by Nora Roberts
“I think, we’ve always thought, this was about blood.” Absently, he glanced at the scar on his wrist. “So far, knowing or sensing that hasn’t done any good. Where are your ancestors from?”
“England primarily, some Irish tossed in.”
“Mine, too. But then a lot of Americans have English ancestry.”
“Maybe I should start researching and find out if there are any Dents or Twisses in my lineage?” She shrugged when he frowned at her. “Your great-grandmother sent me down that path. Have you tried to trace them? Giles Dent and Lazarus Twisse?”
“Yeah. Dent may be an ancestor, if he did indeed father the three sons of Ann Hawkins. There’s no record of him. And other than accounts from the time, some old family letters and diaries, no Giles Dent on anything we’ve dug up. No record of birth, death. Same for Twisse. They could’ve dropped down from Pluto as far as we’ve been able to prove.”
“I have a friend who’s a whiz on research. I sent her a heads-up. And don’t get that look on your face again. I’ve known her for years, and we’ve worked together on other projects. I don’t know as yet if she can or will come in on this, but trust me, if she does, you’ll be grateful. She’s brilliant.”
Rather than respond, he chewed on it. How much of his resistance was due to this feeling of losing control over the situation? And had he ever had any control to begin with? Some, he knew, was due to the fact that the more people who became involved, the more people he felt responsible for.
And maybe most of all, how much was all this exposure going to affect the town?
“The Hollow’s gotten some publicity over the years, focused on this whole thing. That’s how you found out about us to begin with. But it’s been mild, and for the most part, hasn’t done much more than bring interested tourists through. With your involvement, and now potentially two others, it could turn the Hollow into some sort of lurid or ridiculous caption in the tourist guides.”
“You knew that was a risk when you agreed to talk to me.”
She was keeping pace with him, stride-by-stride on the sloppy ground. And, she was striding into the unknown without a quake or a quiver. “You’d have come whether or not I agreed.”
“So part of your cooperation is damage control.” She nodded. “Can’t blame you. But maybe you should be thinking bigger picture, Cal. More people invested means more brains and more chance of figuring out how to stop what’s been happening. Do you want to stop it?”
“More than I can possibly tell you.”
“I want a story. There’s no point in bullshitting you about that. But I want to stop it, too. Because despite my famous guts, this thing scares me. Better shot at that, it seems to me, if we work together and utilize all our resources. Cybil’s one of mine, and she’s a damn good one.”
“I’ll think about it.” For now, he thought, he’d given her enough. “Why don’t you tell me what made you head down the woo-woo trail, writing-wise.”
“That’s easy. I always liked spooky stuff. When I was a kid and had a choice between, say, Sweet Valley High or Stephen King, King was always going to win. I used to write my own horror stories and give my friends nightmares. Good times,” she said and made him laugh. “Then, the turning point, I suppose, was when I went into this reputed haunted house with a group of friends. Halloween. I was twelve. Big dare. Place was falling down and due to be demolished. We were probably lucky we didn’t fall through floorboards. So we poked around, squealed, scared ourselves, and had some laughs. Then I saw her.”
“Who?”
“The ghost, of course.” She gave him a friendly elbow poke. “Keep up. None of the others did. But I saw her, walking down the stairs. There was blood all over her. She looked at me,” Quinn said quietly now. “It seemed like she looked right at me, and walked right by. I felt the cold she carried with her.”
“What did you do? And if I get a guess, I’m guessing you followed her.”
“Of course, I followed her. My friends were running around, making spooky noises, but I followed her into the falling-down kitchen, down the broken steps to the basement by the beam of my Princess Leia flashlight. No cracks.”
“How can I crack when I had a Luke Skywalker flashlight?”
“Good. What I found were a lot of spiderwebs, mouse droppings, dead bugs, and a filthy floor of concrete. Then the concrete was gone and it was just a dirt floor with a hole—a grave—dug in it. A black-handled shovel beside it. She went to it, looked at me again, then slid down, hell, like a woman might slide into a nice bubble bath. Then I was standing on the concrete floor again.”
“What did you do?”
“Your guess?”
“I’d guess you and Leia got the hell out of there.”
“Right again. I came out of the basement like a rocket. I told my friends, who didn’t believe me. Just trying to spook them out as usual. I didn’t tell anyone else, because if I had, our parents would have known we were in the house and we’d have been grounded till our Social Security kicked in. But when they demolished the house, started jackhammering the concrete floor, they found her. She’d been in there since the thirties. The wife of the guy who’d owned the house had claimed she’d run off. He was dead by then, so nobody could ask him how or why he’d done it. But I knew. From the time I saw her until they found her bones, I dreamed about her murder, I saw it happen.
“I didn’t tell anyone. I was too afraid. Ever since, I’ve told what I find, confirming or debunking. Maybe partly to make it up to Mary Bines—that was her name. And partly because I’m not twelve anymore, and nobody’s going to ground me.”
He said nothing for a long time. “Do you always see what happened?”
“I don’t know if it’s seeing or just intuiting, or just my imagination, which is even more far-famed than my guts. But I’ve learned to trust what I feel, and go with it.”
He stopped, gestured. “This is where the tracks cross. We came in from that direction, picked up the cross trail here. We were loaded down. My mother had packed a picnic basket, thinking we were camping out on Fox’s family farm. We had his boom box, his load from the market, our backpacks full of the stuff we figured we couldn’t live without. We were still nine years old. Kids, pretty much fearless. That all changed before we came out of the woods again.”
When he started to walk once more, she put a hand on his arm, squeezed. “Is that tree bleeding, or do you just have really strange sap in this part of the world?”
He turned, looked. Blood seeped from the bark of the old oak, and seeped into the soggy ground at its trunk.
“That kind of thing happens now and again. It puts off the hikers.”
“I bet.” She watched Lump plod by the tree after only a cursory sniff. “Why doesn’t he care?”
“Old hat to him.”
She started to give the tree a wide berth, then stopped. “Wait, wait. This is the spot. This is the spot where I saw the deer across the path. I’m sure of it.”
“He called it, with magick. The innocent and pure.”
She started to speak, then looking at Cal’s face, held her tongue. His eyes had darkened; his cheeks had paled.
“Its blood for the binding. Its blood, his blood, the blood of the dark thing. He grieved when he drew the blade across its neck, and its life poured onto his hands and into the cup.”
As his head swam, Cal bent over from the waist. Prayed he wouldn’t be sick. “Need a second to get my breath.”
“Take it easy.” Quickly, Quinn pulled off her pack and pulled out her water bottle. “Drink a little.”
Most of the queasiness passed when she took his hand, pressed the bottle into it. “I could see it, feel it. I’ve gone by this tree before, even when it’s bled, and I never saw that. Or felt that.”
“Two of us this time. Maybe that’s what opened it up.”
He drank slowly. Not just two, he thought. He’d walked this path with Fox and Gage. We two, he decided. Something about being here with her. “The deer
was a sacrifice.”
“I get that. Devoveo. He said it in Latin. Blood sacrifice. White witchery doesn’t ascribe to that. He had to cross over the line, smear on some of the black to do what he felt he needed to do. Was it Dent? Or someone who came long before him?”
“I don’t know.”
Because she could see his color was eking back, her own heart rate settled. “Do you see what came before?”
“Bits, pieces, flashes. Not all of it. I generally come back a little sick. If I push for more, it’s a hell of a lot worse.”
“Let’s not push then. Are you okay to go on?”
“Yeah. Yeah.” His stomach was still mildly uneasy, but the light-headedness had passed. “We’ll be coming to Hester’s Pool soon.”
“I know. I’m going to tell you what it looks like before we get there. I’m telling you I’ve never been there before, not in reality, but I’ve seen it, and I stood there night before last. There are cattails and wild grass. It’s off the path, through some brush and thorny stuff. It was night, so the water looked black. Opaque. Its shape isn’t quite round, not really oval. It’s more of a fat crescent. There were a lot of rocks. Some more like boulders, some no more than pebbles. She filled her pockets with them—they looked to be about hand-sized or smaller—until her pockets were sagging with the weight. Her hair was cut short, like it’d been hacked at, and her eyes looked mad.”
“Her body didn’t stay down, not according to reports.”
“I’ve read them,” Quinn acknowledged. “She was found floating in the pool, which came to bear her name, and because it was suicide, they buried her in unconsecrated ground. Records I’ve dug up so far don’t indicate what happened to the infant daughter she left behind.”
Before replacing the pack, she took out a bag of trail mix. Opened it, offered. Cal shook his head. “There’s plenty of bark and twigs around if I get that desperate.”
“This isn’t bad. What did your mother pack for you that day?”
“Ham-and-cheese sandwiches, hard-boiled eggs, apple slices, celery and carrot sticks, oatmeal cookies, lemonade.” Remembering made him smile. “Pop-Tarts, snack pack cereal for breakfast.”
“Uppercase M Mom.”
“Yeah, always has been.”
“How long do we date before I meet the parents?”
He considered. “They want me to come for dinner some night soon if you want in.”
“A home-cooked meal by Mom? I’m there. How does she feel about all this?”
“It’s hard for them, all of this is hard. And they’ve never let me down in my life.”
“You’re a lucky man, Cal.”
He broke trail, skirting the tangles of blackberry bushes, and following the more narrow and less-trod path. Lump moved on ahead, as if he understood where they were headed. The first glint of the pool brought a chill down his spine. But then, it always did.
Birds still called, and Lump—more by accident than design, flushed a rabbit that ran across the path and into another thicket. Sunlight streamed through the empty branches onto the leaf-carpeted ground. And glinted dully on the brown water of Hester’s Pool.
“It looks different during the day,” Quinn noted. “Not nearly as ominous. But I’d have to be very young and very hot to want to go splashing around in that.”
“We were both. Fox went in first. We’d snuck out here before to swim, but I’d never much liked it. Who knew what was swimming under there? I always thought Hester’s bony hand was going to grab my ankle and pull me under. Then it did.”
Quinn’s eyebrows shot up, and when he didn’t continue, she sat on one of the rocks. “I’m listening.”
“Fox was messing with me. I was a better swimmer, but he was sneaky. Gage couldn’t swim for crap, but he was game. I thought it was Fox again, dunking me, but it was her. I saw her when I went under. Her hair wasn’t short the way you saw her. I remember how her hair streamed out. She didn’t look like a ghost. She looked like a woman. Girl,” he corrected. “I realized when I got older she was just a girl. I couldn’t get out fast enough, and I made Fox and Gage get out. They hadn’t seen anything.”
“But they believed you.”
“That’s what friends do.”
“Did you ever go back in?”
“Twice. But I never saw her again.”
Quinn gave Lump, who wasn’t as particular as his master, a handful of trail mix. “It’s too damn cold to try now, but come June, I’d like to take a dip and see what happens.” She munched some mix as she looked around. “It’s a nice spot, considering. Primitive, but still picturesque. Seems like a great place for three boys to run a little wild.”
She cocked her head. “So do you usually bring your women here on dates?”
“You’d be the first.”
“Really? Is that because they haven’t been interested, or you haven’t wanted to answer questions pertaining.”
“Both.”
“So I’m breaking molds here, which is one of my favorite hobbies.” Quinn stared out over the water. “She must’ve been so sad, so horribly sad to believe there was no other way for her. Crazy’s a factor, too, but I think she must’ve been weighed down by sadness and despair before she weighed herself down with rocks. That’s what I felt in the dream, and it’s what I feel now, sitting here. Her horrible, heavy sadness. Even more than the fear when it raped her.”
She shuddered, rose. “Can we move on? It’s too much, sitting here. It’s too much.”
It would be worse, he thought. If she felt already, sensed or understood this already, it would be worse. He took her hand to lead her back to the path. Since, at least for the moment, it was wide enough to walk abreast, he kept ahold of her hand. It almost seemed as if they were taking a simple walk in the winter woods.
“Tell me something surprising about you. Something I’d never guess.”
He cocked his head. “Why would I tell you something about me you’d never guess?”
“It doesn’t have to be some dark secret.” She bumped her hip against his. “Just something unexpected.”
“I lettered in track and field.”
Quinn shook her head. “Impressive, but not surprising. I might’ve guessed that. You’ve got a yard or so of leg.”
“All right, all right.” He thought it over. “I grew a pumpkin that broke the county record for weight.”
“The fattest pumpkin in the history of the county?”
“It missed the state record by ounces. It got written up in the paper.”
“Well, that is surprising. I was hoping for something a bit more salacious, but am forced to admit, I’d never have guessed you held the county record for fattest pumpkin.”
“How about you?”
“I’m afraid I’ve never grown a pumpkin of any size or weight.”
“Surprise me.”
“I can walk on my hands. I’d demonstrate, but the ground’s not conducive to hand-walking. Come on. You wouldn’t have guessed that.”
“You’re right. I will, however, insist on a demo later. I, after all, have documentation of the pumpkin.”
“Fair enough.”
She kept up the chatter, light and silly enough to make him laugh. He wasn’t sure he’d laughed along this path since that fateful hike with his friends. But it seemed natural enough now, with the sun beaming down through the trees, the birds singing.
Until he heard the growl.
She’d heard it, too. He couldn’t think of another reason her voice would have stopped so short, or her hand would have gripped his arm like a vise. “Cal—”
“Yeah, I hear it. We’re nearly there. Sometimes it makes noise, sometimes it makes an appearance.” Never this time of year, he thought, as he hitched up the back of his jacket. But these, apparently, were different times. “Just stay close.”
“Believe me, I…” Her voice trailed off this time as he drew the large, jagged-edged hunting knife. “Okay. Okay. Now that would have been one of those unexpected things
about you. That you, ah, carry a Crocodile Dundee around.”
“I don’t come here unarmed.”
She moistened her lips. “And you probably know how to use it, if necessary.”
He shot her a look. “I probably do. Do you want to keep going, or do you want to turn around and go back?”
“I’m not turning tail.”
He could hear it rustling in the brush, could hear the slide of mud underfoot. Stalking them, he thought. He imagined the knife was as useless as a few harsh words if the thing meant business, but he felt better with it in his hand.
“Lump doesn’t hear it,” Quinn murmured, lifting her chin to where the dog slopped along the path a few feet ahead. “Even he can’t be that lazy. If he heard it, scented it, he’d show some concern. So it’s not real.” She took a slow breath. “It’s just show.”
“Not real to him, anyway.”
When the thing howled, Cal took her firmly by the arm and pulled her through the edge of the trees into the clearing where the Pagan Stone speared up out of the muddy earth.
“I guess, all things considered, I was half expecting something along the lines of the king stone from Stonehenge.” Quinn stepped away from Cal to circle the stone. “It’s amazing enough though, when you take a good look, the way it forms a table, or altar. How flat and smooth the top is.” She laid her hand on it. “It’s warm,” she added. “Warmer than stone should be in a February wood.”
He put his hand beside hers. “Sometimes it’s cold.” He fit the knife back into its sheath. “Nothing to worry about when it’s warm. So far.” He shoved his sleeve back, examined the scar on his wrist. “So far,” he repeated.
Without thinking, he laid his hand over hers. “As long as—”
“It’s heating up! Feel that? Do you feel that?”
She shifted, started to place her other hand on the stone. He moved, felt himself move as he might have through that wall of fire. Madly.
He gripped her shoulders, spinning her around until her back was pressed to the stone. Then sated the sudden, desperate appetite by taking her mouth.