The Sign of Seven Trilogy (95 page)

“We will stop it.”

“How? There are only a few weeks left, such a little bit of time. What can you do this time you didn't do before? Except be brave. What do you plan to do?”

“Whatever it takes.”

“You're still looking for answers, with time running out.” Her smile was soft as she nodded, soft as a second hornet, then a third squirmed, black on red. “You were always a brave and stubborn boy. All those years your father had to punish you.”

“Had to?”

“What choice did he have? Don't you remember what you did?”

“What did I do?”

“You killed me, and your sister. Don't you remember? We were walking in the fields, just like this, and you ran. Even when I told you not to, you ran and ran, and fell. You cried so hard, poor little boy.” Her smile was full, and somehow luminous, as the roses disgorged hornets. And the hornets began to hum.

“Your knees were all scraped and scratched. So I had to carry you, and the weight of you, the strain of it, was too much for me. You see?”

She spread her arms and the white gown blossomed with blood. Hornets swarmed in buzzing black clouds until even the roses bled. “Only a few days later, the blood and the pain. From you, Gage.”

“It's a lie.” It was Cybil who spoke, who was suddenly at his side. “You're a lie. Gage, it's not your mother.”

“I know.”

“She's not so pretty now,” it said. “Want to see?”

The white dress thinned to filthy rags over rotted flesh. It laughed and laughed as fat worms writhed through the flesh, as the flesh gave way to bone.

“How about you?” it said to Cybil. “Want to see Daddy?”

The bones re-formed into a man with sightless eyes and a charming grin. “There's my princess! Come give Daddy a kiss!”

“More lies.”

“Oh, I can't see! I can't see! I can't see what a worthless shit I am.” It laughed uproariously. “I chose death over you.” Hornets stabbed out to crawl at the corners of its grin. “Death was better than your constant
need
, your unrelenting, sickening love. Didn't have to think twice before . . .” It mimed shooting a gun with its hand. And the side of its head exploded into a ruin of blood, bone, brain.

“That's the truth, isn't it? Remember, bitch?” Its single blind eye rolled in its socket, then the image burst into flame. “I'm waiting for you, for both of you. You'll burn. They all burn.”

He woke with his hand clutching Cybil's, and her eyes staring into his.

“Are you okay?”

She nodded, but stayed as she was when he sat up. Dawn spread milky light into the room as her breath shuddered in and out.

“It wasn't them,” she managed. “It wasn't them, and it wasn't the truth.”

“No.” Because he thought they both needed it, he took her hand again. “How did you do that? Get into my dream?”

“I don't know. I could see you, hear you, but at first I was removed from it—not part of it. It was almost like watching a movie, or a play, but through a film, or a curtain. Like gauze. Then I was in it. I pushed . . .” Dissatisfied, she shook her head. “No, that's not right, not really. It was less deliberate than that, more visceral. More like a flick, the way you'd give a curtain in your way an annoyed flick. I was so angry because I thought you believed what it was saying.”

“I didn't. I knew what it was from the start. Bluff me once,” Gage murmured.

“You were playing it.” Cybil closed her eyes a moment. “You're good.”

“It's looking for our hole card, wants to know what we've got. And it told us more than we told it.”

“That there's still time.” Now, she sat up beside him. “However strong it's getting, however much it might be able to do, it still has to wait for the seventh for the real show.”

“Give the lady a cigar. It's about time for our bluff. Time to make the bastard believe we have more than we do.”

“And we'd do that by . . . ?”

Gage rose, went to the dresser, opened a drawer. “Bait.”

Cybil stared at the bloodstone he held. “That's supposed to be in a safe place, not knocking around in . . . Wait. Let me see it.”

Gage tossed it casually in the air, then over to her.

“This isn't our bloodstone.”

“No, I picked it up at a rock shop a few days ago. But it fooled you for a minute.”

“It's the same basic size, not quite the same shape. It might have power, too, Gage. The research I've done points to bloodstones as part of the Alpha Stone.”

“It's not ours. Not the one it's worried about. It might be worthwhile finding out just how worried it is, and what it might do to get its hands on what it thinks is Dent's bloodstone.”

“And to see how pissed off it gets when it realizes—if it does—this is a substitute.”

“Can't be overstated. It's used our pain against us, our tragedies. Let's return the favor. The bloodstone helped Dent keep that thing under for three centuries. Stopped it in its tracks a good long while and set the stage for what we're doing. That's got to be one of the big losses.”

“Okay. How do we con a demon?”

“I've got some ideas.”

She had some of her own, but they were down avenues her research had taken her, avenues she didn't want to travel. So she kept her silence, and listened to his.

 

A COUPLE HOURS LATER, CYBIL STORMED OUT OF Cal's back door with sharp lashes of fury whipping from her. She spun around when Gage slammed out after her. “You've got no right, no
right
to make these plans, to make these decisions on your own.”

“The hell I don't. It's my life.”

“It's all our lives!” she tossed back. “We're supposed to work as a team. We're meant to work as a team.”

“Meant? I'm sick to death of this destiny crap you're so high on. I make my own choices, and I deal with the results. I'm not going to let some ancient guardian make them for me.”

“Oh, for God's sake.” Everything about her snapped out in angry frustration, voice, hands, eyes. “We all have choices. Aren't we fighting, risking our lives, because Twisse takes away choice? But that doesn't mean any of us can just forget why we were brought together like this and go off on his own.”

“I am on my own. Always have been.”

“Oh, screw that! You're sick of destiny talk? Fine,
I'm
sick of your ‘I'm a loner and I don't belong' refrain. It's boring. We're bound by blood, all of us.”

“Is that what you think?” In contrast to her heat, his tone was brittle and cold. “You think I'm bound to you, by anything? Didn't we just cover this a little while ago? We're having sex. That's the beginning and the end of it. If you're looking for more—”

“You conceited ass. I'm talking about life and death and you're worried about me trying to get my hooks in you? Believe me, outside of the bedroom, I wouldn't have you on a bet.”

Something flashed in his eyes. It might have been insult or challenge. It might have been hurt. “I'd take that bet, sister. I know your type.”

“You don't know—”

“You want it all your way. You figure you're so damn smart you can run the show and everyone in it. Nobody runs me. And when this is over, you think you can keep me on the line or cut me loose, at your whim. You've got the looks, the brains, the style, what man could resist you? Well, you're looking at one.”

“Is that so?” she said, her tone frigid. “Is what you were doing in bed with me last night your definition of resisting?”

“No, that's my definition of banging a willing and convenient woman.”

Her angry color drained, but she inclined her head, regally. “In that case, you can consider me now unwilling and inconvenient, and do your substandard banging elsewhere.”

“Part of the point. I go my way on this because this has all played out long enough for me. This fight, this town, you. All of it.”

Her hands curled at her sides. “I don't care how selfish you are, how stupid you are, after this is done. But before it is, you're not going to jeopardize all the work we've done, all the progress we've made.”

“Progress, my ass. Since you and your girl pals got here, we've been bogged down in charts, graphs, exploring our emotional thresholds, and other bullshit.”

“Before we got here, you and your idiot brothers fumbled around on this for twenty years.”

He backed her against the rail. “You haven't lived through a Seven. You think you know? What you've dealt with so far's been nothing. A few chills and spills. Wait until you see some guy disembowel himself, or try to stop some teenage girl from lighting the match after she's poured gas all over herself and her baby brother. Then you talk to me about what I can do, what I can't. You think seeing your old man put a bullet in his ear makes you some kind of expert? That was quick and clean, and you got off easy.”

“You son of a bitch.”

“Suck it up.” His words were a slap, quick and careless. “If Twisse isn't offed before the next Seven, you're going to be dealing with a lot worse than a father who'd rather kill himself than stand up with his family.”

She swung out, and there was enough behind the blow to have his head jerking back. With his ears ringing from it, he gripped her arms to ward off a second attack. “Do you want to talk about fathers, Gage? Do you really want to bring up fathers, considering your own?”

Before he could respond, Quinn rushed out. “Hold it, hold it, hold it!”

“Go back inside,” Cybil ordered, “this doesn't concern you.”

“The hell it doesn't. What the hell's wrong with you? Both of you?”

“Step back, Gage.” Cal pushed through the door, with Fox and Layla behind him. “Just step back. Let's go inside and talk this out.”

“Back off.”

“Okay, okay, that's not the way to win friends and influence people.” Fox moved up, put a hand on Gage's arm. “Let's take a breath here and—”

Gage shoved him off, knocked him back a step. “The back off goes for you, too, Peace and Love.”

“You want to go a round with me?” Fox challenged.

“Jesus!” Layla fisted her hands in her hair. “Stop! Just because Gage is being an idiot doesn't mean you have to be one.”

“Now I'm an idiot?” Fox rounded on Layla. “He shoves Cybil around, tells me to back off, and
I'm
an idiot.”

“I didn't say you were an idiot, I said you didn't have to be an idiot. But apparently I'm wrong about that.”

“Don't start on me. I didn't get this stupid ball rolling.”

“I don't care who got it rolling.” Cal held up his hands. “It stops here.”

“Who gave you the gold star and put you in charge?” Gage demanded. “You don't tell me what to do. We wouldn't be in this mess in the first place without you and your ridiculous blood brothers ritual with your pussy Boy Scout knife.”

It erupted then, the shouts, the accusations, each rolling over the next into an ugly mass of anger, resentment, and hurt. Words struck like fists, and none of them paid attention to the darkening sky or the oncoming rumble of thunder.

“Oh, just stop! Stop it. Shut the hell up!” Cybil pitched her voice over the chaos, silencing it to a ragged and humming silence. “Can't you see he doesn't give a damn what the rest of you think or feel? It's all about him, maybe it always has been. If he wants to go his own way, he'll go. I, for one, am done.” She looked dead into Gage's eyes. “I'm done here.”

Without a backward glance, she walked back into the house.

“Cyb. Shit.” Quinn scalded the men with one long stare. “Nice job. Come on, Layla.”

When Quinn and Layla slammed in behind Cybil, Cal swore again. “Who the hell are you to lay all this on me? Not who I thought, that's for damn sure. Maybe Cybil's right. Maybe it's time to be done with you.”

“You'd better cool off,” Fox managed as Cal left them. “You'd better take some time and cool the hell off unless you really do like being alone.”

And alone, Gage let his mind seethe with resentment, let his thoughts travel on the stony road of blame and grievances. They turned on him, all of them, because he had the balls to take a step, because he'd decided to stop sitting around scratching his ass and studying charts. The hell with them. All of them.

He took the bloodstone out of his pocket, studied it. It meant absolutely nothing. None of it. The risks, the effort, the work, the
years
. He'd come back, time after time. He'd bled time after time. And for what?

He laid the stone on the porch rail, stared bitterly out at Cal's blooming backyard. For what? For whom? What had the Hollow ever given him? A dead mother, a drunk for a father. Pitying or suspicious looks by the
good
townspeople. And oh yeah, just recently, it got him handcuffed and shoved around by an asshole the town deemed worthy to wear a badge.

She
was done? He sneered, thinking of Cybil. No,
he
was done. Hawkins Hollow and everyone in it could go straight to hell.

He turned, slammed back into the house to get his things.

It oozed out of the woods, a miasma of black. Inside the house, angry voices rang out again, and it seemed to shudder with pleasure. As it flowed over grass, pretty beds of flowers, it began to take shape. Limbs, torso, head writhing into form through the murk. Fingers, feet, eyes glowing unearthly green took shape as it crept closer to the pretty house with its generous deck and cheerful flowers raining out of glossy pots.