The Pagan Stone Page 0,16

better fit. Because she wanted a change of venue, she brought her laptop and the file of notes she'd printed out that dealt specifically with the bloodstone down to the kitchen. With the back door and windows open to the spring air, she made iced tea, fixed a small bowl of salad. Over lunch, she reviewed her notes.

July 7, 1652. Giles Dent (the Guardian) wore the bloodstone amulet on the night Lazarus Twisse (the Demon) led the mob it had infected to the Pagan Stone in Hawkins Wood, where Giles had a small cabin. Prior to that night, Dent had spoken of the stone, and shown it to Ann Hawkins, his lover and the mother of his triplet sons (who would be born on 7/7/1652). Ann wrote of it, briefly and cryptically, in the journals she kept after Dent sent her away (to what would become the O'Dell farm) in order to birth their sons in safety.

When next documented, the stone had been divided into three equal parts, and was clutched in Cal Hawkins's, Fox O'Dell's, and Gage Turner's fists, after they had performed their blood brother ritual, at the Pagan Stone at midnight on their shared tenth birthday (7/7/1987). The ritual-blood ritual-freed the demon for a period of seven days, every seven years, during which time it infected certain people in Hawkins Hollow, said infection causing them to perform acts of violence, even murder.

However, as the demon was freed, the three boys gained specific powers of self-healing and psychic gifts. Weapons.

Cybil nodded at the word she'd underscored. "Yeah, these are weapons, these are tools that kept them alive, kept them in the fight. And those weapons sprang from, or are certainly connected to, the bloodstone."

She reviewed her notes on Ann Hawkins's journal entry about bringing three back to one, and her conversations-such as they'd been-with Cal, with Layla. One into three, three into one, Cybil mused and found herself mildly annoyed Ann hadn't elected to appear to her.

She thought she'd like to interview a ghost.

She began to type her thoughts, using the stream-of-consciousness method that served her best, and could and would be refined later. From time to time she paused to make a quick handwritten note to herself on her pad, on some point she wanted to dig into later, or a reference area that needed a closer look.

When she heard the front door open, she kept working-thought fleetingly: Quinn's back early. Even when the door slammed, sharp as a shot moments later, she didn't stop the work. Wedding tension, she supposed.

But when the door behind her slammed, and the thumb bolt on the lock snicked, it got her attention. She saved the work-it was second nature to save the work, and her mind barely registered the automatic gesture. Over the sink, the window slid down, the slow movement somehow more threatening than the slammed door.

She could hurt it, she reminded herself, as she rose to sidestep to the knife block on the counter. They'd hurt it before. It felt pain. Drawing the chef's knife out of the block, she promised herself if it was in the house with her, she would damn well cause it some pain. Still, her instincts told her she'd do better outside than locked in. She reached for the thumb bolt.

The shock ripped up her arm, had her loosing a breathless scream as she stumbled back. On a sudden, thunderous burst, the kitchen faucet gushed blood. She stepped toward the phone-help, should she need it, was only two minutes away. But when she reached for the phone, a second, more violent shock jolted her.

Scare tactics, she told herself as she began to edge out of the kitchen. Trap the lone woman in the house. Make a lot of noise, she added when the booming shook the walls, the floor, the ceiling.

She saw the boy through the living room window. Its face was pressed against it. It grinned.

I can't get out, but it can't get in, she thought. Isn't that interesting? But as she watched, it crawled up the glass, across it, down, like some hideous bug.

And the glass bled until it was covered with red, and with the buzzing black flies that came to drink.

They smothered the light until the room, the house, was dark as pitch. Like being blind, she thought as her heart began to buck and kick. That's what it wanted her to feel. It wanted to claw through her to that old, deep-seated fear. Through the booming, the buzzing,