The Sign of Seven Trilogy

by Nora Roberts

  They drifted away, the people from town, the ones he knew by name or face, or couldn’t quite place. There were businesses to run, lives to get back to, appointments to keep. Brian and Joanne stood by him a moment longer.

  “Bill was helping out at the farm the last week or two,” Brian said. “I’ve got some of his tools, some of his things out there, if you want them.”

  “No. You should keep them.”

  “He did a lot to help us with what we’re doing,” Joanne told Gage. “With what you’re doing. In the end, he did what he could. That counts.” She kissed Gage. “You take care.”

  Then it was only the six of them, and the dog who sat patiently at Cal’s feet.

  “I didn’t know him. I knew, a little, who he was before she died. I knew, too much, who he was after. But I didn’t know the man I just buried. And I don’t know if I’d have wanted to, even if I’d had the chance. He died for me—for us, I guess. Seems as if that should even it all out.”

  He felt something. Maybe it was some shadow of grief, or maybe it was just acceptance. But it was enough. He reached out for a handful of dirt, then let it fall out of his hand onto the casket below. “So. That’s that.”

  CYBIL WAITED UNTIL THEY WERE BACK AT CAL’S. “I have something we need to discuss and deal with.”

  “You’re all having triplets.” Fox dropped into a chair. “That would put a cap on it.”

  “Not so far as I know. I’ve been doing a lot of research on this, but I’ve hesitated to bring it up. Time’s too short for hesitation. We need Gage’s blood.”

  “I’m using it right now.”

  “You’ll have to spare some. What we did for us after the attack, we need to do for Cal’s and Fox’s families. In their way, they’ll be on the front line. Your antibodies,” she explained. “You survived the demon bite, and there’s a very decent chance you’re immune to its poison.”

  “So you’re going to mix up a batch of antidemon venom in the kitchen?”

  “I’m good. Not quite that good. We’d use the ritual we used before—the basic blood brothers ritual. Protection,” she reminded Gage. “Your Professor Linz spoke of protection. If Twisse gets past us, or if it’s able to breach the town, or worse, the farm, protection may be all we can offer.”

  “There are a lot of other people besides our families,” Cal pointed out. “And I don’t see them circling up to hold bloody hands with Gage.”

  “No. But there’s another way. Taking it internally.”

  Gage sat up, leaned forward. “You want the population of Hawkins Hollow to drink my blood? Oh yeah, I bet the mayor and town council will jump right on that.”

  “They won’t know. There was a reason I put off bringing this up, and this is it.” She sat on the arm of the sofa. “Hear me out. The town has a water supply. The farm has a well. People drink water. The Bowl-a-Rama’s still doing business, selling beer on tap. We wouldn’t cover everyone, but this is the best shot at a broad-based immunization. I think it’s worth a try.”

  “We’re down to days left now,” Fox considered. “When we go into the woods we’ll be leaving the Hollow, the farm, all of it. The last time we did that, it was damn near a massacre. I’d feel easier if I knew my family had something—a chance at something. If that something’s Gage’s blood, let’s start pumping.”

  “Easy for you to say.” Gage rubbed the back of his neck. “The whole immune thing is a theory.”

  “A solid one,” Cybil said, “based on science, and magicks. I’ve looked into both elements, studied all the angles. It could work. And if it doesn’t, we’re no worse off.”

  “Except me,” Gage muttered. “How much blood?”

  Cybil smiled. “Going with a magickal number, I think three pints ought to do it.”

  “Three? And just how are you going to get it out of me?”

  “I’ve got that covered. I’ll be right back.”

  “My dad gives blood to the Red Cross a few times a year,” Fox commented. “He says it’s no big, and after he gets OJ and a cookie.”

  “What kind of cookie?” Gage wanted to know, then looked dubiously at Cybil when she came back in with a shipping carton. “What’s that?”

  “Everything we need. Sterile needles, tubing, container bags with anticoagulant, and so on.”

  “What?” The thought of what was in the box had his stomach doing a long, slow roll. “Did you go to some vampire site online?”

  “I have my sources. Here.” She handed Gage the bottle of water she’d set on top of the box. “It’s better for you if you drink plenty of water before we draw the blood, particularly as we’re going to draw about three times what’s usually taken in a donation.”

  He took the bottle, then glanced into the box and winced. “If I’m going to have to slice some part of me open again for the ritual, why can’t we just take it from there.”

  “This is more efficient, and tidier.” She smiled at him. “You’re willing to punch a hole in a demon and die, but you’re afraid of a little needle?”

  “Afraid is a strong word. I don’t suppose you ever jabbed anyone else with one of those.”

  “No, but I’ve been jabbed and I studied the procedure.”

  “Oh, oh! Let me do it.” Fox waved a hand.

  “No way in hell. She does it.” Gage pointed at Layla, whose mouth dropped open in shock.

  “Me? Why? Why?”

  “Because of everyone here you’ll worry most about hurting me.” He smiled thinly at Cybil. “I know you, sweetheart. You like it rough.”

  “But . . . I don’t want to.”

  “Exactly.” Gage nodded at Layla. “Neither do I. That makes us the perfect team.”

  “I’ll talk you through it,” Cybil told Layla, and held up a pair of protective gloves.

  “Oh, well. Shit. I’m going to go wash my hands first.”

  It was surprisingly simple, though Layla—whom he’d seen literally crawl through fire—squealed breathlessly as she slid the needle into his arm. He munched on macadamia nut cookies and drank orange juice—though he’d requested a beer—while Cybil efficiently stowed the three filled bags.

  “Thanks to your recuperative powers, we could do this all at once. We’ll give you a little while, then go ahead and do the rituals.”

  “The farm should be first. We could swing by there,” Fox calculated, “take care of that.”

  “That works. I want to take Lump out there.” Cal glanced at the dog sprawled under the coffee table. “He’s not going in with us this time.”

  “We’ll take him out, then go by the Hawkinses’,” Fox said, “then into town. Head out to the water supply from there.” When he reached for a cookie, Gage slapped his hand aside.

  “I don’t see your blood in the bag, bro.”

  “He’s good,” Fox proclaimed. “Who’s driving?”

  IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN A WASTE OF THEIR TIME, efforts, and Gage’s blood. Cybil gnawed on that in the days—and nights—that followed. Everything that had seemed logical, everything she’d been able to document, verify, research, speculate on now seemed completely useless. What had begun for her months before as a fascinating project was now the sum total of everything that mattered. What good was intellect, she thought as she rubbed her exhausted eyes, when Fate twisted what should be into the impossible?

  How had time run out? How could that be? Hours now, essentially, she could count in hours the time they had left. Everything she learned, everything she saw, told her that at the end of those hours she would lose the man she loved, the father of her child. She would lose the life they might have made together.

  Where were the answers she’d always been so good at finding? Why were they all the wrong ones?

  She glanced up as Gage came into the dining room, then put her fingers back on the keyboard though she had no idea what she’d been typing.

  “It’s three in the morning,” he told her.

  “Yes, I know. There’s a handy little clock in the bottom corner o
f the screen.”

  “You need sleep.”

  “I have a pretty good idea what I need.” When he sat down, stretched out his legs, she shot him a single hot look. “And what I don’t need is you sitting there staring at me while I’m trying to work.”

  “You’ve been working pretty much around the clock for days now. We’ve got what we’ve got, Cybil. There isn’t any more.”

  “There’s always more.”

  “One of the things I tripped over when it came to you was your brain. That’s one Grade-A brain you’ve got. The rest of the package gets the big thumbs-up, too, but the brain’s what started the fall for me. Funny, I never gave a damn, before you, if the woman I was hooked up with had the IQ of Marie Curie or an Idaho potato.”

  “IQ scales are considered controversial by many, and skewed toward white and middle-class.”

  “See.” He tapped a finger in the air. “There you go. Facts and theories at the fingertips. It just kills me. Whatever the scale, you’re one smart woman, Cybil, and you know we’ve got what we’ve got.”

  “I also know it ain’t over till the fat lady sings. I’m trying to gather more information about a lost tribe in South America that may have been descended from—”

  “Cybil.” He reached out, laid his hand over hers. “Stop.”

  “How can I stop? How can you ask me to stop? It’s July fourth, for God’s sake. It’s three hours and twelve minutes into July fourth. We only have now. Tonight, tomorrow, tomorrow night, before we start back to that godforsaken place, and you . . .”

  “I love you.” When she covered her face with her free hand and struggled with sobs, he continued to speak. Calm and clear. “That’s a damn big deal for me. Never looked for it, and I sure as hell never expected it to slap me in the face like a two-by-four. But I love you. The old man told me my mother made him a better man. I get that because you make me a better man. I’m not going back to the Pagan Stone for the town. I’m not doing it just for Cal and Fox, or Quinn and Layla. I’m not doing it just for you. I’m doing it for me, too. I need you to understand that. I need you to know that.”

  “I do. Accepting it is the problem. I can walk into that clearing with you. I just don’t know how I can walk out without you.”

  “I could say something corny about how I’ll always be with you, but neither one of us would buy that. We’ve got to see how the cards fall, then we’ve got to play it out. That’s all there is.”

  “I was so sure I’d find the way, find something.” She stared blindly at the computer screen. “Save the day.”

  “Looks like that’s going to be my job. Come on. Let’s go to bed.”

  She rose, turned into him. “Everything’s so quiet,” she murmured. “The Fourth of July, but there weren’t any fireworks.”

  “So we’ll go up and make some, then get some sleep.”

  THEY SLEPT, AND THEY DREAMED. IN THE DREAMS, the Pagan Stone burned like a furnace, and flaming blood spat from the sky. In the dreams, the writhing black mass scorched the ground, ignited the trees.

  In the dreams, he died. Though she cradled him in her arms and wept over him, he did not come back to her. And even in dreams, her grief burned her heart to ashes.

  SHE DIDN’T WEEP AGAIN. CYBIL SHED NO TEARS AS they packed and prepared throughout the day of July fifth. She stood dry-eyed as Cal reported there were already some fires, some looting and violence in town, that his father, Chief Hawbaker, and a handful of others were doing all they could to keep order.

  All that could be done had been done. All that could be said had been said.

  So on the morning of July sixth, she strapped on her weapons, shouldered her pack like the others. And with the others left the pretty house on the edge of Hawkins Wood to strike out on the path to the Pagan Stone.

  It was all familiar now, the sounds, the scents, the way. More shade than there had been weeks before, of course, Cybil thought. More wildflowers, and a thicker chatter from birds, but still much the same. It wouldn’t have been so very different in Ann Hawkins’s time. And the feelings clutched tight inside Ann as she’d left these woods, left the man she loved to his sacrifice, not so different, Cybil imagined, than what was tight in her walking into them.

  But at least she would be there, with him, to the end of it.

  “My knife’s bigger than yours.” Quinn tapped the scabbard hooked at Cybil’s waist.

  “Yours isn’t a knife, it’s a machete.”

  “Still, bigger. Bigger than yours, too,” Quinn said to Layla.

  “I’m sticking with my froe, just like last time. It’s my lucky froe. How many people can say that?”

  They were trying to take her mind off things, Cybil knew.

  “Cybil.” The word came in a conspirator’s whisper, and from the left, from the deep green shadows.

  When she looked, when she saw, Cybil’s heart simply broke.

  “Daddy.”

  “It’s not.” Gage stepped back to her, gripped her arm. “You know it’s not.”

  When he reached for his gun, Cybil stilled his hand. “I know, I know it’s not my father. But don’t.”

  “Don’t you want to come give Daddy a hug?” It spread its arms wide. “Come on, princess! Come give Daddy a great, big kiss!” It bared its sharklike teeth, and laughed. And laughed. Then it raked its own claws down its face, its body, to vanish in a waterfall of black blood.

  “That’s entertainment,” Fox said under his breath.

  “Poorly staged, overplayed.” Shrugging it off, Cybil took Gage’s hand. Nothing, she promised herself, would shake her. “We’ll take point for a while,” she said, and with Gage walked to the front of the group.

  Twenty

  THEY’D PLANNED TO STOP FOR REST AT HESTER’S Pool, where the young, mad Hester Deale had drowned herself weeks after giving birth to the child Twisse put inside her. But the water there bubbled red. On its agitated surface, bloated bodies of birds and some small mammals bobbed and floated.

  “Not exactly the right ambiance for a quick picnic,” Cal decided. With his hand on Quinn’s shoulder, he leaned over to brush his lips at her temple. “You okay to go another ten minutes before we break?”

  “Hey, I’m the three-miles-a-day girl.”

  “You’re the pregnant girl. One of them.”

  “We’re good,” Layla said, then dug her fingers into Fox’s arm. “Fox.”

  Something rose out of the churning water. Head, neck, shoulders, the dirty red sludge of the pond, dripping, running. Torso, hips, legs, until it stood on the churning surface as it might a platform of stone.

  Hester Deale, bearer of the demon’s seed, damned by madness, dead centuries and by her own hand, stared out of wild and ravaged eyes.

  “You’ll birth them screaming, demons all. You are the damned, and his seed is cold. So cold. My daughters.” Her arms spread. “Come, join me. Spare yourselves. I’ve waited for you. Take my hand.”

  What she held out was brittle with bone, stained with red.

  “Let’s go.” Fox put his arm firmly around Layla’s waist, drew her away. “Crazy doesn’t stop with death.”

  “Don’t leave me here! Don’t leave me here alone!”

  Quinn glanced back once, with pity. “Was it her, or another of Twisse’s masks?”

  “It’s her. It’s Hester.” Layla didn’t look back. Couldn’t. “I don’t think Twisse can take her form—or Ann’s. They’re still a presence, so it can’t mimic them. Do you think when we finish this, she’ll be able to rest?”

  “I believe it.” Cybil looked back, watched Hester—weeping now—sink back into the pool. “She’s part of us. What we’re doing is for her, too.”

  They didn’t stop at all. Whether it was nerves, adrenaline, or the Nutter Butters and Little Debbies Fox passed around, they kept hiking until they’d reached the clearing. The Pagan Stone stood silent. Waiting.

  “It didn’t try to stop us,” Cal pointed out. “Barely messed with us.”

  “It di
dn’t want to waste the energy.” Cybil peeled off her pack. “Storing it up. And it thinks it destroyed the one weapon we had. Bastard’s feeling cocky.”

  “Or like the last time we came here on the eve of a Seven, it’s hitting the town.” Cal pulled out his cell phone, punched the key for his father’s. His face, his eyes were grim when he flipped it back closed. “Nothing but static.”

  “Jim Hawkins will kick demon ass.” Quinn put her arms around Cal. “Like father, like son.”

  “Fox and I could try to see,” Layla began, but Cal shook his head.

  “No, nothing we can do. Not there, not at the farm. And there’s something to be said for saving our energies. Let’s set up.”

  In short order Gage dumped an armload of wood near Cybil as she unpacked provisions. “Seems superfluous. If we wait a few hours, there’ll be plenty of fire.”

  “This is our fire. An important distinction.” Cybil lifted a thermos. “Want some coffee?”

  “For once, no. I’m going to have a beer.” He looked around as he opened one. “Funny, but I’d feel a lot better if it had come after us, like last time. Bloody rain, lashing wind, bone-snapping cold. That bit with your father—”

  “Yes, I know. It was like a tip of the hat. Have a nice walk, catch you later. Arrogance is a weakness, one we’ll make sure it regrets.”

  He took her hand. “Come here a minute.”

  “We need to build the fire,” she began as he drew her to the edge of the clearing.

  “Cal’s the Boy Scout. He’ll do it. There’s not a lot of time left.” He put his hands on her shoulders, ran them down her arms, up again. “I’ve got a favor to ask you.”

  “It’s a good time to ask for one. But you’ll have to live to make sure I followed through.”

  “I’ll know. If it’s a girl . . .” He saw the tears swim into her eyes, watched her will them back. “I want Catherine for her middle name—for my mother. I always felt first names should belong to the kid, but the middle one . . .”

  “Catherine for your mother. That’s a very easy favor.”