He’d actually heard the thing in his mind—not just caught fleeting tastes and emotions like Melissa casting across the desert. He could talk to them now.

“You scared it.”

The small voice sucked him back into reality and the cool light of the blue time, and Rex whirled around to face its source. Cassie clutched the hunting knife with both hands, staring back at him, her eyes wide with amazement. The patterns woven onto the knife stung his eyes.

“How did you do that?” she asked. “It was so big.”

Speechless, Rex found himself watching Cassie’s heartbeat pulsing in her throat, the blood close to the surface. The awe on her face was like the hopeless gaze of paralyzed prey, caught and cornered by its pursuers. Helplessly he felt the hunger rising inside him.

The other darkling had left this prey for him, small and alone.

Join us, Rex heard the beast’s words echo in his mind, and realized that he could end the awful struggle within himself now, with just one easy kill.

8

12:00 A.M.

NIGHTMARE INTERRUPTED

“There they go,” Jessica said.

A cloud of slithers was swirling up from the dense trees in the distance, like a flock of birds sent into flight by a gunshot. She and Jonathan were at the top of their arc, the straight line of the railroad track below them leading off toward the deep desert.

“Never seen that many before,” Jonathan said. “Not since…” His voice trailed off.

Jessica saw that the swarm had split, half of them wheeling around, heading toward her and Jonathan.

“What are they up to?” she said. The darklings had mostly steered clear of Jessica since she’d discovered her talent. But this flock of slithers almost looked intent on attacking. The creatures were spreading out, flying low, rushing toward them like oil spreading across the treetops.

“Not sure.” Jonathan squeezed her hand. “And I think we’re lost. Hold up a second.”

They were descending into a small clearing near the railroad tracks. She bent her knees on landing, the soft grass absorbing their momentum.

“Which way?” she asked. From the ground the trees looked the same in every direction.

Jonathan shook his head. “Don’t know. And we’re taking way too long.”

The trip from the car had eaten up precious minutes, but at least they’d been moving fast, bounding straight down a dirt road, then through a neighborhood of shabby houses set on large, junk-strewn lots. At the rendezvous point Melissa had pointed in the direction Rex had wandered off, saying he was only half a mile away. But the dense brush had forced them to take small jumps from clearing to clearing, weaving their way toward him. This was the worst kind of terrain to fly across; mesquite trees were dangerous, with their razor-sharp thorns.

After all this aimless bouncing around, Jessica figured that the other two were probably there already, charging straight through the trees under Melissa’s guidance. She just hoped they had enough Dess-made weapons to protect Rex and the lost girl—and themselves—until she and Jonathan finally managed to discover a flight path.