Blue Noon

They zoomed passed an old Chevy that was lumbering down Creek Turnpike. This far out of town the roads were almost empty, which meant that his father’s car would be easy for his old friends in the sheriff’s department to spot. He was sure that by now, they’d recognize it from halfway across the county.

Jonathan didn’t know what he’d do then. Get stopped for breaking curfew, maybe go to jail again, and risk Cassie Flinders disappearing forever? Or do a grand theft auto, get the cops into hot pursuit mode, and get Jessica and himself into more trouble than Beth could ever have imagined?

Not a great choice.

Jessica cleared her throat. “Um, I hope you’re not pla

“Midnight’s not for ten more minutes. Unless there’s another eclipse.”

She pulled away, sitting straighter in her seat and checking her seat belt. “Oh, right. Thanks for reminding me. Midnight can come at any time now.”

“Yeah. Cool, huh?”

“Uh, no, Jonathan. Not cool. What if it keeps happening?”

He shrugged. “Then we get to fly around more.”

She sighed. “You’d love that, wouldn’t you?”

“What? More midnight? The whole world belonging to just us five? Less time in Flatland? Sure, I would.”

“But we don’t understand what’s happening, Jonathan. On the phone Dess said something about the blue time changing completely. And today we didn’t know if the eclipse was ever going to stop. It felt like the world had ended.”

“Yeah, right. Like that’s going to happen.” He snorted. “And anyhow, look at it this way: if the world ends, you won’t have to worry about Beth anymore.”

Jessica just turned away, staring out the passenger window and not saying another word.

Jonathan frowned, wondering what he’d said wrong now.

7

11:53 P.M.

PREY

Melissa’s eyes rolled back in her head, her nose wrinkling. Rex saw a shudder pass through her body from toes to fingertips.

“What, did they stop already?” Rex asked.

She shook her head. “No, Flyboy’s still got his pedal all the way down. They’ll get here in time, more or less. But the flame-bringer’s not in a very good mood.”

Dess glanced up from her GPS device and snorted. Rex shook his head. Great time for a lovers’ quarrel.

He swept his eyes across the railroad tracks again. This place was wrapped in Focus, inhuman marks corrupting every piece of gravel in the rail bed, every blade of grass shooting up through the wooden cross-ties. Darklings and slithers had danced here. Even the steel spikes in the iron rails bore the traces of their claws and snouts and slithering bellies.

All this Focus couldn’t have been laid down in twenty-one minutes. They must have come here before the eclipse.

Of course, Rex thought, there were always a few midnight places on the outskirts of town. Perhaps it was only a coincidence that this weak spot had been visited before.

He knelt to take a closer look at a slitherprint, a sinuous line that wound down the railroad tracks as far as he could see. It didn’t look especially fresh, not like a trail left only fifteen hours ago.

But Rex frowned; his new hunter’s nerves were twitching with all the metal around him. Why would a slither travel down a railroad line that reeked of iron rails, steel bolts, and buried telegraph lines? Most darkling places on the city’s edges were open fields and empty back lots, places where little patches of the wild still clung—stands of native plants, snake holes, or small creeks not yet erased by buildings and concrete. But this iron path was an artery of the rail system, an old and powerful symbol of human cleverness and dominance. Only a hundred years ago it had represented the highest technology that humanity possessed, yet the darklings had embraced this spot. They must have come here with a purpose.

Rex saw how far the Focus stretched up and down the track, how it trailed off into the brush and extended even to the ramshackle houses backed up against the right-of-way. He wondered how far into the mesquite trees it went. The small town of Jenks was close to the Arkansas River, and the scrub in these parts was impenetrably dense, hiding much of the landscape from his new predator’s eyes.

But old darklings had been here, of that Rex was sure. He could see deep, clawed footprints in the soil and a broad tree branch that had almost cracked under the weight of something huge and winged. There were slither burrows scattered throughout the underbrush; darklings young and old hid from the sun out in the deep desert caves, but some of their little minions nested closer to town, buried under the earth.

It took time to layer a place with this much Focus, this many signs. They must have begun months ago, maybe a lot longer than that. Melissa and Madeleine had felt their celebrations out in the desert: the darklings had somehow known that the eclipse was coming and exactly where it would happen. Which meant they’d probably also known what Dess had discovered today, that this first tear in the blue time would spread like a rip along the seam of an old T-shirt.

Maybe it had always been their plan that the blue time would one day come apart. But what would happen then?

Suddenly something caught Rex’s eye. One of the railroad track cross-ties stood out, a halo of red surrounding it. He looked closer and smelled the inherent strangeness of the spot. The blue time was paper-thin here.

The old wood of the cross-tie was marked with a sliver of Focus, looking out of place here among the stains of darklings. He drew closer and saw in the half-moon shape the distinctive tread of a sneaker.

That was why it looked different—that other kind of Focus clung to it, the kind Rex had only learned to see over the last couple of weeks.

“Prey,” he said softly.

“Five minutes,” a

“Close,” Melissa said. “But they’re slowing down. Wimps.”

“Not everyone appreciates the subtle pleasures of flying through a windshield, Melissa,” Dess said.

“They’ve got five whole minutes before midnight, and Flyboy’s already parking it!”

“How far are they?” Rex interrupted.

“A few miles.”

“Not good.” He followed the trail of human Focus with his gaze. The glimmering footprints left the rail bed and headed down into the dense undergrowth. “She went this way. On foot, not being dragged.”

“Who? Cassie?” Dess asked.

Rex nodded.

“You can see that?”

“I can see the traces of humans now,” he said, pointing at the trail. “And these footprints look like they were made in the blue time. Cassie must have left them during the eclipse.”

Dess’s face twisted into a skeptical expression. Other than Melissa and Madeleine, none of them yet understood how different he had become.

Rex knelt on the tracks and sniffed. He could smell the uncertainty of the lost girl, could see her fear in the tentative distance between the steps. It made his mouth water, his palms sweat. This was a young one, weak and ready to be cut from the herd.

“Get a grip, Rex,” Melissa said softly.

He shook the hunting thoughts from his head. “Okay, I’m going to track her. She might still be close by. You guys stay here. But yell out a countdown for the last thirty seconds, Dess.” He slid down the loose gravel bank of the rail bed and plunged into the thick bushes.

“Rex!” Dess shouted. “There’s only four minutes left! Get back here.”

“Quit showing off, Rex,” Melissa called. “Once midnight falls and her brain starts up again, I’ll find her right away.”

Rex glanced back. The two of them were standing inside Polychronious, a large and complex tridecagram that Dess had laid down on a patch of clearing, using a spool of fiberoptic cable stolen from Oklahoma Telecom a few midnights ago. The cable smelled bright and buzzy to Rex, like cleaning detergent fumes going up his nose, and the thirteen-pointed star Dess had woven with it made his head spin. They would be safe from darklings inside it, even if the flame-bringer was a few minutes late.