MIDNIGHT QUEST: A Short 'Men of Midnight' Novel (9 page)

They were there with Lauren, looking after her.

That was
his
job. Looking after Lauren, making sure she was safe and happy—that was what he was supposed to be doing, instead of being on the road, a thousand miles from home, on some half-assed quest to—to what?

As Metal put it—the fuck was he doing?

Jacko rarely got tired but all of a sudden he was swamped with fatigue. Something more than physical tiredness, something that was dangerous on the road.

He’d been driving for ten hours straight and had another seven hours at least before he got to Rancho San Diego.

A blinking sign by the side of the road showed a motel with vacancies. Jacko swerved and ten minutes later he had the keys to a room. He was too wound up to sleep but at least he could rest his eyes for a few hours.

The room was disgusting. Maybe a year ago he wouldn’t even have noticed. He was used to living rough as a kid and as a SEAL on mission. Being dry and on something softer than the ground was already better than many ops he’d been on.

But now, after living with Lauren, it was a form of punishment being in this room. The smell assaulted him as soon as he turned the key in the lock in the plywood door a blind man could have picked in under a minute.

There were NO SMOKING signs everywhere in the motel but someone had recently smoked in the room, leaving that nauseating smell of stale cigarette smoke. Layered on that was the smell of filthy carpet and dusty curtains.

The bed sagged visibly. The bathroom door was open. Inside was a cracked yellowed sink. He checked the bathroom out, pulling back the ancient shower curtain to see some pubes on the shower stall floor.

It was okay. This was punishment he deserved. This crappy place was right for someone who at this very moment could be sleeping beside the most beautiful woman in the world—a woman who loved him—on a lavishly comfortable bed that smelled clean and fresh.

Jacko didn’t even take his boots off. He just lay down on the dirty bedspread, put his hands behind his head and stared at the ceiling, waiting for dawn.

Thinking of Lauren.

Lauren, so very soft. Lauren, whose pale skin was a magnet for his hands, for his eyes, for his mouth. Lauren, who loved him.

If she were here right now, he’d be touching her all over, feeling where her body was already starting to change. He’d felt that the night he arrived home, without understanding. Minute changes invisible to someone who hadn’t made a study of every inch of Lauren’s body his lifelong mission.

The face just a little fuller, breasts a touch larger, nipples a little darker, not that pale pink he loved but a deep rose color he loved even more.

He’d put his hand over her belly without realizing what lay beneath it. If he had, he’d have freaked even earlier.

Goddamn.

Before his eyes, Lauren started changing shape. She was smiling at him while her body transformed. The breasts grew even larger, her belly swelled, rippled. Something inside her, fighting to get out.

The skin of her belly moved, bulging in odd places. It became like a beach ball, the skin shiny and taut, growing and growing. Jacko couldn’t believe that Lauren kept smiling at him while her body was undergoing such a massive transformation. Her belly grew monstrously huge. Something kept moving under the skin, undulating like a snake under water.

Jacko put his hands on her belly, as if to contain it. Under the skin of his palms, he could feel something inside, moving. Something kicked against his hand, hard, like something fighting to get out. He pressed harder, to keep it inside.

Lauren kept smiling at him but tears started running down her cheeks. He frowned, wiped his thumb across her cheek. Not tears. Blood.

Her breasts, too. The nipples were…bleeding, thin trickles of blood from the nipples running down the underside of her breasts. Under his hand, what was in her belly poked at him hard, something
sharp
.

Lauren, bleeding tears but still smiling at him, sighed heavily as if suddenly tired. Her belly was rippling. She pulled her knees up, spread her legs, and Jacko saw that there was a lake of blood under her. He glanced sharply at her face and saw how pale she was, the trickle of blood from her eyes very dark against her shockingly white skin.

“Lauren?” Her eyes turned to him but they were cloudy. She was having trouble focusing. “Lauren, honey? Look at me.” Jack made his voice sharp, to catch her attention. He was never sharp with Lauren but she seemed to be moving further and further away from him, though she wasn’t moving from the bed. Her eyes drifted shut. “Focus! Damn it, Lauren,
look at me!”

She wasn’t responding and oh God, the blood! Jacko needed to get up and find something to staunch the bleeding but he didn’t dare leave her side. He picked up her hand, that pretty hand he loved to hold, but she didn’t curl her fingers around his as she usually did. Her hand was slack in his.

She was slick with blood now and he was frantic. The bleeding between her legs was heavy and he pulled the top sheet off the bed to stuff between her legs when all of a sudden her belly bulged obscenely and something appeared from her vagina. A black head of hair. Her body was pushing it out though she was unconscious, head slumped back, bloody eyes closed.

Jacko was sweating, frantic, not knowing where to help her, how to help her. He needed to call someone but in the meantime she was giving birth, bleeding, unresponsive.

“Lauren, look at me, honey, don’t close those beautiful eyes, I want to see them, I want to see you looking at me, Lauren, honey—
Lauren.”

He kept up the litany, in a panic. He never panicked but the situation was barreling out of control. A head slithered out from between her legs, one shoulder, the other—coarse black hair, deformed features. Eyes alive, watching him.

As Jacko watched, the creature
pulled itself
out of Lauren’s body with long, spindly arms, this freakishly disjointed
thing
, slithering out in a gush of blood, blood Lauren didn’t have to spare. The thing cracked her open, thin black fingers tearing her apart from the inside.

Jacko heard the crackling sound of Lauren’s pelvic bones breaking. The pain had to be horrible, but she was unconscious, pale face still, eyes unmoving behind their lids.

The thing finally clawed its way out of her ravaged body, blood spurting, the white splinters of broken bones visible. Jacko reached for it to kill it but it slithered out of his grasp.

The thing scampered to the edge of the bed, multi-jointed legs working like a spider’s legs. It crouched there for a second, head cocked, watching as Jacko frantically tried to soak up the blood that was rushing from Lauren, shaking her, shouting her name. He lifted up her shoulders and her head lolled, as if she were…

No.
No!

With a hateful cackle, the creature leaped from the bed, scuttling like a cockroach across the room, disappearing out the door. Jacko couldn’t race after it because he held a motionless Lauren in his arms, blood pouring from her ravaged body.

“Lauren,” he whispered. Sound barely made it out of his tight throat. He was strong but there was nothing he could do against the damage that her body had suffered. “Honey, come back to me.”

She shuddered in his arms and he pulled her tightly against him, holding her, rocking her. She didn’t embrace him, her arms lying slack at her sides, hands open on the blood-soaked sheets.

He had one hand against her back and felt a long breath leaving her body. No breath coming back in. He held her even more tightly, his own harsh breathing loud in the silent room. Panic filled his head, he couldn’t hear, he couldn’t see, he couldn’t think.

Another small shudder, a rattling sound in her throat, and he could feel life slipping from her. One last sigh and she collapsed in his arms. Pulling back, Jacko stared at Lauren through tear-swollen eyes and all he could see was a beautiful corpse, ravaged beyond recognition.

“No!”
he screamed. “No no no!”

Her blank eyes stared back at him accusingly. He hadn’t been able to save her and now she was dead.

The creature across the room stopped and looked back over its misshapen shoulder, head cocked, studying him out of black, fathomless eyes. Crooked lips lifted over bloodstained teeth. “She’s dead,” it hissed.

No!

Jacko bolted up in a rush, shaking. He was breathing hard, panting, sweat pouring off him in rivers. His head swiveled, looking around the room. Empty. He looked at his hands. Empty. Not holding a dead Lauren.

He checked the bedsheets. Not covered in blood. There was no monster creature across the room staring at him, taunting him.

Lauren wasn’t dead.

It took a long time for his body to recognize that. It was shaking and shivering, convinced he’d watched her die.

Finally, he sat up against the dusty headboard, more exhausted than when he’d arrived. Somehow he’d fallen asleep and had a nightmare. If that was what he could expect when he fell asleep—watching Lauren die, torn apart and bleeding—he’d stay awake the rest of his life.

There was nowhere to go with his horror and dread. He couldn’t go back to Lauren this way, simply couldn’t. He was a wreck, convinced his child would be a monster that ripped her apart. Even when he closed his eyes for more than a minute, he could see the creature slashing its way through her, a goblin from the bowels of hell. His goblin. His hell.

Jacko sat on the sad bed in the dirty motel room until the sky outside the smeared windows turned faintly lighter. He exited the motel room, got into his truck and turned south, hoping to find something that would let him sleep without dreaming of demons.

He reached San Diego mid-morning, turned east onto 94 and the road started climbing up into verdant hills.

At San Diego he barely thought of Coronado, which was weird. It was just the turnoff point, not the turning point of his life.

San Diego was where he joined the Navy, Coronado where he underwent SEAL training. The Navy and the SEALs had turned his life around. In a very real sense, his life began the day he walked into the Navy recruitment office. The most important place in his life had been San Diego.

Until Lauren. Until Portland.

The day he first saw Lauren—
that
was the day his real life began. The day he was no longer alone in the world. The SEALs gave him brotherhood, so did ASI. But nothing in his life had prepared him for what it meant to be a couple. To know he would be with Lauren till—as the saying went—death did them part.

To be loved.

Before Lauren, he’d have laughed if anyone said he’d fall in love, and now look at him.

No one had ever loved him before Lauren and he was running away from her, just when she needed him.

But God, the image of that goblin, tearing her up from the inside…

He rolled into Rancho San Diego. It was a pretty, upscale dormitory town, full of expensive shops, galleries and restaurants. Mayer’s office was on Catalina Boulevard, which turned out to be one of the main thoroughfares. It was so devoid of traffic he was able to park right outside the lawyer’s offices.

Jacko got out of his SUV slowly and stretched. He felt stiff and creaky, like an old man. Like he’d had a bad flu for a couple of decades. He hadn’t slept beyond the time of the nightmare but that wasn’t it. On one op in East Africa they’d gone for two weeks on an average of a couple of hours’ sleep every twenty-four hours, and he’d still been going strong when the op ended. Now he was wiped out with worry and self-loathing and homesickness and terror. He was feeling all of them, all at once.

There it was, a four-story brick building, big potted plants outside a brass and glass entrance. Jacko pulled out his cell, called the lawyer. He had called from the road to say he’d be arriving Sunday and Mayer had promised he’d keep the office open. Mayer answered immediately and told him to come right in.

Jacko was dirty, tired. His clothes were rumpled and he was smelling none too fresh after so many hours driving. He hadn’t shaved either.

Jacko had no pretensions to elegance, didn’t even want any. Off-duty, he dressed in jeans and tees that, though clean, were well worn. When he was on official ASI business, he usually wore turtleneck cotton sweaters and sports jackets and occasionally slacks instead of jeans. He made an effort for his bosses to be presentable. He’d even removed his facial piercings and in winter, long sleeves covered his tribal tats.

But right now he was presenting himself as a rumpled thug with two days of stubble.

Fuck it.

He walked into the building, found a big brass board with company names etched on it and saw that Mayer & McLean Law Office was on the third floor. He took the stairs two at a time, needing the physical exercise.

Inside, it was everything he imagined a law office should be. Prosperous and quiet as they sued the pants off people on behalf of their clients. Jacko avoided having any dealings with doctors and lawyers if possible.

A very blond woman in clothes Lauren would approve of lifted her eyes, then widened them when she saw him.

“Yes?” she said in a voice that was supposed to make him cringe.

He just stared her down. “Morton Jackman. Here to see Mr. Ernest Mayer.”

“I’m sorry.” She didn’t check anything. He didn’t fit the profile of a Mayer client. That was okay with Jacko. He was used to not fitting anyone’s profile. “Mr. Mayer is fully booked up. Today and tomorrow.”

Fuck that. “Check your boss’s schedule. See if he made room for me.”

“I’m sure that—” She clicked and her heavily mascaraed eyes widened. She looked back up at him. “I was—um—mistaken. You can go in, Mr. Jackman, first door on the right. I’ll announce you.”

A Mr. Jackman to see you, sir
, he heard as he went through the polished teak door with Ernest Mayer, Esq on a brass plaque to the side of it.

The door didn’t open when he got within three feet from it like the ASI doors did. It was a good office, it smelled of money, but it wasn’t anything compared to his company.

What the fuck was he doing here when he could be back in Portland, working at the coolest company on earth, then going home to the most beautiful woman in the world? He stood before the door until he heard a click and a female voice coming from a small box by the side of the door, asked him to come in