The Pagan Stone (34 page)

“Call for an ambulance. I’ve got to keep the pressure on.”

“Go. God.” Cal pushed breath out, drew more in. He fisted his hand in Lump’s fur. “I’ve got this. I’ve got this. Go.”

But Gage kept Cal’s hand tight in his, drew out his phone. And with his eyes locked on his father’s pale face, called for help.

 

CYBIL WOKE GROGGY, HEADACHY. THE GROGGY wasn’t much of a surprise. Mornings weren’t her finest hour, particularly after a restless night, and the dreams were a plague now. More, Gage had been closed in the night before. Barely speaking, she thought, as she grabbed a robe in case there were men in the house.

Well, his moods weren’t her responsibility, she decided, and felt fairly closed in herself. She’d take her coffee out on the back deck—alone. And sulk.

The idea perked her up a little, or would have if she hadn’t found both Layla and Quinn holding a whispered conference in the kitchen.

“Go away. Nobody talk to me until I’ve had two solid hits of caffeine.”

“Sorry.” Quinn blocked her path to the stove. “You’ll have to put that off.”

Warning flashed into her eyes. “Nobody tells me to put off my morning coffee. Move it or lose it, Q.”

“No coffee until after this.” She picked the pregnancy test off the counter, waved it in front of Cybil’s face. “Your turn, Cyb.”

“My turn for what.
Move!
”

“To pee on a stick.”

Cybil’s jones for coffee tripped over sheer shock. “What? Are you crazy? Just because sperm met egg for the two of you doesn’t mean—”

“Isn’t it funny I have this on hand just like I had one for Layla.”

“Ha ha.”

“And it’s interesting,” Layla continued, “how you pointed out yesterday the three of us are on the same cycle.”

“I’m not pregnant.”

Layla looked at Quinn. “Isn’t that what I said?”

Nearly desperate for coffee, Cybil rolled her eyes. “I
saw
you pregnant. Both of you. I didn’t see me that way.”

“It’s always harder to see ourselves,” Quinn returned. “You’ve told me that a few times. Let’s make it simple. You want coffee? Go pee on a stick. You won’t get past both of us to the goal, Cyb.”

Fuming, Cybil snatched the box. “Pregnancy’s made both of you bossy and bitchy.” She stalked off to the first-floor powder room.

“It has to mean something.” Layla rubbed her hands over her arms, ridiculously nervous. “If we’re right, or if we’re wrong, it has to mean something. I just wish I could figure out what.”

“I’ve got some ideas, but . . .” Worried, Quinn paced to the kitchen doorway. “We’ll think about that later. After. And either way, we have to be with her on this.”

“Well, of course. Why wouldn’t . . . Oh. You mean if she is, and she doesn’t want to be.” With a nod, Layla stepped up so she stood beside Quinn. “No question about it. Whatever it is, whatever she needs.”

They waited a few more minutes, then Quinn dragged both hands through her hair. “That’s it. I can’t stand it.”

She marched to the door, knocked for form, then pushed the door open. “Cyb, how long does—Oh, Cybil.” She knelt down immediately to gather Cybil up as her friend sat on the floor.

“What am I going to do?” Cybil managed. “What am I going to do?”

“Get off the floor to start.” Briskly, Layla leaned down to help her up. “I’m going to make you some tea. We’ll figure this out.”

“I’m so stupid. So
stupid
.” Cybil pressed her hands to her eyes as Quinn led her to the kitchen and a chair. “I should’ve seen it coming. All three of us. It’s a perfect goddamn fit. It was right there in front of my face.”

“It didn’t click for me,” Quinn told her. “The possibility of it didn’t click in for me until the middle of the night. It’s going to be all right, Cybil. Whatever you want or need, whatever you decide, Layla and I are going to be right there to make sure it’s all right.”

“It’s not the same for me as it is for the two of you. Gage and I . . . We don’t have any plans. We’re not . . .” She managed a weak smile. “Linked the way you are with Cal and Fox.”

“You’re in love with him.”

“Yes, I am.” Cybil looked into Quinn’s eyes. “But that doesn’t mean we’re together. He’s not looking for—”

“Forget what he’s looking for.” Layla’s voice was so sharp, Cybil blinked. “What are
you
looking for?”

“Well, it certainly wasn’t this. I was looking to finish what we started here, and to have some time with him outside of this. If I looked further than that, and I’m not so strong and coolheaded that I didn’t look further and hope that we might make something together. And not so wide-eyed and optimistic that I expect to.”

“You know you don’t have to decide right away.” Quinn stroked Cybil’s hair. “This is between the three of us, and we’ll keep it that way as long as you want.”

“You know we can’t do that,” Cybil replied. “There’s a purpose in this, and that purpose might be the difference between life and death.”

“Gods, demons, Fate—,” Layla snapped. “None of them have a right to make this choice for you.”

When Layla set the tea on the table, Cybil took her hand, squeezed fiercely. “Thanks. God. Thanks. The three of us, the three of them. Ann Hawkins had three sons and they were her hope, her faith, her courage. Now there are three more—the possibilities of three more inside us. There’s a symmetry there that can’t be ignored. In many cultures, in much lore, the pregnant woman holds particular power. We’ll use that power.”

She took a deep breath, reached for the tea. “I could, when it’s finished, choose to end this possibility. My choice, and yes, screw gods and demons.
My
choice. And I don’t choose to end this possibility. I’m not a child, and I’m not without resources. I love the father. Whatever happens between Gage and me, I absolutely believe this was meant.”

She took another breath. “I know this is the right thing for me. And I know I’m officially scared to death.”

“We’ll all be going through it together.” Quinn took Cybil’s hand, took a good, strong hold. “That’s going to help.”

“Yes, it is. Don’t say anything yet. I need to work out the best way to tell Gage. The best time, the best method. Meanwhile, the three of us need to try to figure out how we can use this surprising bout of mutual fertility. I can contact—”

“Hold that thought,” Quinn said when the phone rang. After glancing at the display, she smiled. “Hello, lover. You—” The smile dropped away, and so did her color. “We’re coming. I—” She shot alarmed glances at Cybil and Layla. “All right. Yes, all right. How bad? We’ll meet you there.”

She hung up. “Bill Turner—Gage’s father—he’s been shot.”

 

THEY’D TAKEN HIS MOTHER AWAY IN AN AMBULANCE, Gage thought. All the lights, the sirens, the rush. He hadn’t gone with her, of course. Frannie Hawkins had bundled him away, given him milk and cookies. Kept him close.

Now it was his father—the lights, the sirens, the rush. He wasn’t entirely sure how it was he was speeding behind the ambulance, wedged in between Fox and Cal in the cab of Fox’s truck. He could smell the blood. Cal’s, the old man’s.

There had been a lot of blood.

Cal was still pale, and the healing wasn’t complete. Gage felt Cal tremble—quick, light shivers—as his body continued the pain and the effort of healing itself. But Cal wasn’t dead, wasn’t lying in a pool of his own blood as he’d been in the vision. They’d changed that . . . potential, as Cybil would call it.

Score another for the home team.

But they hadn’t seen the old man. There’d been no vision of his father—dead or alive. No foresight of the old man leaping through the door and onto crazed Cy Hudson’s back. No preview of that hot, determined look in his eyes. There sure as hell hadn’t been any quick peek through the window to show him the way the old man lay on the floor, bleeding through Fox’s wadded-up shirt.

He’d looked broken, Gage realized. Broken and frail and old when they’d loaded him into the ambulance. It wasn’t right, it wasn’t the right image. It didn’t match the picture of Bill Turner that Gage carried around in his head the way, he supposed, he carried the picture of his mother in his wallet.

In that, she was forever young, forever smiling.

In Gage’s head, Bill Turner was a big man, hefting the sway of a beer belly. He was hard eyes, hard mouth, hard hands. That was Bill Turner. As soon backhand you as look at you Bill Turner.

Who the hell was that broken bleeding man in the ambulance up ahead? And why the hell was he following him?

It blurred on him. The road, the cars, the buildings as Fox swung toward the hospital. He couldn’t quite solidify it, couldn’t quite bring it into focus. His body moved—getting out of the truck, climbing out when Fox slammed to the curb of the emergency entrance, striding into the ER. Part of his brain registered odd details. The change in temperature from June warmth to the chill of air-conditioning, the different sounds, voices, the new rush as medical people descended on the broken, bleeding man. He heard phones ringing—a tinny, irritatingly demanding sound.

Answer the phone, he thought, answer the goddamn phone.

Someone spoke to him, peppering him with questions.
Mr. Turner, Mr. Turner
, and he wondered how the hell they expected the old man to answer when they’d already wheeled him off. Then he remembered
he
was Mr. Turner.

“What?”

What was his father’s blood type?

Did he have any allergies?

His age?

Was he on any medications, taking any drugs?

“I don’t know,” was all Gage could say. “I don’t know.”

“I’ll take it.” Cal took Gage’s arm, gave him a quick shake. “Sit down, get coffee. Fox.”

“I’m on that.”

There was coffee in his hand. How had that happened? Surprisingly good coffee. He sat with Cal and Fox in a waiting room. Gray and blue couches, chairs. A TV set on some morning show with a man and a woman laughing behind a desk.

Surgical waiting room, he remembered, as if coming out of a dream. The old man was in surgery. GSW—that’s what they called it. Gunshot wound. The old man was in surgery because he had a bullet in him. Supposed to be in me, Gage remembered as his mind replayed that quick whip of the gun toward him. That .38 slug should be in me.

“I need to take a walk.” As Fox started to stand with him, Gage shook his head. “No, I just need some air. I’m just . . . have to clear my head.”

He rode down in the elevator with a sad-eyed woman with graying roots and a man with a seersucker blazer buttoned tight over a soccer ball belly.

He wondered if they’d left anyone broken and bleeding upstairs.

On the main level, he passed the gift shop with its forest of shiny balloons (Get Well Soon! It’s a Boy!) and cold case of overpriced floral arrangements, racks of glossy magazines and paperback novels. He went straight out the front doors, turned left, and walked without any thought of destination.

Busy place, he thought idly. Cars, trucks, SUVs jammed the lots, while others circled, searching for a spot to park. Some of them would stop by the gift shop for glossy magazines and balloons. A lot of sick people around, he supposed, and wondered how many of them had a GSW. Was there an appropriate tagline on a balloon for a GSW?

He heard Cybil call his name. Though the sound of it seemed absurdly out of place, he turned. She hurried down the sidewalk toward him, at just short of a run. All that dark, curling hair was sunstruck, flying around that fabulous face.

Gage had the odd thought that if a man had to die, he could go happier knowing a woman like Cybil Kinski had once run to him.

She caught him, grabbed both his hands. “Your father?”

“In surgery. How’d you get here?”

“Cal called. Quinn and Layla went in. I saw you so . . . Can you tell me what happened?”

“Cy brought his .38 into Cal’s office, shot up the place. Cal, too.”

“Cal—”

“He’s okay. You know how it goes.”

An ambulance roared into the lot hot, sirens, lights. Someone else in trouble, Gage thought. Another balloon on a string.

“Gage. Let’s find a place to sit down.”

He brought himself back to her, to Cybil with the gypsy eyes. “No, I’m . . . walking. It happened fast. Couple of fingersnaps. Let’s see. Bang, bang, Cal’s down. Cy aims for him again, so I yelled out. No . . .” Not quite right, he remembered.

“It doesn’t matter.” She hooked her arm around his waist. If she could have taken his weight, she would have. But the weight he carried wasn’t physical.

“It does. It all matters.”

“You’re right.” Gently, she guided him around so they were walking back toward the hospital. “Tell me what happened.”

“We went for him first, for Cy, but the guy’s built like a mountain, and you add in the infection. Shook us right off. Then I yelled. He turned the gun at me.”

In his mind, it replayed in slow motion, every detail, every movement. “The dog had been asleep, as usual, under the desk. He came up like vengeance. I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it. Fox is about to charge Cy again, might’ve had enough time. We’ll never know. The old man, he comes through the door like a freight train, jumps Cy, and the three of them go down—and the dog, too. The gun went off. Fox was okay, so I got over to Cal. Never gave the old man a thought. Fox was okay, Cal was bleeding and working on pushing the goddamn bullet out. I never gave the old man a thought.”

Cybil stopped, turned to him. She said nothing, only watched his face, held his hands.

“I looked over. Fox must’ve pulled his shirt off. He was using it to put pressure on the wound. Chest wound. GSW. The old man, he can’t push the goddamn bullet out like we can.”

She released his hands to put her arms around him.

“I don’t know how I’m supposed to feel.”

“You don’t have to decide.”