Darkest Hour

by Rob Cornell

  “What your little girl’s got. You know. The stuff.”

  “You’re talking about magic.”

  “Magic. Mojo. Superpower. The Touch. None of the names really work for me.” She shrugged, leaned away. “But your girl’s supposed to have the motherload.”

  “Why are you looking for her?”

  The woman laughed and gave Kate a look that made her feel dense. “Seriously?”

  “Nothing you’re saying to me makes a bit of sense. And since you won’t answer any of my questions…” Kate tossed her hands up.

  The woman rolled her eyes and let loose a long sigh. “This isn’t going anything like we planned.”

  “Who are you?”

  “My name’s Mica, but you mortals call me a pixie.”

  “A pixie?” Kate looked Mica up and down, looking for any sign of what she was. Weren’t pixies the same thing as fairies? Shouldn’t Mica have been a lot smaller then? And have wings?

  Mica stood. “Wipe that look off your face, Chica. I ain’t Tinkerbell. I’m a pixie. And never mind what you think that means.”

  “Sorry. I didn’t mean to insult you.” She started to stand as well.

  Mica whipped her gun hand out straight with the barrel centered on Kate. “Keep your seat if you like breathing.”

  Kate sat. She raised her hands out at her sides. Her heart knocked hard in her chest.

  “This is how this is gonna work,” Mica said. “I’m going to call my peeps and tell them what a cluster fuck we got. Then we’re going to decide what to do with you, though I think I know what they’ll say.”

  Kate didn’t like the sound of that one bit. Decide what to do with her? In movies and TV that kind of talk meant they probably intended to kill her, tie off a loose end in whatever scheme they had running. Unless Kate could make herself seem valuable, they would have no reason to keep her around.

  Mica drew a cell phone and started dialing one-handed while the other hand kept the gun trained on Kate.

  Kate thought about something Gala had said. At the time, she was convinced it was a bunch of malarkey. She still thought so. But Mica and her people might go for it.

  “I can help you find her,” Kate said.

  Mica stopped dialing. “Oh, yeah? How come you haven’t already done it yourself?”

  “I didn’t know about it before. But I met with a mystic. She said, as her mother, I had the power to find her.”

  “A mortal mystic?” She scrunched up her face. “They typically aren’t very reliable, hate to say.”

  “But it’s possible she’s right.”

  “Yeah, it’s possible. Like I said, you got a bit of the stuff.” She shrugged. “You know how to work it?”

  She was tempted to lie. Anything to buy some time. But that lie would crumble too easily to do much good. “I don’t. But one of your people probably does.”

  “What do you know about my people?”

  “How’d you find me?”

  Mica clucked her tongue again. Her thumb tapped out the last digits to the number she had started dialing. Her gaze stayed locked on Kate as she placed the phone to her ear and waited for an answer. “I’m with the mom,” she said after a few seconds.

  Kate strained to hear the voice on the other end of the line, but it was impossible.

  “Mission’s a bust,” Mica said. “The girl and Lockman are in the wind. Mom doesn’t know diddly.”

  Whatever answer came back made Mica wince.

  “I know…I know… Look, I did what I was tasked. I can’t help it if the targets have domestic squabbles.”

  She nodded at the response. Listened a few seconds longer. “She wants to help.”

  Kate’s heart rate picked up, gathering that the conversation had turned to her fate.

  So far, Mica had spent the conversation staring into middle space. Now her gaze turned to Kate. “She’s got it in her head some magic could do the trick, but she isn’t a caster. She’s one hundred percent civie.”

  Another pause as Mica listened.

  “You want me to bring her in then?”

  Kate’s heart rate nearly doubled now. Her nerves made her feel like she might shake apart at any minute. Deep breaths helped some, but adrenaline had the best of her.

  “Right,” Mica said. “She’s questiony. How much do we want to give her?” Pause. “That much, huh? You’re the boss.” She signed off with a curt “bye now” and returned her phone to her pocket.

  Kate lifted her chin, raised her eyebrows. “Well?”

  Mica lowered her gun. “Coach says he’d like you on the team.”

  Sounded like good news, except for one glaring issue. “What kind of team?”

  Mica walked over to the bed, leaned down so her face was in Kate’s. “The kind that always wins.” She rubbed her nose and sneezed. A blast of golden dust shot right into Kate’s eyes from Mica’s nostrils.

  The whole world seemed to tilt. Kate’s stomach lurched as she felt herself falling backward. Before she hit the mattress, everything went black.

  Chapter Ten

  “There has to be a way.”

  The doctor wiped his nose with the back of his sleeve then looked at his arm as if he had expected to leave a streak. Apparently satisfied by what he found, he sniffed and returned his attention to Lockman. “You’re talking about exorcism, more or less.”

  Lockman hitched a shoulder. “Call it whatever you want. Can it be done?”

  They stood at one of over twenty work-stations arranged throughout the Quonset hut designated The Lab. From tables holding bubbling, steaming, and glowing substances in glass beakers to a corner sectioned off in an airtight plastic bubble and housing various nonhuman cadavers in equally various phases of dissection, the structure housed paranormal experiments put together by some of the greatest minds in the field.

  It was Adam’s idea to start The Lab. Lockman didn’t see the benefit of fooling around with mojo, but the ogre had made the case they could use any advantage available. One of the things several of the scientists—if you could call them that—focused their experiments on were methods of killing vampires. They were hoping for some weapon or contagion that worked only on vamps and that could wipe out large numbers of them while leaving innocent mortal lives unscathed.

  His initial doubts about The Lab would evaporate in a second if the doctor he now spoke with, Dr. Wendell Truman, could help with what Lockman was asking him about.

  The doctor looked down at the long table that stretched between them. Piles of books of all size and manner of binding lay on the table, many of them open even while others were stacked on top of their pages. Truman didn’t seem to study any particular book. The one closest to his gaze’s aim was upside down and had a good amount of its pages torn out. He hummed to himself, scratched the side of his stubbled face. “The problem is—one of them anyway—is we aren’t sure of the nature of your daughter’s possession. I don’t even know if it is possession.”

  “I don’t care what it is, doc. If that artifact put Gabriel in her, there should be a way to get him back out.”

  “I don’t doubt it. But how?”

  “Isn’t that what we brought you people here to figure out? Isn’t that what all these books,” he waved a hand at the table, “and all these experiments are for?”

  Truman blinked and sniffed. “Frankly, Mr. Lockman, I was of the understanding our focus was on vampire weaknesses.”

  Lockman clenched his teeth and took a measured breath through his nose. He reminded himself this wasn’t the Agency. No matter how much it seemed like what they were rebuilding here on this old Texan farm. “Vamps are the priority, yes. But you’ve been briefed. You know about the ogres’ prophecy.”

  “Of course. In fact, I’ve even found literature that supports it.”

  That stopped Lockman. He creased his brow. “What?”

  Truman rubbed his nose with the back of his hand. “Oh, yes.” He scanned the pile of books on the table, looked over his shoulder at the
two dozen bookcases that formed a partial cubicle separating Truman’s area from the others in The Lab. “I’d have to locate it. An old diary written during the American Civil War. It was kept by a wealthy slave owner in the South who apparently used slaves as test subjects in paranormal experimentation.”

  Lockman’s stomach soured. He made a face.

  Truman nodded. “His accounts are quite disturbing, indeed.”

  “What could he have to do with a prophecy about Jessie?”

  “It appears some of his experiments bore fruit, despite their distasteful nature. One area he seemed especially interested in was divination. Of course, who isn’t, right?”

  “You mean predicting the future?”

  A nod and another dab at his nose with his sleeve. Another peek to see if he’d left anything behind. “He wanted to foresee troop movements of the North. He never had much luck with that. However, his breakthrough came when one of his slaves turned out to be a sensitive.”

  Lockman was having a hard time seeing how any of this could lead to a prophecy about Jessie and the end of the vampires.

  Truman must have sensed Lockman’s doubts. He held up a hand. “Bear with me. The sensitive he discovered must have had a great deal of power, especially for a mortal. The only other mortals I’m aware of that come close are Gabriel Dolan and your daughter.”

  “What did this guy make her do?”

  “Petty things at first. Curse his enemies. Increase his wealth. Charm women.”

  “All that power and she never fought back?”

  “You have to understand. The woman had no idea what she was capable of. Not until this man began his experiments on her. She merely acted as a sort of conduit for his own designs.”

  Lockman could just picture it. Another example of mojo’s corruption. Another reason to keep this Lab on a short leash and even shorter lease. After they took care of these vamps and got Jessie back to normal, he would send these “scientists” to opposite sides of the Earth and burn down the building with everything in it.

  After a long, juicy sniff, Truman rapped his knuckles on the cover of a leather bound book on the table in front of him. “It didn’t last. She must have learned all the while he used her. The diary doesn’t go into much detail, but I gather she eventually used her magic to escape.”

  “And that’s it? Where does the prophecy come in?”

  Truman’s grin was worthy of a werewolf under a full moon. “The very last entry.”

  Something like a firecracker going off in a frog’s mouth boomed through The Lab.

  Truman started and drew up his shoulders toward his ears.

  A foul odor soon roiled through the whole Quonset.

  Lockman waved a hand in front of his face without much effect. From where he stood, he couldn’t see where the explosion had occurred. He did, however, hear the woosh of a fire extinguisher from somewhere beyond the wall of bookshelves behind Dr. Truman.

  “Somebody made an oops,” Truman said.

  Lockman took to breathing through his mouth to avoid inhaling any more of that nasty scent. “The last entry,” he prompted.

  The doctor put his sleeve against his nose again, only this time he left it there. “According to the plantation owner, the woman actually returned after her escape. The diarist writes of her visit and how he was convinced she would kill him for what he had done. But she didn’t. She told him she couldn’t kill him because of a vision she’d had. She said he was to father a child with one of his mistresses, and that that child would begin a line eventually leading to the birth of a young lady destined to save the world from demons.”

  It took Lockman a second to parse the last part of the story, mostly because it sounded so farfetched. He narrowed his eyes. “You mean this prick is one of Jessie’s ancestors?”

  “Seeing as it was supposed to be a mistress that starts the birth line, I doubt we could research the genealogy. However, the prediction of a young woman responsible for saving the world from so-called demons sounds similar enough to the ogres’ predictions about Jessie.”

  Lockman huffed. “So what? That’s all there is? One line in a diary? How does that help us one bit?”

  “I don’t know that it does.”

  “Nice. Thank you very much for wasting my time, Doctor.”

  Truman dropped his sleeve from his nose. “Knowledge is never a waste, Mr. Lockman. And for the record, there was more to it than one line.”

  “That’s nice. How about we focus on researching what I asked about in the first place? Finding a way to get rid of Gabriel.”

  “That’s just it. I’m not sure we should.”

  “Why not?”

  “If she is somehow destined to bring an end to this vampire uprising, she must possess great power.”

  Lockman thought about the things she had done to the wolves last night while hardly trying. “She’s got plenty of power, Doc. Trust me.”

  “It’s quite possible that this merger with Gabriel’s consciousness, soul, whatever you like to call it, could be the source of that power.”

  “What are you trying to say? That if we get rid of Gabriel, we lose our chance to win this war?”

  Truman tossed up his hands. “I can’t say anything definitively. The nature of prophecy is so tenuous. But one that goes back at least as far as the American Civil War certainly shows veracity. I’d hate to be the one to meddle with such a thing and end up negating it.”

  Lockman reached over the table and grabbed the doctor by the collar. He pulled until the doc’s face came within an inch Lockman’s. “My daughter is not some experiment. I’ll be damned if I let some mojo bullshit have me stand by and let a monster like Gabriel corrupt her.”

  Truman sniffled. “I understand your personal feelings, Mr. Lockman. But you must acknowledge that Jessie is more than just your daughter. She very well could be the only thing standing in the way of Armageddon.”

  Chapter Eleven

  They fear you.

  Jessie squeezed her eyes shut. Even with the basement in total blackness, she could still see. She wanted to close out all of her senses. If she could, she would have preferred the oblivion of sleep. But she had slept too much already. Drifting off would be impossible. Besides, she had learned that even vampires dream. The nightmares she was having since mutilating those werewolves were unbearable.

  “Leave me alone,” she said aloud, as if Gabriel sat in the dark with her instead of speaking only in her head. She closed the part of her mind that let his voice in. Whatever her dad thought, she never mistook Gabriel as her friend. He was a tool, a source of knowledge, no more significant to her than a paranormal search engine.

  Is that so?

  She started, opening her eyes. The shape of the water heater stood before her, her vision as clear as it would have been on a moonlit night. How had he…? She set her jaw and focused on snapping shut that pocket of her mind holding Gabriel again. She hadn’t had to really try locking him in for months. It had become second nature.

  You’re not the only one learning.

  A gasp caught in Jessie’s throat. She scrambled to her feet from her seat against the brick wall. Turning, she scanned the basement as if she would find Gabriel standing somewhere nearby. She had the basement to herself. Just her bed in the corner. A dresser against one wall. An armoire for her closet against another. Mismatched furniture her dad had found at a consignment shop. The throw rug in the middle of the basement came from that same shop. A weird excuse for a bedroom, but she figured it beat a crypt or coffin.

  She ground her teeth together. “You need to shut up now.”

  We have so much to talk about.

  Her breath hissed out between her clenched teeth. Not cool. Not one bit. If she couldn’t block him out anymore, she was looking at some seriously miserable days ahead of her. The dude liked to talk, for one thing. And when he got on a roll, some of the things he talked about gave her already cold skin the shivers.

  Aw, I’m not that bad, am I? I
taught you how to resist the pain from religious symbols. I explained how you could make yourself impervious to silver’s touch. If you let me, I can tell you how it’s possible to walk in the sunlight without bursting into flames.

  Jessie made fists and paced. Yes. He had taught her those things—and more—but only when she had let him. That sense of control over when and if he could communicate with her had made her feel safe enough to allow it. If she couldn’t figure out how to shut him out again, then Dad was right. She was a walking bomb. Gabriel could drive her crazy just by nattering on non-stop.

  What benefit would that bring me? Don’t worry, child. I’ll let you sleep. But you aren’t paying attention. I said I could teach you how to walk in sunlight.

  “I heard you the first time.”

  Well?

  She stopped pacing, bounced her fists against her hips. Not for the first time, she wondered how he could know these things. She had stopped bothering to ask, though, because he refused to tell her. Still, having the ability to walk in the sun as a vampire was the last barrier to—

  Immortality.

  Gabriel’s voice felt like a wet snake twisting in Jessie’s brain. She shuddered. She pressed her fists against either side of her head as if she could squeeze him out of her mind. Listening to him would be a mistake. His managing to bypass her ability to silence him at will could only mean he was that much closer to using her for his own agenda.

  But it was hard to resist his promise. Eliminating her weakness to the sun also eliminated the last thing that could kill her. Short of getting chopped into tiny pieces or vaporized by an explosion, she really would be immortal.

  Then you wouldn’t need the others. Wouldn’t have to suffer their judgments. You could singlehandedly destroy the vampire army. Their fear would turn to respect, admiration, even loyalty.

  Jessie dropped her fists and forced her fingers to relax enough to open. “You must think I’m a real douche. I’m not a power hungry psycho like you are. I don’t need all that.”

  Of course not. But how about a little self-determination? Or do you prefer letting your father lock you underground in the dark until he decides it’s okay to let you out?