She held out both her hands, palms up.

Melissa caught Rex’s eye, and they joined hands first with each other, waiting for a moment until their connection was complete. Her heart was pounding, and even though she was certain that the memory was all part of a big lie—propaganda, like Angie had said—Melissa recalled that long-ago mindcaster gathering, letting her wonder at those ancient images shared around the fire calm her.

As her mind stilled, she felt herself drawing strength from Rex’s dark confidence. Whatever the horde of old mindcasters inside Madeleine had in store for the two of them, at least they were facing it together.

“Come now. Don’t lollygag,” Madeleine snapped.

As one, they raised their other hands and let her grasp them, completing the circle.

As Madeleine stilled herself, she changed, becoming a congress of minds.

Melissa was always awestruck at the vastness of it: memories stretching back to shadowy recollections of the ice age, when glaciers could be reached in a month’s walk to the north. Ten thousand years of history, hundreds of generations, thousands of mindcasters.

She squeezed Rex’s hand. Facing that accumulated mass of minds, she was glad for his dark presence beside her.

“What have they done to you?” Madeleine murmured. She was probing the black sphere of Rex’s darkling half, searching its smooth surface for purchase. As the fingers of her mind settled in and began to pry, Rex’s hand flinched in Melissa’s.

“It’s for your own good,” the old woman muttered. Her concentration deepened, her raspy breathing slowing in Melissa’s ears.

After a long moment the darkness inside Rex began to swell, like something viscous and heavy coming slowly to a boil. The muscles in his fingers twitched again in her hand, a dry taste stirring among the patterns of his mind.

Eyes closed, Melissa watched the changes shifting through him and wondered if Madeleine really knew what she was doing. Melissa could taste arrogance in the mass of memories, their certainty that they could control anything and anyone. But they’d never faced something like Rex.

Then bitter metal filled her mouth, like old pennies on her tongue.

A seam had begun to open in Rex’s mind, his darkling inner core shivering, its surface cracking. Melissa tasted Madeleine’s satisfaction.

Rex made a pained sound.

Melissa sent calming thoughts toward him, but Madeleine pushed her back. You don’t know what you’re doing, girl. Stay clear.

The old mindcaster turned her attention back to Rex, pressing harder, and the darkness inside him began to split—a black and radiant shaft spilled across the mental landscape, bleeding color from it like the dark moon’s light. Images of an ancient Samhain flowed from his mind: masked humans piling up the bones of cattle and setting them alight, fires dotting the landscape for miles, raising up a slaughterhouse smell. Melissa felt a twitch of hunger at the scent and realized that the reaction was a darkling’s. Soon she was ravenous, feeling the call to hunt, to kill.