Touching Darkness

However frustrating this was, at least they were flying. His sore throat was gone, his ankle had stopped hurting, and last night he had started to clear things up between him and Jessica. If Rex hadn’t left his cryptic little message, this would have been the perfect hour to spend time in some high place with her, alone.

Thank you, Rex and Melissa.

Jonathan wondered how those two could have gotten themselves into trouble again so soon, forty-nine hours after their last scrape. Were they trying to get killed? Last night Melissa had seemed different, as if Rex’s calm, collected sanity was slowly seeping into her. But maybe the opposite was happening too, and Melissa’s madness was bleeding into Rex.

Since Jonathan had touched her, feeling what it was really like inside her head, he’d wondered if at the core of her bitterness lay a genuine death wish, a desire to permanently escape the torment of never having her brain to herself.

Suddenly something flashed through his mind.

“Decatur Street?” he said softly.

“Yes!” Jessica cried. “I was just thinking that. I remember now. That’s the exit she took.”

Jonathan swallowed. “That’s weird.”

“So you knew where she lived all along?”

“Me?” Jonathan laughed. “Yeah, right. Like I spend a lot of time with cheerleaders.”

He pointed off to the right, tugging Jessica toward an exit ramp. They leapt across a quartet of gas stations arrayed around an intersection, coming down onto a rough, undeveloped field. Rainbow cacti dotted the field like spiky basketballs, and Jonathan slowed their pace. He’d clipped a cactus once in the secret hour—as sharp as razor wire, with the added bonus of spines that broke off and stayed in you.

From the top of their next jump Jonathan saw a dark cluster of houses in the distance.

“Look familiar?”

“Yeah. I think that’s her neighborhood. She’s not just a cheerleader, you know.”

“Sorry,” Jonathan muttered. “I’m just saying, I had absolutely no idea where Constanza lived. I’d never given it a thought until tonight.”

“But you just said—”

“I know.” He could feel the last few jumps settling into his mind, the way the angles always did. But this familiarity made no sense. Somehow he could see the approach to Constanza’s house as clearly as the trip to Jessica’s every night, every open field and rooftop, all the landings between here and the two-story mansion sitting on the biggest lot of the development.

But he’d never been here before. Not once.

A haze appeared on the horizon, a crooked column like the dust devil they’d seen three nights before. But this one was much larger and in motion, the black and fluttering shapes of slithers forming a whirling vortex over the house.

“Crap. Looks like they did need us.”

“I hope we’re not too late.” Jessica pulled out her flashlight and put it to her lips. Jonathan heard her whisper above the screeching, “Demonstration.” The cloud wheeled in the air before them, starting to bleed away into the desert, the beating of leathery wings roaring like a hundred flags in a high wind. He wondered if the darklings had already left, their ancient minds sensitive enough to have felt the flame-bringer coming and smart enough to flee.

“Um, Jonathan… could you?” Jessica held out her wrist. He smiled and said, “Acariciandote,” slowly and clearly to the bracelet.

“Thanks,” she said. “I’ll learn. Promise.”

“I’ll give you lessons.” Jonathan pulled his chain over his head and murmured, “Rubbernecking.” It was good to have it ready, even if he probably wouldn’t need it with Jessica around.

At the peak of their next leap the flashlight sprang to life in her hand, its blinding beam cutting through the swarm of flying slithers. Jonathan’s eyes jammed shut, seared by the astonishing intrusion of white light into the cool, eternal blue of the secret hour. Matching the horrific screams that filled the air, a last image remained burned into his vision: slithers bursting into flame at the light’s touch, a fiery wedge exploding across the black horizon, the dark moon itself paling in comparison to the power of the flamebringer. Then the smell of burned flesh reached his nose.

Jonathan coughed and forced his eyes open.

Mercifully, Jessica had turned Demonstration off. The flock of slithers had been split by the beam, leaving two chaotic masses careening across the desert. A blotchy haze marked the place where the light had passed through the swarm, like the drifting puffs of smoke left over after the finale of a fireworks show.

Jonathan tried to blink away the spots before his eyes “Warn me next time?”

“Sorry.” She squeezed his hand. Through the streaks burned onto his vision, he saw that her eyes were wild, her expression electrified from the surge of power that had coursed through her. His hand tingled where their palms were pressed together.

He blinked again: Acariciandote was glowing on her wrist, the little charms as bright as diamonds.

They settled on the lawn of the big house. Dead slithers lay around them amid the sparkle of metal. Jonathan knelt and picked up a power drill, the steel bit blackened by fire.

“They put up a fight, at least.”

“Rex!” Jessica called. “Melissa?”

A hissing noise answered them, a wet and shuddering sound that carried a foul stench across the lawn. A massive shape lurched from between Constanza’s house and the next one over, a welter of legs thrusting out in all directions as the thing struggled to keep itself upright.

Jonathan gagged at the smell, his eyes watering as they beheld the creature.

It had been a tarantula not long before, most of its mass gathered in a bulbous body. But it was trying desperately to transform, the legs receding into the beast, its body stretching, writhing like a giant hairy earthworm. A wet, flailing wing emerged from its back, half formed and sickly. The darkling hissed at them again, and a stream of viscous liquid shot from its mouth onto the ground a few feet short of Jessica.

It was dying.

“Close your eyes,” she said.

“No problem.”

The scream deafened him at first; then Jonathan heard the burst of flame, felt its heat drying his exposed flesh like a bonfire out in the desert. He didn’t breathe for an endless time, then finally was forced to fill his lungs with the smell of the ancient, dying darkling.

When he opened his eyes, coughing as he struggled to inhale, there was nothing left of it, just a blackened patch of lawn and a glimmer of metal. Jonathan squinted through the tears in his eyes.

A hubcap lay in the grass where the darkling had been.

“That’s what wounded it,” he said.

“Wounded it?” a voice called. “I think Categorically Unjustifiable Appropriation gets the kill.”

Melissa and Rex stumbled around the side of the house, their faces and hands blackened where improvised weapons had burst into blue flame.

“Just because you showed up in time to hose down the remains, don’t go taking credit, Jess.” Melissa’s eyes were bright, her voice on the edge of laughter. The sweat on her face glistened like a knife.

Rex looked sick to his stomach. “Never again,” he said softly, slumping on the front porch. He looked up wearily. “So you did get my message.”

Jessica nodded. “Barely. Next time, leave directions.”

Rex thought for a second, then said, “Oh.”

“We wouldn’t have made it at all, except at the last moment Jonathan remembered where Constanza lived.”

“I had no idea,” Jonathan said.

Melissa was staring at him, her eyes narrowing, tempering the crazed look on her face. “But then suddenly you did,” she said softly.

He returned her gaze and nodded. She knew something about what had happened in his head.

“What were you guys doing out here, anyway?” Jonathan said.

“We spent all day following Constanza,” Rex answered, “trying to find out what we could about Ernesto. It was a bust, so we figured we’d try the secret hour.”