Darkening Dawn (The Lockman Chronicles Book 5) (31 page)

For fuck’s sake, I’m so stupid.

All she needed to put the kibosh on Gabriel’s plan was to send the unicorn home.

She smiled. “Hey, Chucky.”

He ignored her.

“Earl. I have a little surprise for you.”

That got his attention. He stopped sawing and looked up.

She drew in a deep breath, pulling together the limited use magical energy she had left inside of her. “Return,” she said flatly and sent the energy toward the unicorn.

A blue spark jagged through the air, then sputtered out. It left behind an electrical fire smell, but did nothing else.

“What the fuck?”

Earl grinned. He let loose his famous chuckle. It came up from deep in his belly. His shoulders bobbed. “You really think I’m that stupid?”

Panic buzzed through Jessie’s every nerve. This had never happened before. Ever.

Had this cocksucker somehow stolen the very last of her powers, the one thing that gave her any purpose on this planet?

Don’t cry. Don’t give him the satisfaction.

She couldn’t help herself. A pair of tears ran from the corner of each eye.

Earl made a whirling motion with his finger. “Why don’t you spin round there and take a look?”

Dread turned Jessie’s stomach to stone. Slowly, she turned the office chair.

At first, she couldn’t comprehend what she was looking at. A small round table sat just outside the blood pool. On the table lay a scatter of what looked like moon rocks. But when she looked closer, one of the rocks had what looked like part of a face carved into it.

Okay. Earl had some pieces of a statue on a table. Big whoop.

“Don’t you recognize him?” Earl asked.

A deeper part of her made the connection before her conscious mind did. The realization came with a physical response that felt like her stomach turning inside out. The hairs on her arms and the back of her neck stood on end.

When her conscious mind caught up, Jessie couldn’t hold back any tears. She cried full out. Phlegm the flavor of blood clogged her throat. Snot ran down her nose.

Oh, God. Oh, my God.

How sick was this old man? How badly did he want to hurt her? Why had he…why had he collected pieces of Wertz to display here?

“I see you do,” Earl said. “Funny thing about gnome stone. I didn’t believe it, but Mr. Dolan insisted. Gnome stone has some natural magical dampening to it. Part of their self-defense mechanism from what I gather. I was wondering if it would really work.”

He snorted and grinned. “Guess it does.”

Jessie clenched her teeth and screamed through them. The scream seemed to rip her throat. The trickle of draining blood turned to a small but steady stream. Some of the blood filled her mouth. The metallic taste was like a bullet on her tongue.

She spat the blood out.

Earl started chuckling again behind her. “Apparently the stuff is twice as powerful if you have an emotional connection to it. That Dolan sure is smart for a dead guy.”

Lava churned in her belly like the bowels of Mordor. That much heat couldn’t stay contained in a girl Jessie’s size. She had to set it free, had to erupt and consume everything around her with molten flame.

Jessie planted her heels against the floor, cocked her knees, then pushed out. Her chair rolled through the blood, its four wheels each leaving behind its own wake. The sound of the rattling casters was partially muffled by the blood, but the wheels rolled smoothly enough to get her to the pool’s edge by Earl and the unicorn.

Earl wrenched the hacksaw free and hopped to his feet.

Jessie had no plan, no thought, no specific goal. She operated on instinct alone and let it make all the moves for her. Which started with her tipping the chair and landing on her side outside the pool.

“What in hell do you think you’re going to accomplish?” He came and stood over her, hacksaw in one hand, the other opening and closing as if he didn’t know what to do with it. Or her. “Get on up.”

As if she could.

His momentary indecision gave Jessie another few seconds. She swung her legs like a sideways pendulum and knocked ankles with Earl with enough force to drop him to the floor.

He landed on his knees and howled.

Jessie reared her legs back, then took another swing. She caught him in the side this time, up by his rib cage. She didn’t have much leverage lying on the floor and tied to a chair, but she had a good set of abs that helped give her legs some momentum.

Earl toppled onto his side, but he hung onto the hacksaw. He propped himself on his elbow and waved the saw wildly back and forth as if trying to swat away a fly with a newspaper.

Jessie lay well out of the saw’s reach, but she had to stop herself from taking another kick at him so she wouldn’t get sliced by the blade.

Then he started kicking.

The bottom of his boot knocked Jessie on the top of the skull. He shot his heel out two more times, striking the same spot on her crown.

The impact dazed her more than the pain. Not that it didn’t hurt. She felt bruised clear down to her brain.

Earl scooted away from her before getting to his feet.

Jessie looked up at him from the floor, head throbbing, wrists raw and bleeding from friction against the ropes. She panted. Each breath stung her raw throat.

“Did you really think all that would get you somewhere?” Earl asked with a parental disappointment. Kind of made Jessie think of Mom. Mom had used that tone a lot with Jessie during her middle school years.

The chair pinched one of her arms under her. Most of the feeling had gone out of it, except for pins and needles. Nothing she could do about it now. She closed her eyes and rested her head on the cool concrete floor.

She felt Earl’s presence move closer and loom over her. She didn’t bother opening her eyes. She let her whole body go slack. If he wanted her back in the circle, he would have to drag her back. She wouldn’t make it easy for him.

“You sure are a shitload of trouble, ain’t you?”

The inside of her mouth tasted like rust. She spat. “It’s what I live for.”

“I hope Dolan chews your soul to pieces once he’s inside you.” He started to say something else, but gasped.

Jessie opened her eyes.

Earl stood with his mouth hanging open, staring at something behind her. A brilliant light reflected in his eyes, all sorts of different colors, as if passed through a prism.

Jessie canted her head around as far as it would stretch. For a moment, all she could see was a starburst of light on the ceiling.

Then she heard movement. The unmistakable clop of hooves on the concrete, followed by a piercing whinny. A second later, the unicorn came to stand over Jessie. Light ran up and down her horn in multicolored bands like a flashing neon sign. Jessie could see the notch where Earl had started to cut. The small imperfection did nothing to mar her beauty. Not even her blood-soaked flank could stifle her majesty.

This was what a unicorn was meant to look like.

“You get away from her,” Earl shouted.

The demand didn’t make sense to Jessie. If he worried about the unicorn going after somebody, he should have worried about himself.

He retreated back to the crate and grabbed the elven weapon, which he then brought to bear on the unicorn. “I said get back.”

The unicorn ignored him. She reared back on her hind legs, and as she came back down, Jessie realized this magnificent creature meant to crush her skull.

Chapter Fifty-Two

C
RAIG
L
OCKMAN HAD USED A
piece of his soul to revive the unicorn. This connection allowed him to see through her eyes. He watched as she raised her forelegs to stop down on Jessie.

While he had no actual corporeal form in the Inbetween, Lockman had learned early that many sensations of the physical world still plagued him, like the phantom pains from a lost limb. In this case, his stomach dropped as if he plummeted down a roller coaster’s first hill. His throat closed and a lump caught in his chest.

The unicorn had faced him with an impossible choice. The kind of choice he had faced too many times in life. A choice between those he loved and the Greater Good.

A terrible term drilled into him by the Agency.

Always look toward the greater good, they would say.

Consider the consequences of forgetting the greater good.

The greater good comes before all else.

All in the name of protecting the world from the supernatural. A goal he had believed in wholeheartedly, but one he had learned did not need to come at the sacrifice of the innocent. There had to be a balance. The greater good could not always trump the lives of individuals.

But, much as he hated it, sometimes it did.

Gabriel Dolan was the worst threat to humanity—and the supernatural for that matter. If he was allowed a second chance at Jessie’s soul, especially now that she possessed the power of the Return, he wouldn’t squander it. He would make sure to bring about as much chaos and fear as he could. That was the real reason he wanted to bring on the Dawn. Always had been.

Drive mortals to the brink of mass hysteria, then twist their fear to control them.

He could do it too. Of that, Lockman had no doubt.

So he was forced to make that horrible choice with a hope—no, a certainty—that Jessie could use her own wits to survive the unicorn’s single-minded need for revenge.

Come on, Jess. You can do it.

Chapter Fifty-Three

R
IGHT BEFORE THE BITCH UNICORN
ruined everything by smashing Dolan’s prize, Earl fired the elf gun. The beam struck her square in the face, or should have, but that damn horn of hers somehow absorbed it. The horn’s light blazed twice as bright as it took on the color of the beam.

Even so, the shot had some impact. Just enough to drive the unicorn back and off balance. Her front hooves came down a few feet shy of trampling the girl.

He fired again.

The result was the same. The horn drew the beam to it and flared with blue-green light. Yet again, it drove her back.

She thrashed her head back and forth in frustration.

“Go on,” Earl shouted. “Git.”

He shot her three more times in quick succession. Each blast of the beam went to her horn and drove her back until Earl had her a good six or seven yards from the girl.

But what now? If he couldn’t knock her out with the elf gun, how in hell was he going to get her horn to finish the ritual? He lifted the hacksaw and looked at it as if he might find the answer there.

That bitch’s horn dust coated most of the blade, making it look like sparkling quartz.

Well, shit.

His gaze went from the saw to the girl to the circle of blood and back to the saw.

The unicorn made a move forward.

Earl let loose a couple more shots. Didn’t matter where he aimed—legs, body, head—the blasts all went to her horn. Whatever magic she had in that horn had reached a level of power that just might have made her immortal.

It couldn’t last forever.

But Earl didn’t need to wait for her to finally weaken. He just needed to drive her far enough back and give himself room to set things right.

He unleashed a steady barrage of fire as he pushed forward, getting closer and closer to the girl.

The unicorn backed all the way to the far wall, nowhere else to go.

Earl kept firing to keep her pinned against the wall. Each time she tried to drive forward, the beam knocked her back. He briefly wondered if the elf gun ever ran out of juice. Best not to test its limits.

When he reached the girl, he went to grab at the chair arm, but she kicked at him again, got him in the shin.

Earl took good care of himself. He was in damn fine shape for his age. But he wasn’t young no more either. His bones didn’t take abuse as good as they used to. Her foot caught him just right, sending a jagged pain up his leg to his knee.

He staggered, almost hit the floor. Instead, he stumbled into the near wall and leaned against it to keep his feet. Dummy didn’t realize the unicorn wanted to kill her. And he had just given the uni a chance to break into a gallop toward her.

Earl shot from the hip, no time for careful aim.

The beam went wide and blasted a crack into the ceiling.

The unicorn lowered her head, her horn pointed toward the girl.

Earl dove like a tight end going for a quarterback sack. On his way down he kept firing. Most of the shots missed, but one hit her horn and stopped her charge.

His bones cried out in pain as he landed on the hard floor. The impact knocked the elf gun from his hand. It smacked the floor with a wet plop out of his reach. The hacksaw clashed against the floor as well. Some of the horn dust broke loose and scattered in a small, glittering cloud.

Earl growled through his clenched teeth.

He had landed before the girl with her head nearest to him. She struggled and kicked against her bindings, but she couldn’t get at him from that angle, and the chair kept her from any serious movement.

Earl planted a hand on the chair back, dug the toes of his boots into the floor, and shoved. Her thrashing antics actually helped, unknowingly throwing her weight in such a way that gave her some momentum toward the circle.

She slid in feet first.

She kept kicking and splashed blood all over the place, even dotted Earl’s face with it.

He was so focused on getting her into the circle, he lost track of the unicorn. Then he felt her looming above him.

He managed one more shove to the girl, getting her in to her shoulder, but her head still lay outside the circle. Blood flung about as she twisted and kicked. It coated one side of her from shoulder to ankle.

One of the unicorn’s hooves slammed down onto Earl’s back. Something cracked. As the unicorn put more of her weight down on her hoof, Earl’s body popped three more times like shots from a small pistol.

He screamed. Dark edges closed in on his vision. The pressure on his back squeezed his lungs, pushed out his breath, and made it impossible for him to draw another.

But he still had the saw with the horn dust on it. It was
all
he had. And the sloppy remains of a ritual that should have been an easy thing. The unicorn had been out, the girl bound, no one in the way of bringing on the Dawn.