The Sign of Seven Trilogy (106 page)

Gage rose, waved his friends back. He walked out to listen to the doctor tell him the old man was dead.

 

HE'D BURY THE OLD MAN BESIDE HIS WIFE AND daughter. That Gage could do. He wasn't having any damn viewing, or what he thought of as the after-graveside buffet. Short, simple, done. He let Cal handle the arrangements for a graveside service as long as it was brief. God knew Cal knew Bill Turner better than he did. Certainly the Bill Turner who died on the operating table.

He retrieved his father's one good suit from the apartment and delivered it to the funeral home. He ordered the headstone, paid for it and the other expenses in cash.

At some point, he supposed, he'd need to clean out the apartment, donate everything to Goodwill or the Salvation Army. Something. Or, as the odds were Cal would be making arrangements for his own graveside service before much longer, Gage figured he could leave that little chore to Cal and Fox.

They lied to the police, which wouldn't keep Gage from sleeping at night. With Jim Hawkins's help, they'd tampered with evidence. Cy remembered nothing, and Gage figured if the old man had to die, that shouldn't be for nothing either.

He came out of the funeral home, telling himself he'd done all he could. And he saw Frannie Hawkins standing beside his car.

“Cybil said you'd be here. I didn't want to come in, to intrude.”

“You've never intruded.”

She put her arms around him—one good, hard hug. “I'm sorry. I know how things were between you and Bill, but I'm sorry.”

“I am, too. I'm just not sure what that covers.”

“However things were, however he was, in the past, in the end he did everything he could to protect you—and my boy, and Fox. And in the end, you've done exactly the right thing for them, for the Hollow, and for Bill.”

“I'm laying the rap for his own death on him.”

“You're saving a good man, an innocent man from a murder charge and prison.” Frannie's face radiated compassion. “It wasn't Cy who shot Cal or Bill—and we know that. It isn't Cy who should spend, potentially, the rest of his life behind bars, leave his wife alone, his kids and grandkids.”

“No. We talked about that. The old man's not in a position to put his two cents in, so . . .”

“Then you should understand Bill considered Cy a friend, and it was mutual. After Bill quit drinking, Cy was one of the ones who'd sit around with him, drinking coffee or Cokes. I want you to know I feel absolutely certain this is what Bill would want you to do. As far as anyone knows, Bill came in with the gun, God knows why because none of us do, and when Cy and the rest of you tried to stop him, there was an accident. Bill wouldn't want Cy punished for what was beyond his control. And nothing can hurt Bill now. You know what happened, what Bill did in the end. It doesn't matter what anyone else knows.”

It helped hearing it, helped rub dull the sharper edges of guilt. “I can't feel—the grief, the anger. I can't feel it.”

“If and when you need to, you will. All you need to know now is you've done what can and should be done. That's enough.”

“Would you do something for me?”

“Just about anything.”

“When I'm not around, will you put flowers out there now and again? For the three of them.”

“Yes. I will.”

He stepped over to her car, opened the door for her. “Now I'm going to ask you something.”

“Ask away.”

“If you knew you had a week or two to live, what would you do?”

She started to speak, stopped, and Gage understood she'd smothered her instinctive response—for his sake. Instead, she smiled. “How am I feeling?”

“Good.”

“In that case, I'd do exactly as I pleased, particularly if it was something I'd normally deny myself or hesitate over. I'd grab everything I wanted, needed. I'd make sure the people who annoyed me knew just what I thought. And more important, that everyone I loved knew how much they meant to me.”

“No confessing your sins, making amends?”

“If I haven't confessed and amended by that point, screw it. It's all about me now.”

Laughing, he leaned down and kissed her. “I really love you.”

“I know you do.”

 

AS USUAL, IN GAGE'S OPINION, FRANNIE HAD HER sensible finger on the heart of the matter. But first things first. He knew too well that death—anyone's death— wouldn't stop the approach of the Seven. The meeting they'd held in Cal's office now had to be open to all six.

“The deal's pretty straightforward,” he began. They sat, all of them, in Cal's living room on the night before his father's burial. “Some of the books and folklore Linz accessed have fancy or fanciful language, but it boils down to this: The bloodstone—our stone—is the key. Part of the Alpha Stone, just as Cybil theorized. A power source. And oddly enough, in some of Linz's studies, this fragment is called the Pagan Stone. I don't see that as coincidence.”

“What's the lock?” Quinn asked.

“Its heart. The black, festering heart of our own Big Evil Bastard. Insert key, turn, the lock opens and the Evil Bastard goes back to hell. Simple as that.”

“No,” Cybil said slowly, “it's not.”

“Actually it is. But you've got to ante up first.”

“And you're saying you're what we ante up?”

“The stakes are a little too rich for me,” Layla added. “Why play its game? We'll find one of our own, and use our rules.”

“It's not its game,” Gage corrected. “It's the only game we've got. And one it's been trying to delay and destroy for eons. The bloodstone destroys it, which is why it came to us in threes, why we weren't able to put it together until now. Until we were old enough, until we were all a part of it. It took all six of us. The rest of it will, too. But only one of us turns the key. That's for me.”

“How?” Cybil demanded. “By going inside it? By dying and going to hell with it?”

“‘Into the black.' You already know this,” he said, watching her face. “You've already found what Linz did.”

“Some sources theorize the bloodstone—or Pagan Stone—this particular fragment of the Alpha, will destroy the dark, the black, the demon, if it pierces its heart. Can,” she said quickly, “may—if it's been imbued with the blood of the chosen, if it's taken in at exactly the right time.
If
,
can
,
may
.”

“You didn't share this?”

“I'm still verifying. I'm still checking sources. No,” she added after a moment of silence. “I didn't share it.”

“‘Into the black,'” Gage repeated. “All the lore uses that phrase or a close variation. The dark, the black. The heart of the beast, and only when it's in its true form.
Bestia
. And every living thing around it, not protected, dies when it dies. Its death requires equal sacrifice. Blood sacrifice. A light to smother the dark. And you'd found that, too,” he added to Cybil.

“I found some sources that speak of sacrifice, balance.” She started to qualify, to argue—
anything
—then stopped. They were all entitled to hear it. “Most of the sources I've found claim that to pierce the heart, the demon must be in his true form, and the stone must be taken into it by the guardian, by the light. And that light must go in with full knowledge that, by destroying, he will, in turn, be destroyed. The sacrifice must be made with free will.”

Gage nodded. “That jibes with Linz.”

“Isn't that handy? Doesn't that just tie it up in a bow?”

For a moment, as Gage and Cybil watched each other, no one spoke. Then Quinn made an
ahem
sound. “Okay, question.” Quinn held up a finger. “If the bloodstone and a sacrifice does the job, why didn't Dent kill it?”

Still watching Cybil, Gage answered. “First, it came as Twisse, not in its true form.”

“I think there's more,” Cal said. “I've been thinking about this since Gage ran it by us. Dent had broken the rules, and intended to break more. He couldn't destroy it. It couldn't be done by his hand. So he paved the way for us. He weakened it, made certain it couldn't become, as Linz says. Not fully corporeal, not in full power. He bought time, and passed all he could down to his ancestors—to us—to finish it.”

“I'll go with that. But I don't think it's the whole story.” Quinn glanced at Cybil, and her eyes held sorrow and apology. “Destroying the demon was—is—Dent's mission. His reason to exist. His sacrifice—his life—wouldn't be enough. True sacrifice involves choice. We all have choices in this. Dent isn't wholly human. Despite our heritages, all of us are. This is the price, the choice to sacrifice life for the whole. Cyb—”

Cybil held up a hand. “There's always a price.” She spoke steadily. “Historically, gods demand payment. Or in more pedestrian terms, nothing's free. That doesn't mean we have to accept the price is death. Not without trying to find another way to pay the freight.”

“I'm all for coming up with an alternate payment plan. But,” Gage added, “we all have to agree, right here and now so we get this behind us, that if we can't, I take point on this. Agree or not, that's how it's going to be. It'd be easier for me if we agreed.”

No one spoke, and everyone understood Cybil had to be the first.

“We're a team,” she began. “None of us would question just how completely we've become one. Within that team we've formed various units. The three men, the three women, the couples. All of those units play into the dynamics of the team. But within those units we're all individual. We're all who we are, and that's the core of what makes us what and who we are together. None of us can make a choice for another. If this is yours, I won't be responsible for making it harder, for adding to the stress, for possibly distracting you, or any of us so we make a mistake. I'll agree, believing we'll find a way where all of us walk away whole. But I'll agree, more importantly, because I believe in you. I believe in you, Gage.

“That's all I have to say. I'm tired. I'm going up.”

Nineteen

HE GAVE HER SOME TIME. HE WANTED SOME HIMSELF. When he walked to the door of the bedroom they shared, Gage thought he knew exactly what he needed to say, and how he intended to say it.

Then he opened the door, saw her, and it all slipped away from him.

She stood at the window in a short white robe, with her hair loose, her feet bare. She'd turned the lights off, lighted candles instead. Their glow, the shifting shadows they created suited her perfectly. The look of her, what he felt for her, were twin arrows in the heart.

He closed the door quietly at his back; she didn't turn. “I was wrong not to pass along the research I found.”

“Yeah, you were.”

“I can make excuses, I can tell you I felt I needed to dig deeper, gather more data, analyze it, verify, and so on. It's not a lie, but it's not altogether true.”

“You know this is the way. You know it in your gut, Cybil, the same as I do. If I don't do this thing, and do it right, it takes us all—and the Hollow with us.”

She said nothing for a moment, but only stood in the candlelight, looking out at the distant hills. “There's still a smear of sunlight at the very tips of the mountains,” she said. “Just a hint of what's dying. It's beautiful. I was standing here, looking out and thinking we're like that. We still have that little bit of light, the beauty of it. A few more days of that. So it's important to pay attention to it, to value it.”

“I paid attention to what you said downstairs. I value that.”

“Then you might as well hear what I didn't say. If you end up being the hero and dying out there in those woods, it's going to take me a long time to stop being angry with you. I will, eventually, but it's going to take a good, long time. And after I stop being angry with you—after that . . .” She drew a long breath. “It's going to take me even longer to get over you.”

“Would you look at me?”

She sighed. “It's gone now,” she murmured as that smear of light faded into the dark. Then she turned. Her eyes were clear, and so deep he thought they might hold worlds inside them.

“I have things I need to say to you,” he began.

“I'm sure. But there's something I need to tell you. I've been asking myself if it would be better for you if I didn't tell you, but—”

“You can decide after I say what I have to say. I got an answer on this earlier today from someone whose opinion I respect. So . . .” He slipped his hands into his pockets. If a man had the guts to die, Gage thought, he ought to have the guts to tell a woman what he felt for her.

“I'm not telling you—or not just telling you—because I may not come through this. That's kind of the springboard for saying it now. But I'd've landed here sooner or later. No getting around it.”

“Getting around what?”

“A deal's a deal for me. But . . . the hell with that.” Annoyance ran over his face, heated his eyes to a burning green. “All bets are off. I like my life. It works for me. What's the point of changing what works? That's one thing.”

Intrigued, she angled her head. “I suppose it is.”

“Don't interrupt.”

Her eyebrows winged up. “Pardon me. I assumed this was a conversation, not a monologue. Should I sit down?”

“Just shut up for two damn minutes.” Frustration only kicked up the annoyance factor. “I've got this push-pull thing with the whole destiny deal. No denying it pulls me in, or I'd be a few thousand miles away from here right now. But I'm damned if it pushes me where I don't want to go.”