by P. C. Cast
“Hey, uh, Stevie Rae. Is Damien okay?”
“Well, what do you think, Erik? His boyfriend who he loved just died in a real horrible way. No, he’s not okay. But he is sleepin’. Finally.”
“You know, you don’t have to be like that. I really am worried about him, and I cared about Jack, too.”
Stevie Rae took a good look at Erik. He did look like crap, which was totally unusual for pretty-boy Erik. And he’d obviously been crying. Then she remembered that he’d been Jack’s roommate, and also had been real sweet about standing up for Jack when that asshole Thor tried to pick on him for being gay. “Sorry,” she said, touching Erik’s arm. “I’m just upset ’bout all this, too. I got no reason to be a B to you. Here, I’ll start over.” She took a breath and smiled sadly. “Damien’s sleepin’ right now, but he’s not okay. He’ll be needin’ friends like you when he wakes up. Thanks for askin’ and thanks for bein’ here for him.”
Erik nodded and squeezed her hand briefly. “Thanks back at you. I know you don’t like me much, what with the stuff that went down between Zoey and me, but I really am Damien’s friend. Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help.” Erik paused, glancing up and down the hallway, as if to be sure they were alone, and then he took a step closer to Stevie Rae and lowered his voice. “Neferet had something to do with this, didn’t she?”
Stevie Rae’s eyes widened in surprise. “What makes you say that?”
“I know she’s not what she pretends to be. I’ve seen her be her real self, and it’s not pretty.”
“Yeah, well, you’re right. Neferet’s real self isn’t pretty. But just like me you saw that she was right in front of us when Jack died.”
“Still, you think she’s behind this.”
It wasn’t a question, but Stevie Rae nodded a silent yes answer.
“I knew it. This House of Night sucks. I was right to say yes to the L.A. House of Night.”
Stevie Rae shook her head. “So that’s it? That’s what you do when you know somethin’ evil is happening? You run away.”
“What can one vampyre do against Neferet? The High Council reinstated her; they’re on her side.”
“One vampyre can’t do much. A whole bunch of us joining together can.”
“A few kids and a vamp here and there? Against a powerful High Priestess and the High Council? That’s insanity.”
“No, what’s insanity is steppin’ aside and lettin’ the bad guys win.”
“Hey, I have a life waiting for me—a good one, with a kick-ass acting career, fame, fortune, all that stuff. How can you blame me for not wanting to get mixed up in the Neferet mess?”
“You know what, Erik? All I’m gonna say to you is this: evil wins when good folks do nothing,” Stevie Rae said.
“Well, I’m technically doing something. I’m leaving. Hey, did you ever think about this—what if all the good folks leave and evil gets bored playing all by itself and goes home, too?”
“I used to think you were the coolest guy I’d ever met,” she said sadly.
Erik’s blue eyes glinted with humor and he beamed his one-hundred-watt smile at her. “And now you know I am?”
“Nope. Now I know you’re a weak, selfish boy who’s gotten almost everything he ever wanted just ’cause of his looks. And that’s not cool at all.” She shook her head at his stunned look and began walking away. Over her shoulder she called back, “Maybe someday you’ll find somethin’ you care about enough to stand up for.”
“Yeah, and maybe someday you and Zoey will figure out it’s not really your job to save the world!” he shouted after her.
Stevie Rae didn’t so much as glance back at him. Erik was a tool. The Tulsa House of Night would be better without his weak butt dragging them down. The going was going to get really tough, and that meant the tough needed to get going—and the sissies needed to get gone. Just like John Wayne, it was time to rally the troops.
“And, hell no, it’s not weird that my troops include a Raven Mocker,” Stevie Rae muttered to herself as she hurried out to the parking lot and Z’s Bug. “I’m not really gonna rally him. I’m just gonna get info from him. Again.” Purposefully, she shut her mind to what had happened between her and Rephaim last time she’d “just needed information from him.”
“Hey, Stevie Rae, you and me gotta—”
Not pausing in her rush to the car, Stevie Rae held up a hand and cut Kramisha off. “Not now. I don’t have time.”
“I’m just sayin’ that—”
“No!” Stevie Rae shouted her frustration at Kramisha, who stopped and stared at her. “Whatever it is you want to be sayin’ to me, it can keep. I don’t like soundin’ mean to you, but I have things I have to do and exactly two hours and five minutes until the sun comes up to do them in.” Then she left Kramisha standing in her dust as she jogged the final few feet to the Bug, started it, put it into gear, and practically peeled out of the student parking lot.
It took her exactly seven minutes to get to the Gilcrease grounds. She didn’t drive the car up there. The ice storm had been cleaned up and the electric gate was working again, so everything was shut up tightly. Stevie Rae pulled the Bug off the side of the road behind a big tree. Automatically cloaking herself with the power she filtered from the earth, she went directly to the ramshackle mansion.
The door was no problem. No one had bothered to relock it yet. Actually, as she made her way through the old house and up to the rooftop, she detected very little change from the last time she’d been there.
“Rephaim?” she called his name. Her voice sounded eerie and too loud in the cold, empty night.
The door to the closet where he’d made his nest was open, but he wasn’t crouched within.
She went out onto the rooftop balcony. That, too, was empty. The entire place was deserted. But she’d known he wasn’t here since she’d stepped onto the museum grounds. Had Rephaim been here she would have felt him, just like she’d felt him earlier when he’d been at the House of Night, watching her. Their Imprint connected them—as long as it was there, unbroken, it would tie them together.
“Rephaim, where are you now?” she asked the silent sky. And then Stevie Rae’s thoughts slowed and rearranged themselves, and she had the answer; she’d had it all along. All she’d had to do was to get her pride and her hurt and her anger out of the way and the answer was there, waiting. Their Imprint connected them—as long as it was there, unbroken, it would tie them together. She didn’t have to find him. Rephaim would find her.
Stevie Rae sat down in the middle of the roof and faced north. She drew a long, deep breath and let it out. With her next breath she concentrated on drawing in all of the scents of the earth surrounding her. She could smell the cold dampness of the winter-bare boughs, the crispness of the frozen ground, the richness of the Oklahoma sandstone that littered the grounds. Drawing the earth’s strength with her breath, Stevie Rae said, “Find Rephaim. Tell him to come to me. Tell him I need him.” Then she released the earth power with her exhalation. Had her eyes been open, Stevie Rae would have seen the green glow that hovered around her. She would have also seen that as it rushed off into the night to do her bidding, it was shadowed by a scarlet glow.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Rephaim
He’d been circling the Mayo building, dreading landing and facing Kalona and Neferet, when he felt Stevie Rae’s call. He knew it was her instantly. He recognized the feel of the earth as the power lifted from the ground below and wrapped itself around the air currents to find him.
She calls you …
It was all the prompting Rephaim needed. No matter how angry she was at him. No matter how much she hated him—she was calling him. And if she called, he would answer. In his heart he knew, no matter what, he would always try to answer.
He remembered Stevie Rae’s last words to him.… When you decide your heart matters as much to you as it does to me, come find me again. It should be easy. Just follow your heart …
Rephaim shut off the part of his mind that told him he couldn’t be with her—couldn’t care about her. They’d been apart more than a week. He’d felt every day of that week as if it had been an eon in itself. How had he ever thought he could stay completely away from her? His very blood cried to be with her. Even facing her anger was better than nothing. And he needed to see her. Needed to find a way to warn her about Neferet. And about Father, too.
“No!” he shouted into the wind. He couldn’t betray his father. But I can’t betray Stevie Rae, either, he thought frantically. I’ll find a balance. I’ll find a way. I must. Not sure exactly what he was going to do, Rephaim stilled his seething thoughts and concentrated on following the ribbon of glowing green back to Stevie Rae as if it were his lifeline.
Stevie Rae
She was waiting for him with such concentrated intensity that Stevie Rae had no trouble sensing when Rephaim drew near the Gilcrease. When he dropped gracefully from the sky she was standing, looking up, watching for him. She’d meant to be totally cool. He was the enemy. She was supposed to remember that. But the instant he landed their eyes locked and, breathlessly, he said, “I heard your call. I came.”
That was all it took. Just the sound of his wonderful, familiar voice. Stevie Rae hurled herself into his arms and buried her face in the feathers at his shoulder. “Ohmygoodness, I’ve missed you so much!”
“I’ve missed you, too,” he said, holding her tightly to him.
They stood there like that, trembling in each other’s arms, for what seemed to her a very long time. Stevie Rae drank in the scent of him—that amazing mixture of immortal and mortal blood that beat through his body—that linked them in Imprint and, therefore, also beat throughout her own body.
And then, quite suddenly, like it had occurred to each of them at once that they couldn’t do what they were doing, Stevie Rae and Rephaim broke the embrace and took a step away from each other.
“So, uh, you’ve been okay?” she asked him.
He nodded. “I have. And you? You’re safe? You weren’t hurt when Jack was killed today?”
“How did you know Jack was killed?” Her voice was sharp.
“I felt your sadness. I came to the House of Night to be sure you were okay. That’s when I saw you with your friends. I-I heard the boy crying for Jack.” He hesitated over the words, trying to choose them carefully, honestly. “That and your sadness told me he was dead.”
“Do you know anything about his death?”
“Maybe. What kind of boy was Jack?”
“Jack was good and sweet, and might have been the best of all of us. What do you know, Rephaim?”
“I know why he died.”
“Tell me.”
“Neferet owed Darkness a life debt in payment for entrapping my father’s immortal soul. The debt had to be paid by the sacrifice of someone who was an innocent, incorruptible by Darkness.”
“That was Jack; she killed him. It’s frustrating as all get-out ’cause it looks like Neferet didn’t! She was talkin’ to the school’s High Council, right in front of me, when Jack’s accident happened.”
“The Tsi Sgili fed him to Darkness. She need not have been present. She needed only to have marked him as her sacrifice and then let loose the threads of Darkness to follow through with the actual killing. She didn’t have to witness the death.”
“How do I prove she was responsible?”
“You cannot. The deed is over. Her debt is paid.”
“Damn it! I’m so dang mad I could spit nails! Neferet keeps gettin’ away with all of this awful crap. She keeps winnin’. I don’t understand why. It’s not right, Rephaim. It’s just not right.” Stevie Rae blinked hard, forcing back tears of frustration.
For a moment, Rephaim touched her shoulder and she allowed herself to lean into his hand, to take comfort in the contact with him. Then he pulled back from her and said, “All that anger. All that frustration and sadness. I felt it from you earlier tonight, too, and I thought—” He hesitated, obviously trying to decide whether to keep speaking.
“What?” she asked softly. “You thought what?”
He met her eyes again. “I thought it was me you hated. Me you were so angry at. I heard you, too. You told the Sword Master tainted, unredeemable Darkness lurked outside. You were looking straight at me when you said it.”
Stevie Rae nodded. “Yeah, I saw you, and I knew if I didn’t say somethin’ to get Dragon and Damien outta there, they were gonna see you, too.”
“Then you were not talking about me?”
It was Stevie Rae’s turn to hesitate. She sighed. “I was seriously pissed and scared and upset. I wasn’t thinkin’ ’bout my words. I was just reacting ’cause I was freaked.” She paused again and then added, “I didn’t mean nothin’ against you, but Rephaim, I do need to know what’s goin’ on with Kalona and Neferet.”
Rephaim turned and walked slowly to the edge of the rooftop. She followed him and stood beside him as they stared out at the quiet night.
“It’s almost dawn,” Rephaim said.
Stevie Rae shrugged. “I got about half an hour before the sun rises. It’ll only take ten minutes or so to get back to the school.”
“You should leave now and not take any chances. The sun can cause you too much damage, even with my blood inside you.”
“I know. I’ll go pretty soon.” Stevie Rae sighed. “So, you’re not gonna tell me what’s up with your daddy, are you?”
He turned to look at her again. “What would you think of me if you knew I betrayed my father?”
“He’s not a good guy, Rephaim. He’s not worth your protection.”
“But he is my father,” Rephaim said.
Stevie Rae thought Rephaim sounded exhausted. She wanted to take his hand, to tell him it’d be okay. But she couldn’t. How the heck was it going to be okay with him on one side and her on the other? “I can’t fight against that,” she finally said. “You’re gonna have to come to terms with what Kalona is and isn’t yourself. But you need to understand that I have to keep my people safe, and I know he’s workin’ right beside Neferet, no matter what she says.”
“My father is bound to her!” Rephaim blurted.
“What do you mean?”
“He didn’t kill Zoey, so he didn’t fulfill his oath to Neferet, and now the Tsi Sgili holds dominion over his immortal soul.”
“Oh, great! So Kalona is like a loaded gun Neferet is holding.”
Rephaim shook his head. “He should be, but my father does not serve others well. He chafes uneasily under her command. I believe the analogy would be more accurate if you said that Father is like a misfiring loaded gun Neferet is holding.”
“You’re gonna have to be more specific than that. Give me an example—what do you mean?” She tried to keep the excitement from her voice, but by the way his eyes closed off from her, Stevie Rae knew she’d been unsuccessful.
“I will not betray him.”
“Okay, fine. I get that. But does that mean you can’t help me?”
Rephaim stared at her silently so long she thought he wasn’t going to answer, and she was trying to formulate another question in her head when he finally said, “I want to help you, and I will as long as it doesn’t mean betraying my father.”
“That’s a lot like the first deal you and I made, and that didn’t end up so bad, did it?” she asked, smiling up at him.
“No, not so bad.”
“And, really, aren’t we all basically against Neferet?”
“I am,” he said firmly.
“And your daddy?”
“He wants to be rid of her control.”
“Well, that’s practically the same thing as bein’ on our side.”
“I can’t be on your side, Stevie Rae. You have to remember that.”
“So you’d fight against me?” She met his gaze squarely.
“I could not hurt you.”
“Well, then—”
“No,” he interrupted. “Not being able
to hurt you is different than fighting for you.”
“You’d fight for me. You already have.”
Rephaim grabbed her hand, squeezing it as if through touch he could make her understand him. “I’ve never fought my father for you.”
“Rephaim, do you remember that boy we saw in the fountain?” She changed his grip on her hand and threaded her fingers with his.
He didn’t speak. He only nodded.
“You know he’s inside you, don’t you?”
Again, Rephaim nodded, this time slowly and hesitantly.
“That boy inside you is your mama’s son. Not Kalona’s. Don’t forget about her. And don’t forget about that boy and what he’d fight for, too. Okay?”
Before Rephaim could reply, Stevie Rae’s phone rang with Miranda Lambert’s “Only Prettier.” She dropped Rephaim’s hand and groped in her pocket for it, saying “That’s Z’s ringtone! I have to talk to her. She doesn’t know about Jack yet.”
Before she could press the answer button, Rephaim’s hand caught hers. “Zoey needs to return to Tulsa. That’s one way all of us can fight Neferet. The Tsi Sgili hates Zoey, and her presence here will be a distraction.”
“A distraction from what?” Stevie Rae asked just before she hit the answer button and spoke quickly into the phone, saying, “Z, hang on. I gotta tell you something important but I need a sec.”
Zoey’s voice came through the line sounding like she was talking from the bottom of a well. “No problem, but call me back, ’kay? I’m seriously roaming.”
“Will do in two shakes of a dead cat’s tail,” Stevie Rae said.
“Do you know how gross that sounds?”
Stevie Rae smiled into the phone. “Yep and bye.”
