Blue Noon (33 page)

He struggled to his feet with empty hands spread wide, defenseless.

The darkling lay a few yards away, its paws twitching like a dreaming cat’s. Then it let out a horrifying scream. For a moment Rex didn’t understand, until he saw the metal shaft protruding from its flank: some kind of spear, its steel still sizzling with blue fire. The creature twitched once more, then stopped moving.

Melissa emerged from behind its bulk, looking stunned, her hands black with the creature’s blood.

“Uninterrupted Vivisectional Preoccupation,” she said.

Rex blinked. She had set the spear on the ground and let the darkling fall on it.

“Thanks for distracting it,” she said.

Rex heard slithers flapping away from them in all directions, momentarily scattered by the dying howl of the great cat. He took a painful step, put a gloved hand on her shoulder. “No problem. But what are you
doing
out here?”

“I got bored of waiting and figured you needed some help.” She held up a backpack. “I brought fireworks. So, um… where’s the fire?”

Rex looked back the way he’d come; the red glimmer was just visible in the distance. “That way.”

A puzzled expression crossed Melissa’s face. Her eyes closed for a moment. “You left our only fire with a couple of
thirteen-year-olds
?”

He nodded. “Pretty much.”

Melissa shook her head with disgust. “Daylighters in the secret hour.” She sighed, tossing him a long metal shaft marked with spirals of solder. The steel burned even through Rex’s gloves, but its heft felt good in his hands.

“Thanks,” he said. “How’s Jessica doing?”

“Don’t worry about her; worry about us.” She lifted another spear onto her shoulder. “There’s a lot more dark-lings on their way.”

They crashed through the trees toward the bonfire’s glow, swinging their spears at the slithers that struck through the air. Every step shot through Rex’s injured foot and his throbbing ribs, but the pain had faded into a mindless blur. He had reached Melissa, and his human half was willing to let the beast take over.

The bonfire ahead was building, the smell of smoke swirling through the forest. More of the four-armed dark-lings thrashed at the trees around it, as if trying to batter it into submission. But the wind of their wings only seemed to drive the fire brighter.

As they grew closer, the slithers stopped coming at them, wary of the whirlwind of sparks and burning leaves.

“Cassie! Beth!” Rex shouted.

“Rex?” came a cry. He saw Cassie silhouetted against the flames, the highway flare still sputtering in her hand.

“We’re coming!” he yelled back.

“What about them?” Melissa asked, coming to a halt.

As she spoke, the bloated forms of five huge darklings rose from the forest floor. Their mouths glistened, and the clusters of eyes that dotted their bodies glowed dully in the purple light of the rip. Their long, hairy legs were splayed like the bars of a cage around the fire.

“Spiders,” Melissa said. “Your favorite.”

“Not a problem.” Rex held out his hand. “Give me the backpack.”

He unzipped it and dug his hand in, feeling a collection of bottle rockets, Roman candles, and firecrackers threaded in long strings. “Any highway flares?”

“Sure. At the bottom.”

His hand closed on the flares, and he handed three to her, keeping another for himself. “One for each of us. After I deal with those things, we’ll light up and make a run for the tracks.”

“There’s
five
of them, Rex. And they’re just standing there, staring at that fire like it’s no big deal. They’re not going to be afraid
of you.”

Rex smiled, feeling the beast well up in him. “They should be.”

He turned, spear in one hand and backpack in the other, and limped toward the great spiders. They stood impassively, eyes aglitter with firelight. They were old, he could tell now. As he grew near, Rex felt their minds moving through him, the taste of ash and sour milk coating his tongue.

Abomination. You will die tonight.

“We’ll see.” He broke into a painful, ungainly run.

The spear left his hand first, shooting through the air toward the closest darkling. Two of its arms rose to ward it off, flailing like hairy tentacles. The spear glanced off one of them, coming to rest in the soft earth at its feet.

But the still-unzipped backpack was already soaring over the darkling’s head. It traveled in a long arc, over Cassie and her sputtering flare, its contents already spilling from it as it flew. It all landed with a burst of sparks and smoke in the center of the bonfire.

Watch this … he thought at the darklings.

A moment later the scattered fireworks began to explode, balls of fire spitting out in all directions, the shriek of long strings of firecrackers expelling clouds of smoke, rockets bouncing among the branches. The burning tongue of a Roman candle reached out to ignite one of the spiders, and the beast screamed in pain as flame spread across its hairy surface. One of the winged darklings caught a bottle rocket and began to flail its wings, then crashed into the beast beside it, the two creatures wrapping around each other in a frantic, blazing embrace.

Beth and Cassie dropped into the wet leaves, hands over their heads. The great spiders shifted, their arms shuddering, their terror washing through Rex’s mind with an electric taste.

He rolled under the nearest darkling, pulled his spear from the ground, and thrust it into the beast’s belly. A foul smell spilled from the wound as the beast reared up, its mouth opening wide, its teeth as long as knives.

As Rex raised his spear, a squadron of rockets skittered randomly across the ground in the corner of his eye. Then one hit his shoulder, leapt into the air spinning head over tail, and shot into the gaping mouth of the darkling. The creature made a choking sound as Rex rolled toward the bonfire, rising to his knees to scrabble over to where the girls huddled.

“Are you okay?”

“Those
things
…” Beth sobbed.

“Don’t worry. They’re leaving.” He looked up.

The beast behind him was trying to transform, wings sprouting from its back as the legs were sucked into the body. But then Rex heard a huffing sound—the rocket in its gut exploding—and tasted the beast’s panic in his mind. Its glittering eyes dulled, and a gout of flame burst from the spear wound in its belly. The wings began to crumble….

Rex covered his head as the creature exploded, a mighty rush of scorching heat, the light blinding even through his slammed-shut lids. The earth bucked beneath him, a roar like a jet taking off filling the air.

And then the sound was fading, until all he heard was the screams of midnight creatures retreating in all directions.

When Rex opened his eyes, he saw Melissa kneeling nearby, lighting the highway flares from the remains of the fire. Burning leaves were spread far into the trees, but a few glowing embers and a broad dark patch of ground were all that was left of Cassie’s efforts.

“They’re gone, Rex,” she said. “Looks like you ruined their Samhain.”

He nodded, his vision swarming with glowing spots. “Yeah. I guess bonfires have gotten a lot nastier since their day.”

“We can do even better with the stuff back at the tracks. And we need to get there fast.” She stood, two hissing flares in each hand.

Cassie was already standing, pulling Beth to her feet. They were covered with ash and wet leaves, their faces blank with shock. But Cassie took the flare that Melissa handed her. “Are they all gone?” she asked.

Melissa closed her eyes. “Not hardly. We have to run, girls.” She pointed toward the tracks. “There’s tons more fireworks waiting for us that way.”

“Just give me a minute,” Rex said. His torso was bruised all over, his ankle aching, his vision and hearing swarming with echoes of the explosion. His lungs felt scorched, as if he’d inhaled too much bonfire smoke.

He didn’t hear Melissa’s words at first.

“
Rex
?” Her hand pulled at his jacket.

“Just a second.”

“We have to go
now.”

“I can barely stand.”

“Look.” She reached up and bare fingers brushed his neck, her mind entering him in a wild rush. He saw what was coming….

“Oh, crap.” Rex shuddered. He’d been a fool, all his plans empty gestures. “I never knew.”

Melissa took her hand away and lifted his weight onto her shoulder, pulling him forward. “We can help Jenks, anyway.”

They set off through the trees, Rex’s battered body responding once more to the commands of his will. He didn’t bother to look back, but the jittering of the branches ahead showed that the girls were following, their flares casting wild shadows through the forest. The tracks were only a few minutes away, but it all seemed futile….

Rex shut his eyes and ran, ignoring the pain, trying to erase the image that Melissa had given him. A flood of darklings, a wave that darkened the sky, a vast horde beyond anything in the lore. Their fireworks would present nothing but a trivial detour to the onslaught.

Jessica Day was their only hope.

They bounded down the railroad tracks, following the rip. It stretched out before them, a red arrow pointed at the heart of Bixby.

“Can we make it in time?”

Jonathan nodded. “It’s clearing the way for us, knocking down the frozen rain as it goes. But watch out when we get ahead of it. Water sucks.”

“Jonathan!”

A man stood on the tracks ahead of them, dressed in a bathrobe and wearing an expression of disbelief. They took an extra-high jump so as not to hit him, and his pale face lifted to watch them pass overhead.

“Okay, that was weird,” Jessica said.

“There are more of them. The rip is getting crowded. And not just with humans.”

As they neared Bixby, houses became more frequent. They saw more people wandering around, first alone or in twos and threes, then in crowds gathered on the street. Some of them stared up in wonder at Jessica and Jonathan, but many didn’t even noticed as they soared overhead, too dazzled by the blue-red world around them.

“You think Rex is right?” she said. “Can we really stop this?”

“If he isn’t, most of these people are in big trouble. They’re just standing here, right in the middle of the rip.”

“At least the darklings aren’t here yet.”

He pointed ahead. “Some of them are.”

Before them was another of the creatures made of wispy, grasping tendrils. It hovered over a small group gathered in the backyard of a house, what must have been a Halloween party going late. Everyone was in costume—knights and devils and cowboys and even a white-sheeted ghost all standing almost motionless. The darkling thing had a tendril wrapped around each of them, and Jessica saw that their hands were shaking, as if each was trapped in their own silent, private horrors.

“My God, should we stop?”

“No time,” Jessica said. They had to halt this invasion. All of it, everywhere, not just in this one backyard. “But slow down a little.”

She pulled a flare from her pocket and put one end into her mouth, yanking the top off. Then she banged it against the friction pad clenched between her teeth, sparks flying into her face, the first hiss of the flare burning her eyebrows before she could whip it away.

At the top of their next bounce she threw the flare down into the matted center of the thing. It ignited, the scream echoing across the blue time, its tendrils beginning to slip from the costumed people.

Jessica looked over her shoulder as they flew onward and saw that the crowd had sprung to life and were pulling at the thing’s arms with a sudden and terrifying madness, as if trying to rip it apart.

“There’s more,” Jonathan said softly.

Ahead of them two of the old darklings were stretched across the railroad tracks, like hovering spiderwebs.

“Go around them?” he asked.

“They move too fast.” Jessica pulled out another flare, then realized that it was the last one she was carrying. “Crap.”

She yanked off its top with her teeth, managing to light it without burning her face this time. She thrust it out before them as they soared into the joined webs of tendrils.

At the touch of the flame the two darklings screamed, but Jessica felt cold feathers brushing her legs, her arms, her neck—slithering around her waist for a fleeting moment. Fear welled up in her again, a paralyzing horror that she had made the wrong decision. It was crazy leaving Jenks defenseless, her sister doomed. And suddenly she knew: the darklings had opened up the blue time because of her, because they hated Jessica Day so much….

The end of the world ., . it’s all my fault.

Only the feeling of Jonathan’s hand in hers kept her from giving in to the awesome despair that racked her being. He wouldn’t abandon her, she knew. But they were wrapped around Jonathan as well; she had to fight.

Jessica gritted her teeth and slashed with the flare, carving into the matted tendrils, ripping herself free.

One by one, the fears fell away.

Then the feeling vanished, and she was filled with weightlessness again. The tracks reared up, and she reflexively took another bounding step. She glanced backward; the two darklings lay in a smoldering wreckage, scattered along on the tracks.

“No!” Jonathan yelled, his hand wrenching hers.

“Ow! What’s wrong?” she cried.

“Huh?” He looked at her, dumbfounded. “Wait a second. I caught you…?”

“Caught me? I wasn’t falling.”

“But I thought…” He stared at their joined hands.

“Oh.” Jessica’s eyes widened. “Is
that
your worst nightmare, Jonathan? Dropping me?”

He blinked. “Of course. But…”

Jessica felt a smile spread across her face. “That is
so sweet
!”

They landed and launched themselves into the air again. Jessica saw a glowing red boundary rising up before them. “What the—?”

“It’s the front end of the rip,” he cried. “Get ready!”

Jessica started to answer, but a wall of water struck her in the face.

She’d never flown through frozen rain before. Her first time in the secret hour, Jessica had walked around in a midnight shower, a magical experience no worse than dashing through a sprinkler in summer. But at seventy miles per hour, hitting the motionless storm was like having a fire hose trained on her.