Nora Roberts: The Pagan Stone

“IT BROUGHT THE NIGHT,” CAL SHOUTED AS THE wind tore at them with frozen hands. Outside the circle, snakes writhed, biting, devouring each other until they burned to cinders.

“Among other things.” Quinn hefted the machete, ready to slice at anything that got through.

“We can’t move on it yet.” Gage watched a three-headed dog pace the clearing, snapping, snarling. “It’s trying to draw us out, to sucker us in.”

“It’s not really here.” Fox shifted to try to block Layla from the worst of the wind, but it came from everywhere. “This is just… echoes.”

“Really loud echoes.” Layla clamped a hand on the handle of her froe.

“It’s stronger in the dark. Always stronger in the dark.” Gage watched the huge black dog pace, wondered if it was worth a bullet. “And stronger during the Seven. We’re nearly there.”

“Stronger now than ever. But we don’t take sucker bets.” Cybil bared her teeth in a grin. “And we’re going to draw it in.”

“If it’s in town now, if it’s this strong and in town…”

“They’ll hold it.” Cybil watched a rat, plump as a kitten, leap on the dog’s ridged back. “And we’ll reel it in.”

Fox’s phone beeped. “Can’t read the display. It’s black. Before he could flip it open, the voices poured out. Screaming, sobbing, calling his name. His mother’s, his father’s, dozens of others.

“It’s a lie,” Layla shouted. “Fox, it’s a lie.”

“I can’t tell.” He lifted desperate eyes to hers. “I can’t tell.”

“It’s a lie .” Before he could stop her, Layla snatched the phone, hurled it away.

With a long, appreciative whistle, Bill Turner walked out of the woods. “Sign her up! Bitch’s got an arm on her. Hey, you useless little piece of shit. I got something for you.” He snapped the belt held in his hands. “Come on out and take it like a man.”

“Hey, asshole!” Cybil elbowed Gage aside. “He died like a man. You won’t. You’ll die squealing.”

“Don’t taunt the demon, sugar,” Gage told her. “Positive human emotions, remember.”

“Damn. You’re right. I’ll give you a positive human emotion.” She spun around and in the mad wind yanked Gage to her for a deep, drowning kiss.

“I’m saving you for dessert!” The thing in Bill’s form shifted, changed. She heard her father’s voice boom out now. “What I plant in you will rip and claw to be born.”

She closed her mind to it, poured the love she felt-so strong, so new-into Gage. “It doesn’t know,” she whispered against his mouth.

The wind died; the world fell silent. She thought: Eye of the storm, and took a breath. “It doesn’t know,” she repeated, and touched her fingers lightly to her belly. “It’s one of the answers we never found. It has to be. Another way, if we can figure out how to use it.”

“We’ve got a little over an hour left until eleven thirty-that hour of light before midnight.” Cal looked up at the pure black sky. “We have to get started.”

“You’re right. Let’s light the candles while we can.” And she’d pray the answer would come in time.

Once again the candles burned. Once again the knife that had joined three boys as brothers drew blood, and those wounded hands clasped firm. But this time, Cybil thought, they weren’t three, they weren’t six-but the potential of nine.

On the Pagan Stone six candles burned, one to represent each other, and a seventh to symbolize their single purpose. Inside that ring of fire three small white candles flickered for the lights they’d sparked.

“It’s coming.” Gage looked into Cybil’s eyes.

“How do you know?”

“He’s right.” Cal glanced at Fox, got a nod, then leaned over to kiss Quinn. “No matter what, stay inside the circle.”

“I’ll stay in as long as you do.”

“Let’s not fight, kids,” Fox said before Cal could argue. “Time’s a wasting.”

He leaned over, kissed Layla hard. “Layla, you’re my it. Quinn, Cybil, you go into the small and exclusive club of the best women I know. You guys? I wouldn’t change a minute of the last thirty-one years. So when we come through the other side of this, we’ll exchange manly handshakes. I’m going for big, sloppy kisses from the women, with a little something extra from my it.”

“Is that your closing?” Gage demanded. The stone tucked in his pocket weighed like lead. “I’m taking big, sloppy kisses all around. One in advance.” He grabbed Cybil. If his life had come down to minutes, he was taking the taste of her into the dark. He felt her hand fist on his shirt-a strong, possessive grip. Then she let him go.

“Just a down payment,” she told him. With her face pale and set, she drew both her weapons. “I feel it now, too. It’s close.”

From somewhere in the bowels of the black woods, it roared. Trees trembled, then lashed at each other like enemies. At the edges of the clearing, fire sputtered, sparked, then spewed.

“Bang, bang, on the door, baby,” Quinn murmured, and had Cal gawking at her.

“‘Love Shack’?”

“I don’t know why that popped in my head,” she began, but Fox started laughing like a loon.

“Perfect! Knock a little louder, sugar,” he sang out.

“Oh God. Bang, bang, on the door, baby,” Layla repeated, and unsheathed her froe.

“Come on,” Fox demanded, “put something behind it. I can’t hear you.”

As the fire gushed, as the stench of what came poured over the air, they sang. Foolish, maybe, Gage thought. But it was so in-your-face, so utterly and humanly defiant. Could do worse, he decided, could do a hell of a lot worse as a battle cry.

The sky hemorrhaged bloody rain that spat and sizzled on the ground, casting up a fetid haze of smoke. Through that smoke it came, while in the woods trees crashed and the wind howled like a thousand tortured voices.

The boy stood in the clearing.

It should have been ludicrous. It should, Gage thought, have been laughable. Instead it was horrible. And when the smiling child opened its mouth, the sound that ripped from it filled the world.

Still, they sang.

Gage fired, saw the bullets punch into flesh, saw the blackened blood ooze. Its scream tore gullies in the ground. Then it flew, spinning in blurry circles that spiraled smoke and dirt into a choking cloud. It changed. Boy to dog, dog to snake, snake to man, all whirling, coiling, screaming. Not its true form. The stone was useless until it took its true form.

“Bang, bang, bang,” Cal shouted, and leaped out of the circle to slash, and slash, and slash with his knife.

Now it shrieked, and however inhuman the sound, there was both pain and fury in it. With a nod, Gage slipped the bloodstone out of his pocket, set it in the center of the burning candles.

As one, they rushed out of the circle, and into hell.

Blood and fire. One fell, one rose. The fierce cold bit like teeth, and the stinking smoke scored the throat. Behind them, in the center of the circle, the Pagan Stone flashed, then boiled in flame.

He saw something strike out of the smoke, rip across Cal ’s chest. Even as his friend staggered, Fox was rushing in, hacking at what was no longer there. Fox called out to Layla, shoved her down. This time Gage saw claws slice out of the smoke, and miss Layla’s face by inches.

“It’s playing with us,” Gage shouted. Something leaped onto his back, sank its teeth into him. He tried to buck it off, to roll. Then the weight was gone and Cybil stood with her knife black with blood.

“Let it play,” she said coldly. “I like it rough, remember?”

He shook his head. “Fall back. Everybody, back inside!”

Shoving to his feet, he all but dragged her into the circle where the Pagan Stone ran with fire.