The Pagan Stone (31 page)

“Thank God,” Layla breathed, then turned her head to press her lips to his healed arm.

“I had nearly a full tank, and I’d had the truck tuned up a couple weeks ago, so I focused on the engine.”

“You know zero about engines,” Gage pointed out.

Fox shot up his middle finger. “Sugar in the gas tank. Engine’ll run for a couple miles or so, then it coughs up and dies. Now my truck’s DOA.”

“That’s urban myth.” Cal gestured with his own beer. “It sounds like the sugar got through, clogged your fuel filter or your injectors, and that’s what stopped your engine. You just need your mechanic to change the filters a few times, and drop the tank, clean it out. Cost you a couple hundred.”

“Really? That’s it? But I thought—”

“You’re questioning MacGyver?” Gage asked him.

“Lost my head for a minute. Anyway, I got the sabotage, and it wasn’t a stretch to who. I just angled myself with the bat behind me when Napper showed up.”

“With a gun,” Layla added.

Fox squeezed her hand. “Bullets bounce off me. Almost. And we think of it this way. Napper’s going to be behind bars and out of our hair. I was prepared because of Gage and Cybil, so instead of lying by the side of the road, I’m sitting here. It’s all good.”

“Positive,” Cybil said. “A positive outcome, and one more in the plus column for us. That’s important. Over and above the fact our Fox is sitting here, he was able to turn a potentially negative outcome into a positive one. Destiny has more than one road.”

“I’m real happy to be off the road for the moment. In other news . . .” Fox told them about the progress at the farm. He grinned over at Quinn when she yawned. “Boring you?”

“No. Sorry. I guess it’s part of the baby thing.”

“What baby thing?”

“Oh God, we didn’t tell you. With all the bullets bouncing off you and Porta Potties, we forgot. I’m pregnant.”

“What? Seriously? I’m busy getting shot and digging latrines, and the next thing I know we’re having a baby.” He pushed out of the chair to cross over and kiss her, then punched Cal in the shoulder. “Take the woman to bed. Obviously you know how.”

“He does, but I can get myself there. And I think I will.” Rising, Quinn laid her hands on Fox’s cheeks. “Welcome home.”

“I’ll be right up.” Cal got to his feet. “We could all use some sleep. We didn’t get very far with the link, being rudely interrupted. Tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow,” Gage agreed.

“I think I’ll go up, too.” Cybil stepped over to Fox, kissed him. “Nice work, cutie.”

She heard Quinn’s laugh as she passed Cal’s bedroom door, and smiled. Talk about positive energy, she thought. Q had always had it in abundance. Now, it would likely be pouring off her like light. And light was just what they needed.

She was a little tired herself, Cybil admitted. She supposed they all were, with the bombarding dreams and restless nights. Maybe she’d try a little yoga, or a warm bath, something to soothe her system into relaxation.

Gage came up behind her, and as she started to glance back, he took her hips, turned her. He moved her back against the door to close it, held her there.

“Well, hello.”

His hands moved from her hips to her wrists, then drew her arms over her head. The system she’d thought to relax went on high alert. Braced for, anticipating the demand she saw in his eyes, she could only sigh when his mouth descended to hers. Then could only tremble when instead of demand there was tenderness.

Soft, quiet, the kiss soothed even as it aroused. While his hands held hers prisoner, adding an excited kick to her heartbeat, his mouth took its time exploring and exploiting hers. She sank into the pleasure of it, with a purr in her throat when he cuffed her wrists with one hand and stroked her body with the other.

The light, almost delicate touch stirred desire in her belly, weakened her knees. And all the while his lips slid and skimmed against hers. He flipped open the button at her waistband, danced his fingers under her skirt, closed his teeth lightly, very lightly over her jaw.

She imagined herself pouring into his hands like cream.

Then he hooked his hand in the neck of her shirt, and tore it down the center.

He saw the shock in her eyes, heard it in her quick gasp. Once again, his fingers played lightly over her skin. “Seduction shouldn’t be predictable. You think you know.” His mouth took hers again in a long, drugging kiss. “But you don’t. You won’t.”

His hand tightened on her wrists, a kind of warning while the kiss shimmered like silk. He felt her melt into it, degree by degree, that lovely body yielding, those lovely limbs going limp. So he shot his hand between her legs and drove her to a fast, almost brutal peak and muffled her shocked cries with his mouth.

“I want you in ways you can’t imagine.”

Her breath shuddered out; her eyes stayed on his. “Yes, I can.”

And he smiled. “Let’s find out.”

He whipped her around so she was forced to brace her hands against the door, then fist them there as he did things to her body, to her mind, things that pushed her past desperation into surrender, then ripped her back again. Then he slowed, and once again he soothed, and he lifted her into his arms. At the bed she would have turned into him, curled into him in absolute bliss, but he pinned her beneath him.

“Not quite finished.”

“Oh God.” She shuddered when he lowered his head to flick his tongue over her nipple. “Do we have a crash cart?”

His lips curved against her breast. “I’ll bring you back.” And he took her hungrily into his mouth.

She shivered under him, and she gave. She yielded under him, and she surrendered. Her body lifted, held trembling before it fell again. And always, always, he knew she was with him, bound with him, need fused to need. She was strength and beauty, beyond any he’d thought to possess, and she was with him.

When he was inside her again, hard against soft, he knew her blood pounded as his did. Knew when she said his name, they were lost. Lost together.

She floated, what else could she do but float on the warm lake of pleasure? No stress, no fatigue, no fears for tomorrow. Exhaustion was bliss, she thought. Gliding on it, she opened her eyes, and found him watching her.

She had enough energy to smile. “If you’re even thinking about going again, you must’ve suffered brain damage the last round.”

“It was a knockout.” How could he explain what happened inside him when they came together? He didn’t have the words. Instead, he lowered his head to touch his lips to hers. “I thought you were asleep.”

“Better than asleep. In the lovely, lovely between.”

He took her hand, and she saw what was in his eyes. “Oh. But—”

“When better?” he asked her. “What’s more relaxing than sex? What releases more positive energy, if it’s done right? And, sweetheart, we did it right. But we both have to want to try it.”

She let herself breathe. He was right. Linking now when they couldn’t be any closer in mind and body might break through the block that had frustrated them the last several attempts.

“All right.” She shifted so they lay on the bed face-to-face, heart-to-heart. “The same way we were going to try it earlier. Focusing on you, Cal, Fox, then the stone.”

Her eyes. He could see himself in them. Feel himself in them. He let himself sink, then drew himself out until he stood in the clearing with the Pagan Stone. Alone.

He thought the air smelled of her—secret, seductive. The sunlight glowed gold; the trees massed with thick green. Cal moved to his side, fully formed, his gray eyes quiet, serious. And an ax held in his hands. Fox flanked him, face fierce. He held a glistening scythe.

For a moment they stood, only the three, facing the stone atop the stone.

Then hell came.

The dark, the wind, the blood-soaked rain attacked like animals. Fire roared in bellowing walls and sheathed the stones like blazing skin. He knew, in that instant, the war they’d believed they’d fought for twenty-one years had been only skirmishes, only feints and retreats.

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.” Quinn jabbed a finger at him. “There are six of us here. We’ll
all
draw straws.”

“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 cannon? This is the way. It’s not just about getting it into Twisse, it’s about
taking
it there. It’s about jamming it down the bastard’s throat. About blood—our blood.”