Blood Moon: A Rowan Gant Investigation (26 page)

“Of course,” she replied, shaking her head.
“Why?”

“Your hand,” I said, motioning half-heartedly with
my free appendage.

“Just a sprain,” she said with a quick shrug. “I
twisted it when you went down, and then I fell on top of you.”

“Sorry about that.”

“It wasn’t your fault.”

“I’m still sorry.”

“You can make amends later,” she said with a small
grin. “How are you feeling?”

“My head is killing me,” I said. “Other than that,
I’m just really tired.”

“Well I’m not surprised. You’re body has been
through quite a shock,” she told me. “They estimated you lost just
under two pints of blood before arriving here, and you were already
running low as it was.”

“I bled again?” I reached up with my free hand to
feel my neck even though I didn’t expect to find anything of
consequence. However, to my surprise there was a heavy bandage
taped firmly in place.

Felicity nodded. “Yes, this time there’s actually a
wound.” She paused then added, “And the bleeding was much worse
too. It didn’t seem to want to stop.”

“Wonderful,” I groaned. “So I’m still alive
why?”

“Because I told her it was mine,” Felicity said.

“Told who what?”

“Emily Foster. You don’t remember any of that?”

I shook my head slightly then grimaced. “No. I
don’t. I vaguely recall somebody saying something about bleeding,
but I actually assumed I was here because I hit my head. I
definitely remember that part.”

“That really wasn’t that bad,” she replied. “Just a
bit of a bump. The doctor says you don’t even have a
concussion.”

“Well, at least there’s that. So, are you saying you
were actually able to communicate with Emily Foster’s spirit?”

She chuckled. “Of course I was. You aren’t the only
Witch here, you know. So do you remember anything else?”

“Not much really,” I replied. “Not after hitting the
floor anyway. I do feel like there’s something rolling around in
there, but I just can’t nail it down.”

Felicity gathered herself up from the chair then
lowered the railing on the side of the bed and perched herself next
to me. As she softly brushed my hair away from my face she said,
“Maybe if you just relax it will come to you.”

“You could be right,” I agreed then took a deep
breath and let it out slowly. Relaxing wasn’t one of my more
proficient skills, but I knew I desperately needed to remember what
I had seen if I was going to help stop this killer and, more
importantly, save Judith Albright’s life if at all possible.

Unfortunately, something new was cropping up in my
brain that had me preoccupied. I puzzled over it for a long moment,
concentrating between stabs of pain, then gave up and asked my
wife, “What did you mean when you said you told Emily Foster’s
spirit ‘it was yours’?”

“Oh, that. I can show you,” she replied.

I scrunched my forehead in confusion. “Show me?”

She shot me a broad, toothy smile, but by the time I
realized what I was seeing it was too late. She had already buried
her fangs into my neck, and I was trying to scream.

* * * * *

I felt myself gasp as the scream caught in my throat
and formed a hard lump. Light bloomed in my eyes and slowly settled
to a contrasty blur that eventually became the tile wall of the
autopsy suite filling my vision once again. I was still seeing it
sideways and from floor level, but I didn’t care. It definitely
beat what I had been seeing a split second before.

I heard Doctor Sanders calling out to someone. Her
voice was calm but held a strong sense of urgency. “I can’t stop
the bleeding. Get the paramedics now!”

A quickly moving wave of panic washed over me upon
hearing the string of syllables, and a solid sense of déjà vu
informed me that I had been here before. This time, however, no
darkness encroached upon my corner of the world. No hospital room,
no Goth nurse wearing swan print clothing, and most especially, no
vampire wife.

I still couldn’t move, or even speak. My heart
hadn’t stopped thumping inside my head and neither had the noise of
the blood rushing in my ears, but unlike before, I could hear
everything going on around me as clear as crystal.

Ben’s businesslike but very dire voice was sounding
nearby. “Yeah, this is Detective Benjamin Storm. We need paramedics
at City Medical Examiner’s office on Clark. We have a male in his
early forties hemorrhaging from his neck. Uh-huh… Yeah… Yeah, Doc
Sanders is already on that…”

“Tell them to come in the back entrance,” Doctor
Sanders instructed. “It will save time.”

“Yeah, the back entrance…” my friend repeated. “It’s
closer.”

From somewhere behind and very near to my head I
heard Felicity blurt, “The drawer!” Her voice was a rapid burst and
just to the low side of a shout.

“What?” Ben barked in return.

My wife didn’t take time to answer. I could hear the
soles of her tennis shoes squeak against the tile floor as she
scrambled up and skirted around my prone body. Even though I
couldn’t actually see it happening, I knew it was she who was
attached to the noise.

A heartbeat later I heard her normally singsong
voice now brimming with unbridled rage as she recited aloud,
“Emily, it’s time to go, I want you gone as you well know. Goodbye
now, and stay away, unless I call another day.”

As my wife’s words were still tumbling from her
mouth, I heard the sound of the rollers on the drawer hissing and
clattering as before, beginning with a slow ka-chunk then ramping
up to a fast chatter. A heavy thump came a second later, and the
clacking rollers stopped in the same instant. The dull noise was
followed by the hollow clank of the insulated stainless steel door
slamming shut.

Thick silence filled the room as
the oddly final sound dissipated into the cold air. After a tense
moment I heard Felicity growl with bitter calm, “And don’t make me
stuff your eternal arse into a shoebox,
saigh
.”

“Do me a favor and smile really big,” I said to my
wife.

I had just finished glancing at the IV tube running
into the back of my left hand and the pulse oximeter probe attached
to a finger on my right, so I was once again feeling an
overwhelming and terribly unpleasant sense of déjà vu. At least we
weren’t in a hospital room; however, we were at a hospital, sitting
in a treatment room in the emergency ward. Well, actually, she was
sitting; I was laying on the table, albeit at an incline.

I knew the instant I opened my mouth and asked her
to smile that I was letting irrational paranoia guide the odd
request. But under the circumstances and at this particular moment,
I wasn’t entirely certain I could reasonably distinguish reality
from lifelike ethereal visions, and I needed to be sure.

Felicity’s brow pinched up as she cocked her head to
the side and stared at me. “Why?”

“Just humor me,” I said, the tone
of my voice adding an obvious if unspoken
please
.

She shook her head as if she thought I had lost my
mind, but still curled her lips into a quick smile.

“Bigger,” I urged. “So I can see your teeth.”

“Is this about that vision?” she asked.

“Kind of…”

She sighed then repeated the smile, this time baring
her clenched teeth and rolling her eyes. After turning her head
side to side, she relaxed her mouth and asked, “There. Was that
good enough for you?”

“Yeah, thanks. By the way, how is your arm?”

“It’s fine.”

“You’re sure you didn’t twist it or anything when we
fell?”

“No. I already told you I’m not that fragile.”

“Okay, as long as you’re sure.”

She didn’t even try to mask the bother in her voice
as she responded. “It was just an errant vision produced by your
imagination, Rowan. That’s all. It was something put together by
your subconscious because of everything that was happening on top
of everything else that has happened in the last few days. You’ve
been through this sort of thing before. You know that’s what it
was.”

I reached up and felt my neck for what was probably
the sixth time. There was still nothing there that shouldn’t
be.

She watched me then shook her head and asked, “What
do I have to do to convince you?”

“Don’t suddenly sprout fangs would be a good
start.”

“I’m serious.”

“So am I.”

In a sharp huff she let out an exasperated breath.
“I think the blood loss must have affected your brain.”

“Maybe so, but the whole thing felt pretty real, so
I have to figure there’s something to it.”

“What, you actually think I’m a vampire?” she
quipped. “Now I know something’s wrong with your head.”

“No, that’s not what I mean. I just think there’s
some significance to the vision that I’m missing,” I explained then
tilted my head back and stared at the ceiling. After a minute or so
of silence, I looked over at Felicity again and said, “By the way,
I think I probably forgot to say thank you. That was some pretty
quick thinking you did back there at the morgue.”

“What? You mean salting a dead woman’s corpse into
submission?”

“Hmmph. Well, I couldn’t really see what was
happening, so I didn’t know about the salt. But I could definitely
hear you rattling off the banishing spell. How long have you been
carrying that one around in your pocket, cocked and ready?”

“I haven’t.” She shook her head. “I made it up on
the spot.”

“See there… Like I said, quick thinking.”

“Aye, it was a lucky rhyme. I was angry, and anger
trumps everything. I could have recited a recipe for crab dip as
long as the intent was there. Miz Foster’s spirit should actually
be glad I didn’t pluck a hair out of her dead little head and do
some real damage.”

“Yeah, I caught your addendum as well.”

“Apparently she did too, because she left,” she
spat.

“So… You sound like you’re still a little on the
angry side.”

“I suppose I am,” she admitted.

“At me?” I asked.

“No.” She punctuated the reply with an animated
shake of her head. “Not at you… At the situation. To be honest, I
think it’s really frustration more than anything else. I mean, you
were perfectly grounded, and on top of that you had me anchoring
you as well.” She shrugged and threw her hands up in exasperation.
“But look what happened anyway… There was just no way to control
it.”

“I know,” I told her. “But for the whole process to
work I have to let them in, and once the door is open… Well… You’ve
been there… You know…”

She nodded. “Aye. They’re like houseguests from hell
who refuse to leave.”

We both heard a sharp knock then the door to the
treatment room slowly swung open and Ben poked his head through the
gap.

“Hey, white man,” he greeted me as he continued
pushing the door open wider and stepped inward then allowed it to
pivot shut in his wake. “How ya’ doin’?”

“As well as can be expected, I guess,” I replied,
glancing up at the IV bag and pointing to it. “They’re topping me
off or something.”

“Heya, Firehair,” he said, glancing over at
Felicity.

She nodded.

“So listen,” he began as he looked
back over to me. “The description of your
Twilight Zone
nurse pretty much fits
with our Jane Doe. As much as you were able to give us anyway. So
just ta’ be safe, they’re gonna run the name Amanda against missing
persons.”

“Well, that’s a good thing, right?” I asked.

“Maybe. We’ll hafta see. Woulda helped ta’ have a
last name.”

“Sorry about that.”

He shrugged. “No need to apologize, it was la-la
land stuff. I get that even if they don’t. But the big problem is
the name could be an alias or something, so we could get false
hits. And if she was never reported missin’ in the first place,
then we aren’t gonna get any hits at all. If that happens then we
still have a Jane Doe… Or an Amanda Doe… However you wanna look at
it.”

“But, what you aren’t saying is that no matter what
you get, it still doesn’t bring us any closer to figuring out who
is doing this or to finding Judith Albright,” I offered as I laid
my head back and closed my eyes.

“Yeah, well, I wasn’t gonna point that out. Not just
yet, anyway,” my friend told me. “But don’t count it out. Something
as simple as a name can still produce a lead.”

I let out a long sigh then spoke
aloud to myself as much as them. “Emily kept saying,
It is an honor to be chosen, I won’t be
afraid
.”

“Yeah, you already told me that,”
he grunted. “No offense, white man, but that ain’t a whole lotta
help either. Now,
help, I’m being held at
xyz house on whatever street
would be a
definite step in the right direction.”

“I know,” I replied. “And you also know it doesn’t
work like that.”

“Yeah. Trust me, I’ve been tryin’ to explain that to
the brass.”

“If I can figure out what she meant about it being
an honor to be chosen, maybe it will set us on the right path.”

“Well, based on the amount of time between when she
disappeared and when her body turned up, maybe it’s some form of
brainwashing, then,” Felicity suggested. “Like a Stockholm Syndrome
type of thing.”

“Yeah, they tossed that idea out there when I called
all this in a little while ago,” Ben replied. “Then when I
mentioned you said she heard chanting, they started in with the
whole Satanic ritual murder angle.”

“They just love that one, don’t they?” I
replied.

“Yeah, well some things just ain’t gonna change,
Row.”

“I guess I can’t blame them,” I offered. “Even with
what I know, I have to admit that some kind of ritual murder
scenario crossed my mind too.”