Her scream had faded to a nasal whine, punctuated by small cries at irregular intervals. With each cry came a violent jerk of her body as she fought to retreat from whatever unseen torture was being inflicted.
I looked over at my friend and saw that he was trying to maintain a stolid expression, but his eyes betrayed the fear and concern I knew he was feeling.
“Promise me something,” I said to him.
“What?”
“If this works…” I stopped mid-sentence and swallowed hard as a sudden lance of pain ran like fire along the nerves in my arm. I gathered myself and rushed to continue, giving my head a quick jerk toward my wife. “If we end up swapping places, don’t let her touch me.”
“But…”
“No buts,” I said, cutting him off with a hard shake of my head. “Promise me you won’t let her die, Ben.”
He stood looking at me, the fear now far more obvious in his eyes as my words began to sink in. When he didn’t respond, I knew he had a full grasp of what I had just said.
“Promise me!” I demanded again.
He swallowed hard and gave me a quick nod. It was all I needed.
I turned my attention back to Felicity, struggling to form a solid ground as I shunted everything from her I could. I gritted my teeth and blinked back the tears that were welling in my own eyes, not sure if they were solely from the pain, my concern for her, empathic response, or all of the above.
Harsh shadows shifted in and out of my vision as ethereal darkness tried to fall, and I did my best to let it. Bright blooms of light fell in behind the contrasts, blinding me for sharp instants like the burst of a camera flash. I pressed myself forward, ignoring the growing intensity of the pain even as I heard myself begin to groan in the face of it. But, for each step I took toward the veil, I was shoved back the same, returning in part to cold reality.
My senses were expanding, as I stood on the edge of two worlds, unable to take a firm foothold in either. My frustration was growing, but more than that, my gut fears were beginning to overwhelm me.
By now, Agent Mandalay and the security officer were almost immediately at my back. I could feel them close, and I heard their voices as they argued.
“What’s he doing to her?” the officer was saying.
“Stay back,” Constance told him. “He knows what he’s doing.”
“That doesn’t look like an epileptic seizure to me,” he pressed.
“It’s going to be fine,” she replied, but I could hear the trepidation in her voice, and I’m sure he could too. “Just stay back.”
“I’m calling the paramedics,” he returned. “There’s something wrong here.”
Felicity continued to whimper as she writhed in the seat. Again, her jade green eyes locked with mine while she shook through a shallow tremor. Her mouth opened as if she was trying to say something, but no words escaped, only the high-pitched gurgle of absolute physical torment.
She tried again, attempting to force a word through her trembling lips, “B-b-b-bbbbb…”
I wasn’t sure if the person trying to speak to me was Felicity or the channeled Kimberly. I shook my head and tried to shush her as I continued struggling to ground.
She kept shaking, her motor reflexes no longer cooperating as she persisted in her attempt to speak. In the end, she managed only to make a convoluted noise that sounded vaguely like ‘hmmm’.
Then, without warning, her head snapped back as she once again arched against the safety harness, her guttural howl piercing the crisp afternoon air.
“THIS ISN”T WORKING!” I screamed in bitter frustration.
I was beginning to lose the battle, and I knew it. A feeling of panic was spreading rampantly through my chest, fighting to assume control and reduce me to a blithering idiot. I loosened my grip on her wrist and twisted my palm toward her pulse point then quickly clasped it tight once more, seeking a better connection. I could feel my feet getting hot, and I was beginning to dance from one foot to the other as the burn intensified.
I looked around, searching for nothing in particular but everything in general, all but begging for an answer to fall from the ether. My own fear was taking hold, and I knew I couldn’t afford to let that happen. I had to think, but emotion was building an impenetrable storm front in my brain, and all rational thought seemed to be trapped behind the squall line.
As I continued shuffling in place, I panned my anxious gaze around. My feet felt as though they were on fire now, and I wasn’t sure how much longer I could stand it. When I happened to look down, I saw the thick, rubber soles of my shoes.
Whether by actual realization or simple reflex, I kicked my right toe against the heel of my left shoe and began yanking my foot upward. I struggled against the tight laces of the ankle high tennis shoe until I managed to pull my foot free and then quickly plant it against the asphalt.
Coolness seeped upward through my sock but was immediately overtaken by the heat. I closed my eyes and concentrated as best I could on forming the connection between earth ground and myself. In my mind’s eye, I could see a shaft of light, extending from me and leading down into the center of the earth. Or, at least I thought I could. I wasn’t sure anymore because nothing was changing.
I opened my eyes and saw that Felicity was still writhing against invisible bonds. When I looked closer, I saw that patches of blood were starting to spread where her shirt was pulled taut across her chest.
In my clouded mind, I began wondering if I had done the unthinkable when I had made my cursing demand of Cerridwen. I was no longer thinking clearly, and the idea took vicious hold. I snapped my head to the side and squeezed my eyes shut, unable to look into Felicity’s tortured face any longer, distraught by the belief that I had brought this upon her.
Emotion joined with pain, and I felt hot tears running down my cheeks. I blinked hard, and my blurred vision fell upon the back of the passenger seat inside the van as I allowed my head to hang. My body was beginning to shudder with the first wave of sobs, and I was losing control. I stared forward, continuing to blink as tears formed and overflowed onto my cheeks.
It was then that the ether finally gave up the answer.
In front of me, peeking from the top of the pocket on the back of the seat was a small silver dome, fitted with a ring. Extending from it, wrapped by bailing wire, were faded yellow-tan bristles expanding horizontally into a triangular fan.
It was a whiskbroom.
Felicity’s attempt to stutter a word ran through my brain and joined with an arcane thought that had somehow managed to escape the muddy swirl that was supposed to be my rational mind. At its root, magick was a simple thing, and sometimes the simpler the better.
I reached out and plucked the broom from the pocket, flipped it over so that the bristles now pointed upward, and plunged it back into place.
“Goddammit, GO AWAY!” I screamed.
And, for me, the day turned into night.
Light became darkness.
Then consciousness became a distant memory.
* * * * *
The diesel engine of the life support vehicle was thrumming away at idle, sending a gentle vibration through the floorboards. The back door was hanging open, and looking outward through it, I could see the emergency lights flickering across the cars on the parking lot. To my right, in the cab, the two-way radio would occasionally burp with static and a stream of tinny voices, too faint for me to understand, before falling back into momentary silence.
True to his word, the security officer had called paramedics, and they had arrived within moments of my losing consciousness. When I awoke, I had a throbbing headache but other than that, seemed none the worse for wear. Felicity, too, was showing little or no signs of distress from what she had just been through, other than the fact that she was growing more anxious with every moment that passed. I suspected, however, that we were both running on residual adrenalin and the effects would eventually catch up to us. Fortunately, it was nothing a good, long sleep wo
uldn’t fix.
“I told you we don’t have time for this!” Felicity spat, her voice an audible indicator of her agitation. “We have to go!”
“I just want to check you over,” the paramedic calmly told her.
“What for? How many times do I have to repeat myself?” she demanded. “I’m telling you that I’m just fine, then.”
“Felicity, just let them check you out,” I said, looking over in her direction, only to have my head gently turned back forward by a latex-gloved hand and a penlight unceremoniously shone into my eye.
“Ma’am,” the paramedic tending my wife said, trying to calm the auburn-haired tempest in front of him. “Listen to your husband. We just want to make sure you’re okay.”
“I’ve already told you I’m okay,” she snipped, her faint Celtic lilt taking on the hard edge of a full-blown brogue. “That should be good enough for the both of you.”
“Ma’am,” he appealed. “You have blood all over your shirt.”
From the corner of my eye, I could see that he was motioning toward her chest with his gloved finger.
“I told you those are just stains.”
He shook his head. “They don’t look like stains, ma’am.”
“Aye, and your point?”
He gave a shallow laugh as if he couldn’t believe he was having the conversation. “Ma’am, that’s fresh blood. Usually where there’s blood, there’s an injury.”
My wife raised an eyebrow and cocked her head at the young man.
“You’re wanting to see my chest?” she asked with a perturbed bob of her head. “Is that it?”
Before the paramedic could reply, Felicity crossed her arms and ripped her shirt upward. In a single motion, she pulled it quickly over her head with a snap, revealing that she was braless underneath.
Tugging one arm loose from the sleeve, she reached up and pulled her long hair back over her shoulder with the free hand, then thrust her chest outward.
“There,” she said, glaring back at the startled paramedic. “Are these what you wanted to see, then?”
I was free to look over at them now that most eyes were focused on my half-naked wife, instead of tending to my impromptu check-up. Just as she had been telling him, there was nothing to see— in the way of injuries that is. The young man in front of her, for all his training and clinical experience, was so taken aback by her unabashed display that his face was running through every imaginable shade of uneasy.
Ben was standing outside the door with the county police officer who had responded along with the life support vehicle. My friend nervously cleared his throat and turned away.
The uniformed cop continued to watch, expression never changing. He nodded then quipped, “Nice tattoo.”
“Thank you,” Felicity replied out of reflex.
I sighed. “Put your shirt back on, Felicity.”
“But you said for me to let them check me over,” she replied sarcastically.
“Felicity…”
“Aye, all right, it is a bit cold, then,” she retorted, then directed herself to the paramedic. “But I suppose you can see that for yourself now, can’t you?”
“Go ahead and put your shirt back on, ma’am,” he stuttered.
She let go of her hair and slipped her arm back into the sleeve, then lifted her arms in a reverse of her earlier display.
“Honey, leave the poor guy alone,” I appealed. “He just wanted to make sure you’re okay.”
“And so I am,” she spat. “And, why are you on his side? I’m your wife.”
She finished pulling the shirt back over her head and then tugged it into place.
“Hey,” I said. “I seem to recall being in the same position a few months back, and you weren’t anywhere near as forgiving.”
“That was different,” she told me as she untucked her spiraling curls from her collar and brushed them back.
“How?” I asked, a note of incredulity in my voice.
“Because it was you and not me.”
“I see,” I replied with a nod. “Well, at least I was a little more cooperative.”
“That’s not my recollection.”
“I didn’t do a strip-tease.”
“I was just being cooperative, then.”
“How? By embarrassing everyone?”
“No,” she returned. “I’m simply trying to get us out of here.”
“Ben and Constance are waiting,” I told her. “It won’t take long.”
“I don’t care,” she snapped. “Kimberly hasn’t the time to wait.”
With everything that had happened, I had completely forgotten that she had told me she remembered something from her excursion into the ethereal plane. I looked over at her and met her gaze.
“Do you still…” I started.
“Aye,” she shot back, her voice deadly serious as she nodded vigorously. “And, right now, we’re in the wrong damned place to do anything about it.”
CHAPTER 33:
“What the hell was all that with the strip tease?” Ben asked as he backed the van out of the parking space.
“I still can’t believe you did that,” Constance added, but you could almost hear the giggle in her voice.
My wife replied in a matter-of-fact tone, as if the answer was obvious, “Getting us out of there.”
“By takin’ your damn clothes off?”
“Aye, it worked didn’t it?”
“It embarrassed the kid,” Ben replied.
“And he couldn’t wait to get rid of me then, could he?”
“Yeah, maybe. I guess.”
“Then it worked.”
“You know they’re gonna be tellin’ stories about ya’ don’t ya’?”
“Aye, let them talk. They’ll be giving someone else a rest then,” Felicity remarked, then turned her attention to more pressing matters. With her next sentence, the deadpan delivery was gone and impatience suddenly underlined her words. “Have you found the map yet, Constance?”
“Still looking,” Mandalay called back to her.
The first thing Felicity had asked for when we climbed back into the van was a Missouri highway map. She gave no explanation other than that she needed the map, and she needed it right now.
Agent Mandalay continued rummaging about in the glove box, extracting all manner of Chinese take-out menus, receipts, and even Ben’s backup weapon. All the while, he was making haste for the nearest exit, looking to put some distance between Northwoods Mall and us.
I, for one, had absolutely no objection to that maneuver.
Eventually Constance extracted a wrinkled wad of semi-folded paper, gave it a quick glance, and then started to set it aside with the rest of the detritus.
“That’s it,” Ben announced before she dove in again.
“This?” she asked, holding it up. “For real?”
“Yeah, for real.”
“How can you tell?”
“Just give it to her, will’ya’?”
“Well, I guess it’s a good thing anyway,” she muttered in reply as she handed the sample of origami-gone-bad back to Felicity. “Because I think something’s alive in there.”
My wife took the wad of paper and began looking for a free corner so she could unravel the map from itself. She reached up to click on the courtesy light but was met with nothing more than darkness and the popping noise of the switch.
“Bulb’s shot,” Ben offered.
“Obviously,” she returned, her irritation plainly audible. “And I can’t very well read this in the dark now can I?”
“Hey, you wanna chill?” he barked. “I’m workin’ on it.”
“Benjamin Storm!” she snapped in return. “Don’t you understand? We simply don’t have time to waste!”
“What did you just call me?” my friend asked, giving a quick glance back over his shoulder.
“That’s what she does when she gets serious,” I offered. “Uses your full name, just like her mother.”
Ben shifted his
eyes back forward and immediately slammed on the brakes, narrowly avoiding a rear end collision with a sports car. I couldn’t help but noticed that Constance instantly reached for the shoulder harness, pulled it across her chest, and stabbed the metal finger into the catch at her side.
“Yeah, well stop it, Felicity,” Ben called over his shoulder. “That just didn’t even sound right comin’ outta you.”
“Hey, just be glad she didn’t use your middle name,” I explained. “She does that when you’re in trouble.”
“Dammit, will you two quit joking,” Felicity demanded. “I’m serious.”
“I know you are,” I replied.
“Look, Felicity,” Ben replied as he turned the van toward the main exit. “I know we don’t have time. Trust me, I said it myself earlier, but a lotta shit has happened in the past two hours, and I’m still tryin’ ta’ get my bearings here.”
“Kimberly is being tortured!” my wife appealed, her voice rising slightly. “Don’t you get it?!”
“Goddamit, Felicity, yes! Yes, I get it. Isn’t that what I just said?” Ben growled. “Jeezus H. Christ, you’re worse than Rowan when it comes ta’ this shit!”
“Felicity,” Constance voiced, stepping into the role of mediator. “While neither Ben nor I can fully understand what you are going through, we do have a grasp of what’s happening. We’re on your side, but you are going to have to calm down.”
My wife huffed out a frustrated sigh and sat back hard in her seat. “Aye. I know. But the son-of-a-bitch is killing my friend.”
“Not if we can help it,” Mandalay replied with a note of compassion. “I promise.”
Ben angled the van toward the merge lane and shot forward into traffic, cutting off a small sedan in the process. Horns blared, but he continued wedging his vehicle into the flow of traffic anyway.
“Yeah, fuck you too,” he muttered as he shot an angry glance out his side window.
The light ahead of us winked yellow and my friend punched the accelerator, making the left hand turn onto Northwoods Drive just as it switched to red.
Crone's Moon: A Rowan Gant Investigation Page 25
