An explosion pulled Jessica’s gaze back out to the horizon. One of the slithers had glanced off Jonathan’s shield, blue sparks arcing across the sky as it fell, and the other turned and fled. Jonathan bounded to a halt a few yards away, raising a cloud of pale blue dust that froze in midair—his acrobat gravity working its strange magic.
“Come on!” he cried, holding out both hands.
Jessica was glad to see that he didn’t flinch as Melissa grasped his hand, just looked at her, and said, “Do you know how this works?”
“Yeah, Jessica just taught me.”
A look of surprise crossed Jonathan’s face, and he shot a glance at Jessica. She could only shrug. She hadn’t thought about it that way, but all the techniques of flying were recorded in well-used grooves in her mind, honed by long hours at Jonathan’s side. Even those nights they didn’t fly together, she dreamed about it or puzzled over the mechanics of midnight gravity when she was supposed to be doing physics homework.
Had Melissa really taken all that in so quickly?
“Let’s go,” Melissa said, bending her knees.
The three of them jumped together, a small tentative leap at first. Melissa didn’t send them spinning or stumbling when they landed thirty feet away. They pushed harder on the second jump, launching into a low, fast trajectory across the desert. They built up speed, growing in confidence, dodging scrub and cactus bulbs without any exchange of words, as if Melissa had been flying with them a dozen times before.
Jessica wondered what was going on in Jonathan’s mind, if he was thinking about Melissa reading his thoughts as they flew. Or remembering his horror at their first contact, before Melissa had gotten herself under control. Or perhaps the emergency was too great, his mind too focused on flying…
Maybe that was the trick when dealing with mindcasters; maybe you just had to give your head a rest.
“Halfway there,” Melissa said, breathing hard.
Jessica asked, “Are they okay?”
“Dess is fine. Rex… he’s with the others.”
“With what others?”
Melissa stumbled on the next landing, and the three of them twisted in the air, spinning once all the way around before they set down again. Jonathan dragged them to a halt as they landed.
On the horizon ahead, a flicker of blue sparks rose up from the desert.
“What’s happening out there?” he asked her.
“Dess is holding them off. And they’ll scatter once they taste the flame-bringer on her way.”
Jessica frowned. “What about Rex?”
“Don’t worry about him. Moron—he said he’d warn me before he tried anything like this.”
“Anything like what?”
Melissa shook her head. “We should keep moving if we’re going to get there before Dess blows a fuse.” She looked at them both, pleading with them not to ask any more questions. “Let’s just keep going, okay?”
Jonathan glanced at Jessica, then bent his knees again. “Okay.”
They jumped again, eating up the landscape in long, bounding leaps. Melissa flew as if she’d practiced for months.
Half a mile from Dess they passed over a patch of small, stubby cacti. Jessica spotted a big black car with blown-out tires at its edge.
“That’s not Melissa’s, is it?” she asked.
“No. Grayfoots’,” Jonathan said. “Real ones.”
“Oh.” No wonder things had gotten messed up.
At the height of their next jump Jessica saw a huge black cat rising onto its haunches among blue sparks, surrounded by a whirling cloud of slithers. A thirteen-pointed star was traced out on the desert floor in glowing wires, Dess inside it, the darkling just outside. Melissa’s car sat nearby, looking battered and broken.
“That cat smells blood, Jess,” Melissa said. “It’s too young to be afraid of you.”
“Blood?” Jessica said as they landed, but the mindcaster didn’t answer.
They jumped again, hurtling toward the struggle. Jessica saw Dess’s long spear swing through the air, the panther batting at it with its claws, catching the spear point with a flash. The weapon spun out of Dess’s grip as the creature screamed, leaping backward from the contact through its entourage of winged slithers. It rolled across the desert, salt and sand flying into the air.
But like a cat, it sprang to its feet in an instant and bared its fangs.
Dess stood glaring back at it.
“Close your eyes,” Jessica warned through clenched teeth.
Enlightenment’s beam shot across the blue desert, reaching the darkling at the limit of its power. White fire played across its fur, bringing another howl of anger. All around it slithers burst into flame, wheeling to escape the scorching light.
But the darkling didn’t flee. Its purple eyes flashed as it glared at Dess, directing all its wounded fury toward her.
It readied itself to spring.
Jessica kept the flashlight steady as they flew, squeezing it with all her strength, sending every ounce of her will through it. The white fire grew stronger as the darkling leapt, enveloping it in a hissing ball of flame. Jessica felt the blue world shudder around them, the mountains in the distance seeming to warp as her power surged through Enlightenment.
The beast screamed one last time, disintegrating in midair like an exploding meteor, scattering glowing white coals across the desert floor.
“Eyes open,” Jessica said hoarsely. Another jump took the three of them into a skidding landing near the circle of singed earth and metal stakes. Dess stood inside, dusty and scared-looking, blood running from her forehead.
“Are you okay?” Jessica cried, dropping Jonathan’s hand and running toward her, leaping over the strewn and blazing remains of the darkling.
“I’ll live. But Rex went out there!” Dess cried, pointing into the desert. “I couldn’t stop him!”
“I know,” Melissa said.
“Jessica, Jonathan, go get him!”
“No, don’t.”
The other three looked at the mindcaster in disbelief. Her eyes were half open, rolled back in her head, nothing visible of them but two pale slits of glowing purple.
“He wants us to stay here,” she said softly.
“But you should see the thing that came for him!” Dess cried, wiping the blood from her forehead.
“I can see it, Dess.” Melissa slowly moved her head from side to side, like a drunk piano player grooving to her own music. “He’s okay. And he’ll be back soon.”
“He’ll be dead!” Dess said.
Melissa opened her eyes, which flashed as she stared straight at Jessica. “Trust me—don’t go out there. Rex is in the middle of a big crowd of wicked-old darklings. If you spook them, you’ll only get him killed.”
Jessica noticed that the other three were all looking at her too, waiting for her answer. She was the flame-bringer, after all; only she could save Rex.
She looked at Melissa again. The mindcaster wore an expression of absolute certainty. Jessica remembered the calm she’d felt when they’d touched, as well as how she sensed Melissa’s love for Rex, and found herself suddenly certain about what she had to do.
Nothing.
No matter how screwed up Melissa was now or ever had been, whatever she had done to Dess or anyone else, she would never, ever hurt Rex. Not in a million years.
Jessica nodded. “Okay. We’ll trust Melissa.”
“Jessica!” Dess cried. “She’s a psycho!”
“No, she’s not. We wait here.”
Melissa smiled, her eyes drifting closed again. “It won’t be much longer. They know the flame-bringer’s nearby, so they won’t be in the mood for a long conversation.”
“Conversation?” Jonathan said. “Are we talking about darklings here?”
“Old ones. Smarter than this turkey,” Melissa said, kicking at the sputtering embers near her feet. “By the way, Jess, you were right.”
“About what? You not being psycho?”
“No. About flying. That was fun.” She opened her eyes and turned toward her old Ford, inside of which Angie’s frozen form could be glimpsed, and cracked her knuckles. “But not as much fun as getting a shot at that bitch’s brain.”