The Pagan Stone Page 0,58

remain in exactly the same place day after day, year after year. Are you going to want your laptop?"

"Yeah." He'd never considered a woman applying lipstick particularly sexy. Before. "If it gets too irritating working with you and the blonde, I'll set up somewhere."

"Gather it up then. The train's about to pull out." While he did she took out blusher, stroked a bit over her cheeks. In seconds, she'd done something with a minute mirror and a pencil to soot up her eyes. As they walked toward the door she spritzed something from a silver tube about the size of his thumb onto her throat. And that scent, that autumn woods scent reached out and grabbed him by his.

So he grabbed her, rubbed his lips over hers. "We could blow off the day." And had the satisfaction of feeling her heart kick against his.

"Tempting. Seriously tempting, but no. I'd have to call Quinn and explain I'm not picking her up because I've decided spending the day naked in bed with you is more important than trying to find the way to destroy a demon who wants us all dead. Not that she wouldn't understand, but still."

She opened the door, stepped out on the deck.

The boy crouched on the roof of her car, a grinning gargoyle. As it flashed its teeth, Gage pushed Cybil behind him. "Get back in the house."

"Absolutely not."

With a flourish, the boy raised its hands, then chopped them down like a mad conductor. The dark fell; the wind rose.

"It's just show," Cybil shouted. "Like the walls upstairs."

"More than that this time." He could feel it in the bite of the wind. Inside in surrender, Gage thought, or out here, in challenge? If he'd been alone, it wouldn't be a question. "My car's faster."

"All right."

They started forward, pushing into the wind that shoved them back. Gage kept his eyes on the boy as it whirled in wild circles over the slope of hill, the curve of road. Debris flew, chunks of garden mulch, falling twigs, and peppering gravel. He used his body in an attempt to shield her from the worst of it. Then the boy leaped down.

"Fuck the whore while you can." The words were only uglier when shouted in that young, childish voice. "Before long, you'll watch as I make her scream in pleasure and pain. Want a taste, bitch?"

Crying out in shock, Cybil doubled over, clutching herself. Gage made the choice quickly, and letting her fall to her knees, he pulled out his knife. On a howling laugh, the boy flipped out of range in a gleeful handspring. Gage gripped Cybil's arm, wrenched her to her feet. One look at her face had her horror, her helplessness stabbing through him like his own knife.

"Get in the car. Get in the damn car." He shoved her inside, fighting off the rage as the thing in a boy's form pumped its hips obscenely. The rage pushed at him, screamed at him to go after the thing, to hack and slice. But she was curled into a ball inside the car, shaking.

Gage pulled himself in, fought to slam the door against the wind. Ruthlessly now, he shoved Cybil back, yanked the seat belt around her. Shock and pain turned her face to white marble.

"Hold on. Just hold on."

"It's in me." She gasped it out while her body jerked. "It's in me."

Gunning the engine, Gage shot into reverse, then whipped the wheel. The car bucked in the force of the wind as he sped over the bridge toward the road. Blood spat out of the sky, splatting the windshield, hissing like acid on the roof, the hood. The boy's head appeared at the top, its eyes slanted like a snake's. As it ran its tongue through the blood, Cybil moaned.

It laughed when Gage flipped the wipers on full speed, pumped the washer to spray. Laughed as though it was a fine, fine joke. Then it squealed, either with humor or with surprise, when Gage wrenched the car into a vicious three-sixty. The windshield erupted with fire.

He cut his speed rather than risk a wreck, blocked out everything but the need for a steady hand on the wheel. Slowly, the dark ebbed, the fire sputtered.

When the sun flashed on again with a gentle spring breeze, he pulled to the side of the road. She slumped back in the seat, staring up as her shoulders shook with each breath.

"Cybil."

She cringed away. "Please don't. Don't touch me."

"Okay." Nothing to say, he thought.