[Midnighters 01] - The Secret Hour

by Scott Westerfeld - (ebook by Undead)

  “What does it mean, Rex?”

  He paused, blinking.

  “Two words, linked together… flame-bringer.”

  Jessica shrugged. “Which is what?”

  He took a step back from the stone, shaking his head. Jessica turned around, looking at the other midnighters. They all looked as puzzled as she was.

  “I don’t know,” Rex said. “Flame-bringer? There’s no such talent.”

  “There is now,” Jonathan said.

  “Well, it better be something good,” Dess announced. “Because in about five minutes we’ve got company.”

  29

  12:00 a.m.

  FLAME-BRINGER

  “What do you mean, Dess?” Rex asked.

  “When the defenses ate Jessica’s darkling, my clean metal got very dirty. It’s starting to sputter out.”

  Jessica looked up at the edge of the pit. The ring of lightning surrounding them looked weaker. The flashes no longer blinded when they shot up into the sky, the bolts of blue pale and tentative.

  “I know,” Rex said. “But I thought you could fix it.”

  “We did what we could. I don’t have enough clean steel. Someone left my duffel bag out on the desert.”

  “You walked away from your duffel bag,” Rex replied, “when you were getting all Amazon with your spear.”

  “Somebody had to kill that tarantula,” Dess shouted.

  “You didn’t kill it, you turned it into an army,” Rex yelled, “which some of us almost drowned in.”

  “You don’t drown in an army!”

  “Stop it!”

  Melissa’s cry silenced Rex and Dess. Jessica saw that their argument had drained the color from her face. She was doubled over in agony.

  “Sorry, Melissa,” Rex said. He took a deep breath.

  “There’s nothing I can do, Rex,” Dess said softly.

  Jessica looked up into the sky. Through the sputtering ceiling of lightning she could see slithers swirling around the snake pit. At the lip of the crater a host of tiny eyes gazed down at her. The spiders had surrounded the pit and peered down at them expectantly.

  “It’s up to you, Jessica.”

  She looked at Rex helplessly. “What am I supposed to do? You all keep acting like I know something. Like I’m someone special.”

  Jonathan grasped her hand, and she felt his reassuring weightlessness flow into her. “It’s okay, Jess. We’ll figure it out.”

  “What does ‘flame-bringer’ mean, Rex?” Dess asked.

  “I can’t be sure. I’d have to do more—”

  “There isn’t time to go look it up in the lore, Rex,” Jonathan interrupted. “What do you think it means?”

  Rex looked over at the shaft of stone, biting his lip. Melissa pulled her head from her hands and looked up at him.

  “You’re not serious,” she said.

  Dess laughed. “You think it’s literal, don’t you? You think she can use fire. Real fire.”

  “In the secret hour?” Jonathan asked.

  “That would kick butt,” Dess said. “Red fire in the blue time.”

  Rex looked at Melissa.

  “It makes sense, I guess,” she said. “At least it’s something that would scare them enough to explain all this.”

  “But you said fire didn’t work here,” Jessica said.

  Rex nodded. “That’s right. That’s why they created the secret hour in the first place. The whole point of the Split was to escape technology. Fire, electronics, all the new ideas.” He turned to Jessica. “But you’ve come to make them face fire again. You could change everything.”

  “Well, don’t just stand there making speeches about it,” Dess said. “Anyone got any matches?”

  “No.”

  “No.”

  “No.”

  Melissa shook her head. “Some flame-bringer. Too bad we didn’t get the match-bringer.”

  “Hey, I asked about matches,” Jessica said. “And Rex said they’d be—”

  A cracking sound pealed through the snake pit, along with a blinding flash, and a dead slither fell to the ground next to Dess.

  “Oh, yuck!” she cried, holding her nose at the smell.

  Melissa raised her head to the sky. “They know it’s fading. They’re coming closer.”

  “Okay,” Rex said. “Maybe we don’t need matches. We can start a fire the old-fashioned way.”

  “With what? Flint or something?” Jonathan said.

  “Or two sticks. You rub them together,” Dess said.

  “Sticks?” Jessica looked around. “I’m not the stick-bringer either, and this is a desert.”

  “Here.” Rex pulled off a steel ring from his boot. He picked up a rock from the ground. “Bang these together, Jess.”

  She took them from him and struck them against each other.

  “Harder.”

  Jessica held the rock firmly and brought the metal down against it as hard as she could.

  A spark flew, bright red in the blue light.

  “Oh, yeah,” Dess said. “Did you see that color?”

  Jessica glanced at Rex. It hadn’t looked like much to her.

  His mouth had fallen open. “Fire,” he murmured.

  “Yeah, but sparks won’t stop an army,” Jonathan said. “We need to start a blaze.”

  Dess nodded. “Too bad there’s no kindling out here. Does anyone have any paper?”

  Jessica pulled Dess’s map to the snake pit out of her pocket. “I’ll get this going. You guys try to find something else flammable.” She knelt and put it on the ground, holding the rock next to it. She struck at it with the steel.

  A few sparks came, but they bounced harmlessly off the paper.

  A scream came from overhead. Jessica paused to look up. A darkling hovered right above them, daring the lightning. The blue fingers leapt up at the creature, hurling it back. But it descended once more, testing the defenses again and again. The sparks seemed to be driving it into a murderous rage.

  “Keep whacking,” Dess said.

  Jessica turned back to the rock, trying to connect at a shallow angle. She missed with the metal ring, and her knuckles drove the rock into the sand. Pain shot through her hand.

  Jessica pulled the rock from the sand and struck at it again. The sparks wouldn’t come. Blood welled up on her knuckles, and the cut on her ring finger began to throb with her heartbeat.

  This wasn’t working.

  “How long before midnight ends?” she heard Jonathan ask.

  “Not soon enough,” Dess said.

  Jessica kept pounding away at the rock. A few more sparks flew, but the paper wouldn’t ignite.

  “It’s not happening,” she said. “Maybe two stones?”

  “Here.” Jonathan knelt next to her, handing her another rock. She struck them together.

  Nothing.

  She looked at her watch. Twenty minutes before the end of the hour. The flashes of lightning were fading visibly around them.

  “Jessica.”

  “I’m trying, Jonathan.”

  “Your watch.”

  “What?”

  He pointed at the watch. “It’s working.”

  Jessica looked at it uncomprehendingly. She realized that she hadn’t worn it in the midnight hour before. She always took it off before going to bed.

  “It’s working,” Jonathan repeated, “and it’s electronic—it’s not a windup.”

  “Here they come,” Dess whispered.

  Jessica looked up. The circle of blue lightning around the snake pit had died, exposing the dark moon over their heads. The darkling overhead was descending warily. The wind from its wing beats stirred the dust around her.

  “Jessica,” Rex said softly. “We need a fire now.”

  She picked up the rocks again but paused.

  She remembered the new building at Aerospace Oklahoma, where she and Jonathan had taken refuge the weekend before. When Jessica had seen it tonight, it had been ablaze with lights. They must be ligh
ting it every night. All night.

  “Jessica…”

  A sound came from all around them, a rushing noise. The tarantulas were pouring into the snake pit from every direction.

  “No,” Rex said softly.

  Jessica pushed the little button on the side of her watch, and the tiny night-light glowed white in the blue light. It said 12:42.

  Jonathan met her eyes, his jaw wide open.

  “Forget these,” Jessica said, dropping the two rocks to the ground. She pulled the flashlight from her pocket and held it to her lips.

  “Serendipitous,” she said.

  She turned it toward the surging sea of tarantulas and switched it on.

  A cone of white light leapt from the flashlight, and the spiders began to scream.

  30

  12:00 A.M.

  TALENT

  The white light swept across the crater floor, reducing the spiders to ash in its wake. Shrill, horrible cries rose up from the swarming army, like a thousand whistles blowing at once. The tide of hairy bodies turned away swiftly, pouring back up the snake pit’s sloped walls. Jessica pointed the flashlight into the air, and the slithers that crossed its path burst into flame, suddenly red against the dark sky. She shone the light straight up to search for the darkling over their heads, but the creature had disappeared into the distance, howling.

  A last few spiders crawled witlessly around the smoking bodies of their fellows, and she burned them one by one with the flashlight.

  The white light seemed unreal and uncanny in the blue time, revealing everything in its true colors. The beam drove the blue from the landscape, returned the reds and browns of the desert, and turned the charred bodies of slithers and spiders a dull gray.

  Even the moon above them seemed gray now, pale and unthreatening, washed out and emptied of its menace.

  As the attackers retreated from the snake pit, the night grew silent. The clicking calls of slithers and the shrieks of the spider army faded, until only the howls of a few darklings could be heard, screams of pain and defeat in the distance.

  “Turn that thing off!” Dess complained.

  Jessica started when she saw her friends’ eyes flashing angry purple in the light. Dess cowered behind her hands. Jonathan, Melissa, and Rex had all covered their eyes, their faces twisted in pain.

  Only Jessica could stand the light.

  She pointed the flashlight to the ground, then switched it off.

  “Sorry.”

  One by one, blinking painfully, they dropped their hands.

  “That’s okay,” said Rex.

  “Yeah. Don’t worry about it,” Jonathan said.

  “Call it even.” Dess laughed, rubbing her eyes. “Not being spider food kind of makes up for the temporary blinding.”

  “Speak for yourself,” Melissa said, rubbing her temples. “I had to taste your stupid pain along with mine.”

  “You really can do it,” Rex said softly. “You brought technology into the secret hour.”

  Jessica’s head spun. Her vision still danced with the colors revealed in the white light, the afterimages of burning spiders and slithers. The flashlight seemed to be tingling in her hand.

  “Fire on tap,” Dess said. “You’re a darkling’s worst nightmare!”

  Melissa nodded slowly, looking into the sky. “That’s true. They are not happy about this. Not happy at all.”

  Jessica looked at her, then down at the flashlight in her hand. “Yeah, but what are they going to do about it?”

  Dess laughed. “You said it.”

  Jonathan put his hand on her shoulder. “It’s true. You’re the flame-bringer. This means you’re safe now, Jessica.”

  She nodded. The flashlight in her hand seemed ordinary now, but when it had shone, something had surged through her, larger and more powerful than anything she had experienced before. She had felt like the conduit of something huge, as if the daylight world were flowing through her into midnight, changing everything.

  “Safe,” she murmured. Not just safe, though. What she had become felt bigger than that, and scarier, too.

  “You know, Jessica, it’s probably not just flashlights,” Dess said. “I wonder what your limits are. I mean, maybe you can use a camera in the blue time.”

  Jessica shrugged, looking at Rex.

  “There’s no way of knowing,” he said, “except to try. I mean, film is a chemical process, kind of like fire, I guess.”

  “Hey, just a flash attachment would kick butt.”

  “Or walkie-talkies!”

  “What about a car engine?”

  “No way.”

  The group fell into silence. Rex shook his head, dazed and happy, then looked up at the setting moon.

  “It’s late,” he said. “We can figure this out tomorrow night.”

  Jonathan nodded. “I better get going. St. Claire’s boys are on the lookout for me these days. Do you want me to take you home?”

  Jessica sighed. She wanted to fly, to leave the horrible things she’d seen tonight behind on the ground. But she shook her head.

  “I have to get back to the party. Constanza will flip if I just disappear into thin air.”

  “Okay. See you tomorrow?”

  “Definitely.”

  Jonathan bent forward to kiss her, and gravity left her body at the touch of his lips. As he pulled away, her feet settled back onto the ground, but her stomach still danced inside her.

  “Tomorrow,” she said as Jonathan turned and jumped, soaring out of the snake pit. Another bound took him high into the air, then he disappeared into distance and darkness.

  “We’d better get moving too,” Rex said.

  “Sure,” Jessica answered. “I’ll be okay.”

  “You look better than okay.” Dess laughed. “Wipe that smile off your face, Jessica Day.”

  Jessica felt herself blushing and pulled her jacket tighter.

  “Do you know the way back to the party?” Melissa asked quietly.

  “Yeah.” She pointed. “Moon sets in the west, so back that way.”

  “Not bad, Jessica,” Dess said. “You’re starting to get the hang of midnight.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Let’s clean up some of this stuff, guys,” Rex said. “We left a bigger mess than usual.” Dess and Melissa grudgingly agreed.

  “I should get back to the party,” Jessica said. She hefted the flashlight in her hand. “I guess I’ll be safe.”

  Rex nodded. “Thanks for coming here, Jessica. For trusting us.”

  “Thanks for telling me what I am,” she answered, then frowned. “Whatever it turns out to mean in the long run, at least I’m not a totally useless midnighter, you know?”

  “I never thought you were.”

  It wasn’t long before she reached the bonfire. Walking directly took only five minutes, just like Dess had promised.

  Jessica had never seen a frozen fire before. It didn’t look like much. The bluish flames cast no light, were barely visible except as a warping of the air, like ripples of heat in the desert.

  She didn’t want to look at the frozen people, especially their faces, which seemed ugly and dead, like a bad photograph. So she peered closely at the fire, reaching out a tentative finger to touch one of the flames.

  The heat was still there, but muted and soft, like a sound from the next room. Her touch left a glowing mark suspended in the air, as if the red flame were trying to poke its way through into the blue time. She pulled her finger back. Where she had touched it, the frozen flame was red now. That one spark of light stood out against the blue veil that lay across the desert night.

  As the moon set, Jessica slipped back into the shadows.

  Midnight ended.

  The cold wrapped around her suddenly, and she shivered in the light jacket.

  The fire pit jumped into motion—conversation, laughter, and music blurting to life as if Jess had opened a door onto a party. She felt smaller; the world had suddenly grown crowded, pushing her back in
to the shadows.

  “Jessica?”

  Constanza was peering out at her from the fireside.

  “Hey.”

  “I thought you were ‘taking a walk’ with Steve,” Constanza said, smiling. “Didn’t think I’d see you for a while.”

  “Yeah, well, he turned out to be kind of a creep, actually.”

  Constanza took a few steps nearer, hands disappearing into pockets as she left the fire behind her.

  “He what?” Constanza looked closer, her eyes widening as she saw Jessica’s electrified hair, her bloody knuckles, the dirt on the jacket and dress. “Are you okay? What happened?”

  “Oh, I’m sorry about your clothes. I didn’t—”

  “That creep!” Constanza cried. “I’m so sorry. I had no idea.”

  “Well, it wasn’t exactly his—”

  “Come on, Jess, I’m taking you home.”

  Jessica paused, then sighed with relief. The last thing she wanted was any more partying tonight. “Yeah, sure. I’d really appreciate that.”

  Constanza thrust her arm through Jessica’s and walked her toward the cars.

  “These Broken Arrow boys are really too much sometimes.” Constanza sighed. “I don’t know what anyone sees in them. They think they’re so cool, but they’re so out of control.”

  “Nice fire, though.”

  “You like bonfires?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, good. Maybe sometime we’ll—”

  A voice came from the darkness in front of them. “Hey, there you are.”

  Jessica’s feet froze in midstride. It was Steve, making his way back from the cars where he’d led Jessica. She felt Constanza’s hand tighten on her arm.

  “You totally disappeared there, Jess. Kind of freaked me out.” He took a few steps closer. “Hey, what happened to your—”

  He never saw it coming; Jessica hardly saw it herself. In one fluid motion Constanza released her, took a step forward, and punched Steve in the face.

  He stumbled backward, tripped on his own feet, and landed on his butt on the hard ground.

  “Hey!” Constanza took Jessica’s arm and resumed their march toward the cars, continuing where she had left off.