Page 23 of Bite of the Gargoyle

“No.”

I’m so taken aback, I need a minute to process her words. I sit back in my chair and let my eyes fall to the floor as I wonder how much she actually knows and whether the information she does know is true.

“If not Derith,” I ask, “thenwho?”

“He who lives in shadow,” she answers.

“I don’t understand.”

She reaches for my hand again. I scoot back in my chair, because the last thing I want to do is touch her again and experience what happened the last time.

“It’s all right,” she says. “This time, I intend to show you, not to see.”

I breathe in deeply but make no motion to offer my hand. Instead, I just study her, trying to understand what she wants from me.

“Take my hand,” she says. “I will show you what you wish to know.”

I scoot forward in my chair until my ass is right smack dab on the edge and look at her in the eyes.

“Okay,” I say.

She tilts her head towards her hands and eyes them ceremoniously. I layer my hands over hers, but I leave an inch of air between our palms.

“Okay,” I repeat, and this time, I let my hands sink into hers as if pulled down by a mighty anchor. After a second or two, I feel a warmth spread out from the center of her hand and the warmth travels into mine and up my arms. It starts to burn but just slightly—like putting your hand on a warm stove.

The space between our joined palms is now emitting a greenish-blue light.

“What is—”

“Shhh.”

I listen, and the warm glow between our hands intensifies. The warmth spreads up through my arms and shoulders, up my neck, and into my flushed cheeks. I feel it all over my body soon enough, and when the warmth finally reaches the top of my head, I feel myself jerked back in my seat and thrust into a blinding vortex of light.

I open my mouth to scream, but all the air is promptly sucked from my lungs. My chair clatters to the ground behind me, then disappears entirely. Our hands are still joined. The witch’s eyes are closed.

“What the hell was that?” I ask, stumbling around to get my footing. She releases me and I collapse against a wall.

But not the wall of the witch’s hovel. Now, I’m in a very ornately decorated place. The room is made of stone with colorful tapestries hanging on the wall. There’s a four-poster bed in the center of the room. As the scene unfolds before me, I watch as a door bursts open and a couple stumbles in. They’re busily engaged in a passionate kiss and I look away.

“Watch,” the witch says.

The couple disappears under the covers of the bed, then move under the bed’s red velvet linens and I hear the woman moan. At that moment, the door crashes open again.

A man enters.

I can’t see his face from this angle, until he turns.

Then I fall to my knees.

“You…” I cover my mouth with my hands and try to stifle my shock, but there’s no help for it. This is the man—the one from all those years ago. The man I believed was Derith. But now that I see him, in this dream vision, I realize Derith and he aren’t the same person, even if they are breathlessly similar.

As I watch the man, he observes the bed and the activity within it. He breathes heavily. He’s angry, but he isn’t moving. He’s thinking. Plotting.

Suddenly, he grabs the bed linens and yanks them back, throwing them to the floor.

I look at the man who slaughtered my family and catch a glimpse of the knife in his right hand.

“Brother,” he says the word as if it’s a threat.

---