Midnight Is the Darkest Hour

by Ashley Winstead

For Russell, who said I did not have to be good

It tells of a creature whose true name is so hoary and evil that men’s minds can’t contain it, and so we call him the Low Man. Cursed to remain trapped in Bottom Springs by men who practiced spiritual magics now long forgotten, the Low Man slumbers for all eternity in the deep, dark heart of the swamp, in a place no trapper or hunter has ever set foot. Every few years, the story goes, he wakes and rises from his underwater tomb to roam Bottom Springs, searching for a way out, seeking to be let loose upon the world in order to devour it.

The Low Man can see into your heart, see your true wickedness, and once he’s marked you, whether it’s hours, days, or years later, one night he will slip in through your window. He’ll sink his fangs into your neck like a rough kiss and feast—not only on your body, dismembering the cage that contains you, but on your soul.

Once, I’d wondered which scared the people of Bottom Springs more: the Low Man or the Devil.

All understanding faded except for one truth: Everett Duncan had tried to save me, and I could not let him be harmed.

Yes, Everett will always protect me. And I will protect him. Some days that’s what I’m most afraid of.

We’ve entered some dark game I don’t understand. Our secret is a wound, a vulnerability. We’re bleeding in the water, and there’s a predator circling, so cunning I never saw it coming. Safe is the last thing we are.

That had to be the worst kind of prison—the one whose bars were buried under your skin, invisible cages around your heart and mind.

Hatred grew in my heart until I burned to do for Ever what he’d done for me—my desire to protect him so intense that in those hours, guarding his broken body, the only words I had for it were holy passion.

Something strange happens as I watch Everett bend the metal: I remember that he is a man.

It’s like I’ve grown so close to him I’ve forgotten what he looks like from a distance. But now I remember.

I thought once that you might be the answer to the only prayer I ever made. Or my conscience—my heart, beating outside my body.

I wanted to drink their threat, hold that volatile substance in my chest. Swallow their danger and become the danger myself. Vampire, viper; all that power, mine.

Everett needed a life raft. I could be one. I could put myself between him and his father. There was a way.

“I love you, Ruth. Of course I love you. It’s the only thing that’s ever redeemed me.”