The Hollow

Chapter Seventeen

SHE WAS WET AND COLD, SO FOX CARRIED LAYLA to the bed, wrapped the blanket around her. A bruising scrape marred her temple, and would undoubtedly ache when she came to. No blood, no breaks as far as he could see on a quick and cursory look. Getting her warm and dry were priorities, he thought. Then he'd make certain, then he'd look closer, look deeper. He'd barely had time to check her pulse before Quinn and Cal rushed in.

"Is Layla- Oh, God."

"Fainted, I think. I think she just fainted," Fox told Quinn when she dropped down beside him. "Maybe hit her head. Something happened when she was in the shower. I don't think there's anything there now, but Cal-"

"I'll check."

"You said... Sorry." Quinn mopped at her own tears. "Really bad day. You said you heard her screaming."

"Yeah, I heard her." Her terror had been so huge, he thought as he pushed her wet hair away from her face. It had reached out and gripped him by the throat, had filled his head with her screams. "I heard all of you."

"What?"

"I guess our Bat Signal worked. It was jumbled, but I heard all of you. She needs a towel. Her hair's wet."

"Here." Cal handed him one. "Bathroom's clear."

"Cybil, Gage?"

Cal squeezed the hand Quinn held out to him. "I'll go check on them. Stay here."

"What happened to you?"

Fox shook his head. "Later." He lifted Layla's head to spread the towel under her hair. "She's coming around. Layla." Relief gushed through him when her eyelids fluttered. "Come on back, Layla. It's all right. It's over."

She surfaced with a wheezing gasp, with her hands slapping wildly, her eyes wide with horror.

"Stop. Stop." He did all he could think to do. He wrapped himself around her, pushed calm into her mind. "It's over. I've got you."

"In the shower."

"Gone. They're gone." But he could see in her mind how they'd come out of the drain, slid across the tiles.

"I couldn't get out. The door wouldn't open. They were everywhere, they were all over me." Shuddering, shuddering, she burrowed against him. "They're gone? You're sure?"

"I'm sure. Are you hurt? Let me see."

"No, I don't think... My head a little. And-" She focused on him. "Your face! Oh God, your hand. It's swollen."

"It's healing. It's okay." And the healing pain was nothing against the overwhelming relief. "It looks like Twisse took a shot at all of us at once."

Quinn nodded. "He hit me and Cal. Grand slam."

"More a clean sweep," Cybil said from the doorway. "He hit me and Gage, too. Six for six. Fox, why don't you go on downstairs? Your pals are still pretty shaken. We'll help Layla get dressed, then we'll be down in a few."

She was ice pale, he noted. It was the first time he'd seen Cybil that far off her stride in the months he'd known her. Quinn was already rising, going to her. Because the room became essentially and completely female again, Fox decided it was probably best for each sector to retreat to its particular corner, take a deep breath before mixing again.

"All right." But he touched Layla's face, kissed her gently. "I'll be right downstairs."

TIMES LIKE THESE, FOX THOUGHT, CALLED FOR whiskey. He found the single, unopened bottle of Jameson among the wine, and figured it had been Cal's contribution to the liquor supply. He got glasses, ice, and poured a generous two fingers in each.

"Good thinking." Cal downed half of his in one swallow, and still his eyes remained haunted. "You healed up. You looked bad when I saw you outside."

"Spiders. Lots of them. Big bastards."

"Where?"

"My office."

"The town was gone for me." Cal studied the whiskey, swirled it. "I came out of the center with Lump, and it was gone. Like a bomb had gone off. Buildings leveled, fire and smoke. Bodies. Jesus, pieces of them everywhere." He took another, slower sip. "We'll need to write this down, get everybody's deal."

"Oh yeah, that'll help." Gage downed a single, bitter swallow. "It got us, big-time. Now we're going to take minutes of the meeting."

"You got better?" Cal shot back. "You got the final solution, bro? Because if you do, don't hold back."

"I know we're not going to talk it to death. And sitting around taking notes doesn't mean dick unless you're writing a book. That's your lady's business, not mine."

"So what are you going to do? Take a walk? You're good at that. Are you just going to catch a plane to wherever the hell and come back for the finale? Or do you want to just skip that part this year?"

"I come back to this hellhole because I swore on it." Rage whirling around him like wind, Gage moved in on Cal. "If I hadn't, it could blow to hell as far as I'm concerned. It doesn't mean a damn to me."

"Not much does."

"Stop!" Fox's voice snapped out as he wedged between them. "It doesn't do any good to start swiping at each other."

"Maybe we should make peace signs and daisy chains."

"Look, Gage. If you want out, there's the goddamn door. And if all you can do is kick him while he's down," Fox added, swinging around to Cal, "don't let the same goddamn door hit you on the ass on your way out."

"I'm not kicking anyone, and who the hell asked you?"

Raised voices had Cybil quickening her steps. She took stock of the scene in the kitchen quickly, and stepped into it before someone threw a punch. "Well, this is productive."

She walked right in the middle of three furious men, snatched the glass out of Gage's hand, drank. And her voice held the faintest edge of boredom. "At least someone had the good sense to get out the whiskey before the testosterone attack. If you boys want to fight, go outside and beat on each other. You'll heal quickly enough, but the furniture in here won't."

Fox settled down first. He set the whiskey he no longer wanted aside, gave a sheepish shrug. "They started it."

Appreciating him, Cybil cocked a brow. "And do you do everything they do? Jump off bridges, play with matches? Let's try this instead. I'm going to put food and drink together to address that basic human need. The comfort it brings should help us get through telling each other what happened."

"Gage doesn't want to talk," Cal said.

"Neither do I." She looked at Gage as she spoke. "But I'm going to. It's another basic human need, and shows us we've got that all over the Big Evil Bastard." Smiling with lips she'd painted a defiant coral before coming down, she shook back her hair. "Why doesn't somebody order pizza?"

IT LACKED EFFICIENCY, BUT THERE WAS SOMETHING more comforting about gathering in the living room rather than sitting at the dining room table like sensible adults. Cybil set out a platter of antipasto while they waited for pizza.

Fox sat on the floor at Layla's feet. "Ladies first," he suggested. "Quinn?"

"I went out for ice cream, and since I was going to eat ice cream, I went for the power walk first." Her fingers twisted the chunky silver chain around her neck. "But I kept ending up in the same place, on the same corner. It didn't matter which direction I took. I couldn't find my way, couldn't get home." She gripped Cal's hand, pressed her forehead to his shoulder. "I couldn't find you. It went pitch dark. There was no one, and I couldn't get back."

"Everything was gone for me." Sliding an arm around her shoulders, Cal gathered her close. "The town was destroyed, everyone dead, blown to pieces. I ran here, but there was nothing. Just a smoking hole in the ground. I don't know where I was going. Looking for you. Because I couldn't, I wouldn't believe... Then I saw you, and Fox."

"I saw you first," Quinn said to Fox. "It was like you came through a wall of water. You were blurred at first, and your footsteps-you were running-but the sound was smothered. Then it all cleared. You grabbed my hand, and it all cleared.

"That has to mean something, don't you think?" She glanced around as she asked. "I was heading for hysterical. I think I'd been there and back at least once already, and was making the return trip. Then I saw Fox, and when he took my hand everything went back the way it's meant to be. Then Cal was coming."

"You weren't there, either of you. Nothing was. Then you were." Cal shook his head. "It was almost like switching a channel. Like a click. You were bleeding," he said to Fox.

"Spiders," Fox said and told them. "I didn't notice anything off about the town when I got out. I saw you on the corner, Quinn. Looking lost, I guess. I'd heard you- sensed you, and the others. Like a bad connection, fuzzy and weak. But I could hear Layla screaming. I heard that loud and clear."

"You were two blocks away," Quinn pointed out.

"I could hear her screaming," he repeated. "Right up until I got into the house. Then it stopped. It must've been when you passed out."

"It was after Quinn went out. She went for ice cream because I was upset." Her gaze flicked to Fox, then back to the fingers linked in her lap. "I decided to take a shower while she was gone. I felt it first, sliding over my foot. They were coming out of the drain. Snakes. With the screams I let out, I'm surprised they didn't hear me in the next county."

"I didn't hear you," Cybil told her. "I was right downstairs and I didn't hear a thing."

"They kept coming." When her breath wanted to snag, Layla eased it out slowly, deliberately. "I got out of the shower, but they were on the floor, too. Coming up out of the sink. Not real, that's what I kept trying to tell myself, but I couldn't-I didn't keep my head. When the door wouldn't open, I went a little crazy, beating at them with a towel, with my hands. The window was too small, and it wouldn't open anyway. I must've fainted, because I don't remember anything else until Fox was there. I was in bed, and Fox and Quinn were there."

"Your passing out might be part of the reason it stopped," Cybil speculated. "There's no maintaining an illusion when you're unconscious."

"What happened to you?" Layla asked her.

"I couldn't see. Gage and I were in the kitchen, and my eyes stung for a minute, then went blurry. Then everything went gray. I went blind."

"Oh, Cyb."

She smiled at Quinn. "Q knows that's a small, personal terror of mine. My father lost his sight in an accident. He was never able to adjust, accept. Two years later he killed himself. So blindness holds a particular terror for me. You were there," she said to Gage, "then you weren't. I couldn't hear you, and I asked you to help me, but you didn't. I guess you couldn't."

She paused, but he said nothing. "I heard the front door slam open. I heard Fox. My vision started to clear, and then... you were there again." He'd held her, she thought. They'd held each other. "Where did you go, Gage? We need to know what happened to each one of us."

"I didn't go far. Back to the apartment where I used to live. Above the bowling alley."

At the knock on the door, Cal rose, but he kept his eyes on Gage's face. "I'll get that."

"There was a physical thing with you," Gage went on. "With your eyes. The irises, the pupils were covered, the whole of your eyes were white. And no, I couldn't help. I stepped toward you, and right into the apartment."

Cal came back, set the pizza boxes on the table. "Were you alone?"

"At first. I couldn't get the door open, the windows. That seems to be a recurring theme."

"Trapped," Layla murmured. "Everyone's afraid of being trapped, being locked in."

"I heard him coming. I knew-I know the sound of his feet on the stairs, when he's drunk, when he's not. He was, and he was coming. Then I was back in the kitchen."

"There's more. Why are you holding back?" Cybil demanded. "We all went through something."

"When I reached for the doorknob, it wasn't my hand. Not this hand." Gage held his up, turned it, studied it. "I saw myself in the mirror. I was about seven, maybe eight. Before that night at the Pagan Stone, younger than that. Before things changed. Before we changed. And he was drunk, and he was coming. Clear enough?"

In the silence, Quinn reached down for her tape recorder, ejected the tape, put in a fresh one. "This hasn't happened before, am I right on that? That all of you were affected at the same time, that so many were affected?"

"Dreams," Cal said. "The three of us have dreams, usually on the same night, not always about the same thing. That can happen weeks, even months before the Seven. But something like this, no. Not outside of those seven days."

"It went to a lot of trouble to get to us," Fox commented, "to cherry-pick our particular and specific fears."

"Why were you the only one who was hurt?" Layla demanded. "I felt them bite me, but I didn't have any bites when I came out of it. But you did. They're healed now, but you did."

"Maybe I let it in too far, and my own ability worked against me. Made my fear more real, more tangible. I don't know."

"It's possible." Quinn considered. "Could it have started with you? Given the timing, it could have started with you first. Used more, well, juice. Fed off that for the rest. Not just your fear, but your pain, too. It used the connections. You to Cal or me-one of us was probably next. Then Layla, then Cybil, and rounding it up with Gage."

"Like a current. The energy." Layla nodded. "Moving from one to the other. Fox weakened the current when he broke free. And back down the line. If that's the way it happened, it could be a kind of defense, couldn't it? Something we could use."

"Our energy against its energy." Quinn gave in and flipped open the pizza box. "Positive against negative."

"I think we'll need to do more than think of raindrops on roses." Cybil slid a slice out for herself. "And whiskers on kittens."

"While I doubt we're going to hear the guys do a chorus of 'Do-Re-Mi,' even if lives depend on it, roses and kittens are a springboard." Considering big trauma, Quinn treated herself to an entire slice. "If each of us has personal fears, don't we all have personal joys? Yes, yes, hokey, but not really over the top. Oh God, this is good. See, personal joy. Pepperoni pizza."

"That's not how Fox broke its hold," Layla pointed out. "I don't think he mentioned focusing on pizza or rainbows."

"Not entirely true." Because Lump's eyes filled with love, Fox peeled a piece of pepperoni off his slice, fed it to the dog. "I thought about how what was happening was bullshit. Not easy when hungry mutant spiders are crawling all over you."

"Eating here," Cal reminded him.

"But I thought more about how we were going to kick the Big Evil Bastard's ass. How we were going to end him. I kept thinking that, like I was telling him. Trash talking, lots of very foul language. That's a personal pleasure, on a very real level. And when those things started falling off me, thumping on the ground, I started feeling fairly perky. Not, the hills are alive, spinning around like a lunatic perky. But not half bad, considering."

"It's always worked that way for you. Once you figured it out," Cal added. "And it's worked for me, for Gage. We've been able to break down the illusions-when they are illusions. But I tried, and I couldn't this time."

"So you bought it."

"I-"

"You bought it, at least for a few minutes. Because it was too much, Cal. Everything that matters to you gone. Quinn, your family, us, the town. And just you left. You didn't stop it, so everyone and everything was gone, killed, destroyed. But you. It was too damn much," Fox repeated. "Those spiders weren't real, not all the way real. But I saw my hand after they had at me, and it was swollen to the size of a cantaloupe, and bleeding. The wounds were real, so I'm saying Twisse put a hell of a lot into this one."

"It's been over a week since the last incident. Also starting with you, Fox." Cybil laid a slice on a plate, walked it over to Gage. "It used Block's jealousy, his anger, maybe his guilt, fed off that, used that to infect him enough to have him attack you."

"So where did it get the extra amps for this?" Gage shrugged. "If that's the question, there are plenty of negative emotions running around this town, just like any place else."

"It's specific," Cal disagreed. "It was specific to Block. This was specific to us."

Cybil slid a glance toward Layla, but said nothing as she took her seat again.

"I was upset, and angry. So were you," Layla said to Fox. "We had... a disagreement."

"If it can cook up something like that every time one of us gets pissed off, we're toast," Gage decided.

"They were both upset." Quinn considered how best to phrase it. "With each other. That could factor. And it may be that when the emotions involved are particularly intense, when there's sexuality involved, it's more potent."

Gage lifted his beer. "Again. Toast."

"I happen to think intense human emotion, emotion that draws from a well of affection," Cybil added, "and good healthy sex, is a hell of a lot more potent than anything the son of a bitch can throw at us. That's not spinning in circles on a mountaintop naivete. It comes from studying human relationships and their power, and this particular situation specifically-and how it's come to us. How many times have the three of you had a scene like you did before in the kitchen?"

"What scene?" Quinn wanted to know.

"It was nothing," Cal muttered.

"You were in each other's faces, shouting obscenities, and about to come to blows. It was..." Cybil's smile was sly and just a little feline. "Stimulating. Countless times, I wager-want to take the bet?" she asked Gage. "Countless times, and I up my bet to wager several of them have resulted in fists in faces. But here you are. Here you are because at the core, you love each other. That's the base, and nothing changes it. It can't shake that base. It must beat its fists-if fists it has-at the barrier it can't pass. We're going to need that base, and we're going to need all those intense human emotions, especially if we're going to do the incredibly foolish and attempt a blood ritual."

"You've got something," Quinn stated.

"I think I do. I want to wait to hear back from a couple more sources. But yeah, I think I do."

"Spill!"

"For one thing, it means all six of us, and we'll have to go back to the source."

"The Pagan Stone," Fox said.

"Where else?"

LATER, CAL GRABBED A MOMENT ALONE WITH Quinn. He drew her into her bedroom, and with his arms around her, just breathed her in. "It was worse," he said quietly, "worse than it's ever been because for a while I thought I might have lost you."

"It was worse, because I couldn't find you." She tipped her head back, sank into the kiss with him. "It's harder when you love someone. It's better and it's harder, and it's pretty much everything."

"I want to ask you a favor. I want you to go away, just for a few days," he continued, talking fast. "A week, maybe two. I know you've got other writing projects you're squeezing in. Take a break, maybe go back home to-"

"This is my home now."

"You know what I mean, Quinn."

"Sure. And no problem." Her smile was sunny as June. "As long as you come with me. We'll have ourselves a little holiday. How's that?"

"I'm serious."

"So am I. I'll go if you go. Otherwise, you're going to want to drop this. Don't even think about picking a fight," she warned him. "I can practically see you trying it out in your head, calculating if you got me mad enough I'd walk. You can't. I won't." For emphasis, she put her hands on his cheeks, squeezed. "You're scared for me. So am I, just like I'm scared for you. It's all part of the package now."

"You could go buy a wedding dress."

"Now that's fighting dirty." But she laughed, kissed him hard. "I've already got some lines on that, thank you very much. Your mother and mine are bonding like Super Glue and... more Super Glue over wedding plans. Everything's under control. We had a bad day, Cal, but we came through it."

He drew her back, breathed her in once more. "I need to take a walk around town. I need to... I need to see it."

"Okay."

"I need to take a walk with Gage and Fox."

"I get it. Go on. Just come back to me."

"Every day," he told her.

WHEN HE GOT THEM OUTSIDE, CAL WALKED THE neighborhood first. The light was soft, easing in on evening. There were the houses he knew, the yards, the sidewalks. He walked by his great-grandmother's house, where his cousin's car sat in the drive, and flowers budded and bloomed along the walk.

There was the house of the girl he'd been crazy about when he'd been sixteen. Where was she now? Columbus? Cleveland? He couldn't quite remember where she'd gone, only that she'd moved away with her family in the fall of the year he'd turned seventeen.

After that Seven, when her father had tried to hang himself from the black walnut tree in their backyard. Cal remembered cutting the man down himself, and having no time for more, tying him to the tree with the hanging rope to hold him until the rage passed.

"You never did score with Melissa Eggart, did you, hot-shot?"

How like Gage to remember and to turn the memory into something normal. "I doubled. Was working my way up to stealing third. Then things got busy."

"Yeah." Gage slid his hands into his pockets. "Things got busy."

"I'm sorry about before. And you were right," he added to Fox. "It's stupid to swipe at each other."

"Forget it," Gage told him. "I've thought about walking plenty of times."

"Thinking and doing got miles between them." They turned, headed toward Main. "I wanted to punch something, and you were handy."

"O'Dell's handier, and he's used to getting punched." When there was no sarcastic rejoinder from Fox, Gage eyed him. He thought of the ways he could handle Fox's mood, and opted for what he did best. Needling him. "Are you having intense human emotions?"

"Oh, suck off."

"There he is." Gage swung an arm over Fox's shoulders.

"Punching you still isn't out of the question."

"If she was pissed at you," Cal said helpfully, "she's not now. Not after your white-charger routine."

"It's not about that. About being pissed, about saving the girl. It's about wanting and needing different things. Look, I'm heading home from here. I didn't shut anything down, lock anything up."

"We'll go with you, check it out."

"No, I got it. I've got some actual work to do. If anything else needs going over tonight, I'll crib off your notes. See you later."

"He's got it bad," Gage commented as they watched Fox head down Main. "Real bad."

"Maybe we should go with him anyway."

"No. We're not what he wants right now."

They turned, walking the opposite way as night crept closer.