Dark Legion

by Rob Cornell

  For now, he shoved aside those thoughts and moved in to assist, ready to end this vamp king once and for all. That’s when the vamp king threw Jessie across the room and through the glass wall overlooking the city. She didn’t scream. Didn’t make any sound at all except for crashing through the window.

  The king gazed after her, the splits across his confused face healing.

  Lockman took advantage of the vamp’s distraction and threw all his weight and speed behind the dagger in his hand. The vamp turned at the last minute. The last ends of his cuts grew back together.

  Lockman slammed the dagger through the king’s chest.

  The king’s yellow eyes went wide. He gasped and staggered back. A wisp of smoke trailed out of his open mouth.

  Panting, pain pulsating through his shoulder, Lockman waited for the king to disintegrate.

  With his fingertips, the king explored the dagger’s hilt sticking out of his chest. He wrinkled up his already warped face which made his head look like a bleached prune. Then he relaxed. His eyes focused on Lockman. “You missed by barely an inch, I’d say.”

  Lockman felt himself sailing backward. He crashed into a wall hard enough to crumble the plaster, dropped flat to the floor. He started to push himself up.

  The vamp got to him first, grabbed his left arm, and wrenched it backward.

  The snapping and the pain came in tandem. Lockman shouted. His eyes watered. But the vamp didn’t give him a second to endure the pain.

  The king swung Lockman by his dislocated arm and shot putted him into the recessed section of the suite with the sofas.

  He landed on one of the sofas, but it did little to cushion his fall since he landed on his bad arm. He rolled off the couch to get his limp arm out from under him, the short drop to the floor sparking enough pain to make him vomit into the carpeting.

  The vampire king stepped down into the recess and loomed over Lockman. “What did you do to her?”

  Too many synapses fired in Lockman’s brain to decipher the vamp’s question. He could only shake his head while he tried to hold his broken arm so it didn’t feel like an alligator had chewed on it.

  The king grabbed one of Lockman’s ankles, lifted his foot. Turned his foot around until his toes pointed where his heel used to face.

  More crackling bones carried with it a lifetime’s worth of agony. The muscles in Lockman’s neck cramped from him screaming so hard.

  The vamp dropped Lockman’s leg and leaned over him. “What did you do to the girl?”

  Lockman knew pain. Knew it well. Over time he had learned some tricks to get along with pain. They would never be friends, but he could at least accept pain when it arrived by focusing his mind, regulating his breathing, letting the endorphins take over.

  Except now. He couldn’t do any of those things. The vampire had turned his arm and leg in ways they were never meant to go. There was no negotiating with this kind of pain. It owned him.

  “Take your time,” the king said. “I have plenty of things yet to break.”

  It took all he had to pull himself together long enough to speak. “I raised her right.”

  Not the answer vamp king wanted. He reared back his head and screamed. Then he stomped on Lockman’s good leg, cracking loose the kneecap like a bottle top.

  Lockman’s lungs seized, closing off any more shouts. He twisted on the floor. More bile boiled up his throat.

  The vamp’s whole body shook when he spoke. “She is an abomination. An insult to all vampire kind. How is it possible? Tell me.”

  Tears ran away from the corners of Lockman’s eyes. Consciousness played with him, pretending to let him go to the painless abyss, then yanking him back into the agonizing light. He rolled his head back and forth. He heard whimpering. His own whimpering. He did not recognize this broken version of himself. Nothing had ever beaten him. Now it felt like everything had. Jessie turned into a monster. Marty and Teresa gone. Thousands of vamps amassed and planning for war against humankind. And three of his four limbs broken and useless.

  Three out of four.

  That left him with one.

  Nothing had ever beaten him.

  He would not declare defeat while he still had one good arm left.

  Through the overwhelming pain, Lockman peered up at the vampire king and moved his lips.

  The king’s uneven nostrils flared. He bent slightly, but the dagger still in his chest kept him from bowing any closer.

  Lockman moved his lips again, only a wordless whisper making it through.

  The king growled. “You can tell me what you’ve done to her?”

  Lockman nodded.

  “Can you tell me how to undo it?”

  Lockman nodded again.

  The king winced as he got down on his knees beside Lockman. The silver dagger, though not in the heart, pained him. But Lockman knew why the vamp hadn’t yanked it out. He would need to remove it very carefully. Pull at the wrong angle and the dagger could cut his heart. It would not take much for a silver blade to end a vampire even centuries old.

  They had such fragile fucking hearts.

  Which was exactly what Lockman was counting on.

  He mimed speaking again, adding some more hoarse whisper for effect.

  The vampire leaned closer. “Say it, you worthless mortal.”

  “My friend Marty. He was a shaman. He told me…her secret.”

  “Yes?” The king leaned another couple inches forward. All Lockman needed.

  “She’s the chosen one, you dumbass.” He grabbed the dagger’s hilt and jerked it to one side like a lever. The blade, in turn, tilted in the opposite direction and cut into the vamp’s heart.

  The king reared back. His scream shook loose some of the shards of glass still hanging in the window frame.

  His last act as king of the vampires was to pull the dagger free and bury the blade into Lockman’s chest.

  Chapter Sixty-Nine

  Dagger must have gone through his lung. Lockman could hear the wet wheeze every time he took a breath. Good news? All the pain had overloaded his system. Shock had comfortably settled in. Death wouldn’t hurt so bad after all.

  At least he wore the honor badge of liquefied vampire king all over his clothes.

  He laughed, which made him cough and filled his mouth with the taste of blood. While he had failed earlier to draw in the cold and block out his emotions, a different kind of cold filled him now. His body slowing down. Circulatory system dropping offline.

  “Dad?”

  Voice had to be a hallucination, his dying brain kicking out lies to comfort him. He closed his eyes. He thought about Kate, alone in a random motel room, waiting for Lockman to come back with their daughter. Like last time. Everyone scarred but otherwise unscathed. They could start again. Kate, Jessie, and him. A family. A real life.

  Not this time.

  “Dad?”

  Why did his mind have to torture him like this? For fuck’s sake, let me die.

  Something touched his arm. He could barely feel it. He opened his eyes. A pale version of Jessie gazed down at him. Her lips were so red. So blood red.

  “Listen to me.” She sounded like she was talking into a glass jar. “You have to do exactly what I say. No questions. Understand?”

  No, he didn’t understand. He didn’t understand anything. His daughter had fangs. That did not compute. Reality had packed up and exited out his left ear.

  “It’s gross, but Gabriel says it will work.”

  He had no idea what this perverted replication of his daughter wanted from him. He wanted her to shut up. She didn’t belong here. She was—

  —an abomination. An insult to all vampire kind.

  Which she made clear when she bit into her own arm and tore her flesh open.

  Nightmares even into death. Lockman would never escape them.

  Vampire Jessie pulled the dagger out of his chest.

  The shock gave way for a moment and let in the tidal flood of pain waiting at the gat
es. A terrible sound reverberated from the corners of the room. It sounded like a tortured animal. He realized it was him.

  Jessie tossed aside the dagger and shoved her bloody arm against his mouth. “You have to drink.”

  The feel of thick, cold blood on his tongue made him gag. He flailed his head back and forth, trying turn his mouth away.

  Jessie grabbed him by the jaw with her free hand and pressed her wound against his mouth again.

  If Lockman needed proof of a godless world, this would do it. Instead of drifting into death in shock’s numb embrace, he had to go kicking and screaming through the worst nightmare of his life. His daughter, now a vampire, wanted to feed him her blood. What ring of hell had he tumbled into?

  He clamped his lips shut.

  “Dad, please. You can’t die. Not now.” She stroked his head. “I’m so afraid. I don’t know what I am. Who I am.” Her breath hitched as if she were crying, but she didn’t have any tears.

  Was she faking? Jessie hardly ever called him Dad. This couldn’t be her.

  Her eyes studied him a moment. He felt like she was peering into his mind. Then he heard a voice. It sounded like his own, only different somehow.

  Your Agency friends never told you how blood magic was discovered, did they?

  Lockman stared up at Jessie. What was she doing to him?

  The vampires taught it to mortals. As long as they feed, vampires have unlimited blood. Unlike mortals, a little blood for a spell is no sacrifice to them. Not to mention it’s at least twenty times more magically potent.

  Was this her putting the voice in his head? Why?

  I have no stake in keeping you alive. But I’d rather not anger my host. Drink her blood, Lockman. It will save your life.

  Jessie nodded. “It’s okay.”

  Tears filled his eyes. He couldn’t. Not his daughter.

  “I need you, Dad. More than ever.”

  Needed him? The man who had let vampires turn her? Who had allowed a dangerous magical artifact get into her hands and corrupt her with the soul of a madman? She didn’t need him.

  But I need her.

  He wasn’t ready to let her go. Somehow he would find a way to fix this. She deserved better. He would make it better.

  Lockman opened his mouth and let his daughter’s blood pour down his throat.

  Chapter Seventy

  Two days later, Lockman sat in a booth at a diner not far from the motel where he’d left Kate. Dawn cast a painful light through the window. A string to pull blinds down hung right beside him, but he left it alone. This was the first morning light he had seen since before the battle at the hotel.

  He lifted his coffee mug to his lips and looked across the table at Teresa.

  She hadn’t touched her breakfast or her coffee. With Adam’s help, they had practically been force feeding her since their escape. Only one other brother ogre besides Adam survived.

  None of the vamps did.

  Except, technically, for one.

  The one that haunted Teresa now. The one asleep at the rendezvous point outside of Atlanta.

  “We have to get this out in the open,” he said and set his cup down. “Tell me what’s going through your mind.”

  She shook her head so slightly Lockman might have missed it if he wasn’t keeping track of her every move, word, and breath. “I can’t.”

  “Yes, you can. You have to. Otherwise, there’s no way to move forward.”

  “You’ll hate me.”

  “No.”

  Her gaze screwed tightly on Lockman. “We have to kill her.”

  He knew she’d been thinking it all along, but actually hearing her say it stung. She deserved to have her say, though, no matter how biased either one of them was.

  “We can’t kill her.”

  “She’s a vampire. I don’t care if she acts friendly and calls you Dad. She’s still one of them.”

  “This is different.”

  “Different why? Because it’s your daughter instead of my sister?” Her voice’s volume drew a few stares from folks at neighboring tables.

  “That has nothing to do with it.”

  “Bullshit.” She pressed her lips together and took a calming breath through her nose. Then, more quietly, she said, “You can’t tell me her being your daughter doesn’t factor in to the decision.”

  “It factors into my decision. But Adam’s behind this. And Marty—”

  “Is dead.” She pushed her plate of eggs and toast aside. “Are you telling me you believe in that prophecy shit now? Or is that just another convenient excuse to keep her?”

  Lockman ground his teeth. “She saved your life. But you want to turn around and execute her.”

  Her eyes turned cold. “I didn’t ask to have her blood shoved down my throat. I didn’t even have a choice. I wasn’t even conscious.”

  “You would have rather had me leave you there to die?”

  She looked away. “You’re setting yourself up.”

  “For what?”

  “We’ve both said it.” She picked up her fork and poked absently at one of her egg yolks. “There’s no cure for vampirism.”

  No known cure. But he kept that thought to himself. He knew she would see that as a double standard favoring Jessie. Instead, he jumped to the point of the whole discussion. Now that she had put her feelings out on the table, he had to know where she stood.

  “Are you going to be a problem?”

  She sniffed. “You’re asking if you can trust me not to kill your daughter.”

  Each word cut him how she meant them to. Not that she didn’t have the right. Because that was exactly what he was asking her.

  “I’ve got your back, Lockman. I’ve always had your back.” She dropped the fork onto her plate. “I won’t kill her unless you ask me to. Like you did for me with Mandy.”

  Having a conversation with someone who wanted to kill your daughter should have been the hardest conversation of Lockman’s life. What came next would make that conversation look easy.

  He went over and over in his mind, searching for another way. But every other option was too dangerous, too painful. Not that this wouldn’t be painful. Which meant bringing the cold back. Undoing all that he had gained, so he could protect those he loved.

  He could reason with himself for ages, make excuses. It didn’t change anything. He’d made the decision, and he would have to live with it for the rest of his life.

  He knocked on the motel room door.

  Chapter Seventy-One

  Stir crazy didn’t even come close to describing how Kate felt. Three days since she last heard from Craig. That whole time she had waited, living off of carryout and the meager offerings of the motel’s vending machine. She didn’t want to leave for fear that they would come back and she would miss them. Ridiculous, she knew. It wasn’t like they would leave without her.

  Rational thinking, however, went out the door when you had to wait for your boyfriend to rescue your daughter from vampires.

  For the first couple days, she conjured up all sorts of excuses for why they hadn’t come back yet, mostly based around some version of them having to go into hiding before they could get back to her. By the third day, the more realistic possibility trampled over the others.

  She woke up that morning knowing.

  They weren’t coming back.

  The thought disabled her completely. She lay in bed all morning, certain she would never get up. She would lie there until she starved to death.

  When the knock came, she shrieked as if stuck with a hot poker. She scrambled out of bed, face sticky with tears, and ran for the door. She threw the deadbolt, unlatched the chain. When she opened the door, there stood Craig, the morning light at his back. A burst of air seemed to fill her chest. Gravity didn’t feel so brutal anymore. She felt light, free.

  She wrapped her arms around him and hugged him as hard as she could. Feeling his solid body against hers bolstered everything she had decided the night he had left. They we
re in this fight together and she would never let him go, ghosts or vampires or what be damned.

  She felt his chest hitch. She stepped back and looked up at him. His eyes were red. His jaw quivered. But the sound of his voice when he spoke was all ice.

  “I can’t stay long.”

  “What do you mean?” Then she realized what else was wrong. “Where’s Jessie?”

  “She’s with friends.”

  Her heartbeat quickened. “Who? Where?”

  He didn’t answer. He closed the door behind him and pushed past her. “I got these made up for you.” From somewhere he had drawn a manila envelope. He held it out to her.

  She looked at the envelope, not comprehending. “Why isn’t Jessie with you?”

  “Because it isn’t safe.”

  “What isn’t safe? New Orleans? Are we leaving?”

  “Take the envelope.”

  She didn’t know why he had to be so damn cryptic. Then she caught herself. This is how he acted when he needed things to move along without a lot of questioning and second guessing.

  She took the envelope, flipped it open, and slid out the contents. A small stack of things rubber banded together. She removed the rubber band and flipped through the items. A passport. New York driver’s license. Social Security Card. Three credit cards. And a wad of hundred dollar bills. The IDs and the credit cards were all in the name of Sarah Fields, but the passport and driver’s license had Kate’s picture on them. Another new identity. It didn’t entirely surprise her. She always knew they might have to pick up and reinvent themselves again. After the mess they had left behind, it made sense they would need to relocate. What she didn’t understand was the wad of money.

  Craig pointed at the items in her hand. “There’s enough cash there to get you wherever you need to go. The credit cards each have a ten-thousand dollar limit. The driver’s license will work until you switch to whatever state you end up in—”

  She held up a hand. “Why does it sound like you’re sending me away?”

  He set his jaw. She could tell he was trying to tamp down his feelings. But he couldn’t hide them from her.