Nora Roberts: The Pagan Stone

“It was the end of before, for me.” That, he supposed, was the black and white of it. “When you died, so did the better.”

“Poor little boy. Do you hate me for leaving you?”

“You didn’t leave me. You died.”

“It amounts to the same.” There was sorrow in her eyes, or perhaps it was pity. “I wasn’t there for you, and did worse than leave you alone. I left you with him. I let him plant death inside me. So you were alone, and helpless, with a man who beat you and cursed you.”

“Why did you marry him?”

“Women are weak, you must have learned that by now. If I hadn’t been weak I would have left him, taken you and left him and this place.” She turned, just a bit, so she looked back toward the Hollow. There was something else in her eyes now-he caught a glint of it-something brighter than pity. “I should have protected you and myself. We would have had a life together, away from here. But I can protect you now.”

He watched the way she moved, the way her hair fell, the way the grass stirred at her feet. “How do the dead protect the living?”

“We see more. We know more.” She turned back to him, held out her hands. “You asked why I was here. I’m here for that. To protect you, as I didn’t during life. To save you. To tell you to go, go away from here. Leave this place. There’s nothing but death and misery here, pain and loss. Go and live. Stay and you’ll die, you’ll rot in the ground as I am.”

“Now see, you were doing pretty well up till then.” The rage inside him was cold, and it was fierce, but his voice was casual as a shrug. “I might’ve bought it if you’d played more Mommy and Me cards. But you rushed it.”

“I only want you safe.”

“You want me dead. If not dead, at least gone. I’m not going anywhere, and you’re not my mother. So take off the dress, asshole.”

“Mommy’s going to have to spank you for that.” With a wave of its hand the demon blasted the air. The force knocked Gage off his feet. Even as he gained them, it was changing.

Its eyes went red, and shed bloody tears as it howled with laughter. “Bad boy! I’m going to punish you the most of all the bad boys. Flay your skin, drink your blood, gnaw your bones.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” In a show of indifference, Gage hooked his thumbs in his front pockets.

The face of his mother melted away into something hideous, something inhuman. The body bunched, the back humping, the hands and feet curling into claws, then sharpening into hooves. Then the mass of it twisted into a writhing formless black that choked the air with the stink of death.

The wind blew the stench into Gage’s face, but he planted his feet and stood. He had no weapon, and after a quick calculation, decided to play the odds. He bunched his hand into a fist and punched it into the fetid black.

The burn was amazing. He wrenched his hand free, jabbed again. Pain stole his breath, so he sucked more of it and struck out a third time. It screamed. Fury, Gage thought. He recognized pure fury even when he was flying over his mother’s gravestone and slamming hard to the ground.

It stood over him now, stood atop the gravestone in the form of the young boy it so often selected. “You’ll beg for death,” it told him. “Long after I’ve torn the others to bits, you’ll beg. I will dine on you for years.”

Gage swiped blood from his mouth, smiled, though a wave of nausea rolled over him. “Wanna bet?”

The thing that looked like a boy dug its hands into its own chest, ripped it open. On a mad roll of laughter, it vanished.

“Fucking crazy. The son of a bitch is fucking crazy.” He sat a moment, catching his breath, studying his hand. It was raw and red with blisters, pus seeping from them and the shallow punctures he thought came from fangs. He could feel it healing as the pain was awesome. Cradling his arm, he got to his feet and swayed as dizziness rocked the ground under him.

He had to sit again, his back braced on the gravestone of his mother and sister, until the sickness passed, until the world steadied. In the pretty May sunshine, with only the dead for company, he breathed his way through the pain, focused his mind on the healing. As the burning eased, his system settled again.

Rising, he took one last look at the grave, then turned and walked away.

HE STOPPED BY THE FLOWER POT AND BOUGHT A splashy spring arrangement that had Amy, who worked the counter, speculating on who the lucky lady might be. He left her speculating. It was too hard to explain-and none of Amy’s damn business-that he had flowers and mothers on the brain.

That was one of the problems-and in his mind they were legion-with small towns. Everybody wanted to know everything about everyone else, or pretend they did. When they didn’t know enough, they were just as likely to make it up and call it God’s truth.

There were plenty in the Hollow who’d whispered and muttered about him. Poor kid, bad boy, troublemaker, bad news, good riddance. Maybe it had stung off and on, and maybe that sting had gone deep when he’d been younger. But he’d had what he supposed he could call a balm. He’d had Cal and Fox. He’d had family.

His mother was gone, and had been for a very long time. That, he thought as he drove out of town, had certainly come home to him today. So he’d make a gesture long overdue.

Of course, she might not be home. Frannie Hawkins didn’t hold a job outside the home-exactly. Her work was her home, and the various committees she chaired or participated in. If there was a committee, society, or organization in the Hollow, it was likely Cal ’s mother had a hand in it.

He pulled up behind the clean and tidy car he recognized as hers in the drive of the tidy house where the Hawkinses had lived as long as Gage remembered. And the tidy woman who ran the house knelt on a square of bright pink foam as she planted-maybe they were petunias-at the edges of her already impressive front-yard garden.

Her hair was a glossy blond under a wide-brimmed straw hat, and her hands were covered with sturdy brown gloves. He imagined she thought of her navy pants and pink T-shirt as work clothes. She turned her head at the sound of the car, then her pretty face lit with a smile when she saw Gage.

That was, always had been, a small wonder to him. That she smiled, and meant it, when she saw him. She tugged off her gloves as she rose. “What a nice surprise. And look at those flowers! They’re almost as gorgeous as you are.”

“Coals to Newcastle.”

She touched his cheek, then took the offered flowers. “I can never have too many flowers. Let’s go in so I can put them in water.”

“I interrupted you.”

“Gardening is a constant work in progress. I can’t stop fiddling.”

The house was the same for her, he knew. She upholstered, sewed, painted, made crafty little arrangements. And still the house was always warm, always welcoming, never set and stiff.

She led him back through the kitchen and into the laundry room where, being Frannie Hawkins, she had a sink for the specific purpose of flower arranging. “I’m just going to put these in a holding vase, then get us something cold to drink.”

“I don’t want to hold you up.”

“Gage.” She waved off his protest as she got down a holding vase, filled it. “Go, sit out back on the patio. It’s too pretty to be inside. I’ll bring us out some iced tea.”

He did as she asked, mostly because he needed to figure out exactly what he’d come here to say to her, and how he wanted to say it. She’d been busy in the back garden as well, and with her container pots. All the color, the shapes, the textures seemed somehow magically perfect and completely natural. He knew, because he’d seen her, that she routinely sketched out her plans for her beds, her pots every year.