Free Harm None: A Rowan Gant Investigation by M. R. Sellars Page B

sound like a crashing wave, recorded on tape
and played in reverse. The murmur is behind me now. I turn again,
and the robed figure is on the opposite side of the bed. The figure
is pointing at me. The chant becomes louder, and though disjointed
in its cadence, clear.
    “ All...Is...Forgiven.
All...Is...Forgiven...”
    “ Why?” a voice drifts over the
chant.
    I look down to see Ariel’s mutilated corpse.
Her lifeless eyes glare back at me and her mouth slowly
animates.
    “ Why, Rowan, why?”
    An endless scream.
     
    I awoke with a start, my hair and clothes
drenched in a cold sweat. Felicity was once again sitting next to
me on the edge of the sofa, deep concern creasing her brow and sad
tears clouding her eyes.
    “Are you okay?” I asked her, immediately
worried by the expression on her face.
    “Yes,” she sniffed. “I’m all right. The
question is are you going to be okay?”
    “I don’t know,” I replied. “I think so.”
    “You kept saying ‘Why, Rowan, why’, over and
over,” she told me as she intertwined her fingers with mine, then
wiped away a tear with her free hand. “All I could feel from you
was fear, and I couldn’t wake you.”
    “How long was I out of it?” I asked with a
sigh.
    “About half an hour,” she returned. “What’s
going on? You’ve never done anything like this before.”
    “I don’t know. Probably just a bad dream.” I
reached up and brushed a loose strand of hair from her face. “The
things I’ve seen in the past twenty-four hours would give anyone
nightmares.”
    “It’s more than that,” she told me. “You and
I both know it.”
    I lightly caressed her cheek. “Never can fool
you, can I?”
    “This isn’t going to stop until you find the
killer, is it?”
    I didn’t answer. I didn’t have to.
     
    * * * * *
     
    By some miracle, I actually slept. No dreams,
no visions, no nightmares. It was only an hour, but at least it was
peaceful. Upon waking, I re-heated and practically inhaled the meal
Felicity had made for me earlier. I never realized corned beef hash
and eggs could taste so good. After eating, I parked myself in my
upstairs office with a solid stack of reference books. The
Expiation spell had been readily recognizable to me, even
considering the killer’s sickening variations, but the rest of it
was only vaguely familiar. I knew from past reading that flaying
and vivisection of a live sacrificial victim were components of the
invocation rites performed by ritual magicians of days long past.
What I wasn’t clear on was what he might be trying to invoke or
why. I felt that if I could pin these facts down, I might have a
clue about what he would do next. Whether or not this would be
important to the police, I also didn’t know, but it was important
to me.
    It became quickly obvious after only a few
moments study that the healthy pile of books held none of the
answers I sought. Reference material about The Craft didn’t deal
with the horrors I had only recently witnessed, and any other
historical texts in my possession touched on it only briefly.
Feeling this avenue now closed, I pushed the books off to the side
of my desk and switched on my personal computer. A few keystrokes
and mouse clicks later, I was logging in to my local Internet
service provider and merging with the electronic fast lane of the
information superhighway. I navigated through the various starting
pages and came to rest at my objective, a database search screen. I
began my quest for information by typing in the keywords HUMAN
SACRIFICE and clicking on the SUBMIT icon. If my service provider
happened to be randomly monitoring this line, I mused silently,
they were probably thinking I was some kind of psychopath. The
status lights on the modem flickered quickly, and the screen
re-painted itself, displaying the online addresses of the various
matching World Wide Web sites.
    The majority of the web pages listed dealt
with historical text and benign non-literal references such