Chapter 21

Hotch licked his lips as he watched her grab her jacket. Once she's scared, I'll comfort her and then show her there's really nothing to be afraid of.

She looked at him before going to the door. "I wish we had a flashlight."

"We could ask Sean for one, but I'd hate to have to explain why we want it." He looked around the room. "We could make this a little more authentic," he suggested. With her questioning look, he smiled and picked up the metal candle holder. "We can use candle power."

She smiled. "That is actually a really good idea," she told him as she went over and grabbed the matching one off the other table and took the box of matches from the mantel.

"So how do we get to the tower?" Hotch asked as he made his way to the door. He saw her shudder and bit his lip to stop him from laughing.

She sighed deeply. "We need to get into the passages from the hall," she told him and then led the way. He followed her past the kids' room and further into the castle. When she stopped next to a statue of armor, he looked at her questioningly. She grinned and then slid the statue to the left to reveal a secret passageway, and she giggled at his surprise.

"How did you all find these passages?" he asked her seriously as he followed her into it. When the statue slid back in place they were drowned in complete darkness and he froze. She giggled and he realized that she was further down the passageway than he thought. "Babe?" he asked quietly as he tried to find his way along. She giggled again and she was a lot further away. "Give me the matches," he told her as his arm scraped up against the side.

"What? Can't find your way in the dark, Aaron?" she asked from suddenly right in front of him.

He startled and she giggled again. "Damn it, Babe! How do you do that?"

"Do what?" she asked from behind him and he startled again.

"Stop that!" he demanded as he put out a hand and tried to grab her, but his hand couldn't find her. "Babe?" he asked quietly. After several thundering heartbeats, which he could clearly hear and feel his ears, he called out again. "Come on, Babe."

"You're not scared, are you, Hun?" she whispered into his ear and he turned to grab her, but she was gone again.

"Damn it, Kahlan. That's not funny!" he told her seriously.

She giggled from further down the passageway, so he took a tentative step forward. After a few more steps, he hit his head on a low rafter which caused him to emit a few choice words about what he would like to do to the wooden beam. She giggled again, but a match ignited in front of him. He stared her down as she lit her candle and then stepped up to him and lit his. "Sorry, Hun, I didn't think about you being so tall," she told him seriously.

He shook his head at her. "You can actually see in here?"

"Somewhat, but I have trained myself to be very aware of my surroundings. I can sense where the walls are and such, can't you?"

He huffed. "Not as well as you apparently."

She smiled. "I've been playing in the dark since I was little."

He studied her. "And you have been in here."

She grinned. "Yep."

He had always suspected her of having a sort of photographic memory, but he had never discussed it with her. "So you could find your way to the tower without a light?"

"Yes," she told him simply as she headed down the hall with him following.

"Then why did you want a flashlight?"

"Because I don't want to go in it without a light," she told him seriously.

He smiled as he followed her wordlessly. Hmmmm. . . we'll have to see about that.

She turned a corner up ahead of him and when he turned the corner, she was gone. Not even the flicker of her candle could be seen, and he felt his heart quicken as he looked at the intersection he was faced with. Damn it, Babe! Where the hell are you? He squatted down and looked at the footprints in the dust.

"Really, Aaron? It's not a crime scene to be profiled. Let's go," she told him as she came back down the passageway to the right.

"What? I was making sure there weren't any hoof prints in the dust."

Her head jerked around to look at the ground so fast that he had to wonder if she had suffered whiplash, and it made him chuckle. "That's not funny, Aaron!"

"Yes it is," he told her as he continued to laugh.

She huffed and went down the passage. After about twenty more minutes of twisting passages, she came to a halt. Hotch looked around, "this isn't it."

She shook her head slowly and pointed further down the passage.

He looked down and realized the foot prints stopped. "This is as close as you got?" he asked and she could hear the disbelief in his voice.

She shuddered. "Can't you feel it?" she asked so quietly that he had to strain to hear her.

"Feel what?"

She locked eyes with him and he could see the fear in hers. "That!"

His brows rose with question. "What?"

"You don't feel the. . . I don't know. . . the evil?"

He chuckled. "I don't feel anything," he told her seriously.

She bit her lip and cut her eyes to the side.

"What does it feel like?"

"Cold. Dark. Oppressing," she started and then looked him in the eyes again. "You really don't feel anything?"

"No. How do you know this even goes to the tower?" he asked her as he looked down the passageway even though it was too dark to see anything past the glow of the candle.

She took a little step back. "I just do."

He put his hand on the small of her back and urged her forward. "Then come on. I want to show you there is nothing to be afraid of."

She planted her feet and wouldn't let him move her forward. Her breathing quickened. "I. . . I don't think I want to go through with it," she confessed weakly.

He sighed as he put his arm around her shoulder. "Come on, you've come this far. You can do it."

She took another step back. "I've been this far. . . I don't. . ." she started as she shook her head violently.

"Just imagine it: that big four poster bed, rope, me, you. . ." Hotch whispered seductively in her ear.

She closed her eyes and he knew she was imagining it. He smiled and waited patiently to see what she'd do. She finally looked at him. "Alright, but I reserve the right to back out and not actually go in it if I feel like I can't handle it," she told him seriously.

He studied her and knew she was more scared than she wanted him to believe. "Alright," he quickly agreed.

"You promise?" she asked him as she swallowed hard.

"Promise what?"

"That you won't make me go in there if I don't want to."

He put his hands on the sides of her face. "There is nothing to be afraid of, Kahlan."

Her eyes narrowed in mistrust. "You didn't promise."

"Babe. . ."

She pulled away from him. "Fine! You want me to go in there that bad, let's go!" she yelled and took off down the passageway.

"Kahlan!" he called out and quickly caught up with her. "At least wait for me."

She cut her eyes at him. "Of course. I wouldn't want you to miss my reaction," she told him sarcastically.

He grabbed her hand. "Come on, we'll do this together." She looked away from him but she didn't pull her hand away from his, and he noticed that her palms were sweaty. "You're not armed, are you?" he asked softly because he wanted to make sure she couldn't hurt him if she got too scared.

She huffed. "What good would that do me? I told you, you can't kill something that's already dead."

And yet you didn't answer the question. He took a deep breath and started to wonder how safe it would actually be to try and scare her. Hell, she can hurt me with just her hands. Hmmmm. . . Maybe I shouldn't try anything too drastic.

They came to a junction and stopped. He looked at the three ways in front of them, but he couldn't see anything that would tell him which way to go. Being in the dark tunnel had made him lose all sense of direction, so he looked at his wife. "Which way?"

She looked at the passages while she chewed on the inside of her cheek. He watched as her hands balled into fists and goose bumps erupted on her lower arms where she had pushed up the sleeves to her coat. She eyed the right passage warily and took a deep breath. "You still can't feel it?" she asked him quietly.

He looked down the offending passage. "No." She shuddered. "Maybe it's something like if you don't believe in it you can't see it or sense it," he tried. She huffed. "You know, like the unicorn legend in that book of Joey's. It says unicorns still exist but we can't see their horns because we don't believe in them."

"Joey believes," Kahlan quickly put in.

"I know. She believes in dragons, too."

She looked at him quickly, opened her mouth to say something, but shut it as she shook her head.

"You believe in dragons, too?" he asked flabbergasted.

She half shrugged. "How can you not?"

"Kahlan. . ."

"Then explain to me, Aaron, how is it that several ancient cultures have some form of dragon in their history? How can several places around the ancient world have stories and paintings of dragons way before travel between those cultures was possible? Are you saying that all of those people just imagined the creature around the same time? That it was all a giant coincidence? I thought you didn't believe in coincidences."

His brows furrowed. "When you put it like that. . ."

"Come on," she retorted and headed down the right passage and he could tell she was disappointed in him.

He shook his head as he followed closely behind her.

Suddenly both of their candles whooshed out. "Damn it, Aaron!" Kahlan yelled.

"That wasn't me!" he quickly defended himself. He heard her suck in her breath and then there was silence, a deathly, eerie kind of silence. "Babe?" he asked quietly as he took a step forward. The darkness was domineering and he had no idea where she was. "Kahlan?" He couldn't hear her breathing and he got a little worried.

"Then what the hell was that if it wasn't you?" she asked from behind him.

He startled and turned around as she struck a match. "The wind," he suggested as he touched his candle to the flame.

"Wind?" she asked and looked back the way they had come. "How come there hasn't been any wind before and there isn't any now? If the air was moving in here it would still be moving, wouldn't it?"

He shrugged. "Maybe someone came into the passageway somewhere else and the air that rushed in traveled down the corridor."

She bit her lip as she considered it and took a deep breath. "If you say so," she told him, but her tone betrayed how much she didn't believe him. She moved closer to him. "You can go first," she suggested with a look that told him how much she really wanted him to do it.

"Fine," he told her as he grabbed her hand and started to lead the way. As he walked along, he noticed marks in the dust on the floor. Something has been through here but I have no idea what. He was pulled out of his thoughts as he walked into a massive spider web. He groaned his displeasure as he tried to get it off his face as she laughed at him. "Well, at least that proves no one has been through here," he told her matter-of-factly.

She huffed. "At least not anything solid."

He shook his head and started down the passage again. After a few more minutes, they came to the bottom of the tower. She sucked in her breath as she looked up. She couldn't see very far, but whatever she was seeing, he could tell she didn't like it. The candle started shaking and he could tell she was trembling. Jesus, Babe. "Here, let me have that," he told her as he took the candle before she got hot wax all over herself. As soon as he took it, she frantically ran her hands down her arms, across the back of her neck, and down her thigh; she finally stilled as she stuffed her left hand under her right arm and grabbed the right side of her face and neck with her right hand.

Hotch almost chuckled as he watched her because she ended up in a position he had seen Joey in so many times. "You ok, Babe?"

She took a shuddering breath. "Yeah," she offered weakly as she shook her head 'no'.

He chuckled. "You sure," he asked as he handed her back the candle.

"No."

A loud bang from somewhere above them made Kahlan almost drop the candle as she flinched. Hotch thought for a second that she was going to jump into his arms. "That was not the wind!" she demanded as she got closer to him.

He put his hand on her shoulder and she flinched again. "Kahlan, you can tell from outside that the windows in the tower don't have any glass or coverings. That was probably the wind blowing something over or a bird knocking something over."

She chewed on her bottom lip nervously and swallowed hard.

"Come on, we're almost there," he urged her toward the steps going around the outside of the tower.

"Why do you think they don't use it?"

"What?"

"This tower! They've redone the whole castle and yet they haven't touched this section. Why is that?"

Hotch's brows rose as he considered it. "Could be any number of reasons," he told her as he stepped onto the first step.

A small whimper escaped her and she froze, still at the bottom. "Maybe because they know it's haunted."

He stopped and turned back to her. "It's probably because this stairwell doesn't have any sort of railing. Their insurance probably wouldn't cover something this dangerous," he told her calmly as he went back down to her. "You backing out?"

He studied her and thought she looked on the verge of panic and it bothered him because he had never seen her like that before. With everything she had faced since he's known her, every horrible thing she had gone through, he had never seen her panic; he didn't actually think she could. He took a deep breath and tried a different tactic. "We both have angels looking out for us," he told her softly as he put his hand on the side of her face.

Her head snapped up to look at him. She studied him and he knew she was trying to figure out if he believed what he had said. "Have you seen yours?"

His brows furrowed. "You have?"

She closed her eyes and he knew she had calmed down some. "I have seen and felt them," she told him quietly as she looked at him again.

He smiled. There had been times when he thought he had felt Haley's presence, especially in the beginning when he was having a rough day or a lonely night, but he had never told anyone about it, not even Rossi because he wasn't even sure he believed it. "Your dad?" he asked knowing she had lost a few who had meant a lot to her, but he knew her dad meant the most.

She smiled sadly but then shook her head and pulled away from him. "I don't want to give you something else to tease me about," she told him and then turned away from him.

He gently grabbed her shoulder and turned her back around. "I would never tease you about that, Babe," he told her tenderly.

She searched his eyes and knew he was telling the truth. "Not all things beyond our realm are bad," is all she offered.

He smiled and then looked up. "And bad things are not always hiding in the dark. Come on. Let me prove it to you."

She took a deep breath and then nodded weakly. "I hope you're right," she told him and then motioned for him to go first.