Darkest Hour by Rob Cornell Read Free Book Online

Apple and Kate could barely remember living anywhere else.
    Which sometimes frightened her. She felt like forgetting about their home in Michigan was disrespecting her memories of Jessie. It took constant self-recrimination not to let it get to her. That home was just a place. Remembering Jessie and fighting to find her—that’s what mattered now.
    All that New York noise almost masked the voice from behind her.
    This is how it starts.
    She whirled around, expecting to find Gala had snuck out of the shop behind her. All she found was her own reflection in the door’s glass.

Chapter Seven
    Headquarters was a weird cross between a military base and an old farm. It always gave Lockman a surreal tweak whenever he stopped to look around. Today he stood under a noon sun, in what might be considered the base’s center square. Someone had even taken the time to install a flag pole and raise the Stars and Stripes.
    Not that this operation was even remotely all American. Creatures from all over the world and in at least seven different dimensions populated the compound at any given time.
    Lockman squinted against the sun and stared out at the farmhouse that sat toward the front of the roughly fifteen-hundred Texan acres they now occupied. What used to be a horse pen now sported a dozen motorized vehicles, from a muddy four-wheeler to an armored SWAT truck painted to look like a delivery truck on first glance. A second glance would tell even the wettest civilian it was anything but.
    Quonset huts made up the rest of the base. They had erected six of them so far. Two of them housed bunks for the ranks that had signed up for full-time work. Another one served as a mess hall. A fourth housed their command center, which included a central war room as well as various other rooms centered around mission planning, debriefs, and an intelligence hub where the techies performed their own kind of mojo by hacking into various government surveillance systems to “borrow” their services. The fifth structure warehoused their growing collection of artillery. Finally, they had a sort of laboratory for handling the mojo side of things, even though Lockman didn’t exactly approve of treating mojo like science. The Agency had done that and it always made them think they understood more than they did. When it came to mojo, only one fact mattered—it was all bad.
    He had forgotten that rule himself.
    The farmhouse itself served as a sort of initial reception area. New recruits were briefed there. The few enemies they had apprehended were processed there before being detained in their underground cell block. This was also where they had installed their personal entrance to the inter-dimensional network of portals Lockman first discovered through a small café in the French Quarter.
    The house also served the special purpose of housing Jessie, who slept in the old brick basement to avoid the sun.
    That’s where she was now. They had put her, still unconscious, in there last night. So far he had heard no reports as to whether she had come around. For now, with the sun up, he didn’t have to worry about facing her again.
    Gabriel.
    His shoulder muscles knotted at the mere thought of the name. A strange thing considering those same shoulders used to belong to the man.
    It was bad enough to know that Gabriel was trapped within Jessie. She hadn’t mentioned him much, though, so Lockman hadn’t thought about it in a while. Now he finds out all this time Gabriel has been feeding her advice and instruction, making her dangerous. A weapon. One he probably thought he could manipulate for his own gain.
    Six months of putting together a paranormal army had occupied too much of his attention. Plus, Jessie had become so competent; he had stopped thinking of her as the daughter he had vowed to protect and began treating her as just another member of the team.
    Last night had flipped that naiveté out the window and on its head.
    Key images flashed through his