Justin DeVeere might be a violent psychopath, but he was no fool. With a quickness of mind that worried Shade, Knightmare saw his best shot. He turned and bounded away, each stride carrying him two dozen feet, straight toward the lighthouse.

  The lighthouse was on a small man-made hill. A set of stone steps led up to a surprisingly grand porticoed entryway and a narrow door through which Knightmare barely squeezed sideways.

  By the time Shade had conquered her nausea, Knightmare was all the way inside. Furious at the loss of time, Shade leaped to the lighthouse. It was a leap unlike anything she had tried before. It was as if her thick, morphed thighs contained some kind of spring-loaded mechanism, and it quite simply hurled her through the air, hurled but also tumbled, for she had no way to control her flight. She cartwheeled, head over heels, had plenty of time to see the curved wall of the lighthouse but absolutely no way to avoid crashing into it.

  The impact knocked the wind out of her but was not painful. No, the painful part was when she fell to the ground, banging off the portico.

  She was mad now. Mad at Knightmare, mad that she couldn’t control her body, mad at what felt like some kind of psychic interruption from the Watchers.

  With one powerful foot she kicked in the door.

Monster, Chapter 16