Touching Darkness

He’d been so awestruck by the… thing they’d seen, he’d almost been killed by a mere slither.

“Irresponsible,” Melissa named a frying pan.

“What was it?” he croaked.

She turned to him, shook her head. “It thinks like us.”

“A human, you mean?”

“A midnighter. I think she’s… she was one of us.”

“Mixed with one of them.”

Melissa stared at the meat thermometer in her hand and whispered, “Indescribable.”

Something big hurled itself against the pegboard. The coiled computer cables turned into flickering circles, like Christmas lights still in their boxes. A long tendril snaked from behind the flimsy board, wrapping itself around Melissa’s waist. She thrust the point of the meat thermometer into it, and the tendril retreated with a shriek.

“Just a lower darkling,” she said.

Rex sank to the floor. Melissa shoved the last of their defenses into place and crouched next to him, holding his hand, protected by her thick woolen glove.

“I’ll show you what I felt,” she said. “From the thing and that woman. After we get out of here. Tomorrow we’ll touch again.”

“After we get out of here?” He looked at the door with its thirteen knives, the pegboard full of glowing metal. Maybe it would hold, maybe not. Of course, after what he’d seen, death was relative.

Better eaten than… changed.

“Yes, Rex. After we get out of here.”

A fluttering and shrieking came from the blocked window, a slither beating its wings as it died, the pegboard trembling.

“They’re unhappy about us seeing that thing, aren’t they?”

Melissa nodded thoughtfully. “You said it. They aren’t going to give up easily.”

Another slither launched itself through the window, the smell of its burning flesh making Rex gag. The darklings’ mindless peons were sacrificing themselves to deplete the room’s defenses. Rex smiled grimly; it would take more than slithers to get through that pile of space-age metal and tridecalogisms.

Noises came from inside the house now, the beating of frantic wings filling the hallway outside. The thirteen knives began to glow.

A black snake head squeezed under the door, then another—crawling slithers testing them. The first few burned up in the clutter of silverware and fallen nails, but more came. Melissa stomped on their writhing forms, the anklets around her boots glowing blue, then white. Rex wielded Arachnophobia, crushing slithers with the hammer until his arm ached.

After long minutes the slither attacks subsided. The fluttering of wings died away, the metal scattered around the room losing its wild glow.

Rex sank to the floor, wiping sweat from his eyes. His lungs were full of the reek of burned slither flesh, his muscles completely exhausted.

“They’re giving up?” he croaked.

Melissa stood unmoving, eyes shut.

Then Rex heard it. Something coming up the stairs. He couldn’t imagine the half-human thing moving through the house, so it was probably a normal darkling, a brash young one to invade this modern place. Melissa didn’t say what she tasted, just stared at the door with blank-faced fatigue. The stairs creaked under its weight, and the thirteen knives began to glow again.

Terror threatened to paralyze him, but then Rex’s mind went back to what she’d said: Tomorrow we’ll touch again. His head swam at the thought. Finally there was some promise of something more between him and Melissa. They were not going to die tonight.

He pulled the hubcap from the duffel bag.

“Come and get it,” he said softly.

The knives shivered in the wood, lances of tremulous blue fire jumping between them. The scratching sound of claws traveled slowly down the door, and Rex could hear the harsh panting of a big cat. It had taken a hunting shape.

A carving knife began to wobble, almost slipping from the door, but Rex thrust it back into the wood. Brief contact with the glowing metal scalded his palm.

He brought the hubcap to his lips.

“Categorically Unjustifiable Appropriation.”

The metal ignited, coursing with blue fire along its rim, the tiny pictures seeming to dance. The hubcap vibrated in his hand, giving off a buzzing heat that crawled up his arm and into his shoulder. Rex smiled grimly. He had seen what Dess’s really good work could do. So had the darklings.

The panting outside stopped for a moment, a catch in the creature’s breath.

A chuckle escaped Melissa’s lips. “Scaredy-cat.”

A roar answered from outside, a huge howl of pain and anger that made the whole room shudder. But Rex knew from the defeated sound that the darkling had sensed the pulsing weapon in his hand and had decided not to throw away its cold, lingering life.

The stairs creaked again as the darkling descended, the knives fading to a dull, spent gray, and the dread that had hung over the room slowly diminished.

Before the hour ended, Rex took one last look through one of the rips in the clawed and battered pegboard. He saw the halfling leave, making its ungainly way from the balcony of the master bedroom to the roof, then taking to its overburdened wings.

“Ready to run?” Melissa said.

“What?” he asked.

“They’re all leaving. The entourage too.” Melissa smiled. “We’ll have a couple of minutes, but I don’t think our motionless friends are going to like what we did to their house.”

He looked around the room. “Could be you’re right.”

“Damn kids with their senseless vandalism,” she said.

Rex sighed, thinking of the broken window downstairs. “They might have an alarm system, come to think of it.”

Melissa pulled Magnificently Instantaneous Gratification from the door.

“It won’t work any—” he started, but her expression silenced him.

“I also use it for the regular kind of protection, Rex. In case anyone tries to touch me.”

“Oh.” He looked at his watch. Two minutes.

They ran down the stairs. At the front door Melissa gathered herself for one last mindcast, then nodded. “All clear.”

They reached the old Ford as the blue hour ended. Rex had never been so glad to see blackness sweeping across the sky. At the moment normal time reached them, carried on a cold Oklahoma wind, a high-pitched ringing filled the night.

“Damn,” he said. “They did have an alarm.”

Melissa jumped in and started the car, and they pulled away with a screech. Rex stayed quiet as she drove, letting her mindcast for police. A few minutes later she pulled over and turned off the Ford’s headlights, huddling down out of sight.

Rex also slunk down in his seat, catching a glimpse of two private security cars as they zoomed past.

Melissa took his hand, her wool glove warm against his skin. “Get some poison, Rex.”

“Do what?”

“Something that kills fast. Like one of those snakes that stops your heart in twenty seconds.”

Had what she’d seen tonight finally pushed Melissa over the edge? “Melissa, you can’t—”

“Not for me, moron.” She shook her head. “You know the midnighter inside that monster?”

“Yeah?”

“She’s still alive in there, somewhere. I could feel her. They keep her mind alive so they can use the human part of her to think in signs and symbols. But she knows what’s happened to her.”

Rex put his face in his hands. After a few moments he said, “But how would we get the poison to her?”

“Not for her. You.” Melissa turned on the headlights, stared out the front windshield. “She’s sick, probably dying, and soon they’ll decide they need another one and come looking for you.”

He blinked, shook his head. “What…?”

“Think, Rex. They can already fly, they can already mind-cast, and they hate math.” Melissa pulled onto the road. “She’s a seer.”