Darker Things (The Lockman Chronicles #1)

by Rob Cornell

  VanDemere lifted Kate’s chin, trying to look as noble as possible while bound. “Pick me, Craig. If they have to kill one of us, you know it has to be me.”

  * * *

  At her mother’s words, Jessie screamed through her own gag. She knelt on the floor where the guy in the fatigues had pushed her. Using her shoulder, she managed to work the gag out of her mouth. “No. Mom. You can’t.”

  Her mom looked down at Jessie. “I’m not going to let them hurt you.”

  “Well, I’m not going to let them hurt you.” She turned to Craig. Her heart hammered in her chest and the words that came from her mouth frightened her more than anything she had seen in the last few days. “Me, Craig. Don’t let them hurt Mom. She doesn’t deserve any of this. I’m the one that started this by running away to find you.”

  Craig’s intense eyes tracked back and forth between Jessie and her mom. “Both of you, stop. I’m not going to pick.”

  “You have to,” Jessie said. “Or he’ll kill us both and you know it.”

  “He’ll kill you both anyway.”

  Dolan laughed. “Wow, she’s a firecracker. If it helps, I might be less inclined to kill her since she is technically my niece. But I can’t make the decision for you.”

  “Please,” Jessie said.

  “I can’t,” Craig said. “I won’t. You have a whole life ahead of you.”

  “He’s right,” Mom said.

  “Then it’s settled.” Dolan nodded to Alec.

  Alec grabbed Mom by the elbow and pulled her forward.

  Jessie screamed, tears searing her eyes. She hopped to her feet and charged at Alec, slamming her shoulder into the small of his back.

  He barely budged.

  Jessie bounced off of him, lost her balance and, without the help of her hands, dropped to her ass on the tiled floor.

  Dolan drew a thin blade from a leather sheath on his belt. A filet knife. Not the ornate and bejeweled sort of blade one would expect for ritual sacrifice.

  “No!” Jessie cried.

  “Tanner,” Dolan called. “Come hold the artifact over my soon-to-be brother here.”

  Tanner took the cube from Dolan and held it about a foot over Craig’s face.

  Alec brought Mom around the gurney to Dolan’s side.

  Dolan touched the tip of his knife to the top of the cube as if the blade were a magic wand. “You see, Jessie, once upon a time, mortals conducted elaborate rituals to conjure spirits or bring down curses. But all that pomp and circumstance isn’t really necessary. You just need to shed blood or drain life and know why you’re doing it.”

  He swung the tip of the blade to point at her mom’s throat and held it an inch from her skin.

  “Add some super-charged emotion to the mix, and you have the greatest power ever granted mortal men. With enough sacrifices and enough suffering, I could rule the world. Which sounds so sinister, right? Not really my goal, though. I just want this power out there for the people. Let them decide for themselves who should rule. Certainly not the corporate owned bureaucrats pretending to be leaders.”

  “What if there was another way?” Jessie said through tears.

  Dolan cocked an eyebrow. “What other way?”

  “What if you could work magic without killing people?”

  “You can. You torture them. Feed off their pain. Bleed them, but not enough to kill them. It’s how your father’s friends turned him against me. Disgusting, no?”

  “What if you didn’t need blood or pain or any of that?”

  “It’s been tried. And it isn’t possible.”

  “How can you know for sure? There has to be some way.”

  Dolan shrugged. “Even if there were such a way, I don’t have time to find it. I’m sorry, Jessie. This is for your own good.” He turned to her mom. “You want to share a few words with your daughter before you die?”

  Mom’s lip curled. Her angry expression looked like nothing Jessie had seen on her before. She almost looked like someone else. “I think you’ve said enough.”

  The flash of spectral green jumped from her mother to Tanner, still standing over Craig and holding the artifact. Mom’s eyes rolled back into her head and she collapsed to the floor. Tanner’s eyes jerked wide, then narrowed. He smiled.

  Dolan, busy looking down at Jessie’s mom, did not see Tanner swing his good arm at him. Tanner knocked the blade out of Dolan’s hands then followed up with a sucker punch to his ear.

  Dolan staggered aside.

  “What the hell?” Alec lifted his gun too slowly.

  Tanner drew his pistol and fired three times into Alec’s chest.

  Alec sailed off his feet, arms flailing, and dropped to the floor, his head making a sick tock against the concrete.

  More blasts of gunfire over Jessie’s head drove her face down on the floor. She could still see that flash of green. A familiar luminescence. She understood why Mom had been acting so strangely. And she realized her mom was long gone.

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Lockman saw the flash of green pass between Kate and Tanner and realized the worst. He only had a nanosecond to let his heart break, though. Then the shooting started. Alec went down. The guy to his left in the black fatigues started firing at Tanner. The young guy had terrible aim. His shots went wide while Tanner dove to the floor.

  Lockman could feel the zip of bullets flying over him. He tried to flatten himself as much as he could against the gurney, helpless to do much else while strapped down in the middle of the crossfire.

  Tanner hit the floor and fired a cluster of shots out from under the gurney.

  The barrage shredded the kid’s crotch, blood spraying in a mist that fell over Jessie hugging the floor.

  She grimaced as her face was dotted with red, but she didn’t lift her head even while her hands remained bound behind her back.

  The kid flopped to the floor, screaming. His gun rattled across linoleum.

  “Now,” Tanner said, and got to his feet. He turned toward where Dolan had staggered, only Dolan was nowhere in sight. “Where did he go?” He spun to face Lockman, pressed his pistol against his breastbone. “Where?”

  “I didn’t see. But I can help you get him. I know who you are.”

  Tanner grinned. Lockman knew Tanner’s smile and this looked nothing like it. “Thanks for the offer, but I have a feeling you might try to take him from me. And I have plans for that fucker.”

  “You going to kill me, then?”

  “Nah. You’re too valuable to be dead. I still want the ascension Dolan promised. You’re the key to getting it.” He chucked Lockman’s chin with the barrel of his pistol then ran out the door. “I’m coming for you, you son of a bitch.” His voice echoed.

  Lockman turned his head to check on Jessie. “Jess, you good?”

  She lifted her head and scanned the room. Her gaze froze on something at floor level.

  He didn’t have to ask. He knew she was looking at Kate. “Maybe she’s all right.” His words tasted like dust.

  She rolled onto her side, then up to a sitting position. Tears streamed down her face, making the soldier’s blood run down like rain dappled war paint.

  Lockman wanted to offer some more comfort, but knew it wouldn’t do much good, and they had to get out of there. He began rocking his weight back and forth until the gurney rocked with him from one set of wheels to the next. Eventually he gained enough momentum to tip the whole gurney. He crashed sideways with it, the straps keeping him pinned to the contraption. In view now were Kate and Alec. Kate lay in a crumpled ball as if she had merely fallen asleep on the spot. Rivulets of dark blood ran off Alec’s chest and pooled on the floor around him. The hair on his face and arms had grown thick, nearly masking the skin beneath.

  His chest rose and fell.

  Not good.

  Lockman scanned the floor and found the knife Dolan had intended to use on Kate. It lay only a few feet away, but with his arms strapped at his sides, it might as well have been a mile.
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  Footsteps from the other side of the gurney, out of Lockman’s view.

  He tensed. Had Dolan come back?

  But the footfalls were light. Then Jessie came around the gurney. She sat down next to the knife and picked it up with her bound hands behind her back. She turned the blade and worked it under the zip tie around her wrists and sawed through the plastic, freeing her hands.

  “Nice work.”

  She didn’t speak. Her eyes were red and chapped around the rims. A seething glow in her eyes had replaced the tears. She crawled over to Lockman and unbuckled the straps.

  The relief when he rolled free of the gurney rushed to Lockman’s head and he was dizzy for a moment. He tried to stand and his foot slipped out from under him, sending him to his hands and knees. He saw the back of his right hand and realized the IV was still stuck in him. They must have pumped him full of something to sedate him. He yanked the needle out of his hand, shook his head to try and clear it, then attempted to stand. This time he found his feet.

  Jessie sat with her mother’s head in her lap, stroking her hair. Her touch looked so gentle, yet the fury in her face put a steel sheen on her. She looked older than her thirteen years. Too much older.

  Lockman crouched at her side. “We have to go.”

  “I’m not leaving her.”

  “Alec isn’t dead. And he isn’t human. We can’t be here when he wakes up.”

  “I said I’m not leaving her.”

  He touched her shoulder. “You’ve shown a lot of strength for a girl your age. More than some of the men and woman I worked with at the Agency.”

  “I don’t want a pep talk, okay? Just leave me alone.”

  “No. Never.”

  She looked at him. “Suddenly you care?”

  “Suddenly?” Lockman glanced at Alec.

  The werewolf’s chest rose and fell a little more steadily. The blood had stopped flowing so freely. Tanner’s gun obviously hadn’t been loaded with any special rounds. The wolf would be up any second now.

  He returned his gaze to Jessie. “I cared from the moment I realized you could be real. My daughter. I haven’t been there for you your entire life. Now that I’m here, you can’t get rid of me.”

  “Dolan’s going to get away.”

  “So what? Dolan has nothing without me. And I’m not so sure that specter will let him get far.”

  “So what? We just leave? Leave mom?”

  Lockman looked down at Kate. When she woke, she would be insane. Who knew how the tearing of a soul would manifest itself? Jessie didn’t need to see her mother like that. But how could he leave her behind? Simple. He couldn’t.

  “Come on.” He lifted Kate’s limp body and threw her over his shoulder. “We’re all getting out of here.”

  Jessie got to her feet, started to say something, but a wolfish growl cut her off.

  Alec—or what used to be Alec—crouched on the floor, teeth bared and eyes shining. A wolf the size of a full-grown man, hate and hunger rumbling in its voice.

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Charles ducked behind his car as more automatic gunfire cut a line through the air. Bullets pummeled the car and obliterated most of the windows. He kept low until the barrage stopped. Then he pulled his own weapon and skirted the back of the car. He rested his gun arm on the hood to steady his aim and fired into the doorway where the gunman who had pulled Millie inside still stood. Someone else had pulled her out of sight. Charles just hoped she wasn’t near the door anymore.

  He fired three shots, squeezing them off like his dad had taught him so long ago, back when Dad still talked to him. All three shots clustered in the middle of the gunman’s chest, just like hitting the paper targets at the range. The gunman dropped his mini Uzi and flailed backward into the house.

  Now what?

  Charge the house. He would be damned if he’d come all this way with Millie to let these guys kill her for Dolan. Gun up, he raced across the front lawn straight at the door, ready to dive to the ground at the first sight of a second soldier.

  All his focus on the door.

  His mistake.

  The shot came from the right, from the driveway. It spun Charles around and slammed him to the ground as if he’d been tackled by a linebacker instead of a .45 caliber round. He didn’t feel the pain right away. He lay on his back, looking up at the sky, trying to catch his breath but the wind had been knocked clean from his lungs.

  “I’ve got him,” someone shouted.

  Charles thought he recognized the voice. Couldn’t place it in his agony. He felt around his torso until he found the wound in his side. Probably shattered his ribs. Bits of bone probably stuck in his internal organs like splinters. Not a scrape or a clip. Not a wound he could survive, maybe not even with immediate medical attention.

  And the solider looking over him now wasn’t about to call Charles an ambulance.

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  With Kate slung over his shoulder, Lockman took a careful step backward from the werewolf. Jessie visibly trembled, her gaze locked on the thing that had played her step-father for the past several years.

  “Easy, Jess. Step back with me.”

  “What good will that do?”

  “He’s an animal. You can’t think of him in any other way. In this form, he’s operating more on instinct than anything. If we don’t come off as an immediate threat, he might go away.”

  He no sooner said it when the wolf bounded for him.

  Lockman had barely a second to react. He spun sideways as if in a ballet with an unconscious partner. As smoothly as he could, he set Kate on the floor.

  The wolf leapt through the space Lockman had just vacated, but he recovered quickly and crouched for a second pounce.

  Lockman ducked low and waited for the wolf to make a move. His heart thundered in his chest. The odds of him taking on a werewolf in hand-to-hand combat did not stack high. He would have taken a nest of vamps over this one wolf any time. Unfortunately, you can pick your friends, but your supernatural enemies usually pick you.

  The wolf growled from deep in its throat. While its glimmering red eyes looked all wolf, they had a human-like focus, an intelligence behind them. Lockman realized he was wrong about werewolves, or at least this one. Even in wolf form, the thing could think and reason like a mortal. The perfect melding of logic and instinct.

  Scary shit.

  The wolf jumped.

  Lockman threw out his hands and gripped fur before the wolf’s jaws could snap into his throat. The impact threw him back. He let the momentum carry him and rolled onto his shoulders while kicking out with his legs. One foot caught the wolf in the belly while Lockman rolled backward and the wolf yelped and fell away.

  On his feet, Lockman prepped himself for another attack. He spotted the wolf padding around Kate’s body. Strings of saliva hung from the wolf’s teeth. Its black hackles stood on end. It snapped at Kate’s ear without actually biting her.

  Jessie shrieked.

  “Get away from her, Benji. She’s had enough of your rabies.”

  The wolf’s jaw opened wide, showing yellow teeth and a pink tongue spotted with black. It gently rested its mouth against Kate’s throat, but didn’t clamp down.

  Lockman’s gut clenched. His face burned.

  “Do it.”

  The quality of Jessie’s voice sent a chill down Lockman’s spine. He turned to her, slack-jawed.

  Her hard gaze stayed on the wolf. “She’s going to wake up insane anyway. Might as well put her out of her misery.”

  The wolf hesitated. Lockman thought he could see some conflict behind the wolf’s eyes. It seemed ridiculous, but Alec was still in there. This was not just an animal. And Lockman would do well to remember that.

  “You pretended to love her a long time,” Jessie said. Even with fresh tears in her eyes, she looked cold-blooded. She looked like Lockman. “But you’re just an animal. So get it over with. Kill her.” She bent down. The knife Dolan meant to use for his sacrific
e lay at her feet. She picked it up and stood straight. “Then I can kill you.”

  “Jessie,” Lockman said. He opened his mouth to say more and found himself empty of words. So he joined her in glaring at the wolf, the dare on the table, the choice with the monster.

  The wolf backed away from Kate’s body and closed its mouth.

  Lockman held out his hand to Jessie. “Knife, please.”

  The wolf pounced for Lockman again.

  Jessie tossed the knife and Lockman dove to meet it halfway. He reached out and grabbed it by the blade. The blade cut him, but he had no time to sweat the small stuff. When he landed from his dive he threw the knife at the charging wolf.

  The thin blade buried itself between the wolf’s eyes, nearly to the hilt. The wolf stopped short with a yelp, then dropped to the floor.

  Panting, Lockman stood and walked over to the wolf. He stepped on the top of the wolf’s skull and pried the knife free. Then he swung a leg over the wolf’s back as if mounting a horse. “You might want to look away,” he said to Jessie.

  She stared at him without a flinch.

  He grabbed the fur on the back of the wolf’s head and lifted it back to expose the neck. The blade had a sharp enough edge that Lockman cut easily through the wolf’s throat until he hit the spine at the base of the neck. That’s when he had to saw. Eventually he had the wolf’s head clean off. He threw it aside, stood.

  Jessie looked him up and down.

  Lockman felt the blood all down the front of his pants. He didn’t need to look. “Can’t take chances. Sorry you had to see that.”

  “I’m not.”

  He didn’t like that vacant tone to her voice. Didn’t like the matching blank stare. He approached her and took her by the shoulders. “You need to get a grip.”

  “I’m fine. I get it now. There’s no such thing as good mojo.”

  “It’s a hard lesson to learn.”

  “Whatever. Let’s get the fuck out of here.”

  Lockman nodded and turned to retrieve Kate.

  Kate sat up, watching them both with wide eyes.