The Sign of Seven Trilogy

by Nora Roberts

  As soon as he spoke, the light snapped off.

  Rather than romance or charm, the flickering candles they’d lit as backup lent an eeriness to the room. “I’ll go fire up the generator.” Cal pushed up. “Water, refrigerator, and stove for now.”

  “Don’t go out alone.” Layla blinked as if surprised the words had come out of her mouth. “I mean—”

  “I’m going with you.”

  As Fox rose, something howled in the dark.

  “Lump.” Cal was out of the room, through the kitchen, and out the back door like a bullet. He barely broke stride to grab the flashlight off the wall, punch it on.

  He swept it toward the sound. The beam struggled against the thick, moving curtain of snow, did little but bounce the light back at him.

  The blanket had become a wall that rose past his knees. Calling his dog, Cal pushed through it, trying to pinpoint the direction of the howling. It seemed to come from everywhere, from nowhere.

  As he heard sounds behind him, he whirled, gripping the flashlight like a weapon.

  “Don’t clock the reinforcements,” Fox shouted. “Christ, it’s insane out here.” He gripped Cal’s arm as Gage moved to Cal’s other side. “Hey, Lump! Come on, Lump! I’ve never heard him like that.”

  “How do you know it’s the dog?” Gage asked quietly.

  “Get back inside,” Cal said grimly. “We can’t leave the women alone. I’m going to find my dog.”

  “Oh yeah, we’ll just leave you out here, stumbling around in a fucking blizzard.” Gage jammed his freezing hands in his pockets, glanced back. “Besides.”

  They came, arms linked and gripping flashlights. Which showed sense, Cal was forced to admit. And they’d taken the time to put on coats, probably boots as well, which is more than he or his friends had done.

  “Go back in.” He had to shout now, over the rising wind. “We’re just going to round up Lump. Be right there.”

  “We all go in or nobody does.” Quinn unhooked her arm from Layla’s, hooked it to Cal’s. “That includes Lump. Don’t waste time,” she said before he could argue. “We should spread out, shouldn’t we?”

  “In pairs. Fox, you and Layla try that way, Quinn and I’ll take this way. Gage and Cybil toward the back. He’s got to be close. He never goes far.”

  He sounded scared, that’s what Cal didn’t want to say out loud. His stupid, lazy dog sounded scared. “Hook your hand in my pants—the waistband. Keep a good hold.”

  He hissed against the cold as her gloves hit his skin, then began to trudge forward. He’d barely made it two feet when he heard something under the howls.

  “You catch that?”

  “Yes. Laughing. The way a nasty little boy might laugh.”

  “Go—”

  “I’m not leaving that dog out here any more than you are.”

  A vicious gush of wind rose up like a tidal wave, spewing huge clumps of snow, and what felt like pellets of ice. Cal heard branches cracking, like gunfire in the dark. Behind him, Quinn lost her footing in the force of the wind and nearly took them both down.

  He’d get Quinn back into the house, he decided. Get her the hell in, lock her in a damn closet if necessary, then come back out and find his dog.

  Even as he turned to get a grip on her arm, he saw them.

  His dog sat on his haunches, half buried in the snow, his head lifted as those long, desperate howls worked his throat.

  The boy floated an inch above the surface of the snow. Chortling, Cal thought. There was a word you didn’t use every day, but it sure as hell fit the filthy sound it made.

  It grinned as the wind blasted again. Now Lump was buried to his shoulders.

  “Get the fuck away from my dog.”

  Cal lurched forward; the wind knocked him back so that both he and Quinn went sprawling.

  “Call him,” Quinn shouted. “Call him, make him come!” She dragged off her gloves as she spoke. Using her fingers to form a circle between her lips, she whistled shrilly as Cal yelled at Lump.

  Lump quivered; the thing laughed.

  Cal continued to call, to curse now, to crawl while the snow flew into his eyes, numbed his hands. He heard shouting behind him, but he focused everything he had on pushing ahead, on getting there before the next gust of wind put the dog under.

  He’d drown, Cal thought as he pushed, shoved, slid forward. If he didn’t get to Lump, his dog would drown in that ocean of snow.

  He felt a hand lock on his ankle, but kept dragging himself forward.

  Gritting his teeth, he flailed out, got a slippery hold on Lump’s collar. Braced, he looked up into eyes that glittered an unholy green rimmed with red. “You can’t have him.”

  Cal yanked. Ignoring Lump’s yelp, he yanked again, viciously, desperately. Though Lump howled, whimpered, it was as if his body was sunk in hardened cement.

  And Quinn was beside him, belly down, digging at the snow with her hands.

  Fox skidded down, shooting snow like shrapnel. Cal gathered everything he had, looked once more into those monstrous eyes in the face of a young boy. “I said you can’t have him.”

  With the next pull, Cal’s arms were full of quivering, whimpering dog.

  “It’s okay, it’s okay.” He pressed his face against cold, wet fur. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

  “Get him in by the fire.” Layla struggled to help Quinn up as Cybil pushed up from her knees. Shoving the butt of a flashlight in his back pocket, Gage pulled Cybil to her feet, then plucked Quinn out of the snow.

  “Can you walk?” he asked her.

  “Yeah, yeah. Let’s get in, let’s get inside, before somebody ends up with frostbite.”

  Towels and blankets, dry clothes, hot coffee. Brandy—even for Lump—warmed chilled bones and numbed flesh. Fresh logs had the fire blazing.

  “It was holding him. He couldn’t get away.” Cal sat on the floor, the dog’s head in his lap. “He couldn’t get away. It was going to bury him in the snow. A stupid, harmless dog.”

  “Has this happened before?” Quinn asked him. “Has it gone after animals this way?”

  “A few weeks before the Seven, animals might drown, or there’s more roadkill. Sometimes pets turn mean. But not like this. This was—”

  “A demonstration.” Cybil tucked the blanket more securely around Quinn’s feet. “He wanted us to see what he could do.”

  “Maybe wanted to see what we could do,” Gage countered, and earned a speculative glance from Cybil.

  “That may be more accurate. That may be more to the point. Could we break the hold? A dog’s not a person, has to be easier to control. No offense, Cal, but your dog’s brainpower isn’t as high as most toddlers’.”

  Gently, affectionately, Cal pulled on one of Lump’s floppy ears. “He’s thick as a brick.”

  “So it was showing off. It hurt this poor dog for sport.” Layla knelt down and stroked Lump’s side. “That deserves some payback.”

  Intrigued, Quinn cocked her head. “What do you have in mind?”

  “I don’t know yet, but it’s something to think about.”

  Eighteen

  CAL DIDN’T KNOW WHAT TIME THEY’D FALLEN into bed. But when he opened his eyes the thin winter light eked through the window. Through it, he saw the snow was still falling in the perfect, fat, white flakes of a Hollywood Christmas movie.

  In the hush only a snowfall could create was steady and somehow satisfied snoring. It came from Lump, who was stretched over the foot of the bed like a canine blanket. That was something Cal generally discouraged, but right now, the sound, the weight, the warmth were exactly right.

  From now on, he determined, the damn dog was going everywhere with him.

  Because his foot and ankle were currently under the bulk of the dog, Cal shifted to pull free. The movement had Quinn stirring, giving a little sigh as she wiggled closer and managed to wedge her leg between his. She wore flannel, which shouldn’t have been remotely sexy, and she’d managed to pin his arm d
uring the night so it was now alive with needles and pins. And that should’ve been, at least mildly, annoying.

  Instead, it was exactly right, too.

  Since it was, since they were cuddled up together in bed with Hollywood snow falling outside the window, he couldn’t think of a single reason not to take advantage of it.

  Smiling, he slid a hand under her T-shirt, over warm, smooth flesh. When he cupped her breast he felt her heart beat under his palm, slow and steady as Lump’s snoring. He stroked, a lazy play of fingertips as he watched her face. Lightly, gently, he teased her nipple, arousing himself as he imagined taking it into his mouth, sliding his tongue over her.

  She sighed again.

  He trailed his hand down, tracing those fingertips over her belly, under the flannel to skim down her thigh. Up again. Down, then up, a whispering touch that eased closer, closer to her center.

  And the sound she made in sleep was soft and helpless.

  She was wet when he brushed over her, hot when he dipped inside her. When he pressed, he lowered his mouth to hers to take her gasp.

  She came as she woke, her body simply erupting as her mind leaped out of sleep and into shock and pleasure.

  “Oh God!”

  “Shh.” He laughed against her lips. “You’ll wake the dog.”

  He tugged down her pants as he rolled. Before she could clear her mind, he pinned her, and he filled her.

  “Oh. Well. Jesus.” The words hitched and shook. “Good morning.”

  He laughed again, and bracing himself, set a slow and torturous pace. She fought to match it, to hold back and take that slow climb with him, but it flashed through her again, and flung her up.

  “God. God. God. I don’t think I can—”

  “Shh, shh,” he repeated, and brought his mouth down to toy with hers. “I’ll go slow,” he whispered. “You just go.”

  She could do nothing else. Her system was already wrecked, her body already his. Utterly his. When he took her up again, she was too breathless to cry out.

  THOROUGHLY PLEASURED, THOROUGHLY USED, Quinn lay under Cal’s weight. He’d eased down so that his head rested between her breasts, and she could play with his hair. She imagined it was some faraway Sunday morning where they had nothing more pressing to worry about than if they’d make love again before breakfast, or make love after.

  “Do you take some kind of special vitamin?” she wondered.

  “Hmm?”

  “I mean, you’ve got some pretty impressive stamina going for you.”

  She felt his lips curve against her. “Just clean living, Blondie.”

  “Maybe it’s the bowling. Maybe bowling…Where’s Lump?”

  “He got embarrassed about halfway through the show.” Cal turned his head, gestured. “Over there.”

  Quinn looked, saw the dog on the floor, his face wedged in the corner. She laughed till her sides ached. “We embarrassed the dog. That’s a first for me. God! I feel good. How can I feel so good after last night?” Then she shook her head, stretched up her arms before wrapping them around Cal. “I guess that’s the point, isn’t it? Even in a world gone to hell, there’s still this.”

  “Yeah.” He sat up then, reached down to brush her tumbled hair as he studied her. “Quinn.” He took her hand now, played with her fingers.

  “Cal,” she said, imitating his serious tone.

  “You crawled through a blizzard to help save my dog.”

  “He’s a good dog. Anyone would have done the same.”

  “No. You’re not naive enough to think that. Fox and Gage, yeah. For the dog, and for me. Layla and Cybil, maybe. Maybe it was being caught in the moment, or maybe they’re built that way.”

  She touched his face, skimmed her fingers under those patient gray eyes. “No one was going to leave that dog out there, Cal.”

  “Then I’d say that dog is pretty lucky to have people like you around. So am I. You crawled through the snow, toward that thing. You dug in the snow with your bare hands.”

  “If you’re trying to make a hero out of me…Go ahead,” she decided. “I think I like the fit.”

  “You whistled with your fingers.”

  Now she grinned. “Just a little something I picked up along the way. I can actually whistle a lot louder than that, when I’m not out of breath, freezing, and quivering with terror.”

  “I love you.”

  “I’ll demonstrate sometime when…What?”

  “I never thought to say those words to any woman I wasn’t related to. I was just never going to go there.”

  If she’d been given a hard, direct jolt of electricity to her heart, it couldn’t have leaped any higher. “Would you mind saying them again, while I’m paying better attention?”

  “I love you.”

  There it went again, she thought. Leaps and bounds. “Because I can whistle with my fingers?”

  “That might’ve been the money shot.”

  “God.” She shut her eyes. “I want you to love me, and I really like to get what I want. But.” She took a breath. “Cal, if this is because of last night, because I helped get Lump, then—”

  “This is because you think if you eat half my slice of pizza it doesn’t count.”

  “Well, it doesn’t, technically.”

  “Because you always know where your keys are, and you can think about ten things at the same time. Because you don’t back down, and your hair’s like sunlight. Because you tell the truth and you know how to be a friend. And for dozens of reasons I haven’t figured out yet. Dozens more I may never figure out. But I know I can say to you what I never thought to say to anyone.”

  She hooked her arms around his neck, rested her forehead on his. She had to just breathe for a moment, just breathe her way through the beauty of it as she often did with a great work of art or a song that brought tears to her throat.

  “This is a really good day.” She touched her lips to his. “This is a truly excellent day.”

  They sat for a while, holding each other while the dog snored in the corner, and the snow fell outside the windows.

  When Cal went downstairs, he followed the scent of coffee into the kitchen, and found Gage scowling as he slapped a skillet onto the stove. They grunted at each other as Cal got a clean mug out of the dishwasher.

  “Looks like close to three out there already, and it’s still coming.”

  “I got eyes.” Gage ripped open a pound of bacon. “You sound chipper about it.”

  “It’s a really good day.”

  “I’d probably think so, too, if I started it off with some morning nookie.”

  “God, men are crude.” Cybil strolled in, her dark eyes bleary.

  “Then you ought to plug your ears when you’re around our kind. Bacon gets fried, eggs get scrambled,” Gage told them. “Anybody doesn’t like the options should try another restaurant.”

  Cybil poured her coffee, stood studying him over the rim as she took the first sip. He hadn’t shaved or combed that dark mass of hair. He was obviously morning irritable, and none of that, she mused, made him any less attractive.

  Too bad.

  “You know what I’ve noticed about you, Gage?”

  “What’s that?”

  “You’ve got a great ass, and a crappy attitude. Let me know when breakfast is ready,” she added as she strolled out of the kitchen.

  “She’s right. I’ve often said that about your ass and attitude.”

  “Phones are out,” Fox announced as he came in, yanked open the refrigerator and pounced on a Coke. “Got ahold of my mother by cell. They’re okay over there.”

  “Knowing your parents, they probably just had sex,” Gage commented.

  “Hey! True,” Fox said after a moment, “but, hey.”

  “He’s got sex on the brain.”

  “Why wouldn’t he? He’s not sick or watching sports, the only two circumstances men don’t necessarily have sex on the brain.”

  Gage laid bacon in the heated skillet. “Somebody mak
e some toast or something. And we’re going to need another pot of coffee.”

  “I’ve got to take Lump out. I’m not just letting him out on his own.”

  “I’ll take him.” Fox leaned down to scratch Lump’s head. “I want to walk around anyway.” He turned, nearly walked into Layla. “Hi, sorry. Ah…I’m going to take Lump out. Why don’t you come along?”

  “Oh. I guess. Sure. I’ll just get my things.”

  “Smooth,” Gage commented when Layla left. “You’re a smooth one, Fox.”

  “What?”

  “Good morning, really attractive woman. How would you like to trudge around with me in three feet of snow and watch a dog piss on a few trees? Before you’ve even had your coffee?”

  “It was just a suggestion. She could’ve said no.”

  “I’m sure she would have if she’d had a hit of caffeine so her brain was in gear.”

  “That must be why you only get lucky with women without brains.”

  “You’re just spreading sunshine,” Cal commented when Fox steamed out.

  “Make another damn pot of coffee.”

  “I need to bring in some wood, feed the generator, and start shoveling three feet of snow off the decks. Let me know when breakfast is ready.”

  Alone, Gage snarled, and turned the bacon. He still had the snarl when Quinn came in.

  “I thought I’d find everyone in here, but they’re all scattered.” She got out a mug. “Looks like we need another pot of coffee.”

  Because she got the coffee down, Gage didn’t have time to snap at her.

  “I’ll take care of that. Anything else I can do to help?”

  He turned his head to look at her. “Why?”

  “Because I figure if I help you with breakfast, it takes us both off the cooking rotation for the next couple of meals.”

  He nodded, appreciating the logic. “Smart. You’re the toast and additional coffee.”

  “Check.”

  He beat a dozen eggs while she got to work. She had a quick, efficient way about her, Gage noted. The quick wouldn’t matter so much to Cal, but the efficient would be a serious plus. She was built, she was bright, and as he’d seen for himself last night, she had a wide streak of brave.