Hunted hon-5

by P. C. Cast

  He’s the perfect age for me…

  Finally Kalona stopped staring at me and slowly turned to Rephaim, who was crouched in the corner of the room, his terrible human hands pressed around the knife that still protruded from his bird chest.

  “Is this true, my son? Did one of my children cause the priestess’s wound?”

  “I have no way of knowing, Father. Not all of the sentries have returned,” Rephaim spoke between short, panting breaths.

  “It is true,” Darius said.

  “Of course that is what you would say, Warrior,” Kalona said.

  “I give you my word as a Son of Erebus that I tell you the truth,” Darius said. “And you have seen Zoey’s wound. Surely you recognize an injury made by the claws of one of your own children.”

  I was glad to see that Darius wasn’t all puffed up and ready to continue the fight, like an idiot teenage boy would have been (hello, Heath and Erik!), and then I understood. Darius was still protecting me. If Kalona knew a Raven Mocker had almost killed me, without getting the rest of the story about it having been an accident, then maybe he would at the very least not leave me alone with one of them, and at the most warn his nasty children to stay away from me. That is, if Kalona still wanted me alive.

  Then I quit babbling anything in my mind because Kalona was closing the space between us. I stood very still, staring straight ahead at his bare chest as he reached out, stopping just short of touching me. Slowly, with one finger he traced the path of my wound without actually stroking my skin, but still I could feel the chill that came from his body. I had to grit my teeth hard to keep myself from either shivering and cringing back or looking up into his eyes and taking the chance that I would lean forward just enough for his cold finger to touch my heated flesh.

  “It is the mark of one of my sons,” he said. “Stark, this time do not kill the warrior.” I had just heaved a long sigh of relief when Kalona added, “Of course, I cannot allow him to wound my beloved son without redress. But I prefer to admonish him myself.”

  Kalona’s voice was so calm, so matter of fact, that I didn’t really get the meaning of his words until, like a cobra, he struck. The warrior only had time to begin to take a defensive stance when Kalona whirled, pulled the knife from Rephaim’s chest, and in one motion raked the blade down the side of Darius’s face.

  Darius staggered under the blow, and then fell as blood sprayed all around me, a heavy, scarlet rain in the little room. I screamed and tried to go to him, but Kalona’s frigid hand closed around my wrist, jerking me back against him. I looked up at the immortal, willing the anger and horror I felt to burn through his awful appeal.

  And I wasn’t drawn to him! His spell didn’t work on me! Young and inhumanly beautiful as he was, I still saw him as a dangerous enemy. He must have seen the triumph in my eyes because suddenly his warlike expression changed to a slow, knowing smile. He bent and whispered for my ears alone, “Remember, my little A-ya, the warrior can protect you from all others except me. Not even the power of your elements can keep me from claiming what will eventually be mine again.” Then he pressed his lips against mine and the wild taste of him was like a blizzard rushing through my body, numbing my resistance and freezing my soul with a forbidden desire that utterly overwhelmed me. His kiss made me forget everything and everyone—Stark, Darius, and even Erik and Heath were frozen from my mind.

  He released me and my legs would not hold me up. I crumpled to the floor as he strode from the room, laughing, with his wounded favorite son hobbling behind him.

  CHAPTER 19

  I was sobbing as I crawled over to Darius. I had just reached him when I heard a terrible sound coming from the doorway. I looked up to see Stark. He still grasped his bow in one hand. The other was holding on to the doorpost so tight that his knuckles had turned white, and I swear I could see his fingers making indentations in the wood. His eyes were blazing red and he was bent slightly over, as if his stomach was causing him pain.

  “Stark? What is it?” I wiped the back of my hand across my eyes, trying to clear the tears from my vision.

  “The blood…can’t bear it…have to…” He spoke in broken starts and stops and then, as if against his will, he took a staggering step into the room.

  On the floor beside me Darius got to his knees. He grabbed the knife from the floor where Kalona had dropped it and faced Stark. “You should know I only share my blood with those I have invited to taste of me,” Darius’s voice was steady and strong. Had I not been looking at him I would never have known that a river of blood was gushing down his face from a terrible knife slash. “And I have offered you no such invitation, boy. Back away before what happened here gets any worse.”

  There was a dark struggle going on within Stark that was reflected in his entire body. From the glowing red of his heated eyes to the feral grimace of his lips to the tightrope tension that radiated from him, he looked like he was on the brink of an explosion.

  But here’s the deal: I’d had just about enough. Saying my reaction to Kalona’s kiss had freaked me out was the new understatement of the year. My body still ached. My head was woozy. I was so weak I didn’t think I’d win an arm-wrestling contest with, well, Jack. Now Darius was hurt, and I didn’t have a clue how badly. Seriously, you could stick a fork in me and call me so done with all this stress.

  “Stark, just get the hell out of here!” I rounded on him, glad my voice sounded lots stronger than I felt. “I don’t want to zap the crap outta you with fire, but if you take one more step into this room, I swear I’m going to burn your butt up.”

  That got through to him. Stark’s red eyes locked on me. He looked pissed and dangerous. There was a darkness that surrounded him like an aura, making the red in his eyes blaze. I stood, glad that the sheet was staying tucked around my body, and lifted my arms, holding them up and ready. “Do not push me right now. I promise you won’t like it if I lose my temper.”

  Stark blinked a couple of times at me, like he was trying to clear his vision. The scarlet of his eyes faded, the darkness in the air around him dissipated, and he wiped a shaky hand across his face. “Zoey, I—” he began, sounding almost normal. Darius shifted in his defensive stance, taking a step closer to me. Stark snarled at him—actually snarled—like he was more animal than human, spun around, and ran out of the room.

  I somehow managed to stagger to the door and slam it closed, then dragged a chair from near the bedside and propped it under the door handle, just as I’d seen people do in the movies, before I went back to Darius.

  “I am glad you are on my side, Priestess,” he said.

  “Yeah, that’s me. I’m fierce.” I tried to pretend I wasn’t close to passing out by sounding like Christian from Project Runway. I was pretty sure Darius didn’t know Project Runway from a science project, but it did make him chuckle as we helped each other over to the end of the bed, where he sat heavily and I stood beside him, concentrating on not swaying like I was drunk. Which, sadly, I wasn’t anymore.

  “There should be first aid supplies in the cabinet over there.” He motioned to the long stainless steel cabinet that stretched halfway across the far wall. There was also a sink built into it and a bunch of scary hospital-looking items (they were sharp and very stainless steel) stored neatly in trays and whatnot beside the sink.

  Wearily, I ignored the sharp things and started pulling open drawers and cabinets, which was when I noticed my hands were shaking like crazy.

  “Zoey,” Darius called, and I glanced over my shoulder at him. He looked terrible. The left side of his face was a bloody mess. The slash extended from his temple, all the way down his jawline, messing up the bold geometric design of his tattoo. But his eyes smiled at me and he said, “I’m going to be just fine. This is little more than a scratch.”

  “Well, it’s a big scratch,” I said.

  “I believe it will annoy Aphrodite,” he said.

  “Huh?”

  He started to smile, but ended the attempt with a gri
mace as the movement caused more blood to pour from the wound. He pointed at his face. “She won’t like the scar.”

  When I had a bunch of bandages and alcohol wipes and gauze and stuff, I came back to him. “If she gives you crap about it, I’ll kick her butt. After I’ve rested up.” I stared at the awful “scratch,” ignoring the delicious scent of his blood and swallowing hard to keep myself from puking.

  Okay, yes, it does sound like a total contradiction: the fact that I love the taste and smell of blood, but that seeing it pouring out of a friend’s body grosses me out. Wait, no. Maybe it’s not a contradiction, because, hello! I don’t eat my friends! I thought about Heath and decided to amend my thought: I don’t eat my friends under normal circumstances and unless they give me their permission.

  “I can clean it,” Darius said, reaching for the alcohol wipe I was balling up in my fisted hand.

  “No,” I said, then repeated more firmly, shaking my head to try to clear away the wooziness in it. “No, that’s ridiculous. You’re hurt; I’ll do it. Just walk me through what I need to do.” I paused, before I continued, “Darius, we have to get out of here.”

  “I know,” he said solemnly.

  “You don’t know all of why. I overheard Kalona and Neferet talking. They said they were planning some kind of a new future, and then said it would involve ‘swaying the Council.’”

  Darius’s eyes widened in shock. “Nyx’s Council? As in the High Council of Vampyres?”

  “I don’t know! They didn’t say anything else about it. I guess they could have been talking about the Council here at the House of Night.”

  He studied my face. “But you do not believe that is what they were referring to?”

  I shook my head slowly.

  “Sweet Nyx! It cannot be done!”

  I frowned, wishing my gut wasn’t disagreeing with him. “I’m afraid there’s a chance it can be done. Kalona is powerful, and he has that magical draw-people-to-him thing going on. Look, the bottom line is we can’t be trapped under Neferet’s control while she and the bird guy put their disgusting plan in motion—whatever that plan might be.” Actually, I was scared that they’d already put their disgusting plan in motion, but saying it out loud felt like a spell that would make it be true. “So can’t we just get you fixed up, grab Aphrodite, the Twins, and Damien, and go back to the tunnels?” I felt precariously close to bursting into tears. “I’m all better, and I think it’s worth the chance of drowning in my own blood to get the hell out of here.”

  “Agreed, and I believe Neferet has healed you enough that you will not be in danger of rejecting the Change, even if you are not among a full fold of vampyres.”

  “Are you okay enough to leave?”

  “I told you I am fine, and I was speaking the truth. Let us get this cleaned up and then we will leave this place.”

  “I like the tunnels better.” I surprised myself by admitting out loud what I had been thinking, but Darius nodded solemnly in agreement. “It is because it feels safe there, and it is definitely no longer safe here,” he said.

  “Did you notice Neferet?” I asked him.

  “If you mean did I notice the Priestess’s power seems to have increased—yes, I did.”

  “Great. I almost wish I was just imagining things,” I muttered.

  “Your instincts are good, and they’ve been warning you about Neferet for quite a while.” He paused. “Kalona’s hypnotic power is unusual. I’ve never felt anything like it before.”

  “Yeah,” I said, cleaning the blood off his face. “But I think I’ve broken whatever hold he was having over me.” I refused to admit, even to myself, that though the hypnotic effect was gone, I still had had a powerful reaction to his kiss. “Hey, did Kalona look different to you?”

  “Different? How so?”

  “Younger, like he’s not even as old as you.” I guessed that Darius was somewhere in his early to mid-twenties—or at least that’s how old he appeared to me.

  Darius gave me a long, considering look. “No, Kalona appeared the same as when first I’d seen him—ageless, but not in a way that could ever be mistaken for a teenager. Perhaps he has the ability to alter his appearance to please you.”

  I wanted to deny it, and then I remembered what he’d called me just before he kissed me. It had been the same name he’d called me during my nightmare. My response to him is almost automatic, as if my soul recognizes him, my mind whispered traitorously. A terrible fear shivered through my body, causing the little hairs on my arms and the back of my neck to stand straight up. “He calls me A-ya,” I said.

  “The name sounds familiar. What does it mean?”

  “It’s the name of the maiden the Ghigua women created to trap Kalona.”

  Darius sighed deeply. “Well, at least we now know why he’s so intent upon protecting you. He thinks you are the maiden he loved.”

  “I think it was more obsession than love,” I said quickly, not wanting to even consider the idea that Kalona could possibly have loved A-ya. “Plus, we have to remember that A-ya did trap him, causing him to be imprisoned in the earth for more than a thousand years.”

  Darius nodded. “So his desire for you could very easily change to violence.”

  My stomach clenched. “Actually, the reason he wants me might be just to get back at A-ya. I mean, I don’t know what he’s actually planning to do with me. Neferet was all for killing me, but he stopped her because he said he can use my power.”

  “But you would never turn from Nyx to him,” Darius said.

  “And once he realizes that, I can’t see him keeping me around.”

  “He’ll view you as a powerful enemy, one who might find a way to entrap him again,” Darius said.

  “Okay, so explain to me what to do to get you fixed up, and then let’s find the others and get the hell out of here.”

  Darius walked me through a very gross cleaning of the long slash wound, during which I actually had to pour alcohol into his cut to, as he put it, flush out any infection that might have been caused by the Raven Mocker’s blood. I’d totally forgotten that the same knife had been imbedded in Rephaim’s chest and it definitely had nasty mutant man-bird blood all over it. So I cleaned the cut and then Darius helped me find this weird but cool stuff called Dermabond, better known as liquid stitches, which I squirted in a line down the length of his cut, mushed the sides of the wound together, and, ta-da! except for a big not-yet-healed cut, Darius said he was good as new. I was slightly more skeptical, but (as he reminded me) I really wasn’t a credible nurse to begin with.

  Then he and I searched though the cabinets because I was not going anywhere with a sheet wrapped around me. Okay, you would not believe the gross, paper-thin, backless hospital “gowns” (oh, please, they are so not real gowns) we found in one drawer. Why is it hospitals make you wear ugly, too revealing stuff when you already feel awful? It just makes no sense. Anyway, we finally found a pair of green hospital scrubs that were way too big for me, but whatever. They were seriously better than being wrapped up in a sheet. I completed my look with some booties. I asked Darius if he’d seen my purse, and he said he thought it was still in the Hummer. It was probably shallow of me, but I spent quite a few minutes stressing that if my purse was lost I’d have to get a new driver’s license and cell phone, and wondered briefly if I’d remember the exact right shade of the cool Ulta lip gloss I was going to have to replace.

  Sometime after I put on the scrubs (while Darius’s back was turned) and started worrying about my purse being missing, I realized I was sitting on the bed staring off into space and almost falling asleep.

  “How are you feeling?” Darius asked. “You look…” His words trailed off as I’m sure he tried and vetoed words like “crappy” and “hideous.”

  “I look tired?” I volunteered helpfully.

  He nodded. “You do.”

  “Well, that’s a not-so-amazing coincidence because I am tired. Really tired.”

  “Perhaps we should wai
t and—”

  “No!” I interrupted. “I meant it when I said I wanted to go. Plus, there’s no way I can get any real sleep as long as we’re here. I just don’t feel safe.”

  “Agreed,” Darius said. “You aren’t safe. None of us are safe.”

  Unspoken was the understanding that we would still not be safe even if we managed to get away from the House of Night, but it was better for morale if neither of us mentioned that.

  “Alright, let’s get the others,” I said.

  I checked the clock on the wall before we left the room and realized that it was a little after 4:00 A.M. It was a shock to see how much time had passed, especially since I must have been out for several hours, even though I didn’t feel rested at all. If things were normal at the House of Night, fledglings should be finished with classes. “Hey,” I told Darius, “it’s about dinnertime. They might be in the cafeteria.”

  He nodded, moved the propped-up chair, and opened the door slowly.

  “Hallway’s empty,” he murmured.

  While he’d been peeking down the hall, I’d been checking him out. So, instead of following him out of the room, I grabbed his sleeve and held him back. He gave me a questioning look.

  “Uh, Darius, I’m thinking that we really need to change clothes before we make a grand entrance in the middle of the cafeteria, or even my dorm. I mean, you’re more than a little bloody, and I’m wearing what looks like a big green trash bag. We’re not exactly inconspicuous.”

  Darius glanced down at himself, taking in the dried blood that was splattered all down his shirt and jacket. The blood plus the newly closed laceration on his face plus my hospital scrubs definitely equaled conspicuous, a conclusion Darius obviously came to easily.

  “Let’s take the stairs up to the next floor. That’s where the Sons of Erebus are housed. I’ll change, then get you quickly to your dorm so you can be rid of those.” He gestured at my outfit. “If we get lucky we’ll find Aphrodite and the Twins in the dorm and will just have to scout out Damien and then slip from the school grounds.”