Darkening Dawn (The Lockman Chronicles Book 5) (9 page)

UniLover69 had something important for her. Something momentous.

The possibility of good news in the wake of such a clusterfuck she’d had with Kenny locked Elka in place, in a sort of giddy trance. She could be misinterpreting the signs. With her hopes up, she was afraid to read the message and find another interesting but irrelevant piece of information. As long as she stood there doing nothing, she could avoid such disappointment.

Something bit Elka between her index and middle finger. She shook off her hand and her cigarette butt went flying across the room. She had let it burn to the filter without even noticing. The butt landed on the cheap shag carpet and smoldered.

For the sake of the Great Beyond, was she bent on burning this place down?

She rushed to the cigarette and stomped it with her bare heel. It stung for a moment, but little pains like that never stuck with Elka long. She had suffered far worse in her lifetime.

From the open window came the sound of the El train clacking and squealing along the tracks. Someone screamed, but the scream broke into an androgynous titter worthy of the Mad Hatter.

Sounds of the city.

A city Elka had learned to love. One she thought she could finally settle into for the long haul. At least until her life’s mission had reached its final stage.

Damn you, Kenny. You piece of annoying shit.

Mortals like Kenny made some others seem almost tolerable.

She shook aside her frustration and pushed herself straight to the computer, past any hesitation that might trip her up again.

Hand on the mouse, Elka leaned forward and read the message.

UniLover69:
Got a linky U might want 2 check out.

The message was followed by a shrunken link, so she had no idea where it might take her based on the web address. Normally, this would mean an automatic delete. UniLover had earned an exception to this rule for his/her good track record.

She clicked the link.

Surprisingly, it led her to YouTube. This sight almost never had any legitimate videos on the supernatural. The real stuff stayed hidden on private web pages, often requiring a login, and run by those who knew what kind of negative attention would fall on them if they uploaded to a public site like this.

Which meant, if UniLover wasn’t jerking her around, the owner of this video had no idea what they were doing.

It seemed to take forever for the page to load, and even longer for the video to buffer.

Finally, the video played.

Three seconds in, Elka gasped. The sharp inhale tickled her smoker’s lungs and threw her into a coughing fit. Her face turned red while she tried to suck in breaths between hacks.

The video played on.

The footage was obviously shot with a phone. The camera jittered as if the hand shook. Which it probably was, considering what the phone’s owner was seeing before them.

A few blurry smears and a slight reflection made it apparent that the video was being filmed through a window. The manicured lawn and stretch of sidewalk across the foreground suggested the window belonged to the front of some typical suburban home.

The sound blared through the computer speakers, making them buzz with vibrations. A high-pitched twang, like the pluck on the last string on a giant guitar, rang out, muting all other sounds in the video. The noise came from the unbelievable scene across the street.

A van had come to a halt in front of a house that looked no different from its neighbors on either side, except for the gaping holes in what little remained of its façade. A steady beam of bluish green light shot from the van through one of the holes in the house. The beam struck something small inside, hard to make out because the beam’s light had spread on impact like a stream of water from a faucet hitting the bottom of a pan.

Elka narrowed her eyes and leaned closer to the screen. Within the spray of light she made out what looked like a person’s silhouette, but the thing was too small. Unless it was a child. But if the beam was the thing that had obliterated most of the house’s front, a child would disintegrate in an instant when struck.

A mortal child, anyway.

“Just what did you send me, UniLover?” she said under her breath. An electric thrill ran up her spine and zapped the fog in her brain left behind after killing Kenny. She felt alert, ready for anything, but also a little jittery in her stomach like she’d swallowed too much caffeine.

A paranormal weapon of some kind—like nothing Elka had seen, let alone heard of—and a paranormal target who could withstand the weapon’s frightening power. The whole confrontation playing out in the open for any mortal with a camera phone to record and post on YouTube.

A rare show.

This conflict had to be something serious, something huge, for the players to eschew typical secrecy and do battle with a mortal audience. But Elka didn’t see how it connected to her own goals. Her premonitions must have only meant to signal the scope of what UniLover had sent her, not a contribution to her needs.

As if punctuating her last thought, a blinding white explosion erupted from the center of the beam’s target. The explosion roared like an angry god from the Beyond. The shockwave rattled the window and shattered it into a glittering glass rain that caught the light from the plume of fire consuming the house across the street.

The cameraman staggered back, then lost hold of the phone. The phone clattered onto a hardwood floor and came to rest with a view of a twirling ceiling fan casting flickering shadows in the explosion’s light.

A string of frightened curses came from off screen. Then, “Oh, my God. My God. Sweet fucking Jesus. What the fuck was that?” By his last question, his voice pitched upward, on the verge of sobbing.

Elka hoped he would get a hold of himself and pick the camera back up to continue recording. She wanted to see the degree of damage this weapon could accomplish. Maybe get a glimpse of whoever wielded it inside the van if they risked coming out to check their handiwork—an understated word to describe such destruction, but it was all Elka could think to call it in the moment.

More than likely, they would speed off. The van could not have handled the amount of heat coming from the explosion for long. Not to mention the attention their attack must have drawn.

Another couple of seconds of footage featuring the ceiling fan, then the video quit, leaving Elka with a montage of recommended other videos to view.

She slowly eased back in her seat, but swapped windows without a second of hesitation. She typed a return message to UniLover69.

ParaNorrie:
Any idea what the hell this is?

While she waited for the telltale ping of a reply, Elka dashed into the kitchen to grab her smokes. Halfway back to her desk she heard the bleep. Thankfully, UniLover was still online. She dropped back into her seat and read the response and lit another cigarette.

UniLover69:
Have some theories. Crazy shit coming down the pipes.

UniLover claimed to have a number of sources in the supernatural community, and he/she often talked about information coming “down the pipes.” To Elka, it sounded like bluster. But she couldn’t argue with UniLover’s solid results. Whoever this person was, he/she had more knowledge of the supernatural than most she’d met in her life.

Elka sucked on her cigarette while letting it hang from the corner of her mouth so she could keep her hands on the keyboard. She typed her response—

ParaNorrie:
What kind of theories?

At the bottom of the chat window a message popped up letting Elka know UniLover was typing. The message stuck there for several seconds. Then winked out. Then returned. Elka finished her cigarette and lit another off the first before mashing it into the glass ashtray on the desk. A dozen butts stuck up from a thick layer of ash like chunks of bone left over after a cremation. Some of the ash spilled over onto the desk as she tamped out the cigarette.

She’d almost smoked half of her second cigarette before the chat window blinked and the bell dinged. What Elka had expected to be at least a paragraph long response because of the time it took UniLover to answer, ended up as a single question.

UniLover69:
Have you heard of the Agency?

She didn’t have a clue. Which agency? FBI? CIA? NSA? What did any kind of agency have to do with the paranormal pyrotechnics in that video? She tapped out a response that said as much.

A minute passed and UniLover didn’t reply. The typing notification didn’t even blink on.

Elka lit another cigarette. It tasted like rot in her mouth, but the smoke scratched the need in her lungs and charged her nicotine buzz.

She stared at the screen, waiting, taking hit after hit on her smoke just to have something to do with her hands to keep her from tearing her hair out.

Why is this bugging you so much?

Because it was important. Whether or not it had anything to do with her plans, it still had something to do with her indirectly. It could affect any number of supernaturals on the mortal plane. If enough mortals saw this video and drew the right conclusions, news that the paranormal amounted to more than a grossly romanticized slew of adolescent vampire fantasy novels could spread too quickly to stop. The secrets in the shadows might feel a little light.

It was hard enough hiding when most everyone around you thought you didn’t exist.

Granted, a minor segment of the human population believed or knew firsthand of the existence of the paranormal—like some of the more savvy members of the online forums Elka haunted. No big deal. It wasn’t until that knowledge became mainstream that the trouble started.

When she burned her latest cigarette to the butt, she gave up on UniLover and pushed away from the desk. She started for her bedroom. The warmth from the shower had evaporated, leaving her skin cold and rippled with goose bumps. Her hair had frizzed at the ends from air drying. She would throw on some clothes, pack, then check in with UniLover after.

She barely made it two steps when the computer chimed.

Like a trained monkey, she hurried back to her seat and checked the incoming message.

UniLover69:
Agency = police 4 supes. Easier to show you. This just in…

He offered another link. She clicked through, shocked to find another YouTube video, this from a different user than the first.

While the vid buffered, Elka considered another cigarette, but her stomach felt dry and hollow. Her hands shook from the buzz. She left the pack on the desk and gnawed on her thumbnail instead.

The video started at an odd angle, bent back and aimed toward the sky. In the immediate foreground an overhang lined with a black gutter blocked most of the view. But beyond that, a billowing shaft of black smoke poured up toward the clouds, spreading out like an infection in the sky. Elka knew immediately where the smoke was coming from—the destroyed house from the first video.

Why UniLover sent her such crummy coverage baffled her. It was hard to judge for sure, but it looked like the smoke was coming from at least a block over.

Then the person with the camera—another obvious camera phone—swung around, the picture swirling fast enough to make Elka a little motion sick. When the camera steadied, the setting became a lot clearer.

This new videographer stood on a porch, recording a group of six, mostly dressed in black fatigues and toting big rifles, as they ran down the street in front of the cameraperson’s house.

The sight of the fatigues and rifles turned Elka’s heart to a chunk of coal. Memories rolled up on her as thick and dark as the smoke from the beginning of the video. She shivered while a feverish sweat trickled between her shoulder blades.

But the one dressed in street clothes instead of fatigues…when she turned to glance in the camera’s direction….

Three years folded into three seconds as Elka recognized the girl’s face. Older now, fuller, with a more womanly cast to her features. Yet undeniably the same girl.

The one with the electric blue light.

The one who had turned her dead father’s body into a glittering blue mist.

All in an instant, after one uttered word. A word Elka could hear as clear now as on the day itself.

Return.

The video played on, but Elka did not see it. The face of her enemy remained fixed before her.

Her premonition about UniLover’s message had turned out right.

And Elka had found her path back toward vengeance.

Chapter Seventeen

T
HE PHONY WINDOW IN
J
ESSIE
’s living room mimicked the night outside of Agency headquarters. Through the sheer curtains she could see the mock image of the clear sky and the pinpricks of starlight littering the darkness. Billions of other worlds in space on the mortal plane alone, an infinite universe, but only a sliver of all the worlds parallel to this one.

Way to get all philosophical, nerd.

Jessie lounged on her couch, head propped on a throw pillow on the couch’s arm so she could stare out the window. The pillow felt stuffed with shredded cardboard. Decent throw pillows obviously weren’t within the Agency’s budget. She could probably bitch and get better ones. She didn’t really care, but maybe she would just to cause trouble.

Causing trouble had always taken her mind off things back in the day, during her “normal” life.

Hardy-har! What’s so normal about having a werewolf for a stepdad?

But she’d hadn’t
known
he was a werewolf, so it was like he wasn’t one.

Her stomach turned. She couldn’t believe she was yearning for a fake life. Things had gotten that bad.

Jessie puffed out her cheeks and let out a long breath that riffled her bangs.

Silence stuffed the room, as loud as if the TV were cranked to the highest decibel. Silence drove Jessie into fits, would make her chew off the black polish from her nails, send her pacing the room, make her squirm if she tried to sit still.

Except for tonight.

Tonight she couldn’t so much as stomach a Nine Inch Nails song or a cheesy ’80s comedy. No amount of Anthony Michael Hall, Corey Haim, or Molly Ringwald could shove out the malaise that had taken out a thirty-year mortgage, moved in, and furnished her mood.