The Pagan Stone (2 page)

And that had changed everything. Or had it? Gage wondered. Had it just opened what was always there, waiting?

He could remember it all vividly, every step, every detail. It had started as an adventure—three boys on the eve of their tenth birthday hiking through the woods. Loaded down with skin mags, beer, smokes—his contribution—with junk food and Cokes from Fox, and the picnic basket of sandwiches and lemonade Cal’s mother had packed. Not that Frannie Hawkins would’ve packed a picnic if she’d known her son planned to camp that night at the Pagan Stone in Hawkins Wood.

All that wet heat, Gage remembered, and the music on the boom box, and the complete innocence they’d carried along with the Little Debbies and Nutter Butters they would lose before they hiked out in the morning.

Gage stepped out of the shower, rubbed his dripping hair with a towel. His back had ached from the beating his father had given him the night before. As they’d sat around the campfire in the clearing those welts had throbbed. He remembered that, as he remembered how the light had flickered and floated over the gray table of the Pagan Stone.

He remembered the words they’d written down, the words they’d spoken as Cal made them blood brothers. He remembered the quick pain of the knife across his flesh, the feel of Cal’s wrist, of Fox’s as they’d mixed their blood.

And the explosion, the heat and cold, the force and fear when that mixed blood hit the scarred ground of the clearing.

He remembered what came out of the ground, the black mass of it, and the blinding light that followed. The pure evil of the black, the stunning brilliance of the white.

When it was over, there’d been no welts on his back, no pain, and in his hand lay one-third of a bloodstone. He carried it still, as he knew Cal and Fox carried theirs. Three pieces of one whole. He supposed they were the same.

Madness came to the Hollow that week, and raged through it like a plague, infecting, driving good and ordinary people to do the horrible. And for seven days every seven years, it came back.

So did he, Gage thought. What choice did he have?

Naked, still damp from the shower, he stretched out on the bed. There was time yet, still some time for a few more games, for hot beaches and swaying palms. The green woods and blue mountains of Hawkins Hollow were thousands of miles away, until July.

He closed his eyes, and as he’d trained himself, dropped almost instantly into sleep.

In sleep came the screams, and the weeping, and the fire that ate so joyfully at wood and cloth and flesh. Blood ran warm over his hands as he dragged the wounded to safety. For how long? he wondered. Where was safe? And who could say when and if the victim would turn and become attacker?

Madness ruled the streets of the Hollow.

In the dream he stood with his friends on the south end of Main Street, across from the Qwik Mart and its four gas pumps. Coach Moser, who’d guided the Hawkins Hollow Bucks to a championship football season Gage’s senior year, gibbered with laughter as he soaked himself, the ground, the buildings with the flood of gas from the pumps.

They ran toward him, the three of them, even as Moser held up his lighter like a trophy, as he splashed in the pools of gas like a boy in rain puddles. They ran even as he flicked the lighter.

It was flash and boom, searing the eyes, bursting in the ears. The force of heat and air flung him back so he landed in a bone-shattering heap. Fire, blinding clouds of it, spewed skyward as hunks of wood and concrete, shards of glass, burning twists of metal flew.

Gage felt his broken arm try to knit, his shattered knee struggle to heal with pain worse than the wound itself. Gritting his teeth, he rolled, and what he saw stopped his heart in his chest.

Cal lay in the street, burning like a torch.

No, no, no, no!
He crawled, shouting, gasping for oxygen in the tainted air. There was Fox, facedown in a widening pool of blood.

It came, a black smear on that burning air that formed into a man. The demon smiled. “You don’t heal from death, do you, boy?”

Gage woke, sheathed in sweat and shaking. He woke with the stench of burning gas scoring his throat.

Time’s up, he thought.

He got up, got dressed. Dressed, he began to pack for the trip back to Hawkins Hollow.

One

 

THE DREAM WOKE HIM AT DAWN, AND THAT WAS A pisser. From experience, Gage knew it would be useless to try to find sleep again with images of burning blood in his brain. The closer it got to July, the closer it got to the Seven, the more vivid and vicious the dreams. He’d rather be awake and doing than struggling with nightmares.

Or visions.

He’d come out of the woods that long-ago July with a body that healed itself, and with the gift of sight. Gage didn’t consider the precognition wholly reliable. Different choices, different actions, different outcomes.

Seven years before, come July, he’d turned off the pumps at the Qwik Mart, and had taken the added precaution of locking Coach Moser in a cell. He’d never known, not for certain, if he’d saved his friends’ lives by those actions, or if the dream had been just a dream.

But he’d played the odds.

He continued to play the odds, Gage supposed as he grabbed a pair of boxers in case he wasn’t alone in the house. He was back, as he was every seventh year. And this time he’d thrown his lot in with the three women who’d turned his, Fox’s, and Cal’s trio into a team of six.

With Cal engaged to Quinn Black—blond bombshell and paranormal writer—she often spent the night at Cal’s. Hence the inadvisability of wandering downstairs naked to make coffee. But Cal’s attractive house in the woods felt empty to Gage, of people, of ghosts, of Cal’s big, lazy dog, Lump. And that was all to the good, as Gage preferred solitude, at least until after coffee.

He assumed Cal had spent the night at the house the three women rented in town. As Fox had done the headfirst into love with the sexy brunette Layla Darnell, they might’ve bunked at the house, or Fox’s apartment over his law offices. Either way, they’d stay close, and with Fox’s talent for pushing into thoughts, they had ways of communicating that didn’t require phones.

Gage put coffee on, then went out to stand on the deck while it brewed.

Leave it to Cal, he thought, to build his home on the edge of the woods where their lives had turned inside out. But that was Cal for you—he was the type who took a stand, kept right on standing. And the fact was, if country charm rang your bell, this was the spot for it. The green woods with the last of the spring’s wild dogwoods and mountain laurel gleaming in slants of sunlight offered a picture of tranquility—if you didn’t know any better. The terraced slope in front of the house exploded with color from shrubs and ornamental trees, while at the base the winding creek bubbled along.

It fit Cal to the ground, just as his lady did. For himself, Gage figured the country quiet would drive him crazy within a month.

He went back for the coffee, drank it strong and black. He took a second mug up with him. By the time he’d showered and dressed, restlessness nipped at him. He tried to quell it with a few hands of solitaire, but the house was too . . . settled. Grabbing his keys, he headed out. He’d hunt up his friends, and if nothing was going on, maybe he’d zip up to Atlantic City for the day and find some action.

It was a quiet drive, but then the Hollow was a quiet place, a splat on the map in the rolling western Maryland countryside that got itself juiced up for the annual Memorial Day parade, the Fourth of July fireworks in the park, the occasional Civil War reenactment. And, of course, the madness that flowed into it every seven years.

Overhead, the trees arched over the road; beside it, the creek wound. Then the view opened to rolling, rock-pocked hills, distant mountains, and a sky of delicate spring blue. It wasn’t his place, not the rural countryside nor the town tucked into it. Odds were he’d die here, but even that wouldn’t make it his. And still, he’d play the long shot that he, his friends, and the women with them would not only survive, but beat down the thing that plagued the Hollow. That they would end it this time.

He passed the Qwik Mart where foresight or luck had won the day, then the first of the tidy houses and shops along Main. He spotted Fox’s truck outside the townhouse that held Fox’s home and law office. The coffee shop and Ma’s Pantry were both open for business, serving the breakfast crowd. A hugely pregnant woman towing a toddler stepped out of the bakery with a large white bag. The kid talked a mile a minute while Mom waddled down Main.

There was the empty gift shop Fox’s Layla had rented with plans to open a fashion boutique. The idea made Gage shake his head as he turned at the Square. Hope sprang, he supposed, and love gave it a hell of a boost.

He gave a quick glance at the Bowl-a-Rama, town institution and Cal’s legacy. And looked away again. Once upon a time he’d lived above the bowling center with his father, lived with the stench of stale beer and cigarettes, with the constant threat of fists or belt.

Bill Turner still lived there, still worked at the center, reputedly five years sober. Gage didn’t give a flying fuck, as long as the old man kept his distance. Because the thought burned in his gut, he shut it down, tossed it aside.

At the curb, he pulled up behind a Karmann Ghia—property of one Cybil Kinski, the sixth member of the team. The sultry gypsy shared his precog trait—just as Quinn shared Cal’s ability to look back, and Layla shared Fox’s reading of what was hidden in the now. He supposed that made them partners of sorts, and the supposing made him wary.

She was a number, all right, he thought as he started up the walk to the house. Smart, savvy, and sizzling. Another time, another place, it might’ve been entertaining to deal a few hands with her, see who walked away the winner. But the idea that some outside force, ancient powers, and magic plots played a part in bringing them together had Gage opting to fold his hand early.

It was one thing for both Cal and Fox to get twisted up with their women. He just wasn’t wired for the long-term deal. Instinct told him that even the short-term with a woman like Cybil would be too complicated for his taste and style.

He didn’t knock. They used the rental house and Cal’s as bases of sorts, so he didn’t see the need. Music drifted—something New Agey—all flutes and gongs. He turned toward the source, and there was Cybil. She wore loose black pants and a top that revealed a smooth, tight midriff and sleekly muscled arms. Her wild black curls spilled out of their restraining band.

The toes of her bare feet sported bright pink polish.

As he watched, she braced her head on the floor while her body lifted up. Her legs spread, held perpendicular to the floor, then somehow twisted, as if her torso were a hinge. Fluidly, she lowered one leg until her foot was flat on the floor, forming her into some erotic bridge. With movements that seemed effortless, she shifted herself, tucking one leg against her hip while the other cocked up behind her. And reaching back, she gripped her foot to bring it to the back of her head.

He considered the fact that he didn’t drool a testament to his massive power of will.

She bent, twisted, flowed,
arranged
herself into what should have been impossible positions. His willpower wasn’t so massive he didn’t imagine that any woman that flexible would be amazing in bed.

She’d arched back, foot hooked behind her head when a flicker in those deep, dark eyes told him she’d become aware of him.

“Don’t let me interrupt.”

“I won’t. I’m nearly done. Go away.”

Though he regretted missing how she ended such a session, he wandered back to the kitchen, poured himself a cup of coffee. Leaning back on the counter, he noted the morning paper was folded on the little table, the dog bowl Cal left there for Lump was empty, and the water bowl beside it half full. The dog might’ve already had breakfast, but if anyone else had, the dishes had already been stowed away. Since the news didn’t interest him at the moment, he sat and dealt out a hand of solitaire. He was on his fourth game when Cybil strolled in.

“Aren’t you a rise-and-shiner this morning.”

He laid a red eight on a black nine. “Cal still in bed?”

“It seems everyone’s up and about. Quinn hauled him off to the gym.” She poured coffee for herself, then reached in the bread bin. “Bagel?”

“Sure.”

After cutting one neatly in half, she dropped it in the toaster. “Bad dream?” She angled her head when he glanced up at her. “I had one, woke me at first light. So did Cal and Quinn. I haven’t heard, but I imagine Fox and Layla—they’re at his place—got the same wake-up call. Quinn’s remedy, weights and machines. Mine, yoga. Yours . . .” She gestured to the cards.

“Everybody’s got something.”

“We kicked our Big Evil Bastard in the balls a few days ago. We have to expect him to kick back.”

“Nearly got ourselves incinerated for the trouble,” Gage reminded her.

“
Nearly
works for me. We put the three pieces of the bloodstone back together, magickally. We performed a blood ritual.” She studied the healing cut across her palm. “And we lived to tell the tale. We have a weapon.”

“Which we don’t know how to use.”

“Does it know?” She busied herself getting out plates, cream cheese for the bagels. “Does our demon know any more about it than we do? Giles Dent infused that stone with power more than three hundred years ago in the clearing, and—theoretically—used it as part of the spell that pulled the demon, in its form as Lazarus Twisse, into some sort of limbo where Dent could hold it for centuries.”

Handily, she sliced an apple, arranged the pieces on a plate while she spoke. “Twisse didn’t know or recognize the power of the bloodstone then, or apparently hundreds of years later when your boyhood ritual released it, and the stone was split into three equal parts. If we follow that logic, it doesn’t know any more about it now, which gives us an advantage. We may not know, yet, how it works, but we know it does.”