Hunted

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 grimace 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.