Those who went out to investigate would find the dark moon risen overhead, the last few seconds of rain settling to earth. And soon they would see the fireworks display downtown, the only movement visible on the frozen horizon.

Hopefully many of them would start to make their way downtown then, searching for some kind of explanation. By that time Jonathan would be flying among them, telling everyone to get to this building as fast as possible. And as long as the midnighters’ defenses at Jenks had held off the main darkling force long enough, they’d have time to get here.

As he and Dess waited for the last few seconds of normal time to elapse, Rex took a deep breath. For the next twenty-five hours humanity would be a hunted species, dispossessed of all its clever toys and machines, toppled from the summit of the food chain. Those who understood that quickly enough would run and would live; those who refused to believe would perish.

In the darkling part of his mind, Rex thought for a moment that perhaps this wasn’t such a bad thing. Without predators to cull the herd, humanity had spread across the earth unchecked, crowding the planet beyond its resources, prideful and arrogant.

Maybe one night a year of being hunted would do them good.

He shook his head then, shivering in the cold rain. Darkling notions had teased his mind all week, but he knew he couldn’t let himself think that way—he had a job to do. The people of Bixby didn’t deserve to be slaughtered just because the world was overpopulated. No one did.

He listened to the car alarms and forced himself to hope that everyone down there was listening too.

Just before midnight fell, a peal of thunder started to roll, sounding directly over their heads. And then the earth shuddered, the blue time descending over everything, freezing the rain into a million hovering diamonds around him, cutting off the thunder, the car alarms, everything.

“Can you see it from here?” Dess asked.

Rex looked toward Jenks, and his seer’s vision picked out the slim red glimmer of the rip. It was starting to swell.

“Yep. The red time is on its way.”

“Good going on that fuse.” Dess breathed out a slow sigh. “Guess now we just sit back until the fireworks start.”

As per the plan, the other three midnighters were out in Jenks. Soon they would light the first fireworks display to forestall the main force of darklings. Once that was going strong and before the darklings started to flow around them and into town, Jonathan would fly Jessica and Melissa back here, where the five of them would make their stand.

At least, that was the way it was supposed to work.

“Whoa, Rex! Look at that!”

Dess was pointing back toward downtown. Rex turned, following her gaze to the Mobil Building, the tallest in Bixby. The neon winged horse at its summit hunkered just under the low ceiling of heavy clouds, strangely illuminated against their dark bulk.