind exploded from her chest and she lay dazed for a long while—perhaps three seconds in real time—before she could suck in air. The pilot lay on his back atop her. She rolled him away. He was dazed but breathing.

Hell yes: superhero! Shade thought.

  “Are. You. All right?” she asked, noticing that she had ripped his jacket to shreds.

  The pilot was not in the mood for conversation. He was more in the mood for incoherent, babbling terror.

  A pillar of dust and smoke rose from the crashing helicopter, and then something Shade almost did not recognize: the sound of an explosion, a single loud Bam!, and then a protracted roar as fuel ignited.

  A piece of steel flew like a scythe toward the stunned pilot. Shade snatched it out of the air.

Monster, Chapter 16