The End Of Desire: A Rowan Gant Investigation (37 page)

Skipping the last two stairs, I leapt from
the lower landing, following the direction of the voices to the
left. When I came around the corner, I found Ben, Constance, and
another FBI agent standing a few feet away from the entrance to my
wife’s office.

“Where’s Felicity?!” I demanded. “Is she
okay?”

“She’s fine, Row,” Ben said as he turned
toward me. “Physically, anyway.”

“What do you mean? Where is she?”

He sidestepped a bit and turned back toward
the office. There, just outside the entrance was one of the
vertical, eight-by-eight support beams which were spaced throughout
the basement. Sitting cross-legged on the floor at its footing,
with her chin resting against her chest, was my wife. Her arms were
wrapped around the solid post and a pair of handcuffs was securely
locked about her wrists, holding her in place. The wood of the
upright was gouged and scraped where the connecting chain between
the cuffs had been raked against it. Though I was still several
feet away, I could see welts, and even some trickles of blood,
where she had been struggling against the restraints.

“Felicity…” I breathed as I started toward
her.

Ben grasped my shoulder and held me back. It
was only then I noticed he had one hand wrapped in a washcloth from
our nearby laundry room, and a bright splotch of red was soaking
through it.

“Why haven’t you taken those off her?!” I
shouted.

“Because, it might not be a good idea just
yet,” Constance replied.

“What?…” I stammered. “What’s going on?”

“You’re gonna wanna keep some distance for a
bit,” Ben replied, holding up his wounded hand.

“What happened?”

He cocked his head toward Felicity.

“What? Why?” I stammered, confusion rimming
my words. Jumbles of thoughts were bouncing around my head in
competition with the odd feelings that were creeping in from
elsewhere. I knew deep down the meaning behind the odd rush of
pleasure that was fighting to overtake me, but I didn’t want to
admit it. I glanced around as I chose to let the puzzlement
continue its reign over my grey matter instead. Finally I asked,
“Where’s Annalise?”

“She ain’t here, White Man,” Ben told me.
“Never was.”

“Then what’s going on?” I demanded.

“Ask her,” he replied, nodding again toward
my wife.

She slowly turned her face up and stared at
me with a wicked grin stretched across her lips. A smear of blood
was streaked from the corner of her mouth and down across her chin.
I knew without hesitation that it wasn’t her own.

She casually tossed her head, flipping her
hair back over her shoulder in the process, then settled her gaze
back on me. After a moment she said, “Hello, little man. Have you
missed me?”

Her tone held the same Southern affectation
as the voice with which my friend had carried on the conversation
via the stairwell. Up close, however, the ethereal hollowness of it
resonated through to my very core. I had no idea if anyone besides
me could detect the ghostly echo, but that didn’t really matter. As
long as I could hear it, I knew exactly who belonged to the
words.

“Miranda,” I said.

“You remember,” she replied.

“You’re hard to forget.”

“Of course I am.”

I glanced over at the FBI agent who was
standing with Constance. While I was sure there had been some
manner of briefing done, I doubted it came with an instant
comprehension of the paranormal, especially as it pertained here.
Constance caught my gaze and turned to the agent.

“Reynolds,” she said. “Why don’t you go let
everyone know we’re secure. And, have Cobb cancel the HRT.”

“Yeah, okay,” he replied, casting a baffled
look toward Felicity then me before going.

Once I heard his footsteps receding up the
stairs, I turned back to my wife and stated in a flat tone, “You
aren’t welcome here, Miranda.”

“Of course I am. I was invited.”

“Bullshit.”

“You really should not be so rude.”

“Coming from you that means pretty much
nothing.”

She smiled. “Come now. Is that really a
proper way to express your love for me?”

“Leave now, or I’ll make you leave.”

“I was invited,” she told me again.

“By who?”

She made a show of visually inspecting
herself for a moment before saying, “Your wife, of course.”

“I know better than that.”

“Do you?”

“Yes.”

“Perhaps you only think you do.”

“Then why was Felicity crying out for
help?”

“Giving in to one’s desires can be
disconcerting at first. But, she will get used to it.”

“I don’t think so.”

“She will. Annalise did.”

“We both know you’re lying. Felicity never
invited you here. You invited yourself.”

She shrugged. “Does it really matter? She is
mine now.”

“Perhaps you only think she is.”

She let out a small laugh that sent icy
fingers along my spine. “You are very quick, little man.
Touché.”

“What did you do with the cloves and the
blood, Miranda?”

“Is it not obvious?”

“The effects, yes. But, what did you do?”

“It is a secret.”

“What’s wrong? Are you afraid I might be able
to work stronger magick than you?”

“No.”

“Then why not just tell me?”

“I have a better idea. Maybe you should beg
me to tell you.”

“That’s not going to happen.”

“Even to save your wife?”

“You’ll have to excuse me, but I don’t trust
you.”

“Quick and bright. No wonder you love
me.”

“This game is over. It’s time for you to
leave. I’m not going to tell you again.”

“Not just yet.”

I didn’t respond. Instead I simply turned and
started toward the stairs.

Ben reached out and grabbed my arm. “Wher’re
ya’ goin’?”

I shot a glance back at Felicity then turned
to face him. “I’m sure our guest is thirsty,” I said. “I thought
I’d go get her a big glass of salt water so she can be on her way.
You’d like that, right, Miranda?”

“You do not… want… to do… that,” she
interjected with an odd faltering in her voice.

The hesitation seemed uncharacteristic
based on my previous encounters with this
Lwa
, but I was certainly no expert in the field,
so I wasn’t sure what to make of it. For all I knew, it was some
sort of trick.

I snapped back at her, “Then leave and I
won’t have to.”

“I… I am…” she started, the hesitation
growing worse. “I am not… going… to do… that… just yet.”

She appeared to be struggling with something
unseen. Not just the words but also something on the order of an
outside influence. Her expression changed between each syllable,
and her eyes would go from a cold stare to a vacant wandering each
time. I started to wonder if my wife was fighting back. I could
only hope that she was.

“Then you don’t leave me any choice,” I
said.

I wasn’t going to take any chances. Whether
Felicity was locked in some manner of ethereal tug of war or not,
she needed help. I started toward the stairs again.

“It… will not…” she said then suddenly
halted.

“What? Won’t work?” I called back to her. “It
did before, and I’m betting it will again.”

I hadn’t gone any more than five paces when a
pitiful sob hit my ears. I turned back out of a confused sense of
curiosity and saw tears streaming down my wife’s cheeks.

“I’m not playing this game, Miranda,” I spat
before turning and starting away once more just for good measure.
As I said, I didn’t trust her.

“Rowan… Help me…” she wailed.

This time I stopped dead in my tracks.
The voice calling my name held every bit of the Celtic lilt that
identified Felicity and not even the barest hint of the Southern
accent so prevalent in the
Lwa’s
manifestation.

“Row?” Ben breathed, shifting his gaze back
and forth between the two of us.

I turned and stepped back toward her.
“Felicity?”

“Help me…” she moaned, leaning her body
against the vertical support as if she was completely spent.

“Give me the key,” I said to Ben.

“What?”

“Give me the goddamned key to the handcuffs!”
I demanded again.

He dug in his pocket and fished out a key
ring then shuffled through it before handing it to me with one
pinched between his fingers. “Try this one. Those aren’t our cuffs
so I dunno if it’ll fit.”

“You didn’t cuff her?” I asked, taking the
keys and starting toward Felicity.

“She was like that when I got down here,
Row,” he replied then asked, “Are you sure about this?”

“I don’t know if I’m sure about anything
anymore, Ben,” I said.

I knelt next to my wife and slipped the key
into one of the handcuffs. From this angle, I could see in through
the door to her office, and I noticed a purple overnight bag
sitting on her desk. It was the same one that had once been seized
as evidence when she had been charged with Annalise’s crimes,
simply because it was a repository of Felicity’s “toys” from when
she had been directly involved in the BDSM community well before we
had ever met. I hadn’t seen it since the last time Miranda had made
her presence known through my wife. Obviously, she had tucked it
away down here.

Things began to gel inside my pounding skull.
One of the last times a possession had occurred, Felicity had tried
to kill me and had almost succeeded. She must have sensed this one
coming on and decided to make sure that couldn’t happen again.

I twisted the key and it unlatched the
restraint. I carefully opened it and slipped the metal circlet from
my wife’s bruised and scraped wrist and then undid the other.
Sitting down on the floor, I gathered her up into my arms and held
her.

After a moment of stroking her hair as I
slowly rocked, I looked up at Ben and Constance and asked, “Would
one of you please go get me a glass of salt water before that bitch
comes back?”

“I’ll get it,” Constance offered as she
turned toward the stairwell.

“Aspirin, too,” I added. “Just bring the
whole damn bottle.”

“R
owan, I’m fine,”
Felicity stressed for the third time as she set about rearranging a
stack of clothes she had just placed into her overnight
bag.

On the surface, the habitual manner in which
she placed, removed, and then replaced items into the bag in a bid
to defy the laws of physics would normally lead me to believe her
comment was true. But, the image of her tear-streaked face was
still playing back inside my head, with her desperately pleading
whimper as the background score. If I wasn’t over it yet, I didn’t
know how she possibly could be.

“Fine?” I replied. “Funny, you weren’t fine
an hour ago.”

“Of course I wasn’t,” she countered without
looking up. “But, like you said, that was an hour ago. Time heals,
doesn’t it then?”

Her voice was confident, but her normal
Celtic lilt had given way to a much heavier brogue, which wasn’t at
all surprising. She had to be just as exhausted as the rest of us,
probably more so, and that’s when her accent was at its
thickest.

“I think they were talking about a little
more time than an hour.”

“I’m a fast healer.”

“Uh-huh… Sure… You know, the last time this
happened you checked yourself into a psych ward, or have you
forgotten that?”

“The last time this happened I was
scared.”

“You seemed pretty damn scared to me a little
while ago.”

“I was,” she said with a curt nod. “But, now
I’m not. Now I’m just pissed off.”

I knew she wasn’t just saying that for
effect. She meant it. Any sense of fragility that had been coming
from my wife in the past weeks was completely gone, replaced in
total by a mix of anger and determination. This new emotion burned
so brightly behind her eyes that it defied any description I could
muster. In a very real sense, her present attitude frightened me
almost as much as everything else that had happened.

“Look,” I said. “I’ll admit that you’re
probably the strongest person I know, but you have limits. We all
do. After everything that’s gone on in the past twenty-four hours,
not to mention the past month, I find it really hard to believe
that you’re suddenly okay.”

“Well, I am.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Is that so? Welcome to my world.”

“Come again?”

She stopped packing for a moment and gave me
a serious stare. “Are you telling me this doesn’t sound at all
familiar to you, then?”

“Should it?”

“Aye.” She nodded. “I’m not saying anything
to you now that you haven’t said to me yourself time and again. For
the record, I never believe you either.”

“That’s different.”

“How?”

“It just is.”

Her eyes flashed as she opened her mouth to
fire off a retort; but before any words came out, she closed it
again and simply stared at me. A few seconds later her expression
softened, and she slowly sat down on the edge of the bed and
sighed.

“We can’t keep having this argument, you
know,” she told me.

I let out a heavy breath of my own. “Yeah… I
guess we’ve covered this ground before, haven’t we?”

“We’ve worn it barren,” she replied with a
flat huff.

“I guess we have… And, it doesn’t get us
anywhere, does it?”

“Of course not. We’re both too stubborn.”

“Maybe so,” I agreed. “But, I still think you
have me beat in that department.”

“Aye. It’s a family trait.”

“So I’ve noticed,” I said with a halfhearted
grin. I paused then added, “I’m just worried about you, honey. This
has gotten to be too much… For either of us.”