Rex wondered where it had come from, whether it had flown here swiftly from the desert or crouched in some rocky warren out of the sun, waiting since the eclipse for this ancient delicacy—a rare meal of human flesh.

“Rex…?” Cassie said softly.

That had been the plan, of course: the slither-cat leading her to this spot, trapping her in the cave until its master arrived at midnight. Next the slithers inside would have driven her into its jaws…if Rex hadn’t already coaxed her out himself.

“Go back inside,” he whispered.

She only clung to him tighter.

“Go back in the cave, Cassie!” he shouted. “That thing can’t fit in there!”

“But the snakes!”

Rex turned to look. The blue-lit depths of the cave were dotted with the eyes of slithers staring back at them.

“Here, take this,” he said, pressing the hunting knife into her hand. “They’re scared of it, and help is coming.”

She held the knife loosely, looking down at it with wide eyes.

“It’s name is Animalization,” he said. His fists clenched in pain as Dess’s pointed little tridecalogism passed his lips. “Keep saying that, and they’ll be really scared. Animalization.”

“But—”

“Go!” He shoved her into the fissure, hoping she would find the courage to go deep into the cave, far enough to escape the thin, reaching arms of the darkling.

He whirled back around to face the creature, crouching down into a fighting stance. Its eight legs had extended to full length, pressing against the ground to lift the central body mass up into the air. The legs were covered not with hair, but with glistening spurs, like thorns on some vast and hideous rosebush. The entire beast was dripping with a viscous black substance, as if it had been dipped in crude oil.

Rex flexed his empty hands, realizing that he was completely unarmed. He had no knife, no metal on his boots, and yelling thirteen-letter words would hurt him more than it would any darkling.

“Where are you, Jessica?” he whispered, daring a glance at his watch.

His heart sank. Only six minutes of the secret hour had passed.

She wasn’t going to make it here in time.

The darkling’s two forward legs raised and its body rested on its rear, the posture of a tarantula facing an enemy. Rex could see the fangs in its oily maw, shivering with the creature’s hunger.

He remembered being forced to stand still at ten years old as his father’s pet tarantulas crawled across his bare flesh. The weird slowness with which they moved, the interlocking motions of their eight legs, the sickening fascination that they compelled.

His father’s voice came back to him: Relax, boy! They’re not poisonous. They can’t hurt you. Be a man!

Hairy spiders had crawled through every one of his childhood nightmares.

Rex waited for the darkling to strike. Its two forward legs made slow circles in the air, like the arms of a dog paddling in water. The sinuous motion threatened to hypnotize him, and he tore his gaze away.