31

12:00 A.M..-

Long Midnight

LIGHTNING

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 notice 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.

The water soaked her already damp clothes, filled her mouth so she could hardly speak or breathe, and reduced their path to a blur before them. The highway flare sputtered in her hand, hissing like an angry snake. She could hardly see the ground rushing up at them.

She took a blind jump, and they began to spin.

"Stop! I can't see anything!" she shouted into the wall of rain.

"Can't stop for long - the rip's too close."

Jessica looked backward, which shielded her vision from the water. A huge sheet of red was streaking across Bixby, moving almost as fast as they were.

Turning back to face the deluge, she found she could finally make sense of the watery blue chaos. Through slitted eyes Jessica saw that they were entering downtown. On their next jump they bounded up onto the roof of a six-story building, then jumped higher.

Before her the tallest building in Bixby waited, a huge and winged shape glittering at its summit.

"Is that...?"

"Don't you recognize Pegasus?"

"Wow." She had seen the giant horse from up close before, but never illuminated like this. A long finger of lightning reached down from the heavy clouds above, wrapping the sign in a thousand bright filaments.

They came down on another rooftop, skidding to a halt across wet black tar. Her soaked sneakers stumbled through a clutter of small shapes.

"Yo! Watch the fireworks!"

Jessica wiped water from her eyes. "Oh. Sorry, Dess."

"Where's Rex and Melissa?"

"Long story," Jonathan said. "We're on our way up there." He pointed at the lightning-sheathed Pegasus sign.

"What the hell for?"

"Rex thinks we can seal the rip."

"What, with lightning?" Dess swore. "You do know Rex is crazy these days, right?"

Jonathan looked at Jessica, who felt doubts rising in her again.

But she set her teeth. "We can't let this go on. We have to try."

"Don't ask me. But can I have that?" Dess pointed at the hissing flare. "Just in case you guys are crazy too?"

"Sure." Jessica handed it over.

"Come on." Jonathan was already perched on the edge of the roof. "The rip's right behind us."

"Good luck," Dess said.

"You too." Jessica ran to Jonathan and took his hand. She looked up at the glittering winged horse above them.

"Let's try to make it in one jump," Jonathan said.

"Can we get that far?"

"I hope so. Three... two... one..."

Jessica pushed off as hard as she could, and they soared into the air. At the peak of their arc, she was almost at eye level with the giant horse, higher than she'd ever flown before. But as they came closer, she realized that they were falling short.

"Uh-oh."

"We'll make it!" Jonathan flailed against the rain like an injured bird, then reached out one hand, and as they hit the building, his fingers found the edge of the roof. Jessica smacked into the wall below him, bouncing off and outward. For a moment the canyon of the street below yawned beneath her, and her hand seemed to be slipping through Jonathan's wet fingers.

But his grip remained firm, and he managed to cling to the building, letting her almost weightless body rebound in a circle over his head. She landed on the building's edge and pulled him up behind her.

"Made it!" he cried.

She looked back the way they had come, and her eyes widened. "Jonathan..."

The rip was barreling toward them, taller than a skyscraper now, wider than a football field. As the boundary of red time struck the rain, it released vast sheets of water, like a huge crimson tidal wave plowing through downtown Bixby's streets.

In its wake flew a horde of darklings, a thousand winged shapes of every size, vast whirlwinds of slithers glittering red and black, screaming their rat-squeak cries. A knotted mass of the tendril creatures flew at the center of the horde, their appendages intertwined like braided hairs.

"Rex didn't make it," she said softly. "Beth..."

"No, look." Jonathan pointed. Miles away, a tiny plume of fire rose into the sky over Jenks, showers of sparks and explosions in every color. "He and Melissa must have stopped some of them. Maybe there are more than we thought."

Jessica nodded slowly. Their carefully prepared plan had been woefully inadequate - a few fireworks against an army of monsters.

She tore her eyes away, dropping Jonathan's hand and running toward the giant horse. Its lowest hoof reached down almost to the rooftop - a strand of the arrested lightning wrapped around its metal support, bright and humming with contained power.

She reached toward it, her palm out, like testing the heat of a fire. Huge energies moved inside it, the hairs on her arms standing upright, her whole body tingling. It was like the glorious buzzing feeling when she'd first brought white light into the blue time, but a thousand times more intense. It made her heart pound harder, her vision swim.

Frozen or not, this was really lightning, she realized. An awesome force of nature, inconceivably deadly. Like sticking her hand in a light socket, but a million times more powerful. What was supposed to happen to her when she reached into it?

All she knew was what would happen if she didn't: thousands dead, the old ones feeding on their victims freely, humanity at the mercy of its oldest foe.

"I have to do this," she said softly.

"Are you sure?" Jonathan was right behind her.

"Stand back."

He shook his head, reaching for her, pulling her into a kiss. Jessica felt it in her lips then, the energy of the trapped lightning all around them mixed with the dizzying glow of Jonathan's midnight gravity. Her skin seemed to tighten, its surface running with wild currents and heat.

Jonathan pulled away, stepping back from her. "Okay. Be quick now."

"Farther, Jonathan."

He nodded, leaping to the edge of the roof. Behind him the crimson wave was almost upon them, a towering sheet of falling water and screaming predators.

Suddenly a hissing squadron of rockets rose up to meet them, bursting into showers of white light. Darklings wheeled and spun to avoid them.

"Dess," she whispered. The other building, only one jump away, was now inside the rip.

Jessica Day thrust her hand into the lightning....

The frozen storm surged through her like an explosion. Thunder filled her ears, and wave after wave of pitiless energy rolled through Jessica until her body seemed to disappear and she could feel nothing but the primordial power locked inside that one instant of lightning. It built inside her, white spots flooding into her vision, her ears popping, the taste of metal skating across her tongue.

She felt like it was going to tear her apart.

Then the white heat burst out in a flood, shooting toward the approaching wall of the rip, cutting through its face and into the hordes of darklings and slithers, fire spreading from one midnight creature to the next in a mad zigzag pattern.

The mass of flying beasts began to wheel and howl.

Another torrent of lightning erupted from Jessica, then two more - four lines of fire radiating in the points of the compass, coruscating across the frozen darkness of the blue time.

Finally she felt the wild energies inside her body lessen, falling away like the shriek of a kettle picked up from the stove. The blinding light began to fade, and Jessica could feel her own breathing again and hear the beating of her heart.

The rip was almost gone, folding upon itself to make a narrow beam of red. The darkling horde was cut into fragments, reduced to scattered clouds of slithers and a few maddened darklings fleeing back toward the desert.

Jessica looked around; four streams of soft white light flowed from her, cutting into the distance toward the north, south, east, and west. The energies in her body dwindled further as she felt them spreading out across the entire globe, wrapping themselves around the earth in some sort of pattern.

Something Dess would want to see, she thought hazily.

But her consciousness was fading away.

Then she saw it through the supports of the giant horse, heading toward them from the east. The light of normal time, sweeping across the world like dawn. The dark moon overhead was falling fast.

Samhain hadn't lasted a whole day, not even an hour....

"Jessica." Jonathan was walking toward her across the roof. "You're..."

"Be careful," she said weakly. White heat still burned in her hand. She lifted it heavily before her eyes and stared into the trapped lightning there.

But why was the midnight hour over already?

She pulled her eyes away from the fire pulsing in her palm and looked out at the horizon. She saw the storm unfreezing, the blue light of midnight swept out of the world.

Just as normal time reached her, Jessica felt herself fading....

"Oh, no," she said, casting one last glance at Jonathan's stupefied face.

An interrupted peal of thunder rolled as midnight ended.

And then everything was gone.