Touching Darkness (20 page)

“There!” Jessica cried, pointing.

The road came into view, not much more than a pair of tire-wide ruts in the dirt. They’d finally found a way onto the flats. She reached forward to take Jonathan’s shoulders as he made the turn, shivering again with relief that he’d shown up when he had. Jonathan might be a pain about Flatland sometimes, but he was also the only one among the midnighters who wasn’t crazy—the only one who made her feel safe. The moments trapped in the car with a raving Melissa and a schizoid Dess, speeding away without him, had made Jessica pretty positive about that.

The razor-wire fence of Aerospace Oklahoma was a couple of miles behind them, the brightly lit construction sites visible across the dark badlands. They’d had to drive all the way past it before finding a way into the desert.

“Watch out for security,” she said. “They do all this top secret stuff out here.”

“Rent-a-cops,” Jonathan muttered. “Just what we need.”

The car bucked on the uneven road, and Jessica let go of Jonathan and leaned back, bracing herself against the backseat. She glanced over her shoulder at Melissa’s headlights, half hoping the old Ford would have plowed to a stop in the loose sand. But the car followed, still close, like a determined bloodhound on their trail.

Jessica looked up at Dess in front, her face softly lit by the glowing readout of her device. She hadn’t said much since telling them about Madeleine. Jessica wanted to talk to her, to make sure she was really okay. Of course, she’d had two mindcasters messing with her brain, so maybe okay wasn’t the word. But the moment the two of them were alone, Jessica had to say how sorry she felt. She’d been the one to reveal Dess’s secret. And then she’d just sat there watching, too afraid to move, while Melissa had done that to Dess…

The car slid violently to one side, its engine roaring as the tires lost traction for a moment on the sand. Loose stones pinged the metal frame underneath her. Jonathan fought with the wheel, and they bolted forward again.

Through it all, Jessica saw, Dess never took her eyes from the GPS receiver. “We’re almost at the flats,” she said.

“I can see them,” Jonathan replied.

A moment later the car leveled out, suddenly riding as smoothly as if they’d found asphalt.

“Welcome to the Bixby Emergency Runway, south end,” Dess announced.

Jonathan floored the accelerator, pressing Jessica back into the seat. An expanse of moonlit white glowed before them, the salty remains of an ancient sea, as flat as a parking lot.

Melissa’s car screeched up behind them, then pulled up alongside. Through the rear window Jessica could see huge tails of dust rising from the two cars, white and crystalline, sparkling in the moonlight.

“Does that thing have a clock?” Jonathan asked Dess.

“Accurate to within a millisecond,” she said.

“Good. Tell me when to brake. I don’t want to go through the windshield.”

Jessica swallowed. “What?”

“We don’t know what happens if you’re riding in a car at exactly midnight,” he explained. “We might maintain our momentum when the car freezes. Or maybe not.”

“For some reason, none of us has ever volunteered to test the theory,” Dess said dryly.

“That damn first law of motion again!” Jessica groaned. “How far are we from Rex?”

Dess calculated for a moment. “Eight kilometers—five miles to you kids—and there’s three minutes and twenty seconds left. We need to do ninety miles an hour.”

There was a pause, then Jonathan said, “It’s floored and we’re barely making seventy.”

“We’ll be short by a mile point eleven,” Dess said softly. “And this thing won’t work in the secret hour.”

“We’ll be close, though,” Jonathan insisted, “and we’ll be flying.”

Dess looked out the window. “Looks like queen bitch has the scent.”

Jessica followed her gaze. Melissa was pulling ahead.

* * * * *

Dess counted down from ten. “Nine… eight…”

Jessica checked her seat belt again, wishing they weren’t cutting it so close. They weren’t that far from the place, and whatever the darklings planned to do to Rex had to take some time. But Dess and Jonathan were hellbent on getting as close as they could before the witching hour struck.

And she had to admit that seventy miles an hour was eating up the distance even faster than Jonathan could fly.

“Three… two… one… brake!”

She jolted forward and the car swerved, the tires letting out a shriek as they locked up on the salt. Jessica’s seat belt bit into her shoulder, and a huge cloud of white rose up around them, blotting out the moon. The car swung like a fairground ride until the cloud filled the front windshield—they’d spun 180 degrees and then some.

Before they’d skidded completely to a halt another jolt struck, as suddenly as if the car’s tires had stuck in flypaper. A wash of blue swept across the white expanse, and the seat belt cut across Jessica like a knife, her head slamming against the backseat.

Then everything was still, an absolute silence fallen over the roar of engine and screech of tires.

“Ow!” Jessica cried.

“What?” Jonathan asked, turning around. “I didn’t feel anything.”

“You’re kidding,” Jessica moaned. It felt like a bear trap had closed on her shoulder.

“Must be an acrobat thing,” he said.

“Almost as bad as mindcasters,” Dess mumbled as she unhooked herself, rubbing her shoulders and neck.

They piled out. Jessica coughed, tasting the suspended cloud of salt that swirled up from the car’s distorted and frozen tires. She saw an equally motionless cloud ahead, marking where Melissa’s car had hit the wall of midnight.

“You can fly us both, right?” Dess said, hoisting the clanking duffel bag over one shoulder.

“It won’t be as fast,” Jonathan said.

“We need you, Dess,” Jessica insisted. She wasn’t leaving her behind out here. “Take his left hand.”

With Jonathan in the middle, they lined up facing the direction they’d been driving. The first jump went badly Jessica’s push-off was too strong, which sent them spinning in orbit around Jonathan. They skated to an ungainly stop across the salt.

“Start small,” he said. Jessica remembered when she’d first learned to fly, building up from easy steps to house-clearing leaps.

They pushed off again, a jump of about ten yards, then doubled it the next time into the air. Soon they were eating up the desert below them, headed toward the frozen plume trailing from Melissa’s car.

“That’s not good,” Jonathan said.

Jessica squinted into the darkness. “What isn’t?”

“Her dust trail isn’t nearly as big as ours,” he said. “It’s like she didn’t…” His voice trailed off as their next leap took them through the stinging cloud of salt, a shower of needles that forced her eyes and mouth shut. When they cleared it, Jessica could finally see the car itself, a black shape on the glowing blue expanse.

“She didn’t,” Dess said.

“Didn’t what?” Jessica asked.

“Brake in time.”

A sparkling wedge spread out from the front of the car, a glittering spray of safety glass from the gaping hole in the windshield.

Twenty yards farther on, a dark figure was sprawled on the salt.

Midnight didn’t feel so good.

It hadn’t brought its usual awesome silence. Instead there’d been a sudden burst of noise and mind-wrenching pain that had left her here, swimming in this dark place.

Melissa remembered driving fast, glancing at her watch, letting her foot off the accelerator, slowing as she waited until the last moment to put on the brakes.

Oh, yeah. Really important to put on the brakes…

With an effort she opened her eyes. There were stars in front of her, pinpoints of light dancing against a cold black sky.

Can’t get distracted. Brakes…

Melissa moved her arm painfully, bringing her wrist in front of her eyes. She had to fight to bring the numbers into focus.

The watch face was cracked, the hands stopped at eight seconds to midnight.

She let it drop back to the salt, finally understanding.

“Stupid cheap quartz watch…” she muttered.

Then her head began to pound. Melissa knew all about headaches. She’d felt her own and everyone else’s since the day she was born. Totaled up, she’d probably spent years of her life with a headache. But this one… this was the worst ever.

She swam in the darkness for a while, the pain spreading like a bruise all the way to her fingertips. Then she heard footsteps pounding across the hard desert floor.

“Melissa!”

Stupid noisy flame-bringer. Jessica’s buzzy brain tasted like a nine-volt battery pressed against Melissa’s tongue.

“Quiet,” she commanded, wondering if her eyes were shut. Open or closed, there were stars in front of her.

Loud as a car alarm.

“Don’t move her.”

Maybe that was Jonathan’s voice. His bouncy Flyboy taste was around here somewhere.

Melissa decided to open her eyes. The voices weren’t going to go away until she glared at them. Glaring was good for making annoying people shut up.

Jessica’s blurred, concerned face appeared.

“I’m fine.” Everything was fine… except for the dizziness and the feeling like she was going to puke and the headache. Anyway, there was a bottle of aspirin in her glove compartment, like always. Where was her car, anyway? She lifted her head to look. Jeez, it was miles away.

“Lie still,” Jessica advised.

Yeah, I was just about to start dancing. Melissa thought.

Then a piece of memory fell out of the starry sky—why she’d been driving so fast. And even though speaking hurt, she said, “Go get Rex, you morons.”

The three of them looked at each other, and no one said what they were all thinking, while precious seconds ticked away.

Finally Dess said, “All right. I’ll stay here.”

Melissa closed her eyes. Poor Dess, always the odd one out. Couldn’t fly, couldn’t flame-bring. They should all three go, leaving her for the darklings. Being eaten couldn’t hurt worse than this headache.

But arguing would hurt too.

Their voices and thoughts got even louder. Dess kept telling Jessica which direction to go. Flyboy was anxious to get started and also quietly relieved to have only one passenger to carry. And all the while, not even a mile away, the arid taste of dark things was gathering.

“Go,” she tried to say.

If Rex was out there, he wasn’t conscious; Melissa couldn’t taste him. But she’d driven ahead following the flavor of a familiar mind. Angie wasn’t far away, her brash confidence silenced now by midnight.

Oh, if only Melissa could crawl that mile, the things she would do to Angie. Rex’s dad could tap-dance around her after Melissa was done.

But lying still was better. So she lay still for a while longer.

“Wake up.”

Only Dess now. The other two had faded, finally flying off to help Rex. Polymath thoughts filled the air as Dess pounded stakes into the ground, protection from the dark things all around them.

“Wake up! You’ve got a concussion. If you go to sleep you could die.”

Melissa groaned. “Fine with me.”

“What a coincidence. Fine with me too.”

She opened her eyes, looked at poor lonely Dess, tasting bitter as burnt rubber. Dess thought she’d been robbed of her secret friend. Didn’t she see what Madeleine was? What she had done to them all? Abandoned them. Left them pathetic orphans, when she knew all the tricks.

And anyway, Melissa had had no choice.

She licked her lips, desperately wanting a drink of water. “I’m sorry I touched you, Dess. But they took Rex… I had to find him.”

No answer, just the pounding of stakes into the hard ground. Every stroke was like an ice pick through Melissa’s brain.

Finally the hammer paused. “They know about her now, don’t they?”

“They already knew.” Melissa closed her eyes. Here, half conscious in the middle of the desert, she was awash in darkling thoughts, their slow rhythms easier to take than those of buzzy, headache-making humans. It hadn’t been Madeleine’s first slipup when she’d popped directions into Jonathan’s and Jessica’s brains. Over the years the darklings had sniffed her existence. They could hardly miss the spate of young midnighters appearing in Bixby. And the oldest, most paranoid ones had always suspected that someone had survived.

Then she realized the obvious.

“That’s why they let us live,” she croaked.

The pounding stopped.

“What?”

Talking hurt, but at least Dess wasn’t driving tent stakes while she listened. Melissa lifted her head a bit and rolled painfully onto one side, feeling bruised shoulders and salt scraped hands.

“We weren’t a threat, not until Jessica came along. So the darklings were clever: they let us survive. To find Madeleine.”

And to let Rex mature,
she thought. They’d taken Anathea too young; that was why she was dying after only two years of darkling time.

They wanted Rex to be their slave for centuries…

Melissa groaned, her head sinking back onto the salt.

“Can you sense her?” Dess asked.

Melissa sighed. Casting that far would hurt her head, like everything did. She could feel blood trickling down her face now, its progress as slow as thick oil. But she owed Dess an answer.

She sent her mind past the edge of the desert into the silent town, searching for the null spot that Dess’s numbers had uncovered, hidden behind the contortions of midnight.

Just in time Melissa felt them watching and realized what she’d almost done. The darklings were all around, leery of the barrier Dess had made but paying close attention. They had almost followed her thoughts to Madeleine.

Melissa smiled and let the knowledge she’d taken from Dess scatter like shattered safety glass. One thing about going through a windshield, it made it easy not to think. They would sift Madeleine’s secret place from her mind eventually but not tonight, not with this concussion raging in her head.

“Madeleine’s fine,” she said.
For now.

Dess started pounding stakes again. The protection might not even be necessary—the darklings had bigger fish to fry. A dark mass of them boiled furiously nearby, excited by something in their midst…

“No,” Melissa murmured, and her head sank back to the hard ground. She let herself be overwhelmed, drifting in and out of the merciful sleep that might kill her, consciousness too painful to bear.

Of course, she really ought to remind Dess about the car poised sixty feet away. It was frozen now, but the old Ford was still doing better than forty miles an hour and headed straight toward them with no one at the wheel.

But the words of warning couldn’t seem to form in the jumble of her mind. Amid the gathering darklings was a distracting flavor, the most familiar taste she knew… but different now.

Not far away, Rex was waking up.