Darkening Dawn (The Lockman Chronicles Book 5) (27 page)

“What if I don’t wanna?”

The tension between them had become palatable, like a fog in the room, thick and humid. Their spat unnerved Jessie more than her watcher’s threats had. If they killed each other, and they really were the only ones from their crew left, where would that leave her?

Assuming she didn’t get caught in any cross fire.

“Are you serious?” the old guy said. “After all we been through, you’re going to pull this shit with me? Are you forgetting why we’re here? We ain’t the only ones left. We got one more, and he’s going to set this all right when he comes.”

Her watcher switched back to Mr. Breath. Each exhale had the same angry force as when he’d gotten into Jessie’s face. She expected him to lunge at the old guy any second now.

Instead, she heard footsteps move away. Then a door slam shut with a loud metallic smack.

A long sigh came next, and Jessie could tell it came from the old guy. It had a weary, resigned sound.

“Well, now,” he said in a good-old-boy kind of way, like he was going to offer her a glass of iced tea and a seat on his porch. “Let’s get to it.”

“Like I said to your friend, the Agency can find me no matter where you think you’ve hidden me. They’ll be after me any minute. And I’ll make sure you get the same treatment you gave Ree.”

The old guy chuckled. Jessie half expected him to say,
Aw shucks
. “That the weird-looking fella’s name? What is that? Chinese? I had a hard time deciding if he was a nig or a chink.”

A sour taste filled Jessie’s mouth. “You are some kind of special bastard, aren’t you?”

“Naw, I ain’t all that special. Got a bit of the touch. Dreams and such. And I’ve learned a few tricks from a mutual friend of ours.”

Warmth pressed against Jessie. The old guy’s body heat as he leaned in close. She squirmed against her bindings. She didn’t want to be anywhere near this monster. She preferred the filthy threat of her watcher to the clean evil that radiated from his leader.

“Now you,” he said softly. “You are supposed to be real special. Though I don’t see it. But he does. So I don’t give a good god damn about you. He can have you.”

Jessie was certain she didn’t want to know who this
he
the old guy kept referring to was. She had to know, though. She had to know as much about what was coming to see if she could find any angles to get out of it.

She licked her lips, still rough with dried blood.

“Who?” she asked.

His body heat drifted away. A bone or two creaked as he stood straight.

She could picture a nasty grin on his face, probably with yellow teeth, fangs maybe, devil horns. No. Mortal monsters didn’t need those kinds of trappings.

“Why, Gabriel Dolan, course.”

Jessie’s heart froze. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t feel her arms, her legs. The darkness behind her blindfold somehow darkened even more.

It’s going to happen again.

Those words took on a horrifying relevance.

Jessie had never seriously wished for death.

She did now.

Chapter Forty-Four

T
HEY HADN’T EVEN RESTRAINED
her. Just locked her in a metal-walled room with a Plexiglas window at least four inches thick, riddled with scratches, as if something had tried to claw its way through. Earl had spent a good hour staring at her through the glass, arms folded across his chest, a deadly look in his eyes.

They had also stripped her. They thought they could demoralize her. Make her feel vulnerable and cold—the room’s temperature couldn’t have been much warmer than an October evening in Chicago. Her teeth chattered. Her body shivered.

But Elka’s kind did not wear down easily. They could have never survived the Great Hunt if something as simple as nakedness and a cold room could break them.

So, despite her quivering and exposure, Elka stared back at Earl with matching venom.

Neither of them flinched during the stare-down.

Then, without any preamble, Earl turned away with a bored ease, and walked out of sight beyond the window’s frame.

Elka finally allowed herself to sit. She had to take the floor. There wasn’t any furniture in this zoo cage. She tried to ignore the brown and greenish stains marking parts of the concrete floor. She found a clean spot by the back wall, sat, and leaned her back against the wall. The steel chilled her twice as hard as the air.

She ground her teeth and ate the cold, fueling herself for the battle of wills Earl had set into motion. Torture would come soon enough. He would push as hard as he could to get her to shift and gain access to what he needed from her.

Once he had that, she was in for a long, painful death.

She didn’t care about the pain or the death.

She would not let him defile her, take what was most precious to her people. If he wanted to kill her, he would have to do it while she remained in her human form, denying him any chance of getting to her horn.

A while after Earl left, Tony strutted into view on the other side of the glass. His eyes looked like a pair of black holes, seething with emptiness. It made his smile all the more unnerving.

Elka spared him a single glance, then directed her gaze to a series of close cracks on the floor that look vaguely like a footprint the size of a Frisbee. She could only imagine what kinds of things Gabriel Dolan had used this trap to hold while he, what? Observed? Experimented? Tortured? All leading to an inevitable exploitation of whatever power they possessed.

Earl was following a wicked tradition, and doing so well enough.

It won’t do him any good, she reminded herself. I won’t give in.

A dull thump drew Elka’s attention back to the window.

Tony stood with his fist raised over his head. When he had her attention, he pounded the glass with the heel of that fist a second time. His eyebrows rose over his black eyes. He looked like a rabid animal. He bared his teeth.

His effort to intimidate her only went as far as the thick glass between them. Just as she couldn’t do a thing to him out there, he couldn’t hurt her while she was in here. The faint scents of sweat, blood, and waste clinging to the floor and walls bothered her far more.

He must have noticed his lack of effect. His lips curled down and hid his teeth. His eyebrows drew close together. He punched the glass, this time with his knuckles. The sound barely made it through the window’s thickness. The fact that she heard it at all meant he’d hit pretty hard.

He showed no sign of pain in his hand, though.

No surprise. Elka knew firsthand how hard Tony could hit.

She reached up and touched her face where he had struck her in the van to knock her out. The spot was still tender, and she must have had an ugly bruise there. But she could already feel her enhanced metabolism healing the damage. He would have to hit a lot harder to do anything permanent.

Elka made a show of rolling her eyes and shrugging to send the message that his threats didn’t faze her one bit.

His face tightened into its scowl. He sidestepped toward the slab of metal that formed the door into her cage, keeping his gaze locked on her.

There was one difference between his impotence on the outside and her protection inside. On her side, the door was smooth steel that matched the walls, only visible because of the thin rectangle of seams outlining it. On his side he had the button that triggered the electric lock, and a handle to open the door.

He wouldn’t dare. Earl surely had given the order to keep his niece’s killer off limits to anyone but himself.

Tony reached toward the door. A short buzz sounded, then the latch
snicked
.

Slowly, the door swung inward.

Tony pushed it all the way open and stepped inside the cage.

His hand went to the knife sheathed on his belt as he drew closer to Elka.

Elka stood, hands in fists at her sides. The cold made her shiver, which made her look weak to him. They had fooled her into joining them. Had ambushed her to capture her. But no matter how tough Tony thought he was, she had proved both with Kit and with Whisper that when it came to a one-on-one face-off, they didn’t stand a chance against her.

Poor Tony was too wrapped up in his scary self-image—or too stupid—to figure that out for himself.

He drew his knife.

Elka, in turn, gave Earl exactly what he wanted. She shifted into her true form.

Too bad Earl wasn’t there to take advantage of it. He wouldn’t have made the same mistake as Tony.

When she reached full transformation, Tony jerked to a halt.

He had his hand on his knife like a cowboy at a high noon showdown in the town square.

Elka lowered her head, eyes rolled up to look down her muzzle, the tip of her horn aimed right for Tony’s heart. All he wore was an army green tank top and a fresh sheen of sweat as he realized, too late, his mistake.

Now it was a quick draw contest.

Tony made his move, whipped his knife free, almost had it raised enough to take a stab.

Elka had the advantage of having her weapon already naturally drawn. She drove forward, ran him through, lifted him off his feet once she had him skewered. She was about to shake him off when he hooked his arm around to the side of her neck and jammed in his knife.

Elka reared up on her hind legs. Pain speared clear down her flank. He had missed her throat, but he had cut a tendon or two which made her head go slack when she came back down on her front hooves.

The motion swung Tony free of her horn, though he left the knife in her side. He slapped onto the concrete floor and the back of his head hit with a wet crunch. His eyes rolled back and he went instantly still.

Elka shuffled backward, her hooves clocking on the concrete. The sound echoed against the metal walls which amplified it. Her pain matched the echoing beat, a pulse and a pulse and a pulse through her flank. Blood soaked through her hair down to her skin with sticky wetness.

If she shifted, she wasn’t sure where the knife would end up in her changed anatomy. It might fall free, pushed out by her morphing form. Or it might end up pierced through her throat. If it fell out, she could heal—though it would take time and hurt like hell.

If it stayed in her and cut a vital part, death would take her in seconds.

And if she stayed shifted, she wouldn’t be able to remove the knife herself. Plus, it would leave her exposed to Earl and whatever he had planned for her. She would have to make every effort to get to him before he got to her and, in the meantime, hope she didn’t bleed to death in the process.

Chapter Forty-Five

W
HILE TIME HAD LOST ITS
meaning in the dark behind her blindfold, Jessie guessed an hour went by since the old guy—who still hadn’t introduced himself formally—dropped the Gabriel bomb on her. And since then, he hadn’t said a word.

She could hear him though, shuffling around her, movements sounding busy and purposeful. His breathing remained relaxed and steady, unlike her previous roommate. He even whistled softly from time to time, usually old TV theme songs that Jessie only knew because of her interest in film history.
Sanford and Son
was one of them, which Jessie found sickly ironic coming from such a bigot.

At one point, he assaulted her with a wet cloth, scrubbing at her face without any regard for the pain from her broken nose. She cried out. Tears bled into the fabric of her blindfold. She thrashed against her bindings and tried to kick him in the nuts.

He dodged her blind attacks and went on wiping away like a mother wipes the nose of a squirming toddler.

Air suddenly popped in through her swollen nostrils.

The first thing she smelled was incense. The air was thick with its smoke. It tickled the back of her throat and made her cough. That only made the pain from her forced face wash throb all the more.

But it also clued her in to what was happening.

The old guy had set up a ritual of some kind. She had no doubt it had something to do with Gabriel. And if she dared guess, she would say he probably meant to drop Gabriel’s soul back into her body.

But we destroyed the artifact. Obliterated his soul.

Or had they simply destroyed what kept his soul on the mortal plane?

She realized she hadn’t thought much further beyond blowing up the artifact, assuming that getting rid of it meant getting rid of
him
. But it made sense. You could destroy a thing.

But how could you destroy a soul?

Her damp face turned frigid in the smoky air. It didn’t take long for the rest of her body to quiver with chills. With fear.

Damn if she would show that fear to her kidnapper, though.

“Do you have any idea what you’re doing?” she asked with all the mirth she could muster.

The old man chuckled. She really, really hated that chuckle.

“’Course I do. He made sure I had everything I need. That man left a lot of good shit behind.”

She turned her face in the direction of his voice. “I’m not talking about the ritual.”

“You worried about me, sweetheart? Think I can’t handle a dead man’s spirit trapped in a little girl?”

“You can’t.”

The pat to her cheek startled her since she didn’t see it coming. More creaky chuckles. He was about to earn himself the nickname Mr. Chuckles. Or maybe Chucky, after the possessed doll from the series of so not scary movies.

“Don’t fret about me. Right now, I’m the closest thing Mr. Dolan has to a best friend. Ain’t nobody else can bring him back except me.”

“Key words there are
right
and
now
. You think once he’s here, he’ll make you his second in command? Gabriel Dolan doesn’t have any seconds.”

“I guess you’d know,” he said.

It might have been wishful thinking, but Jessie thought she heard a thread of worry in those words.

“’Course me and him have had some right nice chats for a while now. Not counting the last one.”

Jessie swallowed. With her nose clear, she could taste the mix of snot and blood draining down from her sinuses. Her stomach lurched.

He’d communicated with Gabriel? Several times?

“How is that possible?”