Darkest Hour (3 page)

What Lockman didn’t know, what he could have never fathomed despite having had the last six months to get used to his daughter being a vampire, was that Jessie had one last attack ready for when she needed it.

She opened her mouth wide. So wide it looked like she had displaced her jaw. Then she sank her teeth into the wolf’s neck.

Lockman cringed. He could have handled some more mojo, another splash of exploding wolf guts. Seeing her suck the blood out of the wolf? It was the last step toward admitting that she really was a vampire. His daughter would never look the same to him again.

Jessie tore a chunk of the wolf’s throat out. She spat the flesh and blood-matted fur out and shoved her mouth back into the wound. She fed like a real vamp, as if she had been doing it all her life. Until now she had only gotten her blood from volunteer donors, and drank from the plastic bags they stored the blood in.

The wolf’s struggles quickly weakened. A handful of seconds passed and the wolf finally fell still.

Jessie unhooked her legs from around the wolf and rolled away. The moonlight illuminated her blood-smeared face. Her black eyes gleamed. Her dark veins visibly pulsed.

She’s a monster.

It should have been no revelation. He knew what she had become. A vampire. And vampires were monsters. Yet he had lived with this one for six months and only now had come to realize that crooked truth.

She’s a monster.

But she was still his daughter. Still talked like her. Laughed like her. Complained like her. Boasted like her. She wasn’t like the typical vampire. She was special. Different. The exception.

She doesn’t look all that different right now.

This wouldn’t even be an issue if he hadn’t failed to protect her in the first place. So judging her? Calling her a monster? He had no right.

Jessie got to her feet. She stared at Lockman. The black in her eyes faded again. Her jaw had reset itself and she had her mouth closed, hiding her fangs. Besides the blood on her face and her throbbing veins, she looked almost normal.

She must have seen the judgment in his eyes, as if he had called her a monster aloud to her face. Tears ran streaks through the blood on her cheeks.

“I had to,” she said, voice quivering. “I couldn’t get the magic to work. So I had to.”

Screams and hurried footsteps echoed from around the building. Some of the club goers had found their way out of the dark and now rushed to their cars. Engines revved to life. Tires squealed. Among these noises came a chorus of wolf howls.

More wolves on the way.

Jessie took a few tentative steps forward. “Dad?”

She must have seen the horror on his face. No way he could hide it. He clenched his teeth and held out his hand. “Come on.”

She let out a long breath and nodded. Took his hand. Together, they climbed into the van.

Adam stared at Jessie, at her blood-masked face. His square jaw hung open. “Are you all right?”

“It’s not her blood,” Lockman said.

Teresa adjusted the rearview mirror for her own look at Jessie. Lockman saw her eyes in the reflection, watched them widen when she spotted Jessie.

Lockman patted the back of the driver’s seat. “Let's go.”

After righting the rearview mirror, Teresa gunned the engine and they tore out of the parking lot. Six wolves greeted them, standing in the center of the road. She hit the brakes so hard, Lockman had to brace himself to keep from flying out of his seat.

“Now would be a good time for some of your explosive mojo,” Teresa said. She shoved the gearshift to reverse and stood on the gas. They raced straight backward.

The wolves kept up with what looked like a casual saunter. No way they could outrun the wolves in this van. Especially not in reverse.

“I can’t,” Jessie said. More tears cut clear lines through the blood.

“What are you talking about?” Teresa snapped. “You’re covered with blood.
Use
it.”

“I can’t,” Jessie repeated and absently wiped at her tears, smearing blood around her eyes and getting it all over her hand.

Teresa worked the gearshift, the brakes, and the steering wheel and got the van swung around and roaring away from the half-dozen wolves. The van whined as Teresa tortured it with RPMs it was never meant to handle. The wolves stayed on their tail. They split, three coming up on the right, three on the left. Teresa had to have reached a good sixty miles-per-hour, but the wolves kept pace.

One of the wolves sideswiped the van, slamming against the vehicle like a hockey player executing a body check. The van rocked on its shocks. The side of the van buckled a few inches from the impact.

Another wolf on the opposite side made the same maneuver with equal results.

Teresa shouted out as the wheel jerked in her hands and the van fishtailed.

The wolves struck the van again, this time hard enough to shatter the window above the back door. A second later, a wolf jumped up, trying to get into the window. At the speed they traveled, the wolf didn’t have enough momentum to pull off the stunt. Luckily, the late hour and the seedy locale made for no traffic. But eventually they would run out of road. Teresa would be forced to slow to make a turn. The second they did, that wolf would be in there with them and likely followed by his friends. The wolves would treat themselves to a bloodbath.

Lockman took Jessie by the elbow, lifted her chin, and made sure she looked him in the eyes. “What’s going on? Why won’t it work?”

“I don’t know.”

The van shook from another strike.

Teresa hollered over her shoulder. “Lockman, I’ve got a hundred yards at most before I’m out of road.”

He squeezed Jessie’s arm. “You’re sure?”

She nodded. “I’m sorry.”

The van took another hit, this one from behind.

In the far back seat, Adam twisted to look out the rear window. “Aw, hell. Four more just joined the race.”

Ten wolves against a couple of mortals, a vampire, and an ogre armed with only a shotgun and a single handgun.

They were as good as dead.

Chapter Four

Heart racing, Jessie squeezed her eyes shut. The van swerved and Jessie felt it in her gut as if they drove on water and any minute they could sink.

She dropped down to that dark part of her psyche that she had become quite familiar with in the last six months. Her secret that she had kept from everyone. The place she went to learn all she had about this power inside of her.

You have to tell me what’s going on.

For the longest moment, only silence answered. She sat alone in her mind. Everything going on outside of her was cut off. The van could crash into a brick wall and Jessie wouldn’t know about it until she rose out of mind and found herself in the twisted wreck, assuming she survived. She didn’t know what would happen if she died while in here. Would everything just suddenly stop?

Maybe
, a voice whispered in her ear. She could feel his breath on her ear lobe. She didn’t understand how that worked, how she could feel things in here even though she couldn’t
see
anything. She could smell things, too. She imagined this might be how a blind person would feel if they had somehow gotten caught in zero gravity.

Maybe what?
she asked the voice.

Maybe everything would suddenly stop if your body died out there.

Well, we might be about to find out,
she said and spun the apparition of her body to face him so he couldn’t keep doing that creepy whispering in her ear. Again, it wasn’t that she’d be able to see him, but he did fill some sort of psychic space in her mind. So she couldn’t see him, but she could feel where he was. Sometimes she could catch a whiff of his body odor. He smelled like a warm corpse.

Danger afoot?

You know there is. Don’t play stupid, Gabriel. There’s no time for it.

You have about twenty seconds before Ms. Bitch crashes the car or is forced to slow down.
He sounded almost chipper. Especially when he got the chance to use his nickname for Teresa. He had silly little names for all the people in Jessie’s life. He thought he was a lot funnier than he really was.

Then that’s how long you’ve got to tell me why my magic isn’t working.

Simple,
he said.
You’re tired.

Not for the first time, Jessie wished she could see him, that he was actually flesh instead of merely another consciousness occupying her body. She would have decked him in the nose. Of course, then he might stop telling her how to use her power.

I don’t have time to be tired.

He laughed softly. She could sense his presence in front of her. He had closed the distance between their minds. When he spoke again she could smell his breath. It reminded her of the freezer in the basement back when her life was normal, even before Mom had married Alec, the werewolf spy. Mom would buy fresh meat from the butcher in Hamtramck and freeze it. Gabriel’s breath smelled like that first whiff Jessie would get when she opened the freezer to fetch steaks for Mom.

Magic isn’t infinite. You’re young. Even with the extra power from your vampiric state, you still have limits.

So what? You’re telling me there’s nothing we can do? We’re going to die?

He sighed long and hard.
Do you really think I would let your father’s stupidity end my existence?

So you have an idea?

Yes, dear. I have an idea. But it means hurting one of your companions.

Jessie’s invisible stomach clenched. The smell of frozen beef or pork loin wafted around her psychic self.
What do you mean?

He chuckled softly.
You’ll need to draw blood.

I have blood all over my face. I can use that.

No
, he said, his voice creaking like an old chair.
This has to be blood you are emotionally tied to. Remember, in magic, blood is a symbol of power. It isn’t the actual power itself.

So making someone I like bleed is a symbol? Not really a symbol I want to carry.

The only way you’ll get more power is if you reach a darker part of yourself. Causing pain is the easiest way there. Causing pain of a loved one is even better.

His voice had taken on a wet, slurpy sound. If she could see him, she imagined he would be foaming at the mouth about now.

Why do I think you’re bullshitting me?

Right now, it is not in my best interest to play games. We have only fifteen seconds before we’re likely to die.

Fifteen? It was twenty seconds at least thirty seconds ago.

Time goes slower in the depths of your mind. After all, this whole conversation is made of thoughts alone. Thoughts move much faster than the outside world.

Made sense, she guessed. Small comfort, though. Once she pulled out of her mind, those fifteen seconds would tick by like seconds always did—too quickly by far.

Fine,
she said (or thought).
I draw blood from my dad, say. Everything else works the same.

Not the same. So…much…better…

He said the last words as if he were in mid-orgasm. So gross. Good thing she didn’t need him anymore. She shot up through her mind, like a dolphin charging the surface of the water to launch in an arc through the air. Her eyes snapped open just as one of the wolves hammered against the van.

This time the steering wheel slid through Teresa’s grip. The van lurched to one side. The tires keened as they scraped the pavement going sideways. Jessie felt the van begin to tip. At the speed they were going this van was going to roll and shake the four of them up inside like ice cubes in a blender.

She reached out and grabbed Craig’s arm, dug her nails in as hard and deep as she could, which was pretty hard since she was a vampire.

He cried out and gaped at her in surprise.

Somehow the van righted itself and slammed back down onto all four wheels. Teresa wrangled with the steering wheel, gained control of the van, but they had lost all momentum. The wolves overtook them. One leapt up onto the hood and pawed at the glass in front of Teresa’s face. Another leapt at the shattered window above the side door. It managed to get its front paws hooked inside and its head through the opening, but the window was too small to fit the rest of the oversized wolf.

The wolf in the window growled at Jessie, his jaws close enough that she could feel its hot, moist breath.

Clutching her dad’s arm, she felt his blood well up around her fingers. She pushed out her free hand at the wolf and shouted, “Back.”

As if yanked by an invisible cord, the wolf shot away from the van and through the plate glass window of a drycleaner.

The feel of her dad’s hand over hers drew her attention back to him. He was trying to pry her hand off without success. In fact, the more he struggled, the more strength Jessie felt, and the harder her grip became.

“What are you doing?” he asked with pleading in his eyes.

She opened her mouth, but before she could speak the van came to a jerking halt and sent her sliding off the seat and onto the van floor. She had such a vicious grip on her dad’s arm she ripped loose a hunk of flesh.

He shouted, nearly coming out of his seat as well, but he bounced off the back of the driver’s seat instead. He clapped his hand over the tear in his arm. His eyes watered.

Seeing him in pain made Jessie feel awful. It also made her feel even more powerful.

She got her feet under her and came to a crouched position behind the center console between the driver’s and front passenger’s seats. This gave her a view out the windshield of what had caused Teresa to stop the van. Four of the wolves had managed to circle the van after they lost speed and they now stood in a line across the street like a furry roadblock. The fifth wolf still stood on the van’s hood and had done a fair job of cracking up the windshield in front of Teresa. The safety glass had turned an ocean blue from the amount of cracks with a single, wolf paw-sized hole in the center of the damage.