Darkest Hour (33 page)

Chapter Forty-Four

Jessie lay on the floor, her back arched so that she balanced on her heels and the back of her head in a horrifying imitation of the portal arch out back. Her mouth was stretched wide as if in mid-scream, but she made no sound. She scrabbled at the floor with her fingernails.

The edges of the cube-shaped artifact dug against Lockman’s fingers and palm as he clutched it in one hand. He hobbled to Jessie’s side and dropped to the floor with her. In his hurry to get back to her after hearing her scream, Lockman had forgotten the damage to his body. His body, however, had not. Nausea bubbled in his gut and sent bile up his throat. He swallowed it down, burning like acid all the way, and grabbed Jessie’s arm.

“She can pull him into this,” he shouted as if competing to be heard, though the only sound came from Jessie’s fingernails scrapping the floor. He held up the cube. “Kate, put him in
this
.”

He didn’t know what else to do. Should he bleed onto the artifact? He supposed under normal circumstances—
normal?
—that was how you would activate it. This wasn’t Lockman’s area of expertise. His job had involved confiscating the dangerous relics. He sure as hell didn’t
use
them.

He was still coughing up some blood. He could spit on the—

A flash of brilliant white exploded from Jessie’s body, forcing Lockman to clamp his eyes shut. Even then, he could see the light. Feel it, too, like the glow from a heat lamp. The cube in his hand grew hot. His hand felt as though he clung to a brand fresh from the flame, but he couldn’t get himself to let go. What was another source of pain among the many that harried him already anyway?

The bright glow couldn’t have lasted longer than twenty seconds, probably less. As the light faded, so did the heat from the artifact. By the time Lockman could open his eyes again without fear of going blind, whatever alloy made up the artifact had turned as cool as an untouched door knob.

Jessie no longer arched her back. She lay still, staring at the ceiling, chest gently rising and falling with even breaths.

The air carried the scent of a passed rain shower, enough so that Lockman expected to find the floor wet, but everything was dry. The smell brought back a vivid sense memory, an afternoon where he and Kate had gone hiking in the woods and got caught in the rain. The rain had been one of those humid summer showers. They had moved off the trail and made love in what turned out to be a bed of poison oak. Both of them suffered rashes in uncomfortable locations for a week afterward. But that moment had been worth every itch.

Lockman gazed down at the artifact still clutched in his hand. At once he knew—not guessed,
knew
—Kate had succeeded in pulling Gabriel inside and that the smell in the air was a message left for Lockman.

He also
suspected
something else, and Jessie confirmed it when she said, “She’ll have to stay with him.”

Lockman’s throat narrowed and his mouth filled with the taste of tears. “Why?”

“He’s too powerful,” Jessie said. “The artifact can hold him, but only if Mom stays inside to help.”

“We don’t know that for sure.”

Jessie rolled onto her side to face Lockman. “Mom does.”

“You can still...talk to her?”

Jessie nodded.

Lockman eased down onto his side, facing Jessie. He set the artifact down between them at eye level. His eyes watered. His nose ran. All the pains in his body felt like pin-pricks compared to the pain in his soul.

“There’s one more thing,” Jessie said, voice deep and heavy. “She wants us to destroy it.”

A sob belted loose from Lockman’s throat. The tears streamed freely now. “Of course she does.”

“She says she’s counting on you to do the right thing.” Jessie openly cried now, too. “And that she forgives you. And loves you. Oh, Dad...”

As Lockman and Jessie wept together, a
thuwmping
sound came from outside and slowly swelled in volume until the source was unmistakable.

Chopper
, Lockman thought.
We’ve got visitors.

Chapter Forty-Five

Lockman had spent the last fumes of his strength retrieving the artifact. Whoever the visitors were, welcome or not, Lockman couldn’t go out to greet them. With the sun still up, neither could Jessie. So they waited for the newcomers to find them.

It didn’t take long.

Seeing a famous movie star march through the door in fatigues with an M16 slung over his shoulder should have shocked the hell out of Lockman. In a way, however, Romeo Kress’s arrival made perfect sense. Lockman offered him a weak salute from the floor.

Jessie reacted with similar calm. If Lockman had to guess, Kate probably filled her in on how Kress fit into things. She sat up and scooted further away from the door to avoid the incoming swatch of light, taking the cube, Lockman noticed, along with her, cradling it in her lap protectively.

Behind Kress came a petite woman with jet black hair and a white streak down the center. She carried a matching rifle to Kress’s and wore an expression that said
I’m a badass and I know it
as clear as if she’d painted the words on her face. She nudged her way up beside Kress and surveyed Lockman and Jessie as clinically as an oncologist might study the X-ray of a tumor. The gal seemed like a ball of laughs.

“They’re alive,” she said as if this went against every belief in her soul.

“Sorry to disappoint,” Lockman said. His voice sounded wet to him, thanks to that trickle of blood at the back of his throat.

“Not at all,” Kress said, all his attention focused on Jessie. A half-grin sprung on his lips, giving him a dimple in one cheek. His eyes held all the wonder of a child at his first magic show. “Are you unharmed?”

Jessie made the
ucht
sound of a nonplussed teen girl. “What a stupid question.”

Kress frowned. “Of course. I apologize.”

“I know what you did to my mother,” Jessie said.

Without skipping a beat, Kress came back with, “All in the name of protecting you.”

Those words sounded too sickeningly familiar to Lockman. It was that kind of reasoning that had led him to this point in his life. It didn’t work. He had to learn that the hard way. “What do you want?”

For the first time since he had come through the door, Kress’s eyes turned away from Jessie. “Mr. Lockman. It’s good to finally meet you.”

“Outside of your flicks, I don’t know you. You sure as hell don’t know me.”

“You’re right. Forgive me.” The man had the art of the insincere apology down pat. “I know
of
you. And I knew your former boss, Victor Creed.”

Based on what Kate had said about this guy, he had to be well connected in the supernatural...
community
for lack of a better term. That he knew Creed made sense in that regard. It still surprised him. Creed never mentioned knowing a famous actor with a team of supernaturals all living in an underground complex somewhere between dimensions.

“You didn’t answer my question,” Lockman said.

“I would like the two of you to come with me. You obviously need medical attention. And Jessie is especially revered among my people. We want to contribute to her safety.”

“You mean you want to use me for your Return thingy,” Jessie said.

Kress smiled, showing perfect white teeth, but none of the smile reached his eyes. “We want to make sure you fulfill your destiny.”

Jessie hopped to her feet, holding the artifact in one hand while she aimed a finger of the other hand at Kress. “You can take that destiny shit and cram...” The fierce look in her eyes turned comically to surprise. Her jaw dropped. “What?”

Ms. White Stripe cocked an eyebrow and raised her rifle a little, not quite aiming at anything, but ready to swing the barrel up on notice.

Jessie huffed and cocked her hip. Lockman knew right then that Kate was telling her something Jessie did not like a bit. He’d seen the same reaction before when they’d been living in Illinois and Kate told Jessie to complete some chore. He could almost hear the
But Mom...

Jessie looked down at Lockman. “Mom says we should go with them.”

Well, they had planned on contacting Kress for help before Gabriel had arrived at the base. He saw a significant difference between asking for Kress’s help fighting Gabriel and putting himself and Jessie into the man’s care, though.

“She says,” Jessie continued, “that you won’t survive without their help and you damn well know it.”

Lockman had grown so used to the pain in his damaged body, he had let himself forget the severity of his injuries. Kate was right. Without prompt medical attention, he was a goner, and here stood a life-flight out of this place free of charge.

“You’re mother is near?” Kress asked Jessie.

Jessie glanced at the cube in her hand. She ignored Kress’s question, though. “We need to go with them, Dad.”

Kress didn’t wait for a confirmation from Lockman. He turned to his striped sidekick and made a twirling motion in the air with a finger. Stripe nodded and hoofed it out the door. “Hang in there, Mr. Lockman,” Kress said. “We’ll take good care of you.”

Lockman laid his head back on the floor. He caught the faint scent of rain again. A coolness touched his forehead like an invisible hand feeling for a fever.

Kate?

And then the weight of his injuries, both physical and emotional, pushed him toward the dark. This time, he let it take him.

He dreamed a lot. Mostly about Kate. Memories reenacted in his sleep. An unknown amount of time went by as he slipped in and out of consciousness, plugged into IVs and heart monitors, with nurses in and out to check on him, the room a fully equipped ICU, though Lockman knew it didn’t belong to any public hospital.

Kress’s resources were staggering.

Several times, he would wake from a dream and find Jessie at his bedside. She would hold his hand and watch him with worried eyes. He would try to tell her he was okay, but whatever kind of drugs they pumped into him through the IV tubes made him too groggy to speak.

He found it odd that they didn’t try mojo to heal him. They had him doped up enough that he couldn’t have objected. At one point, Jessie did ask if he wanted her to help him like she had in New Orleans. She kept it cryptic like that, not coming right out and asking if he wanted to drink her blood.

He had just enough strength to shake his head.

No easy exits. He had earned the slow recovery. A little penance for the bad choices he’d made.

On the third day of his recovery, Lockman received a visit from Kress. He was accompanied by the woman with the stripe in her hair whom Lockman had since learned went by Mica. She had a manila folder tucked under her arm. Kress came into the room without greeting. He went straight to a flat-panel TV attached to a hinged arm bolted to the wall. The arm allowed him to swing the TV out so Lockman could view the screen from his hospital bed.

“You need to see this,” Kress said as he cycled through channels. He stopped when he came to a shot of the president standing at a podium in the White House’s East Room.

Lockman watched in awe as the President of the United States addressed the nation about a horrible terrorist attack on Barrow, Alaska that cost the lives of the entire city. Details of the nature of the attack had to remain classified, he explained, for the sake of national security, but rest assured those responsible would be hunted down and brought to justice. He intimated without coming right out and saying it that al-Qaeda had something to do with the attack. Of course, Barrow’s borders and a healthy perimeter, including air space, were now blocked by a military presence, allowing for no press access. He promised to offer continued details on the attack as they came to light, and asked that all Americans pray for the over four-thousand lost in one of the worst terrorist attacks on American soil since 9/11.

The president’s address at an end, Kress immediately shut off the TV and swung it aside. He didn’t look half as stunned as Lockman felt. In fact, he almost looked bored.