Burned

by P. C. Cast; Kristin Cast

Stevie Rae’s frown deepened. “I haven’t exactly had a lot of free time the past couple days. So, no, I haven’t talked to my mama.”

  “You should.”

  “I’m not gonna talk about my mama right now.”

  “As you wish.”

  “And you don’t need to use that tone with me.”

  “What tone?”

  Instead of answering him, she said, “Just sit down and be quiet for a change and let me think about how I’m supposed to help you.” Like she was demonstrating, Stevie Rae sat down, cross-legged, with her back against the old cedar tree that wept ice and fragrant needles all around them. When he still didn’t move, she made an impatient noise and motioned to the space in front of her. “Sit,” she ordered.

  He sat.

  “And now?” he asked.

  “Well, give me a minute. I’m not real sure how to do this.”

  He watched her twirl one of her soft blond curls around her finger and scrunch up her forehead for a while, and then he offered, “Would it help to think about what you did when you tripped that annoying fledgling who thought he could challenge me?”

  “Dallas isn’t annoying, and he thought you were attacking me.”

  “Good thing I wasn’t.”

  “And why is that?”

  Even through the pain in his body, her tone amused him. She knew very well that puny fledgling had been no threat to him, even in his weakened condition. Had Rephaim been attacking her, or anyone else, the impotent youth couldn’t have stopped him. Still, the boy had been Marked by a red crescent, which meant he was one of her subjects, and his Stevie Rae was nothing if not fiercely loyal. So Rephaim bowed his head in acquiescence, and said only, “Because it would have been inconvenient if I’d had to defend myself.”

  Stevie Rae’s lips curved up in the hint of a smile. “Dallas really did think he was protecting me from you.”

  “You don’t need him.” Rephaim spoke the words without thinking. Stevie Rae’s gaze met his and held. He wished he could read her expressions more easily. He thought he saw surprise in her eyes, and maybe a faint glint of hope, but he also saw fear—of that he was sure. Fear of him? No, she’d already proven she wasn’t afraid of him. So the fear had to be within, of something that wasn’t him but that he’d triggered. Not knowing what else to say, he added, “As you said before, I could not swat a fly. I was certainly no threat to you.”

  Stevie Rae blinked a couple of times, as if clearing away too many thoughts, and then she shrugged, and said, “Yeah, well, I’ve had one heck of a time convincing everybody back at the House of Night that it was just a weird coincidence that you dropped from the sky at the same time Darkness manifested, and that you weren’t attacking me. Them knowing there’s a Raven Mocker still in Tulsa has made it super hard for me to get away from school alone.”

  “I should leave.” The words made him feel strangely empty inside.

  “Where would you go?”

  “East,” he said without hesitation.

  “East? You mean like all the way east to Venice? Rephaim, your daddy’s not in his body. You can’t help him by goin’ there right now. I think you can help him more by stayin’ here and working with me to bring both Zoey and him back.”

  “You don’t want me to leave?”

  Stevie Rae looked down as if studying the earth they sat on. “It’s hard for a vampyre to have the person she’s Imprinted with too far away from her.”

  “I’m not a person.”

  “Yeah, but that didn’t stop us from Imprinting, so I’m thinkin’ the rules still apply to you and me.”

  “Then I’ll stay until you tell me to go.”

  She closed her eyes as if the words had hurt her, and he had to force himself to remain still and not reach out to comfort her, to touch her.

  Touch her? I want to touch her?

  He crossed his arms over his chest in a physical denial of the shocking thought.

  “Earth,” he said, his voice sounding too loud in the silence that had fallen between them. She looked up at him then with a question in her eyes. “You called it before, when you tripped the red fledgling. You called it to open so that you could escape from the sunlight on the rooftop. You called it to close the tunnel behind me at the abbey. Can you not simply call it now and make your request of it?”

  Her gentle blue eyes widened. “You’re right! Why am I makin’ it so hard? I’ve done it like a zillion times for other stuff. There’s no reason why I can’t do it for this.” She held her hands out, palms up. “Here, grab hold.”

  It was too easy for him to unfold his arms and press his palms to hers. He looked down at their joined hands, and he suddenly realized that, except for Stevie Rae, he’d never touched a human for any reason except violence. Yet there he was, touching her again—gently—calmly.

  Her skin felt good against his. She was warm. And soft. Her words came to him then, and what she was saying moved inside him, nesting there in a distant place that had never before been touched.

  “Earth, I have a big favor to ask you. Rephaim here is special to me. He’s in pain, and he’s havin’ trouble gettin’ well. Earth, I’ve borrowed your strength before—to save myself—to save those I care about. This time I’m asking to borrow your strength to help Rephaim. It’s only right.” She paused and looked up at him. Their eyes met as she echoed the words he’d spoken to Darkness when he thought she’d been unable to hear him. “You see, he’s hurt because of me. Heal him. Please.”

  The ground beneath them quivered. Rephaim was thinking it was strangely like the skin of a twitching animal when Stevie Rae gasped, and her body jerked. Rephaim started to pull away, wanting to stop whatever was happening to her, but she held tightly to his hands, saying “No! Don’t let go. It’s fine.”

  Then heat radiated from her palms into his. For an instant it reminded him of the last time he’d called on what he believed to be the immortal power of his father’s blood, and Darkness had answered instead—pulsing through his body and healing his shattered arm and wing. But quickly Rephaim understood that there was an essential difference between being touched by Darkness and being touched by the earth. Where before the power had been raw and consuming, swelling him with energy and shooting through his body, now what filled him was like a summer’s wind beneath his wings. Its presence in his body was no less commanding than Darkness had been, but it was power tempered with compassion—its infilling was living and healthy and growing instead of cold and violent and consuming. It was balm to his overheated blood, soothing the pain that pulsed through his body. When the earth’s warmth reached his back—that raw, unhealed place where his great wings grew—the relief was so instantaneous that Rephaim closed his eyes, breathing a long sigh as the agony evaporated.

  And, throughout the healing, the air around Rephaim was filled with the heady, comforting scent of cedar needles and the sweetness of summer grass.

  “Think about sending the energy back into the earth.” Stevie Rae’s voice was gentle, but insistent. He started to open his eyes and let loose her hands, but again she held tight to him, saying, “No, keep your eyes shut. Just stay like you are, but imagine the power from the earth as a glowing green light that’s coming from the ground under me, up through my body and hands, to you. When you feel like it’s done its job, envision it pouring from your body back into the earth.”

  Rephaim kept his eyes closed, but asked, “Why? Why let it leave me?”

  He could hear the smile in her voice. “Because it’s not yours, silly. You can’t own this power. It belongs to the earth. You can only borrow it, and then send it back with a ‘thank you very much.’ ”

  Rephaim almost told her that was ridiculous—that when you’ve been given power, you don’t let it go. You keep it and use it and own it. He almost said it, but he couldn’t. Those words seemed wrong while he was getting filled with earth energy.

  So instead, he did what felt right. Rephaim imagined the energy that filled him as a glowing green shaft of lig
ht, and envisioned it pouring down his spine and back into the earth from which it had come. And as the rich warmth of earth drained from him, he spoke two words very softly, “Thank you.”

  Then he was himself again. Sitting under a big cedar tree on damp, cold ground, holding Stevie Rae’s hands.

  Rephaim opened his eyes.

  “Better now?” she asked.

  “Yes. Much better.” Rephaim opened his hands, and this time, she, too, pulled away.

  “Really? I mean, I felt the earth and thought I was channeling it through me into you, and you seemed to be feelin’ it.” She cocked her head, studying him. “You do look better. There isn’t any pain in your eyes anymore.”

  He stood up, eager to show her, and opened his arms, unfurling his massive wings as if he were flexing a muscle. “See! I can do this with no pain.”

  She was sitting on the ground staring up at him, wide-eyed. The look on her face was so odd that he automatically lowered his arms and folded his wings against his back.

  “What is it?” he asked. “What’s wrong?”

  “I—I’d forgotten that you flew to the park. Well, and from the park, too.” She made a sound that could have been a laugh had it not sounded so choked. “That’s stupid, isn’t? How could I have forgotten somethin’ like that?”

  “I suppose you got used to seeing me broken,” he said, trying to understand why she suddenly seemed so withdrawn from him.

  “What fixed your wing?”

  “The earth,” he said.

  “No, not now. It wasn’t broken when we came out here. The pain you were filled with didn’t have anything to do with that.”

  “Oh, no. I’ve been healed since last night. The pain was caused by the remnants of Darkness and what he did to my body.”

  “So how did your wing and your arm get fixed last night?”

  Rephaim didn’t want to answer her. As she stared at him with those wide, accusing eyes, he found himself wanting to lie—to tell her it had been a miracle wrought by the immortality in his blood. But he couldn’t lie to her. He wouldn’t lie to her.

  “I called on powers that are mine to command through my father’s blood. I had to. I heard you scream my name.”

  She blinked, and he saw realization flash through her gaze. “But the bull said you’d been filled with his power and not your daddy’s.”

  Rephaim nodded. “I knew it was different. I didn’t know why. Nor did I understand I was getting power directly from Darkness himself.”

  “So Darkness healed you.”

  “Yes, and then the earth healed me from the wound Darkness left inside me.”

  “Okay, well, good.” She stood abruptly and brushed off her jeans. “You’re better now, and I gotta go. Like I said, it’s tough for me to get away now that the House of Night is all freaked about a Raven Mocker bein’ in town.”

  She started to walk quickly past him, and he reached out to grab her wrist.

  Stevie Rae flinched away from him.

  Rephaim’s hand dropped instantly to his side, and he took a step away from her.

  They stared at each other.

  “I gotta go,” she repeated.

  “Will you return?”

  “I have to! I promised!” She yelled the words at him, and he felt them as if she’d slapped him.

  “I release you from your promise!” he yelled back at her, angry that this small female could cause such turmoil within him.

  Her eyes were suspiciously bright when she said, “It’s not you I promised—so you can’t release me.” Then she swept past him, her head turned away so he couldn’t see her face.

  “Do not return because you have to. Return only because you want to,” he called after her.

  Stevie Rae didn’t pause and didn’t look back at him. She simply left.

  Rephaim stood there a long time. When the sound of her car faded away, he finally moved. With a cry of frustration, the Raven Mocker ran and then launched himself into the night sky, beating the cold wind with his massive wings and heading up, up to find the warmer thermals that would lift him, hold him, carry him anywhere—everywhere.

  Just away! Take me away from here!

  The Raven Mocker swooped to the east, away from the direction Stevie Rae’s car had taken—away from Tulsa and the confusion that had entered his life since she’d entered his life. Then he closed his mind to everything except the familiar joy of the sky, and flew.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Stark

  “Yeah, I’m listening to you, Aphrodite. You want me to memorize that poem.” Stark spoke to her through the helicopter’s headsets, which he wished he knew how to shut off. He didn’t want to listen to her run her mouth; he didn’t want to talk to Aphrodite or to anyone. He was totally preoccupied with turning over and over in his mind his strategy for getting himself and Zoey on the island. Stark stared out of the window of the helicopter, trying to see through darkness and fog for a first glimpse of the Isle of Skye where, according to Duantia and just about the entire High Council, he was going to meet his certain death sometime in the next five days.

  “Not that poem, idiot. That prophecy. I wouldn’t ask anyone to memorize a poem. Metaphor, simile, allusion, symbolism . . . blah . . . blah . . . ugh. It makes my hair hurt thinking about all that crap. Not that a prophecy sucks any less, but it is—sadly—important. And Stevie Rae has a point about this one. It does read like a confusing poetic map,” Aphrodite said.

  “I am in agreement with Aphrodite and Stevie Rae,” Darius said. “Kramisha’s prophetic poems have given Zoey guidance before. This one could do the same thing.”

  Stark dragged his gaze from the window. “I know.” He looked from Darius to Aphrodite, then his eyes went to Zoey’s apparently lifeless body, where she was strapped in on a narrow litter between the three of them. “She already found Kalona on water. She has to purify him through fire. Air has to whisper to her something spirit already knows, and if she keeps following truth, she’ll be free. I already memorized the damn thing. I don’t care if it’s a poem or a prophecy. If there’s a chance it can help her, I’ll get it to Zoey.”

  The pilot’s voice came through the headsets to all of them. “I’m putting it down now. Remember, all I can do is let you out. The rest is up to you. Just know if you step one foot on the island itself without Sgiach’s permission, you will die.”

  “I got that the first dozen times you assholes said it,” Stark muttered, not caring that the pilot gave him a dark look over her shoulder.

  Then the helicopter landed, and Darius was helping him unbuckle Zoey. Stark dropped to the ground. Darius and Aphrodite carefully handed Zoey to him, and he cradled her in his arms, trying to shield her from the worst of cold, wet wind whipped up by the helicopter’s massive blades. Darius and Aphrodite joined him, and they all hurried away from the helicopter, though the pilot hadn’t been exaggerating. They weren’t even on the ground for a minute when the copter took off.

  “Pussies,” Stark said.

  “They’re just following their instincts,” Darius said, looking around them as if he expected the bogeyman to jump out of the mist.

  “No shit. This place is super creepy,” Aphrodite said, moving closer to Darius, who tucked her hand through his arm possessively.

  Stark frowned at them. “Are you two okay? Don’t tell me the doom-and-gloom vamps got to you.”

  Darius looked him up and down, and then shared a glance with Aphrodite before answering. “You don’t feel it, do you?”

  “I feel cold and wet. I feel pissed off that Zoey’s in trouble and I haven’t been able to help her, and I feel annoyed that dawn is only an hour or so away and my only shelter is a shack the vamps said is a thirty-minute walk back the way we came. Are any of those things the “it” you’re talking about?”

  “No,” Aphrodite answered for Darius, though the Warrior was also shaking his head. “The “it” Darius and I feel is a strong desire to run away. And I do mean run. Now.”

 
“I want to take Aphrodite out of here. To get her away from this island and never to come back,” Darius said. “That is what all my instincts are telling me.”

  “And you don’t feel any of that?” Aphrodite asked Stark. “You don’t want to carry Zoey the hell outta here?”

  “Nope.”

  “I think that’s a good sign,” Darius said. “The warning that is inherent in the land is somehow passing over him.”

  “Or Stark’s just too muscle-brained to be warned,” Aphrodite said.

  “On that upbeat thought, let’s get going with this. I don’t have time to waste on spooky feelings,” Stark said. Still carrying Zoey, he started toward the long, narrow bridge that stretched between an outcropping of the Scottish mainland and the island. It was lit by torches that could barely been seen through the soupy mixture of night and mist. “Are you two coming? Or are you going to run screaming like girls away from here.”

  “We’re coming with you,” Darius said, catching him in a couple of strides.

  “Yeah, and I said I wanted to run. I didn’t say shit about screaming. I’m not a screamer,” Aphrodite said.

  They’d both sounded pretty tough, but Stark hadn’t even gotten to the halfway point of the bridge when he heard Aphrodite whispering to Darius. He glanced at the two of them. Even in the dim torchlight he could see how pale the Warrior and his Prophetess had become. Stark paused. “You don’t have to come with me. Everyone, even Thanatos, said there’s absolutely no way Sgiach is going to let you guys on the island. Even if all of them are wrong, and you do get on, there’s not much you can do. I have to figure out how to get to Zoey. Alone.”

  “We can’t be at your side while you’re in the Otherworld,” Darius said.

  “So we’re watching your back, and there’s nothing you can do about it. Zoey would be totally pissed at me when she gets back in there”—Aphrodite pointed at Zoey’s body—“and found out Darius and I had let you do all this crap alone. You know how she is with her one for all, all for one, mentality. The vamps wouldn’t bring the whole nerd herd here, something I can’t really blame them for, so Darius and I are picking up their slack. Again. Like you said, stop wasting time you don’t have.” She waved her hand at the darkness in front of them. “Go on, I’m just gonna ignore the crashing black waves below us and the fact that I know for damn sure this bridge is going to break any moment and drop us into the fucking water, where sea monsters will drag us under the spooky black waves and suck out our brains.”