Tempted

it coated earth, the crisp, cinnamon smell of the winter trees, and the man-made tang of the asphalt beneath her feet. She ignored those scents and instead focused on the blood. It wasn’t human blood, or even fledgling blood, so it didn’t smell like sunlight and spring—honey and chocolate—love and life and everything that she’d ever dreamed of. No, this blood smelled too dark. Too thick. There was too much of something in it that wasn’t human. But it was still blood, and it drew her, even though she knew the wrongness of it deep in her soul.

It was the scent of something strange, something otherworldly, that led her to the first splashes of crimson. In the stormy darkness of the sunless predawn, even her enhanced vision saw it only as wet splotches against the ice that sheeted the road and covered the grass beside it. But Stevie Rae knew it was blood. A lot of blood.

But there was no animal or human lying there bleeding.

Instead there was a trail of liquid darkness thickening in the sheeting ice, moving away from the street and into the densest part of the grove behind the abbey.

Her predator’s instincts kicked in instantly. Stevie Rae moved stealthily, hardly breathing, hardly making a sound, as she tracked the blood path.

It was beneath one of the largest trees that she found it, hunkered down under a huge, newly broken branch as if it had dragged itself there to hide and die.

Stevie Rae felt a shudder of fear pass through her. It was a Raven Mocker.

The creature was huge. Bigger than she’d thought they’d looked from a distance. It lay on its side, head tucked down against the ground, so she couldn’t see its face very well. The giant wing she could see looked wrong, obviously broken, and the human arm that lay beneath it was weirdly angled and covered with blood. Its legs were human, too, and curled up like it had died in a fetal position. She remembered hearing Darius firing a gun as he and Z and the gang had ridden like bats outta hell down Twenty-first to the abbey. So, he’d shot it from the sky.

“Dang,” she said under her breath. “That must’ve been one heck of a fall.”

Stevie Rae cupped her hands around her mouth and was getting ready to holler for Dallas so he and the other guys could help her drag the body somewhere when the Raven Mocker twitched and opened its eyes.

She froze. The two of them stared at each other. The creature’s red eyes widened, looking surprised and impossibly human in the bird face. They flicked around her and behind her, checking to see if she was alone. Automatically, Stevie Rae crouched, putting her hands up defensively and centering herself to call earth to strengthen her.

And then he spoke.

“Kill me. End this,” he gasped, panting in pain.

The sound of his voice was so human, so completely unexpected that Stevie Rae dropped her hands and staggered a step back. “You can talk!” she blurted.

Then the Raven Mocker did something that utterly shocked Stevie Rae and irrevocably changed the course of her life.

He laughed.

It was a dry, sarcastic sound, and it ended in a moan of pain. But it was laughter, and it framed his words with humanity.

“Yes,” he said between gasps for breath. “I talk. I bleed. I die. Kill me and be done with it.” He tried to sit up then, as if he were eager to meet his death, and the movement caused him to cry out in agony. His too-human eyes rolled back and he collapsed to the frozen ground, unconscious.

Stevie Rae moved before she remembered even making the decision. When she reached him, she only hesitated for a second. He’d passed out facedown, so it was a simple thing for her to move his wings aside and grab him under his arms. He was big, really big—like, as big as a real guy, and she’d braced herself for him to be heavy, but he wasn’t. Actually, he was so light that it was super-easy to drag him, which was what she found herself doing while her mind screamed at her: What the hell? What the hell? What the hell?

What the hell was she doing?

Stevie Rae didn’t know. All she knew was what she wasn’t doing. She wasn’t killing the Raven Mocker.

CHAPTER 3

Zoey

“Is he going to be okay?” I tried to whisper so I wouldn’t wake Stark and was, apparently, unsuccessful, because his closed eyelids fluttered and his lips tilted up slightly in a painful ghost of his cocky half smile.

“I’m not dead yet,” he said.

“And I’m not talking to you,” I said in a much more irritated voice than I’d intended.

“Temper, u-we-tsi-a-ge-ya,” Grandma Redbird rebuked me gently as Sister Mary Angela, prioress of the Benedictine nuns, helped her into the little infirmary room.

“Grandma! There you are!” I hurried to her and helped Sister Mary Angela ease her into a chair.

“She’s just worried about me.” Stark’s eyes were closed again but his lips still hinted at a smile.

“I know that, tsi-ta-ga-a-s-ha-ya. But Zoey is a High Priestess in training and she must learn to control her emotions.”

Tsi-ta-ga-a-s-ha-ya! That would have made me laugh out loud if Grandma hadn’t looked so pale and frail, and if I hadn’t been so, well, worried in general. “Sorry, Grandma. I should watch my temper, but it’s kinda hard when the people I love most keep almost dying!” I finished in a rush and had to draw a deep breath to steady myself. “And shouldn’t you be in bed?”

“Soon, u-we-tsi-a-ge-ya, soon.”

“What does tsi-ta-ga-a-s- whatever mean?” Stark’s voice was thick with pain as Darius spread a thick cream over his burns, but in spite of the wound he sounded amused and curious.

“Tsi-ta-ga-a-s-ha-ya,” Grandma corrected his pronunciation, “means rooster.”

His eyes glimmered with humor. “Everyone says you’re a wise woman.”

“Which is less interesting than what everyone says about you, tsi-ta-ga-a-s-ha-ya,” Grandma said.

Stark barked a quick laugh and then sucked air painfully.

“Be still!” Darius commanded.

“Sister, I thought you said you guys had a doctor here.” I tried not to sound as panicky as I felt.

“A human doctor cannot help him,” Darius said before Sister Mary Angela could respond. “He needs rest and quiet and—”

“Rest and quiet are fine,” Stark interrupted him. “Like I said before: I’m not dead yet.” He met Darius’s eyes and I saw the Son of Erebus shrug and nod his head briefly, as if he’d conceded some point to the younger vampyre.

I should have just ignored the little interplay between them, but my patience had evaporated hours before. “Okay, what aren’t you telling me?”

The nun who’d been assisting Darius shot me a long, cold look and said, “Perhaps the injured boy needs to know his sacrifice was not made in vain.”

The nun’s harsh words gave me a jolt of guilty shock that closed my throat and didn’t let me respond to the hard-eyed woman. The sacrifice Stark had been willing to make was his life for mine. I swallowed past the dryness in my throat. What was my life worth? I was just a kid—barely seventeen. I’d messed up over and over again. I was the reincarnation of a girl created to trap a fallen angel, and that meant deep inside my soul I couldn’t help loving him, even when I knew I shouldn’t… couldn’t…

No. I wasn’t worth the sacrifice of Stark’s life.

“I already know it.” Stark’s voice didn’t waver; suddenly he sounded strong and sure. I blinked my vision free of tears and met his eyes. “What I did was just part of my job,” he said. “I’m a Warrior. I’ve sworn my life into the service of Zoey Redbird, High Priestess and Beloved of Nyx. That means I’m working for our Goddess and being knocked to the ground and burned a little really doesn’t mean shit if I helped Zoey beat the bad guys.”

“Well said, tsi-ta-ga-a-s-ha-ya,” Grandma told him.