Darkening Dawn (The Lockman Chronicles Book 5) (30 page)

Stupid mortals. Their hubris never ceased to astound her. “If this
is
a dream, then I’m as good as dead.”

“I can wake you up.”

The breeze off the ocean blew hot. The clouds of dust and embers rolled in like a hellish storm. The sky opened up and rained blood. Elka felt it soaking her, smelled it as it trickled over her muzzle.

“Please,” he said. “Time’s running out. But you can still save yourself and the girl.”

Elka shook her head. “Why would I want to help
her
?”

“Because if you don’t, it won’t matter if you live or die. Gabriel Dolan has gained enough power here to do serious damage if he gets hold of her.”

Has gained enough power here? Where was here?

“You know where.”

“The Inbetween.”

He nodded.

The rain poured harder. The thick patter of it against her back and the roll and churn of the ocean deafened her. It was a good thing she didn’t need to hear to communicate with the stranger.

“I don’t understand. If you’re not…him…who are you?”

“My name is Craig Lockman,” he said with an intensity that cut straight to Elka’s heart. “And the girl that man has is my daughter.”

Chapter Fifty

T
IME MEANT NOTHING IN THE
Inbetween. The past happened in the future and the present happened before and after both. Craig Lockman could travel the length of his lifetime, back and forth, reliving every moment as the actual moment, only burdened with the knowledge that he could change none of it.

Dark things lurked here. Things that could peer into his lifeline the same as him. Many times they had tried to trick him so that he would give away a portion of his soul from some instant in his life.

But Lockman didn’t fall for it. He wouldn’t give up even a second of his life before death, certainly not to some demon that would taint it like a drop of poison in a large pool.

He clung to every moment of his life like precious jewels. They were all he had left in this hellish nowhere.

When he first found himself in the Inbetween, after an eternity of nightmare riddled sleep, he immediately tried to find a way back. But the wolves had devoured his body. He had nothing to go back to. And unlike Gabriel Dolan, Lockman would never force his soul into another’s body.

So he had to say good-bye to Jessie.

That’s when he started looking for Kate.

He tussled with all manner of wicked things during his search. He began to learn the rules of this place. He could use the memories of his life to shape the world of his death. He could feed himself, shelter himself, arm himself. And while much of the experience melted into an abstract blur, as if he and the world around him had as little substance as a mist in a spring rain, he could create vivid, real instances that mimicked his corporeal existence.

The deeper he traveled into this jungle of souls, the more evil he had to wade through. It seemed the worst of the souls and spirits caught here congregated together, like minds conspiring with like minds, but preying on one another whenever a back was turned.

Eventually, Lockman gave up his search. He would not find Kate here. It disappointed him, but also gave him a huge relief. She didn’t belong in a place like this, stuck in a metaphysical no-man’s-land.

This did make him wonder why
he
had ended up here.

Questioning that wouldn’t make any difference, though. Lockman had always tried to deal with the reality of any situation, not dawdle with pointless what-ifs.

He had resigned himself to an eternity in this place, an eternity that would only end if a stronger soul finally swallowed his.

Then he felt her.

It started with small tugs. A faraway voice that sounded like it was calling his name.

The Inbetween had begun to drive him mad, he decided.

Until the voice grew stronger and he thought—dared to hope—he recognized it.

Jessie?

He soon discovered he could hear her when she dreamed. And eventually he worked out that he could amplify this connection the same way he used his pre-death life to make survival in the Inbetween palatable.

He could go to a moment in his life where he was with her. There he could see her in two ways—both as the person he was in that moment in time, and as the soul peering through his eyes from the other side of death.

He could reach out with his soul. He could touch hers.

And from that contact in the past, he could send a ripple through to her future.

He used the trick to push himself deeper and deeper into her dreams, until he could leave messages with her younger soul to carry to her older soul.

And what an old soul it had become.

He barely recognized her as the kid who had showed up at his door, scared, curious, and so incredibly ignorant about the things that would haunt her from then on.

The darker things.

After learning how to leave impressions in Jessie’s past for her to discover in her later dreams, Lockman began negotiating with other souls in the Inbetween. He would trade favors, mostly protection from the predatory demons, to gain information only they could gather from their own lifelines.

He also picked up whispers of another soul with great power, who had somehow figured out how to reach beyond his own lifeline and even make small impressions outside the Inbetween.

It didn’t take long to discover whose soul it was.

Before long, Lockman knew all about Gabriel’s plans for Jessie.

Lockman pressed the limits of his own influence on the mortal plane. He managed to speak to Jessie in her dreams, but only fleetingly.

He needed a stronger conduit. Someone more receptive to the worlds between. Someone who had even traveled between worlds.

He became drawn to the unicorn. Something had bound her to Jessie so strongly, their fates had to be entwined. He didn’t know how they had met, but at some point they had formed a kinship powerful enough to lead Lockman, through Jessie, to the unicorn.

It had comforted him a great deal to know she had someone like that in her life.

Now he stood in the unicorn’s dream, playing he last card he could from the Inbetween to save his daughter from Gabriel. With his help, the unicorn could wake from the dream and stop the lunatic trying to bring back a mortal monster.

The blood rain had turned the unicorn’s entire coat a deep, glistening red. When her tail twitched, blood splashed as if from a wet paint brush. Her dark eyes stared at Lockman, but she remained silent and still except for her tail.

Why was she hesitating?

“I don’t care who you are,” she said finally. “I won’t do anything to help that bitch.”

Her hatred hit him as hard as if she had turned and kicked him with her hind legs. He felt momentarily out of breath.

He realized his mistake instantly.

He had assumed their relationship had been one of friendship, love. But what tied this unicorn to his daughter was a suffocating, black hate.

“And if she really is your daughter, then you can join that beast Dolan in whatever hell you’ve been banished to.”

She shook, blood flinging in all directions. She couldn’t shake hard enough to keep the blood off, though. Even if the rain stopped, her once soft white body would remain stained red. Lockman felt droplets spatter his face, but he didn’t flinch. He stared back at her, speechless. He had bet everything on this unicorn. If he couldn’t convince her to help, Gabriel would win. Jessie would be lost forever.

He had to try to make her realize the stakes trumped her feelings toward Jessie.

“That’s just it,” he said. “Gabriel
won’t
stay here. He’ll be
there
. I don’t know what Jessie did to piss you off, but it won’t be half as horrible as what’s going to happen if that happens.”

“Not possible,” she said. “Nothing could be more horrible.”

Jesus, Jessie, what did you do?

“You’re going to sacrifice yourself—and let Gabriel send the world into total chaos—just to get back at her?”

“Mortals never did a thing for me. I don’t care what happens to your world.”

“Do you care about what happens to you?” He pointed toward the sky. “That man has a hacksaw to your horn
right now
.”

In fact, Lockman felt the edges of the dream waver. A scraping sound echoed through the sky and set his teeth on edge. He could smell something burning too. Not from a flame, but from friction, like a pair of sticks rubbing together or…

…a saw.

“You hear that? Smell that?”

She looked up, said nothing.

“He’s cutting into you. Let me help you.”

“How can you help me? Why would you bother?”

“Because without you, I can’t save the world.”

“Or your daughter.”

He nodded. “Or her.”

All at once, the unicorn reared back and morphed. She turned into a slim human girl with curly red hair and sad green eyes. She wore a one-piece bathing suit that revealed her pale and freckled arms—dressed for a sunny day at the beach, not a blood storm.

She looked nothing like Jessie, but something about her still reminded Lockman of his daughter. Maybe it was the shadow of age over such a young face.

The girl dropped to her knees and covered her face with her hands. She screamed against her palms. The blood rain covered her all over again, turning her skin and swimsuit slick with it. Her shoulders hitched as she wept.

She threw her fists down, pounding the sand which had turned a brownish red and had the consistency of moist cake. “She took my family. She sent them back, sent them…sent them back…to hell.” She threw back her head and the blood streamed over her face like war paint.

The Return, Lockman realized. He had learned a lot about that during his time watching over Jessie from the Inbetween. Jessie must have Returned this girl’s family. Apparently against their will.

The girl lowered her eyes to Lockman, her expression dead.

Lockman’s heartbeat pounded. The rain grew to torrential proportions. Sheets of red came down and made it hard to see through to the girl.

“So she took your family away,” he said. “Now what? You going to honor their memory by dying? You’re going to let that guy cut your horn off and
use
it while you lay there doing nothing? Is that what your family would want for you?”

“Shut up,” she screamed through the roaring downpour.

“I can help you.” He took a step toward. “Please.”

For an eternal moment, she said nothing. Lockman thought she had checked out. There would be no more arguing with her.

But then she stood. The blood rain had soaked her hair so thoroughly it had lost its curl and lay plastered to the sides of her face and over her shoulders. “You want me to stop the ritual.”

“Yes.” Since the rain had started, it had parted around Lockman. Now the sheets of blood closed in and drenched him. It rolled long his brow. Dripped down his nose, over his lips, and off his chin. Something inside the girl had changed, and that had changed the dream.

“You can wake me up?”

He nodded. He had drawn enough power from willing souls of the Inbetween to revive her and then some. He didn’t have near the power Gabriel did here, because Gabriel took what he wanted from the souls around him, willing or not.

“Then it’s simple. You wake me up and I stop it.”

Just like that?

Lockman cocked his head to one side as if looking at a piece of artwork he didn’t quite get. She hadn’t had a change of heart. He could tell from her stony glare. So what had changed?

She must have seen his distrust. She smirked, a horrific sight with all that blood pouring down her face.

“If you really want to save the world, I’ll help you,” she said. “But you can’t save your daughter.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about the easiest solution to your problem. The one you either thought you could hide from me, or your feelings got in the way of letting you see it.”

He gaped at her. He hadn’t hid anything from her. He had laid out his case as plain as he could.

She laughed and shook her head. “It’s the simplest solution. Gabriel can’t come back if he doesn’t have his precious Chosen One to come back to. So, when you wake me up, I just have to kill your daughter.”

Lockman’s chest tightened. He felt short of breath. Besides the spattering blood, he could only hear his pulse throbbing in his ears.

She was right. Her solution had never crossed his mind. Why would it? She didn’t have to die to stop Gabriel’s plan. Not if they could stop the man from conducting the ritual.

“Which is it, Craig Lockman? Want to wake me up so I can kill her and save the world? Or are we staying in dreamland to let the world fall, and let Gabriel have her anyway?”

Chapter Fifty-One

T
HE NOISE THE HACKSAW MADE
as Earl went at the unicorn’s horn made nails on a chalkboard sound like a top-forty hit. A squirming, shivering sensation ran right to Jessie’s core. She desperately wanted her hands free just so she could block out the sound.

Earl muttered curses under his breath. He’d been hard at work for a good twenty minutes, and from where Jessie sat, it didn’t look like he’d made much progress.

He kept having to stop and wipe sparkling dust off his sweaty face. He also occasionally had to pull the saw loose and knock off more dust caking the serrated blade.

“Having trouble?” she asked.

He grunted and kept sawing.

“Better hurry. This blood’s looking a little coagulated.”

“Hush, you,” he barked.

Jessie peered through the open door. She couldn’t see much from her position. White, tiled walls that seemed to curve into an arch at the top, like a subway tunnel. She wondered if the cavalry would come bursting through that door at any moment. She actually wouldn’t have minded seeing even Kinga charge in, as long as she had along a team of Agents armed to the teeth.

Earl didn’t seem the least bit concerned about such an incursion. Which made Jessie doubt she’d see any last minute rescue.

She was on her own.

Her available weapons? A cutting wit and…

The Return.