Available Darkness Season 2

seethed in pain and anger too much to focus. Cromwell lowered the gun, fired at John’s leg, and turned his right calf to raw meat.
    “Fuck!” John hollered.
    “Now we’re doing things my way , John, got that? If you don’t obey my every fucking word, I’m going to go get that little girl, Abigail, tie her up on my front lawn, and have a barbecue on her burning corpse, do you understand me?”
    John said nothing, staring Cromwell in the eyes, wanting to tear him apart piece by bloody piece with his bare hands.
    “I asked if you understood me!” Cromwell shouted, his face crimson. He turned and shouted back to his wife. “Honey, where the fuck is my phone?”
    The phone flew across the room, skipping twice off the floor before landing beside John.
    “What the … ?” Cromwell said, turning to see Larry with a pistol pushed into the side of his wife’s head.
    “Put the gun down,” Larry ordered, his face stone serious. “Or I shoot the bitch.”
    “OK, OK,” Cromwell said, setting the gun on carpet. “Don’t hurt her.”
    Larry’s eyes absorbed the severity of John’s condition. He winced as his friend struggled to stand.
    Cromwell turned to John, “I’ll tell you whatever you want. Just don’t hurt her.”
    “Yes, you will,” John said, reaching out for Cromwell’s flesh before the man had time to register what was happening.
    John could vaguely sense Cromwell’s wife screaming as he feasted, trying in vain to reach out and halt her husband’s murder. Larry yanked her back, shoved her to the side, and pushed her to the ground. She tried to stand, but Larry shoved his foot into her chest, “Stay down!”
    “No, no, no!” she screamed.
    John sucked Cromwell’s energy into his body, feeling his flesh stitch itself together as if someone was pouring pure life inside him. John dove into Cromwell’s memories, searching for any sign of Hope.
    He steered Cromwell’s memories toward her, first learning her new name — Hannah Quinn — then finding the name of the agent she was sleeping with — Greg Overton.
    John saw Cromwell on the phone earlier that day, instructing Mike Mathews to have Greg bring Hope in so they could wipe her again, as she was starting to remember. After that, they’d have to move her somewhere else. Or, if she became a problem, dispose of her.
    John would have to get to Mathews.
    He searched for more information, but found nothing. John allowed Cromwell’s memories to trickle to nothing as the present surfaced and he saw what was left of the man’s body lying crumpled on the floor. Larry was nowhere in sight.
    “Larry!” John called, afraid something horrible had happened to his friend.
    John ran to the Cromwells’ bedroom and saw Tiny laying in a pool of thick red syrup at the foot of the bed, the right half of his bald head cracked like a melon from the gunshot, his flesh torched. His burnt fists clutched at a blanket which he’d not managed to pull over himself before he was either baked into nothing, or ended by the crack of Cromwell’s gun.
    Jesus.
    John cursed himself for luring Tiny to his death. He should never have given Bob a chance to trigger the house lights. There was no way John could’ve known what he would do, but should have suspected something the second Bob became Mr. Helpful.
    Larry stood with his gun trained on Linda, who was sitting in a chair, crying. Larry looked like he’d been crying too, mourning his friend, Tiny, whom he’d known far longer than John had.
    “What do we do about her?” Larry asked, angrily waving the gun at Bob’s wife, looking like he wanted to shoot her.
    “I don’t know,” John said. Memories of Linda, Bob’s memories, flooded through his mind. Bob had once loved his wife, years ago. They grew distant after their daughter went to college, and things changed. While the passion was missing, and Linda mostly a stranger, Bob did still love her. Traces of that love coursed through John as he looked at Linda, remembering the her from two decades before. The young, carefree, loving woman, eroded by years of indifference.
    John hated feeling his victims’ emotions, especially when clouding his practical thought. If he allowed Linda to live, she would surely call the cops. Omega would be tipped off that much quicker to John’s attack on his boss, giving them a chance to do whatever they planned to do with Hope sooner rather than later.
    “Please,” she said. “Don’t kill me.”
    Larry looked into John’s