Darkening Dawn (The Lockman Chronicles Book 5) (2 page)

Ree kicked the door open, Jessie right behind him, the team circled around her in a horseshoe pattern, all eyes forward. Peering around Ree, Jessie glimpsed the master bedroom through the doorway. An obnoxiously huge room that could have held one of the apartments she and Mom had lived in at one time, with room to spare. A Titanic-sized four-post bed sat in the center of the room. Built-in bookcases full of both leather-bound “for-show” books and ratty grocery store paperbacks lined two of the four walls. An entertainment center that looked like NASA’s mission control room took up most of a third. The final wall was hung with artwork like a gallery, each piece depicting unicorns in some fashion or another, from realistic-looking paintings, to comic book-like illustrations, and a couple abstracts that only slightly resembled their single-horned subject matter.

Apparently, unicorns had serious ego issues.

Other than the fancy furniture, though, the room stood empty.

Jessie concentrated, trying to listen for any kind of movement beyond the ringing in her ears. If she’d still been a vampire, she might have picked up something. Instead, she heard her pulse and the soft puff of Ree’s boots on the room’s plush carpet as he crept deeper inside.

Only one door led off from this room, through the gallery wall. Probably a walk-in closet about the size of a spare bedroom. Maybe hung with furs and a hundred pairs of fancy shoes and designer suits, yet still enough room for a friendly racquetball match.

Dealing in horn dust must have paid damn well.

Ree signaled at the door with a hand and the team filed into the room, Jessie following along. He directed three of the agents to line up against the wall beside the door. A few of them jostled the artwork, but they moved silently, the brush of their feet on the carpet barely a whisper.

The rest of the team, including Jessie, formed up behind Ree in front of the door.

A trickle of sweat ran down between Jessie’s shoulder blades. She took a deep breath through her nose and noticed the room smelled sweet, like fresh cotton candy. From the pre-op briefing, she knew that horn dust smelled something like that. Were they processing the stuff in their bedroom? Or hiding the product in the walk-in?

Ree gave the team a single nod, then he lined up his rifle at the door. “You’re cornered. There’s no way out. Set down any weapons you have and come out slowly.”

No response. Judging from the look on the agents’ faces, this surprised no one.

Ree shuffled closer to the door. He held up three fingers, ticked them off—one, two, three—then reared back to kick the door open.

He never got the chance to follow through.

The door exploded outward, splitting in the middle, the sound like a crack of thunder. Through the two halves of the splintered door emerged a shimmering horn that looked coated in sparkles. The white horse head the horn was attached to burst forward in a blur of speed. Its red mane fluttered along the back of its neck as if blown by a strong wind. Its white-haired body also had a dusting of sparkles, though not as concentrated as on the horn. The sight of the mythical animal froze Jessie in awe. It looked even more magical than her little girl imagination could have ever conjured.

One of the halves of the door hit Ree square in the chest and knocked him to the floor.

The agents behind him—and the only thing between Jessie and the charging unicorn—had time enough to twitch in surprise before the unicorn reached them. Spike was one of those agents, standing right in the unicorn’s path.

The unicorn’s horn shot straight through Spike’s chest, poking out through the center of her back, the sparkling tip smeared with red.

Jessie’s more sensible instincts kicked in, breaking the spell of her awe. She staggered sideways, out of the unicorn’s path.

The unicorn kept charging as it lifted Spike off her feet, a human shish kabob. Spike dropped her rifle and clung to the unicorn’s mane, her legs dangling and kicking helplessly. Blood sputtered out of her mouth as she screamed.

The smell of iron mixed with the sweetness already in the air as if some bright entrepreneur had decided to open up a bakery and butcher in the same store.

Then the chatter of automatic rifle fire filled the room, muffling the other scents with the overwhelming stink of cordite.

Jessie reached out toward the unicorn as it passed her.
No, wait.

Too late. The unicorn’s pure white flank ripped open, bullets chewing into its flesh. The blood that gushed out looked like a more vibrant shade of red than a human’s, but that could have been Jessie’s senses sharpened by the adrenaline coursing through her.

Jessie screamed.

The unicorn reared its head, throwing Spike off its horn. Her limp body bounced off one of the bookcases, leaving behind a red splash across a row of leather-bound books. The unicorn reared around to face the gunfire as if ready to dive against the current of bullets. But a burst of rounds obliterated its skull, leaving its horn hanging from a strip of flesh across one black eye.

The unicorn collapsed, its weight enough to shake the floor. Jessie felt the vibration buzz up her legs. The rest of her felt numb and clammy, kind of like the first time she made out with a boy. With Ryan. A memory from a million years ago. Only then she had a thrill run through her, an excitement at discovering the unknown. Right now, she felt sick, her stomach twisted in knots.

Tears welled in her eyes.

The gunfire stopped. The silence was suffocating. Jessie wanted to scream just to fill it. Her gaze went from the bloody unicorn to Spike’s limp body a couple yards away. She lay on her side, one arm twisted under her at an unnatural angle.

The taste of bile rolled into Jessie’s mouth.

Slowly, she turned to the agents who had opened fire on the unicorn. The first time she tried to speak, her voice cracked. She swallowed, took a deep breath, and tried again. “You didn’t have to kill it. I could have Returned it.”

The agents stared at her as if she had asked them what the square root of pizza was. Maybe she hadn’t cleared her throat enough.

Agent Ree got to his feet. He twisted his neck to one side as if working out a cramp, his eyes pinched. Then he looked at Jessie. “The unicorn attacked, Jessie. They did their job.”

He was right. Jessie never got the chance to work up her power before one of the team was already dead. She had thought she could work faster than that. But she wasn’t a gun. She didn’t have a trigger. And Returning did not lend itself to a quick draw contest.

She ducked her head and wiped her eyes with the back of her wrist. “I know.”

Ree lifted his rifle and jerked his chin at Spike. “Boomer, check on Agent Cezarez. The rest of you, hackles up. Intel says there’s at least one more uni.”

Boomer was the shortest of the group, with thin lips and small, twitchy eyes. He looked like a minion to some evil overlord, but Jessie knew from talking to him that he was a sweet, soft-spoken guy who had a passion for demolitions as deep as Jessie’s love of movies. He rushed to Spike, who now had a real name that Jessie couldn’t bring herself to use, making her death too real, and triggering a wave of guilt she couldn’t deal with now. After all, if Jessie hadn’t insisted on going in with the team, Spike would have stayed with her and never ended up in the path of that unicorn.

The rest of the squad gathered at the entrance to the closet, every one of them with their rifles trained on the inside. But even from where Jessie stood, the closet’s entire contents were visible. Plenty of suits, dresses, two racks of shoes—one his; one hers—a full-length mirror on the far wall…and nothing else.

“Cover me,” Ree said and crept into the closet. He moved with a stiff quickness, swiveling at the waist as he looked up and from side-to-side, always with his rifle aimed in the direction he faced. He shoved aside the clothes hanging on the racks and knocked on the walls behind them. He stomped at foot-spaced intervals on the floor. He squinted at the frame around the mirror and pushed against the wall on either side of it.

Then he lowered his rifle and turned to the team.

“Nothing.”

The second woman on the team shrugged. “Intel’s always a guess.”

Ree shook his head. “Feels wrong.” His gaze looked past his team to Jessie, an intensity in his eyes that made her shiver. “You getting a vibe?”

Jessie wrinkled her forehead and snorted. “That’s not really my shtick. I don’t get vibes.”

Ree sighed, clearly agitated. He looked like someone who had misplaced his keys and had looked everywhere for them without success. “Can you come in here and check anyway?”

She didn’t blame him for completely misunderstanding her abilities. She didn’t fully understand the Return herself. Though it had never given her paranormal radar. Still, she humored him and stepped into the closet.

Ree shuffled around her and out the door, leaving her in the space alone. The clothing surrounding her acted like sound-proofing, muting sounds in the closet, letting the ringing in her ears well back up. She glanced around. The mix of fabrics filled the space with an animal-like musk. She doubted anything synthetic hung in this closet. Just behind the smell of the clothes, though, she smelled that cotton candy sweetness.

The skin on the back of her neck rippled. Her scalp tingled.

Don’t get excited. A unicorn just burst out of here. The smell probably came from it.

But as Ree had put it, Jessie was getting a vibe. It worked at her like a persistent humming in her head. Her cheeks turned cold.

“What is it?”

Jessie turned to the voice. Ree had one eyebrow quirked while he stared at her like she was a total freak.

“You just went pale.”

Jessie slowly pivoted away from him and looked into the mirror. She bit back a shriek at the sight of her reflection. She almost looked like a vampire again. For an instant, she thought she heard a voice, a distant whisper.

It’s going to happen again.

Then the sensation cut out like a lost signal. The color and warmth returned to her face. She watched it happen in the mirror.

Like that, the “vibe” was gone.

Overactive imagination. Wishful thinking. The hope that she really did have more to offer than the Return. Nothing more.

She rolled her eyes and turned back to Ree and the team, all staring in at her like she was a zoo animal. “Nothing,” she said. “Just a little too much adrenaline. The closet’s clear as far as I can tell.”

“Okay. Next step.”

“We go home?”

Ree shook his head. “Clean up.” He pointed to the dead unicorn on the bedroom floor, its blood still soaking into the carpet. “You need to Return that uni.”

Jessie scrunched up her face. Her stomach did a triple lindy. “What the fuck you talking about? It’s dead.”

“We can’t leave it here for civilians to find. Easiest way to dispose of it is you.”

“That’s what I’ve become? A garbage disposal?”

Ree’s shoulders shagged. “Come on. Don’t look at it that way.”

“This is sick. It’s wrong.”

“Hey!” Boomer stood up from his place by Spike’s side. “What the fuck you care about a dead uni? That thing killed Lynn.
That’s
what’s wrong.”

That horrible sugar scent gagged Jessie. She pinched her lips shut and focused on the bookshelf across the room so she wouldn’t have to see either Spike or the unicorn bleeding on the floor, or have to meet eyes with any of the team, all of them judging her now because Returning a dead supernatural somehow offended her ethics.

Boomer made a good point. Why did she care? Was she too tied to her childhood ideal of unicorns? It felt deeper than that. It felt like a misuse of her power. Where that idea came from, she didn’t know. But it had embedded itself into her deeply.

“I…” Her gaze found the smear of Spike’s blood on the book spines. She squeezed her eyes shut. “I can’t.”

“You can’t?” Boomer asked. “Or won’t?”

A hand touched Jessie’s arm. “Jessie, look at me.”

She opened her eyes on Ree standing close by.

He spoke low. “I don’t know what’s going on, but you have to do this.”

“When did Returning the dead become policy?”

“When did Returning any supernatural become a problem?”

Just now
, she thought,
and please don’t ask me why.
Her eyes dipped. She couldn’t stand the disappointed look from Ree. Disappointed and worried, like maybe he thought she’d gone a little crazy.

“Listen,” Ree said, voice soft but firm. “This isn’t up for debate. This is a direct order. Return the uni. Now.”

She wanted to argue, to tell him how disrespectful using the Return on the dead was, a blasphemy of the worst kind. But it wasn’t entirely her argument. More something she
felt
. Definitely nothing she could explain. Besides, she doubted Ree would change his mind. These Agency types didn’t have a reputation for flexibility.

“Fine,” she said. Her voice shook. “But I’m telling you right now, this is wrong. It’s not what the Return is for. And I have a feeling karma’s going to kick my ass for doing it.”

“I’m sure it’ll be fine,” he said and stepped aside, giving her a clear view of the unicorn corpse.

Forgive me.

Jessie drew her power to wield the Return.

The Dark

Chapter Four

M
ORE THAN THREE YEARS LATER
, Jessie Lockman still sometimes dreamed about the dead unicorn.

At the edge of wakefulness on this morning, she heard it whinny in pain and felt the warm spatter of its blood across her face. Its horn sparkled in the sunlight as it tumbled into the tall grass of the open prairie they stood on. It lay flat on one side, its dead eye rolling back to stare at Jessie accusingly. Then it spoke.

“Yo, wake up.”

Jessie wrinkled her brow. She wiped away a drop of blood from the corner of her mouth. That’s when her tongue found the fangs in her mouth.

I’m a vampire again.

“Hey, yo. Wake up.”

This time the voice came from the sky, cloudless and a shade of blue so washed out from the bright sun it nearly looked white. The ground shook. She shook. Then the sky cracked open and a face stared down at her, skin as pale as the sky it had split, except for his rosy cheeks, as if he’d stayed out in the sun too long.