The Shadow Box: Paranormal Suspense and Dark Fantasy Thriller Novels

by Travis Luedke

  Tanner lay in the porch cubby, his gun on the concrete stoop, blood soaking through his shirt from a gash in his shoulder. His eyelids drooped. His head lolled to one side. His chest heaved with labored breaths.

  Lockman kept the Beretta trained on Tanner’s heart. He wasn’t taking chances. “Wake up.”

  Tanner’s eyelids fluttered. He lifted his chin just enough to look at Lockman. Then he smirked. “You stupid asshole. That’s twice you fell for the same trick.” He melted like a sugar cube in the rain, until the residue on the porch blew away and left nothing behind.

  A second later Lockman heard a car engine start. He spun around.

  The Mustang squealed its tires and tore off down the road.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  She should have taken the gun.

  Jessie sank back against her seat as the Mustang accelerated. She stared at the place on the dash where Mr. Creed had left the Glock, now empty. When Tanner had flung open the driver’s side door and hopped behind the wheel, he grabbed at the gun immediately.

  “Don’t want to have any accidents,” he said through heaving breaths and tucked the gun in the back of his waistband.

  Jessie tried to open her door and escape, but Tanner grabbed her arm and yanked her back. “I might need you.”

  She bit his hand as hard as she could, tasted the salted metal of blood, and spat.

  But his grasp slipped, allowing her to shove her way out of the car and scramble away.

  He didn’t come after her. Started the car and peeled out, the sound of the squealing tires like a scream in Jessie’s ears.

  She staggered to the opposite curb and sat down, her whole body shaking. She clenched her hands into fists. They still shook. She pinned her hands between her knees. Her legs trembled. God damn, she was so sick of being afraid. She couldn’t take anymore. So she welcomed the rage that coiled like a snake in her gut. She taunted that rage, dared it to spring and bite. Which made her realize she could still taste Tanner’s blood on her lips. But instead of disgust, she felt a righteous hunger. That man was behind so much of her fear. Behind the threat to her mother. She wasn’t going to blame Craig anymore for the things Tanner and Dolan were doing. She would focus all her anger on them.

  She thought of the Glock Tanner had taken from her. Imagined what might have happened if she hadn’t left it on the dashboard. No safety. One in the chamber. She could have squeezed the trigger the second he got in the car.

  Instead, he had the gun. Tucked in his pants. She wished the gun would misfire and blow another hole in his ass. Wouldn’t that be great? Then Jessie could catch up to him, laugh in his face. See that, asshole? That’s what you get for sticking a gun without a safety down your pants.

  Then she heard the tortured cry of rubber on concrete. The symbol crash of metal against metal followed close behind.

  Jessie stood and jogged to the corner. Down the road she spotted the Mustang. It had veered to the left and smashed into another car parked at the curb. A wisp of steam trailed out from under the crumpled hood.

  The driver’s door popped open and Tanner limped away from the vehicle, clutching at his lower back. He dropped to the ground and writhed. Jessie heard his howl from at least a third of a mile away.

  The iron taste of his blood flared in her mouth for a brief moment, then evaporated completely. She touched her lips and her fingers came away clean. What the hell had just happened?

  A hand touched her shoulder. She shrieked and spun around.

  Craig stepped back, hands held up, one of them holding a massive gun. He nodded toward the Mustang. “That Tanner?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You shoot him or something?”

  She turned to look down the road again. Stared a second, mouth wide. “Or something.”

  “Well?” Jessie asked as Craig huffed back with an unconscious Tanner over his shoulder. “What happened?”

  “Looks like a Glock he had tucked in his waistband fired. He’s bleeding pretty good. We have to get him someplace fast or we’ll lose him.”

  Jessie’s stomach flipped a few times. Seriously? Had she somehow made that happen? No. Had to be a coincidence. But after all she had seen—vampires, ogres, secret agencies versus terrorists using dark magic—she could not deny the possibility.

  “Let’s go,” Craig said. “We’re almost home free.”

  “I thought you wanted to kill him.” She pointed at Tanner.

  “I do. But not until after he tells us where Dolan is, and where he’s holding Kate.” He hiked Tanner’s limp body higher on his shoulder and winced. The wound in his side oozed with fresh blood. “Come on. We need wheels and we need to find Creed.”

  Creed found them first.

  As Craig shoved Tanner into the backseat of a hotwired minivan, Jessie stood watch. Amazingly, no one seemed to have called the cops. Not yet anyway. She spotted Mr. Creed come around one of the condos with another man in black and grey camouflage. It looked like Mr. Creed had to lean on the other man for support while he walked.

  Craig finished belting Tanner into the back seat by the time Mr. Creed and the other man reached them. He looked at the man in the camouflage, squinted. Then he smiled. “Rand.”

  “Lockman.”

  Rand was actually taller than Craig, with arms almost as thick as Jessie’s waist, and ebony skin that shone in the sunlight as if polished. He looked like he could crush cinderblocks with a stern look, but his smile brightened his whole face in a way that made Jessie like him right away.

  “You look like shit,” Rand said to Craig.

  “I’ve looked worse.”

  “Oh, I know it.”

  “Who else we got?”

  “Just me and Clown. But Rodriguez will rendezvous once he gets here.”

  Jessie saw Craig’s jaw clench. “Clown didn’t make it.”

  Rand looked over his shoulder at the condos. “Damn.”

  Craig nodded at Mr. Creed. “You hit?”

  “I threw out my back of all damn things.”

  “Easy does it old man,” Rand said and slapped Mr. Creed on the back. “We’ll get a nice home picked out for you. One of those places with the pretty nurses willing to spoon feed the resident relics.”

  “Fuck off.”

  Rand looked at Jessie. “Who’s the new recruit?”

  “We’ll have time for intros later” Craig said. “We have to get Tanner here some medical attention. Dumb fuck shot himself in the ass, and I’ve got questions I want answered before I let him bleed out.”

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Lockman drove the minivan. Rand took his own vehicle. Jessie rode shotgun with Lockman. Creed sat in back with Tanner and a gun handy in case he woke. Creed had pulled some rags from the back of the van and cut a section from a seatbelt to make a rough bandage to staunch some of Tanner’s bleeding. From what Lockman had seen, the wound didn’t look detrimental in any way other than the bleeding. Which would be bad enough if they didn’t get it stopped soon.

  That’s how Lockman kept himself focused. Remain on task. Get Tanner fixed up enough to question. Never mind that crap he had spewed earlier about stolen souls or whatever.

  Only, the drive proved too quiet. He caught himself looking in the rearview over and over at Creed. Finally, he couldn’t take it anymore.

  “How’d you find me?”

  Jessie started to say something, but Lockman cut her off.

  “Let him tell me.”

  Creed met Lockman’s eyes in the rearview. “What was the question again?”

  “How did you track me to that condo complex?”

  Creed sighed. “I take it Tanner talked some while he had you.”

  “Some.”

  “What all did he say?”

  “Crazy shit.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  Lockman looked at his old boss’s reflection. “Is any of it true?”

  Creed’s eyes shone, bright blue and liquid. He blinked and some of the shine leaked away. “I don
’t know what he said.”

  “You have an idea.”

  “He told you about your tracking device?”

  “Yes. Why would you do that to me? When did you do that to me?”

  “You’re important, Craig.”

  “Important how? Seems like everyone but me knows. Am I really just a brainwashed source of intel?”

  “If that’s all you were, I would never have put you in the field for our side.”

  Lockman’s heart pumped hard. His mouth went dry. “So it is true?”

  “I believe in you. Whatever you were before doesn’t matter.”

  “Of course it matters. I’m a lie. I don’t really exist.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “Tanner said you wiped out my original soul and replaced it with pieces of others. I’m not even someone else. I’m a jigsaw puzzle. Worse, I’m everything I’d spent my time at the Agency fighting against. I’m unnatural. I don’t belong.”

  “You’d rather be a psychotic dabbling in the darkest kinds of evil this world has ever seen?”

  Jessie twisted in her seat so she could look at Creed. “What are you guys talking about?”

  Lockman throttled the steering wheel in his hands. “Stay out of it, Jess.”

  “Sure. Like I asked to be a part of this messed up stuff in the first place.”

  “It’s like I told you,” Creed said. “Your dad’s a good man. Nothing else matters.”

  “I’m not a man at all. I’m a shell, a vessel for your supernatural experimentation.”

  “No. You’re one of the best Agents we ever had. What we did to you, the secrets we kept. A day never went by that it didn’t eat at me. But what you became after we did our part, that’s all you. That’s who you are now. A good man.”

  Lockman’s vision blurred red at the edges.

  “I don’t understand,” Jessie said.

  “It’s simple. Creed here used mojo to turn one of Dolan’s top men against him. Good for the Agency, good for America. Not so good for the person who just learned his whole life as he knows it is a fucking fabrication.”

  Lockman sat on Creed’s porch swing with Jessie. Creed and Rand had Tanner in the pole barn, strapped down to a workbench while Creed stitched him up. Creed had the most experience with the medical stuff, but when he offered to take a look at Lockman’s wound, Lockman had Rand do it instead. While Rand had stitched him up, Lockman asked a few questions to feel out what he knew about what was done to Lockman, but he didn’t seem to have any idea about the truth.

  Lockman wasn’t sure if he should feel relieved or disappointed. After all, Rand’s friendship depended on the lie. Like Tanner had said of Clown, if Rand knew the truth, he would probably shoot Lockman on sight.

  “You’re more broody than usual,” Jessie said.

  “You heard it. I’m really the enemy.”

  “You’re also the guy who saved my life, several times already.”

  He shook his head. “It’s not that simple. I’m responsible for so much destruction. The things I did for Dolan? I was Dolan’s personal Himmler.”

  “Was, was, was. Doesn’t anything you’ve done since matter?”

  “It won’t make up for the lives I destroyed.”

  “Look, I’m no expert on all this mojo stuff, but the way I see it, the person that did those terrible things was not you. He was in that same body, but he wasn’t the same person I’m talking to now.”

  “The person you’re talking to now is nothing more than an amalgam of other people.”

  “No. There’s no such thing. That might be how they made you to begin with, but that’s not who you are now. You’re Craig Lockman. You’re my dad.”

  His chest squeezed. His throat felt dry and he knew if he tried to talk his voice would break. He looked at Jessie, at her eyes, her nose, her cheekbones, and he saw glimpses of himself. Which meant, genetically, that still made her the daughter of a terrorist. He also saw traces of Kate in Jessie’s face. And what of Kate? Did what he know about himself negate what he had had with her?

  He closed his eyes and listened for the wind chimes, but the air had gone still and they hung silent.

  “What are you going to do?”

  Lockman opened his eyes. “What do you mean?”

  “Now that you know the truth, are you still going to go after Dolan, save Mom?”

  “Why wouldn’t I?”

  She shrugged. “If you’re one of the bad guys, why keep running? You can take the thingy that has your original soul and run off to Dolan.”

  “What the hell’s wrong with you? Do you have any idea what Dolan could accomplish with the knowledge I have?”

  “So you still want to stop him?”

  “Of course I do.”

  “Hm.” She smirked a know-it-all smirk and leaned back as if she had just won a bet. “Guess that makes you one of the good guys.”

  “Don’t get cocky. The world isn’t so black and white as that.”

  “You’re the one that tried to convince me there was only bad magic.”

  “I stand by that.”

  “Then explain to me how I made Tanner shoot himself in the butt just by thinking about it?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  She told him what she had experienced after she had bitten Tanner and escaped the car. The feelings flowing through her. The blood on her lips that seemed to burn away right before Tanner crashed the car.

  Lockman listened, his stomach curling in on itself as she related the story.

  “Sounds more like coincidence to me.”

  “What about the blood? It…evaporated. Like it was used up.”

  “There is that.”

  “So there. I stopped the bad guy with magic. You’re wrong. Magic can be used for good.”

  “Intentions mean nothing when it comes to mojo. Don’t you see what happened? If you are responsible for that misfire, it’s because you fueled the mojo with his blood and your anger.”

  “But—”

  “No buts.” He rubbed his temples, a headache burrowing through his brain. “Jesus, of all things, you had to be a sensitive.”

  “A what?”

  “Some mortals are more sensitive to mojo than others. Could be genetic. Which makes some sense since obviously the person I was before was also a sensitive.”

  “Are you telling me I could be a wizard or something?”

  “Don’t be stupid. This is not something you will ever try to repeat. People have a hard time turning away from that kind of power once they start. Even with the unfortunate side effect that you need to kill and torture to get continued results.”

  “No,” she said, her voice so damn earnest and naive Lockman wanted to shake her. “I’ll figure out another way to make it work. There has to be another way.”

  He grabbed her wrist and stared into her eyes. “No. Don’t screw around with this stuff. Ever. Understand?”

  She tried to pull her hand away. His grip held true. “You’re hurting me.”

  His face turned hot. He let go. “Promise me you’ll forget all about trying to do magic.”

  “Fine. Whatever.”

  But she didn’t sound the least bit convincing. The only way to put an end to her notions was to get her out of this world and back to a normal life. Get her back with her mom and her stepdad, safe in suburbia, make mojo nothing more than a vague memory for her, a half-remembered dream.

  Which meant he had to get some answers from Tanner.

  He stood.

  “Where you going?” Jessie asked.

  “They should be done patching up Tanner. I need to talk to him.” He strode down the porch steps and headed for the pole barn.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Lockman stepped into the pole barn through the side door and pulled the door shut behind him. Rand and Creed looked up from the worktable where Tanner lay naked on his stomach, arms at his sides as if waiting for a massage. Straps around his torso and legs held him pinned to the tabl
e. Crumpled, bloody wads of gauze lay scattered on the floor. A jagged gash zigzagged across Tanner’s right buttock, the stitch job one of the ugliest Lockman had ever seen.

  “You butcher him like that on purpose?”

  “Saw no point in being careful.” Creed studied Lockman. “You okay?”

  “Peachy.” He circled the table until he could see the shoulder where Lockman had clipped him. Another gnarled stitch job. “He been awake at all?”

  “I sedated him. But it should be easy enough to wake him now.”

  Lockman nodded. “I want first dibs.”

  Rand folded his arms. “You sure? You two were tight back in the day. You think you can stay objective?”

  “No problem. This piece of shit will sing. You just make sure Jessie can’t hear the screams.”

  Creed wiped his hands with a bloody rag. “We’ll take her uptown. There’s a good ice cream parlor there.”

  “I want Rand to take her. You can stay the hell away from her.”

  Rand looked back and forth between Creed and Lockman, but he didn’t ask questions. “All right.” He clapped Lockman on the back and left the barn.

  Creed threw the rag onto the workbench. “I’m not your enemy, Craig.”

  “You sure as hell aren’t a friend. I don’t know what to make of you.”

  “Look at it from my perspective. If you knew we had a chance to turn one of Dolan’s key men to our side, someone who supplied Dolan with ninety-percent of his mojo, you’d jump at the chance. Bringing you in essentially shut Dolan down. He was a nobody without…”

  “Me.”

  “But you understand, right?”

  “Would I take that man down? Yes. Would I use the very thing we’re supposed to be against to erase his memory and turn him into someone else? That’s crazy. You could have got the intel you needed traditionally.”

  “But we had this artifact. We saw a unique opportunity we couldn’t pass up.”

  “The science team was in on this, too?”