by Rob Cornell
Eventually, Lockman gave up his search. He would not find Kate here. It disappointed him, but also gave him a huge relief. She didn’t belong in a place like this, stuck in a metaphysical no-man’s-land.
This did make him wonder why he had ended up here.
Questioning that wouldn’t make any difference, though. Lockman had always tried to deal with the reality of any situation, not dawdle with pointless what-ifs.
He had resigned himself to an eternity in this place, an eternity that would only end if a stronger soul finally swallowed his.
Then he felt her.
It started with small tugs. A faraway voice that sounded like it was calling his name.
The Inbetween had begun to drive him mad, he decided.
Until the voice grew stronger and he thought—dared to hope—he recognized it.
Jessie?
He soon discovered he could hear her when she dreamed. And eventually he worked out that he could amplify this connection the same way he used his pre-death life to make survival in the Inbetween palatable.
He could go to a moment in his life where he was with her. There he could see her in two ways—both as the person he was in that moment in time, and as the soul peering through his eyes from the other side of death.
He could reach out with his soul. He could touch hers.
And from that contact in the past, he could send a ripple through to her future.
He used the trick to push himself deeper and deeper into her dreams, until he could leave messages with her younger soul to carry to her older soul.
And what an old soul it had become.
He barely recognized her as the kid who had showed up at his door, scared, curious, and so incredibly ignorant about the things that would haunt her from then on.
The darker things.
After learning how to leave impressions in Jessie’s past for her to discover in her later dreams, Lockman began negotiating with other souls in the Inbetween. He would trade favors, mostly protection from the predatory demons, to gain information only they could gather from their own lifelines.
He also picked up whispers of another soul with great power, who had somehow figured out how to reach beyond his own lifeline and even make small impressions outside the Inbetween.
It didn’t take long to discover whose soul it was.
Before long, Lockman knew all about Gabriel’s plans for Jessie.
Lockman pressed the limits of his own influence on the mortal plane. He managed to speak to Jessie in her dreams, but only fleetingly.
He needed a stronger conduit. Someone more receptive to the worlds between. Someone who had even traveled between worlds.
He became drawn to the unicorn. Something had bound her to Jessie so strongly, their fates had to be entwined. He didn’t know how they had met, but at some point they had formed a kinship powerful enough to lead Lockman, through Jessie, to the unicorn.
It had comforted him a great deal to know she had someone like that in her life.
Now he stood in the unicorn’s dream, playing he last card he could from the Inbetween to save his daughter from Gabriel. With his help, the unicorn could wake from the dream and stop the lunatic trying to bring back a mortal monster.
The blood rain had turned the unicorn’s entire coat a deep, glistening red. When her tail twitched, blood splashed as if from a wet paint brush. Her dark eyes stared at Lockman, but she remained silent and still except for her tail.
Why was she hesitating?
“I don’t care who you are,” she said finally. “I won’t do anything to help that bitch.”
Her hatred hit him as hard as if she had turned and kicked him with her hind legs. He felt momentarily out of breath.
He realized his mistake instantly.
He had assumed their relationship had been one of friendship, love. But what tied this unicorn to his daughter was a suffocating, black hate.
“And if she really is your daughter, then you can join that beast Dolan in whatever hell you’ve been banished to.”
She shook, blood flinging in all directions. She couldn’t shake hard enough to keep the blood off, though. Even if the rain stopped, her once soft white body would remain stained red. Lockman felt droplets spatter his face, but he didn’t flinch. He stared back at her, speechless. He had bet everything on this unicorn. If he couldn’t convince her to help, Gabriel would win. Jessie would be lost forever.
He had to try to make her realize the stakes trumped her feelings toward Jessie.
“That’s just it,” he said. “Gabriel won’t stay here. He’ll be there. I don’t know what Jessie did to piss you off, but it won’t be half as horrible as what’s going to happen if that happens.”
“Not possible,” she said. “Nothing could be more horrible.”
Jesus, Jessie, what did you do?
“You’re going to sacrifice yourself—and let Gabriel send the world into total chaos—just to get back at her?”
“Mortals never did a thing for me. I don’t care what happens to your world.”
“Do you care about what happens to you?” He pointed toward the sky. “That man has a hacksaw to your horn right now.”
In fact, Lockman felt the edges of the dream waver. A scraping sound echoed through the sky and set his teeth on edge. He could smell something burning too. Not from a flame, but from friction, like a pair of sticks rubbing together or…
…a saw.
“You hear that? Smell that?”
She looked up, said nothing.
“He’s cutting into you. Let me help you.”
“How can you help me? Why would you bother?”
“Because without you, I can’t save the world.”
“Or your daughter.”
He nodded. “Or her.”
All at once, the unicorn reared back and morphed. She turned into a slim human girl with curly red hair and sad green eyes. She wore a one-piece bathing suit that revealed her pale and freckled arms—dressed for a sunny day at the beach, not a blood storm.
She looked nothing like Jessie, but something about her still reminded Lockman of his daughter. Maybe it was the shadow of age over such a young face.
The girl dropped to her knees and covered her face with her hands. She screamed against her palms. The blood rain covered her all over again, turning her skin and swimsuit slick with it. Her shoulders hitched as she wept.
She threw her fists down, pounding the sand which had turned a brownish red and had the consistency of moist cake. “She took my family. She sent them back, sent them…sent them back…to hell.” She threw back her head and the blood streamed over her face like war paint.
The Return, Lockman realized. He had learned a lot about that during his time watching over Jessie from the Inbetween. Jessie must have Returned this girl’s family. Apparently against their will.
The girl lowered her eyes to Lockman, her expression dead.
Lockman’s heartbeat pounded. The rain grew to torrential proportions. Sheets of red came down and made it hard to see through to the girl.
“So she took your family away,” he said. “Now what? You going to honor their memory by dying? You’re going to let that guy cut your horn off and use it while you lay there doing nothing? Is that what your family would want for you?”
“Shut up,” she screamed through the roaring downpour.
“I can help you.” He took a step toward. “Please.”
For an eternal moment, she said nothing. Lockman thought she had checked out. There would be no more arguing with her.
But then she stood. The blood rain had soaked her hair so thoroughly it had lost its curl and lay plastered to the sides of her face and over her shoulders. “You want me to stop the ritual.”
“Yes.” Since the rain had started, it had parted around Lockman. Now the sheets of blood closed in and drenched him. It rolled long his brow. Dripped down his nose, over his lips, and off his chin. Something inside the girl had changed, and that had cha
nged the dream.
“You can wake me up?”
He nodded. He had drawn enough power from willing souls of the Inbetween to revive her and then some. He didn’t have near the power Gabriel did here, because Gabriel took what he wanted from the souls around him, willing or not.
“Then it’s simple. You wake me up and I stop it.”
Just like that?
Lockman cocked his head to one side as if looking at a piece of artwork he didn’t quite get. She hadn’t had a change of heart. He could tell from her stony glare. So what had changed?
She must have seen his distrust. She smirked, a horrific sight with all that blood pouring down her face.
“If you really want to save the world, I’ll help you,” she said. “But you can’t save your daughter.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about the easiest solution to your problem. The one you either thought you could hide from me, or your feelings got in the way of letting you see it.”
He gaped at her. He hadn’t hid anything from her. He had laid out his case as plain as he could.
She laughed and shook her head. “It’s the simplest solution. Gabriel can’t come back if he doesn’t have his precious Chosen One to come back to. So, when you wake me up, I just have to kill your daughter.”
Lockman’s chest tightened. He felt short of breath. Besides the spattering blood, he could only hear his pulse throbbing in his ears.
She was right. Her solution had never crossed his mind. Why would it? She didn’t have to die to stop Gabriel’s plan. Not if they could stop the man from conducting the ritual.
“Which is it, Craig Lockman? Want to wake me up so I can kill her and save the world? Or are we staying in dreamland to let the world fall, and let Gabriel have her anyway?”
Chapter Fifty-One
THE NOISE THE HACKSAW MADE as Earl went at the unicorn’s horn made nails on a chalkboard sound like a top-forty hit. A squirming, shivering sensation ran right to Jessie’s core. She desperately wanted her hands free just so she could block out the sound.
Earl muttered curses under his breath. He’d been hard at work for a good twenty minutes, and from where Jessie sat, it didn’t look like he’d made much progress.
He kept having to stop and wipe sparkling dust off his sweaty face. He also occasionally had to pull the saw loose and knock off more dust caking the serrated blade.
“Having trouble?” she asked.
He grunted and kept sawing.
“Better hurry. This blood’s looking a little coagulated.”
“Hush, you,” he barked.
Jessie peered through the open door. She couldn’t see much from her position. White, tiled walls that seemed to curve into an arch at the top, like a subway tunnel. She wondered if the cavalry would come bursting through that door at any moment. She actually wouldn’t have minded seeing even Kinga charge in, as long as she had along a team of Agents armed to the teeth.
Earl didn’t seem the least bit concerned about such an incursion. Which made Jessie doubt she’d see any last minute rescue.
She was on her own.
Her available weapons? A cutting wit and…
The Return.
For fuck’s sake, I’m so stupid.
All she needed to put the kibosh on Gabriel’s plan was to send the unicorn home.
She smiled. “Hey, Chucky.”
He ignored her.
“Earl. I have a little surprise for you.”
That got his attention. He stopped sawing and looked up.
She drew in a deep breath, pulling together the limited use magical energy she had left inside of her. “Return,” she said flatly and sent the energy toward the unicorn.
A blue spark jagged through the air, then sputtered out. It left behind an electrical fire smell, but did nothing else.
“What the fuck?”
Earl grinned. He let loose his famous chuckle. It came up from deep in his belly. His shoulders bobbed. “You really think I’m that stupid?”
Panic buzzed through Jessie’s every nerve. This had never happened before. Ever.
Had this cocksucker somehow stolen the very last of her powers, the one thing that gave her any purpose on this planet?
Don’t cry. Don’t give him the satisfaction.
She couldn’t help herself. A pair of tears ran from the corner of each eye.
Earl made a whirling motion with his finger. “Why don’t you spin round there and take a look?”
Dread turned Jessie’s stomach to stone. Slowly, she turned the office chair.
At first, she couldn’t comprehend what she was looking at. A small round table sat just outside the blood pool. On the table lay a scatter of what looked like moon rocks. But when she looked closer, one of the rocks had what looked like part of a face carved into it.
Okay. Earl had some pieces of a statue on a table. Big whoop.
“Don’t you recognize him?” Earl asked.
A deeper part of her made the connection before her conscious mind did. The realization came with a physical response that felt like her stomach turning inside out. The hairs on her arms and the back of her neck stood on end.
When her conscious mind caught up, Jessie couldn’t hold back any tears. She cried full out. Phlegm the flavor of blood clogged her throat. Snot ran down her nose.
Oh, God. Oh, my God.
How sick was this old man? How badly did he want to hurt her? Why had he…why had he collected pieces of Wertz to display here?
“I see you do,” Earl said. “Funny thing about gnome stone. I didn’t believe it, but Mr. Dolan insisted. Gnome stone has some natural magical dampening to it. Part of their self-defense mechanism from what I gather. I was wondering if it would really work.”
He snorted and grinned. “Guess it does.”
Jessie clenched her teeth and screamed through them. The scream seemed to rip her throat. The trickle of draining blood turned to a small but steady stream. Some of the blood filled her mouth. The metallic taste was like a bullet on her tongue.
She spat the blood out.
Earl started chuckling again behind her. “Apparently the stuff is twice as powerful if you have an emotional connection to it. That Dolan sure is smart for a dead guy.”
Lava churned in her belly like the bowels of Mordor. That much heat couldn’t stay contained in a girl Jessie’s size. She had to set it free, had to erupt and consume everything around her with molten flame.
Jessie planted her heels against the floor, cocked her knees, then pushed out. Her chair rolled through the blood, its four wheels each leaving behind its own wake. The sound of the rattling casters was partially muffled by the blood, but the wheels rolled smoothly enough to get her to the pool’s edge by Earl and the unicorn.
Earl wrenched the hacksaw free and hopped to his feet.
Jessie had no plan, no thought, no specific goal. She operated on instinct alone and let it make all the moves for her. Which started with her tipping the chair and landing on her side outside the pool.
“What in hell do you think you’re going to accomplish?” He came and stood over her, hacksaw in one hand, the other opening and closing as if he didn’t know what to do with it. Or her. “Get on up.”
As if she could.
His momentary indecision gave Jessie another few seconds. She swung her legs like a sideways pendulum and knocked ankles with Earl with enough force to drop him to the floor.
He landed on his knees and howled.
Jessie reared her legs back, then took another swing. She caught him in the side this time, up by his rib cage. She didn’t have much leverage lying on the floor and tied to a chair, but she had a good set of abs that helped give her legs some momentum.
Earl toppled onto his side, but he hung onto the hacksaw. He propped himself on his elbow and waved the saw wildly back and forth as if trying to swat away a fly with a newspaper.
Jessie lay well out of the saw’s reach, but she
had to stop herself from taking another kick at him so she wouldn’t get sliced by the blade.
Then he started kicking.
The bottom of his boot knocked Jessie on the top of the skull. He shot his heel out two more times, striking the same spot on her crown.
The impact dazed her more than the pain. Not that it didn’t hurt. She felt bruised clear down to her brain.
Earl scooted away from her before getting to his feet.
Jessie looked up at him from the floor, head throbbing, wrists raw and bleeding from friction against the ropes. She panted. Each breath stung her raw throat.
“Did you really think all that would get you somewhere?” Earl asked with a parental disappointment. Kind of made Jessie think of Mom. Mom had used that tone a lot with Jessie during her middle school years.
The chair pinched one of her arms under her. Most of the feeling had gone out of it, except for pins and needles. Nothing she could do about it now. She closed her eyes and rested her head on the cool concrete floor.
She felt Earl’s presence move closer and loom over her. She didn’t bother opening her eyes. She let her whole body go slack. If he wanted her back in the circle, he would have to drag her back. She wouldn’t make it easy for him.
“You sure are a shitload of trouble, ain’t you?”
The inside of her mouth tasted like rust. She spat. “It’s what I live for.”
“I hope Dolan chews your soul to pieces once he’s inside you.” He started to say something else, but gasped.
Jessie opened her eyes.
Earl stood with his mouth hanging open, staring at something behind her. A brilliant light reflected in his eyes, all sorts of different colors, as if passed through a prism.
Jessie canted her head around as far as it would stretch. For a moment, all she could see was a starburst of light on the ceiling.
Then she heard movement. The unmistakable clop of hooves on the concrete, followed by a piercing whinny. A second later, the unicorn came to stand over Jessie. Light ran up and down her horn in multicolored bands like a flashing neon sign. Jessie could see the notch where Earl had started to cut. The small imperfection did nothing to mar her beauty. Not even her blood-soaked flank could stifle her majesty.