Darkest Hour

by Rob Cornell

  “Wait,” he said. “The oath does not change you. It only forces you to commit.”

  “It doesn’t matter. I will not swear to protect what I think needs to be destroyed.” She yanked her arm free. “Good luck, guys. I’m sure we’ll all meet again in hell.”

  She flung open the door and slammed it behind her, shaking the flimsy walls.

  A moment of silence passed as Lockman and Adam both stared at the door.

  “Did we really just kick Teresa off the team?”

  Adam dragged his massive hands down his face and groaned as if sick to his stomach. “I thought I could convince her.”

  “With or without us, she isn’t going to let this go. You know that, right?” Lockman turned to the ogre. “Knowing Teresa, she’s going to go after Jessie on her own.”

  Chapter Twenty

  The feel of silk against her naked skin drew a memory across Kate’s half-sleeping mind of Craig on the night he had proposed to her. She had put a new set of silk sheets on her bed. She hadn’t known he was going to ask her to marry him, but she sensed something special about that night. It would have been the same night Jessie was conceived. And the last time she would see Craig for fifteen years.

  Special wasn’t the right word at all.

  She opened her eyes and found herself in yet another room, though she had little doubt it belonged to the same building she’d spent most of her day in. This room actually had a window, and sunlight filtered in through a sheer set of peach curtains, and lay across the bed in soft, bright bars. Dust motes swirled in the shaft of light. A quaint antique dresser that could have come out of the Victorian era sat against the wall opposite the window. On the dresser, and reflected in its mirror, stood a music box with a ballerina posed in a frozen pirouette.

  Kate sat up. Her head swirled. Pain lanced her right arm. Blood had begun to seep through the bandages. They would need changing soon. Gritting her teeth, Kate snarled internally. Whenever she’d seen magic done with blood before, the blood disappeared and the wounds closed. Did these people even know what they were doing?

  Her cheeks burned.

  She tossed the sheet off and swung her legs over the edge of the bed. Her head throbbed and spun. She did her best to ignore it. But when she tried to stand and her vision grew hazy, she knew she could only push herself so far and eased back to the mattress. She hung her head and took deep, steady breaths.

  First things first. Get some damn clothes on. The obsession with these folks keeping her naked drove her nuts. Not that she didn’t understand the strategy behind it. Especially the time with the ghost. Keep her feeling vulnerable. Make her easy to manipulate, intimidate.

  No more.

  She wanted out of this house of a thousand rooms. Nothing they had done so far had brought her any closer to finding Jessie. That was the only reason she had cooperated with them on any level. Screw this. She had to find a way to escape.

  She laughed at herself.

  She couldn’t even stand up to get dressed and already she’s making plans to escape. They had her in some massive castle or something, who knew where? She didn’t stand a chance. She wasn’t leaving until they wanted her to—if they ever wanted her to.

  If Craig had been here, he would have figured out a way.

  But she wasn’t Craig. She was a nobody, powerless, caught in a world beyond her comprehension no matter how many times someone tried to explain it to her.

  The spinning in her head had eased off. She could lift her chin and look around a little more without feeling on the verge of passing out. She chuckled to herself again. Unless they kept the dresser stocked, Kate didn’t have any clothes to get into. She made a fist and thumped the mattress. The frustrated gesture cost her some pain, since she had used her cut arm to do it. The bandages felt wet against her skin. The stinging brought water to her eyes.

  “Let me out of here you bastards,” she shouted. She knew they could hear her. Probably see her too. If they didn’t have surveillance cameras installed in the room, they were using some kind of magic to observe her. She felt like a guest on some obscure reality show. “I’m done. I want out.”

  Silence.

  What had she expected? A voice over an intercom?

  She peered along the edge of the ceiling looking for cameras. Didn’t see anything, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there. She wanted to face off with someone, even if only through the lens of a camera. Tell them what she thought about their “team” and how she refused to be a part of it. She was tired of their hollow promises couched in their doom-and-gloom predictions of the world’s end.

  “Did you hear me?” Her voice buzzed in the corners of the room. “I want out.”

  She tried standing again, slowly this time, and got to her feet without too much wooziness. Once she felt steady enough, she shuffled to the dresser. She slid open the top drawer and huffed. About a week’s worth of bras and underwear lay neatly in the drawer.

  Since no one seemed interested in her tirade, she might as well get dressed.

  She helped herself to a matching set of undergarments and checked the second drawer, apparently the pants drawer. Seven pairs, from jeans, to khakis, to what looked like leather, sat folded and stacked inside. She checked a few tags—all her size. Even the leather. They knew her size. They did not know her style. She settled on a pair of khaki cargo pants.

  Drawer number three was full of basic t-shirts, a different color for each day of the week. Kate took a black t-shirt off the top.

  She wanted to yank on the clothes as quickly as possible, but she forced herself to take her time and avoid any more lightheadedness than necessary. The act of getting dressed made her feel more herself and a little stronger. When she had finished, she sat at the foot of the bed and looked around her again.

  The window, you fool.

  They had her so used to rooms without windows she had missed the significance of finally having one now. She wanted to leave. Climb out the window.

  Before she got her hopes too high, she stood and crossed over to take a look out. For all she knew, this room sat on the hundredth floor of this seemingly endless building. She pushed aside the curtains and peered through the glass. The view was astonishing. Kate had never seen such a wide open and unbroken expanse of land. Grassy plains seemed to stretch to infinity, the sky the only thing keeping it from going any further. Not even a mountain range blocked the horizon. Just a flat, straight line where grass met sky.

  She shifted from one side of the window to the other, trying every angle she could see, but the view didn’t change. There was nothing out there except plains. How was that possible? Where on Earth could they be?

  She recalled the view from Kress’s penthouse and realized it had been exactly the same. She had been so preoccupied with the meeting and finding out what they wanted with her, she hadn’t noticed the strangeness. But the only difference between these views was that Kate’s sat at ground level. Only about four feet stretched from the bottom of her window to the grass below. So she could easily climb out the window, even if she had to break the glass.

  But where would she go once out? There was nothing out there for hundreds of miles. Nowhere to even hide.

  She backed away from the window, shaking her head. Had to be some kind of illusion. More magical trickery. Before she could think on it any more, she heard the soft click of the bedroom door opening. She spun around. Too fast. Dizziness piled onto her. The floor tilted under her feet. She kept just enough control of herself to stagger to the bed and flop onto the mattress instead of hitting the floor.

  Mica hurried into the room and reached to help Kate.

  Kate swatted her away. “Didn’t you hear what I said?”

  Mica lifted her eyebrows. Her lips twisted to one side. Then she said, “Just got here, love. Haven’t heard a thing.”

  With her cheek mashed against the bedclothes, Kate smelled detergent, a gentle, spring like scent that reminded her of the endless grassy plains outside. “Don�
��t give me that. I know you guys have me monitored.”

  “‘Fraid you’ve got the wrong impression. This is your room. We don’t snoop on our people.”

  Kate clung to the sheets. The whole bed seemed to corkscrew through the air like a wing-clipped jet plane. Any minute, she’d crash. Closing her eyes only made the spinning worse. “What do you mean my room?”

  “It’s yours. Just like the clothes in the dresser, which you done a good job getting some on. You’re tougher than you look.” She scrunched her face. “But you’ve pushed too hard. Now you’re getting blood all over the sheets.”

  Kate rolled her eyes back—she didn’t dare move her head—and saw the red smears across the sheets by her arm. The bandages barely did a thing to stop the blood flow now. Her arm looked as though someone had wrapped it in strips of gauze dipped in red paint.

  “Let me help you get back to bed proper.” Mica bent to take Kate by the good arm.

  Kate kicked out, her bare heel connecting with Mica’s hip.

  Mica shuffled back and rubbed at the spot Kate had kicked. “Ow, there. What was that for?”

  “Stay away from me.”

  Mica tilted her head so that it lined up with Kate’s. “What in hell’d I do to you?”

  A laugh bubbled out from Kate’s very core. Once loose, she couldn’t pull back. Her whole body shook with laughter. Each new burst jolted the pain in her arm and threw another spin through her head, but she couldn’t stop herself. It took some doing to speak through the laughter. “Are you serious?”

  Mica stared at her, blank.

  A hot rage cut through the laughter, stopping it dead. “You fucking killed me,” Kate screamed.

  God, was she losing her mind? Her emotions spun almost as fast as her head. After the angry outburst, she felt her insides drop. The urge to cry overcame her. She clenched her teeth and squeezed the sheets in her fists, willing herself to keep the tears in. While she managed, a sob still coughed out between her lips.

  Mica raised a hand to touch Kate, thought better, and folded her hands across her belly instead. “Easy, love. Take deep breaths. I’ll get someone to mind that bandage.”

  “No.” Kate barely recognized her own voice. The taste of mucus filled her mouth. She hadn’t let any tears fall, but she was still crying, damn it. “I want out. All I want is to go home.”

  “No you don’t,” Mica said. “Ain’t nothing to go home to. This is your home now.”

  Each word made sense, yet Mica still sounded like she was talking gibberish. This can’t be her home. Why would she ever want to live with these people?

  “You’re right pissed about us kicking your bucket then tipping it back straight. I get that. But don’t let all that go to waste.”

  Kate looked at her arm again. Blood everywhere. It was hard to even see the bandages under it all. More blood rolled through the folds in the sheets. The fingers of that hand had turned numb, only the faintest tingle in the tips. Even if Mica held the door open for Kate and waved her on her merry way, Kate wouldn’t get far in this condition.

  After what they had done to her, they expected her to still help them? Live here? Mica made it sound like a privilege.

  The anger rose again and burned out the sobs clogging her chest. A new strength filled her. She pushed herself up to a sitting position and glared at Mica.

  The ballerina music box on the dresser tinked to life, slowly at first, so that each pinging note did not quite add up to a song. Then faster, until the song became recognizable—music from Swan Lake.

  Mica and Kate both turned toward the plinking music. The little ballerina twirled on top of the music box in an infinite pirouette.

  “Are you doing that, love?”

  “Me?” Kate’s heart pounded in her chest as if she had just quit after her three mile jog—a daily routine lost to her old life before Craig’s reentrance. The skin under all those bloody bandages prickled. “I can’t...”

  Only she could. All at once, she knew she could. She could do more than that. She could—

  The music box flew off the dresser as if kicked by an invisible foot. It sailed across the room and struck the wall. The box broke open at the hinge. The ballerina shattered. The pieces fell to the carpeted floor. The box played a last few, slow notes, then went silent.

  “Well bend me over and fuck me sideways,” Mica said. “It worked.”

  Kate turned to Mica. The dizziness was gone. She could stand. She did. “What did you do to me?”

  “We woke up your mojo, sweets.” Mica stared at the debris from the music box as if it had religious significance. “Be damned if we didn’t.”

  A sound pulsed in Kate’s ears, low and heavy, like a bass beat and a hum. Her heart continued knocking in her chest at a burst-worthy rate. She could smell her own sweat and blood. With only a thought, she pushed Mica up against the wall.

  The drywall cracked around where Mica’s shoulders hit. She looked like she was struggling to move away from the wall, but she couldn’t.

  Kate wouldn’t let her.

  “Better take it easy, love. Mr. Kress won’t like you hurting his fave pixie.”

  “I have power,” Kate said as both a question and a threat. All she had to do was think it, and she could hold this woman who had kicked a door off the hinges and across the room against the wall. “Now you’ll have to let me go.”

  “You don’t get it.” Mica’s voice sounded strained, as if she couldn’t breathe. “You ain’t a prisoner.”

  “Really? I can leave at any time?”

  Mica’s face had turned red. Her cheeks puffed. Her eyes bulged. She didn’t answer.

  Kate realized she was still “pushing.” She not only had Mica pinned, but she was crushing her chest. She tried to ease off, but found she couldn’t finesse this new power like that. As long as she kept pushing, she kept crushing. She had to stop all together.

  When she did, Mica sucked in a massive breath that sounded like a howl going down her throat. On the exhale, she lifted a fist to her mouth and lurched toward Kate. Kate was too distracted by thoughts about this power she had to recognize what Mica meant to do. Then Mica opened her hand, palm up, and blew sparkling dust into Kate’s face.

  Kate felt a rush go through her similar to the feel of going down the first hill on a rollercoaster. Her whole body seemed to lift right before she tipped backward. As she fell onto her back on the bed, she glimpsed her arm. The bandages had turned to ratted shreds and most of the blood had disappeared. A section of her wound was exposed. Some of the flesh had closed into a puckered scar.

  Before she passed out, she tried to counteract the effects of the pixie dust using her new power, but she had no idea how to target such a thing. Pushing Mica back had been a primal act, intuitive. This last magical effort, however, used what remained of her blood and zipped up the rest of the wound.

  She drifted off into pixie sleep with a canted smile on her face.

  I have power.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Scraps of the six hours they spent in the War Room trying to work out their next move ran through Lockman’s dreams. He might as well never have left the War Room, because he continued hashing things out in his sleep—if you could call it sleep. Since he had entered REM, technically he had slept. But when his alarm on his watch woke him at five the next morning, he didn’t feel the least bit rested.

  He woke disoriented, heart rate accelerated, because he didn’t immediately recognize his surroundings. The brick walls. The exposed wooden beams across the ceiling. The faint scent of earth. Then his memory caught up. Last night he had come down into Jessie’s room, looking through her things in search of some sign of where Gabriel might have gone. He had found a diary under her mattress and felt no qualms about sitting down to read it. Not when it might lead to getting her back and safe.

  He must have fallen asleep in her bed while reading it.

  There weren’t many entries. She apparently didn’t care much for, or lacked the disci
pline to, keep at it regularly. She barely mentioned Gabriel throughout. Most of the entries talked about how much she missed her mother. A few mentioned her old boyfriend, who had been possessed by a ghost and driven insane by the experience. She still thought about him and using her power to bring him out of his insanity like she had with Kate, who had been possessed by the same ghost.

  Not a single entry mentioned Lockman.

  He didn’t know what to make of that, if anything. He had thought their relationship strong, despite typical disagreements. But not even any of those disagreements had made it into her diary’s pages.

  He sat up and swung his legs off her bed. The diary plopped to the floor. It had still been in his lap. He picked it up and tucked it back in place under her mattress where it would wait for her return.

  He wanted to head straight back to the war room, but took long enough to grab a couple pieces of toast with a fried egg between them from the mess hall. The mess hall had a team of gnomes working it seemingly 24/7. For some reason, all their names ended with the letter z. Gentz, Stutz, Kurtz... Adam had said that it was simply a gnome thing. No one besides the gnomes knew the significance, if any.

  Lockman stuffed the last bite of his egg sandwich into his mouth as he entered the War Room. Adam was already there, staring at the fifty-inch touch screen mounted to one wall. The screen displayed a map of the US with known concentrations of vamp activity highlighted in a color that indicated severity. Green meant relatively average levels for those places that commonly had a vampire population—they were there, but you hardly knew it if you weren’t looking for them. Most of the highlights were this color. Yellow suggested heightened activity with potential to threaten local populations if left unchecked. About a half-dozen of these marked the map. It didn’t sound like much, but compared to before the vampire king’s rise and fall in New Orleans, this was far beyond normal. Especially the size of these highlighted areas, which meant large numbers as much as it did increased activity.