Darkest Hour

by Rob Cornell

  Jessie screamed. And for the first time since the botched “exorcism,” it sounded like Jessie. She threw her head back, wrapped her arms around herself as if suddenly cinched into a straight jacket. Tears streamed from her eyes. Her whole body shook. To Lockman it looked like something was trying to tear her apart from the inside. Maybe that’s exactly what was happening.

  Despite the quivering pain inside of him, the oppressive fatigue that weighed on him like an extra dose of gravity, Lockman pushed himself up with his good arm until he leaned on that arm like a tire jack. He rocked on his hip and rolled to a kneeling position, facing his struggling daughter.

  “Jess,” he called.

  Her eyes rolled back into her head. When she tilted down her chin, she stared blankly through the whites of her eyes.

  Lockman couldn’t fathom the turmoil roiling inside of her. He reached out to her, though his hand came a foot short of touching her. He felt so damn helpless. There had to be something he could do.

  Jessie jerked once, twice, a third time. Then she blinked and her eyes looked straight again. Her face pinched as if in pain, but when she spoke her voice was filled with wonder. “She is so strong.”

  Lockman knew right away she meant Kate. “I know.”

  But he realized he didn’t really know how strong when Jessie’s skin began to smoke.

  Jessie’s eyes widened. “Dad?”

  With the smoke soon came the smell of cooking flesh. Tiny bubbles began to rise on Jessie’s face like living acne. The bubbles would pop and leave behind flaring red circles. Pieces of skin began to flake and peel and turn to gray ash.

  It took a precious second from Lockman’s mind to catch up with what he was seeing. He glanced up at the sun as if surprised to find it there. Then his brain kicked into gear. The sun.

  Oh, god, the sun.

  Ignoring the thrash of pain in his left arm as it dangled at his side, Lockman forced himself to his feet. What felt like a blow from a medieval mace struck him in the gut. Definitely something bleeding in there. Have to move through it. Sequester the pain, soldier. Command the body. You have a life you can still save.

  He reached down to Jessie. “Quick.”

  The flesh on her arms and face darkened, turning the color of soot. It’s what they called a vamp tan back in the Agency days. The color change signified the fire to come. And sure enough, while Jessie took hold of Lockman’s hand, allowing him to pull her to her feet, her sun-exposed skin burst into flames.

  Jessie screamed with the metallic edge common to vamps, an ear gouging, skin-crawling sound that almost caused Lockman to instinctively shove her away. He fought the urge and instead threw her over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry.

  It felt like carrying a burning effigy. The flames caught on Lockman’s shirt and burned his skin. He had already moved past pain’s reach, though. He operated like a pre-programmed machine.

  He ran.

  His broken left arm swung and bounced against him.

  He ran.

  The flames consuming Jessie burned the side of his neck, the shoulder he carried her on, and the arm he had wrapped around her waist.

  He ran.

  Chapter Forty-Three

  He ran for the entrance to the nearest building. The science building.

  Jessie screamed the whole way, occasionally crying out Mom and Dad and It hurts and Make it stop.

  The door to the science building was only forty or so yards away. But he had to go around the building to reach it, and for the thirty yards the entrance was out of sight, he didn’t know if he could make it. It felt like one of those dreams of being chased and no matter how hard he ran, he never seemed to cover any ground.

  When he kicked open the door and hefted Jessie through the threshold, his body quit, like a puppet with the strings neatly snipped. He collapsed to the floor with just enough presence of mind to shift Jessie off his shoulder so he wouldn’t land on top of her.

  She rolled away from him as limp as a corpse, and just as quietly.

  He fell onto his bad arm, and with his driving will depleted, the pain had free reign to chew into him like a piranha caught up his sleeve. He bellowed. His eyes watered as stars flashed across his vision. Meanwhile, another piranha fed on his guts. He jerked his knees up and curled into a ball. On his growing list of ills, the burns from his face down to his arm barely registered. He wanted to check on Jessie, but the pain debilitated him. He could only lay there and sip air between swells of agony.

  The closing darkness prodded the last reserve of his strength. He refused to drift off before he knew if Jessie was okay. The reserve didn’t last long. The best he could manage was rolling onto his back. This turned out to be enough.

  Jessie knelt at his side. She gazed down at him with concern in her eyes—and god damn if they weren’t actually her eyes again. Black, crusty burns marred most of her face, but parts of her skin had already started to heal. She rested a hand on Lockman’s forehead and sobbed. “Oh, Dad, I’m so sorry. I couldn’t fight him. I tried, but I couldn’t.”

  Lockman reached up and took her hand, squeezed hard. “It wasn’t your fault.” He had to swallow a lump in his throat before he could ask, “Your mother?”

  Jessie closed her eyes. “She’s...” Pieces of blackened skin flaked off, leaving behind fresh patches of pinkish flesh, but the pink quickly turned to the natural vampire gray. “She’s inside of me. She’s holding...” Her lips pursed as if a bad taste filled her mouth. “...him back. Somehow she’s keeping him trapped.”

  “Can she push him out?”

  After a pause, Jessie said, “She would have to drag him out.”

  Lockman realized Kate was speaking to Jessie from within and could hear him as well. So he addressed her directly. “Then do it, Kate. Pull him out of there.”

  Jessie’s eyes fluttered open. The sorrow in them speared Lockman through the heart. “Where would she take him?”

  “Away from you.”

  “Set his spirit free into the world? She can’t hold onto him forever.”

  Lockman let out a long, slow breath. His insides writhed. His head spun. “If she...loses her grip on him?”

  “He’ll take over again. Mom is way strong, but he’s soaked up so much power from all the other souls inside me. It was him all along. Even before he took over. My magical strength. The resistance to silver. The day walking.” A tear ran off the tip of her nose. “I thought he had given those things to me. But I’m nothing without him. I’m just a shell.”

  “Stop that,” Lockman growled. Not for the first time, he wished Gabriel had a physical form that Lockman could physically abuse. “You have your own power. You’re the Chosen One.”

  She snorted and offered a bitter smile. “You never really believed that crap.”

  “Doesn’t matter what I believe. It’s what I know. And I know you are special, you are strong. Just like your mom.”

  Her eyes went wide. She shook her head. “Oh, Dad, you have no idea. If you could feel what I feel right now, know what she’s doing. I thought you were the tough one in the family. Mom’s got us all beat.”

  It hurt, but Lockman laughed. “Why do you think I fell in love with her?”

  Jessie’s smile lingered for a quiet moment, then slowly faded. Much of the burnt skin on her face had dropped away, leaving behind fleshy pink swirls among the fully healed gray. “She’s slipping.”

  So this was it. The last of those he cared for—loved—taken from him, leaving him with only the comfort of knowing he wouldn’t be long in joining them. Gabriel had won. And Lockman could trace the bastard’s victory all the way back to a foolish decision Lockman had made, when he had the chance to destroy the artifact that carried Gabriel’s soul, he chose to keep it instead, thinking he could somehow use it to protect them.

  A small jolt started Lockman’s heart racing.

  The artifact.

  Weren’t they in the science building? Hadn’t some of the scientists taken up the task of st
udying that artifact? Which meant the thing was here somewhere.

  Lockman squeezed Jessie’s hand. “You need to help your mom hang on a little longer.”

  Jessie tilted her head, clearly baffled. “I can’t—”

  “Help me up,” he said evenly, “then help your mom. You have power, Jessie. There’s no time for doubts. Just do as I say.”

  She hesitated a second more, lips parted as if ready to protest. Then she set her jaw, nodded, and slid her arms under him. She lifted him as easily as cradling an infant.

  As Jessie eased Lockman onto his feet, pain rattled through him from a six different directions, the bulk of it all pulsing out from his abdomen. His knees went weak and he almost collapsed, but Jessie held him steady until he could stand on his own. She held him a few seconds longer to be sure.

  He gave a nod. Jessie let go and stood back.

  “I don’t know how I can help her,” she said.

  “The same way she helped you.” He didn’t know if she understood that, wasn’t sure he even did. It sounded right. A marvelous connection existed between them, something beyond the mortal plane. A breed of mojo Lockman had never seen before, but could not deny now. They would not need to shed blood to fuel that power.

  Whether she understood or not, Jessie seemed to take his words to heart. She knelt on the floor, rested her hands on her thighs, and closed her eyes.

  Lockman left her to it. He lurched into the maze of shelves and cubicles that divided up the science building into its separate “departments.” He kept one hand pressed against his side where it felt like most of his internal pain came from, as if holding his organs in place. It eased the pain a fraction. His natural bullheadedness carried him the rest of the way.

  Thankfully, he didn’t have to go far. He found a walled off section with metal shelves teeming with old knick-knacks and doo-dads, a mojo researcher’s wet dream made all the more sexy by the layers of dust and rust on most the items. The memory artifact sat in the center of a workbench with a giant magnifying glass on an adjustable arm bolted to one edge. The magnifying glass was situated so that someone standing at the bench would get a blown-up view of the top of the cube-shaped relic and the intricate carvings on its surface.

  Lockman peered down through the glass at this thing that had played such a major role in his very existence. If not for this artifact, Craig Lockman would not exist. Yet he hated the thing for all the misery it had brought. The thought of touching it made his palms itchy, as if the skin wanted to crawl off. He wondered if the scientists had discovered anything new about it, or if they had come to the same conclusions as the Agency—that while they didn’t know who (or what) had made it, or exactly what its initial purpose was, they could still utilize it, another tool in the war against supernatural terrorism.

  He lost track of how long he let the wicked device entrance him, but the trance broke when he heard Jessie scream.

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Jessie lay on the floor, her back arched so that she balanced on her heels and the back of her head in a horrifying imitation of the portal arch out back. Her mouth was stretched wide as if in mid-scream, but she made no sound. She scrabbled at the floor with her fingernails.

  The edges of the cube-shaped artifact dug against Lockman’s fingers and palm as he clutched it in one hand. He hobbled to Jessie’s side and dropped to the floor with her. In his hurry to get back to her after hearing her scream, Lockman had forgotten the damage to his body. His body, however, had not. Nausea bubbled in his gut and sent bile up his throat. He swallowed it down, burning like acid all the way, and grabbed Jessie’s arm.

  “She can pull him into this,” he shouted as if competing to be heard, though the only sound came from Jessie’s fingernails scrapping the floor. He held up the cube. “Kate, put him in this.”

  He didn’t know what else to do. Should he bleed onto the artifact? He supposed under normal circumstances—normal?—that was how you would activate it. This wasn’t Lockman’s area of expertise. His job had involved confiscating the dangerous relics. He sure as hell didn’t use them.

  He was still coughing up some blood. He could spit on the—

  A flash of brilliant white exploded from Jessie’s body, forcing Lockman to clamp his eyes shut. Even then, he could see the light. Feel it, too, like the glow from a heat lamp. The cube in his hand grew hot. His hand felt as though he clung to a brand fresh from the flame, but he couldn’t get himself to let go. What was another source of pain among the many that harried him already anyway?

  The bright glow couldn’t have lasted longer than twenty seconds, probably less. As the light faded, so did the heat from the artifact. By the time Lockman could open his eyes again without fear of going blind, whatever alloy made up the artifact had turned as cool as an untouched door knob.

  Jessie no longer arched her back. She lay still, staring at the ceiling, chest gently rising and falling with even breaths.

  The air carried the scent of a passed rain shower, enough so that Lockman expected to find the floor wet, but everything was dry. The smell brought back a vivid sense memory, an afternoon where he and Kate had gone hiking in the woods and got caught in the rain. The rain had been one of those humid summer showers. They had moved off the trail and made love in what turned out to be a bed of poison oak. Both of them suffered rashes in uncomfortable locations for a week afterward. But that moment had been worth every itch.

  Lockman gazed down at the artifact still clutched in his hand. At once he knew—not guessed, knew—Kate had succeeded in pulling Gabriel inside and that the smell in the air was a message left for Lockman.

  He also suspected something else, and Jessie confirmed it when she said, “She’ll have to stay with him.”

  Lockman’s throat narrowed and his mouth filled with the taste of tears. “Why?”

  “He’s too powerful,” Jessie said. “The artifact can hold him, but only if Mom stays inside to help.”

  “We don’t know that for sure.”

  Jessie rolled onto her side to face Lockman. “Mom does.”

  “You can still...talk to her?”

  Jessie nodded.

  Lockman eased down onto his side, facing Jessie. He set the artifact down between them at eye level. His eyes watered. His nose ran. All the pains in his body felt like pin-pricks compared to the pain in his soul.

  “There’s one more thing,” Jessie said, voice deep and heavy. “She wants us to destroy it.”

  A sob belted loose from Lockman’s throat. The tears streamed freely now. “Of course she does.”

  “She says she’s counting on you to do the right thing.” Jessie openly cried now, too. “And that she forgives you. And loves you. Oh, Dad...”

  As Lockman and Jessie wept together, a thuwmping sound came from outside and slowly swelled in volume until the source was unmistakable.

  Chopper, Lockman thought. We’ve got visitors.

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Lockman had spent the last fumes of his strength retrieving the artifact. Whoever the visitors were, welcome or not, Lockman couldn’t go out to greet them. With the sun still up, neither could Jessie. So they waited for the newcomers to find them.

  It didn’t take long.

  Seeing a famous movie star march through the door in fatigues with an M16 slung over his shoulder should have shocked the hell out of Lockman. In a way, however, Romeo Kress’s arrival made perfect sense. Lockman offered him a weak salute from the floor.

  Jessie reacted with similar calm. If Lockman had to guess, Kate probably filled her in on how Kress fit into things. She sat up and scooted further away from the door to avoid the incoming swatch of light, taking the cube, Lockman noticed, along with her, cradling it in her lap protectively.

  Behind Kress came a petite woman with jet black hair and a white streak down the center. She carried a matching rifle to Kress’s and wore an expression that said I’m a badass and I know it as clear as if she’d painted the words on her face. She nudged her
way up beside Kress and surveyed Lockman and Jessie as clinically as an oncologist might study the X-ray of a tumor. The gal seemed like a ball of laughs.

  “They’re alive,” she said as if this went against every belief in her soul.

  “Sorry to disappoint,” Lockman said. His voice sounded wet to him, thanks to that trickle of blood at the back of his throat.

  “Not at all,” Kress said, all his attention focused on Jessie. A half-grin sprung on his lips, giving him a dimple in one cheek. His eyes held all the wonder of a child at his first magic show. “Are you unharmed?”

  Jessie made the ucht sound of a nonplussed teen girl. “What a stupid question.”

  Kress frowned. “Of course. I apologize.”

  “I know what you did to my mother,” Jessie said.

  Without skipping a beat, Kress came back with, “All in the name of protecting you.”

  Those words sounded too sickeningly familiar to Lockman. It was that kind of reasoning that had led him to this point in his life. It didn’t work. He had to learn that the hard way. “What do you want?”

  For the first time since he had come through the door, Kress’s eyes turned away from Jessie. “Mr. Lockman. It’s good to finally meet you.”

  “Outside of your flicks, I don’t know you. You sure as hell don’t know me.”

  “You’re right. Forgive me.” The man had the art of the insincere apology down pat. “I know of you. And I knew your former boss, Victor Creed.”

  Based on what Kate had said about this guy, he had to be well connected in the supernatural...community for lack of a better term. That he knew Creed made sense in that regard. It still surprised him. Creed never mentioned knowing a famous actor with a team of supernaturals all living in an underground complex somewhere between dimensions.

  “You didn’t answer my question,” Lockman said.

  “I would like the two of you to come with me. You obviously need medical attention. And Jessie is especially revered among my people. We want to contribute to her safety.”