Untamed (House of Night, Book 4): A House of Night Novel

by P. C. Cast

  A little trickle of worry made me wake up all the way. “What do you mean?”

  “Exactly what I said. Do not let anything distract you from your purpose.”

  “You’re sounding like you won’t be around to keep me straight,” I said, feeling a flutter of panic start in my chest.

  Grandma came over and sat on the edge of my bed. “I plan to be around for a very long time, sweetheart, you know that. But I still want your promise. Think of it as helping an old woman sleep well.”

  I frowned at her. “You’re not an old woman.”

  “Promise me,” she insisted.

  “I promise. Now you promise me you won’t let anything happen to you,” I said.

  “I’ll do my best; I promise,” she said with a smile. “Turn your head, and I’ll brush your hair while you fall asleep. It will give you good dreams.”

  With a sigh I rolled over onto my side and fell asleep to the loving touch of my grandma and a softly hummed Cherokee lullaby.

  At first I thought the muffled voices were coming from the nanny cam, and not even fully awake, I sat up and reached for the little viewscreen. Holding my breath, I clicked to ON the video button, and then I let out a big sigh of relief when the solitary table came into view with its unchanged, shrouded occupant. I turned off the video and glanced over at Grandma’s now empty but tidily made-up bed. I smiled as I looked blearily around my room. Actually, Grandma had done a nice little bit of cleaning up before she’d gone out for her day of shopping and lunch. I looked down at Nala, who blinked at me sleepily.

  “Sorry. Must have been my overactive imagination making me hear things.” The full moon candle was still burning, though it was definitely smaller than when I’d fallen asleep. I glanced at my clock and smiled. It was only two o’clock in the afternoon. I had several good sleeping hours left before I had to wake up. I lay back down and pulled my quilt up around my neck.

  Muffled voices, this time accompanied by several soft knocks on my door were definitely not my imagination. Nala grumbled a sleepy mee-uf-ow, which I couldn’t help but agree with.

  “If it’s the Twins wanting to sneak off to a shoe sale, I’m going to strangle them,” I told my cat, who looked pleased at the prospect. Then I cleared the sleep out of my throat and called, “Yeah! Come on in.”

  When the door opened, I was surprised to see Shekinah standing there, along with Aphrodite and Neferet. And Aphrodite was crying. I sat bolt upright, brushing my crazy bedhead hair out of my face. “What’s wrong?”

  The three of them came into my room. Aphrodite walked over to me and sat on the bed beside me. I looked from her to Shekinah and finally to Neferet. I couldn’t read anything but sadness in any of their eyes, but I continued to stare at Neferet, wishing I could see past her careful façade—wishing everyone could.

  “What’s wrong?” I repeated.

  “Child,” Shekinah began in a sad, kind voice. “It’s your grandmother.”

  “Grandma! Where is she?” My stomach clenched when no one said anything. I grabbed Aphrodite’s hand. “Tell me!”

  “She was in a car wreck. A bad one. She lost control as she was driving down Main Street because . . . because a big black bird flew into her window. Her car left the road and hit a light pole head-on.” Tears were running down Aphrodite’s face, but her voice was steady. “She’s at St. John’s Hospital in intensive care.”

  I couldn’t say anything for a second. I just kept staring at Grandma’s empty bed and the little lavender-filled pillow she’d placed there. Grandma always surrounded herself with the scent of lavender.

  “She was going to the Chalkboard for lunch. She told me so last night just before—” I broke off, remembering how Grandma and I had been talking about her going to the Chalkboard for lunch just before I opened the curtains to find the horrible Raven Mocker. It had been listening to us, and it had known exactly where Grandma was going today. Then it had been there to run her off the road and cause her accident.

  “Just before what?” To the uninformed observer, Neferet’s voice would have seemed concerned—that of a friend and mentor. But when I looked up into her emerald eyes, I saw the cold calculation of an enemy.

  “Just before we went to bed.” I was trying hard not to show how much Neferet disgusted me—how truly vile and twisted I knew she was. “That’s how I know what she was doing driving that way. She told me what she was going to be doing today while I slept.” I looked away from Neferet and spoke to Shekinah instead. “I need to go to her.”

  “Of course you do, child,” Shekinah said. “Darius is waiting with a car.”

  “May I go with her?” Aphrodite asked.

  “You already missed all of your classes yesterday, and I don’t—”

  “Please,” I interrupted Neferet, appealing directly to Shekinah. “I don’t want to be alone.”

  “Don’t you agree that family is more important than academics ?” Shekinah said to Neferet.

  Neferet hesitated just for a second. “Yes, of course I do. I was just concerned about Aphrodite falling behind.”

  “I’ll take my homework with me to the hospital. I won’t fall behind.” Aphrodite gave Neferet a big reassuring smile that was as fake as Pamela Anderson’s boobs.

  “Then it is decided. Aphrodite will accompany Zoey to the hospital, and Darius will look after the both of them. Take your time there, Zoey. And be sure to let me know if there is anything the school can do for your grandmother,” Shekinah said kindly.

  “Thank you.”

  I didn’t so much as glance at Neferet as the two of them left my room.

  “Fucking bitch!” Aphrodite said, glaring at my closed door. “Like she’s ever been concerned about me falling behind in anything! She just hates it that the two of us are friends.”

  Okay . . . okay. I have to think. I have to go to Grandma, but I have to think and make sure everything is taken care of here, first. I have to remember my promise to Grandma.

  I wiped tears from my face with the back of my hand and rushed over to my dresser, pulling out jeans and a sweatshirt. “Neferet hates that we’re friends because she can’t get inside our heads. But she can get inside Damien, Jack, and the Twins’ heads, and I can promise you she’ll be sniffing around them today.”

  “We have to warn them,” Aphrodite said.

  I nodded. “Yes, we do. This nanny cam thing won’t reach all the way to St. John’s, will it?”

  “Probably not. I think the range is only a few hundred yards.”

  “Then while I’m getting dressed, take it to the Twins’ room. Tell them what’s happened, and also tell them to warn Damien and Jack about Neferet.” Then I took a deep breath and added, “Last night, there was a Raven Mocker clinging to my window.”

  “Oh my Goddess!”

  “It was horrible.” I shuddered. “Grandma blew crushed turquoise at it, and I had wind help her out, and that made it disappear, but I don’t know how long it had been listening to us.”

  “That’s what you started to say. The Raven Mocker knew your grandma was going to the Chalkboard.”

  “It caused her accident,” I said.

  “It or Neferet,” she said.

  “Or the two of them together.” I went to my bedside table and grabbed the nanny cam monitor. “Get this to the Twins. Wait.” I stopped her before she’d left the room. I went to Grandma’s blue overnight bag and search through the zippered compartment that she’d left open. Sure enough, just inside it was a deer hide pouch. I opened it up to double-check and then, satisfied, I handed it to Aphrodite. “This is more turquoise dust. Have the Twins split it with Damien and Jack. Tell them it’s powerful protection, but we don’t have much of it.”

  She nodded. “Got it.”

  “Hurry. I’ll be ready to go when you get back.”

  “Zoey, she’s going to be okay. They said she’s in intensive care, but she had her seat belt on and she’s still alive.”

  “She has to be,” I told Aphrodite as my eyes fi
lled with tears again. “I don’t know what I’d do if she wasn’t okay.”

  The short ride to St. John’s Hospital was a silent one. It was, of course, an obnoxiously sunny day. So, even though we all had on sunglasses and the Lexus had heavily tinted windows, it was uncomfortable for us. (Well, us being Darius and me—Aphrodite looked like she was having a hard time not hanging out the window and basking in the sun.) Darius dropped us off in the ER drive-through and said he’d park the car and meet us in intensive care.

  Even though I hadn’t spent much time inside a hospital, the smell seemed to be an innate memory, and one that wasn’t positive. I really hated the antiseptic-covering-disease sense of it. Aphrodite and I stopped at the information desk, and a nice old lady in a salmon-colored smock pointed us to intensive care.

  Okay, it was really scary in intensive care. We hesitated, not sure whether we could actually go through the swinging double doors that had INTENSIVE CARE emblazoned in red across them. Then I remembered that they had my grandma in there, and I marched resolutely through the intimidating doors into Scaryville.

  “Don’t look,” Aphrodite whispered as I started to stumble because my eyes were automatically being drawn to the glass windows of the patient rooms. Seriously. The walls of the rooms weren’t walls at all. They were windows—so that everyone could gawk at the dying old people using potty pans and such. “Just keep walking to the nurses’ station. They’ll tell you about your grandma.”

  “How do you know so much about this stuff?” I whispered back.

  “My dad’s OD’ed twice and ended up here.”

  I gave her a shocked look. “Really?”

  She shrugged. “Wouldn’t you OD if you were married to my mom?”

  I suppose I would, but I thought it best not to say so. Plus, we’d come to the nurses’ station.

  “How may I help you?” said a blonde who was built like a brick.

  “I’m here to see my grandma, Sylvia Redbird.”

  “And you are?”

  “Zoey Redbird,” I said.

  The nurse checked a chart, and then she smiled at me. “You’re listed here as her next of kin. Just a moment. The doctor is with her now. If you wait in the family room just down the hall there, I’ll let him know you’re here.”

  “Can’t I see her?”

  “Of course you can, but the doctor needs to finish with her first.”

  “Okay. I’ll be waiting.” After I’d taken just a few steps, I stopped. “She’s not left alone, is she?”

  “No, that’s why all the rooms have windows for walls. None of the patients in intensive care are ever left alone.”

  Well, peeking through a window wasn’t going to be good enough for what was going on with Grandma. “Just be sure the doctor gets me right away, okay?”

  “Of course.”

  Aphrodite and I went to the family room, which was almost as sterile and scary as the rest of intensive care.

  “I don’t like it.” I couldn’t sit, so I paced back and forth in front of a really ugly blue-flowered love seat.

  “She needs more protection than nurses looking through a window every once in a while,” Aphrodite said.

  “Even before what’s happened recently, Raven Mockers had the ability to mess with old people who were on the verge of death. Grandma’s old, and now she’s—she’s . . .” I stumbled over my words, not able to speak the frightening truth.

  “She’s been hurt,” Aphrodite said firmly. “That’s all. She’s just been hurt. But you’re right. She’s vulnerable right now.”

  “Do you think they’ll let me call in a Medicine Man for her?”

  “Do you know one?”

  “Well, kinda. There’s this old guy, John Whitehorse, who’s been a friend of Grandma’s for a long time. She’s told me he’s an Elder. His number is probably in Grandma’s cell. I’m sure he’d know a Medicine Man.”

  “Might not hurt to try to get one here,” Aphrodite said.

  “How is she?” Darius asked as he strode into the family room.

  “We don’t know yet. We’re waiting for the doctor. We were just talking about maybe needing to call one of Grandma Redbird’s friends to get a Medicine Man in here to sit with her.”

  “Wouldn’t it be easier just to ask Neferet to come? She’s our High Priestess and also a Healer.”

  “No!” Aphrodite and I said at the same time.

  Darius frowned, but the doctor’s entrance saved us from having to explain further to the warrior.

  “Zoey Redbird?”

  I turned to the tall thin man and held out my hand. “I’m Zoey.”

  He took it and shook hands with me solemnly. His grip was firm, and his hands were strong and smooth. “I’m Dr. Ruffing. I’ve been taking care of your grandmother.”

  “How is she?” I was surprised I sounded so normal, because my throat felt like it was completely clogged with fear.

  “Let’s have a seat over here,” he said.

  “I’d rather stand,” I said. Then I tried to give him an apologetic smile. “I’m too nervous to sit.”

  His smile was more successful, and I was glad to see such kindness in his face. “Very well. Your grandmother has been in a serious accident. She sustained head injuries, and her right arm is broken in three places. The seat belt bruised her chest, and the airbags deploying burned her face, but both saved her life.”

  “Is she going to be okay?” I was finding it hard to speak above a whisper.

  “Her chances are good, but we’ll know more after the next twenty-four hours,” Dr. Ruffing said.

  “Is she awake?”

  “No. I’ve induced a coma so that—”

  “A coma!” I felt myself sway. I was suddenly flushed and hot, and there were bright little specks around the edges of my vision. Then Darius’s hand was under my elbow, and he was guiding me to a seat.

  “Just breathe slowly. Concentrate on catching your breath.” Dr. Ruffing was crouched in front of me, and he had my wrist between his large fingers, taking my pulse.

  “Sorry, sorry. I’m okay,” I said, wiping the sweat that was beading my forehead. “It’s just that a coma sounds so terrible.”

  “It’s actually not so bad. I’ve induced the coma to give her brain a chance to heal itself,” Dr. Ruffing said. “Hopefully, we’ll be able to control the swelling that way.”

  “And if you can’t control the swelling?”

  He patted my knee before he stood up. “Let’s just take this one step at a time—one problem at a time.”

  “Can I see her?”

  “Yes, but she needs to be kept quiet.” He started leading me toward the patients’ rooms.

  “Can Aphrodite come with me?”

  “Just one at a time right now,” he said.

  “It’s okay,” Aphrodite said. “We’ll be right here waiting for you. Remember—don’t be scared. No matter what, she’s still your grandma.”

  I nodded, biting the side of my cheek so that I didn’t cry.

  I followed Dr. Ruffing to a glass room not far away from the nurses’ station. We paused outside the door. The doctor looked down at me. “She’s going to be hooked up to a lot of machines and tubes. They look worse than they are.”

  “Is she breathing on her own?”

  “Yes, and her heartbeat is good and steady. Are you ready?”

  I nodded, and he opened the door for me. As I entered the room, I heard the distinctly frightening sound of bird wings.

  “Did you hear that?” I whispered to the doctor.

  “Hear what?”

  I looked into his completely guileless eyes and knew beyond any doubt that he had not heard the sound of the Raven Mockers’ wings.

  “Nothing, I’m sorry.”

  He touched my shoulder. “It’s a lot to take in, but your grandmother is healthy and strong. She has an excellent chance.”

  I walked slowly over to the side of her bed. Grandma looked so small and frail that I couldn’t keep the tears from slipp
ing from my eyes and washing down my cheeks.

  Her face was terribly bruised and burned. Her lip was torn, and she had stitches in it and in another place on her chin. Most of her head was covered by bandages. Her right arm was completely swathed in a thick cast that had weird metal screw things sticking out of it.

  “Do you have any questions I can answer?” Dr. Ruffing asked softly.

  “Yes,” I said without hesitating and without taking my eyes from Grandma’s face. “My grandma is a Cherokee, and I know she’d feel better if I called in a Medicine Man.” I did pull my gaze from Grandma’s broken face to look up at the doctor then. “I don’t mean to be disrespectful to you, and it’s not for the medicine part. It’s for the spiritual part.”

  “Well, I suppose you could, but not until later, when she’s out of intensive care.”

  I had to stifle the urge to scream at him, It’s while she’s in intensive care that she needs the Medicine Man!

  Dr. Ruffing was continuing to speak quietly, but he sounded very sincere. “You have to understand that this is a Catholic hospital, and we really only allow those—”

  “Catholic?” I interrupted, feeling a flood of relief. “So you’d allow a nun to sit with Grandma.”

  “Well, yes, of course. Nuns and priests often visit our patients.”

  I smiled. “Excellent. I know the perfect nun.”

  “Good, well, are there any other questions I can answer for you?”

  “Yeah, could you point me to a phone book?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  I don’t know how many hours passed. I’d sent Darius and Aphrodite back to school—under protest—but Aphrodite knew I needed her to be sure everything was okay there, so I didn’t have to worry about it while I was here, worrying about Grandma, and reminding her of that was how I finally got her to leave. And I promised Darius I wouldn’t leave the hospital unless I called him for a ride, even though the school was less than a mile down the street, and it would be mega-easy for me to walk back.

  Time passed weirdly in ICU. There were no outside windows and, except for the sci-fi thrums and beats and clicks of the hospital machinery, the rooms were dark and quiet. I imagined it was a kind of waiting room for death, which completely creeped me out. But I couldn’t leave Grandma. I wouldn’t leave her, not unless someone ready to battle demons would take my place. So I sat and I waited and I kept watch over her sleeping body as it fought to heal itself.