Darkness Returns (25 page)

The stupid joke only made her tear up some more.

She wiped more tears from her eyes. If she hadn’t made herself into a shadow and someone saw her, they could have mistaken her for a stone gargoyle carved in the wrong direction. Despite her scant amount of clothing, the cold didn’t bother her. She felt it, registered the cool dew mist in the air of a typical Michigan spring night, still not ready to give up winter, but Jessie didn’t shiver or have to rub her arms for warmth. Being a vampire, after all, was only one step up from being a corpse.

She tried to shove the dark thoughts away. Maybe someone inside could give her some pills to help. A niggle of guilt wormed in her stomach for thinking so snidely. Because through the window she could see into a common area, lined with uncomfortable looking couches and chairs along the walls, a scarred and dust-covered piano in one corner, and her ex-boyfriend, Ryan Whitaker, sitting on the floor in front of a pretty nice-sized flat panel TV, his eyes aimed at the moving picture, but his gaze one million light-years into some other galaxy. They probably had him pumped up good with meds, and they were probably the only things keeping him from tearing himself apart at the seams.

The tears on her cheeks felt as cold as the night dew collecting on the window ledge.

Others milled about the common room, some dressed in hospital issue pajamas that looked like they hadn’t changed out of in days. Greasy hair, spiked or ratted. Wandering, sad eyes. Not everyone looked like doped up zombies, though. A few just looked lost and lonely, as if they had no place better to go. The awareness in their eyes haunted Jessie nearly as much as the vacancy in Ryan’s.

A kind-looking man with a set of keys clipped to his belt loop approached Ryan, patted his shoulder, then pointed to one of the couches only a few feet behind, obviously trying to convince Ryan to get off the hard tile floor.

Ryan pulled his knees up and wrapped his arms around them. He shook his head and rocked gently.

The kind-man patted Ryan’s shoulder again, said something else, then walked away. Must be an orderly. Somehow he looked as though he enjoyed his job. Jessie couldn’t imagine surrounding herself with all that misery everyday for what probably amounted to a scant paycheck.

The exchange between them reminded Jessie that she had better hearing that she was using. A habit she’d formed early on, part of her denial about who she was. She used her vampire senses when she needed them. Otherwise, she held back.

Pretending I’m not a monster. How cute.

Why had she come here? She couldn’t spend all night leering in at Ryan. She couldn’t go in to see him—though wouldn’t that have been a trip, buzzing the gate, arriving at the door looking like something that belonged on the set of a Guillermo Del Toro film set?

Truth was, she had nothing better to do. How something as twisted as her could bring about The Return, the mortal plane’s salvation, was—

Stop feeling sorry for yourself.

The voice springing up in her head was neither her own or her dad’s. It was Mom.

A shudder ran through Jessie that hit hardest in her chest. Was it her imagined version of her mother’s voice? Or had she actually spoken to her from some place…beyond? Once upon a time, questions like that were a cinch to answer.

She waited. A breeze whisked into the hollow of the window she stood in and curled around her like a failed tornado, breaking against her. Despite the cool wind, a breath of humidity hung in the air with the settling dew. It occurred to Jessie that midnight had passed and dawn had begun its slow approach.

If I was really feeling sorry for myself, I’d wait for the sun to rise and melt me into goo right here on this window ledge.

She had hoped to provoke a response. She got silence instead.

Mom’s voice had come from inside her after all. She sighed, shook her head, considered flying off to find shelter from the coming sun. She pressed her hand against the window which had what looked like chicken wire baked into it. Through one of the wire diamonds she looked inside at Ryan, who hadn’t moved.

She looked inside.

Jessie’s vampiric heart began to beat a quicker rhythm. The cold on her skin evaporated. She even started to feel a little warm. The penny taste in her mouth from her last meal grew more pronounced. Her senses were waking up.

She
was waking up.

Inside.

Sometimes you are such a dip, Jess
, she scolded herself.

How many souls did she have inside of her. Gabriel had made it sounds like millions. A virtual Big Apple of spirits walking the streets of her inner city. When Kress had caged her, forcing her down in there, she hadn’t looked for any specific soul. How could she? She didn’t know any of them.

Gabriel probably knew several. Either through research or personally. He’d spent a good amount of time trapped with them in the artifact before he ever followed them into her.

Was that the trick to getting their help? Knowing who to ask?

Inside
.

That word felt like it had so much meaning now. But why? Something she’d thought to herself, something that had triggered this excitement in the first place.

Before Mom had pulled him out, the only soul inside of Jessie that Jessie knew anything about was Gabriel. And then only because he had tapped enough power to make himself known. Even before he had taken her over, he had spoken through her. His soul had lived at the surface of her…

Inside.

That place that she could go to, that deep floor of her own soul, where the others lived. It’s where she met the strange old soul that told her
The Chosen must choose
as if speaking fortune cookie answered everything.

Same place she had met the dark thing that had wanted to eat her.

Down low.

Inside.

Stop thinking about the word and figure out what the fuck it means.

She had both hands on the window now, pressed hard enough to make her wrinkly knuckles turn white and her fingertips to draw smears down the glass. Ryan stared in the direction of the television, which now depicted a woman showing off her soft, manicured hands after doing the dishes. Mom had made Jessie wash her fair share of dishes, and her hands had looked more like they do now afterward than the woman’s on the TV commercial.

All at once, Ryan shot to his feet. He glanced from side to side as if meaning to cross a busy street. Then he turned. With his atomized gaze, she couldn’t tell for sure, but it looked like he was looking at her through the window.

Impossible. Mortal eyes would only see deeper than usual shadows around the window’s edges as she had taken on a shadow form. The trick didn’t turn her invisible. But most mortals who saw strange shadows that didn’t seem to quite belong thought their eyes were fooling them. They didn’t immediately think,
Hiding vampire! Hiding vampire!

Still, Ryan’s gaze screwed to a focus she hadn’t seen on him since her last visit to the hospital—and things had ended so well that time.

She should fly away. He didn’t need her driving him anymore insane.

What good was a rational thought if emotion couldn’t rebel against it a little.

She hung to the window ledge and watched as Ryan shuffled across the common room, skirting furniture without having to actually look down and see it in his way. Now Jessie knew he was staring at her, or whatever it was he saw of her. He came right up to the glass.

Jessie gasped when he placed his hands right where she had hers.

Last chance
, a voice from within said, one she didn’t recognize at all.

And then, the old soul—
The Chosen must choose.

And finally, Mom.
Find me, Jess. Find me.

She stared through the window into Ryan’s eyes that seemed to stare through
her
.

I want to help you so bad, Ry. I want to make you all better.

The way her thoughts arranged those last words would change Jessie’s life forever, but she wouldn’t realize it until later. Right now she needed to—

Find me, Jess.

But where? They had blown up the memory artifact with her soul inside.

Inside.

Jessie tried to swallow and her throat locked. She felt both brilliant and idiotic at the same time. The answer had been there all along. Why had it taken her dense head so long to realize it.

Inside.

If there were anything left of her mother, that was where she would find her.

And if there were anyone who could help Jessie get her mojo back, it would be Mom.

Chapter Thirty-Two

“Every damn bit of resources you have available,” Lockman said, trembling as if he might fall apart at any second. “We need to find her.”

Kress held out his hands in a calming gesture, though the bandages across his knuckles tainted the effect. “Calm down, Craig.”

“I’m going to reveal a little of myself to you, Kress. Are you ready for the weighty confession?”

Kress’s eyebrows quirked up. He stayed silent.

“I fucking hate it when people tell me to calm down.” Lockman crossed the checkered tile floor of Kress’s penthouse living room to where Kress sat on his couch in a silk robe like Hugh Fucking Heffner. He even had his initials embroidered in gold stitching on one lapel. The tips of his hair were still wet from his shower, and though he obviously hadn’t run a comb through it yet, looked stylishly unstyled.

Kress flinched at Lockman’s approach. “Enough bullying,” he said, raising his hands further and bringing them together in front of his face. “I have men right outside because I know how you are.”

Lockman stopped halfway to the couch. He’d had no intention of laying a hand on Kress. Whatever his “condition,” it had started making the actor paranoid as well. He certainly didn’t have the chops to continue leading this operation. But that put Lockman next in line, and right now he needed the freedom to move, not get stuck behind a desk hoping others—like that three-foot gnome in the expensive suits—could handle the work that needed getting done. Which started with finding Jess, talking her down, bringing her back in the fold before something really went FUBAR. Out there on her own, as angry as she was, she was a liability who—

Fuck.

Now he sounded like Teresa.

Problem number two they had to deal with. Running with the Vegas wolves made her a shitload more volatile than before. Fate sure liked to try and put out its fires with gas.

He scowled. When had he started believing in fate?

“I’m not going to hurt you, Kress. You’re my CO, for Christ’s sake.”

He parted his hands and peeked at Lockman through the inch gap between them. “That didn’t stop you from trying before.”

“I’ve lost my temper. It’s a different thing. I’m not going to torture you. I want you to do your fucking job and rally a team to pursue Jessie. I want to lead that team. And I want it to leave within the next four hours.”

Kress’s demeanor shifted as quickly as a werewolf in the first light of a full moon. He dropped his hands, folding them in his lap. Crossed his legs. The lavender scent of his shampoo started to grate on Lockman.

“So now you are in charge?” Kress asked.

“You’re sick. You told me so yourself. I’m not giving orders, I’m giving advice.”

“You have a very direct way of…advising.”

“We don’t have time for this.”

Tears filled Kress’s eyes. He blinked and one set loose down his cheek. “I’m a mess. I need to be locked up.”

Last thing Lockman had expected to hear. “Are you serious?”

Kress shrugged. He looked down at his bandaged hands. “I broke three bones and bloodied the hell out of my knuckles punching the wall in my shower. The tiles have a little stain in the grout, but they otherwise fared just fine.”

Lockman swallowed. Waited.

“I probably should be hospitalized. I’m more a risk than a help anymore, I’m afraid.”

The juices in Lockman’s gut churned. “Are you stepping down?”

Kress smiled, tears glistening in the track lighting installed along the ceiling above the long couch. “I suppose I am.”

“I’m not a beaurocrat.” Lockman couldn’t think of what else to say.

Kress seemed to understand. “But you’re my second in command, as ordered by the president himself. Denying your new position would equate to treason.”

“We can’t find anyone else?”

“With your experience? Knowledge? And charming manners?” Kress laughed as more tears streamed down his face. “I know you feel responsible for what happened to all your men and women in Barrow—”

“I
am
responsible.”

“Just as I’m responsible for what happened to my dear Mica. I sent her on a mission that effectively rendered pixies extinct, not to mention lost a woman I…respected very much.” His mouth turned down. He pressed his lips together and breathed hard through his nose, each breath shaking as it came out of him. “But that’s what leaders do.” He looked up at Lockman. “Before this Agency, I ran my own shop. We started with a few other supernaturals. Mica and Wertz were two of the first. This was twenty-two years and ninety-one days ago that we made our blood pact to fight for supernatural rights.”

He waved a hand.

“Sounds foolish now. But we meant to fight. And once rumors of The Return came down the pipeline, I put everything I could afford behind this operation. I don’t need the fucking president.” He pointed a finger at Lockman. “And I sure as hell don’t need you.” He let the finger drop. “But we all need Jessie. If there’s any hope for The Return. We all need Jessie.”

“You’re rambling.” That constant itch that even worked in his sleep dug at Lockman. “What’s the next move.”

He stood, taking forever to get to his feet, as if he’d aged a hundred years in the last twenty minutes. He rubbed his back like an old man suffering bed sores. The only thing not aged about him was that putrid sweetness of his lavender shampoo and a less powerful, but clean-smelling body soap.

“The next move is for you to get your ass into the glass box and make that call.” His gaze trailed over the shelves that held his various acting awards. “I’m turning myself over to the medical personnel.”