Even at that, none of them was in any bigger hurry to stop Roger and save this little girl than I was. I would have gladly stayed longer, no matter how I felt, but the final decision hadn’t been left to me. Ben ordered me to go home, and since I had come with him, he was seeing to it personally that I was returned safely. Deckert had seconded the motion, and Agent Mandalay took no convincing whatsoever. She was happy to see me go, though after the incident with the child’s dress, I had caught her looking curiously at me across the room from time to time. But, of course, only when she thought I couldn’t see her.
“What I don’t get is this,” Ben continued. “If you could sense, or feel—or whatever the hell you do—all that bad ju-ju comin’ off just the house and stuff, then why couldn’t Ariel Tanner and the rest of her group pick it up from him? I mean he was right there in the flesh and all? Shouldn’t they have noticed somethin’?”
I wasn’t surprised by the question, and I was glad that he had waited until we were alone before he asked it. Knowing him as I did, that shouldn’t have surprised me either.
“Theoretically, yes.”
“And what’s that supposed to mean?”
“Well, if I’m right, there are a couple of reasons why they might not have picked up anything from him,” I paused.
“Whaddaya want, a signed invitation? Spit it out.”
“Number one is the Expiation spell,” I continued, finally opening my eyes and sitting up a little straighter as he merged us onto the highway. “My guess is that he feels pretty good about himself once he’s absolved himself of the guilt. That would make him give off some positive vibes, so to speak. The positive energies would tend to cancel out the negative ones. You know, yin and yang, the great cosmic balance and all that.”
“Yeah, okay.” He nodded his head thoughtfully. “I can see that. Basically, it just tells me he’s a crazy fuck, and what he did to these women just doesn’t matter to ‘im.”
“That’s one way of looking at it.”
“But why can you pick it up now?”
“He’s escalating,” I offered. “He’s cycling through the absolution and anger quicker as the time for the sacrifice draws nearer.”
“Have you figured out why he’s doin’ this yet?”
“No, unfortunately. I’m not sure that he even knows.”
We continued in silence while Ben digested my answers. Finally, he looked over at me and spoke, “So what’s number two?”
I was already regretting that I had told him there was more than one reason. The second was the one that I was still wrestling with myself. Still, I had already opened my mouth, so there was no turning back. Whether I had come to grips with it or not, I needed to tell Ben.
“Number two,” I said with a tired sigh, “is that he was probably able to mask over his energies because he’s a lot better than I expected him to be.”
“Whaddaya mean ‘better than ya’ expected ‘im ta’ be’?” he appealed. “Ya mean like better at the hocus-pocus stuff?”
“Yeah. The ‘hocus-pocus’ stuff.” I didn’t feel up to arguing over his choice of terminology.
“But not better’n you, right?”
I didn’t answer him.
“Aww, Jeez, white man,” he grumbled, “I hate when you clam up like that... Tell me he’s not better than you.”
“I don’t know yet” was all I could say.
CHAPTER 24
Cally’s van was gone from my driveway, and the lights were out when Ben dropped me off. I had called Felicity from his cell phone shortly after the evidence technicians arrived on the scene and let her know that I was still in one piece. While that fact had been a relief to her, the news was still clouded by bitter disappointment at our having arrived too late to rescue the little girl and apprehend Roger. Before saying goodbye, I reminded her that there was still time before the full moon and that we weren’t giving up. When I pressed the glowing END button on the face of the phone, I lingered, momentarily lost in thought as I wondered to myself if that small amount of time was going to be enough.
The dogs stirred instantly when I entered the house, doing exactly what they perceived as their canine duty by checking to be sure I wasn’t some unfamiliar intruder. As soon as they had satisfied themselves as to my identity via cold-nosed, doggish snuffling, they both wandered sleepily back to their beds, wagging their tails with lazy contentment.
Two of our three feline residents, Dickens and Salinger, were in the middle of one of their many nocturnal wrestling matches. My intrusion into what they had declared to be their ring served as sufficient enough surprise to bring them instantly apart. Looking for all the world like two furry, mismatched bookends, they absently licked their paws and peered up at me as if to say “What? We weren’t doing anything.”
I kicked off my shoes then made my way softly into the bedroom. My wife was sound asleep, curled in the center of our bed, tightly hugging my pillow. I thought of crawling in as well, but she looked too peaceful, and I feared I would wake her. Besides, even though it was rapidly approaching two in the morning, I wasn’t actually sleepy. I had far too much on my mind to relax at the moment, and my earlier headache still plagued me in the form of a dull throb running down the back of my neck. Gently, I pulled the sheets up over her shoulders then quietly padded back through the house.
The wall clock rang out its familiar double chime in proclamation of the hour as I stretched out on the couch. If I were ever going to relax, I would have to clear away some of the annoying debris that had collected in my mind over the past few days. Of course, after the infusion of adrenalin I had received earlier this evening, my guess was that such a task would be next to impossible, at least for the time being.
Dickens jumped stealthily up to the arm of the couch nearest my head and announced himself with a throaty feline trill before crawling determinedly around me. After a false start or two, he stretched across my chest and proceeded to purr himself to sleep. He remained there undisturbed, even when I slowly stretched and yawned. My eyes seemed to almost itch, and my eyelids felt oddly heavy as I let out a long-winded sigh. As they slowly closed, I reminded myself that I wasn’t sleepy. I wasn’t sleepy at all.
“Hey, Mister.” A little strawberry-blonde girl, wrapped in a white lace dress, was tugging at me. “Hey, mister, wake up.”
Falling.
Darkness.
Light.
Darkness.
“Wake up, Mister!” her tiny voice more urgent now. “It’s almost time. We’re going to miss it.”
“Miss what?” I try to ask.
I can see my words, but I can’t hear them. They visibly leave my mouth in a rush and shoot skyward like helium-filled balloons. I watch them as they disappear into the darkness. When I turn my gaze back downward, the little girl is staring up at me urgently.
“We have to go now!” she exclaims, pulling on my hand. “Now!”
I’m running.
I can hear my footfalls on thin carpeting. My heart is pounding behind my ribs. My breaths are deep and labored, and the cold air stings my throat and lungs. I don’t know if I’m running from or running to. The little strawberry-blonde girl is nowhere to be seen.
I’m running.
I’m sitting.
“I told you,” the little girl says to me. “We almost missed it.”
I turn to face her. I don’t know where she came from. I vaguely remember that she was gone, but I don’t know why. I feel that she has been there all along.
“I have to go soon,” she says and points at a spot far above my head. “My turn is next.”
I look up and see a large round disk, mottled white and grey. The moon. It lacks fullness by only a thin sliver along the edge. I lower my eyes back to her.
The little girl is no longer little. She is a full-grown woman. She is Ariel Tanner, dressed in white lace and surrounded by a dimly glowing aura of milky light. She is kneeling next to me, holding my hand and smiling.
“She doesn’t un
derstand,” Ariel tells me. “You will have to explain it to her.”
“Explain what?” I ask. My own words meet my ears as a mirror image of themselves, echoing softly “?tahw nialpxe.”
She places two fingers across my lips to hush me and shakes her head. Her soft hair billows weightlessly, the aura dancing in perfect unison with each individual strand. “You have to stop him, Rowan. It’s all up to you now. Only you can save her.”
She lowers her fingers from my lips and stretches forward then lightly kisses my cheek. As she pulls away, she smiles shyly at me.
Her eyes widen with surprise, and the shy smile drains away. Her lips form a mute frown as a glossy patch of vermilion appears on her bosom, spreading like oil across the white lace.
“Why, Rowan, why?” she mouths as she falls away from me into nothingness.
I reach for her, but she is gone.
Darkness.
Light.
Darkness.
Falling.
Falling upward into the light.
Another nightmare?” Felicity was sitting next to me on the edge of the sofa when I awoke from the fitful slumber.
“Yeah,” I answered, “like that’s a surprise, huh?”
“Anything in it that might help?”
“I dunno,” I returned lethargically as I pulled myself upright. “It mainly just told me that we were running out of time, as if I needed a reminder.”
She moved out of my way as I swung my legs around and allowed my feet to drop to the floor.
“Want some coffee?” she asked.
“Yeah, sure. What time is it anyway?”
“Almost noon,” she called over her shoulder as she headed for the kitchen. “I figured you didn’t get in till late, so I let you sleep.”
“Thanks. I appreciate that. I think.”
“Ben called earlier.” She returned with a mug of hot coffee and handed it to me. “He said to tell you thanks.”
“For what?” I queried and took a sip of the hot liquid, letting it burn the sleep from my throat.
“For all your help,” she answered. “They caught Roger early this morning. He came back to the house, and they were waiting for him.”
I stared back at her incredulously, almost dropping the steaming mug. “He what? What about the little girl?”
“She’s fine. Not a scratch on her. She’s already been reunited with her parents.”
I couldn’t believe it. After everything we had been through, Roger had walked right back into the hands of the police. I suppose I should have been thankful, but I just couldn’t shake the feeling that something was out of sync. A sense of foreboding that made me believe that something was terribly wrong.
“I need to go talk to Ben,” I announced and began searching about for my shoes.
“Slow down,” Felicity insisted. “Don’t you think you’d better take a shower first? No offense, but you look pretty rough.”
She was right. The activities of the night before, combined with eight hours on our living room sofa, had to have taken their toll on my appearance.
“Yeah, okay,” I agreed. “But do me a favor will’ya? Call Ben and tell him I’m coming down to see him.”
“Sure. No problem.” She pecked me quickly on the cheek. “Now go get cleaned up.”
I left her dialing the phone and tossed my clothes haphazardly into the hamper as I stripped. The sun was coming in brightly through the window, eliminating the need for artificial light, so I just kicked on the exhaust fan and climbed into the shower.
With a quick turn of the porcelain handles, I started the water flowing and adjusted the temperature to my liking. I turned to allow it to flow down my back and held my eyes closed, willing away the remaining tension in hopes of at least a few moments relaxation. It was then that something Felicity had just said struck me as odd. She asked me if the nightmare had contained anything that might help, yet she already knew that Ben had called. She knew that Roger had already been captured. I started to call out to her in search of an explanation.
When I opened my eyes, I was looking directly at the back wall. Across the normally pristine white tiles, dark crimson strokes inscribed—
ALL IS FORGIVEN
—A sour, cackling laugh filled my ears, and the water against my back suddenly felt oddly thick. I looked down at my chest where it splashed across my shoulders and saw blood, viscid and hot, dripping from my skin.
I tried to escape the horror, only to find the shower curtain had become solid and unyielding. I began to pound on it wildly, screaming for my wife, as the enclosure quickly began to fill with the sticky, crimson liquid. My cries remained unheeded as the level reached my chest, then my chin, until finally, I was submerged. My throat and lungs began to burn, and I was starting to black out. No longer able to hold my breath, I was about to face my own innermost fear. I was drowning.
I awoke screaming.
Felicity was over me, firmly grasping my shoulders and shaking me into consciousness. “Rowan, wake up! Rowan!”
I bolted upright on the couch, steeped in my own sweat. The cool breeze from a nearby register sent a shiver up my spine as the air conditioner followed orders from the thermostat and worked to maintain the temperature.
Soft morning light was beginning to filter in between the slats of the mini blinds covering our windows, bringing a murky pallor to my surroundings. My wife, clad in an oversized t-shirt, was staring back at me with the same gentle concern I had seen in her eyes just one night before.
“Another nightmare?” she asked rhetorically, sitting back on the edge of the sofa.
“Yeah,” I sighed, “a weird one. Whatever you do, don’t tell me it’s almost noon, and Ben called to tell me thanks.”
“Why would I?”
I heard a muffled series of barks, telling me that the dogs wanted to be let back in. For some reason, that familiar noise, added to my wife’s puzzled expression and my overall feeling as if I had been beaten severely with a two-by-four, was the evidence I needed to tell me I was actually, truly awake this time.
“It’s a long story,” I told her.
* * * * *
After a shower that began hesitantly, I relinquished the remaining hot water to Felicity and prepared a quick breakfast. Over eggs scrambled with broccoli and Swiss cheese, a side of turkey bacon, and coffee, she and I discussed the events of the past evening. For the most part, the discussion was one-sided, with me doing the talking and her doing the listening as I filled her in on the details of the assault on Roger’s house, followed by those of the doubly bizarre nightmare. The latter accounting, I recorded in my Book of Shadows as I went.
“I got a call from a client last night,” Felicity announced while we put away the freshly washed dishes. “Apparently, they lined up a last minute product shoot with some model that’s only available today.”
“Go ahead. I’ll be fine,” I answered her unspoken question.
“Are you sure, then?” she posed. “I can refer it over to Hartley. He owes me one anyway.”
“Really. I’ll be fine,” I assured her. “There’s no need in both of us sitting around here staring at the walls. I don’t know if there’s much more either of us can do to help Ben right now anyway. Besides, like I said, Agent Mandalay isn’t exactly my number one fan.”
“Okay. If you’re sure.”
“I’m sure.”
I helped her load the Jeep and waved goodbye as she backed out slowly and went on her way. The landscape around me was growing brighter as the sun crept higher in the morning sky, chasing away the dimly shimmering globe of the moon—the moon that was less than twenty-four hours from full.
* * * * *
I called Ben shortly after Felicity left and was told that he was following up leads in the field. After leaving a message for him, I resigned myself to performing what had become the more mundane tasks in my life—support calls, returning email, and even some minor house cleaning. Don’t get me wrong, I was actually looking forwar
d to returning to the everyday normalcy, but not until this whole thing was over and done with.
It was approaching three in the afternoon when the phone rang. Ben was on the other end, returning my call.
“So, any good news?” I queried into the handset.
“No,” he told me, “not really. The parents made a positive ID on the little girl’s dress. And they found a spot where the floor had been dug up in the corner, but that’s about it.”
“That’s where he buried the hearts he took from the victims,” I stated mechanically.
“Yeah... It wasn’t pleasant... Oh, and that tip ya’ gave us on the syringe. We found it right where ya’ said it would be. Lab showed traces of a sedative called Diazepam.”
“Not the curare?”
“No,” he returned. “Seemed off to me too, so I asked the doc about it. Apparently, that stuff paralyzes the blink response, and he would have to use some kinda artificial lubricant to keep her eyes from dryin’ out. Also, repeated doses could build up in ‘er system and cause respiratory failure. Sounded kinda high maintenance for someone tryin’ ta’ duck the cops.”
“But it makes sense,” I volunteered. “He doesn’t want her injured. I’m convinced of that. In my vision, he kept referring to her as The One. As odd as it may sound, he holds her in very high reverence. She has to be pristine for the ritual, but he also has to keep her under wraps until the full moon.”
“Yeah, it sounds odd all right, ‘specially when ya’ consider what he plans to do to ‘er in this ritual thing.” There was a lengthy pause at his end. I could almost see him trying to form his words. “So listen, Row. About that whole hocus-pocus thing last night. What did’ya mean when ya’ said ya’ don’t know if he’s better than you or not?”
Harm None: A Rowan Gant Investigation Page 30