A liquid motion caught his eye. One of the creatures’ long tendrils was approaching, sliding across the desert floor like a snake. As Rex watched in horror, it stretched toward his boot, wound around his leg as soft as feathers. Every muscle in his body strained against it, but he couldn’t move.

Cold swept through him then, and an arid voice…

Winter is coming.

Rex tried to open his mouth to speak, but his teeth were clenched so hard it felt like they would shatter. He let out a growl, pulling his lips apart, forcing his tongue to form words in his captive mouth.

“What will happen?”

We will hunt again. Join us.

“No,” he said.

We are hungry.

Images exploded in Rex’s mind, every bully who had ever taunted him, all his father’s beatings, the spiders making their way across his pale, bare flesh. Every old fear came surging out of his memories, tearing at the foundations of his human side. Suddenly he knew he was a failure. The lore he had taught himself to read was nothing but lies. All along he had been a blind seer, a fraud.

Laughing, the old ones showed him the coming change, how the blue time was tearing open, unleashing the darklings’ ancient hungers.

“No,” he said, already exhausted. “I’ll stop you.”

There was a shudder from the beasts.

You are not the one who threatens us.

Rex’s body suddenly went rigid, as if something was stretching him, prying his mind wide open. All his senses grew a thousand times. The world was suddenly crystal clear all the way to the dim stars on the horizon, even more perfect than in his seer’s vision. He could hear the sound of his own blood rushing through his body, like freight trains pouring past. And he tasted the blue time itself, ash and corruption on his tongue.

More images poured into him—the world moving at darkling speed, the seasons flashing past, only one hour in twenty-five visible, every day almost a month. He saw the prime contortion that the old ones had made, the secret hour itself, groaning under the weight of all that missing time. It was beginning to fray, a steady drumbeat of eclipses until it shattered, and then the hunt would begin.

Unless… Rex saw a bolt of lightning, the ancient pressures released and spreading across the earth, the rip diminishing.

“We can stop this,” he whispered.

She can. You must take her.

“No.”

More images, like his hunting dreams but a thousand times more vivid. He saw a pile of burning bones, human forms wearing horned masks. He felt the rush of galloping pursuit, smelled the fear of the prey, tasted the warm vitals of the kill. Rex felt himself gorging on flesh.

His stomach clenched against the vision, but what horrified him most was how complete it made him feel, how sated. And how powerful. As Rex Greene, he was trapped in a body that was weak and small, that would sicken as it grew old and certainly die in a laughably short time. But the old ones were offering him millennia.

All he had to do was let his humanity slip away. He could join in the feast.

Just take her. You alone can bring her down.

He shook his head, fighting back with his shredded humanity. Then a long-buried Aversion rose up in his memory, one Dess had taught him long ago.

Join us, they coaxed him.

“Unconquerable,” Rex spat at them hoarsely. His mind almost split from the effort, but the grip of the old ones shuddered again, disgusted with him.

Then away with you.

With astonishing suddenness his mind was released from the creatures’ awful grip. Rex felt his muscles unlock, and he was falling like a dropped rag doll, every ounce of will expended in the struggle. They had given up, he realized. Somehow he had beaten them.

Rex opened his eyes and found himself lying facedown on the desert floor, dirt in his mouth, his jaw muscles aching. But he managed a smile. The darklings had shown him something about the coming hunt… something important.

But as the cluster of nightmare shapes moved away, leaving him there exhausted and spent, Rex felt his mind contracting, his senses turning back to merely human. Like a great maw closing around him, darkness consumed the new knowledge, leaving only disjointed images and scents and the taste of dust in his mouth.

By the time the old ones had disappeared on the horizon, he hardly remembered what had happened at all.

18

12:00 A.M.

MONSTER

Rex shambled back across the desert like a zombie.

His face was pale, his hands shaking as they had immediately after his transformation weeks before. He looked strangely like his father—eyes glazed and milky, his gait barely a shuffle.

He wasn’t bruised or bleeding, and his clothes weren’t torn, but the empty expression on his face made Jessica’s skin crawl.

“Are you okay, Rex?” she said.

He didn’t answer, just turned to Melissa. “Did you touch her?”

“No, I waited. I promised, didn’t I?” Melissa reached toward him. “Loverboy, you look like crap.”

“Feel like it too.” Rex took her offered hand and shuddered, then straightened, as if taking strength from her. “Thanks.”

“What the hell, Rex?” Jonathan said. “Are you trying to get yourself killed?”

Rex thought about the question for a few seconds, like it was a tricky one, but finally he shook his head. “I’m just trying to get all points of view. I think I’ve been a pretty crappy historian.”

“Pretty crappy driver, more like!” Melissa cried. She pointed at the old Ford, which was listing to one side; both tires on the right were reduced almost to bare metal rims. “The first time I let you take my car somewhere without me, and you totally kill it?”

“Yeah. Looks that way.”

“I can’t believe you, Rex! Mr. Responsible, who always gets his library books back on time, but when it comes to my car, you don’t even bother to use the road? The front axle’s busted!”

As Jessica watched Melissa continue her tirade—holding Rex tighter with every insult, their fingers intertwining, their bodies leaning against each other for support—she realized how well the mindcaster had concealed her fear that he might never return. Even when they’d touched, Jessica had only caught a glimpse.

Finally Melissa’s diatribe sputtered to a halt. Rex held her in silence for a moment, then said, “I’ll always remember the old beast fondly. It died saving me and Angie.”

Melissa pulled away and turned to stare at the frozen figure in the wrecked car, her voice lowering to a growl. “Well, she’s my consolation prize, then. She really owes me now.”

“Wait a second,” Rex said.

“No way. I’ve already waited too long for this.”

He drew Melissa back to him, placing one palm against her cheek.

After a moment her eyes widened. “What? Why not?”

“I made a deal.”

“Well, I didn’t make any deal!”

“You did. With me.” He shook his head. “We have to wait for midnight to end.”

Jessica wondered if anyone else was having trouble following this. “What are you talking about?”

“Yeah,” Dess added, still holding a bloody rag to the cut above her left eye. “Could those of us who aren’t psychic at least get some subtitles?”

Melissa yanked herself out of Rex’s arms, stumbling back a few feet and glaring at him. “He doesn’t want me to mindcast Angie.”

“Excuse me?” Dess said.

“Angie’s told me some things about the past,” Rex said. “About midnighters and Grayfoots. And we made a deal. We’re going to wait till midnight ends, then we’ll talk to her. Just talk.”

“Hang on,” Jonathan said. “Are you saying we all risked our lives tonight to have a chat?”