The Hollow by Nora Roberts

Author:Nora Roberts
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Penguin Group USA, Inc.
Published: 2010-02-28T20:00:00+00:00

Eleven

FOX SPENT A LONG TIME READING, MAKING HIS own notes, checking back over specific passages Quinn had marked in the journal.

He juggled and mulled, and read more.

No guardian ever had succeeded in destroying the Dark. Some gave their lives in the attempt. Giles prepared to give his, as no other had before him.

No precedent for whatever mumbo-jumbo Dent had used that night in the woods, Fox considered. Which meant he couldn’t have been sure it would work. But he was willing to risk his life, his existence. Hell of a gamble, even considering he’d sent Ann, and the lives in her, to safety first.

He has gone beyond what has been done, what was deemed could be done. The blood of the innocent is shed, and so it will be, my love believes, dark against dark. And it will be my love who pays the price for this sin. It will be blood and fire, and it will be sacrifice and loss. Death on death before there is life, before there is hope.

Ritual magic, Fox decided, and used laundry and housekeeping chores as he had juggling. Blood magic. He glanced at the scar on his wrist. Then, and three hundred years later. Blood and fire at the Pagan Stone in Dent’s time, and blood, in a boyhood ritual in theirs. A campfire, the words he and Cal and Gage had written down to say together when Cal made the cuts.

Young boys—the blood of the innocent.

He toyed with various ideas and strategies as he thought of them. He climbed into bed late, on righteously clean sheets, to let himself sleep on it.

It came to him in the morning, while he was shaving. He hated shaving, and as he did many mornings, considered growing a beard. But every time he attempted one, it itched, and it looked stupid. Talk about pagan rituals, he mused as he drew blade through lather and over skin. Every freaking morning unless a guy wanted the hairy face, he had to scrape some sharp implement over his throat until—shit.

He nicked himself, as he nearly always did, pressed a finger to the wound that would close again almost before it bled. The sting came and went, and still he scowled in disgust at his blood-smeared fingertip.

Then stared.

Life and death, he thought. Blood was life, blood was death.

Dull horror embedded in his brain, in his heart. Had to be wrong, he told himself. Yet it made terrible sense. It was a hell of a strategy, if you’re willing to shed innocent blood.

What did it mean? he asked himself. What did it make Dent, if this had been his sacrifice?

What did it make all of them?

He twisted and turned it in his head as he made himself finish shaving, as he dressed and readied for the workday. He had the Town Council breakfast meeting, and as town lawyer, he couldn’t get out of it. Probably for the best, he decided as he grabbed his jacket, his briefcase. It was probably best to let this stew.

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