Available Darkness Season 2

before her.
    He watched as something appeared on the other side of the portal. Whatever it was, was moving fast. It was large and dark, though its form too blurred to clearly see. John slowed the memory, and watched as the blur grew to more than a shadow.
    It was a man, but not a human.
    It was his brother, Jacob — back on Earth.
    But why?
    And where is Caleb?
    As John stared into the memory of his evil brother’s eyes, he couldn’t help but feel as if he were staring at death incarnate. Is Duncan right? Is whatever waiting on the portal’s other side gathering forces? If so, why?
    John held a single certainty: No one was safe until Jacob was found.

    * * * *

CHAPTER 2 — Abigail

    “Is that her?” Abigail asked, staring through the binoculars at the woman standing outside the nightclub with a small huddle of partiers, laughing and smiling like she hadn’t murdered her 2-year-old son four years before. “She looks so different than she does on TV.”
    “Yup,” Larry nodded, staring through his own binoculars beside her in the van a block from the club. “That’s the Karen McKenna.”
    Abigail zoomed in on the child killer. She didn’t look anything at all like the sad-faced mother in the orange jumpsuit Abigail watched on the news footage she found online. Looking at her, with her well-tended blonde tresses and pretty new dress, from the diamonds around her neck to the shiny shoes on her feet, you’d never know she was a monster. She looked so normal .
    Abigail looked at the people with her, two men and a woman, all of them laughing and smiling like Karen. “Do you think the people with her know who she is?”
    “ Everyone knows who she is,” Larry said. “She’s a fucking celebrity.”
    “How can they stand to be with her? Do they think she’s innocent?”
    “Well, she did get off,” Larry said. “But I don’t think it matters much to people like that. She’s famous.”
    “She’s famous for killing her child!” Abigail said, laying down her binoculars and looking at Larry. No matter how many bad people they’d killed, and no matter how many horrible things had happened to Abigail in her 12 years on the planet, she was still surprised at the dark depths of humanity.
    “Fame is fame,” Larry said, still peering through his binoculars. “Ah, there he is.”
    Abigail raised her binoculars and followed Larry’s line of sight until it ended at the muscular bald man standing behind Karen. He was wearing a dark suit and a Bluetooth ear piece, as if he were Secret Service, rather than Murder Mommy’s bodyguard.
    “Think we can take him?”Abigail asked. “ Without killing him?”
    Larry looked over, grinning. “I dunno, he’s got one of those douche bag Bluetooths, isn’t that an offense worthy of punishment?”
    Abigail laughed, even though she was too hungry to feel the humor in Larry’s joke. “If that were the case, we’d never run out of people for me to feed on!”
    “Yeah, you really need to relax the rules a little, Abi. I say we add ironic hipsters to our list. We could hit the Apple store, Starbucks and that vegan place that just opened up on Crouch Avenue and stock up for the year.”
    Abigail looked through the binoculars again and saw Karen and her bodyguard retrieving a Mercedes from the valet.
    “Looks like it’s showtime,” Larry said, setting his binoculars on the seat, and keying the engine. “You sure you’re up for this?”
    Abigail turned to Larry, waiting for his eyes to meet hers. “Yes, I’m sure,” she said. “Besides, I don’t know how much longer I can go.”
    Larry looked Abigail up and down. Though he hid his reaction well, she could tell he was concerned. Her skin was almost gray, like it always got when she went too long between feedings. And while she didn’t think she was staring at the edge of death, as she had been once five months before, the hunger did weaken her significantly. And it hurt — a pain that she somehow felt both in her head and her gut, though she wasn’t actually eating people, but rather their life force.
    “OK,” Larry said, putting the van into drive and drifting into the street to follow the notorious Karen McKenna from the club.
    They were tailing the Mercedes for nearly 10 minutes when Abigail finally asked what she knew Larry was dreading to hear — a question he’d already answered a dozen times before.
    “What if she didn’t do it?”
    “She did,” Larry said, holding his eyes to the road.