Blood Moon: A Rowan Gant Investigation (8 page)

“Nice try, but it’s not that cold
outside.”

Given how truly awful I was beginning to
feel, I decided not to prolong the inevitable and simply conceded.
“Okay, then maybe you’re right and I’m coming down with
something.”

“You aren’t running a fever,” she countered.
“You’re freezing.”

“So maybe it’s a cold,” I quipped, managing
to squeeze out the last drop of sarcastic humor I had left in
me.

“Not funny,” she replied sternly. “You’re
helping Ben with another murder investigation, aren’t you? You’re
channeling someone. Damn your eyes, Rowan Linden Gant, you
promised!”

At this point the dogs had grown impatient,
and the English setter was doing a halting dance nearby while the
Aussie was letting out a nasal whine as an accompaniment.

“No,” I told her, giving my head an animated
shake then picking up the food dishes from the island and stooping
to set them on the floor. The canines were on them immediately,
gobbling up the breakfast as if it was their one and only meal for
the week.

“Don’t lie to me, Rowan,” she snapped.

“I’m not!” I barked in return as I stood.
“I’m not helping him. But the victim apparently doesn’t seem
interested in hearing that, okay?”

“You aren’t…”

“No,” I interrupted before she could finish
the question. “I’m not letting her in. I’m doing just the opposite,
but it isn’t working.”

“Are you grounding then?” she asked,
referring to the conscious connection most any Witch makes with the
earth in order to avoid mishaps with magickal energies.

Even though the question annoyed me on the
surface, I knew she was right to ask. Grounding was a basic skill
right out of WitchCraft 101 and moreover, the first step in
protecting oneself from a psychic influence. However, following the
first experience with my curse a few years back, I had been left
unbalanced; therefore, it was also an important ability where I had
fallen woefully short for quite some time now, no matter how hard I
tried.

In recent months I had been much better at
maintaining my focus—or at least I thought I had.

I took hold of my wife’s hand and said, “You
tell me. Do I feel grounded to you?”

She twined her fingers into mine, pressing
our palms tightly together. I knew she really didn’t need to have
the physical contact to know one way or the other if I was truly
grounded, but I wanted there to be no mistake. She looked into my
face, and what had been a rising flash of anger in her green eyes
now turned to concern.

“
Damnú
,” she mumbled. “You are
grounded… That fekking
dóiteacht
, I’ll kill him.”

“Who?”

“Ben,” she snipped. “Who else? Come on
then…”

She began dragging me by the hand toward the
living room, and I had no recourse but to follow.

“You can’t blame him for this, Felicity,” I
said as I lumbered along behind her, an overwhelming weakness
starting to permeate my body. “This all started before I even met
up with him this morning.”

“But he talked about a case, didn’t he?”

“Yes. A little.”

“And your channeling the victim, aren’t
you?”

“Yeah… That’s my guess, anyway… Why?”

“Because this doesn’t happen to you when it’s
someone else’s investigation, that’s why… Here, sit down.”

My wife all but shoved me onto the sofa—not
that it took much for her to do so given my present state. She took
a moment to situate me to her liking then began covering me with an
afghan after shooing one of the cats from it.

She had a point, even if it wasn’t entirely
on base. This sort of thing still happened to me even when it
wasn’t one of Ben’s cases, but never to this extreme. I suppose
even the tortured spirits of the dead had enough sense to know
whether or not I had access to someone who would actually listen to
what I had to say rather than having me hauled off for psychiatric
evaluation.

“You stay right there,” she told me after she
finished more or less tucking me in. “I’m going to go make you some
sage tea.”

“Okay,” I told her.

There was really little else I could do. Even
if I wanted to bring up the fact that I’d been using salt and try
to argue the point with her I wasn’t feeling up to it. Oddly
enough, however, my lack of fight wasn’t because I was in any major
pain. In fact, I no longer felt a single ache. The pervasive
weakness had actually transformed into a sense of absolute comfort
and the earlier cold that had started to seep into my bones was now
replaced by welcome warmth.

I allowed my eyelids to droop as the
pleasantness washed over me. I couldn’t remember the last time I
had felt so completely relaxed. I was on the verge of giving myself
over to the darkness of sleep when I felt a quick flutter in my
chest. It was followed by a second, and then a tickle started
somewhere deep inside my brain.

I tried to ignore it, but it was on a
mission. It persisted in the same way a nagging question would turn
into a mindless obsession that kept you awake at night. As if
giving in to just such a need to go check and make sure a light is
turned off, I allowed the relentless itch to force me to move my
arm. Had I been in any other state of mind I don’t know if I would
have considered the unnatural degree of effort it took to
accomplish that task to be worthwhile. But since the growing nag
was going to continue pecking at me until I satisfied the curiosity
it had awakened, I complied.

After what seemed an endless stretch of time,
I managed to bring my hand against my neck. However, the action did
little to quell the tickle in my grey matter because I discovered
in that instant my fingers were now completely numb. Unable to feel
anything at all, I gave up and allowed my hand to fall away as I
offered myself to the comfort of the encroaching darkness.

At that same instant, I could have sworn I
heard Felicity’s near panicked voice screaming my name.

CHAPTER 7:

I didn’t recall much of anything between
hearing the echo of my wife’s voice and coming to once again. Of
course, whether or not I had actually lost consciousness in the
first place was a minor point of contention. I thought I had, but
according to Felicity, she didn’t think so; or if I had, it was for
no more than a split second. Since the whole event was all really
just a blank spot in my head, I had to take her word for it.

The only thing I could say for certain was
that I had suddenly found her concerned face hovering over me while
she pressed her hand hard against my neck—hard enough to hurt, in
fact. Prior to that, about the only thing I could remember was the
sensation of floating in a dark, silent void. Of course, that was
nothing new. Unfathomable darkness and general disorientation were
all just part of the scenery when the dead were demanding my
attention. It seemed to be their way of trying to gain the upper
hand, and much to my chagrin, it usually worked.

What it came down to in the final analysis
was that Felicity was probably dead on with her estimate about how
much time I had spent unconscious—even if that fraction of a second
had felt much longer to me. But, that was to be expected. Time had
an odd way of becoming an unreliable reference point on the dark
side of the veil, especially when you didn’t belong there.

It didn’t really matter now anyway. Fifteen
minutes had noticeably ticked away since then, and in the world of
the living, time still retained its illusion of being a dependable
benchmark. Of course, while one-quarter hour wasn’t exactly the
distant past, it still made a difference; for now there was no
longer darkness and peaceful quiet wrapped around me—just harsh
light and the sound of running water.

“Really, honey, I’m fine,” I said aloud, my
voice a tired drone. The words themselves were inherently positive,
but my timbre painted them with a gloomy hue, which effectively
defeated my purpose for making the comment in the first place.

I leaned forward with a heavy sigh, resting
my hands on top of the bathroom vanity, and looked into the mirror
as I struggled to actually believe the untruth that had just
tumbled out of my mouth. Given what I saw staring back at me, I was
going to be hard pressed to do so. On top of that, I wasn’t even
taking into account that the all too familiar dull thud in the back
of my head had finally arrived, which definitely wasn’t going to
make things easy. The symptom list of signature aches associated
with my curse was sounding off one by one. But the truth is, as
residual effects go, the headache was probably the lesser of my
worries at the moment.

Shifting my eyes slightly, I could see
Felicity’s face reflected in the pane of silvered glass as well.
Judging from her thin-lipped frown, she wasn’t buying into my empty
reassurances at all, so it was really a waste of time for me to
even continue pretending.

After a thick pause, she replied flatly,
giving me a verbal confirmation of her disbelief while she finished
wringing out a washcloth in the basin. “No, Rowan, you aren’t. Look
at yourself…”

I certainly couldn’t blame her for being
disagreeable. After all, I was lying and not very well at that.
Under the circumstances, she obviously wasn’t interested in wasting
time with the game of verbal hide and seek. I had to admit that I
didn’t really feel up to playing either. I suppose I was just doing
it out of habit.

I moved my gaze back to my own reflection and
took in the not so pretty picture once again. Smears of red still
glistened in haphazard swaths along my jaw line and down my neck. A
rusting crinkled pattern ran across my shoulder and upper chest
where my now discarded shirt had recently been plastered to my body
by the sticky wetness. I was an absolute mess by most any
standards. In my own eyes at least, I pretty much looked like an
extra from the set of a low budget slasher movie.

I continued watching in the mirror as my wife
reached up and carefully wiped away more of the blood with the wet
cloth then folded it over and made a second gentle swipe. Since it
had already started coagulating, there were thick, crusty trails
left behind on my skin that were going to take quite a bit more
coercion to remove.

“This is insane, Row,” she muttered. “Just
insane…”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “Tell me about it.”

“And this was how the victim died then?”

“Uh-huh,” I answered. “At least that’s what I
was told. Apparently, the way Ben outlined it, she appeared to have
been purposely bled to death, which would kind of explain this…” I
gestured at the blood with my free hand. “Except there was no blood
at the scene, which obviously doesn’t explain this.”

“I see,” she returned. “I guess I should be
grateful it wasn’t something a bit more immediate or you might not
be standing here right now.”

“I don’t know about that.”

“I guess that last bit is why he asked you
about vampires, then” she announced, ignoring my objection.

“Yeah, I think so. I guess I can’t blame him
too much for thinking something like that,” I said. “I mean after
everything we’ve asked him to accept on blind faith over the years,
why not? To someone like him, I don’t think he sees it as that much
of a stretch. Witch, vampire…”

“Maybe so, but what next? Zombies?”

I couldn’t help but snort out a half chuckle.
“I really doubt it. In his defense he was talking about the people
in a particular subset of the Goth subculture who claim to be
vampires.”

“I still say it’s insane,” she replied then
made a point of displaying the bloody washcloth to me and adding,
“Especially this.”

“I guess that’s about as good a word as
any.”

Even with the grumbling, I was amazed at how
we both seemed to be taking this all in stride. Of course, there
had been several extremely tense minutes at the beginning,
especially in light of Felicity’s initial panic upon seeing what
she described as me bleeding to death. Our alarm probably would
have continued unchecked had it not been for my wife’s hand
inadvertently slipping from my neck as she struggled to reach for
the phone in order to call 9-1-1. Instead of the feared spray of
blood, however, there was nothing. Not even a wound. It suddenly
became obvious to us both that this was an ethereal tap on my
shoulder and that someone wanted my attention in the worst way.

Since realizing that, neither of us had
really treated this event as much more than a severe aggravation.
In a way it seemed as though we were both under the influence of a
psychic anesthetic. I suppose that was a good thing, but I couldn’t
help wondering when it was going to wear off or if it was simply
going to keep us numbed forever. I couldn’t really say which option
frightened me the most. I did know, however, that neither of them
was particularly appealing as far as I was concerned. But as
worrisome as that could be, it was actually one of the least
important thoughts assaulting my grey matter at the moment.

What truly puzzled me was my earlier
queasiness over the thought of blood when placed in juxtaposition
to the apparent nonchalance I felt about it now. Normally I walked
a line somewhere in between the two reactions—affected by the sight
of it, yes, but not repulsed. This sudden shift to one extreme and
then the other had me perplexed. The more I rolled it around inside
my skull the more it gnawed at me, and that wasn’t good. After
chasing the thought around in a circle for several minutes, I
finally told myself that I needed to leave it alone, especially
since it was most certainly some kind of cryptic message from the
spirit who was doing this to me in the first place. Dwelling on it
was just going to give her reason to press the issue to the next
level. After what she’d already done, that was something I
definitely didn’t want happening.