Burned

by P. C. Cast

  She tugged at his shirt, murmuring “Take it off . . .” against his lips. With a grunt, he yanked it over his head. While he was doing that, Stevie Rae pulled off her own T-shirt and started kicking off her boots and unbuckling her belt. She felt his eyes on her and looked up to meet his questioning gaze. “I want to do it with you, Dallas,” she said in a rush. “Now.”

  “Are ya sure?”

  She nodded. “Totally. Now.”

  “Okay, now,” he said, reaching for her.

  When their bare skins touched, Stevie Rae thought she’d explode. This was what she needed. Her skin was ultrasensitive, and everywhere Dallas touched, he scalded her, but in a very, very good way because Stevie Rae needed to be touched. She had to be touched and loved and possessed over and over to wipe away everything: Nicole, the dead kids, fear for Zoey, and Rephaim. Always, before anything else, there was Rephaim.

  Dallas’s touch seared him away. Stevie Rae knew she was still Imprinted with Rephaim—she could never forget that—but just then, with the slick heat of Dallas’s sweaty skin smooth and human and real against hers, Rephaim seemed so distant. It was almost as if he was moving away from her . . . letting her go . . .

  “You can bite me if you want to.” Dallas’s breath was warm against her ear. “Really. It’s fine. I want you to.”

  He was on top of her, and he shifted his weight so that the curve of his neck was pressed against her lips. She kissed his skin, and let her tongue taste him, feeling the pulse there and the ancient rhythm of it. Stevie Rae replaced her tongue with her fingernail, caressing lightly, finding the perfect spot to pierce so that she could drink from him. Dallas moaned, anticipating what was to come. She could give him pleasure, and take from him at the same time. It was the way it worked with mates—it was the way things were meant to be. It would be quick, easy, and feel really, really good.

  If I drink from him, my Imprint with Rephaim will break. The thought made her hesitate. Stevie Rae stopped, one sharp fingernail tip pressed against Dallas’s neck. No, a High Priestess can have a mate and a consort, she told herself.

  But it was a lie—at least for Stevie Rae it was. She knew, in the deepest recess of her heart, that her Imprint with Rephaim was something unique. It wouldn’t follow the rules that usually bound a vam-pyre to her consort. It was strong—amazingly strong. And maybe it was because of that unusual strength that she couldn’t bind herself to any other guy.

  If I drink from Dallas, my Imprint with Rephaim will break.

  The knowledge was a cold certainty within her.

  And then what about the debt she’d agreed to pay? Could she be bound to Rephaim’s humanity without being Imprinted with him?

  It was a question that wasn’t to be answered because at that moment from behind them, as if conjured by her thoughts, Rephaim shouted, “Do not do this to us, Stevie Rae!”

  Chapter 23

  Rephaim

  Rephaim felt her anger and wondered if he would be able to tell whether or not it was directed at him. He purposely focused his thoughts on Stevie Rae, allowing the blood thread that tied them to strengthen. More anger. It poured through their bond, and the force of her ire surprised him though he could feel that she was attempting to hold herself in check.

  No. Her fury wasn’t aimed at him. Someone else was rousing her—someone else was the focus of her aggression.

  He pitied the poor fool. Had he been a lesser being, he would have laughed sardonically and wished the hapless fellow well.

  It was time he put Stevie Rae out of his mind.

  Rephaim kept flying east, tasting the night with his powerful wings, reveling in his freedom.

  He didn’t need her now. He was whole. He was strong. He was himself again.

  Rephaim didn’t need the Red One. She was only the vessel through which he’d been saved. The truth was her reaction to seeing him whole again proved theirs was a tie that needed to be severed.

  Rephaim slowed, feeling unexpectedly weighed down by his thoughts. He landed on a gentle rise of land covered by old pin oaks. Standing on the little hillock, he gazed back the way he’d come, considering . . .

  Why did she reject me?

  Had he frightened her? That didn’t seem possible. She’d seen him whole when he’d entered the circle. He’d been fully healed when he’d faced Darkness.

  For her he’d faced Darkness!

  Absently, Rephaim reached back and rubbed at the base of his wings. His skin felt smooth under his fingers. There was no physical wound left. Stevie Rae had completely healed him from Darkness’s wrath.

  And then she’d turned from him as if she’d suddenly seen him as a monster and not a man.

  But I am not a man! Thoughts blasted through Rephaim’s mind. She knew what I was! Why turn from me after everything we’ve been through?

  Her behavior utterly baffled him. She’d called for him when she’d been in terror for her life—frightened beyond thinking, Stevie Rae had called for him.

  He’d answered her call and gone to her, saved her.

  I claimed her as my own.

  And then, weeping, she’d run away from him. Yes, he’d seen her tears, but he hadn’t known what he’d done to cause them.

  With a deep cry of frustration, he threw his hands in the air, as if to rid himself of even the thought of her, and moonlight glinted off his palms. Rephaim stilled. Holding his arms out, he looked at them as if seeing them for the first time. He had a man’s arms. She’d held his hands. He’d even cradled her in his arms, though it had only been briefly as they’d escaped immolation on the rooftop. His skin was really no different than hers. His was browner, perhaps, but only a little. And his arms were strong . . . well made . . .

  By all the gods, what was wrong with him? It didn’t matter what his arms looked like. She would never truly be his. How could he even imagine it? It was beyond all thoughts—beyond even the wildest of his dreams.

  Unbidden, the words of Darkness echoed through his mind: You are your father’s son. Like him, you have chosen to champion a being who can never give you what it is you seek most.

  “Father championed Nyx,” Rephaim spoke to the night. “She rejected him. And now I, too, have championed one who rejects me.”

  Rephaim launched himself into the sky. His wings beat up, up. He wanted to touch the moon—that crescent that symbolized the Goddess who had broken his father’s heart and set about the sequence of events that created him. Perhaps if he reached the moon, its Goddess would give him an explanation that would make sense—that would be balm to his heart, because Darkness was correct. What I seek most, Stevie Rae can never give me.

  What I seek most is love . . .

  Rephaim couldn’t speak the word aloud, but even the thought burned him. He had been conceived in violence through a mixture of lust and fear and hate. Most of all hate, always hate.

  His wings stroked the sky, lifting him ever upward.

  Love couldn’t be possible for him. He shouldn’t even want it—shouldn’t even think of it.

  But he did. Since Stevie Rae had touched his life, Rephaim had begun to think of love.

  She’d shown him kindness, and he’d never before known kindness.

  She’d been gentle with him, bandaging his wounds and tending his body. He’d never been cared for before the night she’d helped him out of the freezing, bloody darkness. Compassion . . . she’d brought compassion into his life.

  And he’d never known laughter before he knew her.

  Staring up at the moon, beating the wind with his wings, he thought of her incessant babble and the way her eyes sparkled with humor at him, even when he didn’t know what he’d done to amuse her, and he had to choke back unexpected laughter.

  Stevie Rae made him laugh.

  She hadn’t seemed to care that he was the powerful son of an indestructible immortal. Stevie Rae had ordered him around as if he was anyone else in her life—anyone who was normal, mortal, capable of love and laughter and real emotions.

&n
bsp; But he did have real emotions! Because Stevie Rae made him feel.

  Had that been her plan all along? When she’d freed him from the abbey, she’d said he had a choice to make. Was this what she’d meant—that he could choose a life where laughter and compassion and perhaps even love truly existed?

  Then what about his father? What if Rephaim chose a new life, and Kalona returned to this world?

  Perhaps that was something he should worry about when it happened. If it happened.

  Before he knew what he was doing, Rephaim slowed. He couldn’t touch the moon; it was as impossible as it was for a creature such as he to be loved. And then Rephaim realized he was no longer flying to the east. He’d circled and was retracing his path. Rephaim was returning to Tulsa.

  He tried not to think as he flew. He tried to keep his mind utterly clear. He wanted only to feel the night under his wings—to have the cool, sweet air brush his body.

  But Stevie Rae intruded again.

  Her sadness reached him. Rephaim knew she was crying. He could feel her sobs as if they were in his own body.

  He flew faster. What had made her weep? Was she crying because of him again?

  Rephaim flew past Gilcrease without hesitating. She wasn’t there. He could feel that she was away, farther to the south.

  It was as his wings beat the night air that Stevie Rae’s sadness changed, shifting into something that at first confused him, and then when Rephaim realized what it was, his blood boiled.

  Desire! Stevie Rae was in the arms of someone else!

  Rephaim didn’t stop to think like a creature of two worlds who was neither man nor beast. He didn’t remember that he’d been born from rape and sentenced to know nothing except Darkness and violence and service to his hate-driven father. Rephaim didn’t think at all. He only felt. If Stevie Rae gave herself to another, he would lose her forever.

  And if he lost her forever, his world would go back to the dark, lonely, joyless place it had been before he’d known her.

  Rephaim couldn’t bear that.

  He didn’t call on his father’s blood to lead him to Stevie Rae. Rephaim did the opposite. From deep within him, he conjured an image of a sweet-faced Cherokee maiden who hadn’t deserved to die in a flood of blood and pain. Keeping the girl he’d dreamed as his mother in his mind, he flew on instinct, following his heart.

  Rephaim’s heart led him to the depot.

  The sight of the place sickened him. Not simply because he remembered the rooftop and how close Stevie Rae had come to death. He hated the place because he could feel her there—inside—under the earth, and he knew she was in another’s arms.

  Rephaim tore the grate from the opening. Without hesitation, he strode through the basement. Following the link that bound him to her, he entered the familiar tunnels. His breath came hard and fast. His blood pounded through his body, fueling his anger and despair.

  When he finally found her, the boy was atop her, rutting against Stevie Rae, oblivious to everything else in the world. What a fool he was. Rephaim should have hurled him from her. He wanted to. The Raven Mocker in him wanted to slam the fledgling against the wall again and again until he was battered and bloody and no longer a threat.

  The man within him wanted to weep.

  Flooded with feelings he could neither understand nor control, he found himself frozen in place, staring, with horror and hatred as well as desire and despair. As he watched, Stevie Rae readied herself to drink the boy’s blood, and Rephaim knew two things with utter certainty: first, what she was doing would break their Imprint. Second, he did not want their Imprint to be broken.

  Without conscious thought, he shouted, “Do not do this to us, Stevie Rae!”

  The boy’s response was quicker than Stevie Rae’s. He leaped up, pushing her naked body behind him.

  “Get the fuck outta here, you freak!” The boy kept himself positioned between Rephaim and Stevie Rae.

  The sight of the fledgling shielding her, protecting his Stevie Rae from him, sent a wave of possessive fury through Rephaim.

  “Begone, boy! You’re not needed here!” Rephaim crouched defensively and began moving slowly toward him.

  “What the—?” Stevie Rae said, shaking her head as if she was trying to clear it while she grabbed Dallas’s shirt from the floor and hastily pulled it on to cover herself.

  “Stay behind me, Stevie Rae. I won’t let it get you.”

  Rephaim stalked the boy, following him as he moved back, pushing Stevie Rae with him. Rephaim saw her eyes widen as she peered around the boy and finally truly saw him.

  “No!” she cried. “No, you can’t be here!”

  Her words stabbed him.

  “But I am here!” His anger was at the boiling point. The boy kept moving back, keeping Stevie Rae behind him. Following him, Rephaim entered the kitchen. As he did, a flickering motion caught his attention, and he glanced upward.

  Darkness writhed in a sick black pool that clung to the ceiling.

  Rephaim wrenched his attention back to Stevie Rae and the fledgling. He wouldn’t think of Darkness now. He couldn’t even consider the possibility that the white bull had returned to claim the rest of his debt.

  “Stay back!” the boy cried. Unbelievably, the fledgling made a shooing motion at Rephaim, as if he were an annoying bird that had fluttered into someone’s home.

  “Sssstep aside! You are keeping me from what’s mine!” Rephaim hated to hear the bestial hiss in his voice, but he couldn’t help it. The damned boy was pushing him to the edge of his patience.

  “Rephaim, just go. I’m fine. Dallas isn’t doin’ anything bad to me.”

  “Just go? Leave you?” the words burst from Rephaim. “How can I?”

  “You’re not supposed to be here!” Stevie Rae shouted, looking like she was on the verge of tears.

  “How could I not be? How could you believe I wouldn’t know what you were about to do?”

  “Get outta here!”

  “You mean run away? Like you did from me? No. I won’t do that, Stevie Rae. I choose not to do that.”

  The boy had reached the wall. While he looked from Rephaim to Stevie Rae, he was feeling behind him for cords that poked from a hole that had been chiseled there.

  “You know each other. You really do,” the boy said.

  “Of courssse we do, fool!” Rephaim hissed again, hating the ungovernable beast in his voice.

  “How?” The fledgling hurled the word at Stevie Rae.

  “Dallas, I can explain.”

  “Good!” Rephaim shouted as if she’d spoke to him and not the fledgling. “I want you to explain what happened today.”

  “Rephaim.” Stevie Rae looked around Dallas to him and shook her head like she was beyond frustrated. “This is so not the right time.”

  “You know each other.”

  Rephaim noticed the change in the boy’s voice before Stevie Rae did. The fledgling’s tone had hardened—gone cold and mean. The Darkness above them quivered as if in gleeful anticipation.

  “Yeah, okay, we do. But I can explain. See, he—”

  “You’ve been with him all along.”

  Stevie Rae frowned. “All along? No. It’s just that I found him when he was real hurt; I didn’t know what—”

  “All this time I’ve been treatin’ you like you was some kind of queen or somethin’, like you was a real High Priestess,” he interrupted Stevie Rae again.

  Stevie Rae looked shocked and hurt. “I am a real High Priestess. But like I was tryin’ to tell ya, I found Rephaim when he was hurt bad, and I just couldn’t let him die.”

  Taking advantage of the fact that the boy’s attention was completely focused on Stevie Rae, Rephaim inched closer.

  The Darkness above them thickened.

  “He was part of what almost killed you in the circle!”

  “He was what saved me in the circle!” Stevie Rae shouted back at Dallas. “If he hadn’t shown up, that white bull would’ve drained me dry.”

&
nbsp; Her words didn’t faze the boy. “You’ve been keeping this thing a secret. You’ve been lyin’ to everybody!”

  “Well, heck, Dallas! I didn’t know what else to do!”

  “You lied to me, you whore!”

  “Don’t you dare talk to me like that!” Stevie Rae slapped him. Hard.

  Dallas staggered back half a step. “What the fuck has he done to you?”

  “You mean besides savin’ my life twice? Nothin’!” she yelled.

  “He’s messed your head up completely!” Dallas yelled. The Darkness above them poured down from the ceiling, like it had suddenly found a weak point in a dam. It slicked around Dallas, covering his head and shoulders, swirling around his waist with a sickening familiarity that reminded Rephaim of razor-edged snakes. But Darkness didn’t cut Dallas. Instead, he seemed oblivious to the glistening blackness that now coated him.

  “I’m in charge of my own mind. He hasn’t done anything to me,” Stevie Rae said. Her eyes widened, like she finally noticed the Darkness. She took a step back from the boy, like she didn’t want to be tainted by what was touching him. “Dallas, listen to me. Think. You know me. This isn’t what it seems.”

  Rephaim could see the change come over Dallas. It was that withdrawal from him that did it—that coupled with the influence of the Darkness that encased him. Totally incensed, the fledgling screamed, “He’s made you a goddamned whore and a liar! You need some sense knocked into you, girl!” Dallas lifted his hand like he was going to hit Stevie Rae.

  Rephaim didn’t hesitate. He leaped, closing the space between him and the boy, knocking him away from Stevie Rae and taking his place in front of her.

  “Don’t hurt him!” Stevie Rae was saying as she grabbed Rephaim’s arm and kept him from making another strike against the boy. “He’s just freaked-out. He wouldn’t really hurt me.”