Jez took it, frowned, then paged through the first few articles. Headlines jumped out at her.
"'Four-year old dies in coyote attack.' 'Record heatwave in Midwest; hundreds hospitalized.' 'Mother confesses: I killed my babies.' 'Mystery virus erupts in eastern U.S.: Scientists baffled.'"
There were lots more, but she didn't look at them. She looked at Hugh, her eyebrows drawn together.
"Thanks for sharing this. Am I supposed to fight the coyote or the virus?"
His lips smiled, but his eyes were bottomless and frighteningly sad. "Nobody can fight what's happening-at least not in the ordinary way. And all that's just the beginning."
"Of what?" She loved Hugh, but sometimes she wanted to strangle him. Old Souls loved being mysterious.
"Have you noticed the weather lately? It's either floods or droughts. Record cold days in winter, record heat in the summer. Record number of hurricanes and tornadoes. Record snowfall and hail. It just gets weirder and weirder every year."
"Well-sure." Jez shrugged. "They talk about it on TV all the time. But it doesn't mean any-"
"And the earth's being disturbed, too. Earthquakes. Volcanoes. Last year four dormant volcanoes erupted and there were dozens of major quakes."
Jez narrowed her eyes. "Okay..."
"And there's another weird thing, even though it's not as obvious. You have to kind of dig a little to get to the statistics. There's been an increase in animal attacks all over the world. All kinds of animals." He tapped the pile of newspaper articles. "This coyote attack-a couple of years ago you never heard about coyotes killing kids. Just like you never heard of mountain lions attacking adults. But now it's happening, and it's happening everywhere."
Prickles of unease were going up Jez's arms. It was true, what Hugh was saying. Not that she'd paid much attention to the human news when she was a vampire-but it did seem as if animal attacks were getting more frequent.
"A bunch of elephants stomped their trainers last year," she said slowly.
"Dog attacks are up four hundred percent," Hugh said. "According to the California state police. In New Mexico there's an epidemic of rabid bats. In Florida they've had seven tourists killed by alligators since last January-and believe me, that information was hard to find. Nobody wanted to report it"
"I bet."
"Then there are the insects. We're seeing more and more people get attacked by them. Killer bees. Fire ants. Tiger mosquitoes-and, no, I'm not joking. They're for real, and they carry dengue fever, a really nasty disease."
"Hugh..."
"Which brings me to diseases. You have to have noticed that. There are new diseases popping up all over. Ebola. Mad cow disease. That flesh-eating bacteria. Hanta viruses. Lassa. Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever. You bleed from your ears and nose and mouth and into the whites of your eyes-"
Jez opened her mouth to say "Hugh" again, but he was racing on, his chest rising and falling quickly, his gray eyes almost feverish.
"And they're resistant to antibiotics the same way that the insects are resistant to pesticides. They're all mutating. Changing. Getting stronger and more deadly. And-"
"Hugh." She got it in while he took a breath.
"-there's a hole in the ozone." He looked at her. "What?"
"What does it all mean?"
It means that things are changing. Spiraling out of control. Heading for..." He stopped and looked at her. "Jez, it's not those things themselves that are the problem. It's what's behind them." "And what is behind them?" Hugh said simply, "The Old Powers are rising." Chills swept over Jez. The Old Powers.
The Ancient Magic that had controlled the universe in the old days of the Night World. No one could see or know the Old Powers; they were forces of nature, not people. And they had been sleeping like giant dragons for thousands of years ever since humans had gained control of the world. If they were waking up again now...
If magic was coming back again, everything would change.
"It shows in different weird ways," Hugh went on. "Night People are getting more powerful. Lots of them have noticed it. And they say the soulmate principle is back."
The soulmate principle. The idea that for every person there was one destined soulmate, one true love, and that the two souls were bound for eternity. Jez lifted her shoulders and dropped them without meeting Hugh's eyes. "Yeah, I heard. Don't believe it, though."
"I've seen it," Hugh said, and for a moment Jez's heart stopped. Then it started again as he continued, "In other people, I mean. I've seen people our age who found their soulmate, and it's really true; you can see it in their eyes. The Old Powers really are rising, Jez... for good and for evil. That's what's behind all these other changes."
Jez sat very still. "And so what happens if they keep rising?"
"What happens is..." Hugh paused and then looked at her. "It means a time of darkness is coming," he said simply.
"A time-?"
"Of serious darkness. The worst. We're talking the end of the world, here."
Jez could feel gooseflesh on the back of her neck, where her wet hair touched her skin. She might have been tempted to laugh if it were anybody else telling her this. But it was Hugh, and he wasn't joking. She had no desire to laugh.
"But then it's all over," she said. "There's nothing we can do. How can anybody stop the end of the world?"
"Well." He ran a quick hand through his hair, pushing it off his forehead. "That's why I'm here. Because I'm hoping you can."