Darkening Dawn (The Lockman Chronicles Book 5) Read online

  Jessie screamed.

  The unicorn reared its head, throwing Spike off its horn. Her limp body bounced off one of the bookcases, leaving behind a red splash across a row of leather-bound books. The unicorn reared around to face the gunfire as if ready to dive against the current of bullets. But a burst of rounds obliterated its skull, leaving its horn hanging from a strip of flesh across one black eye.

  The unicorn collapsed, its weight enough to shake the floor. Jessie felt the vibration buzz up her legs. The rest of her felt numb and clammy, kind of like the first time she made out with a boy. With Ryan. A memory from a million years ago. Only then she had a thrill run through her, an excitement at discovering the unknown. Right now, she felt sick, her stomach twisted in knots.

  Tears welled in her eyes.

  The gunfire stopped. The silence was suffocating. Jessie wanted to scream just to fill it. Her gaze went from the bloody unicorn to Spike’s limp body a couple yards away. She lay on her side, one arm twisted under her at an unnatural angle.

  The taste of bile rolled into Jessie’s mouth.

  Slowly, she turned to the agents who had opened fire on the unicorn. The first time she tried to speak, her voice cracked. She swallowed, took a deep breath, and tried again. “You didn’t have to kill it. I could have Returned it.”

  The agents stared at her as if she had asked them what the square root of pizza was. Maybe she hadn’t cleared her throat enough.

  Agent Ree got to his feet. He twisted his neck to one side as if working out a cramp, his eyes pinched. Then he looked at Jessie. “The unicorn attacked, Jessie. They did their job.”

  He was right. Jessie never got the chance to work up her power before one of the team was already dead. She had thought she could work faster than that. But she wasn’t a gun. She didn’t have a trigger. And Returning did not lend itself to a quick draw contest.

  She ducked her head and wiped her eyes with the back of her wrist. “I know.”

  Ree lifted his rifle and jerked his chin at Spike. “Boomer, check on Agent Cezarez. The rest of you, hackles up. Intel says there’s at least one more uni.”

  Boomer was the shortest of the group, with thin lips and small, twitchy eyes. He looked like a minion to some evil overlord, but Jessie knew from talking to him that he was a sweet, soft-spoken guy who had a passion for demolitions as deep as Jessie’s love of movies. He rushed to Spike, who now had a real name that Jessie couldn’t bring herself to use, making her death too real, and triggering a wave of guilt she couldn’t deal with now. After all, if Jessie hadn’t insisted on going in with the team, Spike would have stayed with her and never ended up in the path of that unicorn.

  The rest of the squad gathered at the entrance to the closet, every one of them with their rifles trained on the inside. But even from where Jessie stood, the closet’s entire contents were visible. Plenty of suits, dresses, two racks of shoes—one his; one hers—a full-length mirror on the far wall…and nothing else.

  “Cover me,” Ree said and crept into the closet. He moved with a stiff quickness, swiveling at the waist as he looked up and from side-to-side, always with his rifle aimed in the direction he faced. He shoved aside the clothes hanging on the racks and knocked on the walls behind them. He stomped at foot-spaced intervals on the floor. He squinted at the frame around the mirror and pushed against the wall on either side of it.

  Then he lowered his rifle and turned to the team.

  “Nothing.”

  The second woman on the team shrugged. “Intel’s always a guess.”

  Ree shook his head. “Feels wrong.” His gaze looked past his team to Jessie, an intensity in his eyes that made her shiver. “You getting a vibe?”

  Jessie wrinkled her forehead and snorted. “That’s not really my shtick. I don’t get vibes.”

  Ree sighed, clearly agitated. He looked like someone who had misplaced his keys and had looked everywhere for them without success. “Can you come in here and check anyway?”

  She didn’t blame him for completely misunderstanding her abilities. She didn’t fully understand the Return herself. Though it had never given her paranormal radar. Still, she humored him and stepped into the closet.

  Ree shuffled around her and out the door, leaving her in the space alone. The clothing surrounding her acted like sound-proofing, muting sounds in the closet, letting the ringing in her ears well back up. She glanced around. The mix of fabrics filled the space with an animal-like musk. She doubted anything synthetic hung in this closet. Just behind the smell of the clothes, though, she smelled that cotton candy sweetness.

  The skin on the back of her neck rippled. Her scalp tingled.

  Don’t get excited. A unicorn just burst out of here. The smell probably came from it.

  But as Ree had put it, Jessie was getting a vibe. It worked at her like a persistent humming in her head. Her cheeks turned cold.

  “What is it?”

  Jessie turned to the voice. Ree had one eyebrow quirked while he stared at her like she was a total freak.

  “You just went pale.”

  Jessie slowly pivoted away from him and looked into the mirror. She bit back a shriek at the sight of her reflection. She almost looked like a vampire again. For an instant, she thought she heard a voice, a distant whisper.

  It’s going to happen again.

  Then the sensation cut out like a lost signal. The color and warmth returned to her face. She watched it happen in the mirror.

  Like that, the “vibe” was gone.

  Overactive imagination. Wishful thinking. The hope that she really did have more to offer than the Return. Nothing more.

  She rolled her eyes and turned back to Ree and the team, all staring in at her like she was a zoo animal. “Nothing,” she said. “Just a little too much adrenaline. The closet’s clear as far as I can tell.”

  “Okay. Next step.”

  “We go home?”

  Ree shook his head. “Clean up.” He pointed to the dead unicorn on the bedroom floor, its blood still soaking into the carpet. “You need to Return that uni.”

  Jessie scrunched up her face. Her stomach did a triple lindy. “What the fuck you talking about? It’s dead.”

  “We can’t leave it here for civilians to find. Easiest way to dispose of it is you.”

  “That’s what I’ve become? A garbage disposal?”

  Ree’s shoulders shagged. “Come on. Don’t look at it that way.”

  “This is sick. It’s wrong.”

  “Hey!” Boomer stood up from his place by Spike’s side. “What the fuck you care about a dead uni? That thing killed Lynn. That’s what’s wrong.”

  That horrible sugar scent gagged Jessie. She pinched her lips shut and focused on the bookshelf across the room so she wouldn’t have to see either Spike or the unicorn bleeding on the floor, or have to meet eyes with any of the team, all of them judging her now because Returning a dead supernatural somehow offended her ethics.

  Boomer made a good point. Why did she care? Was she too tied to her childhood ideal of unicorns? It felt deeper than that. It felt like a misuse of her power. Where that idea came from, she didn’t know. But it had embedded itself into her deeply.

  “I…” Her gaze found the smear of Spike’s blood on the book spines. She squeezed her eyes shut. “I can’t.”

  “You can’t?” Boomer asked. “Or won’t?”

  A hand touched Jessie’s arm. “Jessie, look at me.”

  She opened her eyes on Ree standing close by.

  He spoke low. “I don’t know what’s going on, but you have to do this.”

  “When did Returning the dead become policy?”

  “When did Returning any supernatural become a problem?”

  Just now, she thought, and please don’t ask me why. Her eyes dipped. She couldn’t stand the disappointed look from Ree. Disappointed and worried, like maybe he thought she’d gone a little crazy.

  “Listen,” Ree said, voice soft but firm. “This isn’t up for debate.
This is a direct order. Return the uni. Now.”

  She wanted to argue, to tell him how disrespectful using the Return on the dead was, a blasphemy of the worst kind. But it wasn’t entirely her argument. More something she felt. Definitely nothing she could explain. Besides, she doubted Ree would change his mind. These Agency types didn’t have a reputation for flexibility.

  “Fine,” she said. Her voice shook. “But I’m telling you right now, this is wrong. It’s not what the Return is for. And I have a feeling karma’s going to kick my ass for doing it.”

  “I’m sure it’ll be fine,” he said and stepped aside, giving her a clear view of the unicorn corpse.

  Forgive me.

  Jessie drew her power to wield the Return.

  The Dark

  Chapter Four

  MORE THAN THREE YEARS LATER, Jessie Lockman still sometimes dreamed about the dead unicorn.

  At the edge of wakefulness on this morning, she heard it whinny in pain and felt the warm spatter of its blood across her face. Its horn sparkled in the sunlight as it tumbled into the tall grass of the open prairie they stood on. It lay flat on one side, its dead eye rolling back to stare at Jessie accusingly. Then it spoke.

  “Yo, wake up.”

  Jessie wrinkled her brow. She wiped away a drop of blood from the corner of her mouth. That’s when her tongue found the fangs in her mouth.

  I’m a vampire again.

  “Hey, yo. Wake up.”

  This time the voice came from the sky, cloudless and a shade of blue so washed out from the bright sun it nearly looked white. The ground shook. She shook. Then the sky cracked open and a face stared down at her, skin as pale as the sky it had split, except for his rosy cheeks, as if he’d stayed out in the sun too long.

  After a blurry second, Jessie blinked away the last threads of sleep and her mind caught up.

  The guy with the boyish face shook her again by the shoulders. “Yo, girl, are you straight?”

  Jessie let out a long sigh as she remembered the night before. Most of it anyway. Sneaking out of the safe house. Taking a cab to a club she’d heard rumors about. Showing the bouncer her ID at midnight, and his cool smile as he wished her a happy birthday and stepped aside to let her in.

  Discovering the rumors were true.

  Music heavy with bass pulsed out of a sound system that seemed as supernatural as many of the beings on the crowded dance floor. Despite all her time with the Agency, Jessie could name three quarters of the creatures writhing and popping to the music. Not to mention that some of those who looked human might have been a shifter of some kind—werewolf, doppelganger…unicorn.

  From Jessie’s vantage point up on the promenade, she saw two long bars bracketing the dance floor. Each bar had three bartenders pouring drinks and scooping up tips. Only one of them was human, maybe. Another was an ogre, which gave Jessie a momentary pang in her chest as he reminded her of Marty, the first ogre she ever met, gone now for over five years.

  The smell of sweat permeated the club, turning her stomach a little. Doubt crept in about whether or not she really wanted to be here. If Wertz found out, he’d wrap her in chains and lock her in a small cement cell underground somewhere.

  But what difference would that make? The way he treated her, she might as well have the chains on already. And staying cooped up in a safe house where she could look out the window and see the normal, free world pass her by was worse than any dark cell. At least in the cell she wouldn’t know what she was missing.

  Fuck it. I’m tired of being a prisoner.

  So she found the stairs and made her way down to the dance floor.

  That’s where she met him.

  Though she’d be damned if she could remember his name. After about ten minutes of dancing together and trying to talk over the music, he started sneaking her drinks from the bar. Colorful, girly drinks, but with plenty of kick. Whenever she asked what was in them, he just smiled and shrugged one shoulder.

  She didn’t care. They made her feel great. Tingly from head to toe. And extra tingly around her…

  Not even her times of heavy petting with Ryan had she had a sensation like that down there.

  The last thing she could pull out of the cloud in her memory was him taking her hand in the cool air outside the club and walking her to his car in the lot across the street. He wanted her to come home with him, but no matter how drunk, she knew that was a bad idea. For all she knew, Wertz had discovered her gone and had set the dogs loose looking for her. Plus, she didn’t want to mark her eighteenth birthday with a one-night stand. Her rebellious streak hadn’t killed her common sense.

  He had seemed okay with her saying no, but before he let her go, he said, “Let me show you something.”

  He began unbuttoning his shirt.

  Jessie staggered backward with a drunken laugh. “Dude, I already told you. Ain’t gonna happen.”

  He finished unbuttoning his shirt, revealing a strip of his pale, hairless chest and his abs. He didn’t have much definition, but she couldn’t call him scrawny either. “I know. Just trust me.”

  “I don’t even know you.”

  Without another word, he pulled off his shirt and tossed it to Jessie. She caught it in her hands and smelled his scent rise up from the silken fabric.

  Smiling, he pulled his shoulders back as if stretching after a long time at a desk. Large, gossamer wings unfolded from his back and spread out to either side of him. Golden lines curled through the translucent skin like cursive. Pulses of light ran through the lines as if in time to his heartbeat.

  Jessie gasped. She dropped his shirt to the blacktop. “What are you?”

  His cheeks flushed even brighter, visible even out of the cast of the nearest streetlight. Jessie hadn’t notice before, but it looked like every part of him had a simmering glow beneath the skin. “I’m a fairy,” he said.

  “You’re beautiful,” Jessie said.

  That’s the last thing she remembered.

  Chapter Five

  “WHERE THE FUCK AM I?”

  Mr. Fairy jerked back as if Jessie had tried to bite him. His wings fluttered, creating a strong breeze in this small space. Tiny little papers as thin as onion skin blew off the nightstand along with what looked like green tobacco. Ashes swirled out from a glass tray next to the papers.

  Jesus Christ, had she smoked weed last night?

  She tried to sit up, but a hammer smacked her square in the head. At least that’s what it felt like. She dropped back onto the bed, but got a glimpse of her surroundings. Studio apartment. The door with two bolt locks and a chain. Dirty laundry scattered across the floor. The bed, a dresser, and a hotplate the only décor, except for a pair of Duran Duran posters taped to one wall, edges tattered, curled, and yellowing.

  And the kicker—on her back on the bed, with the fairy out of her way, Jessie saw her full reflection in the mirror on the ceiling.

  Oh, God, what have I done?

  “Chill out, okay?” The fairy hovered beside the bed, his wings a blur behind him. He was naked except for a pair of tighty whities.

  Jessie cringed at the sight. Her heart pounded. She pushed her heels into the mattress to scoot herself backward, ignoring the supernova in her skull. “What did you do to me?”

  The fairy raised his hands. “Nothing happened, I swear.”

  For the first time, Jessie thought to check herself. She patted her legs and chest, found all of her clothes still on. She paid attention to her body, searching for any soreness that might suggest more than nothing had happened in the night. Outside of the headache, she felt normal.

  She stared at the floating fairy and worked to steady her breathing. “How did I get here?”

  “I drove you.” He pushed his palms out toward her to keep her from blurting her next question. “I didn’t know where else to take you. What’s the last thing you remember?”

  Jessie gazed at his buzzing wings, almost invisible except for the faint streaks of golden light that flickered on t
hem. “You showed me your wings.”

  The fairy nodded. “Makes sense. That’s when you passed out. I guess I gave you a few too many.”

  “You think?” First night as a legal adult and she gets so wasted she passes out. Awesome sauce. Jessie rubbed her temples, trying to massage the headache away without any luck. “So you took me home and did what with me?”

  His eyes grew wide. He jiggled his head almost as fast as his wings fluttered. “No way, yo. I already told you, nothing happened. I put you in here and I slept on the couch. This morning I came in to get my weed and you were making funny noises so I woke you up.” He crossed his heart with a finger. “Scout’s honest honor.”

  Jessie looked him up and down. His bloodshot eyes. His—now in the light—scrawny body. He didn’t look worthy of his beautiful wings. “You’re a druggie fairy?”

  “Hey, yo, don’t judge me. You didn’t seem to mind my company last night.”

  True enough. It wasn’t fair taking out her own bad decision making on him. Actually, she was really lucky it was him she ended up with. Some other guy might not have been so…decent. “Sorry. That was low. Listen, can I use your phone to call a cab? I’m probably in deep shit.”

  “I can drive you home.”

  Wouldn’t that make Wertz’s day? Not only did I sneak out, get blasted, and spend the night at a stranger’s place, I led him right to our secret safe house. Forget a prison cell. The gnome might say to hell with the Return and put Jessie in front of a firing squad.

  “Thanks, but it’s better if you don’t.” She scooted herself to the edge of the bed, eased her legs off the mattress, and slowly rose to a sitting position. Her brain sloshed in her head. Spiky pain ran up her neck, across her scalp, and dropped into her eyeballs. Her stomach hitched. She pinched her mouth shut and concentrated on not puking.

  “You sure? Because I don’t—”

  The twin dead bolts on the door exploded in a rain of sparks. Something hit the door on the outside and sent it bursting open, the chain snapping as easy as breaking a spiderweb. Three figures dressed in black fatigues and balaclavas covering their faces charged in. Their boots stomped through the dirty laundry, but the mess didn’t trip any of them up.