by Rob Cornell
“What?”
He drew an X through one of the circles. “That’s where the community center is.” He crossed out another circle. “That’s the factory.”
“The vamps are snacking on their way out.”
Lockman drew a larger circle around the concentrated group of pins. “But here is where the hardcore feeding happens.”
“Feeding and recruiting.”
The bitterness in her voice was so thick, Lockman could practically taste it on the air.
“That leaves us two locations to check. But if they’re anything like the lairs we’ve already found, we’re going to have to do some recruiting of our own.”
Lockman glanced toward Marty’s room. He could hear him and the brother currently watching over him talking in low voices. “I have an idea about that.”
“Out of the question.” Marty winced as he tried to sit up higher on the half-dozen pillows propped behind him.
Lockman and Teresa shared a glance. They sat in chairs posted on either side of Marty’s bed. Marty’s brother, David, leaned against the wall at the foot of the bed, hands in the pockets of his khaki overalls.
“Martin, the mortals have a good idea.” Though the way David said mortals, it didn’t sound like he approved of those who had offered the idea. Lockman couldn’t really complain. He’d had the same disdain toward Marty for some time. Wasn’t such a stretch to think ogres had similar prejudices against humans.
Marty scratched at the poultice the ogre Shaman had applied to his arm—a mix of leaves, what looked like mud, and a sheen of clear slime over the top of it all. It looked like a tree had sneezed on his arm. “It’s not a good idea. Enough of our people continue to suffer at the hands of these monsters. I won’t risk my brothers becoming vampire fodder.”
“We are warriors,” David said. “Twenty of us in all on the mortal plane.”
Lockman raised his eyebrows. Twenty brothers? Those ogres knew how to breed.
“This is my fight.” Marty’s booming voice buzzed in the corners of the room. “I brought the one that can end this. I will see this through with him. Not my brothers.”
Lockman felt itchy on the inside. He shifted in his seat. “I hope you’re not talking about me. I’m one man, Marty. I can’t stop this by myself.”
Marty stared hard into Lockman’s eyes. His large nostrils flared. His green skin darkened. “This is part of the prophecy. This battle is a step toward your destiny. I know it.”
Destiny. Prophecy. God damn, but Lockman had hoped he’d heard the last of Marty’s crazy notions. He raked a hand through his hair. “Did you forget? I don’t believe in your prophecy.”
“Lucky for all of us, it doesn’t require you to believe.”
“I can’t fight these vamps alone. It’s suicide.”
Marty smiled. “You won’t fight them alone.”
Maybe the ogre was still delirious, or his shaman brother had given him something for the pain that made him loopy. Ogre morphine or something. “If you mean you and Teresa, that’s still not enough.” He looked across at Teresa. “No offense.”
She held up a hand. “I’m with you on this one.”
“Not me and Teresa. And not my brothers.”
“Then who?”
His smile turned lopsided. He looked totally stoned. Lockman turned to David. “What’s his deal?”
“His inner spirit has intoxicated him.” He shrugged. “It’s a shaman thing. Figure he’s having a vision.”
Lockman rolled his eyes. “Great.” He patted Marty on the leg. “We’ll talk about this later, I guess. Get some rest.”
The smile fell from Marty’s face, though a bright excitement remained in his eyes. “They’re here.”
“Who’s—”
A pensive knock on the apartment door cut him short. Teresa and Lockman shared wide-eyed looks.
David didn’t look the least bit fazed. “Should I get it?”
Marty pointed at Lockman. “They’re here for him.”
Nothing like a tripped out ogre delivering dialogue fit for a B-horror flick to send a chill up the spine. Lockman narrowed his eyes. Before he could say anything, the knock came again. He stood and walked out to the door. The door had a peephole. Lockman hesitated a second, then put his eye to the hole.
His breath caught in his throat. Impossible. How had they found him? He swung the door open.
Kate and Jessie stood on the porch, looking as shocked as him.
Jessie smiled. “Holy shit. It worked.”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Two days.
After staggering out of the crypt, Yora sought a newspaper dispenser and checked the date on the display copy behind the glass. Two days had passed since she fell asleep in the crypt. Despite the film of dirt on her clothes and the tears in her shirt from the bullets she’d taken, she felt unscathed, full of energy…
And terribly hungry.
She did not quibble over meal selection. The first mortal she found, a derelict that smelled of bourbon and burnt cheese, she took. Every last drop of his blood. She even chewed some of his flesh to get out as much of his juices as possible. She could have feasted on three more, but didn’t have time to waste. The king would have noticed her absence and learned of her failure by now. She had to make up for this.
The pimp’s amulet still hung around her neck. Hunger temporarily sated, she could now concentrate on the charm’s magic. The pull struck her immediately. It took much of her strength to stand still long enough to gain her bearings. Then she let the magic move her.
The smell of jasmine and kudzu. The waning moon. The sky’s blackness. As she walked under the amulet’s influence, Yora knew she would succeed tonight. She would bring Lockman to her Master and make amends for her failure.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
“How many?” Jessie turned away from the map.
Lockman shook his head. “We’re not sure.”
“A thousand?”
He inhaled deeply through his nose, folded his arms. He didn’t want to scare her. He also didn’t want to lie. She had long since earned the truth from him. “Maybe more.”
“So Anne Rice had it right. New Orleans is vampire country.”
“Only after Katrina. When it became an easy feeding ground.” He gave Jessie a stern look. “And you should know by now that the books and movies have it wrong. We call them vampires because that’s what they’re like in our world. But they’re animals, not people.”
“Only they’re acting a lot like people now.”
A shiver ran down his back. She was right. The vamps were adapting. The leadership of a professed king had helped them assimilate mortal culture to a degree. Other supernaturals had done so with ease. Ogres like Marty. The nymphs. Even werewolves who could take human form. Never fully integrated into the mortal world, but comfortable with the way it worked and able to operate on its periphery.
Vampires never had managed to do this. Their hunger for blood had always devolved them back to their true nature.
Until now.
“What are you going to do?” Jessie asked.
He thought about what Marty had said. His talk of prophecy. His insistence that Lockman’s destiny meant for him to bring down the vamps. His prediction of Kate and Jessie’s arrival—those that were supposedly meant to help him. He shoved it all away. He would not involve those he loved in this fight. They had no place in it. Marty was a fool if he thought otherwise. “We’re still trying to figure that out.”
She nodded toward the map. “What do the circles mean?”
“Points we think the vamps are operating out of.”
“You’re going to go to them.” Not a question.
“Taking down their leadership seems our best bet at breaking up the army.”
“Is that what this is?” She looked up at Lockman. Something in her eyes looked different, older. Enough to make Lockman’s gut clench. “This is a war?”
“The vamps think it’s a conquest. We’l
l make it a war if we have to.”
“With only you, Teresa, and Marty with a broken arm.”
“He’ll heal in another few days. Ogres are strong. They don’t heal instantly like some of the other supernaturals, but they don’t stay down for long.”
“Still, it’s only the three of you against a whole army.”
Lockman sighed. Marty’s nattering about prophecy wormed its way back into his mind. It wasn’t that he believed it. It just filled the space where no real strategy existed. They had nothing. He wasn’t about to tell Jessie this. But rather than lie, he changed the subject. “You never told me how you found us?”
Her gaze dropped. Her hair covered her face. She mumbled something that Lockman couldn’t hear.
“What?”
She drew her hair back behind her ear. She still wouldn’t look at him. She reached into her pocket and pulled out something white in her fist. She held out her hand and opened her fingers. A piece of clean gauze lay on her palm.
A warning buzzed at the edge of Lockman’s senses. What could a scrap of gauze have to do with finding him? His mind sent up a wall when a possibility threatened to enter. “I don’t get it,” he said, knowing a part of him did and wasn’t ready to deal with it.
“This had your blood on it,” she said. “I used it to find you. All the blood evaporated.”
Lockman squeezed his eyes shut. His stomach dropped as if he had stepped off the edge of a cliff. “Mojo.”
“We have to talk.”
“I told you not to mess with that stuff.”
“Did you hear me? We need to talk.”
“I thought we were talking.” Heat ringed his neck and bled up into his face. “I told you not to mess with that stuff.”
Jessie’s eyes flashed—those eyes that looked so different now, almost like they belonged to someone else. “You don’t own me, Craig.”
Kate came out from the kitchen where Teresa had taken her aside to try explaining the situation to her. Dark circles shadowed her eyes. “Is everything all right?”
Lockman glared at her. “You let Jessie use mojo to find me? Are you out of your fucking mind?”
“And how else were we supposed to find you? You wouldn’t answer your phone.”
“It broke.”
“And you didn’t think to borrow a phone from your old girlfriend to make sure we were okay?”
“I thought you didn’t want me calling you.”
Teresa came out of the kitchen and raised her hands. “Easy guys. Why don’t we sit down and—”
Kate turned on Teresa. “You stay out of this.”
“Don’t talk to her like that,” Lockman said.
Teresa waved a hand. “It’s okay.”
Kate’s face turned beet red. “I thought I told you to stay the fuck out of this.”
“ENOUGH!” The voice boomed through the flat like a cannon blast, deep and jagged.
At first Lockman thought it had come from Marty. Then he saw the expressions on Kate’s and Teresa’s faces as they stared at something beside him. That something, he discovered when he turned to look, was Jessie.
Her eyes glowed an electric blue, whites and all. Her body went rigid, arms flat against her sides, hands in fists, knees locked, legs straight. “Enough,” she said again, her voice returned to normal except for an accompanying static whine like feedback from a speaker.
Lockman swallowed the stone in his throat. “What the hell?”
“It’s why we had to find you,” Kate said. Her voice quivered. “Something’s happened.” She crossed the room to the backpack Jessie had brought in with her. Kate unzipped the front pocket and what she pulled out made Lockman’s breath catch.
She held the memory artifact out in front of her. “This is your fault.”
Lockman couldn’t answer. He had no answer. No excuse.
A gasp from behind made all of them turn. Marty stood in the doorway to his bedroom, cradling his weak arm with his good. He stared at Jessie, at her glowing eyes. Jessie stared right back. A wicked smirk touched her face. “Martin. I never thought I’d see you again.”
“Funny,” Marty said. “I knew I would see you again, Gabriel.”
Bile rose in Lockman’s throat. Just hearing the name brought flashes of half-memories, once his own until certain members of the Agency had essentially reprogrammed his mind using the memory artifact. The golden chalice. The blood. The heavy scent of his father’s cologne, too close…too…close. He gritted his teeth and mentally hammered at the memories until they broke apart. Those weren’t his memories. Not anymore.
Teresa looked at Marty. Looked back at Jessie. Looked at the artifact in Kate’s hand. “What the fuck is going on?”
“The prophecy,” Marty whispered. “It has begun.”
Chapter Forty
All of them stood around the bed where they had laid Jessie and watched as the glow in her eyes finally faded. Jessie’s rigid body relaxed. She closed her eyes and went to sleep.
Kate wiped tears off her face. “What have you people done to my daughter?”
Marty tried to put a hand on her back. Kate flinched away. Who could blame her? She’d never seen a ogre before. “We haven’t done anything,” Marty said. “This was all meant to be.”
“Can it, Marty.” Lockman took Jessie’s limp hand. “I’ve had it with this prophecy bullshit. If you know what’s going on with Jessie, figure out a way to fucking fix it.”
“I can’t redirect the path of destiny. I’m no god.”
All over again. What he had vowed to protect Jessie and Kate from had found them all over again. And Kate was right. It was his fault for not destroying the artifact. “Why did you call her Gabriel?”
“Because he is inside of her. It was Gabriel who spoke through her.”
Kate covered her face. She moaned and swayed as if ready to pass out.
Lockman rushed to her side and held her up. He expected some rebuke, but she clung to him and cried against his chest. He glared over her shoulder at Marty. “We’ll pick this up again later. Don’t think you’ve gotten out of explaining your damn self.”
The ogre had lost some color to his green pallor. The corners of his eyes pinched as he adjusted his hold on his bad arm. “I’ll explain what I can. But my visions don’t tell me everything. Fate has to take its own course.”
“I liked the foul-mouthed, gun-dealing Marty better than this mumbo jumbo prophet thing you’ve got going.”
Marty smiled sadly. “Honestly, brother? So did I.”
Teresa agreed to keep watch over Jessie so Marty could get back to bed himself. Lockman took Kate out to the living room and sat with her on the couch. She cried for a good twenty minutes before she could catch her breath and finally talk.
“What’s going to happen to her?”
He glanced at the memory artifact on the end table where Kate had left it. “I don’t know.”
“That’s not good enough. I don’t understand anything that’s going on. For Christ’s sake, there’s a giant green man in there telling me Jessie’s possessed by Gabriel. The person you used to be. Dolan’s brother.”
“Marty’s out of line. He has no more idea what’s happened to Jessie than the rest of us.”
“He seems pretty confident.”
“That’s because he depends on mojo for his answers. You and I both know what good that is.”
Kate chewed on her lip. Lockman could see the wheels turning behind her eyes. “It worked for us,” she said. “Jessie found you.”
“I didn’t say it doesn’t work. But you can’t trust it. It’s dangerous.” He narrowed his eyes. “When did you turn into a magic advocate?”
“I’m not. But Jessie said something to me, something that made a lot of sense.” She sniffled, put a hand on Craig’s knee. “Jessie and I won’t ever be as safe as we thought we once were. If we’re stuck with this…fate, destiny, or whatever, shouldn’t we use every resource we’ve got to protect us?”
“You haven
’t seen what I’ve seen.”
“Don’t you think I’ve seen enough? You can’t keep treating me like I’m naive to this world anymore.”
“If you think mojo’s a good option for protecting Jessie, you obviously haven’t seen enough.”
“Then how come you didn’t destroy the artifact?”
She had him there. She had him good. From the look in her eyes, she knew it, too.
“Magical artifacts, ghosts, vampire armies? Do you really think we can fight all that with guns? We have to turn their own methods against them.”
“Your tune’s changed a lot in a few days.”
“I had to make a decision.”
“What’s that?”
“Either deny what’s out there and leave Jessie vulnerable, or face facts and use every resource to protect my daughter.”
Lockman cupped her chin in his hand. He gave her a long, hard look. Same beautiful face. Same shine in her eyes. But that new strength. He felt himself falling for her all over again. “I’m sorry I got you into this. You deserve better. You are—”
The front window exploded inward, and a vampire landed on all fours in the middle of the room.
Chapter Forty-One
The vamp turned her head and hissed at Lockman. He recognized her instantly. Hell, she still wore the bullet-ridden clothes from the other night. A film of soot covered her mottled white skin and dusted her clothes. She looked as if she’d spent the last several nights in a cellar. Probably something similar. She’d gone to ground to heal.
Now she was back for more.
Lockman shoved Kate aside to get her out of the vamp’s sights. Get her focused on him.
The vamp noticed the gesture and grinned a fangy grin. Then scampered toward Kate.
No time to grab for a gun. He wouldn’t let this beast touch Kate, even if it meant his own life. He hurled himself into the vamp’s path and slammed his shoulder into her side, knocking her sideways and sliding along the hardwood floor. She recovered quickly, rose to her feet, and growled at Lockman as they faced off.
