Darkness Returns (11 page)

Hard as it was, she pulled her eyes off the mural, and faced Kress. “What do you want from me?”

He pressed his lips together and focused on some point in space between them, as if concentrating on coming to a decision on how to proceed. After a moment, he blinked and his gaze returned to Jessie. “I had hoped, once we found you, the way to move forward with the prophecy would become apparent. I had assumed forming this new Agency and investigating paranormal anomalies would eventually lead us to the next step.”

A sheen of sweat made his forehead glisten. A tremor crept into his voice.

Jessie found herself taking an instinctive step backward.

“But we…I…do not have time to wait. I brought you here because I want to ask you a favor.”

Jessie took another step back. “A favor?”

“The power is in you, Jessie. So much power.”

Not lately
, she thought with the incident at the hospital firmly in mind.

Kress took a couple steps toward Jessie, closing the space between them. “I know you’re doubting yourself. I know you suffered a terrible experience with Gabriel. But Gabriel is gone now, and time is short. You must step up to the plate.” And he stepped up closer still.

A half-dozen feet stretched between them, yet Jessie still felt crowded. She also felt watched. She imagined if she looked up she would find all the angels and demons had ceased their battle to stare down at her. She made a special effort not to check.

As creepy a vibe as Kress was putting off, Jessie was totally on board with helping speed along this whole Return thing. The sooner they got it out of the way, the sooner she could stop hearing about the fucking thing. The Chosen One. The Prophecy. The Return. The…The…The… Always something. It had grown tiresome. Thing was…

“I don’t know what more I can do.”

Kress took another step forward. “The answer is inside of you.”

For a second, she thought he was tossing off a lame, Hallmark style metaphor. But as he took yet one more forward step with that glazed look back in his eyes, Jessie realized he meant the phrase literally.

“Much of Gabriel’s strength came from consulting those much stronger than he,” Kress said. He had halved the distance between them by now. His cologne hadn’t bothered Jessie before, but now its pungent musk gagged her. “You have millions of ancient souls within you. More knowledge and power concentrated into one place than anywhere in existence. It occurred to me that those souls must be the answer. It’s the only thing that makes sense.”

As locked up as her throat had become, Jessie forced herself to speak. It was very important he understood. “It makes no sense. None. It’s crazy. Those souls, unlike Gabe’s, leave me alone. I don’t know why, when I imagine any single one of them could do a thousand times the damage. So as long as they leave me alone, I’ll leave them alone.”

Kress had room enough for one more step before he invaded Jessie’s typical personal space. He took that step, then dared another. The stink of his cologne overwhelmed Jessie. She tried to take a step away, but the backs of her legs came against something that kept her from moving. When she twisted around to see what blocked her, she found Wertz, the gnome, standing there in one of his tailored three-piece suits. His head only came as high as her butt. He had his arms crossed over his tiny chest, and he looked up at her with as much confidence as if he stood six-foot-five. She had no idea when he had snuck in here.

“Jessie,” Kress said, his voice so close he had to be standing less than a foot away.

When she turned back, he was leaning forward, his face a few inches from hers.

“As your commanding officer, I must insist you consult with the souls. Find an answer for us. Fulfill your destiny and bring us The Return.”

Jessie lifted her chin and looked at Kress down the length of her nose. “You might have made bank playing bad guys, but you suck as Darth Vader. Fulfill my destiny? Really? Lame.”

“This isn’t a joke.”

“Then let me give you a serious answer to your,” she made quotes with her fingers, “order. Cram it up your ass. I might not have the mojo I used to, but I still got the vamp strength. Now back off or I’ll knock you into a wall and make a corner in this round room.”

Kress sighed. His eyebrows knit and his face sagged, making him look sad. “You’re right. You have a great deal of vampire strength. But you also have the same weaknesses.”

The skin on Jessie’s back felt like it was shriveling. A ghostly, painful pressure pushed at her like a hand of fire. She whirled around.

Wertz stood with his arm extended upward, a crucifix clenched in his baby-sized fist. The thing looked so harmless, just a metal cross, yet it pulsed with invisible energy, each wave striking Jessie with painful heat and making her skin feel like it meant to twist and tear itself loose from her body.

She scampered backward and bumped into Kress. The second she did, a chain swooped over the top of her like a jump rope and then was pulled tight across her chest. Even through her shirt, she could feel the chain’s silver links burn her skin.

She screamed, bucked, but another loop of chain wrapped around her ankles, and the burning sensation rode up her legs, turning them numb.

“What are you doing? Get off of me. Stop it.”

Rough hands jerked at her arms. Another chain looped around her wrists. She lost her balance and fell to the floor on her side. She felt like a rodeo calf, getting hog tied. Looking up, she saw Kress, Wertz, and now Mica crowding down on her, pulling the chains taut, locking them into place with padlocks. The chain around her wrists was the worse as it touched her bare skin, which sizzled like a greased skillet.

“Why are you doing this?” she cried.

But they wouldn’t talk to her. They carried out Jessie’s shackling with cold, professional eyes, like officers from animal control just here to tie up the beast and take it away.

Once all the chains had Jessie secured, the three backed off and looked down at her. She squirmed and pulled, but the silver wouldn’t break. Blood ran from her wrists down along her forearms.

“Craig is going to kick your ass for this.”

Mica sniffed and bobbled her head. “Think we can handle him, love. No worries there.”

“I’m not doing this to punish or hurt you,” Kress said.

“Well, it hurts,” Jessie pushed through her narrowing throat.
Don’t cry. Don’t let them see you cry.
She lifted her burning and bloody wrists. “A lot.”

“Those will come off soon.” He patted Mica on the shoulder. “Go get it.”

Mica nodded and trotted out the door, which now hung wide open.

“You think chaining me up and torturing me is going to make me ask the souls for help?” Tears filled her eyes. Her voice quivered.
Damn it, do not cry!

“I’m not going to torture you. I’m going to convince you.”

A squeaking echoed from the hall outside. A moment later, Mica backed in through the door, pulling a wheeled cart. On the cart sat what looked like a large kennel cage, only the metal shined like…well…like polished silver.

Jessie’s stomach dropped. She couldn’t hold back any more. She openly sobbed. The smell of her own flesh cooking against the silver chains made her gag, bringing up the taste of the blood she drank from the vials earlier.

Mica brought the cart to the room’s center and Wertz helped her lift the cage off and set it down in the middle of the pentagram. Wertz then unlatched the cage door and swung it open.

Jessie thrashed and hitched as the gnome and the stunk-striped pixie came over to her. She made it as much of a struggle for them to pick her up and carry her to the cage, but she couldn’t stop them. Eventually, they shoved her inside.

The door made no noise when Wertz closed it except for a soft
clink
of silver against silver. The gnome latched the door, slipped a padlock that also appeared made of silver through a loop in the latch, and locked Jessie in like a feral cat.

Jessie had enough room to lay on her side as long as she curled her legs up some. She could also kneel without fear of touching the top. She got to a kneeling position and held out her chained wrists. “What about these?”

Kress crouched in front of the kennel and peered through the bars. “The locks are charmed. They will release in about twenty minutes. You should be able to shake loose, at which point Wertz will return to collect the chains.”

“Are you serious?”

“I’m not foolish enough to underestimate your strength.”

“You won’t get away with this. This isn’t right.”

“No. It isn’t. And I suspect I’ll suffer some consequence or another. But I’m desperate, Jessie.” He stood and walked away without another word.

Mica and Wertz followed him out. No one glanced backward.

The door to the circular room clanged shut.

The Chosen One curled into a fetal ball and wept.

Chapter Twelve

Lockman came back from probably the longest workout of his entire life to find the apartment empty. The TV was still on, a list on the screen of the last batch of movies watched off the digital device the suite came furnished with and that seemed to have every movie ever made loaded on it.

Three empty vials had joined the two on the rack from that morning. He checked Jessie’s room, found the sweatpants she’d been wearing the last three days in a pile on the floor. All sorts of clothes spilled out from her dresser drawers, which was pretty standard. The girl had a heck of a time folding her clothes and putting them back neatly after going through a frenzied excavation to find a matching shirt or pair of pants.

All part of living with a teenager, he supposed.

He didn’t go too far into her room, not wanting to invade her private space. This was something new he was working on with her, unlike the routine searches he used to perform when they first lived together with Kate in that Illinois cabin.

A million years ago
.

He backed out and looked around the rest of the apartment for any clue to her whereabouts. By Kress’s order, she wasn’t to leave the suite unaccompanied. She must have finally gotten too stir crazy to care. Not that he could blame her.

He quickly washed up and changed clothes, then headed down to the command center. He found Kress in his office, the door closed, his voice muted by the glass as he spoke with his skunk-striped sidekick. He had a red tinge to his face and gestured a lot with his hands. But when Mica caught Lockman peering through the glass, she tapped Kress on the arm, pointed Lockman out, and the animated conversation quit just like that.

Mica came to the door and opened it. “Help you?”

“You seen Jessie?”

Kress stood behind his desk. He waved Lockman in. To Mica, he said, “Have Wertz check on that project and get back to me.”

“Sure thing,” Mica said with a complete lack of expression. She brushed against Lockman on her way out.

Lockman came in. “You know where Jessie is at?”

Kress eased into his chair and looked at Lockman, waiting for him to take a seat as well. Lockman stayed on his feet.

“Come on, Craig. You can’t lord over me every time you step into my office. I thought we’d come to an understanding.”

Lockman remembered the emotional tour Kress had taken him on. He sat.

“Jessie is on an operation at the moment.” Kress held up a hand. “Don’t ask me more, because I can’t tell you.”

“I thought she was on lockdown.”

“This took precedence.”

“I thought nothing took precedence over The Return.”

Kress gave Lockman a bored stare.

“She’s my daughter, Kress. You can’t just send her off and expect me not to worry.”

“I understand. I’m sorry. But as we’ve established, Jessie is part of this Agency as much as you are. She has her part to play.”

“Just tell me where you sent her.”

Kress leaned back in his chair. The frame creaked, in need of oil. The sound-proofed office felt stuffy, the ensuing silence oppressive. Lockman tried to wait him out. Sometimes the best way to get an answer was to stop asking questions and let the quiet pressure a response. Kress knew that trick, though, and he didn’t say a word, matching Lockman’s stare across the desk.

“I’m getting tired of this routine,” Lockman said.

“It’s your routine, not mine.”

The muscles in Lockman’s arms turned to hard cords. The edges of his vision turned red.
This guy thinks he owns us.

In a way, he did. Kress held all the cards, and he knew how to play a hand.

“Before you get too bent out of shape, I have some good news if you’d like to hear it.”

Lockman took a long breath through his nose, then let his hiss out between his teeth. “What?”

“Your old friend made a blip on the supernatural map.”

“Teresa?”

“I had our mystics take that hair sample you found and put together a spell that would signal us if she engaged in any supernatural activity. We tried a straight up tracking spell, but—”

“She’d know how to dodge something like that. What kind of blip are we talking about?”

“I don’t have specifics. All we know is that she either cast some of her own mojo or someone put the mojo on her.”

“That’s a neat trick.”

“We have the best resources available. Our Agency makes your old organization look like a backyard militia in comparison.”

Lockman grabbed the arms of his chair and squeezed until his knuckles whitened. “We did good work.”

“But you were an all mortal shop, outside of the supernaturals you enslaved, of course. Like Martin.”

Did this man want to provoke him? “You leave Marty out of this. In fact, you never speak of him again.”

“You planted a microchip in his brain to suppress his natural ogre tendencies. You can hardly act surprised that this bothers me, seeing as your cronies would have done the same to me or my friends given the chance.”

“We did what we thought was right at the time. And I don’t have to defend the old Agency. There’s no point looking back.” He stood, not giving a damn what his “commanding officer” thought about it. “Tell me where Teresa is and I’ll take care of her.”