The Pagan Stone Page 0,2
closer it got to July, the closer it got to the Seven, the more vivid and vicious the dreams. He'd rather be awake and doing than struggling with nightmares.
Or visions.
He'd come out of the woods that long-ago July with a body that healed itself, and with the gift of sight. Gage didn't consider the precognition wholly reliable. Different choices, different actions, different outcomes.
Seven years before, come July, he'd turned off the pumps at the Qwik Mart, and had taken the added precaution of locking Coach Moser in a cell. He'd never known, not for certain, if he'd saved his friends' lives by those actions, or if the dream had been just a dream.
But he'd played the odds.
He continued to play the odds, Gage supposed as he grabbed a pair of boxers in case he wasn't alone in the house. He was back, as he was every seventh year. And this time he'd thrown his lot in with the three women who'd turned his, Fox's, and Cal 's trio into a team of six.
With Cal engaged to Quinn Black-blond bombshell and paranormal writer-she often spent the night at Cal 's. Hence the inadvisability of wandering downstairs naked to make coffee. But Cal 's attractive house in the woods felt empty to Gage, of people, of ghosts, of Cal 's big, lazy dog, Lump. And that was all to the good, as Gage preferred solitude, at least until after coffee.
He assumed Cal had spent the night at the house the three women rented in town. As Fox had done the headfirst into love with the sexy brunette Layla Darnell, they might've bunked at the house, or Fox's apartment over his law offices. Either way, they'd stay close, and with Fox's talent for pushing into thoughts, they had ways of communicating that didn't require phones.
Gage put coffee on, then went out to stand on the deck while it brewed.
Leave it to Cal, he thought, to build his home on the edge of the woods where their lives had turned inside out. But that was Cal for you-he was the type who took a stand, kept right on standing. And the fact was, if country charm rang your bell, this was the spot for it. The green woods with the last of the spring's wild dogwoods and mountain laurel gleaming in slants of sunlight offered a picture of tranquility-if you didn't know any better. The terraced slope in front of the house exploded with color from shrubs and ornamental trees, while at the base the winding creek bubbled along.
It fit Cal to the ground, just as his lady did. For himself, Gage figured the country quiet would drive him crazy within a month.
He went back for the coffee, drank it strong and black. He took a second mug up with him. By the time he'd showered and dressed, restlessness nipped at him. He tried to quell it with a few hands of solitaire, but the house was too... settled. Grabbing his keys, he headed out. He'd hunt up his friends, and if nothing was going on, maybe he'd zip up to Atlantic City for the day and find some action.
It was a quiet drive, but then the Hollow was a quiet place, a splat on the map in the rolling western Maryland countryside that got itself juiced up for the annual Memorial Day parade, the Fourth of July fireworks in the park, the occasional Civil War reenactment. And, of course, the madness that flowed into it every seven years.
Overhead, the trees arched over the road; beside it, the creek wound. Then the view opened to rolling, rock-pocked hills, distant mountains, and a sky of delicate spring blue. It wasn't his place, not the rural countryside nor the town tucked into it. Odds were he'd die here, but even that wouldn't make it his. And still, he'd play the long shot that he, his friends, and the women with them would not only survive, but beat down the thing that plagued the Hollow. That they would end it this time.
He passed the Qwik Mart where foresight or luck had won the day, then the first of the tidy houses and shops along Main. He spotted Fox's truck outside the townhouse that held Fox's home and law office. The coffee shop and Ma's Pantry were both open for business, serving the breakfast crowd. A hugely pregnant woman towing a toddler stepped out of the bakery with a large white bag. The kid talked a mile a