by Nora Roberts
“The Anasazi did it.” Quinn stepped in from the doorway. She went to Cal first. Her long blond hair swung forward as she leaned over his chair to kiss him. “Hi.”
When she straightened, her hands stayed on his shoulders. Fox wasn’t sure the gesture was purely out of affection or to soothe. But he knew when Cal’s hand came up to cover one of hers, it meant they were united.
“Towns and villages have emptied out before, for mysterious and unexplained reasons,” she continued. “The ancient Anasazi, who built complex communities in the canyons of Arizona and New Mexico, the colonial village of Roanoke. Causes might have been warfare, sickness, or something else. I’ve been wondering if some of those cases might be the something else we’re dealing with.”
“You think Lazarus Twisse wiped out the Anasazi, the settlers of Roanoke?” Cal asked.
“Maybe, in the case of the Anasazi, before he took any name we know. Roanoke happened after sixteen fifty-two, so we can’t hang that on our particular Big Evil Bastard. Just a theory I’ve been kicking around.” She turned to poke into the bags on the counter. “In any case, we should eat.”
While food and plates were transferred to the dining room, Fox managed to get Layla aside. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah.” She took his hand, turned it over to study the unbroken skin. “I guess you are, too.”
“Listen, if you want to take a couple of days off, from the office, I mean, it’s fine.”
She released his hand, angled her head as she took a long study of his face. “Do you really think I’m that . . . lily-livered?”
“No. I just meant—”
“Yes, you do. You think because I’m not sold on this idea of the—the Vulcan Mind Meld, I’m a coward.”
“I don’t. I figured you’d be shaken up—anyone would be. Points for the Spock reference, by the way, even though it’s inaccurate.”
“Is it?” She brushed past him to take her seat at the table.
“Okay.” Quinn gave Cal’s burger one wistful glance before she started on her grilled chicken. “We’re all up to date on what happened at the Square. Bad birds. We’ll log it and chart it, and I’m planning on talking to bystanders tomorrow. I wondered if it might be helpful to get one of the bird corpses and send it off for analysis. Maybe there’d be a sign of some physical change, some infection, something off that would come out in an autopsy.”
“We’ll just leave that to you.” Cybil made a face as she nibbled on the portion of the turkey sub she’d cut into quarters. “And let’s not discuss autopsies over dinner. Here’s what I found interesting about today’s event. Both Layla and Fox sensed and saw the birds, as far as I can tell, simultaneously. Or near enough to amount to the same. Now, is that simply because all six of us have some connection to the dark and the light sides of what happened, and continues to happen in Hawkins Hollow? Or is this because of the specific ability they share?”
“I’d say both,” was Cal’s opinion. “With the extra click going to shared ability.”
“I tend to agree. So,” Cybil continued, “how do we use it?”
“We don’t.” Fox scooped up fries. “Not as long as Layla pulls back from learning how to use what she’s got. That’s the way it is,” he continued when Layla stared at him. “You don’t have to like it, but that’s how it is. What you have isn’t any good to you, or to the team, if you won’t use it, or learn how to use it.”
“I didn’t say I wouldn’t, but I’m not going to have you shove it down my throat. And trying to shame me into it isn’t going to work either.”
“What will?” Fox countered. “I’m open to suggestions.”
Cybil held up a hand. “Since I opened this can of worms, let me try. You’ve got reservations about this, Layla. Why don’t you tell us what they are?”
“I feel like I’m losing pieces of myself, or who I thought I was. Adding this in, I’m never going to be who I was again.”
“That may be,” Gage said easily. “But you’re probably not going to live past July anyway.”
“Of course.” On a half laugh, Layla picked up her glass of wine. “I should look on the bright side.”
“Let’s try this.” Cal shook his head at Gage. “The odds are you’d have been hurt today if something hadn’t clicked between you and Fox. And it clicked without either one of you purposely trying. What?” he asked as Quinn started to speak, then stopped herself.
“No. Nothing.” Quinn exchanged a quick look with Cybil. “Let’s just say I think I understand where everyone’s coming from, and everyone makes a point. So I want to say, Layla, that maybe you could consider looking at it another way. Not that you’re losing something with this, but you could be gaining something. Meanwhile, we’re still going through Ann Hawkins’s journals, and the other books Cal’s great-grandmother gave us. And Cybil’s working on finding where Ann might have gone the night Giles Dent faced down Lazarus Twisse at the Pagan Stone, where she stayed to have her sons, where she lived until she came back here when they were about two. We’re still hopeful that if we find the place, we may find more of her journals. And Cybil also verified her branch of the family tree.”
“A younger branch than all of yours, so far as I can tell,” Cybil continued. “One of my ancestors, a Nadia Sytarskyi, traveled here with her family, and with others in the mid-nineteenth century. She married Jonah Adams, a descendent of Hester Deale. I actually get two branches, as about fifty years later, one of my other ancestors—Kinski side— also came here, and hooked up with Nadia and Jonah’s grandchild. So, like Quinn and Layla, I’m a descendent of Hester Deale, and the demon who raped her and got her with child.”
“Making us all one big happy family,” Gage put in.
“Making us something. It doesn’t sit well with me,” Cybil added, speaking directly to Layla, “to know that part of what I have, part of what I am, comes down from something evil, something neither human or humane. In fact, it pisses me off. Enough that I intend to use everything I have, everything I am to kick its ass.”
“Does it worry you that it may be able to use what you have and are?”
Cybil lifted her glass again, her dark eyes cool as she sipped. “It can try.”
“It worries me.” Layla scanned the table, the faces of the people she’d come to care for. “It worries me that I have something in me I can’t fully understand or control. It worries me that at some point, at any point, it may control me.” She shook her head before Quinn could speak. “Even now I don’t know if I chose to come here or if I was directed here. More disturbing to me is not being sure anymore if anything I’ve done has been a choice, or just some part of a master plan created by these forces—the dark and the light. That’s what’s under it for me. That’s the sticking point.”
“Nobody’s chaining you to that chair,” Gage pointed out.
“Ease off,” Fox told him, but Gage only shrugged.
“I don’t think so. She’s got a problem, we’ve all got a problem. So let’s deal with it. Why don’t you just pack up and go back to New York? Get your job back selling—what is it—overpriced shoes to bored women with too much money?”
“Step back, Gage.”
“No.” Layla put a hand on Fox’s arm as he started to rise. “I don’t need to be rescued, or protected. Why don’t I leave? Because it would make me a coward, and up until now I’ve never been one. I don’t leave because what raped Hester Deale, what put its half-demon bastard in that girl, drove her mad, drove her to suicide, would like nothing better than for me to cut and run. I know better than anyone here what it did to her, because it made me experience it. Maybe that makes me more afraid than the rest of you; maybe that was part of the plan. I’m not going anywhere, but I’m not ashamed to admit that I’m afraid. Of what’s out there, and of what’s inside me. Inside all of us.”
“If you weren’t afraid you’d be stupid.” Gage lifted his glass in a half toast. “Smart and self-aware are harder to manipulate than stupid.”
&n
bsp; “Every seven years good people in this town, ordinary people, smart, self-aware people hurt each other, and themselves. They do things they’d never consider doing at any other time.”
“You think you could be infected?” Fox asked her. “That you could turn, hurt someone? One of us?”
“How can we be sure I’m immune? That Cybil and Quinn are? Shouldn’t we consider that because of our line of descent we could be even more vulnerable?”
“That’s a good question. Disturbing,” Quinn added, “but good.”
“Doesn’t fly.” Fox shifted so Layla met his eyes. “Things didn’t go the way Twisse planned or expected, because Giles Dent was ready for him. He stopped him from being around when Hester delivered, stopped him from potentially siring more offspring, so the line’s been diluted. You’re not what he was after, and in fact, according to what we know, what we can speculate, you are part of what’s going to give me, Cal, and Gage the advantage this time around. You’re afraid of him, of what’s in you? Consider Twisse is afraid of you, of what’s in you. Why else has he tried to scare you off?”
“Good answer.” Quinn rubbed her hand over Cal’s.
“Part two,” Fox continued. “It’s not just a matter of immunity to the power he has to cause people to commit violent, abnormal acts. It’s a matter of having some aspect of that power, however diluted, that when pooled together is going to end him, once and for all.”
Layla studied Fox’s face. “You believe that?”
He started to answer, then took her hand, tightening his grip when she started to pull it free. “You tell me.”
She struggled—he could see it, and he could feel it, that initial and instinctive shying away from accepting the link with him. He had to resist the urge to push, and simply left himself open. And even when he felt the click, he waited.
“You believe it,” Layla said slowly. “You . . . you see us as six strands braided together into one rope.”
“And we’re going to hang Twisse with it.”
“You love them so much. It’s—”
“Ah . . .” It was Fox who pulled away, flustered and embarrassed that she’d seen more, gone deeper than he’d expected. “So, now that we’ve got that settled, I want another beer.”
He headed into the kitchen, and as he turned from the refrigerator with a beer in his hand, Layla stepped in.
“I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to—”
“It’s nothing. No big.”
“It is. I just . . . It was like being inside your head, or your heart, and I saw—or felt—this wave of love, that connection you have to Gage and Cal. It wasn’t what you asked me to do, and it was so intrusive.”
“Okay, look, it’s a tricky process. I was a little more open than I should’ve been because I figured you needed me to be. The fact is, you don’t need as much help as I thought. As you thought.”
“No, you’re wrong. I do need help. I need you to teach me.” She walked to the window to look out at the dark. “Because Gage was right. If I keep letting this be a problem for me, it’s a problem for all of us. And if I’m going to use this ability, I have to be able to control it so I’m not walking into people’s heads right and left.”
“We’ll start working on it tomorrow.”
She nodded. “I’ll be ready.” And turned. “Would you tell the others I went on up? It’s been a very strange day.”
“Sure.”
For a moment, she just stood, looking at him. “I want to say, and I’m sorry if it embarrasses you, but there’s something exceptional about a man who has the capacity to love as deeply as you do. Cal and Gage are lucky to have a friend like you. Anyone would be.”
“I’m your friend, Layla.”
“I hope so. Good night.”
He stayed where he was after she’d gone, reminding himself to stay her friend. To stay what she needed, when she needed it.
Three
IN THE DREAM IT WAS SUMMER. THE HEAT GRIPPED with sweaty hands, squeezing and wringing out energy like water out of a rag. In Hawkins Wood, leaves spread thick and green overhead, but the sun forced its way through in laser beams to flash into his eyes. Berries ripened on the thorny brambles, and the wild lilies bloomed in unearthly orange.
He knew his way. It seemed Fox had always known his way through these trees, down these paths. His mother would have called it sensory memory, he thought. Or past-life flashes.
He liked the quiet that was country woods—the low hum of insects, the faint rustle of squirrels or rabbits, the melodic chorus of birds with little more to do on a hot summer day but sing and wing.
Yes, he knew his way here, knew the sounds here, knew even the feel of the air in every season, for he had walked here in every season. Melting summers, burgeoning springs, brisk autumns, brutal winters. So he recognized the chill in the air when it crawled up his spine, and the sudden change of light, the gray tinge that wasn’t the simplicity of a stray cloud over the sun. He knew the soft growl that came from behind, from in front, and choked off the music of the chickadees and jays.
He continued to walk the path to Hester’s Pool.
Fear walked with him. It trickled along his skin like sweat, urged him to run. He had no weapon, and in the dream didn’t question why he would come here alone, unarmed. When the trees—denuded now—began to bleed, he kept on. The blood was a lie; the blood was fear.
He stopped only when he saw the woman. She stood at the small dark pond, her back to him. She bent, gathering stones, filling her pockets with them.
Hester. Hester Deale. In the dream he called out to her, though he knew she was doomed. He couldn’t go back hundreds of years and stop her from drowning herself. Nor could he stop himself from trying.
So he called out to her as he hurried forward, as the growling turned to a wet snicker of horrible amusement.
Don’t. Don’t. It wasn’t your fault. None of it was your fault.
When she turned, when she looked into his eyes, it wasn’t Hester, but Layla. Tears streaked her face like bitter rain, and her face was white as bone.
I can’t stop. I don’t want to die. Help me. Can’t you help me?
Now he began to run, to run toward her, but the path stretched longer and longer, the snickering grew louder and louder. She held out her hands to him, a final plea before she fell into the pool, and vanished.
He leaped. The water was viciously, brutally cold. He dove down, searching until his burning lungs sent him up to gulp in air. A storm raged in the woods now, wild red lightning, cracking thunder, sparking fires that engulfed entire trees. He dove again, calling for Layla with his mind.
When he saw her, he plunged deeper.
Once again their eyes met, once again she reached for him.
She embraced him. Her mouth took his in a kiss that was as cold as the water. And she dragged him down to drown.
HE WOKE GASPING FOR AIR, HIS THROAT RAW AND burning. His chest pounded with pain as he fumbled for the light, as he shoved up and over to sit on the side of the bed and catch his laboring breath.
Not in the woods, not in the pond, he told himself, but in his own bed, in his own apartment. As he pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes he reminded himself he should be used to the nightmares. He and Cal and Gage had been plagued by them every seven years since they’d turned ten. He should be used, too, to pulling aspects of the dream back with him.
He was still chilled, his skin shivering spasmodically over frigid bones. The iron taste of the pool’s water still coated his throat. Not real, he thought. No more real than bleeding trees or fires that didn’t burn. Just another nasty jab by a demon from hell. No permanent damage.
He rose, left the bedroom, crossed his living room, and went into the kitchen. He pulled a cold bottle of water out of the fridge and drank half of it down as he stood.
When the phone rang, he felt a fresh spurt of alarm. Layla’s number was displayed on the caller ID. “What’s wrong?”
“You’re okay.” Her breath
came out in a long, jerky whoosh. “You’re okay.”
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
“I . . . God, it’s three in the morning. I’m sorry. Panic attack. I woke you up. Sorry.”
“You didn’t wake me up. Why wouldn’t I be okay, Layla?”
“It was just a dream. I shouldn’t have called you.”
“We were at Hester’s Pool.”
There was a moment of silence. “I killed you.”
“As attorney for the defense, I have to advise that’s going to be a hard case to prosecute, as the victim is currently alive and well and standing in his own kitchen.”
“Fox—”
“It was a dream. A bad one, but still a dream. He’s playing on your weakness, Layla.” And mine, Fox realized, because I want to save the girl. “I can come over. We’ll—”
“No, no, I feel stupid enough calling you. It was just so real, you know?”
“Yeah, I do.”
“I didn’t think, I just grabbed the phone. All right, calmer now. We’ll need to talk about this tomorrow.”
“We will. Try to get some sleep.”
“You, too. And Fox, I’m glad I didn’t drown you in Hester’s Pool.”
“I’m pretty happy about that myself. Good night.”
Fox carried the bottle of water back to the bedroom. There, he stood looking out the window that faced the street. The Hollow was quiet, and still as a photograph. Nothing stirred. The people he loved, the people he knew, were safe in their beds.
But he stood there, watchful in the dark, and thought about a kiss that had been cold as the grave. And still seductive.
"CAN YOU REMEMBER ANY OTHER DETAILS?” CYBIL wrote notes on Layla’s dream as Layla finished off her coffee.
“I think I gave you everything.”
“Okay.” Cybil leaned back in the kitchen chair, tapped her pencil. “The way it sounds, you and Fox had the same dream. It’ll be interesting to see if they were exact, or how the details vary.”
“Interesting.”
“And informative. You could’ve woke me, Layla. We all know what it’s like to have these nightmares.”