Chosen

police's attention turned on me for a little while. What sucked even worse was when Heath had been the third human taken.

Well, I couldn't let him be killed. Plus, we'd kinda sorta accidentally Imprinted. With Aphrodite's help I'd figured out how to follow the Imprint to Heath. The police thought that then I'd rescued a pretty messed-up Heath from a human serial killer.

What had I really discovered?

My undead best friend and her disgusting minions. I'd gotten Heath out of there (the 'there' had been the old downtown Prohibition tunnels under the abandoned Tulsa depot) and confronted Stevie Rae. Or what was left of her.

See, one problem was that I didn't believe all of her humanity had been destroyed, like it appeared to have been with the other undead and very nasty ex-fledglings who had been trying to chomp on Heath.

The second problem was Neferet. Stevie Rae had told me that Neferet was behind their undeadness. I knew it was true because Neferet had put a really awful spell on Heath and me right before the police had showed up. It was supposed to make us forget everything that had happened in the tunnels. I think it worked on Heath. It had only worked on me temporarily. I'd used the power of the five elements to break through mine.

So, long story short. Since then I'd been worried about what the hell I was going to do about: one, Stevie Rae; two, Neferet; three, Heath. It might seem that it helped that none of my three worries had been around during the past month, but it didn't.

'All right,' I said aloud, 'it's my birthday, and an exceedingly crappy birthday it has been, even for me. So, Nyx, I'm going to ask for only one birthday favor from you. I want to find Stevie Rae.' I added a hasty 'Please.' (As Damien would remind me, when speaking to one's goddess it was best to be polite.)

I hadn't really expected any kind of answer, so when the words roll down your window kept drifting around and around my mind, I thought they were the lyrics to a song on the radio. But my radio wasn't on, and the words had no music with them— plus, they were inside my head and not inside my radio.

Feeling more than a little nervous I rolled down my window.

It had been unusually warm all week. Today the high had been almost sixty, which was weird for December, but it was Oklahoma, and weird was just another word for Oklahoma weather. Still, it was close to midnight and the night had definitely cooled off. Not that that bothered me. Adult vamps don't feel the cold with the same intensity as humans. No, it isn't because they are cold, dead, pieces of walking reanimated flesh (eesh, that might be what Stevie Rae is, though). It's because their metabolism is way different than humans. As a fledgling, especially one who is more advanced than most kids who have only been Marked for a couple of months, my resistance to the cold was already way better than a human kid's. So the cool air rushing into my Bug didn't bother me, which was why it was strange that I suddenly started to sneeze and felt kinda creepy.

Ugh, what was that smell? It was like a musty basement and egg salad that hadn't been refrigerated soon enough and dirt all mixed together to make a disgusting whiff of something that was nastily familiar.

'Ah, hell!' I realized what I was smelling and jerked my Bug across all three one-way lanes to park a little bit north of the downtown bus station. I barely took time to roll up my window and lock the door (I'd just die if my first edition of Dracula was ripped off) before I got out of the car and hurried to the sidewalk where I stood very still and sniffed the air. I caught the scent right away. Ugh. It was too horrible to ignore. Still sniffing like a retarded dog, I began following my nose down the sidewalk away from the comforting lights of the bus station.

I found her in an alley. At first I thought she was leaning over a big trash bag full of garbage and my heart squeezed. I had to get her out of this kind of life—I had to figure out a way to keep her safe until this awful thing that had happened to her could be fixed. Or she needs to die once and for all. No! I closed my mind to that kind of thinking. I'd watched Stevie Rae die once. I wasn't going to do it again.

But before I could get to her and wrap her in my arms (while I held my breath) and tell her I'd make all of this okay, the bag of garbage moaned and moved and I realized that Stevie Rae wasn't digging through the trash, she was biting a street person on the neck!

'Oh, gross! Jeesh, would you just stop!'

With inhuman quickness, Stevie Rae whirled around. The street person fell to the ground, but Stevie Rae kept hold of one of her dirty wrists. Teeth bared and eyes glowing a very creepy red she hissed at me. I was too disgusted to be scared or even freaked out. Plus, I'd just had a really terrible birthday and people, even undead best friend people, were on my last nerve.

'Stevie Rae, it's me. You can turn off the hissing crap. Plus, it's a ridiculous vampyre cliché.'

She didn't say anything for a second, and I had the horrible thought that she might have somehow deteriorated in the month since I'd last seen her, to a point where she was actually like the rest of them—bestial and unreachable. My stomach gave a painful flip, but I met her red eyes and rolled my own. 'And, please, you smell really bad. Are there no showers in Creepy Undead Land?'

Stevie Rae frowned, which was actually an improvement, because then her lips covered her teeth. 'Go away, Zoey,' she said. Her voice was cold and flat, making what used to be a sweet Okie accent sound like rough trailer trash, but she'd said my name, which was all the encouragement I needed.

'I'm not going anywhere until we talk. So let go of that street person—eesh, Stevie Rae, she probably has lice and who knows what else—and let's talk.'

'If you want to talk you'll have to wait till I'm done eating.' Stevie Rae cocked her head to the side in a movement that looked insectile. 'Don't I remember that you Imprinted your little human boy toy? Looks like you have a taste for blood your own self. Want to join me in a bite?' She smiled and licked her fangs.

'Okay, nasty, just nasty! And for your information Heath is not my boy toy. He's my boyfriend, or one of them anyway. I sucked his blood kinda sorta by accident. I was going to tell you about it, but you died. So, no. I do not want to bite that person. I don't even know where she's been.' I gave the poor, wide- eyed, matted-hair woman a weak smile. 'Uh, no offense, ma'am.'

'Good. More for me.' Stevie Rae began to bend back over the woman's throat.

'Stop it!'

She looked over her shoulder at me. 'Like I said, go away, Zoey. You don't belong here.'

'Neither do you,' I said.

'That's just one of the many things you're wrong about.'

When she turned back to the woman, who was now crying and repeating 'please, oh please' over and over, I took a couple of steps forward and raised my hands over my head. 'I said let her go'

Stevie Rae's answer was to hiss and open her mouth to chomp the woman's neck. I closed my eyes and quickly centered myself. 'Air, come to me!' I commanded. Instantly my hair began to lift in the breeze that surrounded me. I circled one hand in front of me, imagining a mini-tornado. I opened my eyes as I flicked my wrist and tossed the power of air toward the crying homeless woman. Exactly as I'd imagined it, the whirling air surrounded her, and hardly rustling one hair on Stevie Rae's very nappy head, it picked up her victim and carried her down the alley, letting go of her only when she reached the safety of a streetlight. 'Thank you, air,' I murmured, and felt the breeze brush my face caressingly before it dissipated.

'You're getting good at that.'

I turned back to Stevie Rae. She was watching me with an obviously leery expression, as if she thought I was going to conjure another tornado and suck her up into oblivion.

I shrugged. 'I've been practicing. It's really just concentration and control. You'd know that if you'd been practicing, too.'

A flash of pain crossed Stevie Rae's gaunt face so quickly that I wondered if I'd really seen or just imagined it. 'The elements have nothing to do with me now.'

'That's crap, Stevie Rae. You have an affinity for earth. You had it before you died, or whatever,' I faltered over how awkward it was to be talking to undead dead Stevie Rae about being dead. 'That kind of thing just doesn't go away. Plus, remember the tunnels? You still had the affinity then.'

Stevie Rae shook her head and her short blond curls, the ones that weren't all nappy and dirty, bounced, reminding me of how she used to look. 'It's gone. Whatever I once had died with the part of me that was human. You need to accept it and move on. I have.'

'I'll never accept it. You're my best friend. I'm not going to move on.'