Blood Brothers Page 0,48

have pushed him to kiss her that way, but he knew what he'd felt as that something released its grip. He knew what he'd been feeling since she'd stepped out of her car at the top of his lane.

Plain and simple lust. Caleb Hawkins for Quinn Black.

"You camped here, the three of you, that night." Apparently taking Cal at his word about the safety of the area, Quinn moved easily around the clearing. "You-if I have any understanding of young boys-ate junk food, ragged on each other, maybe told ghost stories."

"Some. We also drank the beer Gage stole from his father, and looked at the skin mags he'd swiped."

"Of course, though I'd have pegged those activities for more like twelve-year-olds."

"Precocious." He ordered himself to stop thinking about her, to take himself back. "We built a fire. We had the boom box on. It was a pretty night, still hot, but not oppressive. And it was our night. It was, we thought, our place. Sacred ground."

"So your great-grandmother said."

"It called for ritual." He waited for her to turn to him. "We wrote down words. Words we made. We swore an oath, and at midnight, I used my Boy Scout knife to cut our wrists. We said the words we'd made and pressed our wrists together to mix the blood. To make us blood brothers. And hell opened up."

"What happened?"

"I don't know, not exactly. None of us do, not that we can remember. There was a kind of explosion. It seemed like one. The light was blinding, and the force of it knocked me back. Lifted me right off my feet. Screams, but I've never known if they were mine, Fox's, Gage's, or something else. The fire shot straight up, there seemed to be fire everywhere, but we weren't burned. Something pushed out, pushed into me. Pain, I remember pain. Then I saw some kind of dark mass rising out, and felt the cold it brought with it. Then it was over, and we were alone, scared, and the ground was scorched black."

Ten years old, she thought. Just a little boy. "How did you get out?"

"We hiked out the next morning pretty much as we'd hiked in. Except for a few changes. I came into this clearing when I was nine. I was wearing glasses. I was nearsighted."

Her brows rose. "Was?"

"Twenty-one hundred in my left eye, twenty-ninety in my right. I walked out ten, and twenty-twenty. None of us had a mark on him when we left, though Gage especially had some wounds he brought in with him. Not one of us has been sick a day since that night. If we're injured, it heals on its own."

There was no doubt on her face, only interest with a touch, he thought, of fascination. It struck him that other than his family she was the only one who knew. Who believed.

"You were given some sort of immunity."

"You could call it that."

"Do you feel pain?"

"Damn right. I came out with perfect vision, not X-ray. And the healing can hurt like a mother, but it's pretty quick. I can see things that happened before, like out on the trail. Not all the time, not every time, but I can see events of the past."

"A reverse clairvoyance."

"When it's on. I've seen what happened here on July seventh, sixteen fifty-two."

"What happened here, Cal?"

"The demon was bound under the stone. And Fox, Gage, and I, we cut the bastard loose."

She moved to him. She wanted to touch him, to soothe that worry from his face, but was afraid to. "If you did, you weren't to blame."

"Blame and responsibility aren't much different."

The hell with it. She laid her hands on his cheeks even when he flinched. Then touched her lips gently to his. "That was normal. You're responsible because, to my mind, you're willing to take responsibility. You've stayed when a lot of other men would've walked, if not run, away from here. So I say there's a way to beat it back where it belongs. And I'm going to do whatever I can to help you do just that."

She opened her pack. "I'm going to take photos, some measurements, some notes, and ask a lot of annoying questions."

She'd shaken him. The touch, the words, the faith. He wanted to draw her in, hold on to her. Just hold on. Normal, she'd said, and looking at her now, he craved the bliss of normality.

Not the place, he reminded himself, and stepped back. "You've got an hour. We start back