She crawled toward him, and the worst of his fears broke away when he found her hand. When their fingers linked, the light burst again with a sound terrible as a scream. Fire engulfed the Pagan Stone, sheathed it as leather sheathed a blade. In a deafening roar the flame geysered up toward the cold, watching moon. And it flew to ring the clearing in a writhing curtain of fire. In its savage light, Fox saw the others, sprawled on, kneeling on the ground.

All of them, all of them trapped inside a circling wall of flame while in its center, the Pagan Stone spewed more.

Together, he thought as the vicious heat slicked his skin with sweat.

Live or die, it would be together. With his hand locked on Layla's, he pulled them both across the clearing. Then her arm was around him, and they were pulling each other. Cal gripped his forearm, dragged him forward. He met Gage's eyes. With the air burning, they once again clasped hands.

Together, Fox thought, as the deadly walls of fire edged closer. "For the innocent," Fox gasped out against the smoke coating his throat. The fire, blinding bright, ate across the ground. There was nowhere to go and, he knew, only moments left. He pressed his cheek to Layla's. "What we did, we did for the innocent, for each other, and f.u.c.king A, we'd do it again."

Cal managed an exhausted laugh, brought Quinn's hand to his lips.

"f.u.c.king A."

"f.u.c.king A," Gage agreed. "Might as well go out with a bang." He jerked Cybil against him, covered her mouth with his.

"Well, h.e.l.l, we might as well try to get through it." Fox blinked his stinging eyes. "No point in just sitting here getting toasted when we could ... It's dying back."

"Busy here." Gage lifted his head, scanned the clearing. His smile was both grim and satisfied. "I'm a h.e.l.l of a good kisser."

"Idiot." Cybil shoved him back, pushed up to her knees. Flames retreated toward the stone, began to slide up it. "It didn't kill us."

"Whatever we did must've been right." With dazzled eyes, Layla stared as the fire poured itself back into the bowl, shimmered gold. "I think what we did here, especially, finding each other, staying together."

"We didn't run." Quinn rubbed her filthy cheek against Cal's shoulder.

"Any sensible person would have, but we didn't run. I'm not sure we could have."

"I heard you," Layla said to Fox. "Live or die, it was going to be together."

"We swore an oath. Me, Cal, Gage when we were ten. The six of us tonight. We swore an oath. The fire's out." He managed to gain his feet.

"I guess we'd better go take a look." When he turned to the stone, he was struck speechless.

The candles were gone, as was the bowl. The Pagan Stone stood in the moonlight, unmarred. In its center the bloodstone lay, whole.

"Jesus Christ." Cybil choked the words out. "It worked. I can't believe it worked."

"Your eyes." Fox whipped around to Cal, waved a hand in front of his face. "How's the vision?"

"Cut it out." Cal slapped the hand aside. "It's fine. It's just fine, good enough to see three's back into one. Nice job, Cybil."

They walked toward it, and much as they had during the ritual, formed a circle around the stone on the stone. "Okay, well." Quinn moistened her lips. "Somebody's got to pick it up-meaning one of the guys because it's theirs."

Before he could lift his hand to point at Cal, both Cal and Gage pointed at Fox. "d.a.m.n it." He rubbed his hands on his jeans, rolled his shoulders, reached out.

His head fell back, his body convulsed. And as Layla grabbed him, he laughed like a loon. "Just kidding."

"G.o.dd.a.m.n it, Fox!"

"A little levity, that's all." He scooped the stone into his hand. "It's warm. Maybe from the scary magic fire, or maybe it just is. Is it glowing? Are the red splotches glowing?"

"They are now," Layla murmured.

"It ... it doesn't understand this. It doesn't know this. I can't see ..."

Fox swayed, the world rocked around him. Then Layla gripped his hand, and it steadied again. "I'm holding its death."

Nudging by Gage, Cybil edged closer. "How, Fox? How is that stone its death?"

"I don't know. It holds all of us now. You know, from what we did. Our blood is what fused it. And this is part of what can-will-end it. We have the power to do that. We had it all along."

"But it was in pieces," Layla finished. "Until now. Until us-all of us."

"We did what we came to do." Reaching out, Quinn brushed her fingertips over the stone. "And we lived. Now we have a new weapon."

"Which we don't know how to use," Gage pointed out.

"Let's just get it home, find the safest place to keep it." Cal looked around the clearing. "I hope n.o.body had anything important in their pack, because they're incinerated. Coolers, too."

"There go my Nutter b.u.t.ters." Fox took Layla's hand, kissed the wounded palm. "Wanna take a walk in the moonlight?"

"I'd love to." Could there be a better time, she thought. Could there be a more perfect time? "Good thing I left my purse at Cal's. Which reminds me. Cal, I've got the keys in there, but I'd like to hang on to them if it's okay with you and your father."

"No problem."

"What keys?" Fox asked as he rubbed some soot off her face. "To the shop on Main Street. I needed them so Quinn and Cybil could look it over with me. It's all fine for you to look at the s.p.a.ce with carpenter eyes, or lawyer eyes, whichever, but if I'm going to open a boutique for women, I wanted women's eyes."

"You're-what?"

"But I am going to need you, and hopefully your father, to go through it with me. And I'm going to charm your father into an I'm-in-love-with- your-son discount. Hopefully a deep discount because of deep love."

Fussily, she brushed at the dirt coating his shirt. "And the fact that even with the loan-and I'm counting on you to put in a really good word for me at the bank-I'm going to be on a very tight budget."

"You said you didn't want it."

"I said I didn't know what I wanted. Now I do." Clear, green, amused, her eyes met his. "Did I forget to mention it?"

"Yeah, pretty much altogether."

"Well." She gave him a shoulder b.u.mp. "I've had a lot on my mind lately."

"Layla."

"I want my own." She tipped her head to his shoulder as they walked.

"I'm ready to go after what I want. After all, Jesus, if not now, when?

By the way, consider this my twoweeks' notice."

He stopped, took her face in his hands as the others trudged and limped by them. "Are you sure?"

"I'm going to be too busy supervising the remodeling, buying stock, fighting demons to manage your office. You'll just have to deal with it."

He touched his lips to her forehead, her cheeks, her mouth, then grinned at her. "Okay."

Exhausted, content, he walked with her behind the others on a path spattered with moonlight. They'd made magic tonight, he thought.

They'd chosen their path, and found their way.

The rest was just details.

Turn the page for a look at THE PAGAN STONE the final book in the Sign of Seven Trilogy Coming in December 2008 from Jove Books.

April 2001 Mazatlan, Mexico SUN STREAKED PEARLY PINK ACROSS THE SKY, splashed onto blue, blue water that rolled against white sand as Gage Turner walked the beach. He carried his shoes-the tattered laces of the ancient Nikes tied to hang on his shoulder. The hems of his jeans were frayed, and the jeans themselves had long since faded to white at the stress points. The tropical breeze tugged at hair that hadn't seen a barber in more than three months.

At the moment, he supposed he looked no more kempt than the scattering of beach b.u.ms still snoring away on the sand. He'd bunked on beaches a time or two when his luck was down, and knew someone would come along soon to shoo them off before the paying tourists woke for their room-service coffee.

At the moment, despite the need for a shower and a shave, his luck was up. Nicely up. With his night's winnings hot in his pocket, he considered upgrading his ocean-view room for a suite.

Grab it while you can, he thought, because tomorrow could suck you dry.

Time was already running out; it spilled like that white, sun-kissed sand held in a closed fist. His twenty-fourth birthday was less than three months away, and the dreams crawled back into his head. Blood and death, fire and madness. All of that and Hawkins Hollow seemed a world away from this soft tropical dawn.

But it lived in him.

He unlocked the wide gla.s.s door of his room, stepped in, tossed aside his shoes. After flipping on the lights, closing the drapes, he took his winnings from his pocket, gave the bills a careless flip. With the current rate of exchange, he was up about six thousand USD. Not a bad night, not bad at all. In the bathroom, he popped off the bottom of a can of shaving cream, tucked the bills inside the hollow tube.

He protected what was his. He'd learned to do so from childhood, secreting small treasures away so his father couldn't find and destroy them on a drunken whim. He might've flipped off any notion of a college education, but Gage figured he'd learned quite a bit in his not- quite twenty-four years.

He'd left Hawkins Hollow the summer he'd graduated from high school.

Just packed up what was his, stuck out his thumb, and booked.

Escaped, Gage thought as he stripped for a shower. There'd been plenty of work-he'd been young, strong, healthy, and not particular. But he'd learned a vital lesson while digging ditches, hauling lumber, and most especially during the months he'd sweated on an offsh.o.r.e rig. He could make more money at cards than he could with his back.

And a gambler didn't need a home. All he needed was a game.

He stepped into the shower, turned the water hot. It sluiced over tanned skin, lean muscles, through thick black hair in need of a trim. He thought idly about ordering some coffee, some food, then decided he'd catch a few hours' sleep first. Another advantage of his profession, in Gage's mind. He came and went as he pleased, ate when he was hungry, slept when he was tired. He set his own rules, broke them whenever it suited him.

n.o.body had any hold over him.

Not true, Gage admitted as he studied the white scar across his wrist.

Not altogether true. A man's friends, his true friends, always had a hold over him. There were no truer friends than Caleb Hawkins and Fox O'Dell.

Blood brothers.

They'd been born the same day, the same year, even-as far as anyone could tell-at the same moment. He couldn't remember a time when the three of them hadn't been ... a unit, he supposed. The middle-cla.s.s boy, the hippie kid, and the son of an abusive drunk. Probably shouldn't have had a thing in common, Gage mused as a smile curved his mouth, warmed the green of his eyes. But they'd been family, they'd been brothers long before Cal had cut their wrists with his Boy Scout knife to ritualize the pact.

And that had changed everything. Or had it? Gage wondered. Had it just opened what was always there, waiting?

He could remember it all vividly, every step, every detail. It had started as an adventure-three boys on the eve of their tenth birthday hiking through the woods. Loaded down with skin mags, beer, smokes-his contribution- with junk food and c.o.kes from Fox, and the picnic basket of sandwiches and lemonade Cal's mother had packed. Not that Frannie Hawkins would've packed a picnic if she'd known her son planned to camp the night at the Pagan Stone in Hawkins Wood.

All that wet heat, Gage remembered, and the music on the boom box, and the complete innocence they'd carried along with the Little Debbies and Nutter b.u.t.ters they would lose before they hiked out in the morning.

Gage stepped out, rubbed his dripping hair with a towel. His back had ached from the beating his father had given him the night before. As they'd sat around the campfire in the clearing those welts had throbbed.

He remembered that, as he remembered how the light had flickered and floated over the gray table of the Pagan Stone.

He remembered the words they'd written down, the words they'd spoken as Cal made them blood brothers. He remembered the quick pain of the knife across his flesh, the feel of Cal's wrist, of Fox's as they'd mixed their blood.

And the explosion, the heat and cold, the force and fear when that mixed blood hit the scarred ground of the clearing.

He remembered what came out of the ground, the black ma.s.s of it, and the blinding light that followed. The pure evil of the black, the stunning brilliance of the white.

When it was over, there'd been no welts on his back, no pain, and in his hand lay one third of a bloodstone. He carried it still, as he knew Cal and Fox carried theirs. Three pieces of one whole. He supposed they were the same.

Madness came to the Hollow that week, and raged through it like a plague, infecting, driving good and ordinary people to do the horrible.

And for seven days every seven years, it came back.

So did he, Gage thought. What choice did he have?

Naked, still damp from the shower, he stretched out on the bed. There was time yet, still some time for a few more games, for hot beaches and swaying palms. The green woods and blue mountains of Hawkins Hollow were thousands of miles away, until July. He closed his eyes, and as he'd trained himself, dropped almost instantly into sleep.

In sleep came the screams, and the weeping, and the fire that ate so joyfully at wood and cloth and flesh. Blood ran warm over his hands as he dragged wounded to safety. For how long? he wondered. Where was safe? And who could say when and if the victim would turn and become the attacker?

Madness ruled the streets of the Hollow.

In the dream he stood with his friends on the south end of Main Street, across from the Qwik Mart and its four gas pumps. Coach Moser, who'd guided the Hawkins Hollow Bucks to a championship football season Gage's senior year, gibbered with laughter as he soaked himself, the ground, the buildings with the flood of gas from the pumps.

They ran toward him, the three of them, even as Moser held up his lighter like a trophy, as he splashed in the pools of gas like a boy in rain puddles. They ran even as he flicked the lighter.

It was flash and boom, searing the eyes, bursting the ears. The force of heat and air flung him back so he landed in a bone-shattering heap. Fire, blinding clouds of it, spewed skyward as hunks of wood and concrete, shards of gla.s.s, burning twists of metal flew.

Gage felt his broken arm try to knit, his shattered knee struggle to heal with pain worse than the wound itself. Gritting his teeth, he rolled, and what he saw stopped his heart in his chest.

Cal lay in the street, burning like a torch.

No, no, no, no! He crawled, shouting, gasping for oxygen in the tainted air. There was Fox, facedown in a widening pool of blood.

It came, a black smear on that burning air that formed into a man. The demon smiled. You don't heal from death, do you, boy?

Gage woke, sheathed in sweat and shaking. He woke with the stench of burning gas scoring his throat.

Time's up, he thought.

He got up, got dressed. Once dressed, he began to pack for the trip back to Hawkins Hollow. It had been the Pagan Stone for hundreds of years, long before three boys stood around it and spilled their blood in a bond of brotherhood, unwittingly releasing a force bent on destruction ...