Never Burn A Witch: A Rowan Gant Investigation (43 page)

The emotion injected itself into me, gelling
in my heart and oozing outward through arteries and veins to poison
my body on the whole. I had to beat back an overwhelming desire to
turn and flee. My forearm tensed as blackjacks of pain threatened
to crush it.

“She with the body?” Ben prodded information
from the traumatized officer.

The uniformed man simply nodded as if his
voice had left him and continued mechanically about the task of
cordoning off the area.

Our end-on angle of approach to the south leg
of the metal half-parabola had obscured our view when we arrived.
Now, as we ventured past the young officer and toward the active
portion of the scene, the sickening charred odor grew thicker with
each step. The lighter tang of kerosene slipped through the
heaviness to layer itself with the fetid stench and lift it higher
on the moist night air, making it inescapable.

“Look, I know you’ve been havin’ some kind of
problem with the hocus-pocus stuff, Row,” Ben stated as we walked,
“so if ya’ don’t think ya’ can handle this…”

“I have to handle it,” I answered
matter-of-factly as his voice trailed off even though I desperately
wanted to grab his offer of escape and run as far away as it would
let me.

That very thought brought another blinding
stab of pain to bear on my forearm. I could feel the warmth of the
blood soaking through the bandages and trickling along my skin.

“No ya’ don’t.” He stopped in his tracks and
turned to me. “You’ve been way too weirded out on this whole thing,
Row. I don’t know what’s goin’ on, but ya’ ain’t right, white man.
Especially here lately.”

“Aye, Ben is right, Rowan,” Felicity added
with more than a hint of personal fear in her voice. “You aren’t
balanced, and you know it. Maybe we should wait at the van.”

“You can wait there if you want,” I offered.
“But I don’t have any choice in this.”

“The hell you don’t!” my friend admonished.
“I just gave ya’ a choice, and I’m damn near ready to make it an
order. I should cuff your ass and park ya’ in a squad!”

“Do it now then because that’s the only way
you’re going to stop me.”

“What the fuck? Stop you?” he appealed
angrily. “Just what the hell has gotten into you, Rowan?”

“I was summoned here, Ben,” I told him with
absolute conviction. “Just as I was summoned to all of the other
scenes.”

“You were what?”

I thrust my arm out for them both to see.
Though the fabric of my shirt and jacket covered it, I knew all
they would need to see was my bare hand. In the wildly
choreographed splash of lights, the crimson rivulets of fresh blood
streaking it were plain to see. I winced as yet another stab of
pain twisted through the hot flesh.

Felicity closed her eyes and sighed.

Ben merely shook his head and muttered,
“Jeezus, white man.”

“Do you think I WANT to be here?” I asked.
“Do you think I actually WANT to see what this sick bastard is
doing to innocent people? Trust me, I’ve let the thought of running
from this investigation cross my mind more than a few times
tonight. I didn’t invite these marks to appear on my arm. Someone
on the other side who is trying to tell me something is putting
them there, and if I can believe the last dream I had, that someone
is Kendra Miller.”

“But what is she trying to tell you?”
Felicity pleaded.

“I still don’t know. But I can tell you
this—every single time I’ve thought about turning and running from
this, the pain has intensified. Judging from the bleeding, my guess
is that this wound has gotten worse, not better. The last time I
didn’t pay attention to one of these marks, I ended up with pool
water in my lungs.”

“And Christine Webster had been drowned…” my
friend admitted quietly.

“This time he killed with fire again. I
really don’t want getting my attention to progress to that step if
you know what I mean.” I fell silent and allowed my arm to drop
back to my side. Ben and Felicity simply stared at me. After a
moment I let out a long sigh. “I’m here for a reason. I was
summoned. I don’t have a choice until I figure out what that reason
is.”

“You still aren’t grounding very well,”
Felicity softly intoned with a razor sharp edge of seriousness in
her voice.

“I know,” I answered simply.

“So what about all the
Twilight Zone
stuff?” Ben questioned.
“You mentioned somethin’ about not bein’ grounded the other day
when you had that backlash thing. Isn’t it dangerous?”

“It can be,” I assented.

“Aye, it can, so I suppose you leave me no
choice either then.” Felicity shook her head. “Someone has to be
there to keep you from going too far.”

* * * * *

As we rounded the base of the Arch, the
picture of the horror was revealed to us at first in small,
disorganized sections. It took several moments of pondering the
scene before the pieces began to interlock into a meaningful
panorama.

Disheveled detectives in various modes of
dress, most looking as though they were just dragged kicking and
screaming from the warmth of their beds, were milling about in a
loose group. One of the throng was interviewing a pair of uniformed
officers, and another was talking to a park ranger who looked to be
just this side of hysterics.

CSU technicians focused their
attentions on a lamppost at the landing of the stairs that led down
from the park grounds above. Flash units added their intense
brilliance to the dancing lightshow as techs took pictures of the
metal pole as well as the marred concrete surrounding it. White
residue caked itself to sections of the post and spread out across
the walkway to partially obscure a spray painted rendering of the
ever familiar
Monogram of
Christ
. A few feet away, a tented marker inscribed
with the number two rested on the ground next to a carelessly
abandoned and recently used fire extinguisher.

Other members of the CSU were closely
scanning the stairs with powerful lights, searching for anything
out of place. Every now and then one of them would pause, stare
intently, and then with an almost dejected fall of the shoulders,
continue on.

Near this tightly contained work envelope, a
white sheet covered something roughly the size and shape of an
average human being. Plastic IV tubes snaked beneath the fabric,
and the detritus of various emergency medical supplies littered the
ground. Two chalky looking paramedics were carefully and
systematically returning the tools of their trade back to their
respective cases.

My temples were already beginning to
throb.

A trim figure clad in blue jeans and a
leather bomber’s jacket stood apart from the center of the
activity. I instantly recognized her as a city homicide detective
who had pulled several shifts watching over Felicity and me.

Detective Charlene “Charlee” McLaughlin stood
almost motionless, her right arm across her chest, palm cupping her
left elbow as the appendage angled upward to rest her loose fist
against her chin. She stared quietly at the shrouded body, her eyes
wide and glazed. She hazarded only a brief, lethargic glance at us
as we drew closer.

We stood wordlessly for a long measure before
Ben finally broke the silence in a solemn voice, “Fill me in,
Charlee.”

“Caucasian, female. Tied to the lamppost and
torched,” she said in a thick monotone. “She was still alive when I
got here, Ben.”

My friend allowed the comment to rest for a
beat before continuing, “You okay?”

“Yeah.” Charlee nodded her head under a thick
shag of ash blonde hair. “Yeah, I’ll be all right.”

“They work on ‘er long?”

“Ten minutes. Maybe fifteen. She arrested
pretty soon after they got here,” she detailed with a deep sigh.
“Probably for the best. From what the paramedics said, she most
likely wouldn’t have lived through the night anyway. Just would
have been that much more suffering for her.”

“Yeah, well she shouldn’t’ve had ta’ suffer
at all,” my friend expressed dully. “Any witnesses?”

“Not that we’ve found yet, but I’ve got some
uniforms out looking. I’m not expecting much, I mean, look where we
are.” She tossed her hands out palms upward and glanced around.
“Not much activity around here in the middle of the night.”

“Yeah, but we can always hope. What about the
ranger?”

“He’s giving a statement to Ackman right now.
He told me she was already on fire when he pulled up. Says he
didn’t even realize she was a person until he started on her with
the extinguisher. Called nine-one-one as soon as the fire was out.
The uniforms with Osthoff were first on the scene.”

No one had noticed that I was drifting closer
to the sheet-covered corpse. Even Felicity was so involved in
listening to the conversation that she had missed my slow but
steady movement as well. I wasn’t even consciously aware of it
until I found myself kneeling next to the body.

“Don’t suppose there was an ID?”

“No, she was nude, just like the others, and
the fire didn’t help of course… but from what we can tell she does
fit the description of Amanda Stark. We’ll have to wait on the
coroner for a positive.

“We did find a Bible.” She pointed at the
stairs where another tented marker, this time adorned with the
number one, stood next to a book.

“What’d the asshole have to say this
time?”

“Pretty straightforward,” Detective
McLaughlin replied. “Exodus 22:18. Thou shalt not suffer a witch to
live.”

“At least he’s consistent,” Ben spat. “I hate
ta’ ask, but did the victim say anything before she died?”

“Actually yeah. Didn’t make much sense, and
to be honest I’m not sure I heard her right considering what the
fire did to her throat and all, but I’d almost swear she said
‘truck.’”

I barely heard her utter the word before my
own scream of agony exploded into the foggy night.

“A
manda Marie Stark, in accordance with the thirty-third
question, in as much as you stand accused of the heresy of
WitchCraft by another of your kind, and as you have admitted these
crimes and remain still impenitent…”

Terror, cold and absolute punctures my
bowels.

I don’t know how long he has had me captive,
but it seems as though it has been forever.

I don’t know how I have endured all that has
been done to me.

My mind races...

I remember the taste of a lime green snow
cone on a sweltering summer day when I was seven.

I remember getting caught cheating on an
algebra exam.

I remember that I have dry cleaning to pick
up.

I don’t know why I remember the things I
do.

I just do.

I still feel the fear.

Why did I answer the door that night?

I wasn’t expecting anything.

Delivery trucks don’t run that late
anyway.

What was I thinking?

“In as much as you have been found guilty,
and that you are damned in body and soul, your sentence on this day
is death. The sentence is to be executed immediately, without
appeal, in the manner of expurgation by fire.”

A single spark in the night.

A faint flickering glow.

A bright explosion fills the darkness.

Fire billows upward across my nude body.

The heat is beyond imagination.

I remember burning my hand as a small
child.

I remember the fear.

I feel it anew.

“May the Lord Jesus Christ have mercy upon
your soul.” The angry voice reaches me through the rush of the
fire.

I hold my breath.

I twist against my bonds.

I want to scream.

That damn truck.

A cold steel talon rips into my shoulder, and
I feel myself wrenched violently backward. Cacophonous screaming
pierces my eardrums as I hurtle upward.

Downward.

Forward.

Backward.

I no longer know.

I spiral through nothingness.

I am blind.

I am omniscient.

Colors bleed and disappear. Greyness blooms
and contrasts itself against the backdrop of space.

A random chord plays out of sync with the
universe.

My heart stops.

My heart races.

My lungs tighten and burn.

Hot yellow fire explodes past me.

Thick fog douses the flame.

Reality slams into me full force as dull
color erupts into view.

“ROWAN!” Felicity screamed my name as she
shook me hard.

I gasped in a deep breath as I snapped my
eyes open and stared back at my wife. Ben and Charlee were kneeling
on the ground with her, and everything was moving in a mad rush. I
saw Charlee gesturing at the paramedics and Ben frantically saying
something I couldn’t make out.

I could feel the warm barrier of Felicity’s
own shields as she cast them around me to ward off the vision I had
inflicted upon myself. My earlier ground had been severed the
moment I allowed the veil between life and death to be pierced. I
would never have been able to cling to this plane of existence had
she not intervened.

Though the supernatural connection between
Amanda Stark and myself was effectively cut, the stream of
consciousness that had been set into motion was forging ahead
unhindered. Memories I might otherwise have considered random
flashed before me in an endless stream, repetitive and
disorganized. Folding one into the next like an insane exercise in
origami.

“…
Tracy gived it to me.
Did’ju see thuh truck too?”

Delivery trucks don’t run that late
anyway.

“…
I’m not sure I heard her
right considering