Crone's Moon: A Rowan Gant Investigation (31 page)

“Boxers or briefs?”

“None of your business.”

“So, I guess your wife did all the shopping
for you?” Mandalay contended.

“Pretty much, yeah,” he agreed.

“Yeah, well you’ve been on your own for a
while now, and you said your divorce is going to be final in a
couple of months.”

“Yeah, so?”

“Yeah, so you’d better learn to shop. Either
that, or get yourself a girlfriend who wants to do it for you.”

“You volunteerin’?”

“Yeah, right,” Mandalay replied, actually
laughing as she made the sarcastic remark. “In your dreams,
Storm.”

“Maybe,” he casually snipped. “But I’m pretty
sure the woman in my dreams is taller than you.”

I glanced over at Felicity and saw that she
seemed to be handling the conversation well, considering. There was
a time when I personally would have been almost livid about the
insensitivity of their exchange in light of what was happening. To
be honest, it still bothered me a bit, but to a large extent I had
grown used to this sort of thing. I knew that the jokes and
nonchalant conversations were just a defense mechanism that most
anyone in their profession quickly developed. It was either that or
the job would eat them alive, and I certainly couldn’t fault them
their sanity. I suppose in a way I was a bit jealous that I
couldn’t turn off the horror and hide behind the mundane as easily
as they.

“I’m betting she has a set of thirty-eight
double-D’s too,” Mandalay baited my friend with a note of
disdain.

“Nope.”

“Excuse me,” she chided. “Forty-fours
then.”

“Nope. Not really all about the boobs,” he
replied with a shake of his head. “I’m more of a leg guy.”

Constance grew quiet for a split second. The
pause would have been almost imperceptible except that time seemed
to be expanding all around me. When she spoke again, I could have
sworn I picked up a hint of surprise in her voice, but then, the
growing roar in my ears was making everything sound odd.

“Really?” she said, voice phasing through a
shallow echo.

“Yeah, really.” Ben’s languid words flowed in
behind hers.

I was just getting ready to call out to
everyone that something was wrong when the thrum ended with an
unceremonious crash, and the world around me phased into solid
reality. I caught myself as I stumbled

“Row,” Felicity asked, taking hold of my arm.
“Are you okay?”

Ben and Constance stopped dead in their
tracks and turned the moment she asked the question.

“Yeah,” I replied, nodding. “Must be some
residual dizziness or something from the seizure earlier.”

“You sure, white man?” Ben asked.

“I think so.”

“That’s not what I asked you,” he
replied.

“Okay, yeah, I’m fine.”

“Rowan…” Felicity began.

“Really,” I told her. “Whatever it was, it’s
over now. I’m fine.”

Ben looked me over as if he were sizing up a
suspect, then muttered, “Okay.”

My friend turned and started walking again.
We all fell in step with him.

“So, I take it Albright is still running the
investigation?” Constance asked, changing the subject.

“Yeah,” Ben nodded. “You don’t think she’d
miss a chance to score points with the mayor, do ya’?”

“It figures,” Constance replied. “But I was
hoping maybe she’d handed it off to an underling by now.”

“She did,” he said. “While it was cold, but
she took it back before the poor bastard had a chance to finish his
first cup of coffee this mornin’. Now she’s right back in the
fuckin’ limelight.”

“Okay, so what if we hit on something here?
How are you going to get it past her?”

“I was hopin’ you’d tell me,” he said.

“Me?” she asked. “I’m not assigned to this
anymore.”

“Yeah, well you’re one up on me. I’m flat out
banned from it.”

“So what does that have to do with me?”

“Your badge is fancier than mine.”

“Dammit, Storm,” she admonished. “You know if
you keep butting heads with Albright, you’re not going to have a
badge at all.”

“Yeah, I know. That’s why you’re here.”

“Well I don’t know that there’s going to be
anything I can do,” Constance offered.

Ben turned to face her and said, “Well, it’s
either that or we find the fucker and I just cap ‘im myself.”

“I’m not listening,” she replied without
missing a beat.

“Yeah, well,” he said. “This has gotta
stop.”

“I agree with you,” she told him. “But
turning into a vigilante is not the way to do it.”

“Sometimes I wonder,” my friend mumbled.

We came to a halt as a group, standing to one
side of the traffic lane behind a row of cars. Twenty feet to our
left was the concrete base of the light standard.

“I’m still not listening,” Mandalay told him
again.

“Good.”

Ben looked across the parking lot, twisting
in place as he scanned the area, an intense frown digging a deep
furrow into his face.

“Some rent-a-cop is probably watchin’ us on
the camera right now,” he finally said while looking over his
shoulder.

“More than likely,” I heard Constance reply,
her voice starting off at a normal tone then suddenly stretching
into a stream of Doppler distorted syllables.

It was happening again. A sharp pain sliced
through my ribcage before I could even open my mouth, and I felt my
chest instantly tighten. Still, I tried to speak but found that I
had no breath.

A choppy drone that vaguely resembled Ben’s
voice fell into the humming void behind Mandalay’s. “Guess you
better do whatever you’re gonna do before security shows up. Okay,
Row?”

The parking lot was starting to spin away,
whirlpooling from my sight in a psychedelic swirl, like multiple
colors of paint pouring down a drain. My heart was hammering in my
chest, and suddenly nothing made sense to me any longer.

I didn’t know where I was.

I didn’t know who I was.

I didn’t know what I was.

But, for some strange reason, I did know I
was in trouble when I heard a vaguely familiar voice. It was loud;
distinctly feminine, possessed of an Irish lilt, and unmistakably
anguished as it echoed in my ears, “Ground! Dammit Rowan!
GROUND!”

S
omething is biting into my side.

Pinching flesh.

Tearing skin.

Freezing.

Burning.

I’m not sure which.

All I know is that it hurts.

I cannot breathe.

I want to breathe, but nothing seems to
work.

I think my brain is saying to breathe, but
maybe it isn’t.

My chest is tight, and I can feel myself
shaking.

Or at least I think I can.

I just don’t know anymore.

Nothing is making sense.

Nothing is certain except the pain.

Nothing at all.

Nothing…

I returned to the here and now in a single,
horrendously painful, fraction of a second. The only warning that I
was about to cross the veil yet again was the sudden feeling that I
was being jerked backward, as if by a hand hooked into my collar.
After that, it was all over. An entirely new kind of pain tore
through my body as I gasped for air. I felt for all the world as if
I had just slammed face first into a concrete wall.

My eyes snapped open and an unfocused mottle
of contrasty greys took over my field of vision. My ears were
filled with the sound of a car alarm blaring, and a ball of agony
throbbed inside my head, keeping perfect time with it.

My sight faded quickly in, returning to
something near normal, even if it was still no more than a black
and white rendition of reality. My head was hanging forward, and I
noticed that I was leaning against something. At first glance, it
looked like the back of a black sedan, but of course, color wasn’t
something I could readily identify at the moment. Still, unless I
missed my guess, the car was ground zero for the obnoxious honking
and warbling.

“Rowan!” Ben’s voice wove its way through the
raucous noise, filtering into my ears. “Rowan! Breathe!”

I looked up and blinked. It took a moment for
me to realize I was staring into his face as he was steadying me. I
fought to focus on him as light suddenly bloomed around me in a
bright flash, chasing the shadows in a chaotic game of tag. Color
began seeping into my world as if being slowly dialed in with a
control knob.

I felt a hot breath suddenly explode from my
lungs, and I coughed as I sucked in the cool, autumn air.

“Storm!” Agent Mandalay’s voice threaded
through the racket with more than a hint of urgency.

Out of reflex, I sent my eyes searching for
the source of the cry. Ben maintained his grip on me but twisted
around to look as well. As I rolled my head to the side and glanced
past him, I caught a glimpse of Constance struggling to hold my
wife’s violently shaking form.

The memory of her first experience with such
ethereal channeling was still fresh enough for me to get a hollow
feeling in the pit of my stomach just at the sight of her seizing.
Lucidity rushed in where once there was confusion, and the words
“Dammit Rowan! Ground!” reverberated inside my skull. I instantly
realized what had happened. Felicity, in an attempt to ground me,
had taken my place on the other side.

I didn’t know how far I had gone, but I did
remember that the hold on me had been one of the strongest I had
ever felt. Tearing me away from it meant she had been left with no
choice but to release her own ground in this plane; and, because of
that, now it was she who was grappling with the horrors on the
opposite side of the dark threshold.

I couldn’t remember exactly what had been
happening to me before I was wrenched away, but I knew it wasn’t
good. What I did recall was that at the very least, I was in
horrific pain, and at the very worst, I was a scant few steps from
taking up permanent residence in the domain of the dead.

In either case, I simply wasn’t going to
allow it to continue happening to her.

I heard myself screaming ‘NO’ as I broke away
from Ben and threw myself toward my now posturing wife. I managed
to sidestep my friend before he even realized what was happening,
and a few steps later, I was hooking my arms around Felicity,
taking the brunt of her weight from Agent Mandalay as she continued
to shudder and jerk. I began settling downward as I cradled her,
kneeling onto the asphalt parking lot.

“Dammit, Cerridwen, you bitch!” I said aloud,
almost yelling; rancor was thick in my voice. “Leave her alone! Do
you hear me?! Leave… Her… Alone!”

Never, and I do mean never, in my history as
a practicing Witch, have I ever had a spell work in full the very
moment it was cast. Especially when it was cast as a demand and not
a request. And, even more importantly, when I didn’t even realize I
was casting one to begin with.

Of course, strong emotion is the most
powerful energy one can muster, and the words themselves are
nothing more than a vehicle for that energy. Sometimes, I suppose
being painfully direct about what you want is the only way to
communicate with The Ancients.

Still, as much as I would like to take credit
for what transpired the moment I recited the angry demand, I am
fairly certain my position with the Gods is not one of absolute
favor. If it was, I’m sure I wouldn’t be doomed to this particular
destiny. Therefore, any demand I would make would be certain to
fall on deaf ears, and I fully suspect this end result was mere
coincidence.

However, you couldn’t convince Ben Storm that
it was anything short of magick.

Even as the last syllable was leaving my
mouth, Felicity ceased her violent shaking and fell limp in my
arms. She gasped once, her chest rose as she drew in a deep measure
of fresh air, and then she began to breathe normally. She was
unconscious, but that was probably for the best at the moment.

Strobe-like amber luminescence was now
flickering across us in the pre-dusk dimness of the overcast
afternoon. I felt a presence beside me and looked up to see Ben’s
incredulous face staring back down at us as he leaned forward.

“Damn, white man, I dunno who the hell Kara
is,” he said, just loud enough for me to hear. “But I think she’s
afraid of ya’.”

“Special Agent Mandalay, Federal Bureau of
Investigation.” Off to my left, I heard Constance almost yelling
the formality, and I looked over to see her face to face with a
mall security guard. She had her badge case open and displayed in
her hand, and the older man was giving it a close look.

I hadn’t even noticed the truck pull up, but
considering that the alarm on the car had yet to reset itself, I
shouldn’t have been surprised that I hadn’t heard it. The security
vehicle was equipped with a flashing light bar, so that explained
the yellowish disco lighting that had suddenly appeared.

I looked around and noticed a small crowd of
shoppers had gathered several yards away. There was plenty of the
standard pointing, gawking, and leaning close to one another in
order to compare notes as they speculated about the scene. I didn’t
have to hear them to know what they were saying. I’d stared back
into crowds like this before. It was all just a part of the human
dynamic, and where there was public strife there would be onlookers
with off-base opinions.

“Seizure,” Constance was shouting to the
security guard. “Fell against the car…”

The last two words of her sentence belted out
across the parking lot, piercing the suddenly low-level ambient
noise as the car alarm reset with a clipped burp of the horn and
settled into silence.

“Fell against the car and set off the alarm,”
she continued in a normal tone.

“She an epileptic?” he asked.