Darker Things (The Lockman Chronicles #1) (33 page)

Charles fired two more shots into the soldier’s chest and went to work on getting to his feet. The pain chewing through his side doubled. His vision narrowed. He blinked away the dizziness swooping over him and stood. He waddled toward the house. Police sirens cried in the distance. You couldn’t have a good firefight in the suburbs without someone calling the cops.

Charles laughed at his own thoughts. Then laughed when he realized how delirious he must be. Somehow he made it to the front door and inside. He heard Millie crying and begging in the next room. The next room was the kitchen. Charles staggered in and found a third soldier holding a gun to Millie’s head while she knelt on the floor. This soldier, a woman, had her back to Charles, but he recognized her blonde buzz cut. Melinda. At one time, when he first joined the Movement, he had a crush on her.

Now he aimed at her head. “Mindy.”

She turned, had a second to show her surprise.

Charles shot her in the face, then twice in the torso once she dropped to the floor.

Millie was screaming, still kneeling on the floor and faced away. She had no idea what was going on.

Charles fell to his knees beside her. He felt the life leaking out his side. “Just me,” he said. “You’re okay now.”

She turned to him, noticed the wound in his side. “Oh, God.” She grabbed at his arm. “Oh, thank you.”

“It’s all good.” He coughed up some blood. “Think I finally earned my badge for assisting an elderly person.”

Her tear-streaked and raw face broke into a smile.

Charles couldn’t think of anything better to see right before dying. He touched her cheek. “You remind me so much of my mom.”

“It’s funny. You remind me of Marcus.”

“Marcus?”

“My husband.”

He tried to smile, but his face felt numb. His body had started filling with a bitter cold. He grew sleepy. Wanted nothing more than to lie down, so he did. Despite the cold inside of him, his face felt feverish and the cool linoleum felt nice against his cheek.

Millie knelt by his side and held his hand. “You saved my life.”

“Your husband.” Charles gasped. God, but it was hard to speak. “He’s…around.”

Her face creased in confusion. “What do you mean?”

“He’s…” Something colder than the cold already inside of him sluiced through him like liquid air. “…here.”

Millie looked into the eyes of the young man who had saved her and saw the impossible. She saw Marcus. Not like before, how he had reminded her of her late husband. No. She saw Marcus’s soul in the eyes of another man.

“Windmill,” the young man said, but only Marcus had ever called her that.

“Marky.” Her chin quivered and her throat felt thick. Every nerve ending buzzed. Especially in the fingertips she used to trace his lips. “Is that you?”

“It’s me, Mill.”

“How? What happened to Charles?”

“I don’t think I have a lot of time to explain. I don’t know if I could.”

Millie cried. A waterfall flowed through her. “Oh, Marky, I’ve missed you like the devil. I hope you’re in a better place.”

“I don’t know. I…I’ve done some shameful things.”

She shushed him. “Don’t waste this time. Even if I’m hallucinating.”

“You aren’t hallucinating. It’s real. I’m real.”

“I love you. Never stopped.”

“I never stopped loving you, either. I…” Charles winced, but Millie recognized her husband in the expression. “I think I’m going back.”

“Wait. I…there’s so much to say. God, Mark, every time something happens, I think to myself, I can’t wait to tell Mark that. I forget you’re gone. Even after all this time.”

“I’m not gone. I’m around. Talk to me. I think I’ll be able to hear you.” Another wince.

It occurred to Millie that Marcus was dying along with Charles. It made no sense, but it sounded right in any case.

“Something I have to…” He coughed. Blood bubbled between his lips.

“What can I do?”

“Nothing…just…” His eyes fluttered closed. His body fell still.

Millie wept as the police rushed, shouting, into the house.

Chapter Forty-Nine

“You have no idea the effects on the temperature when the world is spinning.”

Jessie stared at her mom, trying to process the words she had just spoken, even though there was no making sense of it. Mom had gone crazy.

“It’s all so blurry. The temperature.” She looked at Craig and spat. “Warlock. This is your doing.”

Jessie felt Craig’s arm loop around her shoulders. She shook him off. She didn’t want comfort. She wanted some way to fix this. She moved closer to her mom.

Mom sat with her legs splayed in front of her and her palms on the floor behind her to hold her up. She kept blinking as if she had something in her eyes. Her tongue would dart out between her lips and lick at the corners of her mouth. Her gaze did not rest on anything for longer than a second. “It’s so warm.”

Jessie crouched in front of her. “Mom. It’s Jessie. Do you recognize me?”

“Harlot. Bringer of the dark age. Princess of the fallen days, when mortals become slaves.”

Jessie’s chest squeezed. “Mom, please.”

Gunfire echoed through the building, making Jessie and her mother both jump. Jessie’s mom screamed. “They’ve found us. This is when they make us beg for our lives.”

“Sounds like Tanner found Dolan,” Craig said.

Jessie couldn’t hold back any longer. She cried. The sadness buried her anger. No matter how badly she wanted to let that rage burn off the fear and sorrow, she couldn’t bring it back. For a moment she felt like Craig. She had learned the hard lessons about the darker things in this world. She had faced off with them and survived. Now her cynicism would carry her the rest of the way.

It wasn’t fair. She was a thirteen year-old girl who had essentially lost her mother. An orphan. No matter what Craig had promised, he could not replace Mom. He could not make Jessie forget all the harm she had caused by seeking him out. And she could never go home again.

“You think you know me,” Mom said, pointing at Jessie. “I have traveled whole worlds you will never see.”

“You’re right,” Jessie said, crying. “I don’t know you. I never did.”

Craig rested a hand on Jessie’s shoulder. “She’s not really talking about you. You know that, right?”

“It sounds like she is.” She inched closer to Mom and reached out to touch her leg.

Her mom swatted Jessie’s hand away. “Don’t touch me, Princess Death.”

“I’m your daughter.”

“You are the harbinger of the end of times.”

Jessie wiped the tears out of her eyes, shook her head. “I. Am. Your. Daughter.”

“Dark one.”

“And I love you.”

Her mom hissed and recoiled. “Lies from its tongue.”

“I used to tell you that all the time when I was little. But I haven’t in a long time. I love you, Mom. Even all those times I said I hated you, I loved you. Did you know that?”

“The earth will know the end of mortals. This plane will open to the next and flood its rival.”

She turned to Craig. “What is she talking about?”

“Nothing. It’s nonsense. We need to get her someplace safe, Jessie.”

Jessie tore through her mind to find some solution. There had to be a way to bring Mom back. Again she thought about magic. She had believed there was good magic. She knew better now. But there was still magic. That part was real.

She looked at the knife Craig had tossed aside after beheading the wolf. (
You mean your step-father.
) She ran over, picked up the knife, and sliced her left palm. The pain shot all the way up her arm to her elbow and back again.

“What the hell are you doing?” Craig asked.

She looked him in the eye. Said nothing.

Lockman shook his head. “It won’t work.”

She held up her hand. “Blood.”

“It will take more than a little cut.”

“It didn’t take anything close to that for what happened with Tanner’s gun.”

“That was a coincidence, not magic. You should know enough to recognize the difference by now.”

“I have to try.” She rushed at her mother before either of them could object. She pressed her bloody hand against her mom’s forehead. “Come back to me, Mom. Please.”

Her mom thrashed away from her. She pointed at Jessie. “Princess Death tempts fate. This is how it starts.”

“Mom,” Jessie said, holding out her cut hand. “Come back.” Blood pooled in her palm and dripped onto the floor.

“This is how it starts,” her mother screamed.

Jessie stepped forward and flicked her hand, spattering her mother with her blood. “Come back, God damn it. Your daughter needs you. Come back.”

Her mom screamed and dug a hand at her chest. She pulled something out from under her blouse. A pendant of some kind on a chain. The pendant glowed a blue-white that grew brighter and brighter.

Jessie had to squint and shade her eyes. She noticed her blood glowing the same color and eventually reaching the same intensity.

“She kept it,” Craig said.

Jessie turned to him. “What?”

“The pendant.”

The light grew too bright for Jessie to keep her eyes open. She had to turn away. She could feel heat behind her as if her mother burned on a pyre. She smelled something sweet in the air, like candied raspberries.

Then it all stopped—the light, the heat, the smell—gone as suddenly as it had begun.

Jessie opened her eyes and looked at her mother. All the blood was gone. As was the wild look in her mother’s eyes.

Mom reached out a quaking hand. “Jess?”

“Mom?” She ran to her side and hugged her. The feel of Mom’s arms hugging back sent a thrill through Jessie. “Oh my God, Mom, I’m so sorry.”

“Sorry? For what?”

“For everything,” she said and cried into her mom’s shoulder, this time knowing it was really her.

Craig crouched down on Mom’s other side. He stared at the two of them, wide-eyed, as if they had dropped from the sky. “I don’t fucking believe it.”

Mom looked up at the sound of his voice. “Craig?” Her gaze traced the front of him, following the smears of blood on his clothes.

Jessie felt her start to tremble. She hugged her mother more tightly and whispered inane comforts. Lies, basically. “It’s okay. It’s all right. You’re fine now.” But none of them were fine, might never be. Not after all they had witnessed.

“Where’s Alec?” her mom asked and gently pushed Jessie away so she could look around the room. Her gaze found the wolf’s head and she gagged.

“We can’t stay here much longer,” Craig said. “We don’t know what Dolan has crawling around this place.”

Mom’s face turned white. “What is going on? What have you brought us into?”

“A nightmare,” Craig said. “And I’m sorry. All I want now is to get you out of it.”

Mom looked back and forth between the two of them. “I’m not leaving without Alec.”

“Mom…” Jessie started with no clue how to continue. How did you explain the unexplainable?

“He’s dead,” Craig said. “He died saving your life.”

Jessie watched for Mom’s reaction, trying to anticipate how to help her get through the next few moments. She expected a melt-down, even with Craig’s white lie. Turned out her Mom wore a tougher shell than Jessie realized.

“You’re a terrible liar,” she said, looking into Craig’s eyes. “I could always tell when you were lying.”

“Not always.”

“You mean all this?” She waved a hand as if all their nightmarish experiences of the last few days hung like paintings on the walls. “I knew there was more to you than what you told me. Even back then.”

“Then you know that I hated having to lie to you. And you must know I hated having to leave you.”

Mom’s face went flat and unreadable. “Alec,” she said. “He was on their side?”

“Do you remember anything after the ghost possessed you?” Jessie asked. After the question left her mouth she made a face at how ridiculous it sounded, no matter how real.

“Pieces,” she said, looking back at Jessie. “I was here. But I felt crowded out of my own mind. I can’t even explain it. Like I was half-asleep while someone else took over.” She glanced at the wolf’s head again. “More and more is coming back to me. Like the morning after a bad night of drinking.”

“You don’t drink, mom.”

Mom smiled. “Not so much anymore.” She pointed at the head without looking at it. “That’s Alec?”

“A werewolf,” Craig said. “Or that’s what we call them anyway.”

“How is any of this real?”

“I wish we had more time to talk it over, but we need to get safe. And this place is not safe.”

Mom nodded, held up her arms. “Help me up.”

Jessie and Craig each took an arm and lifted Mom to her feet. Then Mom turned to Craig and rested a hand on his shoulder. Jessie had seen her mother’s intimate touch on Alec, but she saw something different here. The curve of Mom’s spine, the splay of her fingers on his bicep, the tilt of her head, all together made her mom look younger, softer.

“Thank you.”

Craig’s eyes grew more intense than Jessie had yet seen them. It was kind of cool and kind of gross to see him look at her mom that way.

“For what?” he asked.

“For protecting Jessie. And for knowing the difference.”