The Pagan Stone (25 page)

 

A COUPLE HOURS LATER, CYBIL STORMED OUT OF Cal’s back door with sharp lashes of fury whipping from her. She spun around when Gage slammed out after her. “You’ve got no right, no
right
to make these plans, to make these decisions on your own.”

“The hell I don’t. It’s my life.”

“It’s all our lives!” she tossed back. “We’re supposed to work as a team. We’re meant to work as a team.”

“Meant? I’m sick to death of this destiny crap you’re so high on. I make my own choices, and I deal with the results. I’m not going to let some ancient guardian make them for me.”

“Oh, for God’s sake.” Everything about her snapped out in angry frustration, voice, hands, eyes. “We all have choices. Aren’t we fighting, risking our lives, because Twisse takes away choice? But that doesn’t mean any of us can just forget why we were brought together like this and go off on his own.”

“I am on my own. Always have been.”

“Oh, screw that! You’re sick of destiny talk? Fine,
I’m
sick of your ‘I’m a loner and I don’t belong’ refrain. It’s boring. We’re bound by blood, all of us.”

“Is that what you think?” In contrast to her heat, his tone was brittle and cold. “You think I’m bound to you, by anything? Didn’t we just cover this a little while ago? We’re having sex. That’s the beginning and the end of it. If you’re looking for more—”

“You conceited ass. I’m talking about life and death and you’re worried about me trying to get my hooks in you? Believe me, outside of the bedroom, I wouldn’t have you on a bet.”

Something flashed in his eyes. It might have been insult or challenge. It might have been hurt. “I’d take that bet, sister. I know your type.”

“You don’t know—”

“You want it all your way. You figure you’re so damn smart you can run the show and everyone in it. Nobody runs me. And when this is over, you think you can keep me on the line or cut me loose, at your whim. You’ve got the looks, the brains, the style, what man could resist you? Well, you’re looking at one.”

“Is that so?” she said, her tone frigid. “Is what you were doing in bed with me last night your definition of resisting?”

“No, that’s my definition of banging a willing and convenient woman.”

Her angry color drained, but she inclined her head, regally. “In that case, you can consider me now unwilling and inconvenient, and do your substandard banging elsewhere.”

“Part of the point. I go my way on this because this has all played out long enough for me. This fight, this town, you. All of it.”

Her hands curled at her sides. “I don’t care how selfish you are, how stupid you are, after this is done. But before it is, you’re not going to jeopardize all the work we’ve done, all the progress we’ve made.”

“Progress, my ass. Since you and your girl pals got here, we’ve been bogged down in charts, graphs, exploring our emotional thresholds, and other bullshit.”

“Before we got here, you and your idiot brothers fumbled around on this for twenty years.”

He backed her against the rail. “You haven’t lived through a Seven. You think you know? What you’ve dealt with so far’s been nothing. A few chills and spills. Wait until you see some guy disembowel himself, or try to stop some teenage girl from lighting the match after she’s poured gas all over herself and her baby brother. Then you talk to me about what I can do, what I can’t. You think seeing your old man put a bullet in his ear makes you some kind of expert? That was quick and clean, and you got off easy.”

“You son of a bitch.”

“Suck it up.” His words were a slap, quick and careless. “If Twisse isn’t offed before the next Seven, you’re going to be dealing with a lot worse than a father who’d rather kill himself than stand up with his family.”

She swung out, and there was enough behind the blow to have his head jerking back. With his ears ringing from it, he gripped her arms to ward off a second attack. “Do you want to talk about fathers, Gage? Do you really want to bring up fathers, considering your own?”

Before he could respond, Quinn rushed out. “Hold it, hold it, hold it!”

“Go back inside,” Cybil ordered, “this doesn’t concern you.”

“The hell it doesn’t. What the hell’s wrong with you? Both of you?”

“Step back, Gage.” Cal pushed through the door, with Fox and Layla behind him. “Just step back. Let’s go inside and talk this out.”

“Back off.”

“Okay, okay, that’s not the way to win friends and influence people.” Fox moved up, put a hand on Gage’s arm. “Let’s take a breath here and—”

Gage shoved him off, knocked him back a step. “The back off goes for you, too, Peace and Love.”

“You want to go a round with me?” Fox challenged.

“Jesus!” Layla fisted her hands in her hair. “Stop! Just because Gage is being an idiot doesn’t mean you have to be one.”

“Now I’m an idiot?” Fox rounded on Layla. “He shoves Cybil around, tells me to back off, and
I’m
an idiot.”

“I didn’t say you were an idiot, I said you didn’t have to be an idiot. But apparently I’m wrong about that.”

“Don’t start on me. I didn’t get this stupid ball rolling.”

“I don’t care who got it rolling.” Cal held up his hands. “It stops here.”

“Who gave you the gold star and put you in charge?” Gage demanded. “You don’t tell me what to do. We wouldn’t be in this mess in the first place without you and your ridiculous blood brothers ritual with your pussy Boy Scout knife.”

It erupted then, the shouts, the accusations, each rolling over the next into an ugly mass of anger, resentment, and hurt. Words struck like fists, and none of them paid attention to the darkening sky or the oncoming rumble of thunder.

“Oh, just stop! Stop it. Shut the hell up!” Cybil pitched her voice over the chaos, silencing it to a ragged and humming silence. “Can’t you see he doesn’t give a damn what the rest of you think or feel? It’s all about him, maybe it always has been. If he wants to go his own way, he’ll go. I, for one, am done.” She looked dead into Gage’s eyes. “I’m done here.”

Without a backward glance, she walked back into the house.

“Cyb. Shit.” Quinn scalded the men with one long stare. “Nice job. Come on, Layla.”

When Quinn and Layla slammed in behind Cybil, Cal swore again. “Who the hell are you to lay all this on me? Not who I thought, that’s for damn sure. Maybe Cybil’s right. Maybe it’s time to be done with you.”

“You’d better cool off,” Fox managed as Cal left them. “You’d better take some time and cool the hell off unless you really do like being alone.”

And alone, Gage let his mind seethe with resentment, let his thoughts travel on the stony road of blame and grievances. They turned on him, all of them, because he had the balls to take a step, because he’d decided to stop sitting around scratching his ass and studying charts. The hell with them. All of them.

He took the bloodstone out of his pocket, studied it. It meant absolutely nothing. None of it. The risks, the effort, the work, the
years
. He’d come back, time after time. He’d bled time after time. And for what?

He laid the stone on the porch rail, stared bitterly out at Cal’s blooming backyard. For what? For whom? What had the Hollow ever given him? A dead mother, a drunk for a father. Pitying or suspicious looks by the
good
townspeople. And oh yeah, just recently, it got him handcuffed and shoved around by an asshole the town deemed worthy to wear a badge.

She
was done? He sneered, thinking of Cybil. No,
he
was done. Hawkins Hollow and everyone in it could go straight to hell.

He turned, slammed back into the house to get his things.

It oozed out of the woods, a miasma of black. Inside the house, angry voices rang out again, and it seemed to shudder with pleasure. As it flowed over grass, pretty beds of flowers, it began to take shape. Limbs, torso, head writhing into form through the murk. Fingers, feet, eyes glowing unearthly green took shape as it crept closer to the pretty house with its generous deck and cheerful flowers raining out of glossy pots.

Ears and chin, and a grinning mouth that flashed its teeth. The thrill it felt was terrible. It smeared blood over the green of the grass, the bright petals of flowers, because it could.

Soon all would burn, all, and it would dance on the bloody ashes. The boy danced now, in greedy delight, then hopped up to crouch on the rail beside the stone. A small thing, it thought. Such a small thing to have caused so much trouble, so much time.

It cocked its head. What secrets did it hold? What power? And why were those secrets, that power blocked so that in no form could it see? Blocked from them, too, it thought. Yes, yes, the guardian had given them the key, but not the lock.

It wanted to touch the deep green and dark red of it. To steal whatever waited inside. It reached out, drew its hand back. But no, better to destroy. Always better to destroy. And it spread its hands over the stone.

“Yo,” Gage said from the doorway, and shot the boy dead center of the forehead.

It screamed, and what poured from the wound was thick and black, and reeked like death. It leaped, even as Gage continued to fire, as the others rushed out of the house with him. Perched on the roof, it snarled like a mad dog.

Wind and rain erupted in a horrific gush. Taking position in the yard, Gage reloaded, prepared to fire again.

“Try not to shoot my house,” Cal told him.

It leaped again, and as it slammed its fists into the air, the bloodstone exploded into dozens of fragments, into clouds of dust. The boy screamed, in triumph now, even as the blood ran from it. It spun, then it swooped, snake-fast, to latch its teeth into Gage’s shoulder. As Gage dropped helplessly to his knees, it vanished.

Dimly, Gage heard voices, but they were smothered by a drowning fog of pain. He saw the sky, saw it was going blue again, but the faces that leaned over him were blurred and indistinct.

Had it killed him? If so, he wished to Christ death would get a damn move on so the agony would end. It burned, burned, boiling blood, searing bone, and inside his head he screamed. But he had no breath to make a sound, no strength even to writhe in the torment that squeezed, that clawed like flaming talons.

So he closed his eyes.

Enough, he thought. Enough now. Time to go.

So, in surrender, he began to float away from the pain.

The sharp slap to his face irritated him. The second pissed him off. Couldn’t he die in relative peace?

“You come back, you son of a bitch! Do you hear me? You come back. You fight, you fucking coward. You are
not
going to die and let that bastard win.”

The pain—goddamn it—the pain flooded back. When he opened his eyes in defense, Cybil’s face filled his blurry vision, and her voice just kept badgering, hammering. Those dark eyes of hers were drenched with fury and tears.

He wheezed in an agonizing breath. “I wish you’d shut up.”

“Cal. Fox.”

“We’ve got him. Come on, Gage.” Cal’s voice came from some strange distance—miles off, it seemed, and buried in mud. “Focus. Right shoulder. It’s your right shoulder. We’re with you. Focus on the pain.”

“How the fuck am I supposed to do anything else?”

“He’s saying something.” Fox’s face edged into Gage’s view. “Can you hear him? He’s trying to tell us something.”

“I am telling you something, you asshole.”

“His pulse is weak. It’s getting weaker.”

Who was that? Gage wondered. Layla? He saw her words as pale blue lights, drifting at the corner of his eye.

“The bleeding’s stopped. It’s already stopped. The punctures aren’t that deep now. It has to be something else. Some sort of poison.”

And Quinn chimed in, Gage thought. Gang’s all here. Just let me go, for God’s sake. Just let me go.

“We won’t. We can’t.” Cybil leaned closer, but this time her lips rather than her hand laid over his cheek. Blessedly cool. “Please. You have to stay. You have to come back. We can’t lose you.”

Tears spilled out of her eyes, dropped gently onto the wound. They washed through his blood, into the bite, and eased the burn.

“I know it hurts.” She stroked his cheeks, his hair, his screaming shoulder, and wept. “I know it hurts, but you have to stay.”

“He moved. His hand moved.” Fox’s fingers tightened on Gage’s as Gage’s flexed. “Cal?”

“Yeah. Yeah. Right shoulder, Gage. Start there. We’ve got you.”

He closed his eyes again, but not in surrender this time. Bearing down, he concentrated on the source of the pain, followed it as it spread from his shoulder, down his arm, across his chest. He felt his lungs open again as if the hands that had squeezed them closed now slipped away.

“His pulse is stronger!” Layla called out.

“His color’s coming back, too. He’s coming back, Cyb,” Quinn said.

From where she sat on the ground, cradling his head in her lap, Cybil leaned back down, watched his eyes. “It’s almost over,” she crooned. “Just a little more.”

“Okay. Okay.” He saw her clearly now, felt the grass under him, the grip of his friends’ hands over his. “I’ve got it. Did you call me a fucking coward?”

Her breath drew in on a watery laugh. “It worked.”

“Welcome back, man,” Fox said to him. “The wound’s closing. Let’s get you inside.”

“I got it,” Gage repeated, but couldn’t so much as lift his head. “Okay, maybe I don’t.”

“Give him another minute,” Quinn suggested. “The wound’s closed now, but . . . there’s a scar.”

“Let’s go inside.” Cybil sent looks to Quinn and Layla that said more than her words. “We’ll make Gage some tea, get his bed ready.”

“I don’t want tea. I don’t want a bed.”

“You’re getting both.” Cybil shifted his head from her lap, patted his cheek, then rose. If she understood men at all—and Gage in particular—he’d prefer the women out of sight when his friends helped him into the house.