Love Is The Bond: A Rowan Gant Investigation (24 page)

So far I had been unsuccessful in discovering
who, or what, possessed my wife, and that wasn’t going to help my
plight. I had originally thought that she was simply channeling the
killer, and while that might in fact still be the case to some
extent, she had escalated well beyond simply being a conveyance of
ethereal spirit. She had, for all intents and purposes, become one
with it, and the woman I knew as Felicity O’Brien was now little
more than an amalgam of two opposing personalities. Unfortunately,
the darker of the pair was in full control and obviously intended
to stay that way. With each passing moment, my wife was allowing
her own spirit to become a mere undertone. In fact, I doubted that
her psyche was even aware of what was happening to it at this
point.

I had only seen her channel to this extent
twice before, and in both instances the ethereal presences had been
those of friends—first, one who was dead and then, another who was
living. That last time, like this one, the spirit that was still
rooted on this side of the veil had assumed almost complete control
of Felicity’s corporeal self.

I knew that giving herself over so fully to
an ethereal force wouldn’t be a conscious decision on her part. Not
unless she believed it would make a difference in saving a life,
and I knew that wasn’t the case at this point. Under these
circumstances she would fight it, just as I had seen her do before;
of that I was certain. However, I also knew that there was an
extenuating circumstance. Taking into account what she had done the
day before, the sexual energy I had felt at the crime scene, and
the aura she was exuding at this very moment, it wasn’t hard to
figure out exactly what that circumstance was.

I unlocked the Jeep and pulled the door open
then guided her toward the passenger seat. She was starting to
breath heavily, and since I was gripping her wrist, I could easily
feel her pulse quickening.

As she climbed in through the open door, she
turned toward me then pitched slightly forward as if she’d slipped.
Out of reflex I moved in to steady her. As I came in close, I heard
her giggle but didn’t realize my mistake until her open palm met
the side of my face with a resounding smack. I immediately cursed
myself for letting her sandbag me, but I was still stunned enough
that she managed to get in a second hard slap before I could
backpedal out of her reach.

“Get back here,” she ordered. “I’m not
finished with you yet, little man.”

“Maybe not,” I muttered as I broke the seal
on the water bottle and twisted off the cap. “But I’m sure as hell
finished with you, whoever you are.”

With a turn of my wrist, I poured out some of
the water onto the ground to make some headspace in the bottle then
reached into my pocket and withdrew a handful of salt packets. I
fumbled the crimped edges of the paper together and gave them a
quick flick before tearing them crosswise and pouring their
contents into the open mouth of the plastic container. Out of the
half dozen or so that were in my hand, I managed to get the
equivalent of maybe two into the vessel. I had to hope that would
be enough.

“I don’t know what you think you’re doing,”
Felicity snipped, her voice now thick with the Southern
affectation.

I replaced the cap and gave the water bottle
several vigorous shakes as I replied, “Mixing you something to
drink.”

“I’m not drinking that,” she spat.

“Yes, you are.”

“No, I am not.”

“We’ll see.”

Still shaking the container, I moved toward
her. She immediately reached for the door, but before she could
pull it shut, I stepped in and caught it with my upper arm.

Falling back into the seat, she twisted and
kicked her legs out toward me. I sidestepped the first thrust but
caught a hard jab from the second as her pointed heel dug into my
thigh. My leg was still throbbing from her earlier attack, and this
didn’t help matters at all.

I twisted to the side as she kicked again.
This time when she connected it was only a glancing blow and not
enough to slow me down. I managed to slip in between the door and
her as she fell back against the console, and I used my weight to
pin her legs on the seat. I insinuated myself almost directly over
her as she continued taking short swings at me, actually landing
more than one blow against my ribs.

If I hadn’t been sure about the salt water
before, I was now. Her violent resistance was more than enough to
tell me that I had hit upon something that frightened the entity
she had become.

“No!” she screamed, wildly twisting her face
away from me.

My determination was renewed by my
revelation, so I slipped an arm in and managed to twine my fingers
into her hair at the back of her head. I didn’t want to hurt her,
but my options were even less than limited, and she certainly
wasn’t about to offer me any new avenues to take.

“You… Obey… Me… Damn… You…” she growled
defiantly through her clenched jaw as I held her fast and used my
teeth to pull the cap from the bottle of still-swirling salt
water.

I tightened my grip on her hair and pulled
her head back as I put the bottle up to her mouth. She twisted and
bucked against me, trying to turn her face away while keeping her
lips tightly sealed. I leaned farther in, trying to position myself
better and lowered my elbow across her left arm, pinning it against
the console. Her right, however, was still free, and she grabbed
onto my ponytail then yanked hard to the side, pulling me off
balance and wrenching my neck.

“Dammit, Felicity!” I yelped. “Just take a
drink!”

Her only reply was a nasal whine of rage as
she kept her lips tightly sealed.

She brought the sharp heel of her shoe hard
against the back of my calf and drove it downward as she struggled.
Continuing to kick, she then pulled hard on my hair again while
twisting her other arm from beneath mine. In a flash her
fingernails dug deeply into my cheek and raked across my face. I
gritted my teeth as I actually felt the warm blood beginning to run
down my face. I jerked upward, splashing water all across the
interior of the Jeep as I tried to escape her claws.

My mind was racing, trying to figure a way
out of this corner. In retrospect I knew I should have waited until
we arrived home before trying to deal with this, but then, we all
know what they say about hindsight. With everything that had been
going on the past few days, it was obvious that my own judgment had
become severely impaired. Of course, whenever it came to my wife’s
safety and well-being, impaired thinking seemed to be my constant
downfall.

In a moment of lucidity, I decided to cut my
losses and back down before any more damage could be done, and more
importantly, before I accidentally hurt Felicity. I started to push
myself up, but my wife still had me by the ponytail and wasn’t
letting go.

“All right,” I told her as I struggled to
turn my face enough to make eye contact with her. “You win. Let go
of my hair.”

“Beg me,” she instructed, but her eyes seemed
to be focused elsewhere.

“Dammit, Felicity,” I groaned. “Let go.”

I kept watching her face and realized that by
her continuing to hold my head to the side, she was able to see
past me to some extent. Unfortunately, I was blind to what she was
staring at. I could, however, hear a car engine running behind me,
and it suddenly dawned on me that the scene we were creating must
not look good at all. Embarrassment now became another factor in
this fiasco of my own making, as if I needed any more.

Of course, being a participant and not a
spectator, what hadn’t seeped in was exactly how bad it truly
looked; or, more importantly, that the clerk witnessing it from
behind the windows of the store had chosen this particular moment
in time to be a good Samaritan and get involved.

“POLICE!” A commanding male voice struck my
ears. “Turn around slowly and face me with your hands clasped
behind your head!”

I stopped pulling against Felicity and froze
in place, afraid to make any sudden move. Even so, she still hadn’t
released my ponytail, so I wasn’t exactly able to comply with the
instruction.

“Let me go,” I told her again.

She didn’t reply.

“Felicity,” I insisted. “Let me go before
this gets any worse.”

“NOW!” the voice demanded again.

My wife rolled her face toward me, bringing
her eyes to meet mine.

“You’re right,” she said as her mouth spread
into a wicked smirk. “I win.”

For a brief instant I saw what I could only
describe as a purely evil sparkle behind her jade green irises.
Then, with only that smug grin as warning, she let out a terrified
scream.

A split second later my world stopped making
any sense at all, and pain racked me to the core. The water bottle
flew upward, emptying itself across the console as well as both of
us. Every muscle in my body simultaneously convulsed, and I
stiffened for a moment then fell forward.

As I lay there across Felicity, unable to
move, my brain was desperately trying to understand what was
happening to me. My senses were muddled, and I seized on the first
thing I could; that turned out to be the rhythmic thumping of my
own heart. However, behind the slowing cadence there was another
beat, much more frantic and uncontrolled, and it seemed to be
coming from beneath me.

A fleeting instant of clarity dashed through
my brain, and I realized that the racing flutter was Felicity’s
heartbeat. As other sounds began to flood in, joining the pair of
heartbeats was a high-pitched whimper and behind it, the sound of
choking sobs. In that moment I feared that my actions must have
truly terrified my wife. I tried to call out her name but couldn’t
get my mouth to even move, much less form a word.

I suddenly felt my arms being wrenched behind
my back, and I was pulled backward then unceremoniously placed face
down on the cool asphalt. I could feel a knee in my back as my
other senses started to haphazardly return in no particular order.
Cold metal bit into my wrists amid the ratcheting sound of
handcuffs being applied and tightened.

I was positioned such that I was facing the
open door of the Jeep, and I watched as an officer helped Felicity
from the vehicle. She stood shakily, leaning back to steady herself
against the doorframe. From my present angle, I could only see her
from the mid-chest down, and though she was certainly disheveled,
she didn’t appear any worse for wear. Her actions, however, didn’t
prove that out as fact.

While I was able to see what was going on, I
still couldn’t get my muscles to execute the functions my brain
wanted from them. Based on the various sensations that were now
reporting in, I suspected that I had been shot with a Taser. A
random memory of a story Ben had told me about the devices flitted
through my grey matter, and it reminded me that it would most
likely be at least a few more minutes before my nervous system
fully recovered. How that got past the disorientation, I will never
know. However, since there was nothing else I could do, I simply
watched and listened.

Staticky radios blurped in the foreground,
all underscored by the sounds of traffic out on the street and the
rumbling of the police cruiser’s engine a few feet away. Through it
all I could hear Felicity continuing to sob. As if punctuating her
staccato of whimpers, I heard her say “Why, Rowan, why?”

I finally allowed myself to relax.

She was using my name. Maybe the shock of
what had just happened had been enough to interrupt the ethereal
connection that was in possession of her. If she settled down, then
she could tell them that I wasn’t trying to hurt her, and then
maybe we could put this behind us quickly. The sooner we could get
home, the sooner we could regroup and figure out how to handle what
was happening.

“Are you okay, ma’am?” the officer asked.

“No,” she sobbed.

“Are you injured?”

I didn’t even get a chance to blink. In a
flash my wife stepped toward me and kicked me hard in the ribs
while screaming, “You bastard!”

The cops reacted quickly and pulled her back
before she could strike again, but it really didn’t matter. The
physical pain she had just inflicted was nothing compared to the
mental torment that set in the moment I realized nothing had
changed.

I felt my jaw moving in random patterns as I
tried to talk, but heard no sound come from my own mouth. All I
could hear was my wife continuing to sob as she fell against the
officer in a grateful hug and blubbered, “Thank you… Thank you… I…
I thought he was going to kill me this time…”

I still couldn’t see her face, but I was
willing to bet that somewhere behind that Oscar-winning
performance, even if just on the inside, she was still wearing that
wicked grin.

“Jeezus, Rowan, you look like shit.”

It was Ben Storm’s voice that split the
relative silence of the sparse room. I had lost track of how long I
had been staring at the wall. At first it had simply been an
exercise to keep calm, but as the passing minutes accumulated, it
eventually became nothing more than a method of surrender. So, by
now, my state was almost one of a self-induced catatonia. I wasn’t
sure, but I fully suspected that Felicity was already hell and gone
from the police station. Something told me she probably didn’t head
for home, but if she did she wouldn’t be there for very long.

I finally blinked then broke off my empty
gaze and turned to find my friend staring at me through the bars of
the holding cell. At least one of us was on the outside.

“What time is it?” I asked quietly.

He gave me a confused glance but looked at
his watch and answered the question. “It’s a few minutes after
six.”