The Pagan Stone (12 page)

“Our maternal ancestors, despite the male figure in mine. Understanding and wisdom in yours, martyrdom in mine. And still all Major Arcanas, all absolutely apt. Again.”

He slid out and turned the Tower, and she Death.

“Change, potential disaster, but with the other cards you’ve chosen, the possibility of change for the positive, the potential to rebuild. Mine, obviously an end, and not so sunny when viewed with my other picks. Though it rarely stands for literal death, it does symbolize an absolute end.”

She lifted her glass. “I need a refill.”

He rose before she did, took the glass. “I’ll get it. I saw how you made it.”

It would give her time to settle down, Gage thought as he stepped inside. However fascinating she found the process, the results of this particular experiment had shaken her. He knew something about Tarot himself—there was no area of the occult he hadn’t poked into for answers over the years. And if he’d been betting on the pulls, he wouldn’t have put money on two people drawing eight Major Arcana in a row out of a deck.

He fixed her drink, switched for his next round from coffee to water. When he went outside again, she stood at the rail looking out toward the woods.

“I reshuffled, recut. And I drew eight cards at random. Only two were Major Arcana, but oddly enough they were the Devil and Death again.” When she turned he noted she’d settled herself. “Interesting, isn’t it? You and I together pull the most powerful and pointed cards. Because we were meant to, or because we, without direct purpose, foresaw where those cards were in the fan, and instinctively chose them.”

“Why don’t we try another tool? Have you got your crystal ball in that duffel bag of yours?”

“No, and it happens to be Prada. Are you willing to try to look forward, to link our ability and see what happens?”

“What did you have in mind?”

“Accepting and exploiting, hopefully, the connection. I’m better able to focus during or after meditation, but—”

“I know how to meditate.”

“With all that caffeine in your system?”

He only tipped back his water bottle. “We’d better take it back inside.”

“Actually, I was thinking of out here, on the grass. The gardens, the woods, the air.” She took off her sunglasses, set them down on the rail, then wandered down the steps. “What do you do to relax, body and mind?”

“I play cards. I have sex. We could play strip poker, and after you lose I’ll make sure we’re both relaxed.”

“Interesting, but I was thinking more of yoga.” She slid out of her shoes, and into Prayer Position. With fluid grace she moved into a basic Sun Sign.

“I’m not doing that,” Gage said as he followed her into the yard. “But I’ll watch you.”

“It’ll just take me a minute. And on your suggestion? We made a deal. We weren’t going to have sex.”

“The deal was I wouldn’t try to seduce you, not that we wouldn’t have sex.”

“Semantics.”

“Specifics.”

From the Down Dog position, she turned her head to look up at him. “I suppose you’re right. In any case.” She finished, then lowered to the grass to sit in the Lotus position.

“I’m not doing that either.” But he sat across from her.

Where normally she would have rested the back of her hands on her knees, she reached out to take his. “Can you clear your mind like this?”

“I can if you can.”

She smiled. “All right. Do whatever you do that works for you—other than cards and sex.”

He didn’t have any objections to sitting on the grass on a May afternoon with a beautiful woman. Not that he expected anything to happen. He expected her to close her eyes and float off on whatever mantra (the
ohm
symbol at the base of her spine, that intriguing symbol on flesh the color of gold dust, right at the subtle dip from smooth back to firm ass).

Don’t think about it, he warned himself. That wasn’t the way to relax.

In any case, she didn’t close her eyes, so he stared straight into them. A man couldn’t ask for a more appealing focal point than that rich velvet brown. He timed his breathing to hers—or she to his, he wasn’t sure. But in a matter of seconds they were in tune, perfectly in rhythm.

Her eyes were all he could see. Drowning pools. Her fingertips were so light on his, yet he felt weightless, as if he’d float up and away without that tenuous contact.

And he felt, for a moment, absolutely
right
, and completely connected to her.

It slammed and screamed through him, so fast, image after image ramming into the next. Fox lying by the side of the road in the rain. Cal sprawled, his shirt blood-soaked, on the floor of his office. Quinn screaming in terror, beating her hands on a locked door, and the knife that sliced down to cut her throat. Layla, bound and gagged, eyes wild with fear as flames snaked across the floor toward her.

He saw himself, by the Pagan Stone, with Cybil lying lifeless on the altar flames. And heard himself scream with rage an instant before it leaped out of the woods and took him to the dark.

Then it all jumbled together, image and sound, blurring, changing. The bloodstone fired in his hand, and voices rose with words he couldn’t understand. And he was alone, alone as those flames rose from his hand toward the hot summer moon. Alone as it came out of the shadows, grinning.

He didn’t know who broke contact, but the visions snapped off into a red haze of pain. He heard Cybil say his name, once, twice, and the third time with the kind of verbal slap that made him snarl.

“What?”

“Pay attention. Pay attention to the points I’m pressing. I need you to do this for me when I’m done. Are you hearing me?”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” He could hear her, nagging at him, while his head fucking exploded. Like drilling holes in the back of his neck with her fingers was going to . . .

The pain eased from hot, stabbing knives to a dull misery. And when she took his hand, pressing, pressing on the web between his thumb and forefinger, the misery downshifted to annoying ache.

He risked opening his eyes and looked straight into hers, and saw that rich velvet was clouded. Saw her face was bone white, while she took slow, even breaths. “Okay, okay.”

He pulled his hand from hers, placed his on the back of her neck. “Is this right?”

“A little to the . . . Yes. Yes. Firm, you won’t hurt me.”

He couldn’t do worse than the visions had, so he pressed hard on the knots that pain and tension had built under her skin while she addressed the accupressure points on her own hand.

She’d tended to him first, Gage realized, and wasn’t sure whether to be embarrassed or grateful. He watched those clouds of pain dissolve until she closed her eyes on a relief he understood perfectly.

“All right, that’s better. That’ll do. I just need to . . .” She slid back, lay down on the grass with her face to the sun, eyes closed.

“Good idea.” He did exactly the same.

“We didn’t control it,” she said after a moment. “It just dragged us along like dogs on a leash. I couldn’t stop it, or slow it down. I couldn’t block the fear out.”

“Proving you’re a complete failure.”

He heard her muffled laugh, knew her lips would be curved. “That makes two of us, tough guy. We’ll do better. We have to. What did you see?”

“You first.”

“All of us dead or dying. Fox, bleeding on the side of the road, in the dark and the rain. Headlights, I think the headlights from his truck.” She went through them all, her voice shaking a little.

“The same for me. Then it changed.”

“It was all so fast, then it got faster, more blurred, images overlapping. Ordinary things rolling into nightmares, so fast it was impossible to tell one from the other. Everything so fractured. But in the end, you had the stone.”

“Yeah, everyone’s dead, and I’ve got the stone. And the bastard killed me while it was burning in my hand.”

“Did it, or was that an interpretation? What I know is that the stone was there, right through the end, that you had it, and that it held power.” She rolled to her side to face him. “And I know that what we saw were possibilities. Foresight is forearmed. So we tell the others the possibilities, and we all strap it on.”

“Strap what on?”

“Whatever it takes. What?” she demanded when he pressed his fingers to his eyes and shook his head.

“I just got a picture of you strapping that little pearl-handled .22 to your thigh. I must be feeling better.”

“Hmm. What was I wearing?”

He dropped his hands and grinned at her. “We both must be feeling better. Why don’t we . . .” This time he rolled on top of her.

“Hold on there, cowboy. A deal’s a deal.”

“No seduction intended.”

She gave him a casual smile. “None taken.”

“You’re a hard case, Cybil.” Testing, he took her hands, then drew her arms up over her head. Positive energy—she was big on positive energy. And Christ knew he could use some now.

She didn’t resist, only continued to watch him with that half smile on her face.

“I was thinking the two of us deserve a little payoff,” he told her.

“Which would be rolling around naked in Cal’s backyard?”

“You read my mind.”

“Not gonna happen.”

“Okay. Just say when.”

He took her mouth, and there was nothing testing or teasing about it. He went for the heat, and what he found spiked like a fever. Her fingers curled on his and held as her lips parted. It was more demand than invitation, more challenge than surrender. Under him, her body seemed to ripple—rising waves of energy.

Very positive.

No seduction, she thought, no persuasion, and her body responded, rejoiced, in the possession. The honesty of sheer and undisguised lust meant equal terms. Needs trapped inside her for months raced free. She’d take more, just a little more, before herding them back into the pen.

Hooking a leg around him, she arched her hips, deliberately pressing center to center before she pushed to reverse their positions. Now her mouth took command, took its fill as his hands fisted in her hair. When she heard the growl, she laughed against his lips. But when it sounded again, she felt ice slide down her spine.

Slowly, she drew her lips a breath from his. “Did you hear that?”

“Yeah.”

She lifted her head another inch, and that ice floe spread. “We’ve got an audience.”

The dog was massive, its brown fur matted and stained. Frothy drool dripped from its jowls as it lurched drunkenly out of the woods.

“That isn’t Twisse,” Cybil whispered.

“No.”

“Meaning it’s real.”

“Real, and rabid. How fast can you run?”

“As fast as I need to.”

“Get into the house. My gun’s upstairs, on the table beside the bed. Get it, get back, and shoot the damn dog. I’ll keep it off you.”

Cybil ignored the rise of gorge at the thought of killing a dog. “My .22’s in my bag on the deck. We can both make it.”

“Go, get
inside
. Don’t stop.”

He dragged her up, gave her one hard shove toward the house. And the dog gathered itself, and charged.

He didn’t run with her, and she didn’t allow herself to think, not even when she heard the horrible sounds behind her. With her heart slamming, she flew onto the deck, shoved her hand into her bag and closed it around the butt of her revolver.

The scream she loosed when she turned was as much terror as an attempt to draw the dog’s attention to her. But it only continued to roll, snap, to clamp its teeth into Gage as they fought a vicious war on Cal’s pretty green grass.

She raced back, releasing the safety as she ran.

“Shoot it! Shoot the fucker!”

“I can’t get a clear shot!”

His arms, his hands, were torn and bleeding. “Goddamn it, shoot!” As he shouted, he wrenched the dog’s head up, looked straight into those madly snapping jaws. The dog’s body jerked, once, twice, as bullets plowed into its flank, and still it tried to go for the throat. On the next shot it let out a high shriek of pain, and those mad eyes went glassy. Panting, Gage shoved the weight aside, crawled over the blood-slicked grass.

Through the haze of pain he heard weeping. Through the haze of pain he saw Cybil step up to the dying dog and fire the coup de grace into its head.

“It wasn’t dead. It was suffering. Let me get you inside. God, you’re torn up.”

“I’ll heal.” But he put his arm around her shoulders, let her take his weight. He made it as far as the steps before his legs gave out. “Give me a minute. I need a minute.”

She left him slumped on the steps to dash inside. Minutes later, she rushed out again with a fresh bottle of water, a basin filled with more, and several cloths. “Should I call Cal and Fox? When Fox was hurt it helped him to have you both.”

“No. Not that bad.”

“Let me see. I need to see.” Quickly, efficiently, she drew off what was left of his shirt. Her breath might have shuddered at the tears and rips in his flesh, but she washed the wounds with a steady hand. “The shoulder’s bad.”

“Unnecessary information seeing as it’s my shoulder.” He hissed as she pressed the cool, wet cloth to the wound. “Anyway, nice shooting, Tex.”

She used the bottled water to dampen a fresh cloth, then wiped it gently over his face. “I know it hurts. I know the healing hurts almost as much as the need for it.”

“It’s no spring picnic. Do me a favor? Get me a whiskey?”

“All right.”

Inside, she braced her hands on the counter a moment. She wanted to be sick, badly wanted to be sick. But she pushed down the need, shuddered her way past it. And pulling down the bottle of Jameson, poured him a generous three fingers.

When she came back out with it, she saw that most of his surface injuries had healed, and the more serious ones had begun to close. He downed two-thirds of the whiskey she handed him in one pull, then, studying her face, held out the glass. “Down the rest, sweetheart. You look like you could use it.”