Darker Things (The Lockman Chronicles #1) (35 page)

“Shut up.” Not much more to say to a psychopathic magic wielder.

“Right.” He waved his gun at the girls. “As you already know, the hall you tried to take out of here is filled with hungry imps. All the exits are covered by them. The only way out is the roof access.”

“Where?” Lockman asked.

“There is a utility room down the hall, not the way you came. A ladder in that room leads to the roof. Getting off the roof is up to you, though I suppose you could jump into the river.”

The thickness of Dolan’s voice at this last suggestion set Lockman’s teeth on edge like claws on a chalk board. “Stay away from the river. He’s done something to it.”

Dolan smiled. “See? There’s still a part of my brother in you. You know me so well.”

“Too bad you’ll never see him again.”

“Never say never.” He turned the blood-smeared cube in the candlelight. “Assuming this procedure doesn’t kill you. I’m not exactly sure how well this will work with half-congealed blood. We better get on with this.”

Lockman turned to the girls. “Go. But be careful.”

Jessie shook her head, tears welling in her eyes. “We’re not leaving you.”

“You don’t have a choice.”

“Fuck that,” she shouted. “I finally found you. You’re nothing like I thought you’d be, but I don’t care. I found you.”

The air felt thicker in Lockman’s lungs. The smoke from the candles stung his eyes, made them water. “I’m sorry I didn’t find you sooner. I would have if I’d known.”

“No you wouldn’t have.” She laughed through her tears, wiped her nose on the back of her hand. “That would have put me in danger and threatened the greater good.”

Kate stepped up behind Jessie and put her hands on Jessie’s shoulders. “Come on.”

“No.”

“Go,” Lockman said.

“We’re wasting time, Lockman. I’ll shoot them both if they’re not out of here in three seconds.”

Lockman grabbed Jessie and hugged her. He looked up into Kate’s eyes. “Get as far away from here as you can. Don’t look back. If I get out of this, I’ll find you.” He pushed Jessie gently toward Kate then turned his back to them both, trusting Kate to do the rest, even if she had to drag Jessie from the room.

Jessie sobbed, but her cries faded as she left the room with Kate.

Dolan pointed at the gurney with his gun. “Take a load off.”

“You think you can do this ritual and keep that gun on me at the same time?”

“I’ll manage.”

Lockman lifted himself onto the gurney and lay on his back. “Do it.”

With one hand, Dolan pressed the barrel of his pistol to Lockman’s temple. The other hand set the artifact against his forehead. “Let me see my brother’s soul.”

Sparks flashed in Lockman’s eyes. A sickle of pain cut through the right side of his head. His body jerked. More sparks. His vision turned into a night sky with only bursts of light to break the darkness. He lost track of his body. Could no longer feel the gurney under him, smell the hot wax of the burning candles, could not even feel his own breath enter and exit his lungs.

Something screamed.

He recognized the voice. His.

More flashes of light, bigger, brighter. Then bits of color. Snaps of images. Images that he could feel. Smells. Birthday cake. Freshly poured asphalt on the parking lot at his elementary school. The face of his first lover when he was thirteen, and the feel of her tongue against his when they kissed. A darkness. A hard pain low in his body, in a place that had been violated, and the steady grunt of a man he knew was his father.

More images, moving, flowing, bleeding together. A lifetime of memory pouring through his head like sand through the neck of an hourglass. Too fast to glimpse. Only feelings. Rage. Happiness. Fear. Loneliness. Thirst for vengeance against the man who had broken him. And finally the discovery that all that emotion could lead to something…something powerful.

One last image and a flood of senses with it.

The smell of burning flesh while his screaming father tried to shake off the flames that had engulfed him from out of nowhere. Only they hadn’t come from nowhere; the flames were born from his rage.

Lockman’s eyes snapped open. His chest heaved. His throat felt raw as if he’d been screaming. The torrent of memories already began to fade like the threads of a nightmare. He lifted his head at the sound of someone sobbing.

Dolan sat on the floor, the artifact gripped in one fist, the gun held fast in the other. Tears streamed down his cheeks.

“You didn’t know your father was raping your brother, did you?”

“Shut up,” he screamed and got to his feet. He jabbed the gun barrel into Lockman’s cheek. “It’s a lie.”

“If it is, it’s not my lie.”

Dolan’s nostrils flared. His upper lip curled. “It doesn’t matter. I found what I needed.”

“Now what? You kill me? You kill your brother?”

“You are not my brother!” He reared back his gun hand to pistol whip Lockman.

Lockman rolled off the gurney and Dolan struck the thin mattress and rattled the frame. Before Dolan could recover, Lockman clamped both his hands onto Dolan’s wrist, pinning it to the gurney.

Dolan squeezed the trigger.

Pain tore through Lockman’s gut, but he wrenched the gun from Dolan’s hand before he could fire a second shot. He tried to hang onto the pistol. His hands felt clumsy and numb. The weapon dropped to the floor. Lockman looked down at it and saw the bloody hole in his belly.

That’s when the gurney came skating toward him.

He threw up his hands to catch the rolling bed, missed, and the edge of the metal frame hit him in the gut, tripling the pain from the gunshot wound. He shoved the gurney away and doubled over. The edges of his vision closed in. Sparks popped and fizzled across his eyes a lot like the sparks he saw when Dolan first touched the artifact to his forehead. A memory of gutting a lamb on a stone alter rushed through his head, followed closely by the image of an ornate, golden cup that glowed orange like an ember.

He blinked away the image in time to see Dolan run for the door. Lockman staggered to the dropped pistol and picked it up. His fingers felt fat and useless. Chills rattled through him in steady waves. Shock setting in. Bad in the long run. Good enough to carry him a little further and finally take Dolan out of this world.

He raised the weapon and fired right before Dolan slipped out of the room.

The shot tore a chunk out of Dolan’s shoulder. Dolan staggered sideways and bounced off the wall before dropping to the floor.

Lockman held his aim, despite the screaming pain in his gut.

Dolan writhed and groaned on the floor.

Lockman stepped forward, but something stopped him. A rustling from the hall. The distinct sound of a hoof clopping against concrete. He glared down at Dolan. “Your imps are coming.”

Dolan looked up with wet eyes. “I’ve been starving them. They smell our blood.”

“Then we need to get out of here before they block the way.”

He laughed. “Why? So you can interrogate me? Torture me? Arrest me?”

The sound of several sets of clopping hooves now rang through the darkness in the hallway. Growing closer. The acoustics in the hall made it difficult to know how close for sure.

“Last chance, Otto.”

“We can’t outrun them. Not like this.”

The clamor of hooves swelled, as if all the bulls of Pamplona had made a wrong turn and found themselves in the dank hall outside this room. Cold air billowed in through the doorway like the edge of a November rainstorm.

Lockman backed away from the door, one hand on his wound, the other holding the gun out, ready to fire at anything that tried to come in.

The dark hall filled with twisting shadows and childlike screams. One of the beasts leapt through the doorway, into the light.

Shock and panic undid all of Lockman’s training. He opened fire on the imp, squeezing off shot after shot, most of them sparking against the floor or chopping at the walls. Then the gun locked, empty.

The imp’s skin turned to black liquid in the light. It screeched and scampered back into the darkness, leaving behind a brackish smear on the floor.

A moment later the galloping hooves came to a halt. A chorus of heavy breathing echoed just beyond the doorway.

Lockman was so focused on the imps, he never saw Dolan get up. The punch to Lockman’s belly dropped him to his knees. He gasped and heaved, the pain so incredible he thought he might pass out. He willed himself to stay conscious.

Dolan grabbed Lockman by the hair. “I should have just killed you.”

Strength leaking from his body, Lockman looked up at Dolan. “I have a message from your brother.”

Dolan’s eyes widened.

“He wanted you to remember…”

“Remember what?”

“To feed the imps.” He chopped at Dolan’s kneecap with the empty pistol, the impact hard enough to knock the bone out of place.

Dolan shrieked and lost his footing. He landed hard on his ass.

Lockman swung the pistol again at Dolan’s face and cracked his nose. He tossed the pistol aside, grabbed Dolan by the ankle, and used the last of his strength to drag him across the floor to the doorway.

Dolan moaned, but the blow to his face had stunned him beyond struggle.

As close as he dared get to the doorway, Lockman lifted Dolan to his feet. “I’ll tell your brother you thanked him for the reminder.” Then he shoved Dolan out the doorway and into the darkness.

“No,” Dolan screamed.

The cacophony of greedy squeals rose to such a pitch that Lockman had to cover his ears. He stumbled away and dropped to the floor.

Dolan bellowed one last time before the sound of his tearing flesh silenced him for good.

Lockman curled up on his side and listened to the wet smacking sounds of imps feasting on his worst enemy, who had also once been his brother.

Chapter Fifty-Two

Time folded in on itself for Craig Lockman. He felt like he lay there in the quivering candlelight for only minutes and also for days. Either could be true. Probably somewhere in between. Many of the candle wicks had drown in melted wax, their flames snuffed. Eventually, the room would fall into darkness. The imps would come for him then.

He hoped he bled out before that, but he doubted it. A gut shot took its time with killing.

His cheek rested against the cold linoleum flooring. Across the way he could see the cube-shaped artifact where Dolan must have dropped it. The blood that had marred its bronze surface had vanished completely and the candlelight made it shimmer.

Because he couldn’t do much else, he tried to remember more of his old life, but whatever memories that had rushed through him had not stuck for long. He could only see bits and pieces that he had a chance to process consciously. The ornate cup. The slaughtering of the lamb. The rape by his father.

His father?

Or Gabriel’s father?

Who was he? Lockman? Still? Even though he had touched the memories of his former self and could even recall a few of them?

Didn’t matter. He was dying. He just hoped Jessie and Kate got out all right. Lucky Detroit missed out on a full-on haunting. He deserved a medal from the mayor, only the fucking mayor was in on it. And would get away with this untouched. Who would believe he had hired a terrorist to haunt the city? With the Agency disbanded, there was no one to take on people like that.

He drifted in and out of consciousness, these same thoughts circling his mind like the last bits of flotsam rolling into the sewer after a flood. More candles sputtered out. The room grew darker. And colder.

The imps waited at the door. He knew it. Could feel their hunger. Could smell Dolan’s flesh and blood on their breath.

Screams woke him for another doze. A horrible sound followed, like cavalry in a cave, so loud his ear drums quivered and his head pounded.

A blinding beam of light struck him in the face. He put up a hand to shield his eyes.

“In here,” a voice shouted from behind the light.

Another brilliant beam joined the first. “Craig? Oh my god.”

He tried to wet his lips with a sandpaper tongue. “Kate?”

One of the lights came closer and he could see a silhouette behind it. She turned the beam away from him.

His eyes adjusted and he saw her kneeling beside him. Kate. “You guys shouldn’t have come back.”

“Then what would we have done with these industrial-sized flashlights we found in the SUV parked outside?”

He looked toward the other light, no longer pointed directly at him. “Jess?”

“I’m good. We’re both good. You on the other hand? You look like shit.”

“Don’t use that kind of language, kid.”

Kate pointed her light at his belly and hissed through her teeth. “Can you walk?”

“For you? Anything. Just help me up.”

Jessie came over and the two of them helped Lockman to his feet. The gnawing in his gut awoke. He clenched his jaw. “Pick that up before we go.” He nodded toward the artifact on the floor.

Jessie went over and picked it up. “What about Dolan?”

“You didn’t see him when you came in?”

“No.”

“Then he must have tasted good.”

“Oh,” she said. “Oh, gross.”

Chapter Fifty-Three

Lockman hated hospitals. Jessie and Kate both tried to make it as easy on him as possible. Frequent visits. Flowers. Jessie even brought in her laptop to play some of the movies she’d made. He didn’t understand a lot of them—too much unexplained angst between the characters and a lot of weird camera angels—but they looked professional. Not the work of a thirteen year-old.

Kate didn’t say much during her visits. What could he expect? He was happy enough that she came at all, though he didn’t know if she was there only for Jessie, or for him, too.

Then Kate showed up one day without Jessie.

“She’s visiting Ryan,” she said when he asked. “He’s staying in a psych ward of all things. Jessie, she…”

“She thinks she can fix him.”

Kate fussed with a limping flower arrangement. “I don’t want her to get her hopes up, but she did it for me somehow.”

“I think she can do it for him, too.”