Nora Roberts - The Hollow

“They’re real.” She only whispered it. “I thought, at first, they were just another… but they’re real.”

“Yeah.” He took her arm. “We’re going inside. We’re going to turn around, and get inside. Then-”

He broke off as he heard the first stir behind him, just a flutter on the air. And in her eyes, wide now, huge now, he saw it was too late.

The rush of wings was a tornado of sound and speed. Fox shoved her back against the building, and down. Pushing her face against his chest, he wrapped his arms around her and used his body to shield hers.

Glass shattered beside him, behind him. Brakes squealed through the crash and thuds of metal. He heard screams, rushing feet, felt the jarring force as birds thumped into his back, the quick sting as beaks stabbed and tore. He knew the rough, wet sounds were those flying bodies smashing into walls and windows, falling lifeless to street and sidewalk.

It was over quickly, in no more than a minute. A child shrieked, over and over-one long, sharp note after another. “Stay here.” A little out of breath, he leaned back so that Layla could see his face. “Stay right here.”

“You’re bleeding. Fox-”

“Just stay here.”

He shoved to his feet. In the intersection three cars were slammed together. Spiderwebs cracked the safety glass of windshields where the birds had flown into them. Crunched bumpers, he noted as he rushed toward the accident, shaken nerves, dented fenders.

It could have been much worse.

“Everybody all right?”

He didn’t listen to the words: Did you see that? They flew right into my car! Instead he listened with his senses. Bumps and bruises, frayed nerves, minor cuts, but no serious injuries. He left others to sort things out, turned back to Layla.

She stood with a group of people who’d poured out of Ma’s Pantry and the businesses on either side. “The damnedest thing,” Meg, the counter cook at Ma’s, said as she stared at the shattered glass of the little restaurant. “The damnedest thing.”

Because he’d seen it all before, and much, much worse, Fox grabbed Layla’s hand. “Let’s go.”

“Shouldn’t we do something?”

“There’s nothing to do. I’m getting you home, then we’ll call Cal and Gage.”

“Your hand.” Her voice was awe and nerves. “The back of your hand’s already healing.”

“Part of the perks,” he said grimly, and pulled her back across Main.

“I don’t have that perk.” She spoke quietly and jogged to keep up with his long, fast stride. “If you hadn’t blocked me, I’d be bleeding.” She lifted a hand to the cut on his face that was slowly closing. “It hurts though. When it happens, then when it heals, it hurts you.” Layla glanced down at their clasped hands. “I can feel it.”

But when he started to let her go, she tightened her grip. “No, I want to feel it. You were right before.” She glanced back at the corpses of crows scattered over the Square, at the little girl who wept wildly now in the arms of her shocked mother. “I hate that you were right and I’ll have to work on that. But you were. I’m not any real help if I don’t accept what I’ve got in me, and learn how to use it.”

She looked back at him, took a bracing breath. “The lull’s over.”

HE HAD A BEER SITTING AT THE LITTLE TABLE with its fancy iron chairs that made the kitchen in the rental house distinctly female. At least to Fox’s mind. The brightly colored minipots holding herbs arranged on the windowsill added to that tone, he supposed, and the skinny vase of white-faced daisies one of the women must have picked up at the flower shop in town finished it off.

The women, Quinn, Cybil, and Layla, had managed to make a home out of the place in a matter of weeks with flea market furniture, scraps of fabric, and generous splashes of color.

They’d managed it while devoting the bulk of their time to researching and outlining the root of the nightmare that infected the Hollow for seven days every seven years.

A nightmare that had begun twenty-one years before, on the birthday he shared with Cal and Gage. That night had changed him, and his friends-his blood brothers. Things had changed again when Quinn had come to town to lay the groundwork for her book on the Hollow and its legend.

It was more than a book to her now, the curvy blonde who enjoyed the spookier side of life, and who had fallen for Cal. It was more than a project for Quinn’s college pal Cybil Kinski, the exotic researcher. And he thought it was more of a problem for Layla Darnell.

He and Cal and Gage went back to babyhood-even before, as their mothers had taken the same childbirth class. Quinn and Cybil had been college roommates, and had remained friends since. But Layla had come to the Hollow, come into this situation, alone.

He reminded himself of that whenever his patience ran a bit thin. However tightly the friendship was that had formed between her and the other two women, however much she was connected to the whole, she’d come into this alone.

Cybil walked in carrying a legal pad. She tossed it on the table, then picked up a bottle of wine. Her long, curling hair was pinned back from her face with clips that glinted silver against the black. She wore slim black pants and an untucked shirt of candy pink. Her feet were bare, with toe-nails painted to match the shirt.

Fox always found such details particularly fascinating. He could barely remember to match up a pair of socks.

“So…” Her deep brown eyes tracked over to his. “I’m here to get your statement.”

“Aren’t you going to read me my rights?” When she smiled, he shrugged. “We gave you the gist when we came in.”

“Details, counselor.” Her voice was smooth as top cream. “Quinn particularly likes details in the notes for her books and we all need them to keep painting the picture. Quinn’s getting Layla’s take upstairs while Layla changes. She had blood on her shirt. Yours, I’m assuming, as she didn’t have a scratch on her.”

“Neither do I, now.”

“Yes, your super-duper healing power. That’s handy. Run it through for me, will you, cutie? I know it’s a pain, because when the others get here, they’ll want to hear it, too. But isn’t that what they say on the cop shows? Keep going over it, and maybe you’ll remember something more?”

Since she had a point, he began at the moment he’d looked up and seen the crows.

“What were you doing right before you looked up?”

“Walking up Main. I was going to drop in and see Cal. Buy a beer.” Lips curved in a half smile, he lifted the bottle. “Came here and got one free.”

“You bought them, as I recall. It just seems if you were walking toward the Square, and these birds were doing their Hitchcock thing above the intersection, you’d have noticed before you said you did.”

“I was distracted, thinking about… work, and stuff.” He raked his fingers through hair still damp from being stuck under the faucet to wash the bird gunk out. “I guess I was looking across the street more than up the street. Layla came out of Ma’s.”

“She walked over to get some of Quinn’s revolting two percent milk. Was it luck-good or bad-that both of you were there, right on the spot?” Her head cocked to the side; her eyebrow lifted. “Or was that the point?”

He liked that she was quick, that she was sharp. “I lean toward it being the point. If the Big Evil Bastard wanted to announce it was back to play, it makes a bigger impact if at least one of us was on the scene. It wouldn’t be as much fun if we’d just heard about it.”

“I lean the same way. We agreed before that it’s able to influence animals or people under some kind of impairment easier, quicker. So, crows. That’s happened before.”