Midnight

"But – "

"Leave it, Matt,"said Meredith quietly. She had the stave ready in her left hand and with her right was ready to push on the panel for opening the door. "Everybody ready?"

Everyone nodded. Elena felt sorry for Matt and Stefan, who were the most honest and sensitive of al of them.

"One,"she whispered softly, "two, three."

On three Meredith hit the concealed wal switch. And then things began to happen in very slow motion.

By "two"Elena had already begun to shove Misao toward the door. On "three"the others joined her.

But the door seemed to take forever to open. And before the ending of forever, everything went wrong.

The greenery around Misao’s head spread twigs in al directions. One strand shot out and snagged Elena around the wrist. She heard a yel of outrage from Matt and knew that another strand had gotten him.

"Push!" Meredith shouted and then Elena saw the stave coming at her. Meredith whisked with the stave through the greenery connected to Misao. The vine that had been cutting into Elena’s wrist fel to the floor.

Any remaining misgivings about throwing Misao down the stairs vanished. Elena joined in the crowd trying to push her through the opening. But there was something wrong in the basement. For one thing, they were shoving Misao into pitch-darkness…and movement.

The basement was ful of – something. Some things.

Elena looked down at her ankle and was horrified to see a gigantic maggot that seemed to have crawled out of the root cel ar. Or at least a maggot was the first thing she could think of to compare it to – maybe it was a headless slug. It was translucent and black and about a foot long, but far too fat for her to have put a hand around it. It seemed to have two ways of moving, one by the familiar hunch-and-straighten method and the other by simply sticking to other maggots, which were exploding up over Elena’s head like a hideous fountain.

Elena looked up and wished she hadn’t.

There was a cobra waving over them, out of the root cel ar and into the kitchen. It was a cobra made of black translucent maggots stuck together, and every so often one would fal off and land among the group and there would be a cry.

If Bonnie had been with them, she would have screamed until the wineglasses in the cupboards shattered, Elena thought wildly. Meredith was trying to attack the cobra with the stave and reach into her jeans pocket for Post-it Notes at the same time.

"I’l get the notes,"Elena gasped, and wriggled her hand into Meredith’s pocket. Her fingers closed on a smal sheaf of cards and she tugged it out triumphantly.

Just then the first glistening fat maggot fel on her bare skin.

She wanted to scream with pain as its little feet or teeth or suckers – whatever kept it attached to her – burned and stung. She pul ed a thin card from the sheaf, which was not a Post-it Note but the same amulet on a smal rather flimsy note card, and slapped it on the maggot-like thing.

Nothing happened.

Meredith was thrusting the stave into the middle of the cobra now. Elena saw another of the creatures fal almost onto her upturned face and managed to turn away so that it hit her col ar instead. She tried another card from the sheaf and when it just floated away – the maggots looked gooey but weren’t – she gave a primal scream and ripped with both hands at the ugly things attached to her. They gave way, leaving her skin covered with red marks and her T-shirt torn at the shoulder.

"The amulets aren’t working,"she yel ed to Meredith.

Meredith was actual y standing under the swaying, hooded head of the maggot-cobra, stabbing and stabbing as if to reach the center. Her voice was muffled. "Not enough amulets anyway! Too many of these grubs. You’d better run."

An instant later Stefan shouted, "Everybody get away from here! There’s something solid in there!"

"That’s what I’m trying to get!"Meredith shouted back.

Frantical y, Matt yel ed, "Where’s Misao?"

The last time Elena had seen her she had been diving into the writhing mass of segmented darkness. "Gone,"she shouted back. "Where’s Mrs. Flowers?"

"In the kitchen,"said a voice behind her. Elena glanced back and saw the old woman pul ing down herbs with both hands.

"Okay,"Stefan shouted. "Everybody, take a few steps back.

I’m going to hit it with Power. Do it – now!"

His voice was like a whiplash. Everyone stepped back, even Meredith who had been probing the snake with her stave.

Stefan curled his hand around nothingness, around air, and it turned to sparkling, swirling bright energy. He threw it point-blank into the cobra made of maggots.

There was an explosion, and then suddenly it was raining maggots. Elena had her teeth locked so as to keep herself from screaming. The oval translucent bodies of the maggots broke open on the kitchen floor like overripe plums, or else bounced. When Elena dared look up again she saw a black stain on the ceiling.

Beneath it, smiling, was Shinichi.

Meredith, lightning quick, tried to put the stave through him.

But Shinichi was faster, leaning out of her way, and out of the next thrust, and the next.

"You humans,"he said. "Al the same. Al stupid. When Midnight final y comes you’l see how stupid you were."He said "Midnight"as if he were saying "the Apocalypse."

"We were smart enough to discover that you weren’t Stefan,"Matt said from behind Shinichi.

Shinichi rol ed his eyes. "And to put me into a little room roofed with wood. You can’t even remember that kitsune control al plants and trees? The wal s are al ful of malach grubs by now, you know. Thoroughly infested."His eyes flickered – and he glanced backward, Elena saw, looking toward the open door of the root cel ar.