“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. Nothing to do but get her home. She’d been raped right in front of his eyes, and there was nothing to say, nothing to do.
When they got to the house he didn’t help her inside. Don’t touch me, she’d said, so he only held the door, closed it after her. “Go upstairs, lie down or… I’ll call Quinn.”
“Yes, call Quinn.” But she didn’t go upstairs. Instead she walked back toward the kitchen. When he went in moments later, she had a glass of brandy in her shaking hands.
“She’s on her way. I don’t know what you need, Cybil.”
“Neither do I.” She took a long drink, then a long breath. “God, neither do I, but that’s a start.”
“I can’t leave you alone, I can’t give you that. But if you want to go up and lie down, I’ll stay outside the bedroom.” When she shook her head, everything about her seemed to tremble. “Goddamn it, goddamn it, scream, cry, throw something, punch me.”
She shook her head again, drank the rest of the brandy. “It wasn’t real, physically. But it felt real, physically, and every other way there is to feel. I’m not going to scream; I might never stop. I want Quinn, that’s all. I want Quinn.”
When the front door slammed open, Gage thought Quinn must have run every step. She was still running when she reached the kitchen. “Cyb.”
Cybil made a sound, a mix of moan and whimper that sliced straight through Gage’s belly. Even as she turned into Quinn’s arms, Quinn led her away. “Come on, baby, let’s go upstairs. I’ll take you upstairs.”
Quinn sent Gage one long grieving look, then they were gone. Gage picked up the glass, smashed it in the sink. Changed nothing, he thought, looking down at the shards. Just a broken glass, and that changed nothing, fixed nothing, helped nothing.
Cal came in to find him standing at the sink, staring out at the sunny afternoon. “What happened? After Quinn got your call she told me to call Layla, get her here, and she ran out. Cybil, is she hurt?”
“Christ knows.” His throat burned, Gage realized. Burned as if he’d swallowed flame. “It raped her. The son of a fucking bitch, and I didn’t stop it.”
Cal stepped up to him, laid a hand on his shoulder. “Tell me what happened.”
He began coldly, almost clinically, beginning with the blood on the walls. He didn’t stop or acknowledge Fox when Fox came in, but he picked up the beer Fox opened and set in front of him.
“About a mile, mile and a half from your place it stopped. It all went away. Except for Cybil. I don’t know if that kind of thing ever goes away.”
“You got her away,” Cal pointed out. “You got her back home.”
“Give me a medal and call me hero.”
“I know how you feel.” Fox met Gage’s hot and bitter look quietly. “It’s happened to Layla, so I know how you feel. Layla’s upstairs now. That’s going to help. And Cybil will get through it because that’s the way they’re made. We’ll get through it because it’s all we can do. We’ll all get through it because we’re going to make the bastard pay. That’s what the fuck we’re going to do.”
He held out a hand. After a moment, Gage gripped it, and Cal laid his over theirs. “We’ll make the bastard pay,” Gage repeated. “That’s what the fuck we’re going to do. I swear an oath.”
“We swear an oath,” Cal and Fox agreed, then Cal blew out a breath and rose.
“I’ll make her some tea. Tea’s the thing she likes.”
“Put some whiskey in it,” Fox suggested.
They put it together, and after some discussion and debate, put a pony of whiskey on the side. Gage carried it up, then hesitated outside the closed bedroom door. Before he could knock, Layla opened it, jumped a little.
“ Cal made this tea,” Gage began.
“Perfect. I was just coming down to do exactly that. Is that whiskey?”
“Yeah. Fox’s contribution.”
“Good.” Layla took the tray. Then studied Gage with weary eyes. “She’ll be all right, Gage. Thanks for bringing this up.” She closed the door and left him staring at the blank panel.
In the bathroom that linked the two bedrooms, Cybil lay in the tub. She’d had her jag, and that had left her exhausted. Oddly, the fatigue helped. Not as much as her friends, she thought, but some.
As did the hot water, and the fragrance and froth Layla had added to it. Quinn rose from the little stool beside the tub when Layla brought in the tea tray.
“That was really fast, like superpower fast.”
“Gage brought it up. Cal made it, so it’s probably just fine. Honey, there’s whiskey here. Do you want it in the tea?”
“Oh yeah. Thanks. God.” Shifting up, Cybil squeezed her burning eyes, breathed through the threatening flood of tears. “No, no, done with that.”
“Maybe not.” Layla doctored the tea. “I have a moment every now and again. It’s okay. We’re allowed.”
With a nod, Cybil accepted the tea. “It wasn’t the pain, though, oh Jesus, nothing’s ever hurt like that. It was feeling it in me, pounding and pushing, and not being able to stop it, or fight it. It was the boy. Why is that worse? That it made me see the boy while it-” She broke off, made herself drink the spiked tea.