It sang, Cybil thought. In her head she heard the stone sing in thousands of pure voices. The flame that shot up from the center of the stone was blinding white. Beneath them, the ground began to shake, a sudden and furious violence.
“Don’t let go,” Cybil called out. What had she done? she thought as her eyes blurred with tears. Oh God, what had she done.
Looking through that white shaft of flame, she met Gage’s eyes. “You’re one smart cookie,” he said.
In the clearing, through the smoke, in the smoke, of the smoke, the black formed-and its hate of the light, its fury toward its radiance spewed into the air. Arms, legs, head-it was impossible to know-bulged. Eyes, eerily green, rimmed with red blinked open by the score. It grew, rolling and rising until it consumed both earth and sky. Grew until there was only the dark, the red walls of flames. And its hungry wrath.
She heard its scream of rage in her head, knew the others did, too.
I’ll rip it squalling from your belly and drink it like wine.
Now, Cybil thought, now it knew.
“It’s time. Don’t let go.” The stone shook under her hand, but her eyes never left Gage. “Don’t let go.”
“I don’t plan to.” He shot his hand through the fire, clutched the flaming bloodstone.
Then he turned away from her. Even then her face was in his mind. For one last moment, he stood linked with Cal and Fox. Brothers, he thought, start to finish. “Now or never,” he said. “Take care of what’s mine.”
And with the bloodstone vised in his fist, he leaped into the black.
“No. No, no, no.” Cybil’s tears fell through the flame to pool on the stone.
“Hang on.” Quinn clutched her hand tighter, locked an arm around her for support. On the other side, Layla did the same.
“I can’t see him,” Layla called out. “I can’t see him. Fox!”
He came to her, and with nothing left but instinct and grief, both he and Cal laid hands on the stone. The black roared, its eyes rolled with what might have been pleasure.
“It’s not going to take him, not like this.” Cal shouted over the storm of sound. “I’m going after him.”
“You can’t.” Cybil choked back a sob. “This is what he needs to finish it. This is the answer. Don’t let go, of the stone, of each other. Of Gage. Don’t let go.”
Through the rain sliced a bolt of light. And the world quaked.
IN THE HOLLOW, JIM HAWKINS COLLAPSED ON THE street. Beside him, Hawbaker shielded his eyes from a sudden burst of light. “Did you hear that?” Jim demanded, but his voice was swallowed in the din. “Did you hear that?”
They knelt in the center of Main Street, washed in the brilliance, and clutched each other like drunks.
At the farm, Brian held his wife’s hand as hundreds of people stood in his fields staring at the sky. “Jesus, Jo, Jesus. The woods are on fire. Hawkins Woods.”
“It’s not fire. Not just fire,” she said as her throat throbbed. “It’s… something else.”
At the Pagan Stone, the rain turned to fire, and the fire turned to light. Those sparks of light struck the black to sizzle, to smoke. Its eyes began to wheel now, not in hunger or pleasure, but in shock, in pain, and in fury.
“He’s doing it,” Cybil murmured. “He’s killing it.” Even through her grief, she felt stunning pride. “Hold on to him. We have to hold on to him. We can bring him back.”
SENSATION WAS ALL HE HAD. PAIN, SOMETHING SO far above agony it had no name. Ferocious cold bound by intolerable heat. Thousands of claws, thousands of teeth tore and ripped at him-each wound a separate, searing misery. His own blood burned under his broken skin, and its blood coated him like oil.
Around him, the dark closed in, squeezing him in a terrible embrace so he waited to feel his own ribs snap. In his ears sounds seemed to boil-screeches, screams, laughter, pleas.
Was it eating him alive? Gage wondered.
Still he crawled and shoved through the quivering wet mass, gagging on the stench, wheezing for what little dirty air was left to him. In the heat, what was left of his shirt smoked. In the cold, his fingers numbed.
This, he thought, was hell.
And there, up there, that pulsing black mass with its burning red eye, was the heart of hell.
With his strength draining, with it simply leaking out of him like water through a sieve, he struggled for another inch, still another. Dozens of images tumbled through his brain. His mother, holding his hand as they walked across a green summer field. Cal and Gage plowing toy cars through the sand of a sandbox Brian had built at the farm. Riding bikes with them along Main Street. Pressing bloody wrists together by the campfire. Cybil, casting that sultry look over her shoulder. Moving to him. Moving under him. Weeping for him.
Nearly over, he thought. Life flashing in front of my eyes. So fucking tired. Going numb. Going out. Nearly done. And the light, he mused, dizzy now. Tunnel of light. Fucking cliché.
Cards on the table now. He felt-thought he felt-the bloodstone vibrate in his hand. As he reared back, it shot fire through his clutched fingers.
The light washed white, blinding him. In his mind, he saw a figure. The man closed his hands over his. Eyes, clear and gray, looked into his.
It is not death. My blood, her blood, our blood. Its end in the fire.
Their joined hands plunged the stone into the heart of the beast.
In the clearing, the explosion knocked Cybil off her feet. The rush of heat rolled over her, sent her tumbling like a pebble in an angry surf. The light blazed like the sun, dazzling her eyes before throwing everything into sharp relief. For a moment the woods, the stone, the sky were a single sheet of fire, and in the next stood utterly still, like the negative of a photograph.
At the edge of the clearing two figures shimmered-a man and a woman locked in a desperate embrace. In a fingersnap they were gone, and the world moved again.
A rush of wind, a last throaty call of flame, the smoke that crawled along the ground, then faded as that ground burgeoned up, swallowed it. When the wind died to a quiet breeze, the fire guttering out, she saw Gage lying motionless on that ruined earth.
She pushed up to run to him, dropping down to lay her trembling fingers at his throat. “I can’t find a pulse!” So much blood. His face, his body looked as if he’d been torn to pieces.
“Come on, goddamn it.” Cal knelt, gripped one of Gage’s hands as Fox took the other. “Come back.”
“CPR,” Layla said, and Quinn was already straddling Gage, crossing her hands over his chest to pump.
Cybil started to tip his head back to begin mouth-to-mouth. And saw the Pagan Stone was still sheathed in fire, pure and white. There. She had seen him there.
“Get him on the stone. On the altar. Hurry, hurry.”
Cal and Fox carried him-bloodied and lifeless-to lay him on the simmering white flames. “Blood and fire,” Cybil repeated, kissing his hand, then his lips. “I had a dream-I got it wrong, that’s all. All of you on the stone, like I’d killed you, and Gage coming out of the dark to kill me. Ego, that’s all. Please, Gage, please. Just my ego. Not me, not about me. All of us around the stone, and Gage coming out of the dark after killing it. “Please come back. Please.”
She pressed her lips to his again, willing him to breathe. Her tears fell on his face. “Death isn’t the answer. Life’s the answer.”
She laid her lips on his again and his moved against hers.
“Gage! He’s breathing. He’s-”
“We’ve got him.” Cal squeezed his hand on Gage’s hand. “We’ve got you.”
His eyes fluttered open, and met Cybil’s. “I-I got lucky.”
On a shudder, Cybil laid her head on his chest, listened to the beat of his heart. “We all did.”
“Hey, Turner.” With his grin huge, Fox leaned over so Gage could see his face. “You owe me a thousand dollars. Happy fucking birthday.”