The Secret Hour m-1

by Scott Westerfeld

  The needle was pointing in a new direction. It said north was still behind her, but now she was facing a different way.

  “What the—”

  Jessica turned in a slow circle. No matter which way she faced, the needle pointed straight at her.

  “Great, I’m the North Pole now,” she muttered. Another one for Rex to ponder.

  If she survived long enough to see him again.

  She thrust the useless compass into her pocket and looked up at the stars. The Milky Way ran east to west, or at least it had before midnight had freaked out the compass. At one end of the river of light was the rising moon.

  “Jessica, you idiot!” The sun rose in the east; why wouldn’t the dark moon?

  She had been going the right way all along.

  Jessica started running again, as hard as she could. If the slither had spotted her, there was no time left to waste. Either she was headed in the right direction or she was dead meat.

  The moon was higher now, its baleful face broad enough to fill the eastern horizon. Winged things were gathering in front of her, dark shapes against the cold light of the moon.

  Suddenly she saw what looked like a flicker of blue lightning before her. But it seemed to strike in reverse, jumping from the ground up into the sky, spreading out from a thick trunk to many thin fingers of fire, like a huge and leafless tree suddenly revealed by a flash of blue. More streaks of lightning shot up from the ground, and Jessica heard the screams of flying slithers. She watched as one dropped from the sky, touched by one of the branches of blue electricity.

  “Dess,” she said. The bolts of lightning were the snake pit’s defenses, coming to life. Jessica was headed the right way. Safety was close.

  She ran harder.

  The flying beasts seemed to be testing the defenses, trying to get past the lightning and down into the snake pit. As the cloud of slithers thickened, the lightning grew more furious, forming a stuttering arc of blue flame over the pit. The scrubby weeds around Jessica cast long, flickering shadows.

  Another thirty seconds and she would be safe.

  A huge, dark shape rose up over the blue arc, too big to be a slither. It came straight toward Jessica and began to descend, its wings almost large enough to blot out the fireworks behind it.

  She skidded to a stop, panting. As the darkling landed and its wings folded, she could see its form boil and change, resolving into a crouched black shape of muscles, claws, and flashing eyes. A panther.

  The blue arc protecting the snake pit was only a few yards behind it. She was so close.

  Jessica pulled off Jonathan’s necklace, holding it tightly in one hand. She whispered its name, “Obstructively.”

  The beast roared, shaking the hard desert earth under her feet. It reared up, saber teeth growing from its maw.

  For a moment Jessica was overwhelmed by the same paralyzing fear that had trapped her the first time she’d seen a darkling. But then she remembered how joyfully Dess had dispatched that panther, in a wild burst of sparks from the flying hubcap.

  This time Jessica wasn’t defenseless.

  “You’re in big trouble, psychokitty,” she said, holding the necklace high.

  The beast just growled, unimpressed.

  She readied herself to attack, the necklace wadded into a ball in her hand. No point in waiting for another darkling to show up.

  The panther arched its back, eyes flashing, as if sensing what she was about to do.

  Jessica took a deep breath and ran straight toward it.

  The cat reared back, off balance. It was a predator, not used to prey turning on it. But then its hunting reflexes took over. Its claws extended, and it lunged at her with a single bound like the strike of a huge snake, suddenly a bolt of solid muscle.

  She hurled the necklace.

  The metal ignited the moment it left her hand, the links aflame in a string of blue sparklers. Burning steel and the panther arced toward each other, beast and metal colliding in midair with a thunderous sound. The cat was thrown back, howling. It rolled over once and scrabbled to its feet at the edge of the snake pit, shaking its head.

  Its cold eyes locked on Jessica.

  A second later the world seemed to explode.

  A bolt of lightning shot out from the snake pit, leaping across the few feet of desert and striking the body of the panther. The whole snake pit seemed to burst into cold, blue flame for a moment, with a rushing noise like a building rain, and then a deafening explosion threw Jessica to the ground. She rolled across the dirt, the boom shaking the hard desert sand beneath her.

  For a moment she couldn’t move. Her head rang, and she could see nothing but the bolt of lightning striking the big cat, burned into her eyes like the afterimage of a camera flash.

  Jessica forced her eyes open and rose shakily, coughing, not knowing which way was which. Tears streamed down her face, and as she blinked them away, Jessica saw a blurry form hurtling toward her through the air.

  She took a few half-blind steps backward. The shape landed in front of her.

  Jessica put a hand up to her neck instinctively, but the necklace was gone. She was defenseless.

  A hand grabbed her arm.

  “This way, Jess.”

  Gravity slid away. Suddenly she was made of feathers.

  “Jonathan.”

  With a single, soaring step he pulled her across the crackling boundary. She had been only yards from the edge of the snake pit. Lights flashed around them, the hairs on her head standing up as if she’d stepped into a bath of electricity.

  Jessica stumbled when they landed inside the sinkhole, and the moment Jonathan let go of her arm, her feet slipped down the slope of softer sand. She sat down hard.

  “Jess?”

  “I’m okay.” She blinked away the dirt in her eyes and managed to get Jonathan’s face into focus. He was breathing hard, kneeling next to where she sat, loose dirt slipping around them down into the center of the pit.

  “I tried to stop the darkling, but it went for you so fast,” he said breathlessly. “I thought I was too late.”

  “No, you were just in time.” Jessica shook her head, trying to clear the ringing in her ears. Her fingers and toes buzzed, as if some huge force had moved through her, electrifying her body in its wake. Every breath seemed to fill her with energy. She almost felt like laughing.

  “I lost Obstructively. I mean, I threw it at the psychokitty,” she babbled.

  “I saw the whole thing. That was incredible.”

  “Is it gone? Your necklace?”

  “Blown to bits, but I’ll give you another one.”

  “Oh, good.”

  Jessica giggled, then forced herself to take a slow, deep breath. The buzzing in her body was fading. Finally her vision cleared completely. Jonathan’s face was twisted with concern.

  “Are you sure you’re okay?” he asked. “You look like you just stuck a fork into a light socket.”

  “Gee, thanks.” Jessica stood shakily, and he reached out a hand to help her up. “I’m okay, really.”

  In fact, she felt great. She smoothed her hair, which was sticking out in all directions.

  “Uh, Jessica…”

  “Yeah?”

  “Are you wearing makeup?”

  She dusted the dirt off herself. “Can’t a girl get dressed up for a party?”

  Jonathan raised one eyebrow and looked around. The bowl of the snake pit was ringed with pieces of metal, junkyard shapes that glowed and sputtered. Sheets of lightning flashed up from them into the sky, where screaming slithers wheeled in tight circles around the pit. Burned and twisted shapes lay on the ground, the bodies of fried, smoking slithers that had ventured too close. Through the blue dome of lightning Jessica spotted a few darklings hovering in the distance, their eyes radiant indigo in the glare of the incessant flashes.

  Jonathan laughed. “Some party.”

  Jessica smiled but then knitted her brows. “Not all the guests are here, though.”


  “I spotted Melissa’s car on my way, at the other end of the Bottom. I guess they’re going to be a little late.” He looked at the fireworks show around them. “If they get here at all.”

  Jessica looked out through the arcing blue lightning, past the wheeling cloud of slithers. “How did you get through, Jonathan?”

  He pointed to an object on the ground next to him. It looked like an old trash can lid, dented and marked all over with strange signs and patterns. “Meet Purposelessly Hyperinflated Individuality. Something Dess made to help me get here.”

  “Purposelessly Hyperinflated…?” She laughed.

  “What?”

  “Nothing. It’s just a good name.”

  “Her new thing is thirty-nine-letter phrases. Packs more of a punch.”

  “Looks like you needed it,” Jessica said. The lid was blackened on one side, as if it had been used to ward off a flamethrower.

  “I had flying slithers bouncing off me like bugs off a windshield.” Jonathan picked it up. With his fingers through the handle, the trash can lid looked like a battered shield. He looked up at the moon, half risen.

  “They should’ve been here by now.”

  Jessica could still see part of the Milky Way past the huge moon. “They’d be coming from that way, right?” she asked.

  Jonathan nodded and pulled out a candy bar, taking a hurried bite.

  They skirted the pit to the other side, the flashes of lightning sending long shadows from them in all directions. The sinkhole was a rounded, irregular crater in the desert, as if a giant shovel had scooped up a load of dirt. Plants clung to its sides, and the earth at its depressed center looked dark and damp. Jessica started at what she thought was a crawling slither underfoot, but it turned out to be a normal snake, frozen by midnight.

  “Nice place for a party,” she muttered.

  They reached the opposite edge and looked out across the smooth plain of the Bottom.

  “There they are,” Jonathan said.

  26

  12:00 A.M.

  GAUNTLET

  “Looks pretty impressive, Dess.”

  “Thanks, except I was hoping we’d see it from the inside.”

  “Come on,” Rex said for the tenth time. “The cops were all over the place tonight. We’re lucky we made it to your house at all.”

  “So how are we supposed to get over there?” she asked.

  The blue arc over the snake pit shone brightly across the desert. With his midnight vision Rex could see every slender finger of the cold lightning that leapt from the ring of steel Dess had created. He could see the slithers swirling overhead, drawn to the snake pit and its ancient stones, barely smart enough to avoid the deadly forces they attracted from the clean metal. He could also see darklings overhead, hovering wary and patient, waiting for something to happen.

  Everything was in readiness.

  Unfortunately, it was all happening hundreds of yards away, across open, defenseless desert.

  “I have no idea,” he admitted.

  “They know we’re here,” Melissa said. “But they don’t care about us. Just her.”

  Rex nodded. He could see two forms inside the barrier of lightning, looking back at him across the plain. Jessica had made it here, had risked her life to meet them.

  “So maybe we can just walk across.”

  Dess looked at him as if he were nuts.

  “After you,” Melissa suggested.

  Dess had created a small protective perimeter around them, clean steel stakes borrowed from her dad’s camping tent, carefully arranged and linked with wire to make a thirteen-pointed star. The wires glistened in the moonlight like a spiderweb around them. It was easy to keep away darklings if you could set up defenses, but moving across open terrain was another matter.

  “We can’t just sit here.” He looked up at the moon. “We’ve only got another forty minutes or so.”

  “Less than that,” Dess said. “The arc is weakening.”

  Rex stared at her. “What?” he cried. “You said it would last all midnight.”

  She shook her head. “I know, but you saw those fireworks a minute ago. Something big must have hit it. Like maybe a darkling threw itself against the barrier. I didn’t think even a psychokitty would be that stupid.”

  Rex blinked. He wouldn’t have imagined it either. Darklings were very old, and those left alive were, by simple process of elimination, only the very cautious ones. Self-sacrifice was not in their nature. “Then we can’t stand around. We’ve got to help them.”

  Melissa raised her head and sniffed the wind. “I don’t think they’re going away anytime soon.”

  “No,” Rex agreed. “But we have to try. We could run that distance in a couple of minutes.”

  “And get ourselves killed in thirty seconds,” Dess said.

  He turned to Melissa. “You said they don’t care about us.”

  “They’ll care about us pretty quick if we get any closer to her.”

  Rex clenched his fists. “That’s why we have to try. Don’t you guys get it? They want to get Jessica because she’s important, because she’s the key to something. We have to find out what.”

  “Yeah, I get it,” Melissa said. “They hate her. I can taste it like a mouthful of gasoline. But we’ve never really been enemies with the darklings, Rex. You always said they’re like wild animals: stay out of their way and they’ll stay out of ours. She’s the one driving them crazy.”

  “So what do you suggest we do?”

  “We walk away.”

  “What?”

  “We turn around and go home.”

  “Melissa,” Dess said, “my ring around the snake pit may not last for the whole hour.”

  Melissa shrugged. “Then all our problems will be solved, one way or another. Maybe Jessica will figure out what her talent is once she really needs it. Or maybe the darklings get what they want, and everything goes back to normal.”

  Rex looked at his old friend, not believing the words that had just come out of her mouth. “Melissa—,” he started, but found that he didn’t know what to say.

  A sharp laugh came from Dess. “And everything goes back to normal? I thought you didn’t like normal.”

  “Normal might suck, but it’s better than dying for her.”

  “For both of them,” Dess said. She turned to Rex. “I’m not going to get stuck with just you two again. Let’s go.”

  Rex watched as Dess knelt by her duffel bag. She unzipped it and pulled out a yard-long metal pole. She twisted something at one end and gave it a flick. Another shaft of steel slid out like a folding telescope until the whole thing was almost a foot longer than Dess was tall. It was decorated with her usual mathematical signs and symbols, but a lot of them.

  “Resplendently Scintillating Illustrations,” she said happily.

  Dess turned and walked toward the snake pit, stepping over the shining boundary of taut guitar string and onto the open desert.

  “Coming?” she asked over her shoulder.

  Rex blinked, then followed. He paused to lift up the duffel bag, which clanked reassuringly at his side. After a few steps he heard Melissa sigh and knew that she would be close behind.

  They had gone just over halfway when the darklings noticed them.

  A few slithers had flown or crawled near, but Dess’s weapon had sparked to life at their approach. None of them had dared to test its power. Rex had almost begun to think they’d make it without any trouble.

  Then the darkling came. It swept over them from behind, blocking out the moon for a moment, and landed directly in their path.

  It didn’t look like a cat or like any darkling he’d seen before. Rex wasn’t exactly sure what it was. Its globular body was hairy, with uneven patches of fur sticking out all over it. The wings were broad, with skeletal fingers visible through the translucent skin. Four long, hairy legs dangled from the rounded body, waving and softly scraping the desert as it landed. The creature’s bloated belly sagged, resting on
the sand.

  “Old,” Melissa said quietly. “Very old.”

  Rex dropped the duffel bag and reached into it. His hand closed on a paper bag full of small metal objects—washers, safety pins, silverware, and nails, all clinking against each other. He pulled it out and hefted it in his hand, wondering if Dess had really named each and every one of the pieces inside. It felt as if there were hundreds.

  “It doesn’t want to fight us,” Melissa said. “It wants us to go away.”

  “Not a chance,” Rex said.

  The wings were shrinking, being sucked into the creature. A fifth leg sprouted from the body, thrusting out and waving in the air mindlessly. Then another, and then two more, until it could finally lift its bulk up from the earth on eight spindly legs.

  Rex shuddered as he recognized the shape. It was a tarantula, a huge version of the desert spider.

  The monstrous creature illustrated what he’d tried to explain to Jessica back at the museum. The darklings were the original nightmares, the template for every human fear. Black cats, snakes, spiders, lizards, worms—the darklings mimicked them all in their pursuit of terror.

  Spiders, it so happened, were Rex’s personal nightmare.

  Especially hairy spiders.

  The thing’s legs twitched and trembled, the hair on them threadbare and matted. It shifted its balance almost nervously, one leg lingering in the air as if testing the wind. Eyes seemed scattered across its body at random, flashing purple in the dark moonlight.

  “Doesn’t look so tough,” Dess proclaimed without much conviction.

  “There are others,” Melissa said.

  Two more darklings hovered in the air above, well away, but clearly ready to join in.

  “This one first,” Rex said, swallowing his disgust and taking a few steps forward. He reached into the paper bag, took a sharp handful of the metal bits, and threw them as hard as he could at the beast.

  They sputtered to life in the air, burning a deep blue, like the base of a flame. The metal pieces struck the darkling and burned themselves out against it. Wisps of smoke rose from it, and a foul smell like singed hair and wet dog reached Rex’s nostrils. The beast hardly reacted at all, just shivered and twitched, emitting a slow, liquid sigh, the exhalation of huge and infected lungs.