Never Burn A Witch: A Rowan Gant Investigation (26 page)

“I know you do, honey,” I soothed as I hung
up my coat then pressed the closet door shut. “Austin and Shamus
knew I was leaving. They were supposed to let you know what was
up.”

I still wasn’t entirely clear on what she was
driving at, or just as important, why she was sitting in the dark,
bombed out of her gourd. Felicity wasn’t really much of a drinker
under normal circumstances. She would have a glass of wine now and
then or sometimes a mixed drink at a party, but Irish whiskey
straight up? I’d seen her drink it that way but not often. Even
considering her heritage, this was something generally unheard of
for her. I had only seen her drunk once before in the dozen years
I’d known her, and that time she had only qualified as slightly
tipsy.

“Thaz nod da’ point,” she mumbled then
started and immediately aborted an attempt to stand up. “Aye,
don’chu know everyone was watchin’ you then.”

“Excuse me? Watching me what?”

“Well dey have televisions in the hotel,
don’chu know.”

The much touted and endlessly replayed film
of Ben, Constance, and I on the balcony of Sheryl Keeven’s
apartment streamed through my mind in a painfully colorful burst.
“So you mean everyone was watching the news?”

“Onna news,” she repeated
matter-of-factly and bobbed her head then rocked herself up to her
feet where she stood precariously wobbling. “Oh Felicee, your
husband is zo brave. Oh Felicimmy,... Oh Felimiccy...
FEK!
Oh me.” She thumped herself in
the chest with a flaccid hand. “Me…I should be so proud of Roman...
Rolan….” She staggered a moment. “Of YOU… Aye, bud da’ bartenner
was laughin’ an’ then dey took Aussin to jail.”

She swept her arm out in an all-encompassing
gesture and on the back swing began to lose her balance. I took a
pair of quick strides across the room and hooked my arm around her
waist as she began to fall.

“Sweetheart, you aren’t making a lot of sense
at the moment. What are you talking about? Who took Austin to jail
and for what? Is he okay?”

“Becawsh the bartenner has a brokem nodze,”
she giggled.

“A what? A broken nose? Let me get this
straight. You’re saying that Austin hit the bartender?”

“Aye, ‘e thrashed ‘im good for you too.”

“What do you mean?”

“Becawsh, ah’m still mad atch’you then. Aye,
there I am.”

The alcohol had immediately overtaken her the
moment she came upright. Not that she was making much sense before
she was standing, but she was only a hair this side of coherent at
this point. The look in her eyes was a good indicator that she was
now riding a brakeless train toward unconsciousness, and the
engineer called whiskey had the throttle open full.

“Felicity, honey, try to stay with me here.”
Supporting her almost dead weight, I eased her back down into the
chair and knelt in front of her. Cupping one hand beneath her
smooth chin and brushing a tangle of fiery red curls from her eyes
with the other, I continued. “Why did Austin hit the
bartender?”

“Aye, are you listenin’ toomee then? Waz for
laughin’ of coarsh.”

“There has to be a better reason than that,
sweetheart. Your brother wouldn’t just hit someone for
laughing.”

“Aye, buddee wood.” She thrust her chin
upward and blindly poked me in the chest with her limp index
finger. “If the laughin’ they’re doin’ is at his fammy an’ thiz
bashtard was doin’ ‘is laughin’ atchyu, ‘e wuz. Callin’ you the
good witsh of the easht an’ such.”

“Felicity,” I sighed. “Why didn’t you just
ignore it? You know people are like that sometimes.”

“Oh I did... I did, I did, I did... But
Aussin dinnit. No, he dinnit.” She closed her eyes and shook her
head animatedly then fluttered them back open wide. “Oooohh, don’
do that. It maygz the schair move, thin.”

She was almost gone. Any moment she was going
to pass out right where she sat.

“Okay, okay. Is Austin all right?” I pressed
her.

“Wy wunnit ‘e be?”

“The fight, Felicity.”

“Aye, ef coarshee iz. Auzzin won.”

“No, Felicity. Is he in jail right now? Do I
need to go bail him out or something?”

“Oh I alrenny…no…allll-reddddy
did’dat,” she told me then pitched forward and grasped my collar in
her hand. “Aye,
Caorthann
…”
she said, her voice becoming momentarily clear as she used the
Gaelic version of my name. “Aussin…Heesh very prowd of you,
ya’know…he iz.. Bud I’m shtill man at’chu.”

“Okay, honey, I give up. Why are you mad at
me?”

She let go of my collar and fell back in the
chair then looked back at me very seriously, widening her eyes in
an unsuccessful attempt to remain awake. Her eyelids were already
closing, and her body was quickly sinking deeper into the chair.
She barely managed to mutter the soft, slurred answer before
slipping into the arms of sleep, “Beecawwsh... you were downing an’
you woonen’t lemme help.”

So intent had I been on the events unfolding
around me throughout the evening that it hadn’t even dawned on me
that Felicity might remotely feel the same pains I was experiencing
first hand; or even that she may have been reaching out to me
across the ethereal plane. She had done it before, and I should
have realized that it was likely to happen again. Especially when
considering both the intensity of the experiences on an emotional
level and our deep connection to one another.

I carefully slipped my arms around my
unconscious wife then gently lifted her from the chair and carried
her into the bedroom. She was still dressed in her traditional
Celtic garb from the party, and it took me nearly fifteen minutes
to undo the various laces and wrestle her limp body out of the
clothing. I wasn’t overly worried about waking her, for I expected
that at this stage of the game that task would be nearly
impossible.

After finally getting her tucked into the
bed, I debated making a few calls to check on Austin and then
decided against it. If I understood her correctly, she had already
bailed him out of jail, and even if she hadn’t, I was certain his
parents would be seeing to it. If not, it could wait a few hours. I
wasn’t going to be much good at doing anything about it as I was
barely able to keep my own eyes open. I needed to be at the Major
Case Squad command post by ten in the morning, and it was already
coming up on three-thirty. After subtracting time for a shower and
travel, that left me with only about four hours to get some
sleep.

The question settled, I stripped wearily and
shut off the lights. Then with a satisfied sigh, I crawled into the
bed next to my temporarily comatose wife. As I relaxed, a sleep
deprived wrinkle in my brain told me to make a note to ask Ben if
there was some statistical reason known only to law enforcement as
to why dead bodies seemed to always turn up in the middle of the
night.

When I finally began to drift off, I felt for
all the world like I was falling to my death. I knew then that it
wasn’t going to be the restful sleep I had hoped for.

A
baleful cry in the fold of darkness.

A crystalline blanket hued blue by shadows
cast in the dim moonglow…

Fear.

Hatred.

Horror.

Silence.

My heart is racing in my chest. It is one of
only two sounds that break the stillness. The other is the report
of my naked feet crunching frenzied through the sharp crust of ice
to the mantle of snow beneath. I am running from something.

I am running from someone...

I do not know where I am...

I know only that I run in fear.

Frigid air sears my lungs and chills me
throughout. A hardened ache tears at my throat, dry and cold. I
gasp for breath as I slow my pace and finally halt, struggling to
deny the pain. A grove of twisted trees surrounds me.

Envelopes me.

The moon’s filtered shine dances eerily
between the gnarled branches and plays across my nude body. Streaks
of sticky wetness stream across my skin. In the muted light they
appear oily and black. I run my hands across my body and wince at
the soreness of the festering wounds.

The streaks are my own blood.

My staggering footprints stain the snow.

My feet are also raw and bleeding.

My wheezing breath punctuates the night.

A deep, familiar voice rumbles from the
darkness. “Wherefore, since you, Rowan Linden Gant, are fallen into
the damned heresies of Witches, practicing them publicly, and have
been by legitimate witnesses convicted of the sin of heresy...”

I start in fear at the words.

I bolt forward blindly.

A baleful cry in the fold of darkness.

“Yo, mission control ta’ Rowan.” Ben’s voice
snapped me back to the reality at hand. “You want any of this
coffee, Kemosabe?”

He was waving his hand before my face and
looking at me quizzically. From his expression I assumed I had once
again slipped into the glassy-eyed, slack-jawed trance that had
been plaguing me all morning. Snippets of a vivid horror kept
ricocheting about the inside of my skull, disjointed and making no
sense whatsoever. Thus far, I had been unable to piece together
anything from the randomized remembrance of the nightmare and was
beginning to doubt I ever would. Fact of the matter was, it might
simply have been just that, a nightmare. No more than a product of
my overtaxed senses and the frightening spectacles to which I had
been witness in the past hours and days. It may mean nothing at
all. But it was painfully reminiscent of the small vignette that
had appended itself to my recurring nightmare about Ariel Tanner,
and that was what concerned me.

“Yeah, sure,” I nodded as I spoke, shaking
off the fog.

“I’ll warn ya’ up front, this stuff is strong
enough ya’ damn near hafta slice it. There’re some donuts over here
too.” He indicated a large white box as he rummaged about for a
clean coffee cup. “Great little place over on Chippewa. All they
had fresh was glazed, though.”

I shook my head, declining the offer. I
wasn’t sure how something like that would sit with my stomach at
the moment. It already felt like my hastily gulped morning meal was
lodged in it sideways. Considering that the meal had consisted of
cold leftovers from a traditional Irish dinner, it probably
was.

“So, what’s up with you this mornin’?” Ben
continued pressing me as he filled a chipped ceramic mug from a
brown streaked globe of Pyrex then slid it across the table in my
direction before returning the pot to its equally discolored
warming base. “You’ve been glazin’ over left and right ever since
ya’ got here. Somethin’ I should know?”

“I’m not sure,” I returned, accepting the mug
and taking a sip of the brew. It was acrid and bitter. Ben’s
wisecrack about ‘strong enough to slice’ had been right on the
mark. “Could just be lack of sleep, I don’t know. I keep having
these weird flashes...like pieces of a nightmare or something.”

I placed the cup back on the table and
absently rattled clumps of sugar from an off-white cardboard
cylinder, scarcely noticing when they plopped into the black
liquid. Scanning the area around the coffeemaker, I searched for a
stirring stick and found none. Ben noticed my fruitless quest then
reached into his pocket and offered me a cheap plastic
ballpoint.

“So you’re goin’ all...” He finished the
sentence by letting out a low, vibrato whistle tied to an animated
gesticulation with his outstretched arm. Over time, I had come to
know this as his particular brand of sign language for “out
there.”

“Not really... maybe... I don’t know.” I
finished stirring and tapped the pen on the rim of the cup before
laying it aside on an already stained paper napkin. “It doesn’t
really feel the same... It could be just pieces of a bad dream.” I
shrugged and took another sip of the bitter brew. The sugar hadn’t
helped. I don’t know that I had really expected it to.

“You didn’t by any chance come up with
anything on the doubled up Bible verses from last night didya?”

“You mean the one from First Samuel?”

“Yeah, that one.”

“Not really.” I shook my head. “The only
thing I can think of is that it’s a pretty generic verse as far as
the condemnation of WitchCraft goes. It would easily fit as a
catch-all if he doesn’t have a specific heresy over and above that
in mind.”

“So no greater reasoning that might give us a
bead on this wacko then, eh?”

“Not that I can see.”

Ben pursed his lips and nodded back. “Well if
anything else clicks, just say the word. I don’t give a damn if ya’
interrupt the meeting even, ‘kay?”

“Okay.”

“So where’s the little woman this mornin’?”
He changed the subject as he wandered in the direction of his desk
with me tagging along. “I kinda figured she’d be with ya’.”

“When I left her she was holding her head and
muttering Gaelic curses about a bottle of whiskey,” I answered.

“Oh yeah, that’s right. The party. Sorry
again ‘bout that... Did ya’ get yourself any of that Cold-cannon
stuff?” He’d never know just how accurate his mispronunciation
matched the way the contents of my stomach felt at the moment.

He wheeled out his seat and pointed to a
molded plastic chair next to his desk. It looked like something
from a discarded seventies era dinette, and I suspected it would be
even less comfortable than it appeared.

“Something like that, and yeah, she brought
me home a plate. It was my breakfast.” I rested my mug on the
corner of his workspace as I sat down and glanced quickly at my
watch. “Of course, I expect she’s on the road by now. Had a photo
shoot for a client today.”

“On a Sunday? I thought she went freelance so
she could set ‘er own hours.”