The End Of Desire: A Rowan Gant Investigation Read Online Free Page B

that whatever she had unleashed was
no longer using her alone as a vehicle to inflict pain and death,
it had been trying its damnedest to use my wife as well.
    I even had the freshly healing wounds to
prove it.
    Still, why Felicity had been sucked into
this, other than a familial connection we didn’t even know she had,
was something of a perverse mystery in its own right. And, solving
that mystery was what brought me here, now, to this seedy motel
room in the burbs of New Orleans, with nothing more in my
possession than what I could quickly stuff into a single overnight
bag and my carryon backpack.
    “Row? You still there?” Ben’s voice drifted
into my ear, breaking me out of the semi-dream state into which I’d
managed to sink.
    “Yeah, sorry,” I mumbled. “Drifted for a
minute there.”
    “Twilight
Zone ?” he asked.
    That was his personal catch phrase to
describe any time that I would experience an ethereal event,
especially one that would push me into a trance or something even
worse, such as a seizure. The first few times he had witnessed it
happening to me he had been frantic, not that I had reacted much
better. These days, however, he just took it in stride—as much as
one could with that sort of thing, anyway.
    “No… Just tired,” I told him. “So, did you
just call to chew me out for not calling you first, or was there
something else on your mind?”
    “Little of both, I guess,” he grunted.
    “Okay, if you’re finished with your lecture,
are you ready to move on to the other?”
    “What the hell is that?” he asked, confusion
in his voice.
    “Ummm…I don’t know. You called me,
remember?”
    “No, White Man. I mean what’s that fuckin’
noise?”
    Apparently my next-door neighbor had another
transaction waiting in the wings, either that or one of her
co-workers had been in the queue. I’d already identified the voices
of two separate bad actresses operating out of the same room. At
any rate, it appeared my hoped for fifteen minutes of peace wasn’t
going to happen, at least not during this particular hour.
    “Exactly.”
    “Exactly what?”
    “Just like you said, it’s fuckin’ noise,
Ben,” I told him, echoing his raw terminology. “Let’s just say
there is a lot of nightshift work here at the Inn.”
    “Jeezus, Row… You aren’t gonna…you know…”
    “Come on, I think you know me better than
that.”
    “Well couldn’t ya’ get a decent room
somewhere else?”
    “Believe me, I wish I could. Right now I just
need to be happy it has a roof and electricity.”
    “So you at least got a TV?” he asked.
    “Actually, no. I don’t think the people who
normally use these rooms are all that interested in TV. Why do you
ask?”
    “Just wonderin’ what you’re doin’ for
entertainment?”
    The non sequitur queries were really starting
to aggravate me, so I snapped, “I’m not here for entertainment,
Ben, and you know that. Now, are you going to tell me whatever it
is you had on your mind or not?”
    “You sittin’ down?”
    “No. There isn’t a chair, and I’m not so sure
I want to use the bed from the looks of it. I’m not even sure where
I plan to sleep in here now that I think of it.”
    “Yeah, great. Well hold on ta’ somethin’
anyway.”
    “Come on, Ben. What’s with the
melodrama?”
    “Payback’s a bitch.”
    “What?”
    “You kept me waitin’, I’m just returnin’ the
favor.”
    I shook my head and let out a heavy sigh. “I
already said I’m sorry. What more do you want?”
    “You gettin’ pissed at me yet?”
    “I think you can safely say that I am, yeah.
Why?”
    “‘ Cause that’s what I wanted. Like I
said, payback.”
    “Then I think you can consider the debt
cleared,” I told him. “Now do you actually have something to tell
me, or is this all just part of your grand plan?”
    “Actually, I do have somethin’. Figured you
mighta heard it on the news, but I guess not…”
    “I haven’t seen any news since I left