Crone’s Moon argi-5

by M. R. Sellars

  “All right then, status quo or whatever you want to call it, Felicity. Just break the spell. Please?”

  She stared back at me in silence for a moment then turned her head slightly to the side and looked past me.

  “Cally,” she said with quiet resignation. “There are some scissors on the altar shelf in the living room. Could you bring them to me and a book of matches please?”

  I gave my wife a thin smile and then said, “Thank you. I’ll go call Constance now.”

  *****

  “Mandalay.” The federal agent’s businesslike voice issued from the earpiece on the telephone amid a rumble of indistinguishable background noises.

  I had parked myself in the bedroom so that I wouldn’t disturb the magickal workings in the kitchen. On the way through the house, I had taken notice that Ben had finally slumped over to the side and was now snoring at a somewhat lower volume.

  Cally had been taking pity on the unconscious cop and was covering him with an afghan at about the time I was making the turn into the hallway.

  “Hey Constance, it’s Rowan,” I replied, as I finished picking up some of the items the cats had scattered. I piled them back on the nightstand before taking a seat on the edge of the bed.

  “Oh, hi Rowan.” Her voice brightened a notch but remained all business. “I’m just a little busy at the moment…”

  “I know, Ben told me you were working the Larson abduction,” I interjected before she could rush me off the line. “I wouldn’t have called you if it wasn’t important. Can you talk?”

  There was a brief pause then she replied, “Hold on a second.”

  I heard shuffling noises, some voices- hers included- and then footsteps. A handful of moments and a few more unidentifiable sounds later, the background noise dropped noticeably.

  “I’m back” her voice came again, and then she barreled straight into questions of her own. “So have you talked to Storm recently? He missed a seven-thirty briefing and that’s not like him. I’ve been trying to call him all evening, but I keep getting a message that his phone is turned off and no one picked up at his house either.”

  I hesitated for a moment before answering. I guess I’d been the lucky one when I got hold of Allison. “Actually, he’s passed out on my couch.”

  “Passed out?”

  “Long story.”

  “Is that why you called?”

  “I wish it were,” I replied.

  “Okay, so what’s up?”

  “Nothing good I’m afraid.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Your kidnapping just became a homicide,” I offered succinctly.

  “How do you…” she started. “No, forget I even said that. So fill me in, what’s going on?”

  “Well, it gets a little complicated.”

  “Un-complicate it for me.”

  “Okay, in a nutshell, Felicity had two ethereal episodes tonight and…”

  “Felicity?” she interrupted. “Felicity did the woo-woo stuff? Not you?”

  “That’s the complicated part.”

  “Okay, I’ll catch up on that later. Go on.”

  “Well, she had the two episodes, and just before she came out of the second one, she started telling us that Brittany Larson is dead.”

  “Us? You mean you and Storm?”

  “No, me, Cally, and RJ.”

  “So what about Storm? Was he there or not?”

  “He was already passed out,” I replied. “That’s pretty much why I’m calling you.”

  “Why is Ben passed out, Rowan?” Her words were more of a demand than a simple question.

  It was obvious that him missing the briefing was a sore spot for her, and what she had said was dead on- Benjamin Storm didn’t shirk his responsibilities. Unfortunately, this new little tidbit of information just added another layer to my worry over his situation.

  I wanted desperately to cover for my friend, and so I tried to think of a feasible way around answering her without telling an outright lie. Unfortunately, I couldn’t think of a single thing to say other than the cold truth, and before I knew it, that was exactly what came tumbling out of my mouth. “He’s drunk, Constance.”

  There was a spate of silence on the line, and then her voice issued again, this time with a hard edge. “Wake him up and get some coffee into him, Rowan. I’ll be there in half an hour.”

  Knowing the way she drove, I suspected it would be more like fifteen minutes.

  “Okay, but listen, Constance,” I appealed. “Go easy on him. He’s got just about as good a reason for this as anyone can have.”

  “Yeah, well he’d better, Rowan because I had to throw some Federal weight around to get him back on the MCS for this investigation.”

  “Yeah, I think he knows that,” I replied. “Or he suspects it at least.”

  “Well, if he makes me look like a fool then he’s going to have someone besides Lieutenant Albright after his ass,” she snarled. “And I can be a hell of a lot nastier bitch than she can.”

  That was it. I’d had enough arguing. I already felt like I was perched atop an inordinately narrow balance beam eighteen hours out of every twenty-four. Between Felicity’s binding spell, Ben’s marital problems, and now Constance being on the warpath, I felt like what little normalcy I had left in the world was crumbling away beneath my feet, and I wasn’t ready to fall quite yet.

  My own voice adopted an angry edge, and I replied candidly, “Listen, Constance, I understand where you’re coming from, but I seem to remember a certain city homicide detective going to the mat for you when you assaulted a suspect during an interrogation.”

  There was no way for me to retract the statement, but I’m not sure that I would have wanted to if I could. I had been a witness to her loss of control as well as having been her confidant when she needed someone to talk to about it. I hated to slap her in the face with an incident from the past, but Ben had gone so far as to lie for her, and that was no small gesture from a man who valued honesty as much as him.

  Sometimes, I suppose we all need to be reminded of the debts we owe and to whom we owed them.

  I could hear her breathing at the other end, but not a single word was spoken for the span of a half-minute.

  “Listen, Constance,” I finally said. “I’m sorry about that. I didn’t mean to…”

  “No, Rowan, you’re right,” she replied, her voice a mix of emotions. “See if you can get him sobered up. I’ll get out of here in a few minutes and head over.”

  “I’ll see what I can do,” I replied. “Thanks, Constance.”

  I hung up the phone as I stood and then started out the door on my way to the kitchen to enlist some aid in getting Ben up and about. Whatever curiosity I’d harbored regarding how the process of the un-binding was going was immediately eliminated the moment the rasping pain raked across the back of my neck.

  The wall before me became a psychedelic whirlpool spinning at an ever-increasing velocity. My body tensed then jerked as my knees gave way. The burning agony drew itself across my neck once again, halting, then biting anew as it dug deeper into my upper spine.

  I was trying to call out for help when the floor suddenly filled my field of vision, only to be replaced almost immediately by indigo darkness.

  CHAPTER 14:

  I was floating.

  Or maybe I wasn’t really floating. I had no visible point of reference in the darkness, so I couldn’t really say for sure. All I knew for certain was that it felt like I was floating, and I was happily willing to accept that as fact.

  I blinked for no other reason than to make sure my eyes were actually open. Again, it felt like they were open, so I took the sensation at face value.

  There was little else I could do, and the truth was, I didn’t really care.

  I was comfortable.

  In fact, I don’t think I’d ever been this comfortable in all my life.

  Since I couldn’t see anything, I decided I would just listen.

  Actual
ly I wasn’t any more interested in listening than I was in seeing, but I did it anyway. Why? I had no idea other than the fact that there was this little nag in the back of my head.

  It told me it needed to know something. I don’t know what information the nag was after, but it wanted something, and it wanted it now. I tried to ignore it, because after all, I didn’t see any point. It wanted to know something, not me.

  The nag was on a mission. It told me I needed the information too.

  I tried to reason with it. Given that I couldn’t see, and for all intents and purposes, I couldn’t feel, I didn’t really know that I could hear either. So, why bother trying?

  The nag wouldn’t listen. It wanted me to try hearing in the worst way, and it wasn’t going to give up until I did.

  I told it no.

  It nagged harder and became an annoyance.

  I told it to go away.

  It wouldn’t. Instead, it just kept growing beyond annoyance and became a pain.

  A real pain.

  Physical.

  Tangible.

  Now I was no longer comfortable.

  I gave up and listened. I doubted that it would do any good, but I did it anyway. I was willing to do just about anything to make the nag go away.

  Had I cared, I would have been chagrined when I started to pick up the faint sounds around me, fading slowly in from nowhere to eventually fill my ears with ambient noise. But, I didn’t care about such things. I just wanted the nag to go away, so I kept listening.

  Cicadas warbled out their song, the buzz rising and falling, fading away, then starting anew.

  Okay, I could live with that. Why the nag wanted me to listen to cicadas I couldn’t fathom, but if it made the nag leave me alone, I was happy.

  But, the nag didn’t want to hear the insects. It wanted to hear something else, so I listened harder.

  Metal scraping against earth sounded softly in the darkness. How I knew it was metal against earth I couldn’t begin to say. I just knew it as simply as I knew two plus two equaled four. It was a fact.

  The ambience grew as I listened intently. The cicadas, the metal, the earth, the wind… The crunch of dry leaves began sneaking through, adding themselves to the mix and setting up a rhythm.

  Scrape, crunch, thud, warble.

  Scrape, crunch, thud, warble.

  Underscoring the odd rhythm was an off-key hum, and the nag became very interested in it. I focused on the hum and noticed that it ran in an audible parallel to a severely muffled background of driving bass.

  I despised the nag. It was making me take notice of my surroundings, and now I was starting to be curious. I didn’t want to be curious. I wanted to be comfortable like before. But, that was slipping further away with each scrape, crunch, thud, and warble.

  Now I was noticing that labored breaths interrupted the hum at random intervals, falling in and out of cadence with the crunch and scrape that seemed to be setting the beat.

  On the heels of a metallic clunk, a tinny stream of noise masquerading as music suddenly vomited into the blackness. Severe notes, squealing outward from what might have been a guitar, intermixed with the heavy bump of a frenzied drumbeat. In reality, it wasn’t very loud at all, but given the disparity of it against the otherwise quiet darkness, it may as well have been a thunderclap.

  The nag started down a new path.

  It wanted to know about this driving thrum that insisted on being called music. I was just about to appease the annoying little monster when a hot stab of pain shot through my chest.

  I felt myself jerked upward, without warning or apology.

  Stark, blue-white brilliance exploded in my eyes, hot and fierce like an arc of lightning.

  The afterimage of a swirling tunnel and a wooded grove began fading from my retinas.

  Blackness.

  Crashing luminance, intense and stark.

  Nude flesh. Pale, flaccid, and marred.

  Blackness.

  Again, the impressed image began to fade.

  The violent strobe burst, casting a woman’s body in harsh light.

  Woman. Corpse. Blood.

  Blackness.

  Scrape, crunch, thud, warble.

  Light, coming faster and faster.

  Blood. Shoulders. Blood.

  Blackness. Light. Corpse. Blackness. Light. Blood. Blackness. Light. Shoulders. Blackness. Light. Head. Blackness. Light. Shoulders. Blackness. Light. Face. Blackness. Light. Brittany. Blackness. Light. Blood. Blackness. Light. Brittany. Blackness. Light.

  Headless.

  Pain.

  Pain.

  “…Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen.” I heard Cally’s steady but frightened voice calling out.

  With each number she recited, focused pressure drove into the center of my chest, released, and then instantly repeated. I felt something tightly pinching my nose and something pressed against my mouth. Hot air rushed down my throat, and I was suddenly overcome by a need to cough. I tried, or at least I thought I did, but nothing happened.

  I spasmed suddenly and felt my body jerk as I sputtered and gagged. With a heavy wheeze, I drew in a deep breath.

  Whatever it was that was trying to smother me let go of my nose and moved quickly away.

  I tried to cough again and this time I succeeded.

  Then the cough came hard. I felt my shoulders lift from the floor as I sputtered and hacked.

  The next breath was easier.

  “He’s breathing.” This time it was Felicity, relief in her tenor.

  Soft fingers pressed against my neck, and I heard Cally announce, “He’s got a strong pulse.”

  The clamor of hurried footsteps met my ears, reverberating through the hardwood floor before halting with a heavy thump.

  “An ambulance is on the way.” RJ’s frantic tone now entered the mix of voices.

  “Rowan?” A handed patted my cheek lightly as Felicity called my name. “Rowan?”

  The back of my neck was on fire, and it felt as though it was creased with an open, festering wound. My head was already starting to throb, and I involuntarily let out a low moan.

  There was a frightening image dancing around inside my skull, insisting that I share it. My stomach soured at the very thought of trying to describe the horrific tableau. I wanted nothing more than to chase the vision from my mind and slam the door behind it, but a tickle in the back of my skull said no.

  The vision was beginning to fade, and I tried desperately to let it. The tickle objected. It was important even if I didn’t want to think so. I had to tell someone before it was lost forever.

  “Rowan?” Felicity called again.

  “No head,” I heard myself whisper.

  “What?” she asked.

  I felt the warmth of her face near mine as she bent closer.

  “No head,” I repeated as my short brush with consciousness rushed toward its end. “Brittany. No head.”

  *****

  “His vitals are fine. He’s coherent; he knows his name, day of the week, the year, who the President is…” the paramedic was telling my wife, letting her voice trail off as the list grew. “I’m sorry, but there’s not much we can do if he refuses to go with us.”

  Her partner was already loading equipment back into the life support vehicle, which was still lighting up our front yard with its wildly flickering light bar. I hadn’t checked, but I was sure that neighbors were standing on porches and peering out from behind their drapes at the commotion surrounding the ‘Witch house’. This wasn’t the first time we’d provided a light show, and unfortunately, it probably wasn’t going to be the last.

  As was procedure, a police officer from the local municipality had responded along with the paramedics. He had stepped out onto the front porch himself, and I could see him through the glass of the storm door as he was speaking into his radio.

  In sharp contrast to the activity in the immediate vicinity, Ben was still sprawled on the sofa, unconscious and oblivious to everything.

&nb
sp; Luckily enough, the afghan Cally had laid over him earlier was still in place, hiding his sidearm and badge, so we didn’t have to explain to one cop why another cop was passed out in our living room. Although, there had been some question as to why he was sleeping through the ruckus. We had simply explained it away as us not letting a friend drive drunk, and fortunately, that had been satisfactory.

  “But, his heart stopped,” Felicity insisted, still trying to convince the paramedic to cart me off to the hospital.

  The young woman shrugged and shook her head apologetically. “I’m sorry, ma’am. I’ve got no proof of that. His EKG looks perfectly normal.”

  “Felicity…” I started.

  “Your heart DID stop, Rowan,” Cally pitched her offering into the fray, cutting me off.

  I shot her a glance and frowned. I knew she was just being concerned, but at the moment, I needed someone on my side not Felicity’s. Fortunately, RJ was staying out of the way in the kitchen with the twins, Shari and Jennifer, who had arrived with Felicity’s Jeep somewhere in the middle of all this. I’m sure they were hearing the whole story from beginning to end.

  Still, if there was a silver lining to the situation at all, at least the seizures were happening to me again instead of Felicity. For that, I was thankful. It also didn’t hurt that I was now back on the side of the fence I was used to occupying. For all its pressures and pitfalls, it was still a path I had grown accustomed to walking.

  “Look, Felicity, I…” I continued.

  “What if I tell you to take him?” Agent Mandalay took her turn at interrupting even though her question was directed at the paramedic. She had already flashed her badge and federal ID when she arrived on the scene moments behind the paramedics, so it was no secret that she was an FBI special agent.

  “Is he in your custody?” she asked.

  “He can be if that’s what it takes,” Constance replied.

  “Constance!” I appealed again, louder this time. “Felicity! Both of you. All of you. Listen to me. I’m fine.”

  She turned to face me and shook her head as she shot me a concerned look. “Rowan, what I walked into here a few minutes ago doesn’t exactly inspire me to believe that.”