Darkness Returns (13 page)

He stood from his crouch and backed up. “If this works and you bring The Return, I’ll gladly take it.”

She laughed. “Yeah. We’ll see about that.”

Then she fell silent.

All Kress could do was wait.

Chapter Fifteen

The interdimensional doorway into Vegas led into a broom closet in the back of a karaoke bar only two blocks away from the Bane Hotel and Casino. Lockman and Mica entered the casino lobby around two in the afternoon Pacific Time, giving them some extra daylight hours to work. Not that daylight hours meant much in Las Vegas. But when dealing with the supernatural, daylight beat dark any day of the week.

In the middle of all the bling and ding, Lockman’s thoughts kept going back to Jessie. He didn’t like not having her along. He liked even less that Kress had sent her off on some other unnamed mission.

They made their way through the slots and to the hotel reception area. A woman with a Bluetooth device plugged into her ear stood behind a round counter with several computer stations on it. The counter formed a half-circle that separated the receptionist cubby from the lobby like a protective phalanx. At either end of the counter stood finely details statues of wolves sitting like guard dogs. The woman smiled with professional sincerity as Lockman and Mica approached, and took a position at one of the computers.

“Checking in?”

Lockman leaned on the counter, eyeing one of the wolf statues. Even out of the casino proper, the place still smelled like a tobacco factory. He pulled a photograph he’d had printed back at headquarters of Teresa out of his inside jacket pocket and placed it on the counter. The photo was a cropped close-up of Teresa from her sister’s long-since abandoned Facebook page. A sick kind of irony, but it was the best they could find.

Lockman tapped the photo. “She look familiar?”

The receptionist didn’t look at the photo. “I’m sorry, sir, but if you’d like to check in, I can help you. Otherwise, you’ll have to speak to my manager.”

“We’ll want to do that, too.” He pulled his phony FBI ID wallet, opened it, and set it beside the photo. “Have you seen her?”

The woman’s eyes dipped quickly to the counter. Her lips worked together. Some of the color drained from her face. “Is she in some kind of trouble?”

Mica crossed her arms, wearing smug like a designer jacket. “So you
have
seen her.”

The woman’s gaze bounced back and forth between Mica and Lockman. “Let me go get my manager.”

She started to turn. Mica reached across the counter and grabbed the receptionist’s wrist. “We need an answer, love.”

The receptionist stared at Mica’s hand on her the same way she would if a venomous spider had dropped onto her from the ceiling. Her throat clicked when she swallowed. He couldn’t be one hundred percent sure, but Lockman thought the woman’s blonde hair had gotten longer. Peach fuzz had risen on her cheeks, though he hadn’t noticed that before either.

“This is above my pay grade,” the woman muttered.

A brawny guy in a red blazer and striped tie waltzed out from a side door behind the counter, his hands floating in the air in front of him as if he was about to perform a magic trick. He waved those hands as he came to the counter, a smile on his face that looked store-bought and planted there. “Hello, folks. I’m the day manager. Something I can help you with?”

Lockman glanced toward the ceiling and spotted the dark tinted dome that probably housed the surveillance camera. So much for getting one of the little fish nervous enough to talk. He jerked his head to signal Mica to let the fishy go.

Mica released the receptionist’s wrist and went back to her arms crossed default position.

The manager fluttered one of his floating hands at the woman. “Go on, Peg. Take your lunch break now. I’ll handle this.”

“Yes sir.” The woman zipped out the way the manager had come in.

The manager surveyed the items on the counter, gave Lockman and Mica an appraisal, then lifted his eyebrows. “You’re FBI?” His tone said he didn’t believe it.

Lockman bent forward to read the name tag pinned to the manager’s blazer. It read “Able.”
And probably willing
, Lockman thought. Able didn’t give off a wolf vibe, but neither had the receptionist at first. Lockman had a feeling she’d been a special case. The Vegas wolves typically kept mortals in employ for the mundane tasks of working and running their business enterprise, saving upper management and security for themselves. They had collected a good deal of intel on this particular pack when they’d tried to recruit them for their army against the vamps. Lockman doubted they’d changed their operation much since then. No matter how it felt, it hadn’t been that long ago.

“We’re interested in finding this woman.” Lockman pushed the photograph toward Able’s side of the counter. “Your receptionist there seemed to recognize her. How about you?”

“Never seen her,” he said while looking straight at Lockman, not the pic.

“Why don’t you give it a closer look?”

“That won’t be necessary.” His hands had yet to rest anywhere. He pushed them out as if turning down seconds at the dinner table. “Unless you…agents…” He gave Mica’s hair a pointed look while he laid on the sarcasm. “…have a warrant of some kind, I’ll ask you to leave. We’d rather not worry our guests overmuch.”

Mica wrinkled her brow and made a show of looking around. “I think I spotted an old maid sucking air from an oxygen tank on my way in, but there ain’t such a much of a crowd here to upset.”

“Nevertheless.” Now his hands gestured toward the exit.

They could push the issue. Lockman felt convinced Able wasn’t a wolf. If they got aggressive, he might put his hands down and stop lying. Making a scene would probably work against them in the long run, though. Better not to raise the wolves’ proverbial hackles. He picked up his ID and the photo, tucked them away, and nodded his thanks to the manager.

On their way out, Mica said something, keeping her voice low, too low for Lockman to hear it over the electronic bleeps and trills that he could already feel branding his ears. He’d keep hearing that noise for the next twelve hours. He waited until they got outside—and sure enough, he could still hear the gambling machines in his head even out here—then asked Mica to repeat herself.

“The girl knew something. And looked a little furry.”

“Yeah.” The sun caught Lockman in the eye, forcing him to squint. “We need to catch her on the way home from work.”

“Lot of exits to sneak out of.”

He saw the dark shape come up behind Mica, but with the sun in his eyes, he didn’t recognize the threat until too late. Right as Mica started to say more, a leather-clad arm wrapped around her neck and yanked her back off her feet.

Lockman raised one arm to block the sun while he reached for his gun with his other hand. He had a second, with the light out of his eyes, to get a glimpse of the bearded hulk putting Mica out with a choke hold, but he never got to his gun.

A thick hand with a grip as hard as stone wrapped around Lockman’s forearm and tugged. Lockman’s fingers bruised the butt of his gun and then his hand was pulled helplessly away. A bare arm, rife with hair, swung around Lockman’s neck, catching his throat right in the crook of the elbow. The following squeeze cut the blood flow to Lockman’s brain instantly.

With the hand he had up to block the sun, Lockman reached behind him and felt for a face. His palm brushed against a coarse beard. He crawled his fingers over the face until they found an eye. Then he pressed his thumb into the socket.

The edges of his vision curled into darkness. His leverage sucked. And his head pounded in rhythm to his starving pulse. Still, he dug his thumb in as hard as he could.

His attacker grunted and tried to squeeze his eye shut. When that didn’t work, he yelped and his hold on Lockman loosened.

Lockman pulled his arm out of the attacker’s hold and drove his elbow back. His elbow struck hard abs with little effect. Under his thumb, though, he felt a small pop. His attacker screamed and jerked away from Lockman, letting him go completely.

Wasting no time, Lockman drew his weapon as he twirled around. He squeezed off two shots without aiming, but his assailant—a wide-shouldered, thick-bearded guy who wore a flannel shirt to complete his lumberjack look—ducked under the gun’s trajectory and drove at Lockman like a linebacker.

Lumberjack’s flannel-clad shoulder plowed into Lockman’s gut and kept moving, lifting Lockman off his feet. Momentum carried him a good six feet backward through the air. He fired blindly as he fell, but only chipped the white pavement that ran the length of the casino entrance. He cleared the curb and collapsed to the asphalt parking lot. The impact knocked his gun loose. He heard it scrape along the blacktop as he continued to roll awkwardly over his shoulder.

He no sooner came to rest, sprawled face-down on the ground, and Lumberjack grabbed him by the back of the neck and yanked him to his feet. Lockman took two jabs to the face, the second one crunching the cartilage in his nose.

He drew up his arms to block another strike. From between his fists, he saw Lumberjack step backward, teeth bared in a hairy grin, eyes as wild as an escaped psychopath from the local asylum.

Lockman had an instant to wonder why his attacker was backing off.

Then something hard collided with the back of his head and the whole world faded to black.

Chapter Sixteen

Jessie had never heard so many voices speaking at once. It felt like the entire population of a major metropolitan city, like Chicago, had all decided to take part in a massive conversation. The cacophony hurt her ears, even though those ears were only metaphysical ones.

The darkness was familiar, though.

She floated like a disembodied spirit through the black space of her psyche. She had never come this low before. Gabriel had always come up to meet her. She didn’t think they could have communicated among all the noise down here. She didn’t know how in hell she’d gain anything among what Gabriel had called the millions of ancient voices. Millions was god damned right. At least that.

She wanted to cover her ears to at least muffle the sound. The trick with metaphysical ears was that she did not have matching metaphysical hands with which to slap over them. Or if she did, she didn’t know how to use them.

There is a lot you don’t know about your own self
, said the only voice she could hear above the others—her own.

Time didn’t mean much when she turned inward like this. Already, she sensed she’d been down here at least fifteen minutes. From experience she knew that sense could stretch either way, though. Could have been only a few minutes. Could have been an hour.

The question was, how long did she have to suffer through this chaos of voices before she could quit, come out of herself, and tell Kress she’d given it the old college try, but no dice.

Let me answer your own question with another question
, she said to herself.
How long has Ryan suffered being insane for saving you from that ghost? Few years? Hmm? Then stop being such a wuss and get one of these damn voices to listen to you.

After all, Gabriel had a way to communicate with them. That meant it was possible.

Hello?
she called out.

The chatter continued around her without a hitch. She could occasionally pick out words, but never enough to make any sense. And a lot of those words were most definitely not English. Some she wondered if they belonged to the mortal world at all. Guttural and slithering sounds. High pitched squeaks and wavering trills. Scratchy coughs and throaty barks. These voices—if you could call them that—twined with the more familiar tones of mortal conversation. It made for a disturbing racket. Nails on a chalkboard would sound like music in comparison.

Hey! Can’t anyone shut up for a second and listen to me?

The voices carried on, oblivious to her pleas.

She had to focus. These voices belonged to souls. As much as they seemed disembodied to her in this dark, internal place, they each connected to a single spirit that had once existed on the outside. If should could zero in on one, find the source, address that single speaker…

The tidal noise made it hard to concentrate.

Come on, Jess. You can do this.

Jessie fell through a hole in time.

A blink and a year passed at the same speed.

She picked through the voices until she heard a kindly sounding one, the kind of voice you’d expect from a favorite uncle or teacher. The voice had a bit of a creak in it, suggesting he was older. But weren’t all these souls old? Some of them thousands of years. Maybe more.

Don’t get distracted.

Jessie felt something. Hard to explain at first. Then she realized it felt a lot like the attention from a pair of eyes. It felt like someone was
looking
at her.

The kindly voice she’d sifted through the noise fell silent.

No. You can’t shut up on me now.

In this place, Jessie had no body. Yet somehow she sensed something close. And then the voice whispered directly into her ear.

I haven’t shut up in seventy years. Why would I start now?

No body, yet Jessie felt her heartbeat quicken.

You can hear me?
she asked.

You sound different than the others.

A jolt of pure joy struck Jessie unlike any she’d experienced since she was a kid on Christmas morning and had unwrapped that Easy Bake Oven Mom insisted they couldn’t afford.

You can hear me!

Oh, my…
The voice took a psychic step back from her.
You…you are the host.

Jessie contemplated the significance of his realization. It never occurred to her to wonder what all these souls thought about taking up residence inside of her. Did it feel any different to them than being trapped in the artifact? Did they even realize where they were?

Apparently, they did.

I must go and tell the others,
the kindly voice said, laced with excitement.