The Sign of Seven Trilogy

by Nora Roberts

  “I was terrified. She didn’t belong here, wasn’t supposed to come here. When I got to the farm, nothing I said would budge her. We were going to have this out, that was her stand. Whatever was wrong, we were going to have it out. What could I tell her?”

  “What did you tell her?”

  “Too much, not enough. She didn’t believe me. Why would she? She thought I was overstressed. She wanted me to come back to New York for tests. I walked over, turned on the burner on the stove, and stuck my hand on it.”

  He did the same now, in the little office kitchen, but stopped short of holding his hand to the burner. What would be the point now? “She had the expected reaction, human and medical,” he added, switching the burner off. “Then she saw my hand healing. She was full of questions then, more insistent that I go in for tests. I agreed to everything, anything, on the condition that she go back to New York. She wouldn’t, not unless I went with her, so we compromised. She promised she’d stay at the farm, day and night, until I could go with her.

  “She stayed that night, the next day, the next night. But the night after . . .”

  He walked to the sink, leaned against it as he looked out the window to the neighboring houses and lawns beyond. “Things were insane in town, and in the middle of it, my mother called. She woke up when a car started outside, and she’d gone running. Carly was gone. She’d driven off in the car she’d borrowed from a friend to drive down from New York. I was frantic, more frantic when Mom told me she’d been gone twenty minutes, maybe a little more. She hadn’t been able to reach me, just got static when she tried.”

  When he broke off, when he came back to sit, Layla simply reached across the table to take his hand.

  “There was a house on fire over on Mill. Cal got burned pretty bad when we got the kids out. Three kids. Jack Proctor, he ran the hardware store, had a shotgun. He was just walking along, shooting at anything that moved. One barrel, second barrel, reload. A couple of teenagers were raping a woman right on Main Street, right in front of the Methodist Church. There was more. No point going into it. I couldn’t find her. I tried to find her thoughts, but there was so much interference. Like the static on the line. Then I heard her calling for me.”

  He didn’t see the houses and lawns now. He saw the fire and the blood. “I ran, and Napper was there, blocking the sidewalk. He had his car pulled across it. Had a ball bat, and came at me with it, swinging. I wouldn’t have gotten past him if Gage hadn’t taken him down, and Cal right behind with his burns still healing. I climbed over the car and kept running, because I heard her calling me. The door to the library, the old library, was open. I could feel her now, how afraid she was. I went up the steps, yelling for her, so she’d know I was coming. Carts hurtling at me, books flying.”

  Because it was as real as yesterday, he squeezed his eyes shut, scrubbed his hands over his face. “I went down a couple of times, maybe more. I don’t know, it’s a blur. I got out on the roof. It was like a hurricane out there. Carly was on the ledge above, standing on that spit of stone. Her hands were bleeding; the stone was stained with it. I told her not to move. Don’t move. Oh God, don’t move. I’m coming up to get you. She looked at me, and she was in there, for an instant it let her come all the way out so she could look at me with all that fear. She said, ‘Help me. Please, God, help me.’ Then she went off.”

  Layla moved her chair beside his, and as she had the night before, drew his head down to her breast.

  “I didn’t get there in time.”

  “Not your fault.”

  “Every choice I made with her was the wrong one. All those wrong choices killed her.”

  “No. It killed her.”

  “She wasn’t part of this. She’d never have been part of this except for me.” He drew back, drew away so he could finish. “Last night, I dreamed,” he began, and told her.

  “I don’t know what to say to you,” Layla told him. “I don’t know what I should say to you. But . . .” She took his hand, pressed it between her breasts. “My heart aches. I can’t imagine what you feel if my heart aches. Others who know what happened, who know you, have told you it wasn’t your fault. You’ll accept that or you won’t. If Carly loved you, she’d want you to accept it. I don’t know if you were wrong to lie to her. And I don’t know if I could accept as truth everything I know if I hadn’t seen and experienced it myself. You wanted to keep her separate from this, to keep what you had, who you were, who she was apart from what you have, who you are here. I know what that’s like, the wanting to keep everything in its proper place. But your worlds collided, Fox, and it was out of your control.”

  “If I’d made different choices.”

  “You might have changed it,” she agreed. “Or it all would have taken a different route to the same end. How can you know? I’m not Carly, Fox. And like it or not, we share what’s happening in the Hollow. They aren’t all your choices now.”

  “I’ve seen too much death, Layla. Too much blood and pain. I know more’s coming, and I know we’ll all do whatever we can, whatever we have to do. But I don’t know if I can survive if I lose you.”

  It was his sadness that lay on her heart now. The unbearable weight of his sorrow. “We’ll find a way. You’ve always believed that. You’ve made me believe it. Come on. You’re going upstairs to lie down. No arguments.”

  She cajoled, bullied, and nagged him upstairs. By the time she got him into bed, he was too exhausted to argue, or make suggestive jokes when she undressed him and tucked him in. When she was sure he was asleep, she ran down to close the office, then back up again to call Cal and ask him to come.

  Layla put her finger to her lips when he came in the back way. “He’s sleeping. He had a rough night, and a rough day. A nightmare,” she added, gesturing him into the kitchen. “One that blurred me and Carly together.”

  “Oh. Shit.”

  She poured coffee without asking if he wanted it. “He told me about her, not without considerable struggle, and considerable pain. He’s worn out now.”

  “Better he told you though. Fox doesn’t do well holding stuff in.” He started to drink, lowered the mug and frowned. “How did coffee get in here?”

  “He bought me a coffeemaker.”

  Cal let out a half laugh. “He’ll be all right, Layla. It hits him sometimes. Not often, but when it does, it hits hard.”

  “He blames himself, and that’s stupid,” she said so briskly, Cal lifted his brows. “But he loved her so he can’t do anything else. He told me as soon as he knew she’d left the farm, he tried to find her. You were burned getting people out of a house—kids out—some guy was shooting up the town, that son of a bitch Napper came at him with a baseball bat, and he’s sick because he couldn’t stop her from jumping.”

  “Here’s what he probably didn’t tell you, stop me if I’m wrong. He was burned, too, not as bad as I was, that time, but bad enough. When the call came through, he took off ahead of me and Gage. On the way he kicked Proctor— that was the guy with the shotgun—square in the nuts, tossed Gage the gun, and kept going. He punched out one of two boys tearing into a woman on the sidewalk. I got the other one, but it slowed me down. And there was Napper. He got a good swing in with that bat. Broke Fox’s arm.”

  “My God.”

  “Gage went in like a battering ram, and Fox took off again. It took both of us to take Napper out. Fox was already running up the stairs when we got inside the old library. And it was hell in there. We were too late, too. She was jumping, hell, she was diving off that ledge when we ran out on the roof. I thought he was going to go over after her. He was bloody from fights, from being rammed by books that flew around like missiles, and God knew what else. There was nothing he could do. He knows it. But once in a while it takes ahold of him and gives him a good, hard squeeze.”

  “If she’d believed him, believed in him and done what he asked—what she promised him—she’d be alive.”

  Cal kept his calm gray eyes even with hers. “That’s
right. Exactly right.”

  “But he won’t blame her.”

  “It’s harder to blame the dead.”

  “Not for me, not at the moment. If she’d loved him enough, believed in him enough to keep her promise— only that, to keep her promise—he wouldn’t have had to risk his life to try to save her. I didn’t say that to him, and I’m going to try very hard not to. But I feel better now that I’ve said it out loud.”

  “I’ve said it out loud, and to his face. I felt better, too, but it didn’t seem to do the same for him.”

  Layla nodded. “There’s something else. Why Carly? She wasn’t part of the town, but she was infected, apparently, in minutes. So strongly that she committed suicide.”

  “It’s happened before. It’s mostly people who live in the Hollow, but outsiders can get caught up.”

  “I bet most of them get caught up as victims of someone who’s infected. But here she is, the woman one of you loves, and she’s caught up immediately. I wonder about that, Cal, and I wonder how it was he heard her calling, that she was able to call him, that she was able to wait until he ran out on the roof so he had to watch her jump.”

  “Where are you going with this?”

  “I’m not sure. But it might be worthwhile to have Cybil do a search on her, a genealogy. What if she’s connected? What if Carly was on one of our twisted family trees?”

  “And Fox just happened to fall in love with her?”

  “That’s the point. I don’t think any of this just happened. Cal, have you ever been in love—really in love— with anyone before Quinn?”

  “No.” He answered without hesitation, then took another contemplative sip of coffee. “I can tell you Gage hasn’t either.”

  “It uses emotions,” she pointed out. “What better way to cause pain than to use love against one of you? To twist it like a knife in the heart? I don’t think she was just infected, Cal. I think she was chosen.”

  Fifteen

  THAT NIGHT, THEY READ, AND FOR THE FIRST time in many pages, the first in the many months that had passed for Ann, she wrote of Giles and Twisse. It is a new year. What was has passed into what is, and what may be. Giles asked that I wait until the new to make record of what came to be in the old. Do such turnings of time truly form shields to block the dark?

  He sent me away before I ever had birth pangs. He could not do what he had determined to do with me besidehim. It shames me that I wept, even begged, that I would hurt him with my tears and my pleas. He would not be swayed, nor would he send me from him weeping.He dried my tears with his fingers, and pledged that if the gods were willing, we would find each other again.

  At that moment, what did I care for gods, with their demands, their fickle natures and cold hearts? Yet my beloved had pledged to them before ever to me, and so I was no match for gods. He had his work, his war, he told me, and I—and he put his hands on my belly and the lives growing in them—had mine. Without me, his work would be nothing, and his war would be lost.

  I did not leave him weeping, but with a kiss as our sons squirmed between us. I went with the husband of my cousin, away from my love, the cabin, the stone. I went away on a soft night in June, and as I did, he called these words to me.

  It is not death.

  There was kindness in my cousin’s house, such kindnessI have written on other pages. They took me in, kept my secret even when it came. Bestia, the Dark. Twisse. I lay in fear and in pain on the cot in the small loft of their little house. It came in the lie of a man while my sons began their struggle toward life.

  I felt its weight on my heart. I felt its fingers gliding through the air, seeking me, like the hawk seeks the rabbit.But it did not find me. When my cousin’s husband would not go with him, would not join him with torch and hate on the journey to my love, to the cabin, to the stone, I felt its fury. I think I felt its confusion. It had no power here.

  And Fletcher, dear Fletcher, would be spared what would come to the Pagan Stone.

  It would be tonight. I knew it at the first pain. An end that was not an end, and this beginning. These tied togetheras Giles wished it, as he willed it. Let the demon believe it was his work, his will, but it was Giles who turned the key. Giles who would pay for opening the lock.

  My sweet cousin bathed my face. We could not call for the midwife, or for my mother, whom I longed for. It was not my beloved who paced the room below, but Fletcher, so steady, so true. As the pain built until I could no longer hold back my cries, I saw my love standing by the stone. I saw the torches lighting the dark. I saw all that happened there.

  Was this the delirium of birthing, or my small power? I think it was both, the first strengthening the other. He knew I was there. I pray this is not merely the wish of an aching heart, but truth. He knew I was with him, for I heard his thoughts reach for mine, and meet for one blessed moment.

  Love, be safe, be strong.

  He wore the bloodstone amulet, and those red drops gleamed in his fire, and in the torches they carried towardhim.

  I remembered his words to me when he spelled the stone.

  Our blood, its blood, their blood. One for three. Three into one.

  Now I pushed, pushed, through the pain, through the blood, fighting my war for life. I saw the faces of those who’d come for him. And grieved for what had been done to them, what would be done to them. I heard young Hester Deale condemn him, and me. And still I pushed, and pushed. Sweat and blood and half mad from it all. I watched her run as Giles freed her.

  I saw the demon in the eyes of a man, and the hate in the men and the women who carried its curse like a plague.

  It came in fire, my beloved’s power. His sacrifice came in fire and in light, and in the blood that boiled around the stone. Our first son was born while that light blinded me. While my screams rose with the screams of the damned.

  As the fire blazed, as it scorched the earth, my son loosed his first cry. In it, and in the cries of his brothers as they left my womb, I heard hope. I heard love.

  “It confirms a lot of what we knew,” Cal said when Quinn closed the book. “Adds more questions. It can’t be a coincidence that Ann gave birth as Dent confronted Twisse.”

  “The power of life. Innocent life.” Cybil ticked points off on her fingers. “Mystical life. Pain and blood—Ann’s, Dent’s, the demon’s—the people Twisse brought with him. Interesting, too, that Twisse came to the house where Ann was hidden, and got nothing. Even then, he couldn’t infect the people in that house, or on that land.”

  “Dent would have made sure of it, wouldn’t he?” Layla suggested. “He wouldn’t have sent Ann away without knowing she was safe. Ann, and their sons.” She glanced at Fox. “And those who came after.”

  “She knew what was coming.” As he had no taste for beer or wine, even Coke, Fox drank water. “She knew anyone there when Dent made his move was dead. Sacrificed.”

  “Who gets the blame?” Gage demanded. “They wouldn’t have been there if Twisse hadn’t brought them. And if Dent hadn’t made his move, they’d have torched him.”

  “They were still human, still innocent. But,” Cybil continued before he could argue. “I agree with you, for the most part. We can add that if Giles had done nothing, or whatever he’d done hadn’t worked, the infection would only have grown until they ended up killing each other and feeding the beast. Ann accepted that. Apparently, I do, too.”

  “She mentioned the bloodstone.” Quinn picked up her neglected wine. “Three into one, one into three, all that’s easy enough to get. Three pieces of the stone, to each of you. The trick is making one again out of three.”

  “Blood.” Cybil scanned the faces of the three men. “He told her blood. Have you tried using your blood? Your mixed blood?”

  “We’re not stupid.” Gage slumped in his chair. “We’ve tried that more than once.”

  “We haven’t.” Layla raised her shoulders. “Its, ours, theirs. We—Quinn, Cybil, and I—have its blood. Fox, Cal, Gage, that’s the ‘our blood’
portion. It seems if you add them all, you get the theirs.”

  “Logical, smart, a little disgusting,” Quinn decided. “Let’s try it.”

  “Not tonight.” Cybil waved Quinn back to her chair. “You don’t just jump into bloodletting. Even at ten, these three knew such things required ritual. Let me do a little research. If I’m going to bleed, I don’t want to waste it—or worse, call up the wrong side.”

  “Good point.” Quinn settled back. “Pretty good point. But Jesus, it’s hard not to just do something. It’s been five days since the Big Evil Bastard has come out to play.”

  “Not so long,” Gage said dryly, “when you’ve done a couple seven-year waits.”

  “It used a lot of juice—the fire at the farm, infecting Block.” Cal glanced toward the front window, and the dark beyond it. “So it’s juicing back up. The longer it takes, the harder it’s going to come back at us.”

  “On that happy note, I’m heading out.” Gage pushed to his feet. “Somebody let me know when I need to slash my wrist again.”

  “I’ll send you a memo.” Cybil rose as well. “Research time. I’ll see all you handsome men at the O’Dells’ tomorrow. I’m looking forward to it,” she added, and gave Fox a brush on the shoulder as she passed.

  “Cal, I need you to look at the toaster.”

  Cal’s brows drew together as he glanced at Quinn. “The toaster? Why?”

  “There’s this thing.” She wondered how an intelligent man could be so dense. Didn’t he see it was time to clear the room and give Layla and Fox a minute alone? She grabbed his hand, tugged, rolled her eyes. “Come take a look at the thing.”

  “I guess I’d better get going, too,” Fox said when they were alone.

  “Why don’t you stay? We don’t have to . . . We can just sleep.”

  “Do I look that bad?”

  “You look a little tired yet.”

  “Too much sleep does that, too.”

  And sad, she thought. Even when he smiled, she could see the shadow in his eyes. “We could go out. I know this nice little bar across the river.”