It didn’t look like a cat or like any darkling he’d seen before. Rex wasn’t exactly sure what it was. Its globular body was hairy, with uneven patches of fur sticking out all over it. The wings were broad, with skeletal fingers visible through the translucent skin. Four long, hairy legs dangled from the rounded body, waving and softly scraping the desert as it landed. The creature’s bloated belly sagged, resting on the sand.

“Old,” Melissa said quietly. “Very old.”

Rex dropped the duffel bag and reached into it. His hand closed on a paper bag full of small metal objects—washers, safety pins, silverware, and nails, all clinking against each other. He pulled it out and hefted it in his hand, wondering if Dess had really named each and every one of the pieces inside. It felt as if there were hundreds.

“It doesn’t want to fight us,” Melissa said. “It wants us to go away.”

“Not a chance,” Rex said.

The wings were shrinking, being sucked into the creature. A fifth leg sprouted from the body, thrusting out and waving in the air mindlessly. Then another, and then two more, until it could finally lift its bulk up from the earth on eight spindly legs.

Rex shuddered as he recognized the shape. It was a tarantula, a huge version of the desert spider.

The monstrous creature illustrated what he’d tried to explain to Jessica back at the museum. The darklings were the original nightmares, the template for every human fear. Black cats, snakes, spiders, lizards, worms—the darklings mimicked them all in their pursuit of terror.

Spiders, it so happened, were Rex’s personal nightmare.

Especially hairy spiders.

The thing’s legs twitched and trembled, the hair on them threadbare and matted. It shifted its balance almost nervously, one leg lingering in the air as if testing the wind. Eyes seemed scattered across its body at random, flashing purple in the dark moonlight.

“Doesn’t look so tough,” Dess proclaimed without much conviction.

“There are others,” Melissa said.

Two more darklings hovered in the air above, well away, but clearly ready to join in.

“This one first,” Rex said, swallowing his disgust and taking a few steps forward. He reached into the paper bag, took a sharp handful of the metal bits, and threw them as hard as he could at the beast.

They sputtered to life in the air, burning a deep blue, like the base of a flame. The metal pieces struck the darkling and burned themselves out against it. Wisps of smoke rose from it, and a foul smell like singed hair and wet dog reached Rex’s nostrils. The beast hardly reacted at all, just shivered and twitched, emitting a slow, liquid sigh, the exhalation of huge and infected lungs.

“Leave this to me,” Dess said, “and the heavy artillery.”