He saw the shock in her eyes, heard it in her quick gasp. Once again, his fingers played lightly over her skin. “Seduction shouldn't be predictable. You think you know.” His mouth took hers again in a long, drugging kiss. “But you don't. You won't.”
His hand tightened on her wrists, a kind of warning while the kiss shimmered like silk. He felt her melt into it, degree by degree, that lovely body yielding, those lovely limbs going limp. So he shot his hand between her legs and drove her to a fast, almost brutal peak and muffled her shocked cries with his mouth.
“I want you in ways you can't imagine.”
Her breath shuddered out; her eyes stayed on his. “Yes, I can.”
And he smiled. “Let's find out.”
He whipped her around so she was forced to brace her hands against the door, then fist them there as he did things to her body, to her mind, things that pushed her past desperation into surrender, then ripped her back again. Then he slowed, and once again he soothed, and he lifted her into his arms. At the bed she would have turned into him, curled into him in absolute bliss, but he pinned her beneath him.
“Not quite finished.”
“Oh God.” She shuddered when he lowered his head to flick his tongue over her nipple. “Do we have a crash cart?”
His lips curved against her breast. “I'll bring you back.” And he took her hungrily into his mouth.
She shivered under him, and she gave. She yielded under him, and she surrendered. Her body lifted, held trembling before it fell again. And always, always, he knew she was with him, bound with him, need fused to need. She was strength and beauty, beyond any he'd thought to possess, and she was with him.
When he was inside her again, hard against soft, he knew her blood pounded as his did. Knew when she said his name, they were lost. Lost together.
She floated, what else could she do but float on the warm lake of pleasure? No stress, no fatigue, no fears for tomorrow. Exhaustion was bliss, she thought. Gliding on it, she opened her eyes, and found him watching her.
She had enough energy to smile. “If you're even thinking about going again, you must've suffered brain damage the last round.”
“It was a knockout.” How could he explain what happened inside him when they came together? He didn't have the words. Instead, he lowered his head to touch his lips to hers. “I thought you were asleep.”
“Better than asleep. In the lovely, lovely between.”
He took her hand, and she saw what was in his eyes. “Oh. Butâ”
“When better?” he asked her. “What's more relaxing than sex? What releases more positive energy, if it's done right? And, sweetheart, we did it right. But we both have to want to try it.”
She let herself breathe. He was right. Linking now when they couldn't be any closer in mind and body might break through the block that had frustrated them the last several attempts.
“All right.” She shifted so they lay on the bed face-to-face, heart-to-heart. “The same way we were going to try it earlier. Focusing on you, Cal, Fox, then the stone.”
Her eyes. He could see himself in them. Feel himself in them. He let himself sink, then drew himself out until he stood in the clearing with the Pagan Stone. Alone.
He thought the air smelled of herâsecret, seductive. The sunlight glowed gold; the trees massed with thick green. Cal moved to his side, fully formed, his gray eyes quiet, serious. And an ax held in his hands. Fox flanked him, face fierce. He held a glistening scythe.
For a moment they stood, only the three, facing the stone atop the stone.
Then hell came.
The dark, the wind, the blood-soaked rain attacked like animals. Fire roared in bellowing walls and sheathed the stones like blazing skin. He knew, in that instant, the war they'd believed they'd fought for twenty-one years had been only skirmishes, only feints and retreats.
This was war.
Soaked with sweat and blood, the women fought with them. Blades and fists and bullets whipping through a sea of screams. The iced air choked with smoke as they fell, fought back. Something sliced across his chest like claws, ripping flesh, spilling more blood. His blood stained the ground, and sizzled.
Midnight. He heard himself think it. Nearly midnight. And smearing his hands over the wound, he reached for Cybil. With tears glistening in her eyes, she gripped his hand, reached for Cal.
In turn, one by one, they joined until their hands, their blood, their minds, their will joined as well. Until the six were one. The ground split, the fire ripped its way closer. And the mass of black took form. Once again, he looked into Cybil's eyes, and taking what he found there, he broke the chain.
Reaching into the flames, he pulled the burning stone out with his bare hand. Closing it into his fist, he leaped, alone, into the black.
Into the belly of the beast.
“Stop, stop, stop.” Cybil knelt beside him on the bed, beating her hands on his chest. “Come back, come back. Oh God, Gage, come back.”
Could he? Could anyone come back from that? That cold, that burn, that pain, that terror? When he opened his eyes, it rolled through him, all of it, to center like a swarm of wasps in his head.
“Your nose is bleeding,” he managed.
She made a sound, something between a sob and a curse before she slid off the bed, stumbled to the bath. She came back with a cloth for each of them, pressed her own against her bone-white face. “Where . . . Where's that spot?” He fumbled for the accupressure points on her hand, her neck.
“Doesn't matter.”
“It does if your head feels like mine. Might be sick.” He laid still, closed his eyes. “Really hate being sick. Let's just take a minute.”
Shaking, shaking, she lay beside him, wrapped close. “I thought . . . I didn't think you were breathing. What did you see?”
“That it's going to be worse than anything we've come up against, anything we imagined we would. You saw it. I felt you right there with me.”
“I saw you die. Did you see that?”
The bitterness in her tone surprised him enough for him to risk sitting up. “No. I took the stone, I've seen that before. The blood, the fire, the stone. I took it, and I went right into the bastard. Then . . .” He couldn't describe what he'd seen, what he'd felt. He didn't want to. “That's it. You were punching me and telling me to come back.”
“I saw you die,” she repeated. “You went into it, and you were gone. Everything went mad. Everything was mad, but it got worse. And the thing, form after form after form, twisting, screaming, burning. I don't know how long. Then, the light was blinding. I couldn't see. Light and heat and sound. Then silence. It was gone, and you were lying on the ground, covered with blood. Dead.”
“What do you mean it was gone?”
“Did you
hear
what I said. You were dead. Not dying, not unconscious or floating in some damn limbo. When we got to you, you were dead.”
“We? All of you?”
“Yes, yes, yes.” She covered her face with her hands.
“Stop it.” He yanked them back down. “Did we kill it?”
Her tearful eyes met his. “We killed you.”
“Bullshit. Did we destroy it, Cybil? Did taking the bloodstone into it destroy it?”
“I can't be sureâ” But when he gripped her shoulders, she closed her eyes, dug for strength. “Yes. There was nothing left of it. You took it back to hell.”
The light on his face burned like the fires that waited there. “Now we know how it's done.”
“You can't be serious. It
killed
you.”
“We saw Fox dead on the side of the road. Right now he's on the lumpy pullout sleeping like a baby or banging Layla. Potential, remember. It's one of your favorites.”
“None of us are going to let you do this.”
“None of you makes decisions for me.”
“Why does it have to be you?”
“It's a gamble.” He shrugged. “It's what I do. Relax, sugar.” He gave her arm an absent stroke. “We've made it this far. We'll hash it out some yet, look at the angles, options. Let's get some sleep.”
“Gage.”
“We'll sleep on it, kick it around tomorrow.”
But as he lay in the dark, knowing she lay wakeful beside him, Gage had already made up his mind.
Seventeen
HE TOLD THEM IN THE MORNING, AND TOLD THEM straight-out. Then he drank his coffee while the arguments and the alternatives swarmed around him. If it had been any of them proposing to jump into the mouth of hell without a parachute, Gage thought, he'd be doing the same. But it wasn't any of them, and there was a good reason for that.
“We'll draw straws.” Fox stood scowling, hands jammed in his pockets. “The three of us. Short straw goes.”
“Excuse me.” Quinn jabbed a finger at him. “There are six of us here. We'll
all
draw straws.”
“Six and a fraction.” Cal shook his head. “You're pregnant, and you're not playing short straw with the baby.”
“If the baby's father can play, so can its mother.”
“The father isn't currently gestating,” Cal shot back.
“Before we start talking about stupid straws, we need to
think
.” At her wit's end, Cybil whirled around from her blind stare out of the kitchen window. “We're not going to stand around here saying one of us is going to die. Gee, which one should it be? None of us is willing to sacrifice one for the whole.”
“I agree with Cybil. We'll find another way.” Layla rubbed a hand over Fox's arm to soothe him. “The bloodstone is a weapon, and apparently
the
weapon. It has to get inside Twisse. How do we get it inside?”
“A projectile,” Cal considered. “We could rig up something.”
“What, a slingshot? A catapult?” Gage demanded. “A freaking cannon? This is the way. It's not just about getting it into Twisse, it's about
taking
it there. It's about jamming it down the bastard's throat. About bloodâour blood.”
“If that's true, and without more we can't say it is, we're back to straws.” Cal shoved his own coffee aside to lean toward Gage. “It's been the three of us since day one. You don't get to decide.”
“I didn't. It's the way it is.”
“Then why you? Give me a reason.”
“It's my turn. Simple as that. You jammed a knife into that thing last winter, showed us we could hurt it. A couple months later, Fox showed us we could kick its ass back and live through it. We wouldn't be sitting here, this close to ending it, if the two of you hadn't done those things. If these three women hadn't come here, stayed here, risked all they've risked. So it's my turn.”
“What next?” Cybil snapped at him. “Are you going to call time-out?”
He looked at her calmly. “We both know what we saw, what we felt. And if we all look back, step by step, we can see this one coming. I was given the future for a reason.”
“So you wouldn't have one?”
“So, whether I do or not, you do.” Gage shifted his gaze from Cybil to Cal. “The town does. So wherever the hell Twisse plans to go next when he's done here has a future. I play the cards I'm dealt. I'm not folding.”
Cal rubbed the back of his neck. “I'm not saying I'm on board with this, but say I amâwe areâthere's time to think of a way for you to do this without dying.”
“I'm all for that.”
“We pull you out,” Fox suggested. “Maybe there's a way to pull you out. Get a rope on you, some sort of harness rig?” He looked at Cal. “We could yank him back out.”
“We could work with something like that.”
“If we could get Twisse to take an actual form,” Layla put in. “The boy, the dog, a man.”
“And get it to hold form long enough for me to ram the stone up its ass?”
“You said down his throat.”
Gage grinned at Layla over his coffee. “Metaphorically. I'm going to check with my demonologist friend, Professor Linz. Believe me, I'm not going into this unprepared. All things being equal, I'd like to come out of this alive.” He shifted his gaze to Cybil. “I've got some plans for after.”
“Then we'll keep thinking, keep working. I've got to get into the office,” Fox said, “but I'm going to cancel or reschedule all the appointments and court dates I can for the duration.”
“I'll give you a ride in.”
“Why? Shit, right. Napper, truck. Which means I've got to swing by and see Hawbaker again this morning and check with the mechanic about my truck.”
“I want in on the first part,” Gage said. “I'll follow you in. I can run you by the mechanic if you need to go.”
Cal got to his feet. “We're going to figure this out,” he said to the group at large. “We're going to find the way.”
With the men gone, the women sat in the kitchen.
“This is so completely stupid.” Quinn rapped the heel of her hand on the counter. “Draw straws? For God's
sake
. As if we're going to say sure, one of us falls on the damn grenade while the rest of us stand back and twiddle our thumbs.”
“We weren't twiddling,” Cybil said quietly. “Believe me. It was horrible, Q. Horrible. The noise, the smoke, the
stink
. And the cold. It was everything, this thing. It was mammoth. No evil little boy or big, bad dog.”
“But we fought it. We hurt it.” Layla closed a hand around Cybil's arm. “If we hurt it enough, we'll weaken it. If we weaken it enough, it can't kill Gage.”
“I don't know.” She thought of what she'd seen, and of her own research. “I wish I did.”