Darkness Returns (33 page)

She couldn’t read the look he gave her. A sudden focus in his eyes. A quick lift of his chin. Then he smiled. “Right.”

His smile quickly faded. His eyes narrowed.

Jessie felt it, too. Something different.

No banging.

“They’ve stopped trying to get in,” Jessie whispered as if they might hear her through steel, iron, and reinforced concrete.

“Haven’t stopped trying,” Craig said. “Changing tactics.”

“How do you know? Maybe they gave—”

The keypad next to the door bleeped. The flashing red light turned to a solid green. Next came the clicks, snaps, and final clang of the bolts releasing.

Craig hopped to his feet and kicked the chair aside. “Go, go, go. Down, down, down.”

Jessie hesitated for only a second. She shot off the bed, tossing aside her iPhone, and dropped feet first through the trapdoor, tucking her wings tight against her. She thumped to the metal floor of the secondary safe room and scooted aside right before Craig landed right where she had.

A chain with a metal hoop on the end dangled by the metal ladder that lead out of the tomb-like space. Craig grabbed the hoop and yanked. Above them the trapdoor, attached to the other end of the chain swung closed with a thundering
boom
. He climbed halfway up the ladder to reach the control that engaged the lock. That familiar sound of large bolts locking into place rang through the small space.

The prime difference, her dad had explained earlier when he inspected the subfloor safe room, between this door and the one to her room was that this room could only be locked and unlocked from inside. Another, significant difference, however, was that this door wasn’t nearly as strong.

We’re just buying more time before that wench can get her literal paws on me.

Jessie felt a quiver of bravado. Let the bitch in. Let Jessie have a go at her, one-on-one, and see who came out alive. Only Teresa wouldn’t play fair. She’d have her whole wolf pack behind her, and Jessie wouldn’t stand a chance.

A muffled female voice came through the door. Then three solid poundings against the door. Followed by silence.

Jessie looked to her dad.

He had a pistol in hand that he’d taken from the gun rack down here. He held it, barrel up, arm cocked, all business. She had recommended he use one of the three assault rifles on the rack, and he simply told her he wanted to save them for later.

He had expected this fight.

But he had to know they would lose.

Once Teresa and her pack got through the trapdoor, they had no more saferooms to retreat into. It would be the two of them, a rack of guns, and a bunch of supernaturally powered wolves flooding into the room.

They needed an edge.

They needed mojo.

A nerve scratching whine of metal twisting against metal filled the room. The trapdoor visibly jerked. Jessie’s vampire senses kicked in. She could smell fear on her father, a special kind of musk most men saved for that special moment right before they knew they were going to die.

“I want you to stand behind me,” he said.

She barely heard him. She had plans of her own. But she did back up, which seemed to appease him. She took a seat on one of a pair of army cots. She closed her eyes.

Jessie went
inside
.

Chapter Forty-Three

Lockman watched Jessie sit on the cot and close her eyes, knew immediately what she was doing. “Stop.”

No response. Clicked off like a light.

Her eyes rolled around under the lids as if in REM sleep. Her shoulders relaxed which made the bony top joints of her wings sag to either side, slightly unfolding them behind her.

The trap door jerked again.

Lockman turned toward the sound.

Had he seen a flash of light from the corner of his eyes? Had they gotten the thing briefly open a crack?

He shuffled back, close to the weapon rack, took a regulation shooter’s stance, and aimed up at the door. He would empty the pistol the second the door flung open, keeping any curious faces from peering in to assess the threat. Then he would drop the gun and grab one of the rifles. The first head or paw he saw would get obliterated. Then it was a matter of keeping them guessing. How much ammo did they have, they would wonder. How many of them down there and armed? How long should we wait before trying again?

Or they could lob another grenade into the hole and end it in a few seconds.

The door popped. No crack of light. But however they were pulling on it, they got it to move despite the steel bolts keeping it in place. The little trap door was a mere impediment to the inevitable. Unless a few of those armed squads came to the rescue, Teresa and her pack would get down here, get to him…

To Jessie.

He let his gaze crawl over the weapon rack. Guns. Rifles. A sword with a wickedly serrated edge, almost as ornate as it was deadly. He stood close enough to inhale the scent of gun oil. A nice collection.

Worthless to them, though.

He turned back to Jessie. Her only signs of life the movement of her chest as she breathed and her rolling eyes. She’d gone deep, and got there fast. No doubt her power had evolved as much as her vampirism. Curing an entire floor of mentally ill patients without utilizing a single drop of blood. Everyone except Lockman seemed to overlook that point. She had made no painful sacrifice of any kind, yet the mojo had worked and worked big.

He looked down at the pistol in his hand. A useless piece of plastic and metal in this situation. He hung it on the rack where he’d taken it from and joined Jessie on the cot. He put an arm around her waist—across the shoulders impossible now with her wings.

She muttered something, but otherwise remained in her trance.

The door hitched again, along with the sound of twisting metal.

They were making progress.

A cool hand touched the back of Lockman’s neck.

He shuddered. “What do I do?”

He didn’t care what some ancient spirit hiding inside Jessie had said. This third touch to the back of his neck was Kate. Maybe only the tiniest fragment. But her, nevertheless.

He closed his eyes. Asked again, “What do I do, Kate?”

He felt himself being drawn down, as if falling in slow motion. He let it happen. If any mojo remained in this body from when it belonged to Gabriel, he had to tap it, share it with Jessie, give her that extra push that might give her back the magical strength she once had. Like jumper cables.

Once he made this decision, the slow fall turned into a gut spinning plunge. He felt both weightless and heavy as he soared down into the darkness of his psyche. When he landed, he could not believe where he stood.

Before him stood the old cabin he, Jessie, and Kate had tried to restart their lives in. The smell of pine and the fresh, fishy smell of the nearby creek filled his nostrils as he took a long, relaxing breath. For the moment, he forgot all about the wolves at the door in the real world outside.

Then he heard the clang of metal against metal, but this sounded like it came from back behind the cabin. It rang out a second time. Lockman followed the sound around the cabin and found Jessie wielding an ax.

She looked exactly like the first day he met her.

That cocky slant to her shoulders, the dark dye in her hair, the piercings. No wings. No gray and wrinkled skin. And when she noticed him standing there and smiled at him, no fangs.

“You actually did it,” she said and balanced the axe handle on one shoulder. “You followed me in.”

“The odds out there aren’t in our favor.” He furled his brow. “Did you expect me to come?”

She shook her head. “The old dude thought you might.”

By
old dude
, Lockman assumed she meant the ancient soul she had spoken to before. The one that had said there was nothing left of Kate.

“That is not at all what I claimed,” a voice to Lockman’s side said.

Lockman spun, grabbing for a gun tucked in his waistband and clutching at a fistful of air instead.

An old man who stood about as tall as Jessie stepped out of the woods, his eyes on his feet to avoid tripping on the undergrowth. “I said she was no longer here.” When he reached the clearing at the back edge of the property, he stopped and glided an open hand around him to indicate their surroundings.

“What is this place?”

Jessie snorted. “Sometimes you are so clueless.”

He gaped at her, waiting for an answer instead of an insult.

She rolled her eyes, gestured with the axe in a similar fashion the old man had with his hand, tracing a half circle through the air in front of her with the axe’s blade. “This is Me country. My inner soul.”

“The fact that you are able to leave yourself,” the old man said as he crossed the clearing toward the cabin, “indicates you have great power.”

A mosquito buzzed Lockman’s ear. He shooed it away with a wave. “No. This isn’t my territory. Whatever power I might have is left over stuff from Gabriel.”

The old man chuckled. He stopped within a few feet of where Jessie stood. He looked down at the stump used for a chopping block. Whatever caught the old man’s eye, Lockman couldn’t see past a stack of quartered logs. “The power Gabriel left behind is now yours.” He looked up. “Wouldn’t you say that’s fair?”

“Fair or not, mojo ain’t my thing.”

The old man just smiled and shook his head.

“Hey, Dad,” Jessie piped in. “You need to come check this out.”

Lockman went over and saw what sat on the chopping block. A golden cube with all manner of ornate carvings. The memory artifact. The cause of all their troubles in a way.

“Watch this,” Jessie said.

She lifted the axe over her head, swung it down in a perfect arc, and struck the cube square in the middle. That metallic clang he’d heard when he first arrived echoed outward, startling an owl out of a nearby tree. The axe blade bounced off the cube and didn’t leave the faintest mark.

“We already destroyed it, Jess,” Lockman said. “This is just a…a dream.”

“My point is, you wouldn’t have been able to break this thing with an axe. You can ease up on the guilt department now. Axe wouldn’t have done shit-diddly.”

“But I didn’t even try.”

Jessie shrugged, held out the axe. “Try now.”

“It wouldn’t mean anything,” he said, but took the axe anyway. “We’re in a dream world. None of this is real.”

“Just give it a go.” She stepped aside to give him room to swing.

He started to protest again, explain to her they faced a physical danger out in the real world that this dream one couldn’t save them from, then pulled himself short. If none of this meant anything, why’d he bother finding his way here.

He swung the axe with all his strength.

The axe blade cracked, a piece shooting off into the gnarled grass. The reverberations up Lockman’s arms felt real enough.

The cube remained right where it had sat on the tree stump before his mighty swing, unscathed.

He tossed the axe aside. His hands buzzed as if he’d been sitting on them for a long time. “Still could have thrown it in the ocean or something.”

The old man hitched a shoulder. “Few can read the splitting tines of destiny.”

Lockman cocked an eyebrow. “Um…what?”

Jessie laughed, the sound like the tinkling of wind chimes in a spring breeze. So refreshing and real. “What Cookie is trying to say—”

“Cookie?”

“Cause he talks like a fortune cookie sometimes. Anyway, he’s saying you couldn’t have known what was going to happen, and even if you did, you might not have wanted to stop it.”

“Not want to stop the slaughter of thousands? The death of my friends? The loss of…” He cut off when he almost said wife. It sounded so natural. Only they had never had the chance to make it official. He had proposed. She had accepted. And then the Agency forced him to disappear.

“Kate,” he said after a second.

“Dad, there’s something going on here that’s bigger than all that. Bigger than just us.”

“You,” Lockman said, pointing, “are all that matters anymore. I don’t care if everyone thinks you can save the world. You’re my world. I swore I would protect you against all of these dark things. I failed in a big way in New Orleans—”

“And have been trying to make up for it ever since.” She held out her hands before he could say more. “Why did you come here?”

He looked around, the surroundings so real. The buzzing mosquitoes, the smell of earth and the hint of coming rain. The vivid colors. “Because we’re out of options out there.”

“You chose to give this a chance, to come here and combine whatever mojo you got with mine. You set aside your gun and came to me.”

“I didn’t have any other choice.”

Jessie exchanged looks with the old man, and traded wizened smiles while they were at it. “There is always a choice,” she said. “That’s the point. Now that you’re here, that you actually gave
yourself
over to the magic…”

She slapped her forehead, shook her head. “I’m so dense.”

“What? What are you talking about?” His pulse picked up a few extra beats.

Again, she turned to the old spirit. “There’s always a choice.”

He simply nodded.

“All this time, I could have…just because…fucking A.”

“What is going on?” Lockman insisted.

Jessie looked him in the eyes. “I’m sorry, Dad. You’re not the biggest screw up here. I’ve officially won the title.”

Some of the cryptic nature of that old soul had rubbed off on her. Lockman felt near ready to shake a straight answer out of her. “Why? What did you do?”

“It’s what I didn’t do.”

“Tell me.”

“The Chosen must choose,” she whispered. She shook her head. “It can’t really be that simple.”

“Simple?” the old man said and grunted. “The answers that change the world are never simple.”

Now Lockman wanted to throttle them both. “Will someone please tell me what’s going on.”

“The Chosen One,” the old man said. “She has finally chosen.”

“Chosen what?”

Jessie took Lockman’s hands. “Will you help me?”

“If it means saving you from Teresa and her wolf friends…name it.”