Jonathan
"So, what am I doing here again?" Jonathan asked irritably.
Melissa put her coffee back into its cup-holder a little more forcefully than necessary. "As I told you an hour and a half ago, we are looking for signs of the darkling Mick saw last week."
Jonathan sighed loudly. "I know that; I mean, what am I doing out here? Now that we have Rex, he can spot the darkling tracks in about five seconds. None of the rest of us is going to see anything in the middle of the day, and the darkling certainly isn't here."
Melissa parked the car and got out, looking around at the huge, widely-spaced spruce and oak trees that grew in the River Glen Nature Park. "Everyone else should be here in just a few minutes. Mick's teleporting Dess and Alex here and Rex said he could drive himself."
"Where is he, anyway?"
"McDonald's. I don't know how he stands the crap cuisine they call food, but whatever." Melissa grimaced, shaking her head at Rex's bad taste in restaurants.
Before Jonathan could defend McDonald's, Mick and Alex appeared. Jonathan noted that Mick's power worked very differently from his: Mick could teleport during the day, and he didn't need physical contact to take others with him. Plus, it looks like teleporting is a little more disorienting than flying.
Indeed, Alex looked a little freaked out as he hastily stepped away from Mick. "Uh, wow. That's teleporting, huh?" he asked shakily.
Mick rolled his eyes. "Yeah, dude, that's teleporting. That seer guy told me all I had to do was focus on the place I wanted to get to, and it looks like he knows what he's talking about, so far."
"Of course he does," Melissa said. "And here he comes now." She pointed at the car pulling into the lot.
"Oh, crap, he told me to go get Dess, too. I'll be back before you miss me," Mick promised, and then vanished.
Sure he'll be back before we miss him, because I won't miss him at all. Jonathan was still annoyed at the teleporter for his impertinent questions about Jessica. Where does he get off being so damn nosy, anyway? As if that's not enough, he's dragged us all the way out here so we can trek around the forest wildlife park looking for a darkling that's probably long gone.
Melissa, who had been watching Rex drive up, turned to frown at Jonathan. "Dial down the resentment, Flyboy. You're just jealous because Mick is able to use his power during the day, and you can't."
"No I'm not; that's crazy," Jonathan objected.
"What's crazy?" Rex asked as he slammed his car's door shut. He looked from Jonathan to Melissa and back again, but before he could repeat his question, Mick and Dess popped out of thin air right in front of him. Rex shrugged and got down to business, asking Mick where exactly he was in the forest when he saw the darkling.
"Let me think… OK, that day, I started down that trail there." Mick pointed at the trail that wound to the west.
"That's way out of town, right?" Dess asked. Mick nodded affirmatively. "This forest must be huge… it's exactly the kind of place darklings would like to hang out… all this dense vegetation to block the sun… and those hills to the southwest… if there are caves in the hills, they would make a perfect darkling clubhouse."
While Dess mused over the possibilities the forest offered for darkling habitation, Mick stared at her like he had never seen anyone muse before. Jonathan also noticed that Mick had been holding Dess's hand in order to teleport her, and he hadn't let go yet. Good, if he's busy hitting on Dess, maybe he won't have time to be such a pain in the butt.
The whole time they were hiking through the forest, Jonathan couldn't help thinking that this job would have been better left to midnight, when he could have flown instead of stumbling over tree roots and getting tangled in vines. Finally, to stop himself from dwelling on that, he started watching the other midnighters more closely. He saw that Rex still had his darkling senses, because he was sniffing the air for a scent, rather than just scanning the ground for the Focus left by an inhuman touch.
Jonathan also saw that Melissa was sticking extremely close to him, and that she looked a heck of a lot happier than she had last night. I guess that means they patched things up. I guess that's a good thing; if Melissa and Rex are back together, she might forget to terrify Alex, and maybe he'll stop that infernal stammering if he's not being snapped at.
Jonathan shot the lock-melter a derisive glance; he had never had much patience with the other guy's shyness. Although, Alex didn't look quite so shy today. He was examining Dess's GPS device, and he sounded more enthusiastic than Jonathan had ever heard him. Jonathan also noticed that Mick seemed annoyed by this. He obviously wanted to interrupt, but couldn't find an opening to do so. Geez, now I remember why I used to avoid hanging out with other midnighters; we never get along. If Alex and Mick are gonna fight over Dess, I might actually be glad Rex is around. That's a scary thought.
Finally, after 40 minutes of walking, Rex stopped and fixed Mick with an irritated glare. "All right, Mick, exactly how far into this forest were you, anyway?"
"I was pretty far in; I was actually spending the day out here. Kind of like camping, but without the 'spending the night in a tent' part. Look, if you guys don't like walking, why don't I teleport us there? I know precisely where I was, so it shouldn't be a problem."
Everyone was so sick of walking that they agreed instantly. Mick closed his eyes in concentration, and teleported.
The second the midnighters had materialized, they realized that Mick's idea of teleporting to the place he saw the darkling had worked a little too well. They were definitely in a different part of the forest, but they were also in the middle of midnight!
"Whoa. What the hell just happened?! One minute it's the middle of the day, and now it's midnight? Hang on, this isn't like the eclipses that happened around last Halloween, is it? Jessica closed that rip; don't tell me the darklings have found a way of making a new one!"
"I don't think so, Jonathan," Rex said. He looked unnerved, as did the others, but he kept his voice in calm seer-knows-best mode. "From what I've read about teleporters, they can bend space and time. Mick wanted to show us where he saw a darkling, and he accidentally took us to when he saw it, too."
"That is seriously freaky," Dess said; no doubt she was racking her brain for an equation that could explain someone stepping into another time as easily as stepping into another room.
"Hey, I'm sorry. It was an accident. I can teleport you back if you want." Mick reached out and gave Dess's hand a reassuring squeeze. She pulled away and held up a finger to silence him.
"I think I hear your darkling coming… right now!"
"Oh, crap. We don't have any metal, do we?" Melissa asked.
"Um, I didn't bring any."
"Nope."
"I got nothing."
"We are so screwed."
"What do we do?!"
"Run!"
The midnighters took off, getting off the open trail and into underbrush thick enough that the darkling couldn't follow. The darkling slunk around a large oak trunk and stood there, sniffing for the prey that it had expected. Rex growled softly, and Jonathan elbowed him in the ribs. Don't get any ideas, Rex, now is not the time for you to go all predator on us, Jonathan thought. Melissa seemed to be thinking the same thing, because she wrapped an ungloved hand around Rex's wrist. He stiffened, then relaxed and stopped growling.
Finally, the darkling gave up and moved on, and the midnighters untangled themselves from the brush, leaves and vines. "Be quiet," Alex murmured. "We don't know if it's gone far enough that it can't hear us anymore."
"Right. We should get Jessica to take care of this thing. Where is she?"
"Probably still in my car; I'll go get her." Jonathan jumped into the air and soared back toward the hotel parking lot where he had left his car. When he reached the parking lot, he found Jessica perched on the car's hood, waiting for him.
"There you are. What took you so long?"
"Saw a darkling. Rex said I should get you to take care of it. You got the flashlight?"
"Right here, as always." Jessica took Jonathan's hand, and they flew back to the forest.
As they landed, Jonathan realized that the other midnighters were gone. "Hey, where'd everybody go?" he exclaimed. "They were right here…"
"Um, Jonathan? I think maybe they left to get away from that." Jessica pointed over Jonathan's shoulder. He spun around and saw not one, but three darklings. One was in panther form, one was shaped like a hideous tarantula, and the third mostly looked like some monstrous bird of prey, except that it had the powerful legs and long, curved claws of a large cat. Despite the difference in their appearances, the three darklings had one thing in common: they all looked hungry.
