“You volunteerin’?”
“Yeah, right,” Mandalay replied, actually laughing as she made the sarcastic remark. “In your dreams, Storm.”
“Maybe,” he casually snipped. “But I’m pretty sure the woman in my dreams is taller than you.”
I glanced over at Felicity and saw that she seemed to be handling the conversation well, considering. There was a time when I personally would have been almost livid about the insensitivity of their exchange in light of what was happening. To be honest, it still bothered me a bit, but to a large extent I had grown used to this sort of thing. I knew that the jokes and nonchalant conversations were just a defense mechanism that most anyone in their profession quickly developed. It was either that or the job would eat them alive, and I certainly couldn’t fault them their sanity. I suppose in a way I was a bit jealous that I couldn’t turn off the horror and hide behind the mundane as easily as they.
“I’m betting she has a set of thirty-eight double-D’s too,” Mandalay baited my friend with a note of disdain.
“Nope.”
“Excuse me,” she chided. “Forty-fours then.”
“Nope. Not really all about the boobs,” he replied with a shake of his head. “I’m more of a leg guy.”
Constance grew quiet for a split second. The pause would have been almost imperceptible except that time seemed to be expanding all around me. When she spoke again, I could have sworn I picked up a hint of surprise in her voice, but then, the growing roar in my ears was making everything sound odd.
“Really?” she said, voice phasing through a shallow echo.
“Yeah, really.” Ben’s languid words flowed in behind hers.
I was just getting ready to call out to everyone that something was wrong when the thrum ended with an unceremonious crash, and the world around me phased into solid reality. I caught myself as I stumbled
“Row,” Felicity asked, taking hold of my arm. “Are you okay?”
Ben and Constance stopped dead in their tracks and turned the moment she asked the question.
“Yeah,” I replied, nodding. “Must be some residual dizziness or something from the seizure earlier.”
“You sure, white man?” Ben asked.
“I think so.”
“That’s not what I asked you,” he replied.
“Okay, yeah, I’m fine.”
“Rowan…” Felicity began.
“Really,” I told her. “Whatever it was, it’s over now. I’m fine.”
Ben looked me over as if he were sizing up a suspect, then muttered, “Okay.”
My friend turned and started walking again. We all fell in step with him.
“So, I take it Albright is still running the investigation?” Constance asked, changing the subject.
“Yeah,” Ben nodded. “You don’t think she’d miss a chance to score points with the mayor, do ya’?”
“It figures,” Constance replied. “But I was hoping maybe she’d handed it off to an underling by now.”
“She did,” he said. “While it was cold, but she took it back before the poor bastard had a chance to finish his first cup of coffee this mornin’. Now she’s right back in the fuckin’ limelight.”
“Okay, so what if we hit on something here? How are you going to get it past her?”
“I was hopin’ you’d tell me,” he said.
“Me?” she asked. “I’m not assigned to this anymore.”
“Yeah, well you’re one up on me. I’m flat out banned from it.”
“So what does that have to do with me?”
“Your badge is fancier than mine.”
“Dammit, Storm,” she admonished. “You know if you keep butting heads with Albright, you’re not going to have a badge at all.”
“Yeah, I know. That’s why you’re here.”
“Well I don’t know that there’s going to be anything I can do,” Constance offered.
Ben turned to face her and said, “Well, it’s either that or we find the fucker and I just cap ‘im myself.”
“I’m not listening,” she replied without missing a beat.
“Yeah, well,” he said. “This has gotta stop.”
“I agree with you,” she told him. “But turning into a vigilante is not the way to do it.”
“Sometimes I wonder,” my friend mumbled.
We came to a halt as a group, standing to one side of the traffic lane behind a row of cars. Twenty feet to our left was the concrete base of the light standard.
“I’m still not listening,” Mandalay told him again.
“Good.”
Ben looked across the parking lot, twisting in place as he scanned the area, an intense frown digging a deep furrow into his face.
“Some rent-a-cop is probably watchin’ us on the camera right now,” he finally said while looking over his shoulder.
“More than likely,” I heard Constance reply, her voice starting off at a normal tone then suddenly stretching into a stream of Doppler distorted syllables.
It was happening again. A sharp pain sliced through my ribcage before I could even open my mouth, and I felt my chest instantly tighten. Still, I tried to speak but found that I had no breath.
A choppy drone that vaguely resembled Ben’s voice fell into the humming void behind Mandalay’s. “Guess you better do whatever you’re gonna do before security shows up. Okay, Row?”
The parking lot was starting to spin away, whirlpooling from my sight in a psychedelic swirl, like multiple colors of paint pouring down a drain. My heart was hammering in my chest, and suddenly nothing made sense to me any longer.
I didn’t know where I was.
I didn’t know who I was.
I didn’t know what I was.
But, for some strange reason, I did know I was in trouble when I heard a vaguely familiar voice. It was loud; distinctly feminine, possessed of an Irish lilt, and unmistakably anguished as it echoed in my ears, “Ground! Dammit Rowan! GROUND!”
CHAPTER 31:
Something is biting into my side.
Pinching flesh.
Tearing skin.
Freezing.
Burning.
I’m not sure which.
All I know is that it hurts.
I cannot breathe.
I want to breathe, but nothing seems to work.
I think my brain is saying to breathe, but maybe it isn’t.
My chest is tight, and I can feel myself shaking.
Or at least I think I can.
I just don’t know anymore.
Nothing is making sense.
Nothing is certain except the pain.
Nothing at all.
Nothing…
I returned to the here and now in a single, horrendously painful, fraction of a second. The only warning that I was about to cross the veil yet again was the sudden feeling that I was being jerked backward, as if by a hand hooked into my collar. After that, it was all over. An entirely new kind of pain tore through my body as I gasped for air. I felt for all the world as if I had just slammed face first into a concrete wall.
My eyes snapped open and an unfocused mottle of contrasty greys took over my field of vision. My ears were filled with the sound of a car alarm blaring, and a ball of agony throbbed inside my head, keeping perfect time with it.
My sight faded quickly in, returning to something near normal, even if it was still no more than a black and white rendition of reality. My head was hanging forward, and I noticed that I was leaning against something. At first glance, it looked like the back of a black sedan, but of course, color wasn’t something I could readily identify at the moment. Still, unless I missed my guess, the car was ground zero for the obnoxious honking and warbling.
“Rowan!” Ben’s voice wove its way through the raucous noise, filtering into my ears. “Rowan! Breathe!”
I looked up and blinked. It took a moment for me to realize I was staring into his face as he was steadying me. I fought to focus on him as light suddenly bloomed around me in a bright flash, chasing the shadows in a chaotic game of tag. Color began seeping into my world as if being slowly dialed in with a control knob.
I felt a hot breath suddenly explode from my lungs, and I coughed as I sucked in the cool, autumn air.