27

12:00 A.M..-

Long Midnight

IN THE RIP

Silence...

Midnight fell, extinguishing the mind noise of Jenks, turning the world blue and still and... red.

Here in the center of the rip everything began to glimmer purple - red and blue mixing together, time arrested, yet... not. The rain pattered down for a few more seconds, then petered out; the rip hadn't expanded enough to include the heavy clouds above their heads. Melissa wondered if when it reached them, the rain would start again.

Weather in the secret hour. Just when I thought I'd seen everything.

"Where is she?" Jessica asked.

Melissa closed her eyes, trying to ignore the flame-bringer's coppery, panicked taste. She sent her mind across the rip, feeling it growing, stretching in the opposite directions toward downtown and the mountains. It was moving slowly now, but she could already feel its speed increasing.

No little sisters in it, though.

"Sorry, Jess. I can't feel her."

"Why not?"

"Your sister's not inside the rip. Not yet, anyway. She must still be frozen, so I can't taste her mind."

"But Cassie's house is right there!" Jessica pointed down at the double-wide at the edge of the tracks. The red-tinged boundary had already swallowed it.

"Yep. And I can taste her grandma in there, still sleeping," Melissa said. "But nobody else is home."

Jessica's face twisted into an expression of fury, her mind all fiery peppers and burned toast.

"That little creep snuck out!" she cried.

Melissa raised an eyebrow, suddenly relieved she didn't have an older sister of her own. Madeleine's interfering had included making sure that none of her pet midnighters in Bixby had siblings - and this was why.

"Calm down, Jess," Jonathan said. "She can't be too far away. Once the rip reaches her, we'll deal with it."

Jessica looked at Melissa. "And you're sure you'll recognize her mind?"

"I know Cassie's taste. They'll be together, won't they?"

"What if they aren't?"

Melissa sighed. "I have an idea what your sister tastes like, okay? I've been to your house at midnight."

Jessica stared back, her fury twisting into new shapes as she realized what Melissa was admitting. "Damn you!" she said, and turned and stalked away.

"I never touched the shrimp," Melissa said to Flyboy. "Just the parents."

He offered a shrug, then went to calm the flame-bringer down.

Melissa let out another sigh, feeling weighed down by her long, rain-soaked dress. She and Rex should have admitted what they'd done to Jessica's parents a long time ago. They always figured that it would come up eventually and at a time like this, when everyone needed to stay calm.

They had the fireworks already in place, rockets stuck into the gravel, flares and sparklers divided into separate boxes, all of it covered with a tarp from Jonathan's trunk. Melissa decided to make herself useful while the other two were stressing. She flicked the tarp to knock the rainwater off, then pulled it from the fireworks.

The arsenal looked formidable: candles and hurricane lamps so that Jessica didn't have to light every fuse herself, Roman candles and rockets to bombard the main force of darklings when they arrived, and highway flares that would last for hours, giving the residents of Jenks a fighting chance after the three of them had retreated downtown.

How long now?

Melissa closed her eyes again and swept through the expanding space of the rip. More humans were inside it now, startled by the sudden silence of their TVs and the strange shimmery light that had come over everything.

It was really happening; the blue time was swallowing everyone.

Then she felt a far-off twinge, a familiar mind cutting through the confused babble of normal humans and the mutterings of awakening slithers.

Cowgirl...

Rex was calling.

She smiled at first, but as she focused on the distant beacon of thought, Melissa tasted the emotions animating his cry. He was anxious, begging for her to respond, needing something....

"Oh, crap," she said.

"What?" Jessica called. "Is she okay?"

Melissa shook her head. "Still no Beth. It's Rex. He needs us to get downtown."

Jonathan frowned. "Sure, but not until we - "

"It feels like he needs us now. Something's gone wrong!"

"Forget it," Jessica hissed.

"Listen, just because your sister - "

"No way, Melissa," Flyboy said. "We can't leave Jenks undefended just because you've got a feeling. They're right in the path of the invasion here. We have to light these things before we head into Bixby."

"So let's light them," she said. "He needs us!"

"Not until I find Beth." Jessica grasped Jonathan's arm with a white-knuckled grip.

Melissa realized that arguing wouldn't get her anywhere. The taste of the flame-bringer's mind was set. "Okay," she said. "You and I can stay here until I taste your little sister. Then I'll go get her while you light up the fireworks."

Jessica crossed her arms. "We'll both go get her."

"Whatever. But Flyboy, you have to head downtown now. You can get there in five minutes if you go alone."

"But why?" Jonathan asked.

"Because Rex needs us!" Melissa shook her head. "I don't know exactly why; he's too far away for me to taste his mind that clearly. Just go and see what he needs."

Jonathan looked at Jessica, and Melissa tasted the sickly sweet coupleness passing between them. "I'm not leaving you," he said.

Jessica frowned, and Melissa tasted a twinge of her guilt that their plans were revolving around her as usual. "But maybe Rex - "

"We said we'd stick together tonight!" he cried.

Melissa groaned inwardly, wondering how long this discussion was going to last.

Jessica took his hand. "Listen, Jonathan. You promised me you'd do what Rex said, remember?"

"Yeah, but not - "

"Just go. I'll be fine. I'm the flame-bringer."

For a moment Melissa felt the alternatives evenly balanced within Jonathan, like a coin on its edge. But then Jessica squeezed his hand, her expression set and unblinking, and he nodded.

"Okay. I'll be back in ten minutes."

He kissed her, and the electric taste of their contact swept through Melissa's mind. And then he was gone, leaping out of the rip and over the trees, zooming toward downtown.

Jessica turned to her and said coldly, "Is Beth inside yet?"

"Listen, Jess, about your parents..."

"I don't care. Just look for my sister, please!"

Melissa nodded, tipping back her head to taste the growing area within the rip. She tried to ignore the stirrings deep in the desert, the salty taste of anticipation, of ancient hungers ready to be sated at last.

So far, the oldest minds were still hiding in their mountain lairs. They had waited for thousands of years for this night; they could delay another few minutes until they were sure everything was working. Then they would charge toward Bixby, consuming every human in their way, a linear feast.

Melissa tasted something familiar at the edge of the rip - the quiet, self-assured thoughts of Cassie Flinders. She was surprised at how the world had suddenly changed but unafraid. She'd been inside the rip once before, after all.

A moment later Melissa tasted the other mind beside Cassie, a frightened, mewling, panic-stricken ball of little sister.

"Got her."

"Where?"

Melissa turned her head, sensing the direction. "Of course. The cave where Rex found Cassie. They snuck out to go back there, figuring it was a magic spot or something." Melissa shook her head. "Funny. I really thought we'd fixed her memories."

"She must have drawn a picture of it," Jessica said.

Melissa nodded slowly, remembering the drawings all over Cassie's walls. She hadn't thought to check for that. "The little sneak. Okay, let's go."

"No. Just me. I remember the way."

Melissa frowned. "Listen, I know you don't like me, but I can - "

"It's not that." Jessica glanced at the row of houses by the railroad; more of them had been swallowed by the expanding rip. "They need you here."

"But what am I supposed to do without you?"

"Light the fireworks when the darklings come. There are other people in Jenks who need protection. Listen, Melissa, I know I'm being selfish. I shouldn't only be thinking about my sister. So you stay here."

"But I can't even... Oh, right."

Jessica had taken out a lighter and thrust it into one of the hurricane lamps. She adjusted the wick until it was burning bright, then handed Melissa a sparkler.

"Let's just make sure this really works," she said.

Melissa nodded and thrust the sparkler into the flame of the lamp. It burst to life, shooting out a blinding shower.

"Damn, that's bright!" Melissa said, dropping it to the wet gravel and stamping on it until it sputtered out. A swarm of spots remained brutally burned into her vision, but she found herself smiling.

Maybe Samhain really was a holiday if Melissa was going to do some flame-bringing of her own. "Okay, get moving! I'll be fine here."

Jessica nodded, cramming highway flares into her jacket pocket. She skidded down the embankment and thrashed her way into the trees. Melissa closed her eyes, following in her mind as Jessica found the path that Cassie, and then Rex, had taken three weeks before.

She let her mind drift back to the cave. Cassie was getting nervous now, and Beth was a basket case. Their flashlights had extinguished when the blue time had fallen, and though most slithers had left this area permanently after the flame-bringer's last visit, Cassie still imagined she heard snakes in the darkness. They were making their way slowly out of the cave.

Which was a bad idea. There were young darklings not too far away, probing the edges of the rip, wondering if they could take a few quick prey before their elders arrived in force. Melissa just hoped that the scent of the flame-bringer would keep any midnight creatures away from Cassie and Beth.

She turned her focus back toward the city, where Rex's mind still tugged at her. He was growing more anxious as the rip built up speed, heading toward him down the Bixby-bound railroad line. It was moving at running speed now.

Then it became a little clearer: he needed help to get there before the rip arrived.

Don't worry, Loverboy, she called. Jonathan's coming.

Opening her eyes, Melissa looked down at the trailer houses along the railroad right-of-way. Someone had wandered out of the house next to Cassie's, an old man wearing only a T-shirt and undershorts. He was looking around wide-eyed at the blue-red world, tasting of fear and wonderment.

"You ain't seen nothing yet," she murmured.

Then she twitched, a taste reaching her from the deep desert again.

They were coming... daring to issue from the mountains now. They flew slower than their offspring, their muscles creaking with age, with millennia of disuse. But their ancient hunger drew them toward Bixby, with its hated spires of metal and glass.

Finally we hunt again.

Melissa shivered, then something reached her from in the middle distance - a human mind awakening in the desert, at the farthest end of the rip from Bixby. Someone was camping out there, she realized with horror, out with the spiders and the rattlesnakes. And tonight with much worse things...

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!"