Darkness Returns (14 page)

Wait! I need…I need your help.

The voice didn’t say anything, but she sensed the presence still near.

Jessie thought hard about what to say next. She realized she had no idea what to ask. Here she finally had the attention of one of these souls, and she was choking. She was going to blow it.

Finally, she blurted,
How do I bring about The Return?

The million-voice blather swelled around her. But she couldn’t hear the kindly voice at all, started to doubt the soul was with her anymore.

You truly do not know?

Whatever joy she’d felt before crumbled under the weight of her frustration.
How am I supposed to know something like that? I’m just a girl. I’m nobody.

Oh
.

Oh? Really? That was what this ancient and powerful soul was going with?
Can you help me or not?

It isn’t my place.

If Jessie had a mouth, she would have screamed.
You’ll give a guy like Gabriel all sorts of tips and tricks to help him take over the world, but you won’t help me
save
it? My dad is right. All this paranormal shit is straight up evil.

A tingling sensation, similar to a blush, came over Jessie. She thought the soul was somehow doing this to her, though she wasn’t sure what it meant.

I played no part in assisting the dark one.

So you stood…or floated…by and let it happen. Whatever, dude. Here’s your chance to make it right. Tell me how to bring The Return.

You mustn’t make such a fuss. Your anger will draw unsavory things.

Then do me a fucking solid and answer my question.

That prickly feeling happened again. She also tasted something on her metaphysical tongue. It tasted like ash.

I must go.

No! Tell me what to do. Give me my power back.

But…
All the other voices grew to a deafening level. She couldn’t tell if the kindly soul said more or not.

She was on the verge of giving up when all of the voices, every last one, fell silent.

The silence hit so suddenly, it struck Jessie like a physical force. Her psyche dropped deeper within herself. The darkness, which she thought was as pitch as possible before, somehow thickened. As she fell, the kindly voice called out to her.

The chosen must choose.

Cryptic nonsense. She started to curse him for it, but the demonic scream echoing up from the depths cut her off.

Then she heard a new voice, one with a chilly lisp and a grating edge.

At last
, it said.
The host dares to address us.

Chapter Seventeen

Their situation was the stuff of mobster movie cliché. Lockman and Mica sat back to back in metal folding chairs, their hands and legs bound with rope, and more rope tying them together like a matching set. A warehouse filled mostly with generic hotel furniture wrapped in plastic and set up on pallets formed a simplistic maze around them. A drain was inset in the floor nearby with rusty stains around the edges. The warehouse smelled like polyester and industrial cleaner.

A trickle of blood tickled Lockman’s upper lip. His nose throbbed. Probably broken. He blinked the sweat out of his eyes, admittedly surprised at the sight of Teresa standing in front of him.

Lumberjack and the brawny guy that had grabbed Mica outside the casino stood nearby, each cradling an Uzi 9mm. A fourth companion had also joined them, an emaciated looking woman with creepy eyes that seemed to size Lockman up like a side of beef.

“Wow,” Lockman said, voice croaking. “Thought you might have got into some trouble with the wolves, but I didn’t expect you’d joined them.”

The shine in Teresa’s eyes told Lockman just how far she had joined them.

“Don’t get righteous with me, Craig. You were always the champion of doing whatever it takes for the greater good.”

“Turning into a dog is not what I’d call the greater good.”

Teresa rushed him, grabbed him by the jaw and tilted his head back so she could look down into his eyes. Her fingers dug in with incredible strength. “You have no idea what I’ve been through.”

“But all for the greater good, right?”

She let go of him, reared her hand back, and slapped him across the face.

Lockman and Mica both tipped sideways, their chair legs on one side coming off the floor before rocking back to
thunk
against the concrete. The side of Lockman’s face went numb. His ear rang, making him think of the cathedral bells in the French Quarter, back where Teresa had apparently left her soul.

He tasted blood at the corner of his mouth.

“Where is she, Craig?” Teresa had dark streaks in her hair she hadn’t had last time Lockman saw her. Now they seemed to darken as her hair grew a quarter inch longer. A gray fuzz rose around the edges of her ears.

“Who?” Lockman asked.

“You know who.”

The numbness crackled apart, replaced with a hot sting from his temple, down his cheek, and to his chin. He prodded at the cut in his mouth with his tongue, then worked up some red spit and shot it at the floor between her feet. The bloody saliva spattered one of her boots.

Teresa growled like the dog she’d become, closed her fist, and struck him again, this time against the side of his skull. The ringing in his ear tolled through his whole head. He and Mica rocked in their chairs once more, then back, the snap of the metal legs against the concrete echoing through the warehouse.

“Let’s just take his head to the Alpha,” the girl with the creepy eyes said, practically salivating at the idea. “It’s what he wants.”

“We need to find out where the girl is first,” Teresa snapped.

Lumberjack grunted. “We don’t take orders from the new bitch. You better learn your place.”

“The Alpha wants the same thing I want.”

“We want the wolf-killer. No one cares about some little vampire.”

Teresa spun to face Lumberjack and jabbed a finger at him. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. That little vampire is the biggest threat this world has ever faced.”

“Really?” Lockman spoke up. “My teen daughter is the world’s greatest danger?”

Wacky Eyes and Lumberjack exchanged a look.

“That’s good, love,” Mica whispered. “Rile them up. I’ve almost got me ropes.”

He hadn’t noticed any movement from her at all, but he took her word for it. “That’s right,” he said. “She’s talking about a teenage girl. Scary, huh?”

Teresa snorted. “The same little girl who turned a couple wolves inside out, remember?”

“The Chosen One,” the woman said. “Right?”

These wolves must have sat low in the pack’s pecking order to be so ignorant. The wolves Lockman had dealt with all knew the prophecy jargon well enough. Lockman was a little disappointed their Alpha thought so little of him to send a crew like this after him.

“If you believe all that prophecy crap,” Lockman said.

The three wolves with Teresa threw glances back and forth, dubious and a little stupid. Lockman still had to tread lightly. Stupid wolves could spray bullets from an Uzi just as easily as smart ones.

“Let me tell you a little something about my friend here,” Lockman said. “She’s not exactly stable.”

This time, Teresa threw a sidekick, pounded her boot into his solar plexus, and knocking every last puff of air from his lungs. He jerked against his chair, knocking heads with Mica, who cried out, but otherwise held still.

Lockman tried to pull wind into his deflated chest, couldn’t manage it for three or four long seconds, then finally gasped in a breath.

Teresa glared at him, her eye-shine flickering under the light of the caged bulbs that hung from the warehouse rafters. “Not another word.”

“Or what? You’ll kill me?” He nodded to her companions. “Think that’s a foregone conclusion.”

“Let’s just do this,” Lumberjack said and racked the slide on his Uzi.

“Right,” Mica said. “Let’s.”

Lockman felt Mica vault out of her chair and the next thing he saw was a spray of golden sparkles shooting out over his head. He ducked his chin down as far as he could go to avoid contact.

The plume of pixie dust reached Teresa first. The glinting dust swirled like a mad swarm of gnats, curling around Teresa’s head, causing her to cough and gag. From there, an airborne trail reached out like a tentacle and whipped around the other three wolves. Dust shot into their mouths and got sucked up their noses like golden cocaine.

By this time, Teresa collapsed to her hands and knees, coughing at the floor and spraying the concrete with speckles of blood.

Lumberjack managed to lift his weapon while he choked on the pixie dust.

Lockman threw all his weight forward. With Mica out of her chair, he was able to tip his and fall to the floor right as the Uzi chattered. The rounds whizzed above Lockman, Lumberjack’s aim high as he staggered backward while he coughed and wheezed. Eventually, the effects of the dust overwhelmed him. The Uzi fell from his hands, and he fell to his knees.

A second later, Mica dropped to her knees by Lockman’s side and started tugging at his ropes. They came loose as if they’d never been tied. When Mica tossed the ropes aside, Lockman saw frayed ends that looked as if they’d been burnt.

“You hit?” Lockman asked while she freed him.

She tugged the ropes off his wrists. “Think a round grazed my hair, the lump.”

He smiled up at her. “Yeah, looks like it went straight down the middle.”

“Funny boy.” She shook a hand over the ropes around his ankles and a sprinkling of dust with a green glow rained down and ate straight through them.

“Pixie dust comes in all sorts of brands, huh?”

She looked up at the wolves. The dust in the air around them had dissipated. They weren’t coughing as much. Teresa, red-faced and eyes watery, crawled toward one of the dropped Uzis.

“And a trick like that means I’m plumb out for a bit,” Mica said.

Lockman got to his feet and sprinted for the Uzi Teresa was after. He snatched it up and aimed it at her forehead. She glared up at him with naked hate. Hair grew along her jaw line, giving her a blonde beard. Her facial features popped and bulged.

The other wolves began to change as well while they recovered from the effects of the dust. But Mica was a step ahead. She picked up the other Uzi and emptied its magazine in three measured bursts, one for each wolf.

The smell of cordite hung thick in the air. The echo effect in the warehouse had intensified the sound of the full-auto weapon fire. A ghost of that noise lingered in Lockman’s ears, taking the place of the bling and ding from the casino.

“Come on, love,” Mica said, tossing her Uzi aside. “Finish this and let’s take a jog. More wolves are bound to be on the way.”

By now, Teresa looked more wolf than woman. She growled low in her throat as her clothes split and fell off her hairy body like shed skin. Her lips peeled back from her wet teeth, showing off the vicious canines and their sharp sisters.

“Teresa,” Lockman shouted.

In full wolf form, she crouched low, wound like a spring about to jump. Lockman could see the intelligence in her eyes. She might have looked like an oversized wild animal, but she retained full awareness. Which meant she knew better than to pounce when he had an Uzi pointed at her face.

“Damn it. What were you thinking?”

Mica gave him a nudge with her elbow. “She ain’t your friend no more. Do what needs doing.”

He couldn’t bring himself to pull the trigger.

Teresa could probably smell his hesitation. She leaped at him, snarling. Her front paws struck Lockman’s chest, knocking him back, the impact also shaking the Uzi loose from his grip. As he landed on his back and felt his weapon slip away, he also felt Teresa land on his chest, and her hot breath on his throat from her widening jaw.

Chapter Eighteen

Eight hours.

Kress blinked at his Rolex, unable to believe what it told him.

He had watched over the cage in the chamber for eight hours while Jessie sat, unmoving, inside. The young girl could have rivaled the best of the sculptures in the Hollywood Wax Museum with such pure stillness. During all that time, Kress had sat, paced, jogged in place, sat again, once even lay on his back and stared at the magnificent mural above him, nearly drifting off to sleep.

It was when he slipped in and out of a dream about drowning in a pool of his own tears that he’d decided not to lie down anymore.

Still, for all his restlessness, he couldn’t believe eight hours had gone by already.

The chamber door opened and Wertz came in carrying a tray. The smell of roast duck preceded the gnome as he approached.

Kress’s stomach gurgled when the scent hit him. His mouth watered.

“You are a prince,” he said as Wertz handed the tray over.

Kress set the tray on top of the cage for lack of any better place to put it. He lifted the cover off the plate in the tray’s center and inhaled the steam that wafted free. Beside the duck sat several sprigs of asparagus wrapped with bacon. The tray also held a cup of coffee and a bottle of water. Nary a carb in sight. Wertz had remembered Kress’s new diet.

“Thank you, my friend.”

Wertz jerked his chin toward Jessie. “She been like that this whole time?”

“Indeed.”

“You think she’s okay?”

As if the question alone had summoned bad fortune, Jessie began to hitch and suck in sharp breaths. Her hands, once gently resting on her knees, jerked, her fingers bending into claws.

Kress and Wertz exchanged quick glances.

Jessie bucked. She kicked out her legs, striking the cage walls and shaking it hard enough to knock the tray off the top. Roast duck and asparagus flung through the air. The metal tray clanged against the marble floor. The plate shattered, as did the coffee cup. Kress and Wertz flinched away.

Meanwhile, Jessie continued to twist and kick in the cage as if doing battle with some invisible presence in there with her.