Darkest Hour (7 page)

The woman had jet black hair with a pristine white stripe down the middle. The only thing that kept it from looking like she wore a skunk on her head was the pretty face the hair framed, and eyes a shade of blue that seemed to shine in the shadows made by the drawn shades.

The woman approached Kate with the gun up and aimed straight at Kate’s face. She wore what looked like a black track suit, the kind that made a
whisking
sound when the legs brushed together.

She moved her mouth, but Kate couldn’t hear what she said because of the ear plugs. She quickly pulled them out and tossed them aside. “What? What do you want?”

“I told you to put your fucking hands above your fucking head.” The woman had an accent. Australian, maybe?

Kate complied. The barrel of that gun looked as wide as a manhole from her perspective. The thing probably shot missiles instead of bullets. “I don’t have a lot of money.”

“Don’t want your fucking money.” The woman came right up to the bed and pressed the barrel of the gun to Kate’s forehead. “Cross your wrists over your head.”

Kate crossed her wrists.

“Now hold still.” The intruder pulled a plastic loop from her pocket. She placed the loop around Kate’s wrists and pulled on a loose end. The loop zipped closed, the plastic cutting into her skin. The woman backed off and motioned with the gun. “You can put your hands in your lap now.”

Kate lowered her hands and checked out the zip-tie. Where the plastic dug in she felt a persistent sting. She also felt some circulation loss in her fingers. Five minutes or so and she’d probably lose feeling.

“What do you want from me?”

“I’m going to say a name. You tell me if you know it.”

Kate stared back, said nothing.

“Craig Lockman.”

This woman knew Craig? Was this some demented stroke of luck? She didn’t know what the woman wanted, but was it possible the woman could lead Kate to her daughter?

“I know him,” she said. “Do you know where he is?”

“I’m the one asking questions, love. You dig?”

Kate nodded. She glanced toward her door, wondering if anyone might walk by and notice the door itself was missing and the woman with the giant gun inside. This was New York. Even if they noticed, they’d probably pretend they didn’t.

But the glance at the doorway led Kate to then look at the door itself, flat on the floor in the middle of the room. A little kiss of vertigo came over her. This small woman, no bigger than Kate, had kicked the door clear off the frame and halfway across the apartment.

The woman must have noticed where Kate was looking and what was going through her mind. She grinned, revealing a diamond inset in one of her front teeth. “You like that, huh?”

“You’re not human.”

The woman raised her eyebrows. “Savvy.”

“So what are you?”

“Your fairy fucking godmother.” She waggled her gun barrel back and forth. “No more introductions. I have a few more Qs for you. Where’s your daughter? She at school?”

Kate sneered. “Your guess is as good as mine.”

“Don’t play with me, coochie. Where’s the girl?”

“I already told you. I don’t know. Her father took her away from me.”

That clearly caught the woman off guard. She lowered her gun, shoulders sagged, and she started pacing. “Un-fucking-believable. This is my luck. Romeo is going to pop a gear.”

Kate swung her legs down and sat on the edge of the bed.

The movement drew the woman’s attention. She snapped around and pointed her gun back at Kate. “Chill there.”

“I’m just sitting up.”

“And did I ask you to, love?”

“Who are you?”

The woman stared at Kate and clucked her tongue a few times, looking as if she were trying to decide what to do with her. “Why’d he take her?”

“I don’t know that either. Apparently, it was too much for me to handle.”

The woman smiled again, showing off her diamond. “Sweet of him to protect the poor civies.”

Kate’s hands started to throb. She tried to adjust them in the plastic loop and only managed to spike the pain around her wrists. “I don’t understand anything you’re talking about, but if you’re looking for Craig and Jessie, I’m on board to help. You don’t need this.” She held up her bound hands. “And you don’t need that.” She nodded at the massive gun.

Instead of answering, the woman started a tour of the apartment. She moseyed around the perimeter, checking out the limited amount of furniture while keeping the gun pointed in Kate’s general direction the whole time. It didn’t take long. There wasn’t much to see. The apartment didn’t even have a kitchenette. Kate warmed things up in the microwave sitting on her dresser or she went out to eat. She had eaten more fast food in the last six months than she had the whole rest of her life.

“Are you looking for something in particular?” Kate asked.

“I’d like it good if you stopped talking.”

“I’d
like it good
if you took this damn thing off my wrists before my hands turn purple and fall off.”

The woman smirked. She crossed the room to Kate, drew a switchblade from her pocket, and snapped the blade out. In a brisk sweep, she cut the plastic while somehow avoiding slicing a bit of Kate with it.

The rush of feeling almost felt worse at first. Then the pain gave way to pins and needles. She rubbed her hands together to help bring back circulation. “Thanks.”

The woman then surprised Kate by sitting down on the bed next to her. She didn’t keep the gun trained on her either, laying it across her lap instead. “It’s been a shit week, princess.”

“It’s been a shit year,” Kate said.

“You have no idea.” The woman leaned toward Kate as if she were going to sniff her. Her crystal blue eyes stared deep into Kate’s. “You got some, but nothing much.”

Did everything this woman say have to come across as a riddle? “Some of what?”

“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?”