Darkest Hour

by Rob Cornell

  Chapter Two

  Teresa clicked on small flashlight, shined the beam in Jessie’s face.

  Jessie didn’t squint or try to block the light. She stared directly into the beam as if it wasn’t there. Her eyes had gone a solid black. The dark veins under her pale skin darkened. When Jessie scowled, she showed off the fangs behind her lips.

  “Got a problem, bitch?” Jess asked.

  “Damn right I do,” Teresa answered from the darkness behind the beam.

  A hot bolt shot through Lockman’s veins. They didn’t have time for petty infighting. “Cool it, both of you. In case you forgot, we’re trapped in a werewolf den with the obliterated remains of high ranking members of their pack.”

  The black in Jessie’s eyes faded, revealing her natural irises.

  Teresa swung the flashlight beam off Jessie’s face. She trained it on the doorway leading out to the club proper. More screams and shouts filtered in through the closed door. “Probably not a good idea trying to make our way through a pitch black strip club filled with panicking civilians.”

  “And brother wolves to these guys,” Adam’s gravel voice said from the dark.

  The flashlight beam danced around the room, illuminating the walls, the ceiling, the corners, the blown lights, the bloody remains, the poker table and the chairs around the table. The light did not, however, highlight another exit.

  “You’d think they would have a back way out,” Teresa said.

  “You think there’s a secret passage or something?” Jessie asked with a light buttering of sarcasm.

  “We have to go through the club,” Lockman said. “It’s the only way.”

  “Maybe…” Jessie started then trailed off.

  Lockman turned to where her voice had come from. His eyes had adjusted to the dark as best they could. With the flashlight’s indirect glow, he could make out her general shape. “What?”

  “Nothing. I don’t think it will work.”

  Teresa spotlighted Jessie with the flashlight, only this time aiming at her torso instead of her face. “Spit it out. More mojo?”

  Jessie shrugged a shoulder. “I’ve never done anything like it before. But he says… I mean, with all that blood I absorbed, I should have enough power to do it.”

  “Who says?” Teresa’s words carried a sharp edge.

  Jessie turned away, putting the flashlight beam at her back. “What do you suppose is beyond the back wall?”

  Lockman pulled up mental images of the club’s layout he gathered from the surveillance they’d done before the scheduled meeting. “The parking lot.”

  “So we could get out that way.”

  Teresa aimed the light at the wall in question. “Maybe you can conjure up some mojo and walk through walls, but we’re not so lucky.”

  “No. I can make it so we can all walk through.” Jessie stepped up to the wall and back into the flashlight beam. “Just keep the light there and…” She rested her palms against the wall. “Probably should back up a little.”

  The light bounced slightly as Teresa took Jessie’s advice.

  The sound of Adam’s large feet shuffling along the floor came next.

  Whatever you say. Lockman scooted back about five feet. He noticed the tension in his abs as if prepping to take a punch in the gut.

  Jessie whispered something under her breath. Her voice creaked a little. Almost didn’t sound like her.

  The air in the room turned instantly warm. The barometric pressure seemed to drop thirty degrees. Lockman’s ears popped. His eyes felt swollen in their sockets. When he tried to take a breath, what little air he held in his lungs was sucked out and he was left gasping silently as if a couple of tons had been dropped on his chest.

  A second later, a section of the wall around where Jessie touched it exploded outward. A flurry of drywall dust, fiberglass insulation, and shattered brick flew through the air and dusted the blacktop parking lot outside. A hole about the size of a standard doorway let in the moonlight.

  Only when he noticed the dry taste of desert air did Lockman realize he could breathe again. The pressure had normalized.

  Jessie turned around, the proud grin on her face marred by her vampiric features. Despite this, Lockman still caught a glimpse of teenage innocence in her expression, her smile similar to one she would wear just after winning the middle school spelling bee. But she would never get a chance at anything so mundane as a spelling bee.

  And it’s all my fault.

  “What in hell?” Teresa shouted.

  “A way out,” Jessie answered as if that were the dumbest question she’d heard all day.

  Lockman crossed the room to Jessie. He stared at her. “How?”

  Her smile faltered. She furled her brow. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

  “Like what?”

  “Like I’m a freak.”

  “Because you are.” Teresa stepped into the circle of moonlight let in through the hole and clicked off her flashlight. “And you have a lot of explaining to do.”

  “I don’t have to tell you anything.”

  “Want to bet?”

  “Enough,” Lockman barked. “We can finish this—”

  Something pounded against the door separating them from the club. Then again. The light through the hole in the wall made it possible to see the wood in the doorjamb splinter by the hinges. When the third bang hit the door, the door tore loose from the frame and spun inward off its hinges.

  Adam still stood close to the door and he had to throw an arm up to deflect the door when it came flying at him.

  A massive gray wolf, nearly twice the size as the four Jessie had turned to mush, stood in the doorway, teeth bared and a chainsaw growl in its throat. Lockman had assumed Marka was the pack leader, but this giant had to have outranked him.

  Before any of them had a chance to react, the beast bound into the room, headed straight for Lockman.

  Chapter Three

  Lockman reached behind him for his gun and grasped air, forgetting that he’d dropped the gun when the last wolf had tackled him. If this wolf hit him, he’d lose more than his gun. He had no more time to react, though, when the wolf launched into the air and sailed toward him.

  A shadow shot at the wolf and hit it in mid air hard enough to knock the animal off course. Instead of slamming into Lockman, the wolf crashed onto the poker table and the table collapsed underneath. The shadow turned out to be Jessie, who straddled the downed beast as if she meant to ride it. The wolf bucked her off and sent her careening into the wall. She left a dent in the wall before dropping to the floor.

  The wolf spun on Lockman. This time Teresa interrupted its next attack by emptying her weapon into its flank.

  The wolf’s gray fur seemed to absorb the bullets. Only a small trickle of blood through its coat showed evidence that it had taken fire. It swung its head around and growled at Teresa.

  Teresa ejected her magazine and smoothly slammed another home in her pistol. She opened fire again, this time aiming for the wolf’s face.

  The wolf leapt to one side, dodging the incoming gunfire, and continued to run a wide circle around the room to stay ahead of Teresa’s continued assault. Her second magazine clicked empty. Lockman couldn’t tell if any of her shots had tagged the wolf.

  By this point Jessie had found her feet. She charged across the room, fangs bared, hands in fists, looking nothing like the young girl on his doorstep a year and a half ago, claiming to be his daughter.

  The wolf met her halfway and the two collided in the center of the room so hard it sounded like two sacks of rocks thrown together.

  They hit the floor in a tangle. Jessie had her legs wrapped around the wolf with her ankles locked together. She grasped the wolf by its thick coat and hung tight. The wolf’s thrashing and writhing couldn’t get her to let go.

  “Get out of here,” Jessie shouted.

  A second later, Teresa clutched Lockman’s arm and pulled him toward the hole in the wall.

 
He shook free. “We can’t leave her.”

  “She blew up four others. She can handle herself against this one. But if anymore come and we’re still here, we’re all dead.”

  Adam skirted the wrestling pair on the floor and joined Lockman and Teresa. “She’s right.”

  Lockman had spent so much time trying to protect Jessie, it went against every instinct to leave her behind, even though she had shown herself as the most capable of the four of them to handle the wolves. But how many more could she handle? They would overrun her. She could not take on a whole pack no matter her vampiric strength or how much mojo she had gathered in the last few months.

  “Lockman,” Teresa shouted. She looked him hard in the eyes. “We’ll come back for her. Let’s get the van.”

  He took one last look at Jessie struggling on the floor—her bared fangs glistened in the moonlight coming through the hole—then he turned and ran out into the night. His heart pounded and his lungs burned by the time they reached the van they had rented for their time in Vegas.

  Teresa got behind the wheel. Adam climbed into the back of the van. Lockman joined him. They kept the sliding side door open while Teresa started the engine, backed out of the parking space, and raced toward the hole in the back wall.

  The tires shrieked when Teresa braked by the wall with the open side door facing the hole.

  Lockman hopped out before the vehicle had come to a complete stop. He stopped just outside the hole and shouted in to Jessie. “Let's go, Jess.”

  The wolf bucked and twisted. Jessie kept her grip and managed to stay out of reach when the wolf would try nipping at her. They had reached an awkward stalemate. The wolf couldn’t get on its feet or gain enough leverage to bite Jessie. Jessie, on the other hand, couldn’t let go or the wolf would have an easy opening to attack before she could get on her feet and move.

  What Lockman didn’t know, what he could have never fathomed despite having had the last six months to get used to his daughter being a vampire, was that Jessie had one last attack ready for when she needed it.

  She opened her mouth wide. So wide it looked like she had displaced her jaw. Then she sank her teeth into the wolf’s neck.

  Lockman cringed. He could have handled some more mojo, another splash of exploding wolf guts. Seeing her suck the blood out of the wolf? It was the last step toward admitting that she really was a vampire. His daughter would never look the same to him again.

  Jessie tore a chunk of the wolf’s throat out. She spat the flesh and blood-matted fur out and shoved her mouth back into the wound. She fed like a real vamp, as if she had been doing it all her life. Until now she had only gotten her blood from volunteer donors, and drank from the plastic bags they stored the blood in.

  The wolf’s struggles quickly weakened. A handful of seconds passed and the wolf finally fell still.

  Jessie unhooked her legs from around the wolf and rolled away. The moonlight illuminated her blood-smeared face. Her black eyes gleamed. Her dark veins visibly pulsed.

  She’s a monster.

  It should have been no revelation. He knew what she had become. A vampire. And vampires were monsters. Yet he had lived with this one for six months and only now had come to realize that crooked truth.

  She’s a monster.

  But she was still his daughter. Still talked like her. Laughed like her. Complained like her. Boasted like her. She wasn’t like the typical vampire. She was special. Different. The exception.

  She doesn’t look all that different right now.

  This wouldn’t even be an issue if he hadn’t failed to protect her in the first place. So judging her? Calling her a monster? He had no right.

  Jessie got to her feet. She stared at Lockman. The black in her eyes faded again. Her jaw had reset itself and she had her mouth closed, hiding her fangs. Besides the blood on her face and her throbbing veins, she looked almost normal.

  She must have seen the judgment in his eyes, as if he had called her a monster aloud to her face. Tears ran streaks through the blood on her cheeks.

  “I had to,” she said, voice quivering. “I couldn’t get the magic to work. So I had to.”

  Screams and hurried footsteps echoed from around the building. Some of the club goers had found their way out of the dark and now rushed to their cars. Engines revved to life. Tires squealed. Among these noises came a chorus of wolf howls.

  More wolves on the way.

  Jessie took a few tentative steps forward. “Dad?”

  She must have seen the horror on his face. No way he could hide it. He clenched his teeth and held out his hand. “Come on.”

  She let out a long breath and nodded. Took his hand. Together, they climbed into the van.

  Adam stared at Jessie, at her blood-masked face. His square jaw hung open. “Are you all right?”

  “It’s not her blood,” Lockman said.

  Teresa adjusted the rearview mirror for her own look at Jessie. Lockman saw her eyes in the reflection, watched them widen when she spotted Jessie.

  Lockman patted the back of the driver’s seat. “Let's go.”

  After righting the rearview mirror, Teresa gunned the engine and they tore out of the parking lot. Six wolves greeted them, standing in the center of the road. She hit the brakes so hard, Lockman had to brace himself to keep from flying out of his seat.

  “Now would be a good time for some of your explosive mojo,” Teresa said. She shoved the gearshift to reverse and stood on the gas. They raced straight backward.

  The wolves kept up with what looked like a casual saunter. No way they could outrun the wolves in this van. Especially not in reverse.

  “I can’t,” Jessie said. More tears cut clear lines through the blood.

  “What are you talking about?” Teresa snapped. “You’re covered with blood. Use it.”

  “I can’t,” Jessie repeated and absently wiped at her tears, smearing blood around her eyes and getting it all over her hand.

  Teresa worked the gearshift, the brakes, and the steering wheel and got the van swung around and roaring away from the half-dozen wolves. The van whined as Teresa tortured it with RPMs it was never meant to handle. The wolves stayed on their tail. They split, three coming up on the right, three on the left. Teresa had to have reached a good sixty miles-per-hour, but the wolves kept pace.

  One of the wolves sideswiped the van, slamming against the vehicle like a hockey player executing a body check. The van rocked on its shocks. The side of the van buckled a few inches from the impact.

  Another wolf on the opposite side made the same maneuver with equal results.

  Teresa shouted out as the wheel jerked in her hands and the van fishtailed.

  The wolves struck the van again, this time hard enough to shatter the window above the back door. A second later, a wolf jumped up, trying to get into the window. At the speed they traveled, the wolf didn’t have enough momentum to pull off the stunt. Luckily, the late hour and the seedy locale made for no traffic. But eventually they would run out of road. Teresa would be forced to slow to make a turn. The second they did, that wolf would be in there with them and likely followed by his friends. The wolves would treat themselves to a bloodbath.

  Lockman took Jessie by the elbow, lifted her chin, and made sure she looked him in the eyes. “What’s going on? Why won’t it work?”

  “I don’t know.”

  The van shook from another strike.

  Teresa hollered over her shoulder. “Lockman, I’ve got a hundred yards at most before I’m out of road.”

  He squeezed Jessie’s arm. “You’re sure?”

  She nodded. “I’m sorry.”

  The van took another hit, this one from behind.

  In the far back seat, Adam twisted to look out the rear window. “Aw, hell. Four more just joined the race.”

  Ten wolves against a couple of mortals, a vampire, and an ogre armed with only a shotgun and a single handgun.

  They were as good as dead.

  Chapter Four<
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  Heart racing, Jessie squeezed her eyes shut. The van swerved and Jessie felt it in her gut as if they drove on water and any minute they could sink.

  She dropped down to that dark part of her psyche that she had become quite familiar with in the last six months. Her secret that she had kept from everyone. The place she went to learn all she had about this power inside of her.

  You have to tell me what’s going on.

  For the longest moment, only silence answered. She sat alone in her mind. Everything going on outside of her was cut off. The van could crash into a brick wall and Jessie wouldn’t know about it until she rose out of mind and found herself in the twisted wreck, assuming she survived. She didn’t know what would happen if she died while in here. Would everything just suddenly stop?

  Maybe, a voice whispered in her ear. She could feel his breath on her ear lobe. She didn’t understand how that worked, how she could feel things in here even though she couldn’t see anything. She could smell things, too. She imagined this might be how a blind person would feel if they had somehow gotten caught in zero gravity.

  Maybe what? she asked the voice.

  Maybe everything would suddenly stop if your body died out there.

  Well, we might be about to find out, she said and spun the apparition of her body to face him so he couldn’t keep doing that creepy whispering in her ear. Again, it wasn’t that she’d be able to see him, but he did fill some sort of psychic space in her mind. So she couldn’t see him, but she could feel where he was. Sometimes she could catch a whiff of his body odor. He smelled like a warm corpse.

  Danger afoot?

  You know there is. Don’t play stupid, Gabriel. There’s no time for it.

  You have about twenty seconds before Ms. Bitch crashes the car or is forced to slow down. He sounded almost chipper. Especially when he got the chance to use his nickname for Teresa. He had silly little names for all the people in Jessie’s life. He thought he was a lot funnier than he really was.

  Then that’s how long you’ve got to tell me why my magic isn’t working.