Darkening Dawn (The Lockman Chronicles Book 5)

by Rob Cornell

  What are you going on about, you dumb old coot?

  Elka drew a circle in the air with her horn. A ring of light formed and stayed hanging there for a couple seconds, then it descended on Gabriel.

  Gabriel sat up. The side of her face that took the hit from the elf gun had blackened in a giant bruise. Any other human would have at least lost an eye from a direct hit like that. But with Gabriel inside of her, she wasn’t just any old human.

  Her eyes went wide as the ring of light came down around her and drew tight like a shiny lasso. She cried out, but her voice didn’t sound like a her at all.

  Earl got the sense that it was Gabriel’s own voice somehow tearing loose from the girl’s throat. He felt the boys in his shorts shrink up like raisins. Every hair from head to toe—including the ones on the boys—prickled.

  The light lasso floated back up, bringing Gabriel with it until her toes hung a foot from the floor.

  Elka answered Gabriel’s outcry with a high-pitched one of her own. Till now, Earl had thought unicorns made the same noises as a horse. But ain’t no horse Earl knew sounded like that.

  Another wave of prickles ran over Earl’s skin.

  But that was the last he felt before more than half his body went numb and he dropped to the floor. He knocked his head in the fall, but the pain bothered him less than the absolute lack of feeling from his neck down.

  He could blink. He could breathe. But that was about it.

  He could also think. And his first thought was how stupid he was. Now that she was out, Earl realized that Elka had put herself in his head. She’d gone so deep, in fact, that she had tricked his mind into thinking his body was just fine. A fine display of mind over matter.

  But not his mind.

  Hers.

  She’d played with him like a puppeteer.

  “You bitch,” he howled.

  Tears pooled in his eyes.

  Sorry, Kit. She won. Best we can hope now is Gabriel tears the cunt to shreds.

  Chapter Fifty-Nine

  IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN AN easy thing to break out of the unicorn’s quaint little trap. But something stirred within Gabriel.

  He couldn’t figure out what, though. It felt like a tickle at the back of his brain—

  You mean my brain.

  Shock speared through him as he recognized that voice.

  Somehow his little pet Jessie had slipped the souls.

  I’ve done more than that, asswipe.

  The stirring inside of him grew. He slithered from the back of the brain, down the spine, and into his stomach.

  My stomach.

  Shut up, you!

  The cool, misty sensation swirled in his—

  My.

  —belly. Then he felt a tugging, but nothing physical. It only took him a second to realize…

  Yep, now that is all yours.

  His soul. Something was pulling on his soul.

  On the outside, the unicorn jerked her horn like a wooden switch. The binding light around—

  My.

  —his body yanked him to one side. He swung end over end through the air like a tossed baton until he collided with the altar of bones. The impact seemed to break the magical binding. When he tumbled to the floor, he landed splayed out on his—

  Wrong again.

  —back. The bone altar loomed over him, but the skull at the top had cracked open like an eggshell. Half of it remained in place. The other had landed on his host’s chest.

  Now you’re getting it.

  One empty socket stared up at him.

  He swatted the piece of skull away and stood.

  The unicorn scraped a hoof across the floor like a bull ready to charge. Sparks shot out with each drag.

  A flash of panic struck Gabriel. He tried to hide it, but Jessie’s soul had access to his thoughts again.

  She gasped, the sound like water rushing into Gabriel’s mind.

  That’s it. The chink in your armor. She can throw me around all she wants with her magic, but the only thing she has that can get past your protection is the tip of that beautiful horn.

  Gabriel growled.

  She’ll have to catch me first.

  He turned toward the door and the harsh fluorescent light pouring through it.

  The smell of all the magic the unicorn had thrown about, a sickly sweetness like fresh rock candy, made the room stifling. He bolted for the doorway, looking forward to breathing fresher air.

  Chickenshit.

  You’ve had your fun. Time to go back down.

  He used his will to reach out to his soul army. He didn’t know what had caused them to let her go, but he’d put things right.

  The sound of the unicorn’s hoofbeats echoed behind him as he ran out into the hallway.

  The light shocked his eyes. He squinted and raised a hand to shade his eyes. He kept running while trying to communicate with his legion, but something didn’t feel right. He could only connect to a few, and those few seemed reluctant to answer to him.

  What did you do, you bitch?

  Jessie laughed. I’ve made some new friends. And they’re a little pissed at you for lying to them.

  Between the blazing lights, his attempts to rally his souls, and his conversation with Jessie, Gabriel’s attention had split too much for him to concentrate on where he was running. He bounced against one wall, then staggered across the hall and thumped against the opposite wall.

  He had to give up something so he could stay focused enough to keep ahead of the unicorn. Once she reached the hall’s straightaway, she would catch up easily. He had to make it to the intersection up ahead before she did.

  He tried to block out Jessie’s nattering.

  Ain’t going to happen, Gabe. You’re stuck with me.

  Which meant he had to give up trying to rally the souls.

  For now.

  The clopping of hooves reverberated down the hallway.

  She was in the hall and he had thirty yards to go before he reached the intersection.

  He should have been able to spin around and throw some magic at her to drive her back. Or kill her outright. In fact, he should have killed her right off the bat. But he’d wanted to have a little fun. Stuck for so long in the Inbetween, he deserved some damn fun.

  And now he couldn’t trust to have the magic on hand because Jessie had meddled with his power source. She had somehow scattered them, made most of them hard to reach at all, and the minority leery to lend him their remaining power.

  What did you do to me?

  I told you. I made some friends. A lot of these dudes and dudettes are a bit pissed at you too.

  Fifteen yards to the intersection.

  The thundering hoofbeats had become deafening. The unicorn couldn’t be far behind.

  Souls don’t like being slaves, Gabe. And they sure as hell don’t like false promises.

  Had she really managed to win over so many of his army in such a short time? It had taken him years to gather them, to win their trust, to make them pliable enough to follow his commands.

  And lie to them. Convince them that you meant to set them free on the mortal plane so they could escape the Inbetween. It wasn’t that hard to make them see you for the creep you really are. To make them see that you would never let go of the power they gave you.

  Five yards.

  He just might make it.

  You might, Jessie said. If I wasn’t going to do this.

  That bizarre stirring swelled to an unbearable strength. His breath caught. His heart skipped a beat. A cool glaze covered his brain.

  Those are all mine, by the way.

  But worse than all of these sensations was their final effect.

  He stumbled and came to a halt only two yards from the intersection.

  A wicked scream broke through the pounding of hooves.

  Compelled by the rebelling souls, Gabriel turned to face his fate.

  The unicorn, her horn so bright it made the ugly blaring row of fluorescents above lo
ok dim in comparison.

  She lowered her head. Gabriel used the last seconds of his new life to scream out in rage.

  Then the unicorn ran her horn straight into Jessie’s heart.

  Chapter Sixty

  HE LET GO OF HIS control over her, allowing Jessie’s soul to slam back into its rightful place. His last angry act, as this also allowed Jessie to feel the full brunt of the pain from the unicorn horn piercing her chest.

  It only lasted a few seconds, but those seconds stretched long with agony. She could feel her heart stop beating. Taste her last breath, which had an inexplicable sweetness, as if a sugar cube had melted on her tongue.

  The unicorn stared into Jessie’s eyes. Her dark eyes had a sheen of tears over them.

  Jessie wanted to ask why. Because the unicorn had wanted to kill her before Gabriel had entered her. Those tears had nothing to do with Gabriel, and everything to do with Jessie.

  But why?

  The unicorn blinked.

  All at once, Jessie’s mind filled with flickering images from the unicorn’s life, along with a name.

  Elka.

  Her name was Elka.

  The first image—

  A sight of Elka in a different form, not human, but with a similar bi-pedal build, barely two years old, and clutched against her father’s chest just high enough to see over his shoulder as he ran. Behind him, a creature with ram’s horns, a beaklike nose, and a mouth full of jagged teeth that opened sideways. It held a spear, its tip piercing the side of a unicorn that lay on her side, crying out and kicking, so much blood spattered everywhere.

  Elka’s mother.

  Another beast like the first knelt beside Elka’s mother, his brown chest dotted with her blood. He held a primitive and cruel axe over his head, only its blade glowed a hot red, as if it had come fresh off a smith’s anvil.

  The beast brought down the axe and chopped her horn clean off. The rainbow glow flickered out.

  Both beasts reared back their horned heads and howled to the sky.

  The next image—

  A familiar closet. Only Jessie saw it from behind a wavering illusion of a mirror. Jessie remembered the mirror as well. She wanted to close her eyes, didn’t want to see what came next. But these mini-movies lived in her head. There was no closing her eyes.

  The closet door hung open. A group of agents, including Ree, stood around something on the floor. Something Jessie begged Elka not to show her.

  But she did.

  On the floor at the feet of the agents, Jessie saw herself and the bullet riddled and bloody unicorn. She knew at once that the unicorn was the same man who had ran from the hunters who had killed Elka’s mother. Her father. In his true form.

  Jessie watched herself Return the dead unicorn, only now burdened with the knowledge that she had sent him back to the same place where creatures like the horned monsters, and many others from a hundred different planes, had hunted the unicorns to near extinction.

  The rest of the images came in a series of quick stills, each with a psychic caption that let Jessie know everything about them.

  The family cottage. Flashes of Elka’s life after losing her family. The men she had killed to sate the rage against the mortal girl who had sent her loved ones away.

  Then various pictures with the members of that family throughout her life on the mortal plane. Her aunt. Her uncle. Cousin Delson.

  A horrible realization dawned on Jessie.

  She had Returned them to that world with the hunters. A world littered with hornless unicorn corpses. A burnt landscape, forests and homes charred to near nothingness from hunters who had used flames to chase the unicorns out of hiding.

  A world all but uninhabitable if you were a unicorn who still had their horn.

  Jessie had sent those three to an inevitable and painful death.

  The last tears of Jessie’s life ran down her cheeks as Elka’s story faded.

  Jessie had just enough strength to reach up and stroke Elka under one ear.

  I’m so sorry.

  Then Jessie’s soul, and the several thousand others, along with Gabriel’s, left her body.

  Together, with Elka’s help, they had prevented the Dawn.

  Now Jessie followed them into the dark.

  Chapter Sixty-One

  THAT LAST, INTIMATE CONNECTION ELKA shared with Jessie right before she died twisted Elka’s stomach, and sent her emotions into a spin cycle of hate, guilt, and…love.

  The Chosen One was not the person Elka had thought she was.

  She didn’t send the various supernatural species away out of spite, not all of them anyway. She truly had believed they would be better off.

  A massive assumption that left little room for exceptions. The only ones Jessie had sent back against their will, as far as she had known, were the ones who had meant harm to the mortal plane.

  She had painted the issue with too broad a brush.

  Perhaps part of that was because of the Agency she had worked for. When Elka put herself in Jessie’s dying mind, she had opened her own to Jessie. As the Return, she bore an impossible burden, and the expectations of those around her made that weight all the heavier.

  It wasn’t an excuse.

  Elka would never forgive Jessie.

  But she could stop hating her.

  As gingerly as possible, Elka bent her head and let Jessie’s body slip off her horn.

  Jessie’s eyes had remained open and slightly widened. She lay on her back with a bloody hole in her chest and looked like she saw something on the other side of death.

  Elka hoped Jessie found some peace in the Great Beyond. The Chosen One deserved that much at the least.

  She spent a few more seconds standing over Jessie’s body, thinking about the things she had seen in the girl’s mind. A lost love. A lost father and mother. So many friends.

  Most of all, a loss of innocence at too young an age.

  Elka knew all about that. But she hadn’t handled it with the grace and honor that Jessie had.

  No, Elka would never forgive her.

  But she understood her.

  Never forgive.

  But always admire.

  Chapter Sixty-Two

  EARL OPENED HIS EYES AND found himself already standing.

  The fucking unicorn who had paralyzed him knelt in front of him, panting. Her horn still had that multi-colored glow, but it had lost some of its brightness. The amount of blood gushing from around the knife looked like something out of one of those horror shows Kit loved so much.

  Thinking of Kit made him tear up. At the same time rage made his belly bubble and churn like vat of toxic sludge.

  “You fucking bitch.” Spittle flung from his lips. “Git outta my head. You already ruined my life. I ain’t got nothing more to give.”

  Earl heard a hush and realized it came from inside his head.

  There’s no point in being angry, Earl. What’s done is done.

  “Stop it. Git outta my head.”

  I have one more thing I need you to do for me, then I’ll leave you in peace.

  “I ain’t doing anything for you.”

  But he didn’t have a choice. He felt her rooting through his mind like a purse snatcher going through his latest score. She read thought after thought, tossing aside each one that didn’t hold whatever she sought.

  The sensation Earl felt while she did this wasn’t like anything he’d ever known before. Kind of like a tickle in his head, and an itch at the back of his brain. Something else too. He couldn’t quite explain it. Best he could do was compare it to the feeling you get when you have one of those dreams where you’ve left your house without any clothes on.

  Finally, Elka locked on a thought she liked.

  Earl would have scowled if Elka hadn’t frozen his face. He couldn’t even twitch an eyebrow, let alone move his lips. Bitch had basically shut him up.

  But what she found tipped off Earl to what she had planned for him.

  She’d dug out
the location of the underground complex’s infirmary.

  Slowly, she rose to her feet. She led the way, pulling Earl behind her as if by a leash. No matter how hard Earl fought, he couldn’t resist her commands.

  You wouldn’t want to anyway, she jabbered in his head. The second I let go of you, you go back to being paralyzed.

  She could read his thoughts, so he didn’t need to speak. Good.

  Suck my cock, you twat.

  She did that lip flutter like a horse, only hers sounded a little like a laugh.

  Her steps grew more labored as she made her way through the tunnels. Her breathing sounded like a broken air conditioner. And that blood came off of her so thick she left a trail along the floor that Earl was forced to shuffle through.

  As much as Earl wished she’d collapse and die, she made it to the infirmary.

  It wasn’t much. The room couldn’t have been much bigger than Dolan’s bedroom. Enough room for a pair of examination tables, a row of glass cases along one wall, and a sink and cupboards on the wall kitty-corner to the cases.

  Most of him was numb, but he had enough control of his senses to smell a ghost of antiseptic among the dry, chalky dust. One of the fluorescent bulbs of the ceiling lights buzzed and flickered.

  Elka left him by the entrance while she trotted along the cases, peering in each as she passed, then examined the labels on the cupboards. Satisfied by whatever she found, she turned around and made Earl move again.

  He went to the medicine cases first, opened one up, and took a bottle of Dilaudid. He went to the cupboards next. He gathered a hypodermic needle, two boxes of gauze, and three roles of medical tape. He unloaded the supplies onto one of the examination tables.

  A light on one of those arms with the moving joints in them hung above the table. He flicked the ON switch but the light didn’t come on.

  Forget it, Elka said.

  She had him go back to the cupboards, and this time he collected a needle, the kind of thread doctors used to stitch a wound up, and a box of latex gloves.

  I’ll make the needle slip. I’ll let you bleed out.

  Elka made that horsey laugh again. That’s impossible, Earl. Sorry.