Darkness Returns (12 page)

Kress folded his hands and rested them on the desk. “Vegas. Near as we can tell, when her signal, so to speak, spiked, she was at the Bane Motel and Casino.”

Lockman’s gut tightened. “Bane?” Lockman knew the place, and the joke behind the name. Bane, as in Wolfsbane. How the hell did Teresa end up in Vegas wolf territory? Or why? “If she’s mixed up with the Vegas wolves, she’s probably already dead.”

“Then lucky us. Why don’t you go make sure?”

“I could use backup. Jessie—”

“I’m sending Mica with you.”

Lockman clenched a fist. “Isn’t there anyone else?”

“There is nobody better. Don’t let her disposition fool you.”

It doesn’t fool me
, he thought.
Just annoys the hell out of me.

Chapter Thirteen

Teresa woke to her reflection staring down at her from the ceiling. She lay naked in one of the largest beds she’d ever seen in her life. Most of the sheets had been torn off the thick mattress. The tangled one remaining was rife with bloodstains, most of it hers, but not all.

Every part of her body ached. And while she was no stranger to pain by a long shot, she had never felt such hurt in some areas, the most sensitive areas.

Her mind kept slipping into the memories of the last several days—she’d lost count of how many. No matter how she tried to reel her thoughts back to the present moment, images of fur and shining eyes, whiffs of moist animal smells, and swatches of the sound of her own screams mixed with the grunting, panting, howling of her assailants—her
masters
—kept intruding.

If she closed her eyes, the memories grew more vivid. When she opened them, she had the sight of her bruised and bleeding body in the mirrored ceiling to remind her of what they’d done.

So many of them.

A hundred? At least.

Sometimes taking turns. Usually several on her at once. She couldn’t fight them. Knew it. Yet her instincts would still spark her into struggling now and again. Each time, they made sure she understood who was in control.

The temperature in the honeymoon suite was well controlled. Teresa felt neither too warm or the least bit cold. Still, she began to tremble. Chills rippled through her body. She reached a point where she shook so badly she thought she might cross the line into a grand mal seizure. The shaking made the pain worse. Her insides felt bruised.

Then there was the stink. A mix of her own putrid body odor, stale sex, and blood.

Quivering, she rolled onto her side and clawed her way to the edge of the bed so she could throw up over the side. Cramps locked around her ribcage as she heaved. The edges of her vision grew spotty and gray.

Please let me pass out.

But the relief of darkness didn’t come.

Time passed.

With the taste of bile stuck in her mouth, she stared at her reflection until daylight faded from behind the blinds, turned to a pink dusk, then gave way to night. A light in the bathroom had been left on. Through the bathroom door it cast a rectangle of light that stretched into a tangle of shadows further in the room. But it was enough so that Teresa could still see herself in the mirror above, now looking like a dark apparition, giving her the feeling of an out of body experience.

But she felt her body.

Felt every pain-filled inch.

Then the quality of light changed. Aside from the stripe of light out from the bathroom, a white glow cut through a gap in the blinds and spilled across the bed like an illuminated sheet.

Moonlight.

And where this moonlight touched Teresa’s bare skin, she tingled.

The tingling spread, slowly at first, then picked up speed like a rush of blood to the head. It filled her, crowding out the pain, nourishing her in a way she imagined plants drew nourishment from sunlight.

That’s when she started to feel the…bending. She didn’t know how else to describe it. The sensation of her bones curling, twisting,
bending
into new shape. The whole time, she watched in the mirror as her body changed. She watched the hair spread across her naked skin. Watched her limbs pop loose at the joints, then reforge themselves. Watched her fingers and toes grow razor-length nails. Watched her face expand and reform, her snout lengthening, her teeth sharpening, her eyes going dark, but shining in the moonlight.

When Teresa had achieved full wolf form, she sat in the center of the bed, threw her head back, and bayed so loudly the mirror above cracked.

Chapter Fourteen

Kress staggered into the ancient chamber, tears sticky against his face, and slammed the door shut behind him with such force it echoed like a sonic boom in the circular room. His ear drums pulsed. He hadn’t showered since yesterday and had thrown on the same shirt and slacks he wore that day as well. He could smell himself. What a disgusting waste of a life. What a sick and twisted being.

He clawed at his face, drawing his nails across his cheeks, smearing his palms with blood and tears. He leaned against the golden wall beside the chamber’s entrance and wept with his hands over his eyes.

You need to get a grip, get control.

But there, as Shakespeare would have said, was the rub. He had no control. Every day it seemed to slip further away. And even during those moments where his emotions did not rollick like Satan’s children, he noticed an underlying current of anger and dread. The medical cocktail he’d devised with the help of an unscrupulous pharmacist did nothing to staunch his flare ups. The mood stabilizers, anti-depressants, anti-psychotics… Nothing.

Not that he thought he could really treat his condition with mortal medicine. Desperation had driven him to try, though.

He lost track of the time he spent leaning against the wall with his face covered. The weepiness passed. A bulky discontentment remained, however, that made him feel stuffed and slow. But what finally reminded him of where he was was her voice.

“Is that guilt?” she asked, voice like jagged ice. “Or did your skunk girlfriend just dump you?”

Kress drew his hands down. The salt from his tears stung the scrapes he’d made with his nails. Jessie stared at him from her cage in the center of the room, kneeling, the chains gone now. Her vampiric eyes held a faint red glow. She had a sarcastic grin on her face, but her fangs turned it sinister. He had a feeling she wanted to sink those fangs into his neck.

The thought triggered a freight-train shiver to rattle through him. His emotions turned on him again. The depression broke to a cold fear. His body temperature dropped so low he was surprised when his quickened breaths didn’t puff in clouds from his mouth like they would on a winter day.

“Dude, you just turned fifty shades of pale.”

“Stop it,” Kress snapped. “Stop poking fun at me.”

She lifted one eyebrow. “Sure thing. Just let me out of the cage.”

He pressed his back against the wall. The gold felt like ice through his shirt. He wanted to run away from her. It took all he had to keep from retreating out the door. “I’ll let you out right after you talk to those damn souls.”

She leaned forward, peering through the silver bars of her cage with those red eyes. Those horrible eyes. “What’s wrong with you?”

Enough, damnit. Get a hold of yourself.

Fear pinched his throat so tightly it hurt for him to swallow. When he tried to speak, he only managed a breathy croak.

“Are you sick?” Jessie asked.

Whether it was the fear or desperation, something nudged him toward honesty. He nodded.

Her eyes narrowed. Her lips parted as if she wanted to ask another question. She stayed quiet instead. Watched him.

Finally, the episode broke. The fear dropped like a stage curtain. Equilibrium returned to his mood. Kress pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his face. Only a little blood came off on the silk, so the cuts mustn’t have gone too deep.
Thanks for small favors.

He tucked the kerchief away and approached the cage.

Jessie’s eyes tracked him, but she still didn’t say anything.

“No more sarcastic remarks?”

“If there’s something wrong with you, why didn’t you just say so?”

“To what end? My condition isn’t your concern.”

Her lip curled. “It is when it drives you to lock me up in a
cage
?” Her emphasis on the last word made it echo in the chamber.

Kress cringed. Here he stood, staring down at a girl who looked no older than fourteen despite her vampiric features, was maybe a couple years older than that in reality. In a cage. That he had put her in.

Not just for your sake, Romeo. The whole world depends on this girl’s cooperation.

“I’m sorry.”

“If that’s true, let me out.”

“I can’t.”

She slapped the cage wall, rattling the silver frame, but otherwise accomplishing nothing more than branding her palm with lines from the bars. She winced, curling her burnt hand into a fist with wisps of smoke coming out either end.

Kress crouched beside the cage. “My condition is untreatable by mortal means. And since I am the only one of my kind on this plane, I have no reference for how to begin to cure it.”

“As long as I’m in this cage, you cannot make me feel sorry for you.”

Her words hit him like a splash of cold water.

Of course.

His ability to manipulate emotions did not work on vampires because they were feral things, their emotional range limited by their rabid instincts. This was why he’d never bothered to try with Jessie. But she wasn’t a normal vampire. She had retained her soul. She was no more feral than himself.

Kress reached out to her emotions. He didn’t have a lot of energy left after his flare-up, but he thought all Jessie really needed was a small bump. He could tell her sympathy was with him. The girl was legions more empathetic than her cold father. Even after all she’d been through. Youth could cling to innocence with such tenacity.

If he could boost that empathy just enough to get her to forget about the cage for a moment…

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“Nothing.”

“I can feel it. You’re trying to use magic on me or something.”

Incredible that she could sense his ability like that. She truly was special. “It isn’t magic.”

“What then?”

“I’m trying to help you see things through my eyes.” He pushed a little harder.

Jessie gasped. Her eyebrows came together. She tilted her head and looked upon him with watery eyes. “Tell me what’s the matter.”

“I have the power to manipulate emotion.” Admitting this even while he used that power to win her over was a risk. But he wanted to give her the full picture so she could understand his suffering. “Including my own. But something’s gone wrong. I’ve started to—”

“Lose control.”

“Yes.”

A tear ran free from one of her eyes. “I know how that feels.”

“Of course. It’s very painful.”

“Scary.”

“Jessie, all I want is to go back to wherever I belong. My people will know what to do for me, if there is anything that can be done.”

Jessie raised a hand as if she meant to reach out and touch him. She held it a couple inches from the cage bars. It was the hand she had burned, which had mostly healed already, but a pinkish hash mark still tattooed her palm.

“Are you doing it now? To me?”

He found he couldn’t lie to her. “I wanted you to look past the cage for a moment. That’s all.”

Her fingers curled down like shriveling leaves. She lowered her hand to her lap. “You treated me like an animal when you should have told me the truth. You and your friends.”

“Don’t blame Mica or Wertz. Their loyalty to me is the only thing that convinced them to go along with it. And they understand the importance.”

“Let me out.”

His heartbeat quickened. He felt light-headed. What was going on?

“Mr. Kress? Romeo?”

Kress’s face tingled. He touched his cheek, felt his unshaven stubble, but no sign of the cuts. He smirked. “So you haven’t lost your power after all.”

“Not all of it. But this is easy. I’m just reflecting your own ability back at you.”

Kress’s eyes watered. “I should have never treated you this way.”

“Let me out.”

When Kress stopped manipulating Jessie’s emotions, his own mood regulated. He still felt a tinge of shame for locking her up. Not exactly how one should treat the chosen savior of the world. But he had access to his pragmatism again. Afraid or not, she needed to access the power behind the ancient souls within her, and she needed to do it now.

“I’ll have to get the key from Wertz.”

“I’m not going anywhere.” The sarcastic edge had returned.

But Kress had one last tactic to try before he lost her sympathy.

“This isn’t just about me, you know.”

“Don’t start lecturing me about the fate of the world. If the prophecy is true, The Return will happen when it needs to happen, right?”

It needs to happen now
, he wanted to shout. He swallowed. Nodded. “What about Ryan?”

The corners of her eyes pinched. The red glow in her irises flared. “What about him?”

“If you could return to your level of power before Gabriel interfered, exceed it even…”

She pressed her lips together. Her gaze drifted off of him and appeared to turn inward.

“If you don’t care about my own sickness,” Kress said, “think about his. Think about finally pulling him out of his madness.”

She harrumphed. “If the whole acting thing fell through for you, you would have made a good used car salesman.”

But she still held that look of inward reflection. Kress imagined he could walk out of the chamber and she’d never notice. He waited. While he waited, he chanced giving her emotions a delicate nudge.

She didn’t seem to notice. After a few more seconds she blinked out of her daze and turned her gaze back to him. “Keep the cage locked.”

He lifted his eyebrows.

“If this goes sideways, you’ll want me locked up.” She unfolded from her kneeling position and sat with her legs akimbo. She rested her hands on her knees and closed her eyes. “Of course, either way, you’re in for a good bitch slapping when I get out of here.”