All Acts Of Pleasure: A Rowan Gant Investigation (36 page)

I listened, waiting for the telltale click of
the hammer on the revolver but none came. Finally, after a
frightful pause, I heard a soft meow. Slowly rolling to the side
and looking up, I saw Emily, our calico, perched on the edge of the
island and looking down at me with feline curiosity in her
expressive face. I focused my gaze on the door and saw nothing but
darkness.

Under any other circumstances, I would have
laughed at my own jumpiness. Right now, however, I didn’t find it
amusing.

I dragged myself up from the floor and fished
the sport bottle back out of the sink and started the process of
filling it once again. This time, I managed to get it to
three-quarters full, which is what I was after. Shutting off the
water, I shuffled quickly over to the stove and grabbed the
saltshaker. I gave the lid a twist then dumped the contents into
the sport bottle. Replacing the top on the drink container, I made
sure the spout was closed and began shaking it as I slowly made my
way back toward the doorway to the dining room.

It was now just after four a.m., and she
still hadn’t come after me which could only mean she was waiting
for me to come to her. As much as I didn’t want to do it, I was
going to oblige. It just wasn’t going to be on her terms, or so I
hoped.

Still remaining cautious, I peeked carefully
around the corner and saw nothing but dimness and furniture. I
slipped quickly around the doorframe and kept close to the wall,
skirting around the buffet and inching up to the archway that led
into the living room. Another quick glance around the wall, and I
stepped through and started into the hallway.

My heart was already climbing back up the
scale, adding beats with each passing second. I was straining to
listen for any noise out of the ordinary but still heard none. I
took a pair of steps and waited then advanced once again, creeping
slowly up to the bedroom door. Stepping quickly past it, I took up
a station against the wall next to it. I was positioned such that
if she opened the door, I would be in her blind spot.

I waited for what seemed like several
minutes, desperately trying to work up the courage to do something
other than stand here in the shadows. I still hadn’t heard a thing,
and I was sure that another several minutes had passed by now.
Taking in a deep breath, I forced myself to reach to the side and
grasp the door latch with my left hand. Pressing it down slowly, I
heard the gentle click and then pushed the door open before quickly
yanking my hand back.

Light from the bedroom flooded into the hall,
and I continued standing there, cocked and ready to jump while I
allowed my eyes to readjust to the new influx of luminance. Letting
out a quiet sigh, I dropped my head down and swallowed hard. I
blinked as I grew accustomed to the oblique shaft of light spilling
from the opening, and now, with my gaze angled downward, for the
first time realized that I was stark naked. Yet another ridiculous
moment that was less than amusing to me under the
circumstances.

After several heartbeats with nothing
happening, I shrugged into my thin cloak of bravado.

“Miranda?” I called out.

I waited for several seconds and heard
nothing.

“Miranda?” I called louder.

Now, my ears picked up a thin whimper, but it
sounded nothing like the distorted whines of pleasure I had heard
from my wife earlier. On the heels of the whimper came a soft
sob.

“Felicity?” I called out.

My ears were met only with a renewed
combination of the whimper and sob.

Part of my brain kept telling me that
this could very well be a trap. That I was going to step out from
the wall, round the corner, and catch a very fast moving hunk of
lead right about chest level. Another part, however, told me that
the
Lwa
was gone and that
Felicity needed me. As the two sides argued, I flashed on the fact
that while my headache was still intact it was nowhere near what it
had been earlier.

I decided to believe the hunk of grey matter
that kept saying it was Felicity who was waiting for me, and not
Miranda. Still, I slowly and cautiously peeked in around the
doorframe before fully coming out of my hiding space.

“Felicity?” I called once again as I
carefully stepped into the room.

A harder sob met my ears, followed by a
blubbered pair of syllables that sounded remotely like my name.

The twist of sheets were still lying on the
floor and were streaked with blood from my hands where I had fought
to disentangle myself. There was a smear or two marring the sheets
that remained on the bed as well. The cuffs were still dangling
from the bedposts by their straps, and while my uncorrected vision
couldn’t be sure, I was betting some of my skin was still attached
to them.

I advanced farther into the room and worked
slowly around the obstacles on the floor. After a few steps, I
finally caught a glimpse of fiery auburn hair. The back of the top
of my wife’s head was barely peeking over the footboard of the bed.
Still cautious, I moved slowly toward her until I could see fully
over the edge of the blonde wood.

There she was, huddled on the floor, hugging
her knees to her chest and rocking as she cried. In one hand was
the framed picture that had been sitting on the headboard, the very
photo that several days before had sent me waxing nostalgic about
our trust in one another.

I knelt next to her and gently placed my hand
on her shoulder as I softly called her name.

She started, looking up at me as if she
hadn’t realized I was there until just now. Her jade green eyes
welled with even more tears while she quietly looked at my face and
then my blistered chest.

“Oh Gods…” she whimpered, her voice thick
with her Celtic lilt. It was a welcome sound.

“Shhhhh,” I soothed.

“I didn’t know…” she blubbered as the tears
streamed down her face. “I saw the blood…I didn’t know…I can’t
remember…”

“It’s okay…” I whispered.

She reached out with a trembling hand and
gingerly touched my chest near the charred flesh and growing
blisters. I winced as her fingers brushed the area.

“God…” she mewled. “Did…Did I do that to
you?”

“No,” I reassured her, shaking my head.
“Miranda did.”

“She was in me, wasn’t she?” she asked.

I didn’t answer.

She started shaking again as my silence
filled in the blank.

I looked down and remembered the sport bottle
in my hand. I pondered it for a moment then handed it to my sobbing
wife.

“Here,” I said. “Take a drink of this.”

As she accepted the bottle she managed to
choke out, “What is it?”

“Just humor me,” I replied.

She fingered the spout, unable to open it
with her shaking hands. I popped it up for her then gently guided
her hands, supporting the bottle as she placed it to her lips and
took a swig. I gave it a light squeeze, and she swallowed a
mouthful quickly, before sputtering and pushing it away. It didn’t
matter though; one drink was enough.

“Salt water?” she asked between choked
sobs.

“Yeah. Sorry. I just want to make sure you
stay Felicity for a while.”

Thursday, November 24

Thanksgiving Day

9:53 A.M.

Saint Louis, Missouri

I looked at my watch and glared, giving the
digits on its face an impatient scowl before twisting my wrist back
down and sliding my hand into my coat pocket.

For lack of anything better to do, I
pulled it back out and stuck the fresh cigarette it now held
between my lips. Digging out my lighter, I lit it and took a deep
drag. I had commandeered the pack of smokes from the nightstand in
our bedroom. They were the ones that Felicity—or should I
say
Miranda
—was smoking only a
few hours ago. Where my wife had come up with them, I wasn’t sure.
I suppose prior to trussing me up in my sleep, she could have made
a run to the local quick-shop. She didn’t remember, and I didn’t
press the point. It was obvious at first glance that emotionally
she didn’t need to be badgered about anything, much less such a
trivial fact; and in truth, it wasn’t really all that
important.

Besides, just as I’d had the craving the day
she was led out of the house in handcuffs, I had it again now. I’m
sure I should have just ignored it, but anxiety isn’t always very
tolerant of getting the cold shoulder, and they were right there,
so I gave in. Right now I needed something to calm my nerves, and
it was too early in the day for me to start downing Scotch. This
was my chosen alternative. If it ended up blossoming into a
full-time habit, I’d just deal with it and quit later. It wouldn’t
be the first time the horrors of an investigation had forced me
down this road.

I turned and looked out from the balcony of
the office building. The sun was arcing along the clear, southern
sky, but it was still cold. I vaguely recalled hearing the weather
blurb on the radio saying something about the high for the day
possibly making it into the upper forties. It definitely wasn’t
there just yet.

I hung my head as I leaned against the
railing and exhaled a combination of smoke and steam then glanced
at my watch again. The numbers hadn’t really changed significantly,
but then I hadn’t given them much of a chance to do so. Hearing a
noise, I cast a quick glance behind me, looking toward the door to
see if anyone had come out here to the building’s smoking lounge.
Given that it was Thanksgiving Day and the place was deserted, it
would have to be either Felicity or Helen, as they were the only
other people here.

Helen had actually offered to come to our
house when I called her, but even we weren’t there. The only way I
had been able to calm my wife was to remove her from the “scene of
the crime,” which she had all but begged me to do. As soon as she
had changed and I had thrown on some clothes myself, I made it
happen. We had been sitting in an all-night diner, drinking coffee
and quietly staring at one another when Felicity finally took me up
on my repeated offer to call Helen. As usual, she was more than
accommodating. We met here on the parking lot of the building a
short time later—all three of us looking as though we could use
several more hours sleep.

Of course, that was a while ago. The two of
them had now been sequestered in Helen’s office for over an hour,
and that wasn’t even counting the sixty minutes or so spent prior
to me being ejected from the impromptu emergency session.

It wasn’t that I had caused a problem. In
fact, I’d actually kept my mouth shut for a change. Felicity and
Helen both just felt there were some things that needed discussing
without my presence. I can’t say that I was happy about it, but I
kept my objections to myself and complied anyway because if it was
going to help my wife, then I was all for it.

I started to turn my wrist and glance at the
timepiece again then caught myself. The rampant impatience was only
serving to fuel my anxiety, and looking at my watch every thirty
seconds was more than just a symptom. It was aggravating the
situation. I desperately needed to get a handle on it before I let
it tear me any further apart than it already had. I turned and
leaned back against the rail, shrugging my coat around me in
response to a light breeze, then immediately winced. I leaned back
forward then with extra care reached inside the folds and gingerly
adjusted my shirt where it was rubbing against the blisters on my
chest. After taking another long drag on the cigarette, I let out a
heavy sigh and tried to think about something else.

The first thought that came to mind was the
dogs.

To my relief I had found them, alive and
well, in the garage without so much as a scratch. They were
nonplussed and maybe a bit chilled, but fine. They did, however,
seem happy to be released from their temporary prison.

“There,” I told myself aloud. “Happy ending,
next subject.”

Unfortunately, thinking about the canines
just led me around in a big circle. The next subject simply turned
into a continuation of the original that I had been trying
fruitlessly to avoid.

I simply couldn’t help but think about the
fact that, in a sense, where I found the dogs told me something
about Miranda. While control and dominance were the things she
relished holding over her victims, there was obviously a thread of
compassion somewhere within. She wanted the dogs out of the way, so
she could proceed unhindered, but she hadn’t physically harmed
them. She was perfectly happy to do unspeakable things to a human
male, but a different type of animal such as a dog or cat was
apparently safe.

Felicity, on the other hand, hadn’t
seemed to fare quite as well as the canines. Physically she was
fine, but emotionally she was a shattered mess. Apparently,
the
Lwa
had exited rather
quickly after I had made it out of the room, which explained why
she hadn’t chased me as I expected she would.

As it was, however, the only thing my
wife truly remembered was going to bed the night before. After that
she professed a complete blank until she found herself standing in
our bedroom, decked out in one of her old dominatrix ensembles,
feeling extremely disoriented, and highly aroused. I had no reason
to doubt the truth of her story. That was pretty much the hallmark
of a
Lwa
—pop in, pop out,
leave ‘em bewildered.

Of course, that was only the beginning of her
mental collapse. Like anyone else would have, she had looked about
the room trying to get her bearings as she fought off the confusion
and began to realize where she was. While in this case the
surroundings were familiar, what first met her eyes, unfortunately,
were the remnants of the scene that had been playing out moments
before. The bigger problem was that said tableau included my blood
on the twisted sheets and me nowhere in sight. She was completely
unaware of how the blood had come to be there, but considering what
she had done during the last possession and how she now found
herself attired, she immediately feared the worst.