by Maya, Tara
He considered leaving the girl behind again. He could probably fight his way out the back door. It was the most logical option. After all, the attackers had come for him. The worst the girl might have to suffer was the discomfort from the tear gas. Lockman knew State secrets. The country, even the world, couldn’t afford his capture.
But if she is my...
He bit the thought down before it could slip, full-formed, into the light. Better to leave it half-realized in the shadows at the back of his mind. If he fully contemplated the possibility, it could hamper his ability to focus on the greater good.
He peeked over the counter top toward the back entrance and thought he caught a glimpse of a dark figure moving behind the curtains. Seconds to decide his next move. Up to her or straight out to them?
“Fuck the greater good,” he growled under his breath and duck walked out of the kitchen. Halfway up the stairs he heard the front door splinter, the sound like cracking bones. Then the shattering glass from the back entrance.
He powered his way up the stairs to the loft, found the girl hanging out the window by the waist and heaving in the fresh air. “They’re in,” he shouted as he approached. “We’re going out.”
She looked at him over her shoulder. “Out where?”
He pointed at the window with the barrel of one of his Glocks. The girl’s eyes locked on the weapon in his hand and a deeper shade of fear colored her expression.
“Do you know how to shoot?” he asked when he reached her.
She shook her head, her lips so tight it almost looked like she didn’t have a mouth. He reached into his back pocket, drew the crucifix, and slapped the long end into her hand. “Then hold this out in front of you toward the stairs like your life depended on it.”
Her brow creased, some measure of confusion able to break through her total mask of fear.
“Trust me.” He jammed each Glock into one of his back pockets and swung a leg out of the window. “When I drop down, you come after me. I’ll catch you.”
“This is crazy.”
Footsteps thundered into the house below. Voices, slightly inhuman and distorted, called out “clear” as the attackers moved in and searched for any inhabitants.
“You’re with me or them.” He didn’t wait for a response before swinging his other leg over the windowsill so that both hung down with his abdomen and hands braced against the sill. Gripping the sill, he lowered himself as far as his arms would allow, then let go and dropped the remaining four feet to the pavement.
He relaxed his body for the impact and felt only a sting up through the flats of his feet and into his ankles, even managed to stay standing. He looked up to see if the girl was following and heard her scream. Damn. He should have tried lowering her first. The crucifix could stall the attackers—assuming he was even right about their nature—but they were armed with fully automatic weaponry. They could close their eyes to the symbol and fire enough rounds to take her down if they wanted.
“Hey,” he called, not knowing her name and thinking he might never learn it now. He had only felt this feeble and helpless once before. Dolan was behind it that time as well, managing to change the entire direction of Lockman’s life. “You have to jump. Just jump. Now!”
She screamed again, this time the sound cut in half.
Lockman’s whole body went rigid and cold. He waited a second more for a sign she was coming out the window. Silence answered him.
No. Not this time. Not again.
Suicide, his mind answered to what he planned.
Irresponsible.
Treason.
He drew the Glocks and ran around to the front of the house.
A black SUV with fully tinted windows sat at the curb, all four doors and the back hanging open. His front door hung cockeyed from one hinge like a loose tooth. Bullet holes dotted a mostly straight line along the house’s façade, high, fired at an angle probably from only as far as the cracked sidewalk. It did look like they meant to take him alive. Which gave him a little leverage. Not much. Probably not enough.
Weapons at the ready, Lockman crept to the porch and ducked behind the shrubbery under the picture window. Sirens whined in the distance. Someone had called the cops, but a quick scan of the street showed no sign of watching neighbors. Gang shootings happened enough in these parts of LA that folks knew when to duck their heads and stay out of sight. Any other suburb, you might have a dozen nosey people or more poking their heads out or even wandering over, just asking to get caught in some crossfire.
Lockman had never considered such an advantage to living in a shit neighborhood.
The wait felt like an age. Enough time for Lockman to go back and forth a dozen times about the sanity of trying to save a girl he suspected might be his daughter based on her own suggestion and little evidence to back it up except a feeling that prickled over his scalp every time he pictured her face, that note of recognition even though he’d never seen her before. And he had to admit, it wasn’t just his own face he saw in her. He saw Kate. He saw a whole lot of Kate in that young girl. Take out the piercings and clean up the black makeup—her expression, that cocky I have the world in my palm and plan on playing some ball determination.
Sounds of movement in the living room. The shuffle of boots through debris. Then the low, snake-like voices behind the masks.
“No sign of him,” said one.
“The girl claims he left through the upstairs window,” answered a second.
The obstruction from the masks made it hard to be sure, but Lockman felt more certain of his original assessment based on their voices. The crucifix should have worked. Should have at least bought the girl enough time to get out the window.
“Does he know who she is?”
“We’re questioning her further, but he might not. Even if he did, that does not mean he would still not abandon her.”
“We’ll all see the light if that’s true.”
Bolstered by the confirmation of his suspicions—only vamps thought that “seeing the light” was a bad thing—Lockman wiped the sweat off his upper lip with a wrist and checked that he had a round in the chamber of each Glock.
He swung around into the doorway, brought his guns up, and sighted one barrel on each of the pair standing in his living room. He pulled both triggers in synch and landed one head shot on the vamp to his left. The one on his right dodged, too fast for human reflexes. The silver-tipped round grazed its arm, tearing through the fatigues and exposing a sizzling and smoking wound.
The vamp on the left dropped to the floor. The hole in its head sputtered and gurgled, bubbles of blood popping inside like boiling chili.
The surviving creature brought its automatic weapon to bear on Lockman, but Lockman never stopped moving, spinning across the open doorway to the opposite side. He pressed his back against the brick wall. The vamp’s weapon chattered. Chunks from the doorframe snapped and scattered. A splinter nipped at Lockman’s cheek.
The thing with automatic weapons, you could drain your ammo fast in a single panicked burst of fire. Lockman heard the dry click when the vamp’s magazine went empty. He swung back into the doorway and fired a shot meant for the head, but caught the vamp in the throat instead.
The vamp’s weakness to silver exaggerated the effect of the round. It’s neck exploded like a blood-filled water balloon thrown against a brick wall. Its head toppled to the floor, body not far behind. The headless body still tried to fire the weapon clutched in its hands for a moment before finally giving in to death.
The battle had brought the attention of the four vamps still up in the loft. All four of them stood at the railing and started firing.
Lockman jumped backward through the front door and slammed onto the cement slab porch. The impact on his back knocked the wind from his lungs. For a second he didn’t think he could make himself move. Too long since he’d seen action like this. And fifteen years, no matter how much you worked out, aged a person. Suddenly, Lockman faced the possibility
he wasn’t as strong as he thought.
To hell with that.
He rolled off the porch and into the shrubs, clinging to his guns despite the pain in his back and the thin breath in his lungs.
The rain of bullets from the loft shredded the living room carpet and the cheap floorboards underneath.
So much for them taking him alive.
The barrage ended after an inhumanly loud shout from inside the house. It sounded like a cross between an eagle cry and a bear’s roar, but with a voice.
“Stop!”
The silence that followed was so absolute, Lockman could hear the blood flowing in his ears and the rattle in his lungs as he tried to regain his breath. The distant sirens were less distant.
“Craig Lockman,” the same vamp called, his voice not as loud, but every bit as inhuman. “We have your spawn. Obviously, you know that or you wouldn’t still be here. My men are hungry. Do you want us to feed on her?”
Lockman didn’t bother answering. Bargaining with vamps, especially those under the employ of Otto Dolan, would get him nowhere. Instead, he stayed crouched between the house and the shrubs and thought through the situation. He’d downed two in the living room. At least four remained upstairs. Maybe five since he didn’t see the girl and one of them had to be holding her. That made a total unit of seven vamps. A perfectly capable taskforce to take in one man, even excluding their supernatural prowess. But an odd number. A number that felt wrong.
The hot barrel pressed against the back of his neck proved that feeling right. “Drop your weapons,” said a serpentine voice behind him.
To read more of DARKER THINGS by Rob Cornell, visit the Kindle Store to purchase a copy today.
