* * *
Roger slowed, turning onto the bumpy dirt lane that led past the base of the hill called Craigh na Dun.
“I don’t see anything,” he said. He hadn’t spoken in so long that the statement came out gruffly, sounding belligerent.
“Well, of course not,” Brianna said impatiently. “You can’t see the stone circle from here.”
Roger grunted in reply, and slowed the car still more. Obviously, Brianna’s nerves were stretched, but so were his own. Only Claire seemed calm, unaffected by the growing air of tension in the car.
“She’s here,” Claire said suddenly. Roger slammed on the brakes so abruptly that both Claire and her daughter pitched forward, thumping into the back of the seat in front of them.
“Be careful, you idiot!” Brianna snapped furiously at Roger. She shoved a hand through her hair, pushing it off her face with a quick, nervous gesture. A swallow ran visibly down her throat as she bent to peer through the dark window.
“Where?” she said.
Claire nodded ahead to the right, keeping her hands shoved deep into her pockets.
“There’s a car parked, just behind that thicket.”
Roger licked his lips and reached for the door handle.
“It’s Edgars’s car. I’ll go and look; you stay here.”
Brianna flung her door open with a squeal of metal from the unoiled hinges. Her silent look of scorn made Roger flush red in the dim glow of the dome light overhead.
She was back almost before Roger had gotten out of the car himself.
“No one there,” she reported. She glanced up at the top of the hill. “Do you think…?”
Claire finished buttoning up her coat, and stepped into the darkness without answering her daughter’s question.
“The path is this way,” she said.
She led the way, perforce, and Roger, watching the pale form drift ghostlike up the hill ahead of him, was forcibly reminded of that earlier trip up a steep hill, to St. Kilda’s kirkyard. So was Brianna; she hesitated and he heard her mutter something angrily under her breath, but then her hand reached for his elbow, and gave it a hard squeeze—whether as encouragement or as a plea for support, he couldn’t tell. It encouraged him, in any case, and he patted the hand and tugged it through the curve of his arm. In spite of his general doubts, and the undeniable eeriness of the whole expedition, he felt a sense of excitement as they approached the crest of the hill.
It was a clear night, moonless and very dark, with no more than the tiny gleams of mica flecks in the starlight serving to distinguish the looming stones of the ancient circle from the night around them. The trio paused on the gently rounded top of the hill, huddling together like a misplaced flock of sheep. Roger’s own breath sounded unnaturally loud to himself.
“This,” said Brianna through her teeth, “is silly!”
“No, it isn’t,” said Roger. He felt suddenly breathless, as though a constricting band had squeezed the air from his chest. “There’s a light over there.”
It was barely there—no more than a flicker that promptly disappeared—but she saw it. He heard the sharp intake of her breath.
Now what? Roger wondered. Ought they to shout? Or would the noise of visitors frighten their quarry into precipitate action? And if so, what action might that be?
He saw Claire shake her head suddenly, as though trying to dismiss a buzzing insect. She took a step back, away from the nearest stone, and blundered into him.
He grabbed her by the arm, murmuring, “Steady, steady there,” as one might to a horse. Her face was a dim blur in the starlight, but he could feel the quiver that ran through her, like electricity through a wire. He stood frozen, holding her arm, stiff with indecision.
It was the sudden stink of petrol that jerked him into motion. He was vaguely conscious of Brianna, head flung up as the smell met her nostrils, turning toward the north end of the circle, and then he had dropped Claire’s arm, and was through the surrounding bushes and the stones themselves, striding toward the center of the ring, where a hunched black figure made an inkblot on the lighter darkness of the grass.
Claire’s voice came from behind him, strong and urgent, shattering the silence.
“Gillian!” she called.
There was a soft, sudden whoosh, and the night lit up in brilliance. Dazzled, Roger fell back a pace, stumbling and dropping to his knees.
For a moment, there was nothing but the sharp pain of light on his retinas, and the blaze of brightness that hid everything behind it. He heard a cry beside him, and felt Brianna’s hand on his shoulder. He blinked hard, eyes streaming, and sight began to return.
The slim figure stood between them and the fire, silhouetted like an hourglass. As his sight cleared, he realized that she was dressed in a long, full skirt and tight bodice—the clothes of another time. She had turned at the call, and he had a brief impression of wide eyes and fair, flying hair, lifted and tossed in the hot wind of the fire.
He found time, struggling to his feet, to wonder how she had dragged a log of that size up here. Then the smell of burned hair and crackled skin hit his face like a blow, and he remembered. Greg Edgars was not at home tonight. Not knowing whether blood or fire was the necessary element, she had chosen both.
He pushed past Brianna, focused only on the tall, slim girl before him, and the image of a face that mirrored his own. She saw him coming, turned and ran like the wind for the cleft stone at the end of the circle. She had a knapsack of rough canvas, slung over one shoulder; he heard her grunt as it swung heavily and struck her in the side.
She paused for an instant, hand outstretched to the rock, and looked back. He could have sworn that her eyes rested on him, met his own and held them, beyond the barrier of the fire’s blaze. He opened his mouth in a wordless shout. She whirled then, light as a dancing spark, and vanished in the cleft of the rock.
The fire, the body, the night itself, disappeared abruptly in a shriek of blinding noise. Roger found himself facedown in the grass, clutching at the earth in frantic search of a familiar sensation to which to anchor his sanity. The search was vain; none of his senses seemed to function—even the touch of the ground was insubstantial, amorphous as though he lay on quicksand, not granite.
Blinded by whiteness, deafened by the scream of rending stone, he groped, flailing wildly, out of touch with his own extremities, conscious only of an immense pull and the need to resist it.
There was no sense of time passing; it felt as though he had been struggling in emptiness forever, when he at last became aware of something outside himself. Hands that gripped his arms with desperate strength, and the smothering softness of breasts thrust against his face.
Hearing began gradually to return, and with it the sound of a voice calling his name. Calling him names, in fact, panting between phrases.
“You idiot! You…jerk! Wake up, Roger, you…ass!” Her voice was muffled, but the sense of it reached him clearly. With a superhuman effort, he reached up and got hold of her wrists. He rolled, feeling ponderous as the start of an avalanche, and found himself blinking stupidly at the tear-streaked face of Brianna Randall, eyes dark as caves in the dying light of the fire.
The smell of petrol and roasting flesh was overwhelming. He turned aside and gagged, retching heavily into the damp grass. He was too occupied even to be grateful that his sense of smell had returned.
He wiped his mouth on his sleeve and groped unsteadily for Brianna’s arm. She was huddled into herself, shaking.
“Oh, God,” she said. “Oh, God. I didn’t think I could stop you. You were crawling straight to it. Oh, God.”
She didn’t resist as he pulled her to him, but neither did she respond to him. She merely went on shaking, the tears running from wide, empty eyes, repeating “Oh, God,” at intervals, like a broken record.
“Hush,” he said, patting her. “It will be all right. Hush.” The spinning sensation in his head was easing, though he still felt as though he had been split into several pieces and scattered violently among the points of the compass.
There was a faint, crackling pop from the darkening object on the ground, but beyond that and Brianna’s mechanical ejaculations, the stillness of the night was returning. He put his hands to his ears, as though to still the echoes of the killing noise.
“You heard it, too?” he asked. Brianna went on crying, but nodded her head, jerky as a puppet.
“Did your—” he began, still laboriously assembling his thoughts piecemeal, then snapped upright as one came to him full-formed.
“Your mother!” he exclaimed, gripping Brianna hard by both arms. “Claire! Where is she?”
Brianna’s mouth dropped open in shock, and she scrambled to her feet, wildly scanning the confines of the empty circle, where the man-high stones loomed stark, half-seen in the shadows of the dying fire.
“Mother!” she screamed. “Mother, where are you?”