Darkest Hour (20 page)

Rumors that Barrow had ceased contact with the outside world cropped up on some fringe internet news sites. Lockman knew this wasn’t entirely true, as their resources showed the vamps making fake standard communications to fool any outsiders into thinking nothing was wrong in Barrow. This included regular contact from local law enforcement. It appeared the vamps were keeping cops alive and hostage to vouch for their city’s safety.

The ruse wouldn’t last long. But the vamps had three more weeks of night, and that’s probably as long as they planned on staying. They had little concern for the mess they would leave behind.

Word down the line said that federal law enforcement wasn’t so easily fooled. They wanted to know what had happened to the team they sent to investigate the initial swath of missing persons reports. They weren’t getting answers they liked.

Lockman knew it was only a matter of time before the FBI sent more men into Barrow. The last thing he wanted was for his crew to get tangled up with the feebs. Slim chance they would see an army of supernatural monsters as an allied force. Lockman wouldn’t have the time or patience to try to explain the situation. If mortal law enforcement got in the middle, they would have to fend for themselves.

“How much longer till we hear about those crop dusters?”

Adam stood at the touch screen on the wall. He had it zoomed to a satellite pic of Barrow, working on drawing up a tactical approach to the city. From the aerial view, the city didn’t look like much more than rows of shoeboxes lined up along roadways with a whole lot of ice surrounding them.

“About fourteen minutes less than the last time you asked.”

“Don’t give me lip, Adam. The longer we wait, the more people get killed or turned into vamps. If it’s not too late already.”

Adam tapped the screen and zoomed into the city’s local airfield. He stroked his chin and stared at the screen, silent.

Lockman shoved the laptop back, crinkling some of the papers on the table. He turned his chair to face the ogre. “You hear me?”

“I hear an echo,” Adam said. “The next part goes something like, ‘And then Gabriel gets there and leads his new-found army south, where it continues to grow until all of North America becomes a vampire breeding ground.’”

“Is this a fucking joke to you?”

Adam turned away from the screen, offering Lockman a grave look. “No. But we are mobilizing as quickly as we can. We were not prepared for something like this. We can’t drop a fully equipped army into Alaska as if by magic.”

Lockman cringed at that last word. He hated it. Worms crawled under his skin at the sound. But after he got past his initial disgust, he realized something they had missed. “Why not?”

Adam cocked an orange eyebrow. “Magically transport eight-hundred men and a pair of crop dusters loaded with holy water? Why hadn’t I thought of that?”

Sarcasm sounded strange coming from Adam. Unlike Marty, Adam always had such a formal way of speech. Lockman kind of liked the sarcasm, despite its point being directed at him.

“Nothing that drastic. Even if that were possible, I wouldn’t allow it, because we both know the cost of something like that. But the vamps made it up there somehow, and I doubt they rode snowmobiles.”

“We’ve checked. None of our interdimensional portals have an exit anywhere close to that locale. Nothing even in Alaska, period.”

“There has to be something.”

The ogre turned back to studying the map, as if the answer might be marked there. He grunted. “I’ll have some of the science team look into it.”

“Someone better qualified than Truman, I hope.”

“We have an astrophysicist on retainer. He’s studied the similarities between interdimensional portals and wormholes. Rather, he has studied to find if there are any.”

“Are there?”

“You’d have to ask him.”

Lockman glanced at his laptop. The screen displayed an article written by a fringe news site claiming Barrow had been occupied by the military due to some science experiment gone wrong. The tremors of the situation up there reaching mainstream awareness had begun.

“Sounds like a long shot,” Lockman said.

Adam threw Lockman a huge grin, showing off his dice-sized teeth. “Come on, Lockman. When has anything we’ve done been any less than a long shot?”

Lockman chuckled. “Okay, keep the mobilization running as fast as we can, but call this guy in to see if we can’t jump things ahead a little.”

Chapter Twenty-Five

If Gabriel still possessed a mortal body, he would have crashed the stolen Civic hybrid miles ago. Instead, he felt as fresh and vibrant as if after the most restful night’s sleep. This probably had something to do with the woman who had caught him stealing the car and whose blood he had drained.

Vampires did, in fact, sleep. But Gabriel wondered if that behavior wasn’t a holdover from having to stay cooped up during the day. Now that the sunlight no longer posed a threat to his vampiric body, he imagined he could go on indefinitely as long as he fed regularly.

My how those ancient voices had changed the proverbial playing field. Lockman and his ilk were in for a horrible surprise if they met again.

He’ll find me
, the girl said.
And he’ll rip you the hell out.

Gabriel admired the endless stretch of dessert on either side of the road. Some might call the landscape barren and dull. He found it hypnotic. Not barren at all. Life teemed even in the harsh, dry openness. A different kind of life. A more dangerous, hardy life. Plants with quills and lizards with quick tongues. And snakes with fangs.

The girl didn’t like being ignored. She demonstrated what Gabriel could only describe as a psychic temper tantrum. A quiver ran through their shared body. Their heartbeat quickened. An inexplicable anger made Gabriel throttle the steering wheel as if he meant to tear it loose.

Enough!

Like that, the sensations quit. He had blocked her and whatever she was doing. Yet he could still sense her within him. In his mind he heard her weeping.

He returned his focus to his driving. An hour later, he reached his exit. He followed the road signs to a blip of a town called Sombrero. The whole town consisted of two motels, three restaurants, a gas station, and the few houses that belonged to those that ran these places of business. Except for the folks that lived in Sombrero, this place was merely a stop on the way to somewhere else.

Gabriel pulled into the dirt strip that acted as parking lot for the
La Posada De Rosa
motel. He parked the car in front of a pink shack separate from the motel proper. A set of sagging wood steps led to a screen door with a neon sign above it that read
No Vacancy
but with only
Vacancy
currently illuminated. Gabriel doubted the
No
saw much light. The pink paint job had faded and peeled in spots, though the side of the building closest to the motel had a fair amount of shade from a Burr Oak and the neighboring structure that had protected the paint, leaving it as bright as flamingo feathers.

Gabriel climbed out of the car and up the steps into the shack.

The screen door looked like it should have creaked, but it didn’t make a sound until Gabriel let it smack shut behind him. Inside, the air smelled like goat cheese and mint. The space consisted of a single room with an L-shaped counter walling off one corner. A Mexican flag the size of a sheet for a queen-sized bed hung on the wall opposite the entrance. All the remaining walls hosted framed photographs of an infinite variety of sizes. Every photo featured various groups of smiling people—wedding photos, vacation photos, class photos from as far back as the 1930s.

The girl behind the counter didn’t look much older than Jessie. She wore a halter top that barely covered what it was made for. As Gabriel approached the counter, the mint scent grew stronger and he realized it came from the gum she chomped on. The goat cheese smell remained a mystery, and just as well.

“You want a room,” the girl said, the faintest touch of a Hispanic lilt to her voice.

“I’m looking for someone,” Gabriel said, still a little surprised at the sound of his own voice, since it now came from a teen girl. “I don’t know their name. I don’t know what they look like. I only know that I can find them here.”

The girl popped her gum and stared at him as if he had asked her to wash his underwear. “Um, okay.” Then she seemed to take a closer look at him, realized something was off about his appearance. “You sick or something?”

“Yes,” Gabriel said. “And this person I’m looking for? They can make me well.”

The girl’s eyes narrowed. She chewed her gum and stared. “You ain’t talking about crazy Lucia are you?”

“Perhaps. What makes Lucia so crazy?”

The girl rolled her eyes and snorted. “What ain’t crazy about Lucia?” She leaned conspiratorially over the counter. “She’s always talking about the days she did peyote with the Indians.”

“Why is that so crazy?”

“Because she says she did it back before...” She puckered her lips and scrunched her brow as if trying to remember exact words. “
Before the white man scoured the land
.” The girl giggled, the sound like water chugging down a drain. “That’d make her a million years old or something, right? Then she talks about how she can do magic. Says she cured Mr. Aiken’s—he’s the guy owns the gas station. She says she cured his cancer. Like it had nothing to do with him driving a hundred miles three times a week to get chemo.” She shook her head. “Bitch is crazy.”

Gabriel smiled along and shook his head as if he couldn’t believe what he was hearing, that Crazy Lucia, what a trip. Then he asked, “Where can I find Lucia?”

The gum nearly dropped out of the girl’s gaping mouth. “Why?”

“Because I’m pretty sure she’s who I’m looking for.”

According to the story the girl at the motel offered without Gabriel’s asking, Crazy Lucia used to own and run the
La Posada De Rosa
motel. She was one of Sombrero’s earliest residents. For the longest time, she acted as sort of the town’s matriarch. Some people said she had founded Sombrero herself, having made her way north from Mexico on a pilgrimage. After that, details splintered into dozens of different rumors. Some claimed Lucia had made a pact with Satan for immortality. Others had her coming to Sombrero long after it had been founded, only to be abandoned there by a lover.

When Gabriel pressed about how such a small town could not keep track of how one of its residents came to live there, the girl shrugged her skinny tan shoulders and gave him an answer that confirmed that Lucia was the one he sought.

“I don’t know. It’s like no one can remember for some reason.”

Using Gabriel’s atlas, the girl pointed out where Lucia lived on the outskirts of town. “You can’t miss it. Just pass everything else in town, then make a left onto the tiny dirt road. It winds around a bit, but her place is at the very end. Don’t let it fool ya, though. I don’t know how she affords a house like that, but she’s still fucking nuts.”

As Gabriel pulled up to what could only be described as a desert palace, he realized what the girl had meant. Usually, the local recluse and mystic lived in humble accommodations. Lucia, however, appeared to have invested well at some point. The mansion looked to hold at least four-thousand square feet. The outside, painted in garish hues of blue and green, looked untouched by the desert’s climate. The windows sparkled. And there were a lot of windows, giving the building a greenhouse-like appearance.

All manner of desert plant decorated the front of the house, many of them prickly. Tall cacti lined the brick approach like guards. While walking between them, Gabriel felt like one of the cacti might reach out with a quilled hand and grab hold with a piercing grip.

He made it to the front door without incident.

She was in there. He could sense her power. And she was watching him. On instinct, he didn’t bother to knock. He tried the door and it opened for him.

Inside, the open floor plan plus all the windows gave the sense that the space belonged as much to the desert as the house. The hardwood floors shined as if freshly polished. The decor leaned toward a generic southwestern style, lots of turquoise and earth tones. The only sound came from the fire crackling in an old-fashioned wood burning stove. Night began to settle in the desert and it had felt chilly coming in. Lucia was already prepared for the desert winter evening.

No sign of the woman, though. No sign of anything besides the potted plants lining the windowsills and the end tables.

“Hello?” he called. His girlish voice echoed in the wide space.

A spiral staircase only a few steps from the entrance led to the upper story. Gabriel moved closer and peered up, but couldn’t see anything besides the ceiling of the second floor.

“Lucia,” he called again. “I know you’re home. I know who you are.”

“Do you?”

Not since the days he lived with Father had Gabriel felt such a start. His chest felt near to burst. His breath caught in his throat. He spun toward the voice. Somehow the woman had snuck in behind him, as if she had shadowed his steps into the house. She stood in the open doorway, a smile so ragged with broken teeth and her face so leathered by the sun her head looked like a Jack O’ Lantern planted on the shoulders of a fat woman.