The Secret Hour

“Leave this to me,” Dess said, “and the heavy artillery.”

She ran toward it, the metal shaft over her shoulder like a javelin. The beast reared back on six of its legs, the other two waving in front of it to ward her off.

From a few yards away she threw the weapon, which burst into light even as it left her hand, wailing through the air with the shriek of a Roman candle. The metal buried itself in the spider, tearing a gash in the mottled flesh. Blue fire spewed from the wound.

The thing screamed hideously, its bloated body crashing to the ground as its arms waved uselessly in the air.

“Oh, bleah!” cried Dess. She stumbled back from the spider, putting one hand over her mouth.

Seconds later a horrible smell washed across Rex and Melissa, dead rat and burned plastic mixed together with rotten eggs. Melissa coughed and gagged, falling to one knee.

“Run for the pit!” Rex managed to cry. They were no more than a hundred yards away.

He ran toward one side of the shuddering spider, still clutching the bag of metal bits. Melissa stumbled after him. Dess dashed past the tarantula, whose legs still flailed wildly, heading for the blue arc of the snake pit.

As Rex ran, the desert before him seemed to be moving, dark sand flowing across his path. The huge spider was sagging, deflating like a punctured balloon.

“Stop, Rex!” Melissa cried, pulling him to a halt. “It’s not dead. Just—”

She didn’t finish, choking on the stench.

Now Rex could see them. Things were pouring from the darkling’s wound, gushing out in a torrent. More spiders, thousands of them. They swarmed in a black river between the two of them and the snake pit.

Dess was on the other side, still ru

The black river of spiders changed course, flowing toward him and Melissa. It made a harsh roaring sound as it moved, like a truckload of gravel being poured onto a sheet of glass.

Rex emptied the rest of the bag of metal pieces, scattering its contents in a rough circle around their feet, a couple of yards across. The crawling host swept up to the patch of glittering steel and broke against it, flowing around them like water.

In seconds they were surrounded, an island in a writhing sea of spiders.

The bits of metal sparked and sputtered, the outermost pieces glowing bright purple. A few spiders dared to move into the steel. They burst into flame, but more came, crawling across the bridge of burned bodies.

“How long do you think the steel will last?” he asked Melissa.

“Doesn’t matter,” she said. She was looking upward. Rex followed her dumbstruck gaze.

The other two darklings were coming down.

They were shaped like panthers. One was right above them, its saber teeth protruding from its jaw as it dove, wings billowing like a parachute behind it.

“I’m sorry, Cowgirl.”

“At least these things got me,” she said, “before all those damn, noisy humans drove me insane.”

“Yeah.” Rex hoped the panthers arrived before spiders were crawling all over him. He put his right fist up to his lips and finally named the steel skull rings on his fingers. “Understanding. Incorruptible. Anticlimactic.”

Then he grasped Melissa’s arm, knowing this was all his fault, wondering what he had done wrong.

A second later something barreled into the darkling, and sparks flew.

27

12:00 A.M.

PURPOSELESSLY HYPER-INFLATED INDIVIDUALITY

Jonathan caught most of the impact on his shield, but the collision still knocked the wind out of him. The darkling’s skin bulged with muscle, as hard as a sack of doorknobs. He heard the thin aluminum alloy of Purposelessly Hyperinflated Individuality crumple with the impact, then the shield burned his fingers as it instantly turned white-hot. Sparks flew from the darkling’s flesh, and its scream rang deafeningly in his ears.

For a moment Jonathan grew heavy; contact with the darkling had robbed him of his midnight gravity. He fell toward the ground, but as the icy touch of the creature’s flesh faded, Jonathan’s body lightened again.

By the time he hit the ground, he was almost back to weightless.

He rolled to his feet, coming up face-to-face with a very surprised Rex.

“Did you see that?” he said. “Direct hit.”

On his way out to the Bottom, Jonathan had discovered that the trash can lid was a great flying aid. It was a surfboard, a wing, a sail—a surface to catch the air and control his direction after he’d jumped. In the moments he had soared toward the darkling, Jonathan had used it to adjust his path like a smart missile homing in on its target.

Something sizzled at his feet, and Jonathan glanced down. The spiders were closing in from every direction, forcing their burning way through the metal. He had landed in the middle of a lake of relentless, poisonous bugs.

Smart was relative, he supposed.

“Smells bad out here,” he said to Rex and Melissa. “Let’s jump.”

“One problem, genius,” Melissa said. She pointed.

The other darkling was swooping toward the three of them, skimming across the desert.

Jonathan pulled the still smoldering Purposelessly Hyperinflated Individuality from his hand, hoping its triple-decker name had one more jolt left in it. He crooked the trash can lid in his arm like a giant Frisbee and hurled it at the beast.

He didn’t pause to see the result, grabbing Rex. He held out his other hand.

Melissa shrank from him. “I’d rather die.”

“That’s crap,” Rex said, shoving her forward. Her hands came up instinctively and Jonathan grabbed one.

A wave of nausea hit him, and he almost blacked out. He could feel Melissa’s mind rushing into his, belligerent and angry but at the same time feverishly hungry, consuming his thoughts and memories, pushing into every corner of his mind. Her emotions swept through him: terror of the spiders, surprise at being suddenly weightless, and, overwhelming everything, horror at the intimacy of being touched.

For a moment he was paralyzed, but then an irresistible command surged into his mind.

Jump, idiot, Melissa thought at him.

“One, two…” he started.

Rex hadn’t flown with him for more than a year, but the reflexes were still there. They knelt and jumped together, soaring over the spiders. Together they were strong enough to drag Melissa along.

Jonathan heard the second darkling collide with the projectile, and another feline screech echoed across the desert. But there were other winged shapes coming at them—slithers, at least.

Melissa’s fingers dug into his, but she managed to fight, snapping off necklace after necklace with her free hand, casting them into the air around the trio as they flew, knocking screaming slithers to the ground. Rex flailed about with his free hand, the metal rings he wore sparking to life.

The first jump carried them to within yards of the snake pit. Jonathan had to hold Rex back or their next leap would have carried them all the way through and out the other side.

They skidded to a stop inside the arc’s safety seconds later, and Jonathan let go, letting them drop into the soft sand. Melissa landed badly, an ankle twisting and eyes flashing in the lightning. The venom and agony from her mind drained out of Jonathan, leaving a taste like rotten meat on his tongue.

Melissa doubled over, convulsing once with a pitiful moan, the fingers of the hand he’d touched clawing the hard sand. Still coughing, she managed to stand and face him, and Jonathan braced himself.

Her face held an expression he’d never seen before or perhaps had never been able to see. She was so sad, so hopeless. Then the familiar mask of a