She had barely taken a step away from the two of them when the first missile came whooshing down the parking aisle. A viscous, dark green blob spat from the maw of Evangelina exploded ten feet away.
In an instant, Jennifer had changed into dragon form and curled over the boys to protect them. The acid struck her armored wings and trickled away harmlessly.
Why do you protect them
?
She felt her sister’s curiosity and disdain crawl down her skin with the venom.
I hear your memories. These two boys have given you nothing but grief since you’ve learned what you are. Since they’ve learned what you are
.
“It’s what friends do,” Jennifer retorted. “I wouldn’t expect you to understand.”
She felt the waves of displeasure, even though she still couldn’t see her sister.
Friends are a luxury you can afford in this world. I could not, in mine
.
“Well, now that you’re here, have you thought about trying?” Jennifer felt self-conscious about her voice echoing through the mall parking lot, but they were alone. “I mean, all we hear from you is ‘no friends, no family, no love’…have you ever considered you might get those things, if you stopped acting like a psychotic?”
Jennifer could briefly feel her sister’s doubt again—was that one of the parts arguing with the others?—and then she felt the surge of rage return as Evangelina sprang from the darkness and bore down like the predator she was.
She had no time to react. The collision was fierce. As they rolled over each other on the pavement, Jennifer felt blood trickling from her temple. Dark legs, wings, and claws wrapped themselves securely around her. Even before they stopped rolling, Jennifer could feel the probing mouth brushing against her scaled wing and shoulder. Whatever came out of her sister’s jaws did not feel like a forked tongue or anything else she knew dragons to possess. Now it was at her neck, and her snout…soon it would be at her bloody temple, and the draining would begin…
In a flash she was back to her smaller, human shape. Before Evangelina could adjust, Jennifer had slid out of her sister’s grasp and hacked at the flickering tail.
Standing up, she pulled both daggers up, kissed them, and began to battle shout before Evangelina was even up. Light shone. Sound echoed. The entire parking garage became a cavern of beaststalker fury. At least ten car alarms went off simultaneously.
And in the midst of it all, Evangelina stood up, regained her composure…and smacked Jennifer across the head with her tail.
I’m sorry, sister…did you say something? I’m afraid I can’t hear you very well.
The realization hit Jennifer almost as hard as the tail had. Evangelina was blind. And deaf. Martin Stowe’s vision problems were obvious, of course; and Angus Cheron had “explained” the deafness of Delores at the beaststalker trial. Those “weaknesses” combined to make Evangelina invulnerable to the beaststalker’s shout. That’s why my mother had such a hard time with her!
Correct
came her sister’s voice.
I do not need to see or hear what I can feel. I felt our grandfather’s excitement the last night he was with you, and your own mother’s fear when she realized her first weapon was useless against me. And now, I can feel your despair. Your hopelessness. You’re going to die tonight, Jennifer. You’ll fail, like your mother before you, and your father after you. And then
…
“And then what?” Jennifer knew now her voice wasn’t necessary, but shouting felt better. Plus, it was easier to hear herself over the wail of the car alarms. “You’ll go back to your old dimension, since it was such a fabulous place? Or you’ll stick around in our world, killing people when you feel like it and hiding when you don’t?”
I’ll worry about the future once I settle the past
.
“Sis, you don’t have a future.”
She ran straight at Evangelina, counting on the element of surprise. But her opponent stepped to one side, taking only a small swipe of one blade to the ribs.
Surprise won’t work anymore, Jennifer. Tonight you’re not the unexpected distraction. You’re the prey. Your thoughts are your scent. I will read and track them
.
An idea came to Jennifer like a lightning bolt—and it did not bother her one bit that her sister could hear it as well. Holding her blades high, she swung around, traced a circle in the air, and then brought them down to strike the cement surface of the parking lot.
What came out astonished her. It was her mother’s twin golden eagles. Like feathered bullets, they dove straight for Evangelina and dug at her face with razor claws.
“Read their thoughts!” Jennifer dared. She switched into dragon form, stomped the ground, and brought a stream of serpents to her aid. “And read theirs!”
Evangelina teetered back, flailing at the enormous raptors and obviously wary of the slithering mass approaching her feet. She had only one escape. The shadow around her extended…and then she was gone, the shadow retreating quickly after her.
Jennifer gritted her teeth and flexed back to human form. Her animal friends clustered around her protectively. The cars stopped wailing, perhaps silenced by the unnatural scene before them. Eagle eyes and snake tongues were all around her, but she knew none of them could tell where Evangelina had fled.
“Stay close. She’s around here somewhere.”
With the birds gliding ahead and the serpents wriggling on either flank, Jennifer made her way up each aisle of the parking ramp. Back and forth through the massive levels they went, named after states, themes, and colors for parkers’ convenience: Arizona’s green cactus, blue dice for Nevada, and the purple mountains of Colorado.
As they came within sight of the first few white Alaskan husky signs on the ramp to the top level, Jennifer wondered if Evangelina hadn’t just fled altogether. Maybe summoning animals was something new to her, like beaststalkers had been.
The piercing cry of one of the eagles answered her question. It circled above something crawling down the ramp toward them. Jennifer couldn’t make it out, but it was small and moved slowly.
The other eagle gave a cry as well. It had spotted another one. The small, shadowy shape struggled to catch up with the first.
Another cry—another one.
Still another cry.
Soon, the eagles were calling out repeatedly, and a small army of indiscernible shapes was making its way down the ramp. Some of the creatures were clinging to the walls and restraining wires between levels.
There were hundreds of them. But what were they?
I can summon an army as well, sister
.
The mob sped up a bit. Suddenly, instead of crawling, some of them were jumping. One latched onto the talon of an eagle. A few others launched themselves into the bed of snakes Jennifer had arranged around her. The mambas hissed at the unearthly creatures and struck, as she finally got a good look at them.
They were spiders…almost. Black and hairy, with gray bellies, they had ten or so legs, several bright blue eyes, and short tails that suggested slugs more than anything else. One opened its mouth, revealing a set of clicking mandibles, and screamed.
Creatures from my own dimension
…
Jennifer backed up in a hurry. These things were already swarming over serpents, paying little heed to the small fraction that got devoured. Poison seemed to have no effect on them. The eagles had shaken off the more aggressive jumpers, but were sailing back to her. They could not hold this ground.
Recalling the oreams of Crescent Valley, she raised her daggers and let out a battle shout. The nova of light and sound knocked back the advancing swarm, curling their legs into hundreds of miniature death spasms.
Out of this maelstrom, the invincible shadow of Evangelina swooped. Jennifer ducked just quickly enough to get nothing more than a claw to the head, which was still enough to send her reeling. She somersaulted backward until her shoulders slammed into a parked sedan. The impact knocked her breath away. She felt the metal dent beneath her.
Do you know what it was like
?
The voice in her head purred with certain victory. She couldn’t see her sister but knew she was close.
To grow up where I did
?
Jennifer gasped for breath and struggled to her knees. The sound of something climbing on the sedan behind her motivated her to shuffle away a few feet. Then the sounds of claws on the asphalt warned her of something right behind her. Darkness curled around her. This is it. I’ll be whispering like Mom, “No daughter.” Dad, I’m so sorry you’ll find me like this.
Everything there survives by sucking the life from something else
.
Evangelina loomed over her.
There was so little left in that barren world when my brothers and I arrived. What a feast we must have seemed
!
What
—
The sudden sound of an engine accelerating surprised them both. Jennifer turned just in time to see her predator knocked back by two tons of metal and a screech of tires. Like an explosion, Evangelina burst into five screaming pieces, casting black swirls across the pavement around them.
Before Jennifer could piece together what happened, Susan was out of the assault sedan, wielding a tire iron and shrieking at what was left of Evangelina.
“Stay away from my friend! I’m not afraid of you anymore!”
“Susan!” Jennifer panicked for a moment—she hasn’t been gone long enough to make it back to Dad! But then she saw the device hanging from her friend’s belt, and realized what Susan must have understood once she had driven away for a while and her head was straight. Jonathan Scales was reachable by phone at the hospital. So he’ll be here, maybe in fifteen or twenty minutes. He’s flying as fast as he can.
Susan Elmsmith
.
Evangelina was plainly disoriented from the hit.
Friend of…Jennifer Scales. Goes to our geometry class
.
One of the silhouettes on the ground wriggled and twisted into a new form—the shape of Gerry Stowe. His beautiful face was bruised, and there was blood in his golden hair. He looked up at the iron-wielding Susan, freezing her in surprise.
We do not need to fight, you and me
.
“Gerry?” She almost dropped the tire iron. “How did you get here?”
“Susan, no! He’s not our friend! He’s—”
Gerry staggered to his feet, palms up. He didn’t even seem to see Jennifer. “Wait! I can…I can stop this. I can…I can be a friend. Like I was at your school. I can tell Sister…”
Get her out of the way
!
The other four pieces of Evangelina were rapidly recovering, moving toward each other and reforming into their more powerful outline.
Get her out of the way or we will kill her
.
“No, we don’t have to—” but the boy’s protests were swallowed with the rest of him as Evangelina wrapped him in darkness and then advanced upon Susan.
Back on her feet, Jennifer ran at them both. “Susan, get back in the car!”
She took a claw in the teeth and fell back to the ground, but this gave her friend the time necessary to climb back into the sedan.
The engine revved and the car leapt forward, but this time Evangelina was ready. She hopped over the car, twisted to face up, and clung to the deep contours of the cement roof. Untrained and surprised, Susan drove right past her—and into a bright yellow support pillar.
“Susan!” Jennifer screamed as she watched the air bag deploy in the sedan. It caught her friend’s flailing head, but blood still splattered onto the driver’s side window.
Over the still-running engine, she could hear Evangelina slither and advance behind her. Jennifer had no time to check on her friend. She rolled out of the darkness, spotted the parking ramp railing and the wide-open evening beyond, and scrambled for it.
She cleared the railing right before the predator pounced for her. She felt the vast shadow pass over her as she plummeted toward the earth, flexed herself into the proper shape, and then sailed on dragon’s wings a foot or two above the ground.
Her thoughts went to Susan, Eddie, and Skip just quickly enough for her to decide to pull Evangelina away from them.
I will follow you, sister. I have no interest in your friends, and I don’t need them for bait. You cannot outrun me
.
“Sure of that, are you?” Jennifer whispered, straining her wings and rocketing away from the ramp. Glowing headlights raced beneath her on Interstate 494. “You’ve never seen me fly, sis.”
She could feel Evangelina taking wing and pursuing her.
Your friends are loyal
.
She could feel the creature’s doubt, could almost put it in words: Here, once again, a Scales was leading danger away from loved ones.
“Oof!” Evangelina slammed into her so hard, she spun into a stalled car on the shoulder of the highway. The highway Susan hated because of all the cars. Oh, boy. All the cars.
People don’t see us, her grandfather’s voice reminded her from long ago. She felt a chill at the memory of that day, up at the cabin, as she first learned about her dragon heritage. They don’t see what they don’t understand.
And, in fact, beyond this single car there were no wrecks. Nobody was honking. The drivers were all staring west through their windshields. Or yakking into cell phones. Or eating salad out of plastic bowls precariously balanced on their steering wheels.
Jennifer clawed over the car wreckage and scrambled along the highway shoulder.
Come on, you. I’ve got plenty left
.
Your youth is intoxicating. And tasty, no doubt
.
“Bite me.” She sensed her sister’s movement—could she learn to anticipate the other, just as Evangelina anticipated her? Yes, she could. She took to the air just in time to hear a claw smash the pavement behind her. Triumph at the near miss made her almost dizzy. Her shape streamed over the rapid traffic. “Can I ask you a question, sis? I mean, you’ve been studying languages in this world for a while, I gather. So how does ‘fat, slow cow’ translate into your own world’s language?”