Darkest Hour (32 page)

To test this, he shifted his gaze. The apparition didn’t follow like a sunspot would. But in moving the direction of his eyes, he spotted something else that turned the situation on its head.

Kate’s body lay in the same place and same position as he last saw it. Not a bit of movement. No short rise and fall from shallow breaths. His mind caught on to what Gabriel had just said.

...you are the dead one.

Dead.

While Lockman processed all of this, Gabriel’s conversation with Kate’s (disembodied) voice continued.

“You killed me,” Kate said. “But I refused death’s gift. And I think you know what that means.”

“It means you have eternity on this earth to mourn your daughter’s loss. And the loss of her father.”

Jessie stepped aside, allowing Lockman a clear view of who—or what—he’d been speaking to. Out of all the organs that hurt from the beating he took, Lockman’s heart hurt most at what he saw. It was Kate. He could see her face, recognized the curves of her body. But it was a Kate whose curves he could never touch, whose face he could never stroke, whose lips he could never kiss again. Because Kate was a ghost.

Unlike the ghost he had met before, Kate glowed white instead of green. Her hair floated about as if in a constant wind. She wore a flowing white gown. A white aura surrounded her. With the sun full up in the sky, she almost disappeared in the light. What kept her visible was the contrast of the machine on the base of the arch behind her, which Lockman could also see through her.

“Kate, no.”

She spared him a short glance, but her attention remained with Gabriel/Jessie.

“I understand so much more now,” Kate said. “The other side is full of answers.”

“You should be stark raving mad,” Gabriel said.

“You know as well as I do, things work differently for me. I am the mother of the Chosen One. It’s time for me to bring her back home.”

Jessie pounded her chest with a fist. “
I
am the Chosen One.”

“Gabriel Dolan, you have served your part in this world’s destiny.” Kate’s white aura flared. “Now get the hell out of my daughter.” She sailed toward Jessie as smoothly as a leaf rides the flow of a creek.

Jessie shuffled backward, but never had a chance to escape the coming impact.

Kate flew into Jessie’s body. For an instant, Jessie glowed with her own white aura. Then the aura faded. Jessie stood with her eyes wide, jaw limp, hands held out at her sides as if to balance her. She blinked. Smiled.

“You see?” she said with the taint of Gabriel’s lilt. “You cannot possess me like any mortal. I am—”

Her voice quit as if choked. She turned her eyes to Lockman. She mouthed the word
No
, then dropped to her knees. She continued to stare at Lockman as if he had something to do with what was happening.

All Lockman could do was stare back. The bleeding inside of him had taken its toll. His limbs grew numb. He couldn’t even feel the break in his left arm anymore. He had to rest on his shoulder now, too tired to keep himself propped on his elbow.

Jessie screamed. And for the first time since the botched “exorcism,” it
sounded
like
Jessie
. She threw her head back, wrapped her arms around herself as if suddenly cinched into a straight jacket. Tears streamed from her eyes. Her whole body shook. To Lockman it looked like something was trying to tear her apart from the inside. Maybe that’s exactly what was happening.

Despite the quivering pain inside of him, the oppressive fatigue that weighed on him like an extra dose of gravity, Lockman pushed himself up with his good arm until he leaned on that arm like a tire jack. He rocked on his hip and rolled to a kneeling position, facing his struggling daughter.

“Jess,” he called.

Her eyes rolled back into her head. When she tilted down her chin, she stared blankly through the whites of her eyes.

Lockman couldn’t fathom the turmoil roiling inside of her. He reached out to her, though his hand came a foot short of touching her. He felt so damn helpless. There had to be something he could do.

Jessie jerked once, twice, a third time. Then she blinked and her eyes looked straight again. Her face pinched as if in pain, but when she spoke her voice was filled with wonder. “She is so strong.”

Lockman knew right away she meant Kate. “I know.”

But he realized he didn’t really know how strong when Jessie’s skin began to smoke.

Jessie’s eyes widened. “Dad?”

With the smoke soon came the smell of cooking flesh. Tiny bubbles began to rise on Jessie’s face like living acne. The bubbles would pop and leave behind flaring red circles. Pieces of skin began to flake and peel and turn to gray ash.

It took a precious second from Lockman’s mind to catch up with what he was seeing. He glanced up at the sun as if surprised to find it there. Then his brain kicked into gear. The sun.

Oh, god, the
sun
.

Ignoring the thrash of pain in his left arm as it dangled at his side, Lockman forced himself to his feet. What felt like a blow from a medieval mace struck him in the gut. Definitely something bleeding in there.
Have to move through it. Sequester the pain, soldier. Command the body. You have a life you can still save.

He reached down to Jessie. “Quick.”

The flesh on her arms and face darkened, turning the color of soot. It’s what they called a
vamp tan
back in the Agency days. The color change signified the fire to come. And sure enough, while Jessie took hold of Lockman’s hand, allowing him to pull her to her feet, her sun-exposed skin burst into flames.

Jessie screamed with the metallic edge common to vamps, an ear gouging, skin-crawling sound that almost caused Lockman to instinctively shove her away. He fought the urge and instead threw her over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry.

It felt like carrying a burning effigy. The flames caught on Lockman’s shirt and burned his skin. He had already moved past pain’s reach, though. He operated like a pre-programmed machine.

He ran.

His broken left arm swung and bounced against him.

He ran.

The flames consuming Jessie burned the side of his neck, the shoulder he carried her on, and the arm he had wrapped around her waist.

He ran.

Chapter Forty-Three

He ran for the entrance to the nearest building. The science building.

Jessie screamed the whole way, occasionally crying out
Mom
and
Dad
and
It hurts
and
Make it stop
.

The door to the science building was only forty or so yards away. But he had to go around the building to reach it, and for the thirty yards the entrance was out of sight, he didn’t know if he could make it. It felt like one of those dreams of being chased and no matter how hard he ran, he never seemed to cover any ground.

When he kicked open the door and hefted Jessie through the threshold, his body quit, like a puppet with the strings neatly snipped. He collapsed to the floor with just enough presence of mind to shift Jessie off his shoulder so he wouldn’t land on top of her.

She rolled away from him as limp as a corpse, and just as quietly.

He fell onto his bad arm, and with his driving will depleted, the pain had free reign to chew into him like a piranha caught up his sleeve. He bellowed. His eyes watered as stars flashed across his vision. Meanwhile, another piranha fed on his guts. He jerked his knees up and curled into a ball. On his growing list of ills, the burns from his face down to his arm barely registered. He wanted to check on Jessie, but the pain debilitated him. He could only lay there and sip air between swells of agony.

The closing darkness prodded the last reserve of his strength. He refused to drift off before he knew if Jessie was okay. The reserve didn’t last long. The best he could manage was rolling onto his back. This turned out to be enough.

Jessie knelt at his side. She gazed down at him with concern in her eyes—and god damn if they weren’t actually
her
eyes again. Black, crusty burns marred most of her face, but parts of her skin had already started to heal. She rested a hand on Lockman’s forehead and sobbed. “Oh, Dad, I’m so sorry. I couldn’t fight him. I tried, but I couldn’t.”

Lockman reached up and took her hand, squeezed hard. “It wasn’t your fault.” He had to swallow a lump in his throat before he could ask, “Your mother?”

Jessie closed her eyes. “She’s...” Pieces of blackened skin flaked off, leaving behind fresh patches of pinkish flesh, but the pink quickly turned to the natural vampire gray. “She’s inside of me. She’s holding...” Her lips pursed as if a bad taste filled her mouth. “...
him
back. Somehow she’s keeping him trapped.”

“Can she push him out?”

After a pause, Jessie said, “She would have to drag him out.”

Lockman realized Kate was speaking to Jessie from within and could hear him as well. So he addressed her directly. “Then do it, Kate. Pull him out of there.”

Jessie’s eyes fluttered open. The sorrow in them speared Lockman through the heart. “Where would she take him?”

“Away from you.”

“Set his spirit free into the world? She can’t hold onto him forever.”

Lockman let out a long, slow breath. His insides writhed. His head spun. “If she...loses her grip on him?”

“He’ll take over again. Mom is way strong, but he’s soaked up so much power from all the other souls inside me. It was him all along. Even before he took over. My magical strength. The resistance to silver. The day walking.” A tear ran off the tip of her nose. “I thought he had given those things to me. But I’m nothing without him. I’m just a shell.”

“Stop that,” Lockman growled. Not for the first time, he wished Gabriel had a physical form that Lockman could physically abuse. “You have your own power. You’re the Chosen One.”

She snorted and offered a bitter smile. “You never really believed that crap.”

“Doesn’t matter what I believe. It’s what I
know
. And I know you are special, you are
strong
. Just like your mom.”

Her eyes went wide. She shook her head. “Oh, Dad, you have no idea. If you could feel what I feel right now, know what she’s doing. I thought you were the tough one in the family. Mom’s got us all beat.”

It hurt, but Lockman laughed. “Why do you think I fell in love with her?”

Jessie’s smile lingered for a quiet moment, then slowly faded. Much of the burnt skin on her face had dropped away, leaving behind fleshy pink swirls among the fully healed gray. “She’s slipping.”

So this was it. The last of those he cared for—
loved
—taken from him, leaving him with only the comfort of knowing he wouldn’t be long in joining them. Gabriel had won. And Lockman could trace the bastard’s victory all the way back to a foolish decision Lockman had made, when he had the chance to destroy the artifact that carried Gabriel’s soul, he chose to keep it instead, thinking he could somehow use it to protect them.

A small jolt started Lockman’s heart racing.

The artifact.

Weren’t they in the science building? Hadn’t some of the scientists taken up the task of studying that artifact? Which meant the thing was here somewhere.

Lockman squeezed Jessie’s hand. “You need to help your mom hang on a little longer.”

Jessie tilted her head, clearly baffled. “I can’t—”

“Help me up,” he said evenly, “then help your mom. You have power, Jessie. There’s no time for doubts. Just do as I say.”

She hesitated a second more, lips parted as if ready to protest. Then she set her jaw, nodded, and slid her arms under him. She lifted him as easily as cradling an infant.

As Jessie eased Lockman onto his feet, pain rattled through him from a six different directions, the bulk of it all pulsing out from his abdomen. His knees went weak and he almost collapsed, but Jessie held him steady until he could stand on his own. She held him a few seconds longer to be sure.

He gave a nod. Jessie let go and stood back.

“I don’t know how I can help her,” she said.

“The same way she helped you.” He didn’t know if she understood that, wasn’t sure he even did. It sounded right. A marvelous connection existed between them, something beyond the mortal plane. A breed of mojo Lockman had never seen before, but could not deny now. They would not need to shed blood to fuel that power.

Whether she understood or not, Jessie seemed to take his words to heart. She knelt on the floor, rested her hands on her thighs, and closed her eyes.

Lockman left her to it. He lurched into the maze of shelves and cubicles that divided up the science building into its separate “departments.” He kept one hand pressed against his side where it felt like most of his internal pain came from, as if holding his organs in place. It eased the pain a fraction. His natural bullheadedness carried him the rest of the way.

Thankfully, he didn’t have to go far. He found a walled off section with metal shelves teeming with old knick-knacks and doo-dads, a mojo researcher’s wet dream made all the more sexy by the layers of dust and rust on most the items. The memory artifact sat in the center of a workbench with a giant magnifying glass on an adjustable arm bolted to one edge. The magnifying glass was situated so that someone standing at the bench would get a blown-up view of the top of the cube-shaped relic and the intricate carvings on its surface.

Lockman peered down through the glass at this thing that had played such a major role in his very existence. If not for this artifact, Craig Lockman would not exist. Yet he hated the thing for all the misery it had brought. The thought of touching it made his palms itchy, as if the skin wanted to crawl off. He wondered if the scientists had discovered anything new about it, or if they had come to the same conclusions as the Agency—that while they didn’t know who (or what) had made it, or exactly what its initial purpose was, they could still utilize it, another tool in the war against supernatural terrorism.

He lost track of how long he let the wicked device entrance him, but the trance broke when he heard Jessie scream.