Touching Darkness

At the center of the burning slithers - right at the spot Dess had predicted - stood three stiffs, frozen by midnight. One was Jessica's stalker, handsome Ernesto Grayfoot, camera in hand. Another was a tall woman with blond hair, the third an old man, elegantly dressed in clothes that seemed decades out of date. Even from a distance Jessica could see the resemblance between Constanza and her grandfather.



A fourth figure huddled on the salt between them, small and naked and pale.



Jessica dropped Jonathan's hand and ran to the trembling figure, carrying Explosiveness over her head, spitting demonic shadows in every direction.



It wasn't Rex.



The girl was sickly and withered, her legs too thin to stand on. Clumps of leathery skin clung to her human flesh, which shone albino white from years in darkness.



"Bright..." she said with a dry throat, as blinded as Jonathan by the flame.



Of course, she was a midnighter still. A seer, Rex and Melissa had said. Jessica hid the flame behind her, and the eyes crept open a slit, flashing purple.



"You finally came for me."



Jessica blinked. Finally - after fifty years. The girl couldn't comprehend how long it had been.



"Yes. You're okay now." She didn't look okay. She could barely hold her head up, her muscles wasted from years imprisoned in darkling flesh.



"I don't know you," she said softly. "I'm Anathea."



"We're new in town," Jonathan said, limping up behind Jessica. "Anathea, we're looking for a friend..."



"The other seer," she said, nodding sadly. "They changed him and left me here."



"Do you know where they took him?"



"I can look." She pointed a thin finger at Explosiveness. "But put that out."



Jessica turned and threw it into the darkness. The moment it left her hand, the flare sputtered, dying before it hit the ground. She pulled out Unanticipated Illuminations again, in case any slithers had dared to stick around.



The girl sighed with relief in the sudden blackness and opened her eyes wider. She swept her seer's gaze across the horizon, then nodded.



"He's flying that way."



"Flying..." Jessica could barely make out a flock of shapes against the rising moon. Rex and his new entourage.



They were too late.



"We have to follow him..." she said desperately. "Try to save him."



"If you can keep him aboveground until the sun comes up," the girl said, "the darkling flesh will burn away, I think."



"I've got my own sun," Jessica said, her hand clenching Unanticipated Illuminations. "Come on, Jonathan."



He paused, looking down at Anathea. Are you going to be okay?"



The girl shook her head. "I know why they let me go." She sank back to the ground, exhausted.



"Come on!"



"What if they come back and hurt her?" Jonathan said.



"They don't want my flesh," Anathea answered. "I'm one of them now."



Jessica looked up at the retreating swarm, chilled by the words. If that were true, then Rex was one of them too. "We have to go, Jonathan."



Jonathan paused, then took off his jacket and wrapped it around the girl's frail shoulders.



"We'll be back," he said to Anathea, and then took Jessica's hand.



Unanticipated Illuminations swept the night sky nervously, its beam clearing a path before them. A few flocks of slithers challenged the light but burst instantly into balls of flame, consumed as they streaked toward the ground.



Even with Jonathan half blinded, they gained on the swarm quickly. Soon Jessica could see why. At its center flapped a darkling in almost human form. Its flight was ungainly, the wings uncoordinated and the body twitching horribly, as if it were at war with itself. Its long spiked tail swung like a nervous cat's through the air.



"Rex," she whispered.



They grew closer, and the flashlight began to tear at the trailing edge of the swarm, igniting slithers and driving the rest into mad vortices.



Two darklings descended to join the thing in the center, taking positions on either side and trying to coax it forward, but Jessica saw its human arms flailing, fending them off.



At the peak of their next jump she pointed Unanticipated Illuminations directly into the swarm and said its name again, willing every ounce of her power into it.



The beam lanced through the mass, and the two darklings shrieked and veered away, the halfling bursting into flame.



"Rex!" she cried.



The blazing shape tumbled, gyrating toward the ground like a crumpled paper airplane. At the last moment it managed one billowing flap of its burning wings, bringing itself softly to earth before collapsing.



The swarm twisted around, transforming into a whirlwind that surrounded the fallen creature. Slithers broke off from the spinning mass, launching themselves into the path of her flashlight, disintegrating as they flew. The stench of the screaming, burning animals began to choke her.



Then one struck Jessica's right shoulder, streaking in from below and sending an icy bolt of pain through her arm. She twisted the flashlight around, igniting burning slithers in all directions.



But there were so many of them, and she didn't have another flare.



"Stop here!" Jessica cried as they landed, and Jonathan stumbled blindly to a halt. "There are too many!"



A shape loomed up before her, and Jessica reflexively brought her hand up to protect her face. The slither bounced from her wrist with a screech, leaving the charms on Acariciandote glowing. Through the darkness she saw sleek forms bounding across the desert, hunting cats carried toward them in thirty-foot strides.



She could burn them all one by one, Jessica knew, but in the meantime the swarming slithers would cut her to pieces. The darklings, however cautious and fearful after their long lives, were willing to sacrifice themselves to save their new halfling.



And kill Jessica Day in the bargain.



"What do I do?" she murmured.



"I've got you," Jonathan said. Eyes squeezed shut against her darting white light, he wrapped himself around Jessica, protecting her back. "Just keep fighting."



She felt his body jerk as a slither hit him from behind.



"Jonathan!"



He groaned. "Just fight!"



There wasn't time to argue. She turned Unanticipated Illuminations on the nearest darkling, which stumbled and howled as flame skated across its fur. She swept the light across a flock of slithers to reach another great cat. The beast leapt sideways, but she followed it with a flick of her wrist until it was reduced to a scattering of bright motes tumbling across the salt.



Jonathan flinched again as something struck him, pulling her off balance as he swung Perambulation blindly. Jessica clenched her teeth and ignored his cries of pain, aiming her flashlight at another panther, whose purple eyes flashed, then boiled from its head. The thing screamed, launching itself up into the air, wings bursting into flame even as they sprouted from its back.



It crashed to the ground close enough to shake the desert under her feet, thrashing up a cloud that rolled across them, filling Jessica's eyes with stinging salt.



Another slither flared behind her as Jonathan fended it off with his shield.



A whistling sound came from overhead, a huge darkling plummeting through the air. But Illumination's beam transformed it into a bright, shrieking meteor tumbling to the ground. It was headed right toward them, a flaming pin-wheel of claws and teeth and wings. Jessica struggled, trying to move out of its path, but Jonathan was wrapped around her, still blinded by the white light.



"Jonathan! Incoming!"



He grunted and dragged her backward while Jessica kept the light focused on the beast. The creature burned away as it fell and crumbled when it struck the earth before them, scattering glowing embers around their feet, like the remains of a dying campfire kicked across the desert floor.



Howls came from all around them then, awful sounds of defeat and terror.



Jessica cast around for another black shape in the air or on the ground, but her beam found nothing but a few stray slithers. The other darklings must have given up, their age-old fearfulness finally driving them back into the night. In the distance she could just make out the tattered remnants of the swarm fleeing across the flats.



"I think that's it," she said in the sudden silence.



Jonathan's arms slipped from around her, and he fell to his hands and knees.



Jessica whirled around. His sweat-streaked face was twisted with pain. Jonathan!"



"I'll live," he panted. "Go get Rex."



He raised his head and squinted across the desert, pointing to the crumpled, smoldering heap where the halfling had fallen.



Jessica bit her lip, scanned the sky again. Nothing.



"Okay. Stay here."



She fell into a dead run across the salt, playing the flashlight's beam across Rex as she drew closer. The remains of his darkling body burned away in great gouts of white fire, the wings disappearing into sheets of flame, the outer layer of skin blasted from him like dirt under a fire hose.



When it was done, she turned the flashlight off and ran to where he lay crumpled on the salt.



"Rex!"



He looked up at her with wild eyes, hissing at her through clenched teeth.



"Rex, are you...?"



A shudder passed through his body. He looked down in amazement at his arms, pale and bare. His hair was half burned away, but his skin looked unhurt, as if Unanticipated Illuminations's white fire had stopped at the limit of his humanity.



"Rex?"



"Did you see her?" he croaked. "The other one?"



"Anathea? Yeah, she's back there."



"Take me to her."



Jonathan ran up, limping horribly. "Are you sure you can...?"



Rex rose, not a stitch of clothing on his body, and said, "Quickly. She's dying."



34



12:00 a.m.



ANATHEA



Freedom was killing her, she knew.



She'd thought of nothing else all this time, nothing but getting out of darkling flesh, back to Bixby, to Ma and Pa. In her tattered dreams Billy Clintock always came flying across the desert to save her, clinging to her as the sun rose up over the desert and set her free.



But the reality had turned out to be a grim one. She had grown too weak inside that other body. They hadn't left enough of her to survive without her other half.



Still, it was good to be herself again. Human, more or less.



Anathea curled up on the salt, hoping she'd make it to sunrise or at least until the dark moon set.



When they came back, as the young acrobat had promised, there were three of them.



They landed hard, the other seer stumbling. He was naked until he put on his long coat that had been discarded on the salt, but the darkling flesh had been stripped away from him somehow.



Anathea found herself both angry and glad that they'd saved him, as no one had ever saved her.



The redheaded girl had said she'd brought her own sun Anathea wondered again at the strange, intense Focus that clung to her. She carried some sort of metal shaft in her hand, a weapon that Anathea had watched cut through a whole swarm to rescue their friend. And her eyes were wrong.



What talent was she? And why didn't Anathea know any of them? Had it been that long?



"You're Anathea?" the other seer asked her.



"Yes," she said softly. Her voice had grown weak after all that time inside the darkling.



"What year is it?" he asked.



She frowned.



"What year do you remember, I mean?"



She hadn't thought of years and months for so long... Darkling reckoning in twelves and gross counts seemed more natural to her now. "Nineteen and fifty-two?"



He nodded, as if glad for the information. She let her eyes drift closed.



"Do you know what happened?" he said. "To the rest of your people, the midnighters of your time?"



"My time?" She shivered, remembering now. There had been orders given by her own hands long ago, arranged out on the spelling blocks for villainous daylighters to read. But that had been so long ago, too long to recollect. She shuddered. "Terrible things. But it wasn't my fault. She gave up the secret. Not me."



"The secret?"



"No one was supposed to tell." She shook her head. "That's what started it all, that Madeleine Hayes telling secrets. Those Grayfoot boys knew what they were doing when they brought me out here..."



Anathea let herself sink back to the ground. Thinking about things that had happened before the transformation hurt her head. Maybe she wasn't so human anymore after all. And talking stole her paltry breath. She felt herself slipping away.



The acrobat, the pretty Mexican boy, spoke up. "Can we do anything for you?"



She smiled then and held out her hand. All this time she'd had wings, but it was hard work, laboring inside that horrible other body. Nothing like when Billy Clintock had taken her soaring, what seemed like years ago. "Please?"



He understood and took her hand, and that lightness filled her. It had been so long...



35



12:00 a.m.



FLATS



They decided to leave her there on the salt flats. The three darkling groupies - Angie, Ernesto, and the eldest Grayfoot - still stood frozen, looking at the spot where they had left Rex for the darklings. Maybe the appearance of a dead girl in his place would give them something to think about.



Jonathan turned away, unable to watch as Rex arranged dominoes around Anathea. Rex had dressed, finding his clothes untouched where the darklings had discarded them, and he looked eerily normal. All that was different was his burned hair and his hands, which trembled just like his father's now.



Jessica also didn't look. She pressed against his chest, crying, but Jonathan found he didn't know how to grieve for Anathea, born in 1940 but dead tonight at only fourteen. Her wasted body looked hardly twelve, the age she'd been when she was taken.



And what had she said about a Madeleine Hayes, right before the end? Was the old mindcaster the one who had betrayed her generation so long ago? He would have to ask Dess about that.



"Okay, let's go," Rex called.



Jonathan turned and saw what Rex had left for the groupies, and a chill traveled down his bruised and battered spine. He stared into the seer's eyes: no tears for Anathea, just a fierce, haunted expression, as if Unanticipated Illuminations hadn't burned all the darkness out of him.



Rex had ignored the lore meanings of the dominoes, arranging them into letters a foot high. Around Anathea's body they spelled out in simple English:



YOU'RE NEXT



It made an awful picture, but that was the point, Jonathan supposed. It might convince Angie and the others to pursue a different career path. With no halflings left, this terrible message would be the last the darkling groupies ever received.



Jonathan took Jessica's hand and kissed it, tasting the salt from her tears. "Don't look," he said.



She shook her head.



The slither strikes across Jonathan's back were fading together into one giant bruise, and he winced as he held out his other hand for Rex, whose trembling didn't stop when midnight gravity connected them.



They hadn't told him yet about Melissa going through her windshield. As they flew, the seer's leaps weak and tentative beside him, Jonathan wondered if Rex would make it if she hadn't survived.



They reached the car as the dark moon was setting.



Melissa stood shakily as they landed, her face streaked with blood but managing a smile. Rex pulled his hand from Jonathan's and stumbled toward her across Dess's pattern of stakes and wire, gathering Melissa into a hug.



"I knew it," she said. "You tasted human again."



Jonathan glanced at Dess, who rolled her eyes. She seemed better than when they'd left her.



"Help me with this?" she said, stooping to pull a tent stake from the hard ground. "With Jessica around, we can clean this up before that monstrosity gets rolling again."



Jonathan followed Dess's gesture to the old Ford, pointed at them and trailed by a cloud of dust. "Oh, yeah. Good call."



He held Jessica's hand for a moment longer, and then they set to work, Jonathan's slither bites aching as he bent to pull up the metal stakes. His left leg and all of his back felt like they'd been hit with line drives and then sunburned extra-crispy. And he was starving. He couldn't wait to get back to the peanut butter on banana bread sandwich stashed in his glove compartment.



"You believe those two?" Dess whispered as she wound a spool of wire.



Rex and Melissa still embraced, their faces close, eyes flashing purple from the setting moon.



He shook his head.



"Do we have to tell them about the car?" Dess said quietly a smile playing on her dirt-streaked face.



Jessica didn't smile back, just bent to pull up another stake, and Jonathan reached out and touched her arm. Death was too real to joke about tonight.



They stood back a good hundred yards to watch the two cars jump to life again, streaking across the desert in sudden tandem as the blue light swept from the world. Jonathan's whirled to a quick stop, but the old Ford rattled across the salt for half a mile. He'd already reached inside to turn the engine and headlights off so it disappeared into darkness, only a dust cloud marking its passage.



"I'll get it tomorrow," he promised Melissa again. It was the weekend, and nobody would be out here for a couple of days. As if anyone would steal that crappy old wreck with its busted windshield anyway.



"I hate the hospital," Melissa whined again. "All those sick people. And doctors touching me."



"You need stitches," Rex said. And you could have brain damage."



"Could have?" Dess muttered.



Jonathan sighed and limped toward his car. It was going to be a real treat driving back into town. Finally it was just like Rex had planned, all five of them together again.



But at least they were all still alive. More or less.



Melissa's face had stopped bleeding, but she was going to have scars on her forehead and left cheek for a while, maybe forever. Rex's hands still trembled, and he twitched at sudden sounds. He walked carefully, half blind, his glasses lost somewhere out in the desert. Jessica hadn't said a word since Anathea had died; she clung to Jonathan's arm, exhausted by the fight and by everything they'd seen.



Only Dess seemed herself.



"Is Madeleine okay?" she asked as they walked toward Jonathan's car.



Melissa tipped her head back into the air, and nodded. "She made it through the night. But she knows what's happened; they'll find her soon."



"You are in so much trouble," Dess said.