The Pagan Stone

This was war.

Soaked with sweat and blood, the women fought with them. Blades and fists and bullets whipping through a sea of screams. The iced air choked with smoke as they fell, fought back. Something sliced across his chest like claws, ripping flesh, spilling more blood. His blood stained the ground, and sizzled.

Midnight. He heard himself think it. Nearly midnight. And smearing his hands over the wound, he reached for Cybil. With tears glistening in her eyes, she gripped his hand, reached for Cal.

In turn, one by one, they joined until their hands, their blood, their minds, their will joined as well. Until the six were one. The ground split, the fire ripped its way closer. And the mass of black took form. Once again, he looked into Cybil’s eyes, and taking what he found there, he broke the chain.

Reaching into the flames, he pulled the burning stone out with his bare hand. Closing it into his fist, he leaped, alone, into the black.

Into the belly of the beast.

“Stop, stop, stop.” Cybil knelt beside him on the bed, beating her hands on his chest. “Come back, come back. Oh God, Gage, come back.”

Could he? Could anyone come back from that? That cold, that burn, that pain, that terror? When he opened his eyes, it rolled through him, all of it, to center like a swarm of wasps in his head.

“Your nose is bleeding,” he managed.

She made a sound, something between a sob and a curse before she slid off the bed, stumbled to the bath. She came back with a cloth for each of them, pressed her own against her bone-white face. “Where… Where’s that spot?” He fumbled for the accupressure points on her hand, her neck.

“Doesn’t matter.”

“It does if your head feels like mine. Might be sick.” He laid still, closed his eyes. “Really hate being sick. Let’s just take a minute.”

Shaking, shaking, she lay beside him, wrapped close. “I thought… I didn’t think you were breathing. What did you see?”

“That it’s going to be worse than anything we’ve come up against, anything we imagined we would. You saw it. I felt you right there with me.”

“I saw you die. Did you see that?”

The bitterness in her tone surprised him enough for him to risk sitting up. “No. I took the stone, I’ve seen that before. The blood, the fire, the stone. I took it, and I went right into the bastard. Then…” He couldn’t describe what he’d seen, what he’d felt. He didn’t want to. “That’s it. You were punching me and telling me to come back.”

“I saw you die,” she repeated. “You went into it, and you were gone. Everything went mad. Everything was mad, but it got worse. And the thing, form after form after form, twisting, screaming, burning. I don’t know how long. Then, the light was blinding. I couldn’t see. Light and heat and sound. Then silence. It was gone, and you were lying on the ground, covered with blood. Dead.”

“What do you mean it was gone?”

“Did you hear what I said. You were dead. Not dying, not unconscious or floating in some damn limbo. When we got to you, you were dead.”

“We? All of you?”

“Yes, yes, yes.” She covered her face with her hands.

“Stop it.” He yanked them back down. “Did we kill it?”

Her tearful eyes met his. “We killed you.”

“Bullshit. Did we destroy it, Cybil? Did taking the bloodstone into it destroy it?”

“I can’t be sure-” But when he gripped her shoulders, she closed her eyes, dug for strength. “Yes. There was nothing left of it. You took it back to hell.”

The light on his face burned like the fires that waited there. “Now we know how it’s done.”

“You can’t be serious. It killed you.”

“We saw Fox dead on the side of the road. Right now he’s on the lumpy pullout sleeping like a baby or banging Layla. Potential, remember. It’s one of your favorites.”

“None of us are going to let you do this.”

“None of you makes decisions for me.”

“Why does it have to be you?”

“It’s a gamble.” He shrugged. “It’s what I do. Relax, sugar.” He gave her arm an absent stroke. “We’ve made it this far. We’ll hash it out some yet, look at the angles, options. Let’s get some sleep.”

“Gage.”

“We’ll sleep on it, kick it around tomorrow.”

But as he lay in the dark, knowing she lay wakeful beside him, Gage had already made up his mind.

Seventeen

HE TOLD THEM IN THE MORNING, AND TOLD THEM straight-out. Then he drank his coffee while the arguments and the alternatives swarmed around him. If it had been any of them proposing to jump into the mouth of hell without a parachute, Gage thought, he’d be doing the same. But it wasn’t any of them, and there was a good reason for that.

“We’ll draw straws.” Fox stood scowling, hands jammed in his pockets. “The three of us. Short straw goes.”

“Excuse me.” Qui

“Six and a fraction.” Cal shook his head. “You’re pregnant, and you’re not playing short straw with the baby.”

“If the baby’s father can play, so can its mother.”

“The father isn’t currently gestating,” Cal shot back.

“Before we start talking about stupid straws, we need to think.” At her wit’s end, Cybil whirled around from her blind stare out of the kitchen window. “We’re not going to stand around here saying one of us is going to die. Gee, which one should it be? None of us is willing to sacrifice one for the whole.”

“I agree with Cybil. We’ll find another way.” Layla rubbed a hand over Fox’s arm to soothe him. “The bloodstone is a weapon, and apparently the weapon. It has to get inside Twisse. How do we get it inside?”

“A projectile,” Cal considered. “We could rig up something.”

“What, a slingshot? A catapult?” Gage demanded. “A freaking ca

“If that’s true, and without more we can’t say it is, we’re back to straws.” Cal shoved his own coffee aside to lean toward Gage. “It’s been the three of us since day one. You don’t get to decide.”

“I didn’t. It’s the way it is.”

“Then why you? Give me a reason.”

“It’s my turn. Simple as that. You jammed a knife into that thing last winter, showed us we could hurt it. A couple months later, Fox showed us we could kick its ass back and live through it. We wouldn’t be sitting here, this close to ending it, if the two of you hadn’t done those things. If these three women hadn’t come here, stayed here, risked all they’ve risked. So it’s my turn.”

“What next?” Cybil snapped at him. “Are you going to call time-out?”

He looked at her calmly. “We both know what we saw, what we felt. And if we all look back, step by step, we can see this one coming. I was given the future for a reason.”

“So you wouldn’t have one?”

“So, whether I do or not, you do.” Gage shifted his gaze from Cybil to Cal. “The town does. So wherever the hell Twisse plans to go next when he’s done here has a future. I play the cards I’m dealt. I’m not folding.”

Cal rubbed the back of his neck. “I’m not saying I’m on board with this, but say I am-we are-there’s time to think of a way for you to do this without dying.”

“I’m all for that.”

“We pull you out,” Fox suggested. “Maybe there’s a way to pull you out. Get a rope on you, some sort of harness rig?” He looked at Cal. “We could yank him back out.”

“We could work with something like that.”

“If we could get Twisse to take an actual form,” Layla put in. “The boy, the dog, a man.”

“And get it to hold form long enough for me to ram the stone up its ass?”

“You said down his throat.”

Gage gri