Darker Things (The Lockman Chronicles #1) (26 page)

Only, the drive proved too quiet. He caught himself looking in the rearview over and over at Creed. Finally, he couldn’t take it anymore.

“How’d you find me?”

Jessie started to say something, but Lockman cut her off.

“Let him tell me.”

Creed met Lockman’s eyes in the rearview. “What was the question again?”

“How did you track me to that condo complex?”

Creed sighed. “I take it Tanner talked some while he had you.”

“Some.”

“What all did he say?”

“Crazy shit.”

“Oh yeah?”

Lockman looked at his old boss’s reflection. “Is any of it true?”

Creed’s eyes shone, bright blue and liquid. He blinked and some of the shine leaked away. “I don’t know what he said.”

“You have an idea.”

“He told you about your tracking device?”

“Yes. Why would you do that to me? When did you do that to me?”

“You’re important, Craig.”

“Important how? Seems like everyone but me knows. Am I really just a brainwashed source of intel?”

“If that’s all you were, I would never have put you in the field for our side.”

Lockman’s heart pumped hard. His mouth went dry. “So it is true?”

“I believe in you. Whatever you were before doesn’t matter.”

“Of course it matters. I’m a lie. I don’t really exist.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“Tanner said you wiped out my original soul and replaced it with pieces of others. I’m not even someone else. I’m a jigsaw puzzle. Worse, I’m everything I’d spent my time at the Agency fighting against. I’m unnatural. I don’t belong.”

“You’d rather be a psychotic dabbling in the darkest kinds of evil this world has ever seen?”

Jessie twisted in her seat so she could look at Creed. “What are you guys talking about?”

Lockman throttled the steering wheel in his hands. “Stay out of it, Jess.”

“Sure. Like I asked to be a part of this messed up stuff in the first place.”

“It’s like I told you,” Creed said. “Your dad’s a good man. Nothing else matters.”

“I’m not a man at all. I’m a shell, a vessel for your supernatural experimentation.”

“No. You’re one of the best Agents we ever had. What we did to you, the secrets we kept. A day never went by that it didn’t eat at me. But what you became after we did our part, that’s all you. That’s who you are now. A good man.”

Lockman’s vision blurred red at the edges.

“I don’t understand,” Jessie said.

“It’s simple. Creed here used mojo to turn one of Dolan’s top men against him. Good for the Agency, good for America. Not so good for the person who just learned his whole life as he knows it is a fucking fabrication.”

Lockman sat on Creed’s porch swing with Jessie. Creed and Rand had Tanner in the pole barn, strapped down to a workbench while Creed stitched him up. Creed had the most experience with the medical stuff, but when he offered to take a look at Lockman’s wound, Lockman had Rand do it instead. While Rand had stitched him up, Lockman asked a few questions to feel out what he knew about what was done to Lockman, but he didn’t seem to have any idea about the truth.

Lockman wasn’t sure if he should feel relieved or disappointed. After all, Rand’s friendship depended on the lie. Like Tanner had said of Clown, if Rand knew the truth, he would probably shoot Lockman on sight.

“You’re more broody than usual,” Jessie said.

“You heard it. I’m really the enemy.”

“You’re also the guy who saved my life, several times already.”

He shook his head. “It’s not that simple. I’m responsible for so much destruction. The things I did for Dolan? I was Dolan’s personal Himmler.”

“Was, was, was. Doesn’t anything you’ve done since matter?”

“It won’t make up for the lives I destroyed.”

“Look, I’m no expert on all this mojo stuff, but the way I see it, the person that did those terrible things was not you. He was in that same body, but he wasn’t the same person I’m talking to now.”

“The person you’re talking to now is nothing more than an amalgam of other people.”

“No. There’s no such thing. That might be how they made you to begin with, but that’s not who you are now. You’re Craig Lockman. You’re my dad.”

His chest squeezed. His throat felt dry and he knew if he tried to talk his voice would break. He looked at Jessie, at her eyes, her nose, her cheekbones, and he saw glimpses of himself. Which meant, genetically, that still made her the daughter of a terrorist. He also saw traces of Kate in Jessie’s face. And what of Kate? Did what he know about himself negate what he had had with her?

He closed his eyes and listened for the wind chimes, but the air had gone still and they hung silent.

“What are you going to do?”

Lockman opened his eyes. “What do you mean?”

“Now that you know the truth, are you still going to go after Dolan, save Mom?”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

She shrugged. “If you’re one of the bad guys, why keep running? You can take the thingy that has your original soul and run off to Dolan.”

“What the hell’s wrong with you? Do you have any idea what Dolan could accomplish with the knowledge I have?”

“So you still want to stop him?”

“Of course I do.”

“Hm.” She smirked a know-it-all smirk and leaned back as if she had just won a bet. “Guess that makes you one of the good guys.”

“Don’t get cocky. The world isn’t so black and white as that.”

“You’re the one that tried to convince me there was only bad magic.”

“I stand by that.”

“Then explain to me how I made Tanner shoot himself in the butt just by thinking about it?”

“What are you talking about?”

She told him what she had experienced after she had bitten Tanner and escaped the car. The feelings flowing through her. The blood on her lips that seemed to burn away right before Tanner crashed the car.

Lockman listened, his stomach curling in on itself as she related the story.

“Sounds more like coincidence to me.”

“What about the blood? It…evaporated. Like it was used up.”

“There is that.”

“So there. I stopped the bad guy with magic. You’re wrong. Magic can be used for good.”

“Intentions mean nothing when it comes to mojo. Don’t you see what happened? If you are responsible for that misfire, it’s because you fueled the mojo with his blood and your anger.”

“But—”

“No buts.” He rubbed his temples, a headache burrowing through his brain. “Jesus, of all things, you had to be a sensitive.”

“A what?”

“Some mortals are more sensitive to mojo than others. Could be genetic. Which makes some sense since obviously the person I was before was also a sensitive.”

“Are you telling me I could be a wizard or something?”

“Don’t be stupid. This is not something you will ever try to repeat. People have a hard time turning away from that kind of power once they start. Even with the unfortunate side effect that you need to kill and torture to get continued results.”

“No,” she said, her voice so damn earnest and naive Lockman wanted to shake her. “I’ll figure out another way to make it work. There has to be another way.”

He grabbed her wrist and stared into her eyes. “No. Don’t screw around with this stuff. Ever. Understand?”

She tried to pull her hand away. His grip held true. “You’re hurting me.”

His face turned hot. He let go. “Promise me you’ll forget all about trying to do magic.”

“Fine. Whatever.”

But she didn’t sound the least bit convincing. The only way to put an end to her notions was to get her out of this world and back to a normal life. Get her back with her mom and her stepdad, safe in suburbia, make mojo nothing more than a vague memory for her, a half-remembered dream.

Which meant he had to get some answers from Tanner.

He stood.

“Where you going?” Jessie asked.

“They should be done patching up Tanner. I need to talk to him.” He strode down the porch steps and headed for the pole barn.

Chapter Thirty-Six

Lockman stepped into the pole barn through the side door and pulled the door shut behind him. Rand and Creed looked up from the worktable where Tanner lay naked on his stomach, arms at his sides as if waiting for a massage. Straps around his torso and legs held him pinned to the table. Crumpled, bloody wads of gauze lay scattered on the floor. A jagged gash zigzagged across Tanner’s right buttock, the stitch job one of the ugliest Lockman had ever seen.

“You butcher him like that on purpose?”

“Saw no point in being careful.” Creed studied Lockman. “You okay?”

“Peachy.” He circled the table until he could see the shoulder where Lockman had clipped him. Another gnarled stitch job. “He been awake at all?”

“I sedated him. But it should be easy enough to wake him now.”

Lockman nodded. “I want first dibs.”

Rand folded his arms. “You sure? You two were tight back in the day. You think you can stay objective?”

“No problem. This piece of shit will sing. You just make sure Jessie can’t hear the screams.”

Creed wiped his hands with a bloody rag. “We’ll take her uptown. There’s a good ice cream parlor there.”

“I want Rand to take her. You can stay the hell away from her.”

Rand looked back and forth between Creed and Lockman, but he didn’t ask questions. “All right.” He clapped Lockman on the back and left the barn.

Creed threw the rag onto the workbench. “I’m not your enemy, Craig.”

“You sure as hell aren’t a friend. I don’t know what to make of you.”

“Look at it from my perspective. If you knew we had a chance to turn one of Dolan’s key men to our side, someone who supplied Dolan with ninety-percent of his mojo, you’d jump at the chance. Bringing you in essentially shut Dolan down. He was a nobody without…”

“Me.”

“But you understand, right?”

“Would I take that man down? Yes. Would I use the very thing we’re supposed to be against to erase his memory and turn him into someone else? That’s crazy. You could have got the intel you needed traditionally.”

“But we had this artifact. We saw a unique opportunity we couldn’t pass up.”

“The science team was in on this, too?”

“Of course.”

“So they knew, Tanner knew, and you knew. None of the others?”

“No.”

“Did you ever intend on telling me the truth?”

His gaze dropped. “Why would I? We made you a better person.”

Lockman pointed at him. “See? That’s it right there. The power trip. That artifact made you think you were God. That you were fixing me.”

“You’re going to have to drop that yin-yang view of things if you want to keep fighting against the likes of Dolan. We can’t let the terrorists have all the power.”

“Who died?”

Creed cheek twitched. “What are you talking about?”

“To power that artifact. I know how this shit works. Who had to die to make it work?”

“Nobody died.”

“That’s bullshit. Human sacrifice is the only way to make mojo work.”

“Not with an artifact. They have inherent power of their own. What we did with it did not require a life.”

Lockman crossed the distance between them and gripped Creed’s arm. “There’s more to it. Tell me.”

“We had to use…extreme interrogation techniques.”

“Only you weren’t interrogating. So call it what it is. You tortured someone. Made them bleed. Used the blood to fuel the artifact.”

Creed wouldn’t look Lockman in the eye. He nodded.

“Who?”

A deep breath. A shudder Lockman felt in the old man’s arm. “You.”

Lockman released Creed’s arm and shuffled away. He felt like someone had clubbed him on top of his head, even saw starbursts across his vision. He tried to say something. Couldn’t find the words. Couldn’t fathom a single phrase that expressed the acidic mix of emotions eating away at his insides. He looked at Creed. He looked at Tanner.

“Wake him up.” He barely recognized his own voice. Maybe this voice, with its frayed edge, belonged to the man he used to be.

“I had no idea at the time how this would all turn out. You’ve got to believe me. I thought we were doing the best to serve our country.”

“Wake him up, or I’ll do to you what I’m planning to do to him.”

“All right.” Creed retrieved a vial and a syringe from a tackle box on the edge of the worktable. He filled the syringe with the fluid from the vial and injected it into Tanner’s leg. A second later, Tanner gasped. His eyes opened wide.

Lockman came around and crouched by the table so Tanner could see his face.

Tanner jerked, trying to get up, but the straps held him to the table. Lockman saw the realization dawn in Tanner’s face an instant before he started shouting.