They were already waiting for him, a trio of young darklings.
Melissa felt it all, the tastes surging into her mouth like stomach acid. They tore into his tent the moment the rip arrived, only seconds after the earth’s shudder had pulled him out of his slumber. He fought back against them, swinging a flashlight whose stainless steel case brought a howl of pain from the youngest darkling. But it wouldn’t light, and it had no thirteen-letter name, and soon their claws had cut across his face, then his chest, then finally found his throat.
And then the darklings were eating, slaking their thirst with the man’s still-warm juices, reveling in his last gasps, fighting over scraps…
Melissa felt bile rising in her throat, and her brain spun with the darklings’ killing frenzy. She struck her own head with her hands, trying to drive the images out, and stumbled half blind across the tracks, dizzy and close to vomiting, her mind caught in the whirlwind of hunger and death.
Then pain shot through her outstretched hand, a sharp sensation of burning, and she heard glass breaking.
She wrenched her eyes open, tried to tear her mind back into her own body.
Fire was everywhere, its white light blinding in the secret hour. She’d overturned the hurricane lamp, and it had shattered, spilling its oil across the fireworks. Through the dazzling flames Melissa saw fuses beginning to sparkle.
It was too soon; the darklings weren’t here yet. She had to put the fire out before the rockets and flares and sparklers began to explode, wasting all their ammunition.
Melissa threw herself down on the gravel, rolling across the flaming oil, trying to stifle the flames. Her long black dress was still soaked, wet from trudging through the falling rain from Jonathan’s car. Waterlogged enough to protect her body. But her hands burned, and she inhaled the bitter smell of her own hair igniting, its damp, sizzling strands shooting across the corners of her vision. A rocket shot into space beside her, climbing until the upward edge of the rip silenced it.
Melissa rolled back and forth, spreading out her dress as far as she could. She smelled its singed cotton, felt the muffled hiss of a bottle rocket trapped under her, its detonation like a quick jab to her ribs.
When she opened her eyes a moment later, they stung with smoke, but she saw that the fire was mostly smothered. The last flaming tendrils of oil spread across the wet gravel, sputtering out.
Melissa sighed with relief. Her hands and face were blistered, her hair felt like a total disaster, and she smelled like a wet dog that had been set on fire. But she’d saved the cache of fireworks. Jenks wouldn’t die because of her mistake.
A second later she frowned, realizing her new problem.
The hurricane lamp was destroyed, her only fire extinguished, and Jessica was off chasing her little sister. Until the flame-bringer returned, Melissa was defenseless.
She sent out her mind and soon found a coppery taste on the midnight landscape—the familiar, metallic flavor of flame-bringer. Jessica was still moving, thrashing through the rain-heavy trees on her way to the cave. She hadn’t reached her little sister yet.
Off to the east Jonathan was just now closing in on Rex, climbing toward the last-stand building in leaps and bounds.
And from the deep desert darklings were coming, old ones.
Lots of them.
“Come on, Jessica and Jonathan,” Melissa said, rising to her feet. “Hurry the hell up!”
28
12:00 A.M..-
Long Midnight
FLYBOY, FLY
“Where are they!” Rex shouted.
“Who?”
“Jessica! Melissa!”
Jonathan spread his hands. “They’re still back in Jenks.”
Rex let out a half-animal howl, his hands twisting into claws. Dess looked up from where she knelt inside her thirteen-sided arrangement of fireworks and shrugged. “He wanted you to bring Jessica,” she said.
“Yeah, I’m getting that.”
Jonathan was soaked. Barreling through the suspended rain at seventy miles an hour had been like swimming in his clothes. If the secret hour wasn’t so warm, he probably would have died of exposure by now.
And some thanks I get.
“Why didn’t you bring them?” Rex cried.
“Listen, Melissa didn’t know exactly what you wanted, so she said I should come and see.” He coughed into a fist; he’d inhaled a lot of water on the way here. “Plus Jessica had to sort of look for her, um, sister.”
“Look for her what?” Dess said.
“We need her here!” Rex hissed.
“Okay. Should I go back and get her?”
“Yes. But I’ll come with you.” Rex made his way across the roof toward Jonathan, limping, his teeth clenched with pain.
“Are you okay?” Rex didn’t answer, and Jonathan held out his hand. “Are you sure you can fly?”
Rex shot him a look, and for a moment Jonathan thought he was going to get all scary-faced.
“Don’t worry about me.”
“Hey, Rex,” Dess called. “Sorry to do the math, but if there’s four of you out there, how are you all going to get back?”
Jonathan nodded. As far as he knew, he could only fly with two midnighters in tow—one holding each hand. With four of them out in Jenks, someone would have to stay behind.
“If we can get Jessica back here in time, it won’t matter.”
“What won’t matter?” Jonathan asked.
Rex took his hand in a deathlike grip. “I’ll explain on the way.”
He looked into Rex’s eyes; the exhaustion and madness had only gotten worse in the last week. What if the guy had snapped, and this was all a wild-goose chase? What if Rex decided he was a winged darkling in mid-flight and let go of Jonathan’s hand?
What if he really was a darkling?
Jonathan paused, but then remembered his promise to Jessica and decided to follow the seer’s orders, no matter how crazy he seemed.
“Fly,” Rex said, his voice cold.
“Okay. But I have to warn you, you’re going to get really wet.”
They jumped from the building’s edge, cutting two tunnels through the suspended rain, building speed as they fell. Water spattered against Jonathan’s face, forcing his eyes closed to slits. Flying through frozen rain was like standing under a shower and staring straight up into the faucet.
Before the other buildings rose up around them, Jonathan caught a glimmer of red in the distance—the rip was moving faster now.
“Can we make it?” Rex shouted, covering his mouth with his free hand to keep the water out. “All the way to Jenks and back before the rip gets here?”
“I don’t know. Normally it would only take ten minutes or so. But this damn rain—” He broke off, coughing up water from his lungs.
Rex grunted as they hit the next roof over, and as they pushed off again, his fingernails dug into Jonathan’s flesh, his face twisting with pain.
“Ow, Rex!” The pressure eased. “Why do you need her back here anyway?”
“It’s complicated.”
Jonathan shot Rex a sidelong glance. He should have known that the promised explanation wouldn’t be forthcoming.
He sighed. No point in arguing now. How did Dess always put it? Seer knows best.
“Ten minutes? That’s cutting it close.” Rex winced as they hit the next roof, taking two long strides across its rain-slick surface, then leaping into the air again. “Dess says the rip will reach downtown in less than twenty.”
“Yeah, and that’s assuming we find Jessica right away,” Jonathan said. “I mean, she might still be out looking for her sister.”
“Don’t worry, I can find her,” Rex said.
“Huh?”
The seer didn’t answer as the outskirts of downtown rose up around them. They had landed at street level finally and angled onto the highway. Jonathan imagined the cars around them springing to life again in twenty minutes, all weaving to a stop, people struggling to control them with brute strength, their power steering and brakes suddenly heavy as lead.