The Shadow Box: Paranormal Suspense and Dark Fantasy Thriller Novels

by Travis Luedke

  “Please.” She took his hand. “You're probably right about where she is, but what if she's not? What if she's in real trouble?”

  “I still think we should focus on the trouble she's going to be in when she comes back.”

  “Fine. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't call the police. Cover all our bases.”

  He raised his hands as if in surrender. “I didn't say you couldn't call the police. If you want to do that? Fine.”

  “What happened to Jessie being both our responsibility?”

  “That still stands.”

  “It feels to me like you've dumped this on me. If I want to call the police, than I can go ahead and do that. Not us or we. Me.”

  “You're reading too much into things now.”

  She stood. Went to the kitchen counter and took the phone off the hook. She returned to the table, standing over Alec, and set the phone in front of him. “Then call.”

  He stared at the phone before him as if it were a slug he'd found in his breakfast cereal. “You're letting your emotions get the better of you.”

  “Hey, at least I have emotions. You're sitting there like a cold stone. I don't even know what to think.”

  “She'll embarrass us. It's like crying wolf.”

  “So that's what you're really worried about. Your fucking ego.”

  Alec raised an eyebrow.

  She slapped a hand over her mouth. God, how long had it been since she had said the f-word? Her face glowed like an ember and she hated herself for it. Why couldn't she say fucking if she meant it? If she was really that fucking angry at her husband? She lowered her hand and stood straight.

  “All right. You stay here and do…whatever you're going to do. But I'm not going to sit around and assume my daughter is safe.” She left the kitchen and retrieved her coat from the closet by the front door.

  “Come on, Kate.” Alec stood in the archway to the foyer watching her. “Where are you going?”

  She finished buttoning her coat and made sure her keys were still in the pocket. “I'm going to find Jessie.”

  Chapter Four

  “Or what?”

  The vamp holding the gun to Lockman's head made a low gurgling sound that was probably supposed to be a growl.

  Time to test how badly they really wanted him alive. “If I make a move, are you going to shoot me? Maybe you think you can wing me? Clip a leg?”

  The vamp jabbed with the gun barrel. “Drop them.”

  “Again, I ask, 'Or what?'“ Lockman slowly stood straight from his crouched position. The gun barrel remained snug right at the base of his skull. “To stop me, you will have to kill me.”

  “I'll take pleasure in draining you before the bullet wounds let you bleed out.”

  Lockman smiled. Oh, yeah. Definitely a vamp. As if he had any doubt. But that left the question hanging about why the crucifix didn't work for the girl.

  “What would Dolan think if he saw my flesh between your teeth?”

  “I don't worry about any human's will. If I want to kill prey, I kill.”

  “Nice bluff.” Against every human instinct toward survival, he turned to face the vamp, the animal part of his mind wailing against his will while waiting for the bullet to pierce his brain. Lockman trusted his instincts, but neither did he neglect his intellect.

  The vamp jerked back as if Lockman had cocked an arm to hit him. “Enough. Move again and you die along with the girl inside.”

  The muscles in Lockman's jaw tightened. “See. That kind of talk just pisses me off.” He swung his left forearm in a traditional block meant for an incoming punch, but used it instead to knock the vamp's weapon aside. He lifted the gun in his right hand at the same time.

  The vamp had the advantage of not being human, its reflexes twice that of even the best trained mortal. In a flash, it had Lockman's right wrist gripped and the gun pushed off target, making the two shots Lockman fired thump uselessly into the ground.

  Good thing Lockman had another gun in his left hand. Like the best of stage magicians, he used what he did with his right hand to misdirect from his left. At close proximity, shooting from the hip, Lockman took no chances. He kept squeezing the trigger until the gun snapped dry.

  Smoke hissed from the holes in the vamp's torso, but it must have worn some protective armor under the fatigues. It merely staggered back a few steps, its grip still firm on Lockman's right wrist.

  Anticipating the next move, Lockman dropped his empty Glock and grabbed for the automatic weapon the vamp still held in its free hand. He tried to yank the gun free. The vamp tugged back, trying to loosen Lockman's hold.

  They danced in this tug-of-war stalemate until Lockman let go of the weapon and snatched at the vamp's ski mask. He ripped it off in one fluid motion, the wrap-around sunglasses coming with it.

  The vamp screamed and let go of both Lockman and its weapon to cover its eyes. With most of its face covered by its hands, the vamp could almost pass as a bald human with slightly disfigured ears. That is, until its skin began to bubble.

  Lucky thing the house faced East, directly in the rising sunlight.

  Lockman kicked the vamp in the stomach and shoved him out from behind the shrubs. The vamp stumbled back and fell to the sidewalk. Its head caught fire, the flames bright blue like a propane torch. In a matter of seconds the creature's skull caved in and the head blew away in flakes of ash. Only the burnt stump of its neck remained, and even that began to disintegrate as the exposed flesh met with the sunlight. The rest of the body, still clad in black, looked undisturbed apart from the sizzling bullet holes in the torso.

  “Fucking vampires,” Lockman said, stomach twisting at the sight. Been a long time since he'd seen one, let alone watched one die. He'd had his fill, but two more came out the front door.

  Lockman was ready for them. He used both hands on the Glock, took on a regulation shooter's stance, and nailed them both in the head as they rushed out. He'd lost count of how many rounds he'd fired from which gun, so he retrieved the gun he dropped, released the clips from both guns, and put the fresh clips in.

  The approaching sirens now sounded as close as the next block.

  Reloaded, cocked, and unlocked, he stooped low and crept back into the house. He walked right by all the dropped machine guns belonging to the vamps. Vamps wouldn't load their own weapons with silver, which meant the rounds would do little more than slow them down. Besides, if he wanted to get the girl out of there he couldn't very well spray the place down with bullets. That wasn't the way to get someone you wanted alive. Too bad the vamps hadn't figured that out before they took on Lockman.

  The tear gas had dissipated enough for Lockman to stand it. His eyes watered a little. He refused to wipe the tears away until he had scanned the house. No sign of them up on the loft. But they could be standing back, out of sight. He peered into the kitchen. Undisturbed except for the open drawer where he had stored the crucifix.

  The sound of police sirens spiked right outside, then wound down almost immediately. Lockman's ears rang from the gunfire, but through the broken front door and obliterated window he could hear car doors popping open. The tromp of hurried footsteps.

  A parody of an old classic song ran through Lockman's head.

  Cops to the left of me, vampires to the right, and here I am, stuck in the middle with…

  With some little girl who claimed she was his daughter.

  What the hell had he let himself get into? If the cops got hold of him, the red tape for the Agency to get him out would be horrendous. They might even let him hang to dry, State secrets and all. And if the vamps got him first, a life sentence served in solitary would look like a luxury cruise in comparison.

  Only one answer. Don't get caught. Period.

  He glanced at the stairs leading to the loft. If he went after the girl… No. He didn't have time to think this through. Act. Now.

  He charged the stairs, both guns up and ready to fire. As he raced up to the loft, his view of the space opened. Th
e exercise equipment came into sight first. Then he saw the girl lying on the weight bench, her hands bound behind her, her makeup a black mess across her face. He readied himself to take careful aim as he cleared the last step.

  No vamps.

  He froze at the top of the staircase, heard authoritative shouts from the front of the house. The cops. Lockman tried to make out specific words, but mostly heard the tension and panic in their tone.

  “Where did they go?”

  The girl, crying, looked at the open window.

  Then he heard the barrage of gunfire outside. Then silence. Then a horrifying but purely mortal scream. Apparently the vamps had decided the police were a larger threat to their operation than Lockman. And they didn't have to worry about keeping the cops alive.

  He rushed to the girl and found her wrists tied under the bench with a plastic zip tie. He dug his pen knife out of his pocket and sawed at the plastic band until it snapped. “They might be feeding on those cops, which will make them a lot stronger. We have to get out of here.”

  The girl stared at him with raccoon eyes, her body limp. Lockman checked her exposed skin for signs that she'd been fed upon, didn't see anything.

  He shook her. “Snap out of it.”

  The girl's pallor had already looked sun-deprived when he first saw her. Somehow even more color drained from her face. Her mouth moved silently.

  “Damn you.” He shoved the Glocks into his back pockets, lifted the girl from the bench, and threw her over his shoulder. “What did you do with the crucifix?”

  He was mostly talking aloud, not expecting any response from her. But she groaned and said, “Dropped.”

  Then he saw it on the floor in the corner by the window. He trudged over and retrieved it. Crucifix in hand, teen girl over his shoulder, he hurried down the stairs. “What do you think?” he asked and headed through the kitchen to the back door. “Is your dad everything you had hoped he'd be?”

  She didn't answer.

  Chapter Five

  Cracked, dry asphalt with the occasional sprig of browning weeds rolled past Jessie's vision. He carried her through an alley. She could smell trash and saw garage doors and dumpsters if she looked to either side, everything turned upside-down while she rode on the muscled shoulder of this guy she thought could be her father.

  She wanted to ask him where he was taking her, why there were people dressed all in black shooting at them, why the hell he had given her a metal cross like it might do something to stop them? Questions, questions, questions.

  Instead, she hung limp and let him carry her. She didn't have the strength for much more. Not after what she'd seen…and heard.

  Their voices. What was wrong with their voices?

  They came out of the alley and all at once she was swinging off his shoulder and onto her feet. Her knees gave out from under her but he held her up with an arm around her waist and the bulk of her weight against his hip.

  “I know you're in shock,” the man who may or may not have been Craig Lockman said. “But you have to move on your own. They'll smell our trail and be on us again soon.”

  Then there were those weird things he kept saying. Like what was that about the gunmen feeding on the police?

  She was barely—well almost—fourteen. That didn't make her an idiot. Clearly the guy she thought might be her dad was a nutcase. He was talking about those military dudes like they were animals. Smelling and feeding. Jesus.

  “Are you listening?” His face loomed close to hers.

  She blinked, nodded, and locked her knees so she could stand on her own.

  Lockman pulled a set of keys from his pocket and thumbed a fob. He pointed to a Honda Civic parked at the near curb. “Get in the car.”

  A sound, what at first Jessie thought was the screech of tires on pavement, echoed down the alley from where they'd come. Jessie turned and saw one of the masked men standing in the alley. No car, though. And nothing else that could have made that noise.

  “Now,” Lockman (had to be him, she might as well stop trying to dodge the truth) said and pulled her toward the vehicle then opened driver's side door.

  She glanced from the open door to him. “I…I can't drive.”

  “And you can't shoot. I'd rather we took our chances with you behind the wheel.”

  Before she could say another word, the masked man from the alley was right there. He'd somehow traveled a distance of thirty or so yards in a few seconds. Impossible.

  Lockman, not fazed by the sudden appearance, whipped the cross out from his back pocket and held it forth like…well, like people did in movies with vampires. That was just crazy, right?

  The masked attacker recoiled and that shrieking sound buzzed against Jessie's eardrums loud enough to make her shrink back. No doubt this time. The sound came from the man. Or whatever he really was.

  “The car,” Lockman growled through clenched teeth.

  Jessie didn't hesitate another second. She slipped behind the wheel and grabbed at the set of keys Lockman offered with his free hand.

  The masked man/thing had backed away only about ten feet. He hunched his shoulders and scuttled back and forth as if trying to find a way past some invisible obstacle.

  Jessie started the engine. Lockman kept the crucifix aimed at the attacker and skirted around the front of the car to the passenger side. Then something landed on the roof of the car.

  The impact startled Jessie into kicking the gas pedal and revving the motor while the car remained stationary, still in park. She shrieked as the roof buckled slightly. Another alien screech tore at the frayed remains of Jessie's nerves. She felt her body going cold. This couldn't be happening. None of this.

  Gunfire erupted once again. Jessie ducked and covered her head, expecting a bullet to blast her head off at any moment.

  Then Lockman dropped into the passenger seat. “Drive.”

  Jessie's hands shook. Somehow she managed to put the car in gear and pull away from the curb. She clipped the bumper of the car parked in front of them, but she didn't let that slow her. She mashed the gas pedal down as far as it would go. The engine revved and whined.

  “Ease up on the gas,” Lockman instructed.

  But she didn't want to ease up. She wanted to get the hell away from there as fast as possible. Focused entirely on speed, she didn't consider accuracy. The steering wheel didn't make the car respond as quickly as she expected. Before she could straighten out on the road she smashed into another car parked on the opposite side. They jerked to a sudden halt and a black clad body rolled off the roof, down the windshield, and onto the hood.

  Jessie screamed.

  “Don't worry about him,” Lockman said and twisted in his seat. “He aimed one of his pistols over the back of the seat and fired three times through the back window.

  Jessie's ears rang. She cranked the wheel all the way to the left and pressed on the gas. The car's front end grinded against the car she’d hit. The engine groaned.

  Lockman looked over his shoulder. “What are you doing?”

  “Trying to get unstuck,” she shouted in answer.

  “Reverse might have been a better choice.”

  Reverse hadn't even occurred to her. Despite all the chaos going on around her, she felt her face turn hot.

  Before she could switch strategies, their car scrapped along the length of the other and curled away, back onto the road. The body on the hood rolled off the side and out of view.

  This time Jessie eased off the gas and lined up the car to the road. Once she felt like they were straight enough, she jammed on the gas again. “Where are we going?”

  Lockman fired once more out the back window. “Shit.”

  “What?”

  “Silver's stopped working.”

  She glanced in the rearview and saw another of the masked men, maybe the one from the alley, sprinting along behind them and gaining. A check of the speedometer showed the needle creeping toward forty.

  “Back up is probably on the way.
More cops are definitely on the way. Shit.”

  They were approaching an intersection that came to a T. She would have to turn or end up crashing straight into the face of a tall apartment complex.

  “Which way?” she asked.

  “Straight.”

  “The road ends.”

  “Don't worry about the road.”

  “I'm worried about a lack of road.”

  “Just do as I say. And give it all the gas we've got.”

  She bit the inside of her cheek and lifted her butt off the seat so she could stand on the gas pedal. She had imagined a lot of possible scenarios about meeting her father for the first time. Everything from finding a famous movie mogul that took her in and helped make her into the next Spielberg, to his outright rejecting her, telling her he never wanted a daughter and didn't want to get to know her. None of those scenarios depicted anything close to this.

  A surprising thrill ran through her.

  They careened toward the intersection. Jessie’s heart pounded in her chest. A metallic taste rolled over her tongue. She’d bit the inside of her cheek hard enough to bleed. What was she doing, listening to this guy? If she kept on the gas, they would die. Smashing into the face of a building going nearly fifty miles per hour (and without her seatbelt on, she realized) guaranteed death, if not a permanent vegetative state.

  Almost to the intersection, Jessie screamed, “I can’t do this,” and slammed on the brakes. Momentum carried them past the stop sign and into the intersection, the car sliding sideways while the tires howled against the pavement.

  Lockman opened fire even while they slid out of control. Each shot felt like a nail through Jessie’s eardrum. She hung onto the steering wheel while centrifugal force wanted to tear her out of her seat and throw her through the windshield. Just as she felt like she couldn’t hold on another second, the car jerked to a halt and Jessie slammed into her seat.

  The engine had quit. Horns blared from the cars that had nearly entered the intersection at the same time they had come sailing in. Most of the bleating quit when Lockman fired a few more times at their pursuer. Jessie looked out her window, which now faced the way they had come, saw the bullets strike the running figure, once in the leg and once in the chest. The man staggered, but got right back to sprinting for them as if a couple bullet wounds were little more than insect bites.