The Pagan Stone Page 0,118

played with this deck? Four aces. So it's lucky."

"I'll hold them, until after. I have to believe-you have to let me believe-you'll be able to give them to him yourself."

"Fair enough." He put his hands on her face, skimmed his fingers up into her hair, curled them there as he brought his lips down to hers. "You're the best thing that ever came my way." He kissed her hands, then looked into her eyes. "Let's get this done."

Step by step, Cybil told herself. The fire, the stone, the candles, the words. The circle of salt. Fox had turned on a little boom box so there was music. That, too, was a step in Cybil's opinion. We whistle while we work, you bastard.

"Tell me what you need from me." Quinn spoke quietly as she helped Cybil arrange more candles on the table of the stone.

"Believe we'll end it-that he'll end it. And live."

"Then I will. I do. Look at me, Cybil. No one, not even Cal knows me like you. I believe."

"So do I." Layla stepped up, laid her hand over Cybil's. "I believe it."

"There, you see." Quinn closed her hand over the two of theirs. "Three pregnant women can't be... Whoa, what was that?"

"It... moved." Layla glanced up at both of them. "Didn't it?"

"Shh. Wait." Spreading her fingers over the stone under Layla's and Quinn's, Cybil fought to feel. "It's heating, and it's vibrating. Like it's breathing."

"The first time Cal and I touched it together, it warmed," Quinn said. "And then we were slapped back a few hundred years. If we could focus, maybe there's something we're supposed to see."

Without warning, the wind lashed out, hard, slapping hands, and knocked all three of them to the ground.

"Show time," Fox called out as black, pulsing clouds rolled across the sky toward the setting sun.

IN TOWN JIM HAWKINS HELPED CHIEF HAWBAKER drag a screaming man into the Bowl-a-Rama. Jim's face was bloody, his shirt torn, and he'd lost one of his shoes in the scuffle out on Main Street. The alleys echoed with the screams, wails, the gibbering laughter of more than a dozen they'd already pulled in and restrained.

"We're going to run out of rope." Favoring his throbbing arm where the man who'd taught his son U.S. history sank his teeth, Hawbaker secured the rope and the now-giggling teacher to a ball return. "Christ Jesus, Jim."

"A few more hours." Air wheezed in and out of Jim's lungs as he dropped down, mopped at his streaming face. They had half a dozen people locked into the old library, a scattering of others secured in what Cal told him were other safe zones. "We've just got to hold things a few more hours."

"There are hundreds of people left in town. And a handful of us still in our right mind that aren't burrowed in somewhere, hiding. Fire at the school, another in the flower shop, two more residential."

"They got them out."

"This time." Outside something crashed. Hawbaker gained his feet, drew out his service revolver.

Inside Jim's chest, his already laboring heart sprinted. Then Hawbaker turned the gun, holding it butt first toward Jim. "You need to take this."

"Shit fire, Wayne. Why?"

"My head's pounding. Like something's beating on it trying to get in." As he spoke, Hawbaker wiped at his face, shiny with sweat. "If it does, I want you holding the weapon. I want you to take care of it. Take care of me if you have to."

Jim got slowly to his feet and with considerable care, took the gun. "The way I look at it? Anybody doing what we've been doing the last couple hours is bound to have the mother of all headaches. I've got some Extra-Strength Tylenol behind the grill."

Hawbaker stared at Jim, then burst out laughing, laughed until his sides ached. "Sure, hell. Tylenol." Laughed until his eyes ran wet. Until he felt human. "That'll do her." At the next crash, he looked toward the doors and sighed. "You'd better bring the whole bottle."

"IT BROUGHT THE NIGHT," CAL SHOUTED AS THE wind tore at them with frozen hands. Outside the circle, snakes writhed, biting, devouring each other until they burned to cinders.

"Among other things." Quinn hefted the machete, ready to slice at anything that got through.

"We can't move on it yet." Gage watched a three-headed dog pace the clearing, snapping, snarling. "It's trying to draw us out, to sucker us in."

"It's not really here." Fox shifted to try to block Layla from the worst of the wind, but it came