Nora Roberts - The Pagan Stone

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.”