The Hollow (20 page)

But he couldn't find it. He couldn't find himself or the man who was killing him on the sidewalk a few steps from the Town Square on a rainy Sunday morning.

Then all he could see was red, like a field of blood. All he could see was his own death.

The pressure on his throat released, and the horrible weight on his chest lifted. As he rolled, retching, he thought he heard shouting. But his ears rang like Klaxons, and he spat blood.

“Fox! Fox! O'Dell!”

A face swam in front of his. Fox lay across the sidewalk, the rain blessedly cool on his battered face. He saw a blurred triple image of Chief of Police Wayne Hawbaker.

“Better not move,” Wayne told him. “I'll call an ambulance.”

Not dead, Fox thought, though the red still swam at the edges of his vision. “No, wait.” It croaked out of him, but he managed to sit up. “No ambulance.”

“You're hurt pretty bad.”

He knew his one eye was swollen shut, but he managed to focus the other on Wayne. “I'll be okay. Where the fuck is Block?”

“Cuffed and locked in the back of my car. Christ, Fox, I had to damn near knock him cold to get him off you. What the hell was going on here?”

Fox wiped blood from his mouth. “Ask Napper.”

“What does he have to do with it?”

“He'd be the one who got Block worked up, making him think I'd been screwing around with Shelley.” Fox wheezed in another breath that felt like broken glass inside his throat. “Never mind, doesn't matter. No law against lying to an idiot, is there?”

Wayne said nothing for a moment. “I'll call down to the firehouse, get the paramedics here to look you over at least.”

“I don't need them.” As helpless anger, helpless pain churned inside him, Fox braced a bleeding hand on the sidewalk. “I don't want them.”

“I'll be taking Block in. I'll need you to come in when you're able, file formal assault charges.”

Fox nodded. Attempted murder was closer to the mark, but assault would do.

“Let me help you into the front of the car. I'll take you where you want to go.”

“Just go on. I can get where I'm going.”

Wayne dragged a hand through his wet, graying hair. “Chrissakes, Fox, you want me to leave you on the sidewalk, bleeding?”

Once again, Fox focused his good eye. “You know me, Chief. I heal quick.”

Acknowledgment and worry clouded Wayne's eyes. “Let me see you get to your feet. I'm not driving off until I know you can stand and walk.”

He managed it, every inch of him screaming. Three broken ribs, Fox thought. He could already feel them trying to heal, and the pain was hideous. “Lock him up. I'll be in when I can.”

He limped off, didn't stop until he heard Hawbaker drive away. Then he turned, and stared at the grinning boy standing across the street.

“I'll heal, you fucker, and when the time comes, I'll do a lot worse to you.”

The demon in a child's form laughed. Then it opened its mouth, wide as a cave, and swallowed itself.

By the time Fox made it to the rental house, one of his ribs had healed, and the second was working on it. His loosened teeth were solid again; the most minor of the scrapes and cuts had closed.

Should've gone home to finish this up, he realized. But the beating and the agony of the healing left him exhausted and fuzzy-headed. The women would just have to deal with it, he told himself. They'd probably have to deal with worse before it was over.

“We're up here!” Quinn called down at the sound of the door opening, closing again. “Be down in a minute. Coffee's on the stove, Coke's in the fridge, depending on who you are.”

The bruising on his windpipe was still too severe. He didn't have it in him to call back, so he made his way painfully to the kitchen.

He started to reach for the refrigerator, frowned at his broken wrist. “Come on, you bastard, finish it up.” While the bones knit, he used his left hand to get out a Coke, then fought bitterly with the tab of the can.

“We're getting a late start. I guess we were— Oh my God.” Layla rushed forward. “Fox! God. Quinn, Cybil, Cal! Get down here. Fox is hurt!”

She tried to get an arm around him, take his weight. “Just open this, will you? Open the stupid can.”

“Sit down. You need to sit down. Your face. Your poor face. Here, sit down here.”

“Just open the goddamn can.” He snapped it out, but she only pulled out a chair. The fact that she could ease him down on it with little effort told him he was still in bad shape.

She opened the can, started to cup his hands around it. Her voice was thin, but steady when she spoke. “Your wrist is broken.”

“Not for long.”

He took his first long, desperate sip as Cal ran in. One look had Cal cursing. “Layla, get some water, some towels to clean him up some.” He crouched, put a hand on Fox's thigh. “How bad?”

“Worst in a long time.”

“Napper?”

“Indirectly.”

“Quinn,” Cal said with his eyes still on Fox. “Call Gage. If he isn't on his way, tell him to get here.”

“I'm getting ice.” She dragged the ice bin out of the freezer. “Cybil.”

“I'll call.” But first she bent over, laid her lips gently on Fox's bloody cheek. “We'll take care of you, baby.”

Layla brought a basin and cloth. “It hurts. Can we give him anything for the pain?”

“You have to go through it, even use it. It helps if the three of us are together.” Cal's eyes never left Fox's face. “Give me something.”

“Ribs, left side. He got three, one's finished, one's working.”

“Okay.”

“They should go.” He hissed on a fresh flood of pain. “Tell them to go.”

“We're not going anywhere.” Gently, efficiently, Layla began to stroke the cold damp cloth over Fox's face.

“Here, honey.” Quinn held the ice bag to Fox's swollen eye.

“I got him on his cell.” Cybil hurried back in. “He was already in town. He'll be here any second.” She stopped, and despite her horror at Fox's condition, watched in fascination as the raw bruises on his throat began to fade.

“He messed me up inside,” Fox managed. “Can't focus, can't find it, but something's bleeding. Concussion. Can't think clear through it.”

Cal kept his gaze steady on Fox's face. “Focus on that first, the concussion. You have to push the rest of it back.”

“Trying.”

“Let me.” Layla shoved the bloodied cloths at Cybil before kneeling at Fox's feet. “I can see if you let me in. But I need you to let me. Let me see the pain, Fox, so I can help you focus on it, heal it. We're connected. I can help.”

“You can't help if you freak. Remember that.” He closed his eyes, and opened for her. “Just the head. I can handle the rest once I clear that.”

He felt her shock, her horror, then her compassion. That was warm, soft. She guided him to where he needed to go just as she'd guided him to the chair.

And there, the pain was fierce and full, a monster with jagged teeth and stiletto claws. They bit, and mauled. They tore. For an instant he shied from it, started to struggle back. But she nudged him on.

A hand gripped his sweaty fist, and he knew it was Gage.

So he opened to himself, to them, rode on the pain, on the hot, bucking back of it, as he knew he must. When it ebbed enough for him to speak again, perspiration soaked him.

“Ease back now,” he said to Layla. “Ease back. It's a little too much, a little too fast.”

He kept riding the pain. Bones, muscles, organs. And clung unashamed to Gage's hand, to Cal's. When the worst had passed, and he could take his first easy breath, he stopped. His own nature would do the rest.

“Okay. It's okay.”

“You don't look okay.”

He looked at Cybil, saw there were tears running down her cheeks. “The rest is just surface. It'll take care of itself.”

When she nodded, turned away, he looked down at Layla. Her eyes were swimming, but to his relief, no tears fell. “Thanks.”

“Who did this to you?”

“That's the question.” His voice raw, Gage straightened, then walked to the stove for coffee. “The second being, and when are we going to go kick the shit out of him?”

“I'd like to help with that.” Cybil got a mug for Gage herself, then laid a hand over his, squeezed hard.

“It was Block,” Fox told them as Quinn brought fresh water to clean the healing cuts and scrapes on his face.

“Block Kholer?” Gage tore his gaze from his hand, still warm from Cybil's though she now stood two feet away. “What the hell for?”

“Napper convinced him I'd screwed his wife.”

Cal shook his head. “Block might be stupid enough to believe that asshole, which makes him monumentally stupid. And if he did, I could see him looking for some pushy-shovey, maybe even taking a swing at you. But, bro, he damn near killed you. That's just not . . .”

Fox managed a small, slow sip of the Coke when he saw Cal understood. “It was there. The little fucker. Across the street. I had my attention on Block, since I sensed he wanted to pound me to pulp, so I missed it. I saw it in Block's face though, in his eyes. The infection. If Wayne Hawbaker hadn't come by, he wouldn't have damn near killed me. I'd be dead.”

“It's stronger.” Quinn gripped Cal's shoulder. “It's gotten stronger.”

“We had to figure it would. Everything's accelerated this time. You said Wayne came by. What did he do?”

“I was out of it at first. When I got it together, he had Block cuffed, locked in the car. He said he had to just about knock him cold to get him there. He was fine—Wayne—he was fine. Himself. Concerned, a little pissed, a lot confused. It didn't affect him.”

“Maybe it couldn't.” Layla pushed to her feet. She took the bloodied water to dump because if her hands were in the sink, no one could see them shake. “I think if it could have, it would have. You said Block meant to kill you. It wouldn't want the police, wouldn't want anyone to stop that from happening.”

“One at a time.” Composed again, Cybil pursed her lips. “Not good news, but not all bad.” She brushed at Fox's wet, tangled hair. “Your eye's healing. You're almost back to full handsome again.”

“What are you going to do about Block?” Quinn asked.

“I'll go over and talk to him, and Wayne later. Right now, I could really use a shower, if you ladies don't mind.”

“I'll take you up.” Layla held out a hand.

“You need to sleep,” Cal said.

“A shower's probably enough.”

“That kind of healing empties you out. You know that.”

“I'll start with the shower.” He walked out with Layla. The pain still nipped, but its teeth were dull, its claws stunted.

“I'll wash your clothes while you're in there,” she told him. “There are a few things of Cal's around here you can use. Those jeans are toast now anyway.”

He glanced down at his torn, ripped, and bloody Levi's. “Toast? They're just broken in.”

She tried for a smile as they climbed the stairs, but couldn't quite pull it off. “Does it still hurt?”

“Mostly just sore now.”

“Then . . .” She turned at the top of the stairs, put her arms around him and held close.

“It's all right now.”

“Of course it's not all right now. None of it's all right. So I'm just going to hold on to you until I can handle it again.”

“You handled it just fine.” He lifted a hand, stroked it down her hair. “Right down the line.”

Needing to be steady for him, Layla eased back to take his face carefully in her hands. His left eye looked red and painful, but the swelling was nearly gone. She kissed it, then his cheeks, his temples. “I was scared to death.”

“I know. That's what heroism is, isn't it? Doing what has to be done when you're scared to death.”

“Fox.” She kissed his lips now, gently. “Take off your clothes.”

“I've been waiting to hear you say that for weeks.”

Now she was able to smile. “And get in the shower.”

“Better and better.”

“If you need someone to wash your back . . . I'll send Cal.”

“And my dreams are crushed.”

In the end, she untied his shoes while he sat on the side of the tub. She helped him out of his shirt and jeans with a depressingly sisterly affection. When he stood in his boxers, and she said, “Oh, Fox,” he knew by the tone it wasn't due to delight in his manly physique, but to the bruises that covered it.

“When so much is internal, it just takes longer for the outside to heal.”

She only nodded, and carrying his clothes, left him to shower.

It felt like glory—the hot water, the soft spray. It felt like glory to be alive. He stayed under the water, his hands braced on the shower wall, until it ran cool, until the pain circled the drain and slid away like the water. Jeans and a sweatshirt sat neatly folded on the counter when he stepped out. He managed to get them on, forced to pause several times to rest, to wait until nasty little bouts of dizziness passed. Once he'd wiped the steam from the mirror over the sink and taken stock of his face, the still-fading bruises, the raw look of his eye, the cuts not quite healed, he had to admit Cal was right, as usual.

He needed to sleep.

So he walked—felt like floating—into Layla's room. He crawled onto her bed and fell asleep with the comforting scent of her all around him.