His prayer went unanswered.
“He’s still alive!” the nearby voice called upward with momentous relief and then seemed to direct back upon the suspended figure. “Can you hear me, Mister Gant?”
The warlock lived.
Eldon had failed.
He closed his eyes and waited in silence. All that he could do now is make certain he escaped.
More than a dozen hours passed before the scene was finally clear, and he could safely extricate himself from his hiding place. Weak with cold, pain, and surely blood loss-even with the makeshift tourniquet bound tightly just above his elbow-Eldon made his way cautiously across the steel beams.
He was deeply chilled and felt clammy with the remnants of a cold sweat. His trousers were still damp and reeked of urine where hours ago he had finally been forced to empty his bladder while still wedged in his cramped hiding place. He felt degraded by the act of urinating on himself, but there had been no other choice.
The fog had long dissipated, and he could see the ice-packed river far below. A swift wave of vertigo touched him, and he held fast to the latticed girder. Several minutes later the wave of fear passed, replaced by his dire need to escape, and he continued his shaky climb.
Carefully, he pulled himself up and back over the railing to finally collapse on the concrete deck of the bridge.
He lay there for several minutes, breathing deeply and feeling the warmth of the sun’s rays soaking into his chilled body. He simply wanted to relax and rest after the constant strain of keeping motionless and stable on the cold steel beam for what had seemed a lifetime.
But rest was not an option.
At the beginning of the long night, he had made a promise to God. During the prolonged police search, each time the swath of a powerful flashlight came close, or the echo of footsteps on the bridge stopped immediately above his hiding place, he had reiterated that promise in full.
If he made it through- if he remained free and survived his wounds -he had promised he would not fail again.
Rowan Gant would die.
Ten Months Later
December 1
Saint Louis, Missouri
Heather Burke only half awoke, a substantial part of her remaining submerged in a state of semi-conscious anguish. As consciousness relentlessly crept in, among the heightened sensations to immediately register were a dry throat and a headache like no other she could remember in her thirty-three years. Rapidly following, and skirting the edges of the pain in complete disharmony, blind terror paralyzed her body. Her muscles were tensed, aching, and she felt clammy with cold sweat. Her heart was racing, and out of reflex she sucked in a sharp breath with a startled gasp.
Holding tight to that frantic gulp of air, she listened, waiting for the source of her terror to make itself known. But no matter how intently she focused, she heard nothing other than the beating of her own heart. Even so, she refused to expel the breath until she could simply hold it no longer. When that moment finally came, the only new sound to be added to the silence was that of her timid whimper.
She continued to wait while fighting to keep her breathing quiet and shallow. She desperately wanted to suck in the cool air as fast as she could, but something was out there. Something fearful in the darkness and she didn’t want it to find her. She felt like she was seven years old again and hiding from the boogey man of her childhood nightmares.
Her mind trudged through a thick fog as she tried to center on just exactly what it was she feared so much. Each passing thought bringing her closer to the surface of consciousness. Her muscles finally began to relax as the wakefulness blossomed from half to full, though the murkiness that obscured her thoughts remained.
And, so did the fear.
Heather’s head was throbbing in agonizing pulses. This was a mother of a migraine, she thought. No, she decided after a moment, it wasn’t just a mother. This was the great matriarch of the entire clan. It had to be the very one that had spawned all the others throughout history, and it had apparently elected to go into labor inside her skull.
Slowly, bracing herself against the still unknown terror, she opened one eye. It seemed as though it took forever before she stopped squinting and allowed herself to see. As her blurry vision adjusted, she took note of the gradient blue-black shadows slicing angular paths through the room.
Nothing moved…
Nothing leapt at her from the darkness…
Nothing.
She allowed herself to relax a little more.
Letting her monocular gaze roam, she scanned the room. Her eyeball hurt as she moved it, and she realized quickly both of them were sore and itching. They felt gritty and allergic, like something foreign had invaded their sanctity. She blinked hard, but the feeling remained.
At least what she saw was intimately familiar, shrouded by darkness though it was. There was the TV in the corner with a cheap plastic, tabletop Christmas tree sitting on top of it. The second hand papa-san chair was sitting catty-cornered from her-a basket of wrinkled, to-be-folded-someday clothing occupying it as usual. Everything looked just like it normally did whenever she was sprawled out on her couch in sofa-spud mode.
And to her relief, there was still nothing there that shouldn’t be.
This was definitely her apartment, and she found that comforting. However, something still wasn’t right about it all, and although it was continuing to dull, she just couldn’t fully shake the feeling of terror deep down in the pit of her stomach.
Giving in to a sudden attack of bravery, she moved to sit up, and pain lanced through the center of her head from back to front. She eased herself back down and lay perfectly still, not wanting to further aggravate the troll with the jackhammer that was apparently excavating inside her brain.
This was not good at all. It was unnerving. Along with the pain, there was an increasingly desperate feeling of disorientation, as if the fog of sleep had given way only to be replaced by another obscuring mist in wakefulness.
Between staccato bursts of agony, Heather took mental inventory, searching to put her finger on a reason for the headache. It felt a little like a hangover, but not exactly, and she didn’t remember doing any drinking last night. In fact, she didn’t remember much of anything at all from last night. She remembered leaving work, driving home, and then…
Then what?
She didn’t know. She concentrated for a minute but gave up almost immediately when she realized that it only served to make the pain worse.
Her tongue felt thick. She swallowed hard, and the dryness in her throat formed a lump that hesitated for a moment before painfully making its way downward.
She tried to approach the situation from a different angle. She could see that it was dark. So maybe that meant it was still last night…or tonight…or whatever…night, anyway. Hopefully it wasn’t already tomorrow night. No, it couldn’t be. Could it?
It made her brain hurt too much to think about it, so she gave up again.
“Oh man,” she muttered. “This sucks big time.”
She waited, considering how apropos the statement was. Eventually, there was a temporary lull in the migraine, and she gave thinking another shot.
She was at home, that much was for certain, but she couldn’t quite remember how she had arrived here or even when. She wasn’t even sure if she could really remember the last thing she remembered. Now wasn’t that a kick?
So, she was at home, on her couch, and it was dark. In the overall scheme of things, that really wasn’t much to go on. But at least she was at her home, and she hadn’t gotten drunk and gone home with some sleazy bar asshole. Or had she?