Darkness Returns (15 page)

“What should we do?” Wertz asked as he wiped his cheek with a small handkerchief to clean off something that had spattered him from the dinner tray.

“I doubt we can do anything.” Kress felt a pinch in his chest. He had pushed her too hard. She hadn’t been ready.
Damn you, why did you think you could rush providence?

As quickly as her struggles started, they ended. Jessie fell limp on her side, going from a girl who had looked possessed to one who appeared to be sleeping peacefully. She even tucked her hands under her cheek.

Kress and Wertz exchanged another glance.

Kress stepped toward the cage, knelt beside it, his knee pressing into some droplets of grease or butter. “Jessie?”

Nothing.

Now what? Another eight hours of waiting? That wouldn’t do. After this outburst, he had to make sure she was safe. He reached a hand out to Wertz. “The key.”

“You sure, boss?”

Kress flicked his fingers. “Yes.”

Wertz pulled the key out from his suit pocket and handed it over.

As he worked the key into the padlock, Kress noticed his hands trembling. He paused to take a deep breath and steady himself before turning the key and pulling the lock free. The cage door swung open silently. Kress reached through the opening and rested a hand on Jessie’s ankle.

“Jessie, dear?”

She lay as still as a corpse, and looked like one with her gray skin.

He squeezed her ankle, shook her gently. “Are you with us?”

The speed with which she moved turned her into a blur. Kress’s eyes simply could not process something that quick. He felt her full weight pound him in the chest like a shockwave from a nuclear explosion. He crashed onto his back and skated across the slick floor a good ten yards while Jessie rode him like a sled.

He had time enough to cry out.

Then her hands wrapped around his throat, staunching his voice. Her eyes glowed a deep red and glared into his as if trying to see through to his soul.

Kress’s insides turned to frost.

The sound of Wertz’s designer soles clapping against the marble echoed through the chamber. He made a run for the door. Jessie twisted toward the sound. Her lips split apart in an angry grin, but she didn’t move off of Kress, and let Wertz go. Once the gnome was out the door, she returned her attention to Kress.

A string of saliva dripped off her bottom lip and tapped Kress’s cheek. It felt as hot as the coffee that had spilled off the tray. Desperately, Kress fumbled for concentration, hoping he might manipulate her emotions, though she looked devoid of a soul.

You did it. You sent her into hell and she came back exactly as she predicted she would.

Jessie stroked his jaw line with the backs of her fingers. “Foolish man. You think your little tricks will work on me?”

He felt his efforts reflected back on him, dialing up his fear. He trembled, but set his jaw. If he had to die today, he would do his best to gather the last pieces of his dignity beforehand. What did he fear, anyway? If he couldn’t find his way back to his own people, death was the only other cure for his condition.

For in that sleep of death, what dreams may come…

He had always wanted to play Hamlet in a film adaptation of the play. He might not match the artistry of Olivier’s portrayal, but he was certain to do a hell of a lot better than Mel Gibson.

Kress laughed.

“Something funny?” Jessie, or whatever wicked thing now possessed her, asked. She squeezed his throat too hard to allow him to answer. He stared her square in the eye and tried to communicate his message with a look alone.

I am not afraid.

But lying with a voice was a lot easier than lying with your eyes. She saw the truth. She saw his fear. And she seemed to relish it.

“How should I kill you? Slowly, of course. Painfully. Should I tear off your balls? Ram a fist up your asshole? Or maybe I could go get that gnome back and ram
him
up your asshole.”

Something didn’t sound right about her tone or choice of words.

She’s possessed by some malevolent soul. Of course she doesn’t sound right.

But that wasn’t it. She sounded…too much like herself.

She must have seen this thought dawn in his expression. The mad rage washed from her face. She let go of his throat—which she had never squeezed hard enough to cut off his air supply—and, grinning now, gave him a playful smack on the cheek. “Had you going there, didn’t I?”

Kress closed his eyes a moment and let loose a long breath. “Dear Christ.”

Jessie got off of him and stood. “And the academy award goes to…” She waved a hand in a grand gesture, then patted her chest. “Moi.”

“You think this is a joke? Wertz is going to rush in here any moment with a team armed to the teeth, a thousand silver rounds with your name on each.”

She waggled her eyebrows. “Then I should skedaddle, huh?”

Kress sat up, started to get to his feet.

Jesse planted a foot on his chest and drove him back to the floor. “Uh, nope. You stay. I got to go pull my dad out of the shit-storm you sent him into.”

“What do you mean?”

“Seems my trip downstairs perked my mojo up a little bit. I’ve got a spider sense now. And it’s telling me my dad is in trouble.”

“Then it worked.” Kress couldn’t help the childish crack in his voice.

“Don’t get cocky. There’s some seriously nasty stuff in me. Your master plan almost let some of it devour my soul. And I don’t know anything more about The Return than I did before.” She shoved him with her foot again. “Now tell me where you sent my dad.”

Chapter Nineteen

“Teresa, don’t!”

Her teeth grazed his throat. Her saliva dripped onto his skin. The growl in the back of her throat hitched, went quiet.

Was she listening?

“After all we’ve been through together,” he said. “This isn’t how you want to end this.”

She drew back, closed her jaw. The weight of her on his chest made it hard for him to breath. She didn’t get off, though. But her intelligent wolf eyes stared down at him. Her ears turned in his direction.

“Do you think I wanted to kill your sister? You know better than that. You
told
me to do it. You—”

The Uzi Lockman had dropped came into his line of sight, the barrel pressing against Teresa’s wolf head. Mica had picked up the weapon. Her finger tightened on the trigger. “Reunion’s over, loves.”

But before Mica could fire, Teresa whipped her head around and chomped down on Mica’s arm. Mica squeezed off a reactive burst as she screamed in pain. The bullets sparked against the concrete. Teresa’s teeth sunk deep, and blood laced with multi-colored sparkles oozed around her lips. Then came the sound of Mica’s bones snapping under the pressure of Teresa’s jaw.

The pixie screamed again and dropped the Uzi.

With a back paw, Teresa kicked the Uzi and sent it under one of the furniture pallets. Then she jerked and thrashed like a dog swinging a plush toy until the force of her tugging ripped Mica’s arm off at the shoulder.

Glittering blood spewed from the stump as Mica staggered away, thrown off balance by the sudden detachment. She took three sideways steps before gravity got the best of her and she flopped to the floor. A smell like burnt sugar filled the air. Lockman’s stomach lurched as he realized it came from the pixie’s blood.

Teresa dropped Mica’s arm and leaped off of Lockman to finish the kill. She pounced on the pixie and tore into her throat before Mica had a chance to scream again. The wet gasps from the open wound were a thousand times worse than any scream.

But Mica had one last trick in her arsenal before she bled to death. The sparkles in her blood began to glow a uniform color, a phosphorescent purple like one of those black lights that made those old Grateful Dead posters glow in the dark. The smell of sugar grew so thick the warehouse could have passed as a candy factory. The glowing, purplish blood began to shed droplets into the air, as if gravity had reversed itself. Many of the floating drops sailed into the rafters above. Much of it also seeped into Teresa’s light pelt, matting the hair with polka-dot smudges, like a poorly painted circus animal. Once the blood touched her, though, its dark glow intensified. Trails of smoke rose from each illuminated splotch. Twisting through the sweet smell of the blood came the stink of burning hair. As more and more of Mica’s pixie blood soaked Teresa’s coat, the burning grew worse, until her hair caught fire.

Lockman watched in a horrified daze as flames engulfed Teresa’s wolf form. She leapt off Mica’s limp body and ran in a circle, whining in a typical canine fashion—her new role as werewolf had already sunk into her instincts, making her act like the dog she was. Her running only fed the flames. She quickly realized this and began rolling on the floor.

Mica’s dead eyes stared in Lockman’s direction. They held a plain message it took Lockman a few seconds to decipher through his shock.

Go. Run!

Some of the best advice came from the dead.

Lockman shot to his feet and ran into the maze of plastic-wrapped furniture, in search of the exit, while Teresa’s wolfish yips and howls seemed to shake the air around him and buzz his nerves.

For a few desperate moments, Lockman was convinced the maze would lead him back to where he started. He used Teresa’s agonized mewls as a guide, though, taking any turn among the stacks of furniture that led away from the sound.

He reached the outer edge of the warehouse and followed the wall until he found a metal door with a push bar. Part of him expected to find it locked, but when he slammed his palms against the bar, the door swung outward and sunlight blasted him in the eyes.

Squinting, he scanned the perimeter. A large, mostly empty parking lot stretched before him. The blacktop looked fresh, the yellow lines demarking the parking spaces bright. Two vehicles sat in the lot—a Hummer and a Lincoln Town Car, both with dark tinted windows that made Lockman think of his old ogre friend, Marty, who always rode in cars with all the windows tinted like that.

No sign of anyone belonging to those vehicles. But Lockman could hear the engine to the Hummer still ticking in the heat. Hard to tell for sure with the tinted glass, but he couldn’t make out any shapes inside the vehicles.

Crouching low, Lockman crossed the lot to the Hummer. He peered into the driver’s side window. Up close, he could see inside, found it empty. A touch to the hood confirmed the truck had been driven recently. The driver’s side door pulled open, unlocked. Better yet, the keys dangled in the ignition. The inside smelled like new leather and a pet shop. Obviously another wolf-mobile.

Lockman climbed in, eased the door closed, and started the engine. The size of the vehicle made it seem like it would growl, but it purred, almost as quiet as a hybrid car. The thing couldn’t have been more than a week off the dealer’s lot.

“Driving in style,” he muttered to himself as he put it in gear. He fought the urge to gun the engine and tear out of there. Whoever the new arrivals were, they seemed caught up in what was inside the warehouse. The longer it took them to realize he’d filched their ride, the better. He let the Hummer idle its way to the lot’s exit and only stepped on the gas when he had turned out onto the street.

Before he stomped on the pedal, he caught movement outside the warehouse, glanced over and saw five men scramble out the same door Lockman had escaped from. They all wore stylish leather and trimmed beards, with flashes of gold at their wrists and around their necks. These were the wolf pack equivalent of lieutenants.

They spotted the Hummer pulling away and started running in pursuit.

Lockman floored it, the new truck’s purr tearing into full out roar.

He had no idea where he was, which made it hard to get his bearings and chart a path back to the doorway to HQ. He didn’t see any of the typical Vegas landmarks. No Stratosphere tower with the roller coaster on top. No glass pyramid or fancy fountains. He saw a lot more warehouses all cut from the same mold as the one he’d escaped. A number of storage locker facilities. He also caught glimpses of a barren desert horizon beyond this warehouse suburbia. Made him feel like he’d dropped into the middle of nowhere.

In the rearview, he saw the chasing wolves shift, leaving their nice leather in pieces on the road behind them. A gust of wind swirled the dust on the road around the wolves as they galloped along.

Lockman tried to push the gas down further, but already had it against the floorboard. Luckily, not much traffic in the area. Lockman sped by a couple delivery trucks and had to gun around a semi-trailer blithely backing out from a service drive.

The wolves easily dodged these obstacles. One of them jumped clear over the semi-trailer and didn’t miss a step when he landed. Lockman could keep a fair distance between them on straightaways, but every time he came to a T in the road and was forced to turn, they cut the corners and could maintain their speed, gaining on him.

He didn’t have a gun—unless…

While keeping one hand on the wheel, his eyes on the road, he stretched his other hand down under the seat. What self-respecting werewolf thug didn’t keep a backup weapon in his Hummer?

His fingers brushed something. Could have been a gun barrel. Could have been a squeegee handle for all he could tell. He tried to reach a little lower.

A FedEx truck coasted out into the road ahead, the driver apparently so used to having these roads free from much traffic, he didn’t feel he needed to look both ways before pulling out. Either that, or he had a death wish.

Lockman clutched the wheel with both hands and pounded his foot onto the brake as if throwing a tantrum. The Hummer’s wheels locked. Rubber screamed against the pavement and the smell of it burning filled the vehicle. The driver of the FedEx truck, instead of flooring it to get the hell out of the way, froze, his truck a solid barricade across the road. The whites of his eyes grew huge as he stared at Lockman in the Hummer charging straight for him.

Lockman nearly put his foot through the floor standing on the brake, but physics had its own ideas about how the Hummer would finally come to a stop. The vehicle plowed right into the side of the delivery truck. Lockman hadn’t taken the time to fasten his belt. He locked his elbows and planted his feet, hoping to pin himself against the seat and not go flying through the windshield and into the crumpling FedEx lettering on the wide of the delivery truck.