Blue Noon

“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 ru

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 ru

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.

32

10:30 P.M.

EPILOGUE

The car slid to a halt in front of the house across the street, setting the neighborhood dogs barking wildly.

Nice move, Flyboy, Melissa thought. Dess had told him to keep it quiet tonight. Her parents were still in major curfew mode since the Great Bixby Halloween Hysteria.

He waited for a moment, then reached to honk the horn.

“Don’t,” Melissa said. “She’s coming.”

He glowered for a moment, his impatience bitter in the air. Of course, there was plenty of time before midnight to get to Jessica’s house and still make it out to Jenks. But Jonathan was in a hurry to get tonight over and done with. It was all too emotional, and underneath his tension Melissa sniffed a sliver of fear….

“Don’t worry, Jonathan. She won’t change her mind about leaving.”

He looked at her, bristling, then sighed.

“She better not, anyway,” Melissa said. “I don’t think I can live with my parents much longer. Not with Rex’s new rules on mindcasting.” Her parents had never been psychos like Rex’s dad, but the subtle web of deceits she had woven around them over the years was begi

In particular, they’d started asking about her missing car. It was definitely time to get out of town.

Dess appeared, slipping from her window and crossing the threadbare lawn at a deliberate pace. Melissa felt her a