Darkening Dawn (The Lockman Chronicles Book 5) (17 page)

Earl cleared his throat. “I can hear just fine, though.”

Kit rolled her eyes and cracked her gum.

Elka smiled with her mouth closed to hide her disgust.

The van hit a pothole. The vehicle’s whole frame shook. It sounded and felt like a giant hand had punched the undercarriage.

“Sorry,” Earl said.

Kit snickered. “I cannot wait until I can drive. I just hope I live through Uncle Eee’s driving long enough to see the day.”

It occurred to Elka that the girl spoke differently with her than she did with Earl. With Earl, she put on an overexaggerated accent Elka thought came from down south, only she didn’t know which part. Maybe Kit didn’t have as much air in her head as Elka first thought. She seemed to know how to play to her audience.

“I can’t help it if they don’t take care of their roads in these parts.”

Kit dismissed him with another eye roll. “So what’s your story?”

“I don’t have a story. I’m just along for the ride.”

Kit tapped the seatback with her fingertips in time to the irritating music. She eyed Elka for nearly half a minute. Elka wondered if Kit had fallen into a trance. But something about the stare drew out a feeling in Elka she didn’t recognize. She found herself liking Kit. Really liking her. She imagined the two of them walking through a forest of lilith trees, their pink leaves fluttering down around them. She imagined shifting, showing her true self to Kit, wanting so badly to share that part of herself.

Then she blinked and the feeling and the images disappeared.

“I’d like to be friends,” Kit said. “I don’t have any friends. Closest I have is a pervert who wants to get into my pants.”

A red heat encircled Elka’s neck. For some reason she thought of Kenny. “Who?”

Kit shook her head. “You’ll figure it out once you get to know Uncle Eee’s group of misfits. From the looks of you now, I’m afraid you might try to throttle him if I told you.”

“It’s one of Earl’s crew?” The heat crept up to Elka’s cheeks. Another fucking prick like Kenny. Only worse. A predator of children. And Earl
kept
him around his niece?

Kit reached out and brushed Elka’s cheek with the back of her knuckles. “Relax. I can handle him. And Uncle Eee would have already killed him if he didn’t need him.”

That gave Elka all the clues she needed to guess who the deviant was. The one they called Whisper. He seemed the most intelligent of the lot. He was the one who made up the cocktail in the syringe that had knocked her out, and the one that had woke her up. He also spent a lot of time on a computer or tinkering with odd bits of electronics.

The brains of the operation. But those brains came with a sick price.

Somehow Kit’s touch calmed Elka, though. Her cheek tingled.

What was with her?

Kit waggled her eyebrows. Her blue eye shadow looked all the more ridiculous. Still, Elka could see the beauty beneath. She wanted to wash Kit’s face. See that beauty clean.

“So, what do you say?” Kit asked.

Elka shook herself. Why the sudden obsession with this girl?

A suspicion came to mind.

Was the girl a sensitive?

Earl seemed to have a touch. Maybe it ran in the family. Elka had to wonder if Kit’s energy came from the same source as Earl’s. And did this young girl, still too awkward to know what her outward appearance communicated, know her touch was fueled by the blood, flesh, and bones of her uncle’s friends?

She seemed too smart not to know that.

Then Elka had a second thought.

Maybe Kit wasn’t entirely mortal.

Kit cupped a hand over her mouth and made a static sound. “Earth to Elka. Come in, Elka.”

“I’m sorry. I’ve a lot on my mind.”

“I’ll bet.” She leaned over the seatback and whispered, “So are we friends or what?”

“Sure,” Elka said without hesitation, though she wasn’t sure she meant it. How could a twenty-two-year-old unicorn be friends with a thirteen-year-old niece of a mortal zealot?

Kit smiled, obviously convinced of Elka’s sincerity. “Stick with me,” she said, still whispering. “I’m the only one around here that really knows what she’s doing.”

Before Elka could ask what Kit meant, the van came to a halt. She had completely lost track of their surroundings.

They were parked in the lot of a standard strip mall. The other vehicles in the caravan had lined up side-by-side, all facing the building.

The asphalt was riddled with cracks, and weeds filled nearly every one of them. Everything from fast food wrappers and old newspapers to plastic bags and shards of broken bottles littered the curb running the length of the strip of stores.

Only there weren’t any stores.

Each storefront stood empty except for the FOR LEASE signs posted in them. Some of the stores looked as trash strewn as the curb outside. A star pattern was smashed into one of the windows as if someone had tried to break it.

The whole setting looked pathetic and sad. Suburban blight at its finest.

Earl clunked the transmission into park and cut the engine. “Time to get out, girls.”

Elka and Kit both looked out the van’s windshield. Kit scrunched up her face. Elka imagined her own expression looked the same.

“This here is our improved living quarters?” Kit asked with a level of sarcasm only a teen could reach.

“Hush, now. You’ll see soon enough.”

“In case uh you ain’t looked, I don’t see nuthin’
to
see.”

Elka smirked. The girl had laid on the weird accent real thick.

Earl grunted. Elka caught a glimpse of his face in the rearview mirror. His eyes were dark and pinched at the corners.

“What’d I say about you talking like that?”

Kit laughed. “Lead the way, dear Uncle. Let us see what wonders you have in store for us.”

Earl left the van without another word.

Kit turned back to Elka. “He’s so easy to rattle.” She held out her hand. “Come on, new friend. Let’s see what craziness my uncle is up to this time.”

Elka took Kit’s hand. Her skin felt so soft. Small sparks ran up from Elka’s fingertips to her elbow.

Their eyes met.

“What are you?” Elka asked with breathy awe.

“Easy now,” Kit said. She grinned. “Friends don’t share all their secrets up front.”

True enough. After all, no one in this crew, including Earl, seemed to know what Elka really was. Earl took it on faith from his dreams that he needed her as much as she needed him.

She remembered when everything had seemed so straightforward.

Between Earl’s dream-directed mission for someone he called
master
to Kit and her strange influence, Elka was left stuck with the same question.

What, in the name of the Great Beyond, have I gotten myself into?

Chapter Twenty-Seven

T
HE LAST TIME
J
ESSIE SAW
so many trees, she had lived in a secluded cabin in Illinois with Craig and Mom. But she never had any reason to go into those woods. Mosquitoes and no-see-ums swarming in her face. Underbrush tugging at her ankles. That mossy smell that sometimes seemed nice, but could turn into a rotten gagger of a stink.

All things she hated about the woods surrounded her.

Nope. Jessie was not one with nature.

For the millionth time, she tripped on a rock hidden by the blanket of green covering the forest floor. Some of it probably poison ivy. She’d walk out of here—if she
ever
walked out of here—covered with itchy bumps that would make the twenty or so mosquito bites she already suffered feel like a mere nuisance.

She jerked forward, waving her arms to keep her balance, but the undergrowth grabbed her and momentum did the rest.

While she managed to pull her arms in to break her fall and keep her face out of the dirt, her right elbow struck another hidden rock. Pain jagged up her arm and brought tears to her eyes.

“God damn it,” she shouted.

The thick woods swallowed her shout, and made it sound feeble. Totally wrecked any satisfaction Jessie could get from cursing this plant-life prison.

She lay on her side, cradling her hurt arm against her for a couple minutes. Something leafy tickled the back of her neck.

A trio of birds squawked and chattered in the branches above, a dysfunctional little birdie family. She couldn’t tell what kind of birds they were from where she lay, but probably wouldn’t be able to identify them anyway.

Again, not a nature girl.

But as she lay silent, she heard another sound just behind the birds’ squabble.

Rushing water?

Jessie hauled herself back to her feet. She jerked her shoulders forward to hike up her backpack that, no matter how many times she had adjusted the straps, kept slipping down to her arms.

She cocked her head and listened.

Sure enough, she heard the faint sigh of running water.

A creek? Maybe a river?

She tried to pinpoint the direction the sound came from. It seemed to come from everywhere, echoing among the trees. If she could just pick out the loudest source.

There. That had to be it. North, northeast.

She trudged through the brush, taking careful steps, forcing herself to stay calm, not rush. She wanted to run. Not only was she dying of thirst, her tongue fat and dry in her mouth, but she figured she could follow the water and hope that it led her to some hint of civilization. Or, at the very least, out of these fucking woods.

It took her ten minutes to pick her way through the gnarled undergrowth. Even when the sound of rushing water grew louder, she kept her careful pace. Finally, she reached the edge of a creek about fifteen feet wide.

She could see the creek floor through the clear water. It was only a couple feet deep. Several rocks jutting above the waterline, the water’s flow breaking against them and making the sound that had led Jessie here.

She flung off her backpack and dropped to her knees. With one hand she reached down and scooped some water and brought it quickly to her mouth. She slurped the water. It carried a rusty mineral flavor, but otherwise tasted clean. Of course, at this point, Jessie would have drunk from a toilet bowl. She was that thirsty.

She indulged in the water until her stomach felt too full to take in anymore, then wished she hadn’t drank so much. Her belly sloshed like a fishbowl in an earthquake.

For a minute or two she knelt by the riverbank, the moistness from the dirt seeping through the knees of her jeans. She didn’t mind it. The cool touch centered her. Not to mention that it was a nice contrast to the freaking humidity. Even with most of the sunlight blocked from the canopy of leaves above, her shirt was soaked through with sweat. Her armpits had rubbed raw from the wet friction.

Once she was convinced she wasn’t going to retch, Jessie stood and started down along the edge of the river, following the water’s flow. If she stayed close to the bank, she could avoid the tangling weeds—or whatever the various greenery was; they were all weeds to her—and thankfully stay on her feet, any rocks in her path visible and avoidable.

The mosquitoes still buzzed her ears. Sweat still ran down her back and sides. Between her BO and the clinging stench of garbage on her, she figured any hungry animals lurking in the trees would probably run whimpering, appetite ruined by the nasty human traipsing through their home.

Either that, or her ripe scent would draw them in, salivating.

She tried not to think about it.

She also tried not to notice the growl in her own stomach. The creatures of the forest weren’t the only ones feeling a bit peckish.

After a mile or so—or a hundred, which was more like what it felt—the shadows under the trees grew thicker. The humidity broke. The air turned cool in the darkening woods. Even on the river bank, the rocks became harder and harder to see as night drew down around her.

Skittish rustling came from the underbrush and behind crooked bushes. Jessie jerked in the direction of every sound. The sweat on her skin began evaporating, leaving behind cold gooseflesh. Her sweat-soaked clothes clung to her like cold, wet rags.

She began to shiver.

Eventually, when the dark outpaced her vision, Jessie stopped and wrapped her arms around herself. The river whispered on her left side. The woods sighed to her right. She felt like she had walked into some giant, breathing beast. Or like she’d been shrunk and injected into a body like in
Fantastic Voyage
.

An old, kinda lame movie. But with a unique charm.

There was nothing charming about Jessie’s current situation, though.

The idea of curling up on the riverbank and trying to sleep with all that…nature out there, made her cringe. At worst, something like a coyote or bear would try to eat her. At best, a bunch of creepy bugs would crawl all over her while she slept, maybe into her ears, maybe into her mouth.

Just the thought made her spit and sputter as if the bugs had already gotten in.

What other choice did she have, though? She couldn’t keep moving. Either the sky was overcast, or the moon was on the wane, but she didn’t have any of its light to travel by. The darkness was near absolute. She could now only see a dark waver when she moved her hand in front of her face.

Besides, she could use the rest. Her body ached in those proverbial places where a girl didn’t know she could ache. She felt a lot like she had just done some hand-to-hand with a lurking grue—a nasty creature that looked like a cross between a goat and a crow. Jessie had had a scuffle with one a year ago during a raid of an imp nest. Apparently grues and imps were friendly. They liked the same dark environments and grues offered brutal protection against threats the imps couldn’t handle themselves.

Which wasn’t much.

If Ree hadn’t stepped in with his bowie knife, Jessie would have ended up grue food.

The thought of Ree almost made her cry.

The dumb bastard had sided with the wrong people and he didn’t seem to know it. She had thought better of him. Had thought he had a head screwed on at least a little straight.

As it turned out, not so much.

Even so, she sort of missed him. He’d always been cool with her. Right up until the general and little Miss Kinga showed up.