Once again, Agent Mandalay’s lips parted, emitting a high-pitched, unearthly sound. I wondered at why more attention hadn’t been attracted to the small clearing by her night-breaking shrieks. At the same time, I could only fear what might have happened to Ben, Deckert, and the others.
The spidery lightning bolt remained connected between the two of them, pulsing outward from Roger in a quickening pace and snapping violently against her spasmodically jerking body. Visible sparks leapt from each point of contact, hissing through the air and quickly extinguishing before reaching the ground.
She had begun to slap and claw at herself as if something were trying to rend the flesh from her bones. I don’t know what horror she was seeing; it was something meant solely for her. I only knew that whatever innermost personal fear she had kept locked away in the depths of her subconscious was now loose and ravaging her in ways unthinkable. Roger had been the one to release the obscenity, and by continuing to feed its illusory presence, he was going to kill her.
I was airborne for less than a second. I barely remembered the decision to launch myself at Agent Mandalay’s tormentor—it had been that close to automatic. So intent was his focus on her, he hadn’t even noticed my presence until we collided. My shoulder met hard with his midsection as I flung my full weight into his stationary form. A guttural huff exploded from his surprised mouth as the impact drove the breath from his lungs, sending the two of us on a collision course with the spiny thicket surrounding the clearing.
The primary objective of my less than thoroughly thought out plan was to sever the supernormal connection between Roger and Agent Mandalay, effectively ending the deadly glamour. My secondary ambition was to subdue him until he could be turned over to someone more qualified to make a proper arrest. Fortunately, the first part went exactly as I hoped. It was the second idea that immediately presented itself as a problem.
His initial shock rapidly fading to nothing more than a memory, Roger regained his breath and twisted wildly from my grip as we slammed into the thorny hedges. He scrambled upward from the tangled heap, fighting to break free as he regained his feet. From my prone position, I pitched myself forward, stretching my arm until I believed I could feel tendons tearing away from bone—then I reached even farther. Claw like, my hand hooked around his ankle as he fought the scrub for freedom, and with an agonized jerk, I knocked him off balance, casting him once more to the ground.
The two of us dragged ourselves to our feet almost simultaneously, first into a crouch then fully upright, slightly more than an arms length apart. Roger wheeled around to face me and we both froze. His hood had fallen back across his shoulders, and his face was exposed to the night. Hatred smoked in the grey-ashed cinders of his eyes as he locked his glare on me, and the sinewy tendons in his neck bulged angrily as he tensed.
“I warned you, Gant,” he seethed. “You can’t stop me.”
“I already have. Look at the moon,” I choked between somewhat labored breaths. Internally, I was regretting what my desk bound choice of professions had detracted from my physical condition. “Give it up Roger.”
Slowly, he looked up through the shadowy foliage to the swollen globe. Absolute fullness was only a handful of heartbeats away, and he knew it the moment his eyes were filled with the silvery visage. With an almost calm intent, he just as slowly lowered his gaze back to mine. His smoldering grey irises started to crumble away like ash from a burning coal, revealing a savage red-orange glow.
The fire that had earlier danced up my spine now seared like a blowtorch across my body, slathering its malignant excrement upon me. Bracing myself against the supernatural attack, I pressed my own energies outward, deflecting his rage and forming an ethereal barrier between us. The blaze of pain was immediately doused, and my tortured skin quickly cooled.
Roger was unprepared for the backlash of his own energy and almost didn’t catch it in time. The stream of malice-driven power exploded against his own hastily erected defenses in a roiling shower of crimson lightning. He stumbled backward from the shockwave and fought to maintain his balance. To the average spectator, we would have appeared to be doing something on the order of shadow boxing. To a crowd of Witches, one hell of a fireworks presentation was taking place. However, the exhibition was cut short as my opponent realized his chances of defeating me in such an arena were almost non-existent.
I caught only a vanishing glimpse of Agent Mandalay from the corner of my eye as she crawled forward reaching for her gun. My ears were filled thickly with a demonic banshee wail from Roger as he propelled himself low into my stomach and drove me through the ripping thorns of the thick brush. He bear-hugged me as I fought to maintain my balance, backpedaling into the foliage. I hammered my fist downward and felt it glance across his ribs, a sensation that was immediately followed by jellied numbness chased with glass shards of pain as the blow reverberated up my arm.
My stability faltered as we exploded through the wall of scrub and ricocheted off a solid tree trunk. A crush of agony ripped through me as my attacker’s shoulder dug inward, and I heard the sickening sound of my own ribs as they cracked. We lurched to the ground, glancing from a tree stump, and began to roll. I fought to keep my arm hooked around his neck as our momentum increased. Rocks and small trees insinuated themselves into our wild path, exacting what revenge they could as we rolled over them. I reached with my free arm to grab at the tough saplings, trying to halt our progress down the ever-steepening hill, but to no avail. My grasp was too slow and our inertia too great. I ended up with nothing more than damp fistfuls of leaves and a raw, bleeding gash across my palm.
Our chaotic journey down the hillside ended almost as abruptly as it began. In a tangle of flailing limbs, we were catapulted from a low earthen ledge at the bottom of the hill.
With a dull thud, Roger and I impressed ourselves into the muddy shoreline of the small lake. I laid there gasping as the shock of the sudden stop began to subside. My right arm was still curled tightly around my assailant’s neck, locked firm and unyielding. My heart was racing as I stared upward at the night sky, listening to shouting voices in the near distance.
Roger hadn’t moved since we stopped rolling. I had maintained a desperate hold on him for the entire journey down the hill, and his head now seemed oddly cocked to the side. Resting against him in the mud, I listened for any sound from his limp body and not only heard nothing but felt nothing. Wearily, I disentangled myself from his still form and extricated my arm from about his neck. The voices were drawing closer and were joined by the sounds of running footsteps against soft ground. I hauled myself up to my knees, then shakily, to my feet.
Sharp, blinding pain surged up my thighs then down my calves, and my kneecaps felt as though they had been detonated like small explosive charges. My legs buckled, and I pitched backward, slapping the surface of the water with a stinging smack, and then I slipped under. Most of my breath had been forced from my chest with the surprised yelp elicited by the sharp pains in my legs, and the murky water rushed in to fill my nostrils. I knew I was in no more than two feet of water, so I clamped my eyes shut and started to sit up. Unfortunately, I felt a sudden weight on my chest and an angry hand firmly encircling my throat.
I began flailing my arms in front of me, pounding against the weight and trying to force it off my chest. My lungs burned from lack of oxygen, and the violent physical exertion only added fuel to their blaze. The bonfire in my chest crackled desperately up my throat, singeing it like a blowtorch. My body begged me to gasp for air; my mind forcefully told it not to.
I opened my eyes in the murky shallows and blinked rapidly as silt tried to settle in them. My vision, distorted as it was, started to darken and tunnel as my brain screamed helplessly for oxygen. I knew I was on the verge of passing out, and I fought even harder in the face of my greatest fear. Drowning.
My water-filled ears picked up the thick sounds of splashing as I flailed against Roger, his hand ever tightening around my neck. He pushed me hard in
to the spongy lake bottom, forcing me another inch farther from the cool, fresh air. Through the rippling surface of the silty water, I could see the glowing moon, which had moved past full, and although undetectable to the naked eye, into its waning phase. Its cold blue light glinted sharply from an all too familiar double-edged dagger held poised above me by the madman.
Murderous grey eyes bore down on me through the murky surroundings, smoking with the same fire they had displayed earlier. Ariel’s athamè flashed once again as my attacker prepared to plunge it downward. My vision continued to stretch forth in a tunnel-like fashion then slowly began to fade.
Before I could close my eyes, the blade jerked out of its killing arc and followed a harmless trajectory away from me. At the same instant, the dull thrashing of water distantly entered my ears and was joined by a muffled explosion.
A dark rain spattered the surface of the water above my face and mixed lazily into milky spirals—cloudy helixes of vermilion in the dim moonlight. A second blunted thump sounded, followed quickly by a third, then a fourth. Three more showers of the thick crimson rain sprinkled wildly across the water’s surface. The hand around my throat spasmed twice then fell limp. The weight pressing down on my chest shifted heavily and slid sideways.
Cool air rushed forcefully into my lungs, flowing down my throat in a thick gulp as I suddenly broke the surface. I gasped gratefully, sputtering and choking on the lake water I had sucked in, and blinked rapidly to clear the debris from my eyes. I began flailing angrily as I felt a large meaty hand entwine itself with the front of my shirt in a viselike grip then relaxed when I realized I was being pulled out instead of being pushed back in.
Felicity, Deckert, Mandalay, and two of the officers gathered in a loose semicircle around me as I laid gasping on the bank. Ben’s large hand was still tightly gripping my waterlogged shirt, shaking me.
“Rowan?! Rowan?! Are you all right?” his concern-laden voice urgently met my ears.
I looked around the worried faces of the group then back to his. “Little girl?” I croaked.
“She’s fine. The other coppers are with her,” he smiled down at me. “There’s an ambulance on the way.”
Telltale distant warbling was growing louder as emergency vehicles raced to converge on us. I struggled to sit up, only to find they weren’t going to allow it. Ben and Felicity both pressed me back down gently.
“Stay put,” my wife ordered softly. “They’re coming for you too.”
I didn’t protest, I just continued biting off large chunks of the night air and swallowing them hungrily. Again, I focused on Ben’s face.
“Hey, Tonto,” I choked out between breaths, “you shoot the bad guy?”
“Yeah, Kemosabe,” he grinned. “Yeah, I shot the bastard.”
“Next time,” I wheezed, “don’t take so damn long.”
CHAPTER 28
“Ben was telling me you got a call from that muckity-muck up in Seattle,” Deckert posed and then took a hearty sip of beer. “What’d he have to say?”
He, Ben, and I were seated around the patio table on the back deck of my house. A little more than a week had passed since that night at Wild Woods Park, and I had coaxed them over for a day of barbecue and relaxation. We all desperately needed the chance to decompress from the pressure of the maniacally whirlwind investigation, as well as the intensity of its abrupt ending.
“He wanted to give me the reward he’d been offering,” I answered, carefully trimming the end from a Cruz Real #19. “Everyone’s firmly convinced that Roger was responsible for his daughter’s murder, so he wanted to pay up. How he got my name, he wouldn’t say.”
“What did you tell him?”
“I gave him a list of charities. Environmental Defense Fund, Nature Conservancy, World Wildlife Fund and the like.” I set a wooden match alight and touched the fire to the end of my cigar. “I told him if he really wanted to do something for me, that he should split the reward between them in the names of his daughter and the other victims.”
“In other words,” Ben interjected, waving his own cigar in my direction, “ya’ turned it down.”
“I like to think of it as redirected,” I expressed.
Allison, Felicity, and Mona, Detective Deckert’s wife, were leisurely roaming the perimeter of our large backyard. Every now and then they would pause to admire the last fitful colors of summer that still bloomed in our various wildflower gardens.
Benjamin Storm Junior was giggling with the unencumbered innocence of youth as he tumbled and rolled in the center of the yard. Our dogs let out excited, puppyish yelps, tails wagging and ears perked, as he chased them about in a wild game of tag.
The domestic Saturday afternoon scene was kind and familiar. I longed to lose myself to the relaxed feeling of security but knew deep down that it was a place I could only visit. I would never again be allowed to live there.
Ariel Tanner’s death had forced me to deal with a question I had denied without even knowing it. The question of what my purpose within this lifetime was to be. The answer was one that I had only now begun to come to terms with.
It was only a matter of time before something evil would knock upon my door again, and I knew it. I hoped I would be prepared to face whatever it turned out to be.
“I still can’t get over that glamour thing.” Carl leaned back in his chair, cradling his beer bottle. “I mean I was lost! I couldn’t find anybody, and the woods just kept getting darker and thicker no matter which direction I went. Seemed like it went on forever. Next thing I know, everything clears up, and I’m on the other side of the freakin’ park hearin’ all this screamin’. It was weird. Just plain weird.”
From the descriptions provided by Ben, Carl, Agent Mandalay, and the other officers, I had come to the conclusion that they were all most likely affected by a Spell of Misdirection—a glamour of sorts. The closer they had come to the small clearing, the more disoriented and confused they became. The illusion of the thickening woods obscured the clearing and led them farther away with each step. Agent Mandalay had simply stumbled into the ritual circle entirely by accident. The amount of energy and concentration Roger Henderson had to have expended in order to affect and maintain such a massive phantasm was almost certainly the reason he had not detected my presence in the park until it was too late.
“Mandalay is the one who caught the worst of it,” I volunteered. “Whatever she was seeing, it definitely wasn’t pretty.”
“That reminds me,” Ben spoke up. “I meant ta’ ask you... If he could do all that shit, then why was he botherin’ ta’ drug his victims? Why didn’t he just eenee meenee hocus pocus ‘em?”
“It’s just a guess, but there are a couple of reasons I can think of off-hand.” I drained the last of my own beer before outlining the ideas. “One would be the unpredictability. An aware mind isn’t fooled by illusions and wouldn’t fall into a trance. Another would be that even if he were able to hypnotize his victims, so to speak, the sharp physical pain of the flaying would have snapped them out of it. Drugging them was his safest bet to keep them quiet and immobile.”
They both thoughtfully nodded acceptance of my explanation. Moving my chair back, I stood and checked the burning coals in the fire pit. A fine coating of whitish-grey ash had formed across half the surfaces of the briquettes. Randomly, the ash had fallen away to reveal a fiery red-orange glow. A small tremor ran the length of my spine as my mind fleetingly focused on the memory of the cancerous grey-red combination of Roger Henderson’s violent eyes. I must have stood staring into the pit a moment too long as I was snapped back to reality by the sound of my friend’s voice.
“Hey, white man. You okay?”
“Huh?”
“You’re kinda starin’ off into space, guy,” Deckert intoned. “Something bothering you?”
“No. No, just daydreaming.” I shrugged off their mildly concerned queries and then changed the subject. “The fire needs a few more minutes. I’m dry, anyone else need a beer?”
>
“Yeah,” Ben answered, then drained the last remnants from his bottle.
“Count me in,” Deckert added.
I gathered the empty bottles and disposed of them in the recycle bin before opening the door of the plant-filled atrium and proceeding into the kitchen. Allison, Felicity, and Mona had chased me out of this area earlier and between the three of them, had quickly prepared the food that was to be grilled. Fresh herb scents filled the kitchen and helped me to ease back into the pleasant reality at hand.
I was just opening the refrigerator when the front chime demanded attention. Momentarily placing the beverages on hold, I carefully picked my way through rapidly scattering felines and tugged open the heavy oak door.
“I hope I’m not intruding.” An apologetic statement issued from a somewhat casually dressed Special Agent Constance Mandalay. “I noticed Deckert’s car and Storm’s van in the driveway.”
“Not at all,” I said, holding the door open wide and motioning to her. “Please come in.”
She entered hesitantly and waited in silence while I shut the door. When I turned around, what faced me was a much-subdued version of the hard-nosed femme fatale that had originally confronted me at the Major Case Squad command post. She shuffled nervously and studied the pattern of the hardwood floor between quick glances at me with schoolgirl eyes.
“Listen, Mister Gant,” she finally sputtered, racing to get the words out before they could flee, “I just wanted to apologize for my attitude toward you during the investigation.”
“Rowan, please,” I appealed calmly. “My friends call me Rowan. And there’s no apology necessary, Agent Mandalay.”
“Constance,” she echoed my sentiments. “My friends call me Constance... And I still want to say I’m sorry... I treated you poorly, and I’ve no excuse... Except maybe for ignorance.” She stumbled over the words, and her large eyes glistened as she choked back what might have been a tear. “What... What I saw that night... I... I don’t know if I could ever tell anyone... I don’t know if I could face it again. I... I just feel that if it weren’t for you, I would be dead... If not dead then insane at the very least. I owe you for that, and I just wanted to tell you all this in person... I just needed to say... Thank you.”
Harm None: A Rowan Gant Investigation Page 34