Darkest Hour

by Rob Cornell

  She thought back to what had happened before she found herself in this place and remembered lying on the marble floor in the center of the pentagram. Remembered the feel of her blood being drawn out of the cut in her arm and into the grooves of the engraving. The blood flowed out of her so quickly she hadn’t had a chance to fight.

  Then she recalled Wertz’s words right before she fell unconscious.

  Just lay there and die.

  So was she dead? Or was this some place in between?

  A splash of lava shot from the crevice below and engulfed Kate.

  While the angels and demons passed through her with no more substance than a breeze, the lava burned. The liquid rock weighed her down. The spray fell back toward the Earth and she fell with it, spatters of hot liquid clinging to her naked skin, searing her while not marring her.

  Like molten fingers, the lava drew her down into the crack. The lava had cooled and lost its light. She continued to plummet, down so deep that all turned pitch black. She couldn’t see. The dominant sensation that of falling. The air snatched out of her lungs.

  Something cold touched her chest.

  A second later, electric pain shot through her whole body, emanating from whatever touched her in the dark. At some point she had stopped falling. She felt hard, smooth ground against her back.

  The shock came again.

  Her body convulsed.

  A flash of light touched her eyes, then went immediately dark again.

  A third shock.

  Her nerves felt as if an army of rats gnawed on every inch.

  Light touched her eyes again. A couple flickers. Then gone.

  A frantic male voice came through the dark with a slight squeak to it. “God damn it. Why isn’t she waking up?”

  “Told you, you waited too long, ya crank.” This was a woman’s voice, the accent familiar but still strange. “Go her one more.”

  “All right. Charging, charging...clear!”

  Another pulse of electric agony cut through Kate, making her feel as if she might burst out of her skin. The smell in her nose reminded her of this time from her childhood, when her cat had peed on an electrical cord. The spark had left a burn mark on the carpet. The next day, little Katie didn’t have a pet cat anymore.

  This last jolt shook something inside of Kate. Afterwards she felt a hard knock in her chest as if her heart had punched her breastbone. Her lungs took in air all in a rush as if they hadn’t had any to start with.

  As her eyes fluttered open, Kate realized all at once that her lungs hadn’t had any air. And that knock in her chest hadn’t been a punch, but the first beat after a long break. She had died. They had killed her.

  And now they had brought her back to life.

  Mica and Wertz knelt on either side of her, staring with wide and worried eyes. Wertz held a pair of defibrillator paddles that looked like medieval shields in his small hands. Between the gnome and the pixie’s heads, Kate had a view of the mural. It looked different. Had more angels joined the fray? Had some of the demons been crawling back into the crevice before? Obviously, no one had repainted the thing. She couldn’t have been dead that long. She couldn’t pass the seeming changes off as her imagination, though. Maybe they had moved her to a different room.

  While this passed through her mind in jagged flashes, she gasped and coughed. Her heart pounded so hard it hurt. Her tongue felt like an obstruction in her mouth. She couldn’t get enough air in and out of her lungs fast enough. Lying on her back made it all the harder, so she tried to roll on her side.

  Her muscles spasmed. All she managed was to jerk her body up and then roll right back onto her back.

  “Easy, love,” Mica said. “I’ll help.” She gently lifted one of Kate’s shoulders and tipped her onto her side.

  Breathing came easier. Kate closed her eyes and did nothing else for a while. She didn’t know how much time passed like that and didn’t care. While she lay there, she felt Wertz bandage and tape up her arm. Mica stroked Kate’s back. Everyone real nice to her now after they had killed her.

  She didn’t have the strength to question them about what the hell they were doing to her. But when she got the chance, she would make sure to rail not only at Mini-Man and Skunk Girl, she would give hell to the movie star who had stood by watching it all happen.

  Just as she made this promise to herself, Romeo Kress’s voice oozed in Kate’s ear like audio caramel. “Rest easy, Kate. I know you have many questions and probably a few choice words.”

  Kate tried to say, “You better believe it.” Instead, it sounded more like, “Rooerrveught.”

  “It would have been much harder to convince you to go through this part of ritual if we’d told you about it in advance. Trust me when I tell you the worst is over, though. You have given blood to the Great Maker and, most importantly, crossed the Great Threshold and come back again.”

  If Kress hadn’t addressed her personally, Kate might have mistaken his diatribe as lines from one of his movies. Great Maker? Great Threshold? What did any of this have to do with finding Jessie?

  She felt Kress put a calloused hand on her bare arm. “We have awakened the dormant power within you, Kate. The very same power you passed onto your daughter. The power you can now use to find her.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  “It feels good, doesn’t it?”

  The girl still wouldn’t speak to him. A shame, after all the wonderful conversations they had had in the past. All the things he had taught her, like a father really. And wasn’t that partially true? He was her father. After all, those were his genes passed down to her. It mattered not one whit that another soul had been joyriding in his body at the time of conception.

  Gabriel tilted his head back, putting his face to the sunlight streaming through the treetops. A strange sensation, having cold vampire skin yet feeling warmth from the sun. The flesh would not give up its chill any more than the sun would surrender its heat. Nature meeting the unnatural.

  A laugh bubbled through him, from his narrow chest, through his slender throat, out his dainty mouth. Well, maybe not dainty with the fangs and all. Still, this girl’s body held such wonder for Gabriel to explore. Nothing perverted or sexual. He had no time or interest for that. He ran a hand along the skin of his arm. The arm still held scars from its mortal days. Slices across the inner arm, signs of a troubled teen crying out for help by cutting herself. At least, that’s what it would look like to the common mortal. Gabriel knew better. The girl had told him about her early experiments with magic.

  How cute.

  Gabriel inhaled deeply through his nose—and it was his now, no matter what Lockman wanted to believe, the fool. A vampire’s sense of smell rivaled that of a bloodhound, yet it picked up on different things. Pheromones. Emotion. Even ten miles out from the compound, Gabriel could smell the fear building there. Obviously, word had gotten out about Gabriel’s triumph. Their precious Chosen One had turned against them.

  “No arguments?” he asked aloud. “No insistence that your daddy will stop me and save you? No threats of your own to offer?”

  The girl lay dormant within him like an old memory half-forgotten.

  Sad.

  He supposed the process of his take over might have disabled her soul’s presence somehow. After all, there were a million other souls and more within this body, all deposited by what those buffoons referred to as the Memory Artifact. These were more than mere memories. Even soul wasn’t quite the right word.

  The wind carried a change in the scent coming from the compound. They still feared, but a hint of confidence twined with that fear. They still thought they were important, had some influence over the course of events to come.

  Fools.

  Reverie time had come to a close. Gabriel saluted in the direction of the compound, bidding them adieu, and continued his run toward the smell of civilization—exhaust, fryer oil, overflowing trash bins, the yummy fragrances of mortal men, soon to be extinct, except for those, like Gab
riel, who would thrive in the new world.

  You’re not a mortal, dumb shit.

  The girl. She had spoken.

  Gabriel smiled as he ran, trees whizzing by in brown and green blurs. Glad to have you back, my dear. And quite right. I forgot that I’m a vampire now.

  Don’t get used to it. Her soul’s projected voice tickled like a feather at the back of the brain. You’re not staying for long.

  There was the fiery little girl Gabriel had grown so fond of, even though her impotent threats had become so predictable. She had no idea, the poor thing. He was not only staying long.

  He was staying forever.

  Chapter Nineteen

  “What the hell is this about?” Teresa asked the second Adam entered the conference room.

  The ogre had set up the meeting, just the three of them. The conference room was one of a few they had available outside of their main war room where most of the planning happened. A simple set up—long table with chairs around the perimeter and a magnetic whiteboard mounted to the wall. Nothing else.

  “You want to hold a meeting when I’ve got a team ready—”

  “Ready for what?” Lockman asked.

  She hadn’t seen him come in behind the big ogre and started at the sound of his voice. He skirted Adam so she could see him now, crossed his arms, and waited for an answer.

  Fire glared in Teresa’s eyes. She glared at Adam. “You let him out?”

  “We can’t just throw each other in a cell every time we have a disagreement.”

  “Disagreement? He unleashed Gabriel into the world. Maybe you don’t understand. You never had to face that man. Gabriel Dolan is responsible for some of the most destructive supernatural terrorism...ever.” Her face turned red. The top of her skull could pop off at any minute. She turned on Lockman and pointed. “You should have known better.”

  Lockman opened his mouth to say something, but Adam beat him to it, with a voice that boomed so loud it sounded like it could crack the walls. “Bickering isn’t going to stop him.”

  Teresa jerked back. Her angry gaze turned a shade fearful.

  “Sending a team out there isn’t going to accomplish anything,” Lockman said in the following silence. “If Gabriel has full grasp of Jessie’s power, one team won’t do a damn thing. And that’s assuming they can track him in the first place.”

  Teresa’s nostrils flared, but she said nothing.

  “I recognize the danger,” Adam said. “Even if I haven’t seen it firsthand. But I’m afraid you are not looking at the larger picture.”

  “So you’re on his side,” she said, lifting an eyebrow and crossing her arms.

  “We are all on the same side.” Adam had to push the words through his clenched teeth. “Everyone in this room wants Gabriel Dolan stopped. Everyone here signed up for the fight against the vampires. Everyone here wants to see the Chosen One achieve her destiny.”

  Both of Teresa’s eyebrows lifted. She looked at Adam as if he had accused her of indulging in ogre porn. “You had me up until the Chosen One crap.”

  “You wish harm on Jessie?”

  The corners of her eyes tightened. “I didn’t say that.”

  Lockman stepped forward. “You don’t have to. We all know you’ve wanted her dead from the start. Now you think you’ve got your go-ahead.”

  “She’s not Jessie anymore, she’s Gabriel. Thanks to you. And he’s a target we need to take out as quickly as possible.”

  Adam shifted so he stood between Lockman and Teresa like a barricade. He put his back to Lockman and addressed Teresa. “Jessie is still with him. Inside.”

  “How can you be sure of that? How do you know the priest didn’t exorcise the wrong soul?”

  A slimy chill rolled down Lockman’s back. That had never occurred to him. He felt shaky. The fresh plastic smell of the unused furniture in the conference room turned his stomach. Could he have had Jess banished into nothingness like he had hoped to do to Gabriel?

  “That is extremely unlikely,” Adam said. He sounded confident enough, but it didn’t comfort Lockman much. “The ritual the father was attempting was archaic and inappropriate. An exorcism was no more useful in that situation than pouring fruit juice into your car’s gas tank.”

  “Trick like that could do a lot of damage to an engine, though.”

  Adam sighed. “An inapt analogy, then.”

  Lockman caught the loophole in Adam’s reasoning before Teresa. “If it were that harmless, then how did Gabriel get control? The ritual did something.”

  “I never said it was harmless. I said inappropriate.”

  “You’re splitting hairs.”

  “What I’m saying is that you cannot exorcise a mortal soul. And as demonic as Gabriel might be, his is still a mortal soul.”

  Teresa paced around the far end of the conference table, kicked the chair at the head, and sent it rolling until it bumped into the wall. “We’re wasting time talking about this. He is getting further away.”

  “We are not wasting time,” Adam said. “We are clarifying our mission. We’ve let this issue fester too long, and now, faced with this situation, we can’t afford to let it go any longer. Because we will face Gabriel, and when that time comes, we will have to decide how to handle him.”

  “Simple,” Teresa said. “We kill him.”

  “And sacrifice Jessie,” Lockman said. Jesus, the woman would never change her mind. He hoped Adam’s idea went further than trapping her in a conference room and talking her to death.

  Teresa stood straight, chin up. “For the greater good.”

  “There,” Adam shouted, cutting Lockman off from telling Teresa just how pious she sounded. “That is what you are missing, Teresa.”

  She gave him that look again that said What did you just call me?

  “The greater good,” Adam repeated. “Sacrificing Jessie does not serve the greater good. Losing the Chosen One threatens the greater good.”

  “Only if we buy she’s been chosen for anything.”

  Adam hung his head. Then he looked back at Lockman. “You see? There remains common ground between you after all.”

  Teresa came around the table to Adam and rested a hand on his arm. Her voice softened for the first time in...over a year it seemed to Lockman.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t mean to insult your people. I certainly don’t want to sully Marty’s memory. But no one can even say what Jessie’s exact role is in your prophecy.”

  “She is to bring an end to the vampire reign.”

  “Yes, but how? One little girl, even a vampire girl with all the mojo in the world can’t stop a vampire army alone.”

  “Not alone. No. But she’s only alone if we abandon her.” He leaned down, bringing his eye-level closer to Teresa’s. “Or turn against her.”

  For an instant, Teresa almost looked convinced. Those mean lines around her eyes smoothed out. Lockman thought he recognized his former lover come back from the bitterness that had warped her. As if catching herself, she turned her face away for a moment. When she turned back, the lines had returned, deeper even. “I’m not turning against anyone. I’m doing what I was trained to do. What I joined you to do. What we assembled our own forces to do.”

  Lockman dropped his shoulders. He knew this wouldn’t work. The Teresa from before her sister was turned into a vampire then killed was long gone. And the grudge she held against Jessie for not suffering the same—and in Teresa’s eyes, appropriate—fate would stick to her like an inoperable tumor.

  Only Adam had one last trick up his sleeve—or in his back pocket, since the ogre never wore shirts with sleeves.

  “If you can’t swear an oath to protect the Chosen One, you can no longer serve this mission.”

  Lockman’s and Teresa’s eyes went wide in unison. Judging from how much of the plastic air touched his tongue, his jaw probably had dropped as wide as well.

  Her brow creased. “What are you talking about? You can’t...you can’t.”


  Adam stepped back, aligning himself shoulder-to-shoulder with Lockman. “We started this with an alliance of four. Only three remain here to vote. If you cannot swear an oath to protect the Chosen One, I vote for your expulsion from this alliance.”

  The ogre turned to Lockman. “How do you vote?”

  Lockman closed his gaping mouth. He wished Adam had filled him in on this part of his plan. A little warning would have been nice. He looked at Adam. He looked at Teresa. “Can you swear an oath?”

  Her lip curled. Her eyes bulged as she glared at Adam. “This is ridiculous. Fine. I swear.”

  Adam shook his head. “We demand the most binding of oaths.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “A sacred blood oath,” Adam said. “One that will bind you to your promise until death.”

  “You mean some kind of mojo. Something that will keep me from being able to hurt her even against my will.”

  Lockman felt as blown away by all this as Teresa sounded. The seriousness in Adam’s tone gave him chills.

  “No,” Adam said. “When you make a blood oath in the tradition of the Gulogich, the oath becomes your will.”

  “So then it’s magical brainwashing?”

  “Call it what you like, I can see no other way. Your rage will not let you see the Chosen One’s importance—”

  “My rage?”

  “—so you must leave or take the oath.”

  “This isn’t rage.” Teresa pounded a fist against her chest. Her eyes glistened in the light from the bare fluorescent bulbs mounted to the ceiling. “This is passion for doing what’s right. Everyone here’s become so wrapped up in their personal agendas, they’ve lost sight of the bigger picture.”

  Lockman snorted. “We could say the same about you.”

  “So you’ll force me to agree with you,” she said to Adam. “Make me suffer some ritual to work as your puppet? Fuck that. You don’t have to vote. I’m out of here.” She shoved her way between Lockman and Adam, but Adam grabbed her by the arm.