Nora Roberts - The Pagan Stone

The bitterness in her tone was so ripe, he imagined she could taste it.

“It could’ve been worse, much worse. We could’ve been destitute and instead we simply had to learn how to live on more limited resources and earn our way. My mother’s since married again, to a very good man. Solid and kind. Should I stop?”

“No.”

“Good. Marissa, as I did, came into a-by our former standards-modest inheritance at twenty-one. She’d already been married lavishly, and divorced bitterly, by this time. She blew through the money like a force-five hurricane. She toys with modeling, does very decently with magazine shoots and billboards when she bothers. But what she wants most is to be a celebrity, of any sort, and she continues to pursue the lifestyle of one-or what she perceives to be the lifestyle of one. As a result, she’s very often broke and can only use her charm and beauty as currency. Since neither has worked on me for a long time, we’re usually at odds.”

“Does she know where you are?”

“No, thank God. I didn’t tell her, and won’t, first because as big a pain in my ass as she is, she remains my sister and I don’t want her hurt. Second, more selfishly, I don’t want her in my hair. She’s very like my mother, or as my mother was before this third marriage settled and contented her. People always said I took after my father.”

“So he was smart and sexy?”

She smiled a little. “That’s a nice thing to say after I’ve unloaded on you. I’ve wondered if being like my father meant I wouldn’t be able to face the worst life threw at me.”

“You already did. You broke the window.”

She let out a breath that trembled in a way that warned him there were tears behind it. But she held them back-major points for her-and turning, looked up at him with those deep, dark eyes. “All right, you’ve earned this for listening, and I’ve earned it for being smart enough to dump it on a man who would.”

She gripped his shirt front, rose on her toes. Then she slid her hands over his shoulders, linked her arms around his neck.

Her mouth was silk and heat and promise. It moved over his, a slow glide that invited him in, to sample or to taste fully. The flavors of her wound through him, strong and sweet, beckoning like a crooked finger.

Come on, have a little more.

When she started to ease away, he gripped her hips, brought her back up to her toes. And had a little more.

She didn’t regret it. How could she? She’d offered, he’d answered. How could she regret being kissed on a quiet spring night by a man who knew exactly how she wanted to be kissed?

Hard and deep, with just a hint of bite.

If her pulse tripped, if her belly fluttered, if this sample caused her system to yearn, to burn, she chose to ride the excitement, not step away with regret. So when she stepped back, it wasn’t with regret, it wasn’t with caution, but with the clear understanding that a man like Gage Turner respected a challenge. And giving him one would undoubtedly prove more satisfying to both of them.

“That might’ve been a slight overpayment,” she decided. “But you can keep the change.”

He grinned back at her. “That was your change.”

She laughed, and on impulse held out a hand for his. “I’d say our after-dinner walk did both of us good. We’d better get back.”

IN THE LIVING ROOM, CYBIL SAT WITH HER FEET tucked up, a mug of tea in her hand as she relayed the incident from that afternoon for the group, and Quinn’s recorder.

She didn’t skimp on the details, Gage noted, and she didn’t flinch from them.

“There was blood in the house,” Quinn prompted.

“The illusion of blood.”

“And the flies, the noise. The dark. You saw and heard all that, too?” Quinn asked Gage.

“Yeah.”

“The doors and windows were locked from the inside.”

“The front door opened when I tried it, from the outside,” Gage qualified. “But when we went back in, the kitchen door was still locked, so was the window over the sink.”

“But it-the boy,” Layla said slowly, “was outside, on the window. It never came in.”

“I think it couldn’t.” Cybil took a thoughtful sip of tea. “How much more threatened would I have felt if it was locked in here with me? If it could have gotten in, I think it would have. It could cause me to see and hear-even feel things that weren’t real inside the house. It could lock the door, the window in the room where I was when it started. Not the front,” she said. “Maybe it used up that area of its power on the back of the house. It could only make me think the front door was locked. Stupid. I never thought of it when it was happening.”

“Yeah.” Cal shook his head at her. “It’s pretty stupid of you not to cop to that when the house was bleeding and shaking and you were stuck in the dark with demon boy crawling on the window.”

“Now that we’ve established Cybil completely loses her head in a crisis, we should ask ourselves why it couldn’t come in.” Fox sat on the floor, scratching Lump on his big head. “Maybe it’s like the vampire deal. Has to be invited.”

“Or, keeping Dracula inside of fiction where he belongs, it just wasn’t up to full power. And won’t be,” Gage reminded them, “for a few more weeks.”

“Actually…” Cybil frowned. “If we consider vampyric lore, it’s not impossible the undead, drinker of blood, and so forth, doesn’t have its legitimate roots in this demon. Some of that lore speaks of the vampire’s ability to hypnotize its victims or foes-mind control. It feeds off human blood. This is more your area, Quinn, than mine.”

“You’re doing fine.”

“All right, to stick with this channel, vampires are often said to have the ability to turn into a bat, a wolf. This demon certainly shape-shifts-which adds the possibility of the shape-shifter, of which the lycanthrope is a subset, found in various lore. To some extent, these might be bastardizations of this demon.”

She picked up her own notebook, scribbled in it as she continued. “Undead. We know now that it can take the form of someone who’s died. What if this isn’t, as we thought, a new trick, but an ability it had before Dent imprisoned it, and is only now, as what we’re told is the final Seven approaches, able to pull that out of its hat again?”

“So it kills Uncle Harry,” Fox proposed, “then for fun, it comes back as Uncle Harry to terrorize and kill the rest of the family.”

“It does have a sick sense of fun.” Quinn nodded. “Should we start sharpening stakes?”

“No. But we’d better figure out how the weapon we do have works. Still, this is interesting.” Thoughtfully, Cybil tapped her pencil on the notepad. “If it couldn’t come in, that might give us a little more security, and peace of mind. Have any of you ever seen it inside a home?” Cybil asked.

“It just gets the people in it to kill themselves, or each other, or burn the place down.” Gage shrugged. “Often all of the above.”

“Maybe there’s a way to block it, or at least weaken it.” Layla slid off her chair to sit on the floor beside Fox. “It’s energy, right? And energy that feeds on, or at least seems to prefer, negative emotions. Anger, fear, hate. At every Seven, or the approach of one, it targets birds and animals first-smaller brains, less intellect than humans. And it recharges on that, then moves, usually, to people who’re under some influence. Alcohol, drugs, or those emotions again. Until it’s stronger.”

“It’s coming out stronger this time,” Cal pointed out. “It’s already moved past animals, and was able to infect Block Kholer to the point he nearly beat Fox to death.”

As Layla took Fox’s hand, Cybil considered. “That was target specific, and it wasn’t able to infect the chief of police when he got there and dragged Block off. Target specific might be another advantage.”