Tempted

had un-died and her humanity had been almost totally destroyed. It reminded her of that black time and those days and nights that had been filled with nothing but anger and need, violence and fear.

She stifled a little gasp of realization as she made the rest of the scent connection. The red fledglings, those other red fledglings—the ones she was so reluctant to reveal to Zoey—had this same scent about them. It wasn’t a perfect match, and she doubted whether a nose less keen than hers could even draw the connection, but she could. She did. And the connection made her own blood cold with foreboding.

“Again you come to me alone,” Rephaim said.

CHAPTER 17

Stevie Rae

Rephaim’s words drifted to her out of the darkness. Without seeing the monster he was, his voice had a quality that made him sound hauntingly, heartbreakingly human. That was, after all, what had saved him the day before. His humanity had reached Stevie Rae, and she hadn’t been able to kill him.

But today he sounded different, stronger than he had before. That relieved and worried her at the same time.

Then she shook off the worry. She wasn’t some helpless kid who went running for the hills at the first sign of danger. She could definitely kick some bird butt. Stevie Rae straightened her spine. She’d made the decision to help him get away, and that’s dang well what she was gonna do.

“And who’d ya expect? John Wayne and the cavalry?” Pretending to be her mom when one of her brothers was being sick and annoying, Stevie Rae marched forward. The shape that had been a dark blob hunkered in the back of the shed came into focus and she gave him her best no-nonsense look. “Well, you’re not dead and you’re sittin’ up. So you must be feelin’ better.”

He cocked his head slightly to the side. “Who is John Wayne and cavalry?”

“The cavalry. It just means the good guys comin’ to the rescue. Don’t get excited, though. There isn’t an army comin’. All you got is me.”

“Don’t you consider yourself one of the good guys?”

He surprised her with his ability to have an actual conversation with her, and she thought if she could close her eyes or look away from him, she might almost fool herself into thinking he was just a normal guy. Of course she knew better. She could never close her eyes around him or look away, and he definitely wasn’t a normal anything.

“Well, yeah, I’m good, but I’m not exactly an army.” Stevie Rae made an obvious show of looking him over. And he did still look like crap—definitely battered and bloodied and broken—but he wasn’t lying on his side in a crumpled heap anymore. He was sitting up, leaning, mostly on his uninjured left side, against the back of the shed. He’d arranged the towels she’d left with him over his body like pieces of a blanket. His eyes were bright and alert and never wavered from her face. “So, you are feelin’ better?”

“As you said, I am not dead. Where are the others?”

“I told ya before, the rest of the Raven Mockers left with Kalona and Neferet.”

“No, I mean the other sons and daughters of man.”

“Oh, my friends. They’re sleepin’ mostly. So we don’t have much time. This isn’t gonna be easy, but I think I figured out how to get you outta here in one piece.” She paused, and stopped herself from picking at her fingernails. “You can walk, can’t you?”

“I will do what I need to do.”

“Now what the heck does that mean? Just give me a simple yes or no. It’s kinda important.”

“Yessss.”

Stevie Rae swallowed hard at the sound of his hissed word and decided she’d been wrong about the whole if-she-didn’t-look-at-himhe’d-seem-normal thing. “All right, well, let’s get goin’ then.”

“Where are you taking me?”

“All I could think of was that I need to get you someplace where you can be safe and heal. You can’t stay here. They’ll find you for sure. Hey, you don’t have your daddy’s problem with bein’ underground, do ya?”

“I prefer the ssssky to the earth.” He sounded bitter, practically biting off the words and adding a special hissing emphasis to “sky.”

Stevie Rae put her hands on her hips. “So does that mean you can’t go underground?”

“I prefer not to.”

“Well, do you prefer to stay alive and hidden underground, or up here and about a minute away from bein’ found and dead?” Or worse, she thought but didn’t say aloud.

He didn’t speak for quite a while and Stevie Rae began to wonder if maybe Rephaim didn’t really want to live, which was a thought she hadn’t considered. She guessed it might make sense, though. His own folks had left him for dead and the modern world was like a zillion times different than it had been when he’d been alive and in the flesh before—and terrorizing Cherokee villages. How badly had she messed up by not just letting him die?

“I prefer to live.”

By the look on his face, Stevie Rae thought that maybe his announcement was as much a surprise to him as it had been to her.

“Okay. Fine. Then I need to get you outta here.” She took a step toward him, but stopped. “Do I need to make you promise to be good again?”

“I am too weak to be a danger to you,” he said simply.

“All right, then I’ll just consider your word that you gave me earlier still holding. Just don’t try anything stupid and we might get through this.” Stevie Rae walked over to him and squatted down. “I better take a look at your bandages. They might need to be changed or tightened before we leave.” She checked him over methodically, all the while keeping up a running verbal commentary of what she was doing. “Well, the moss looks like it’s workin’. I don’t see much blood. Your ankle’s pretty swollen, but I don’t think it’s broken. Can’t feel any breaks, anyway.” She rewrapped the ankle and tightened his other bandages, leaving the shattered wing for last. Stevie Rae reached behind him and started to straighten the bandages that had come loose and Rephaim, who had been silent and perfectly still during her examination, flinched and groaned in pain.

“Ah, shoot! Sorry. I know the wing’s bad.”

“Wrap more of the cloth around me. Tie it more tightly against my body. I will not be able to walk if you do not completely immobilize it.”

Stevie Rae nodded. “I’ll do what I can.” She ripped more lengths from one of the towels and then he leaned forward so that she had access to his back. She gritted her teeth and worked as quickly and gently as she could, hating the way he trembled and kept stifling moans of pain.

When she’d finished with the wing, she ladled out some water and helped him drink it. After he stopped trembling, she stood and held out her hands to him. “Okay, let’s cowboy up.”

He gazed at her and even in his strange face she could read confusion. She smiled. “It just means stepping up and doin’ what you need to do, even when it’s hard as hell.”

He nodded, and then slowly reached up and clasped her hands. Bracing herself, she pulled, allowing him time to shift his weight and gather himself. With a painful gasp, he managed to stand, though he put little weight on his hurt ankle and he didn’t seem very steady.

Stevie Rae kept hold of his hands, giving him a chance to get used to being upright, and while she worried that he might pass out, she thought how weird it was that his hands felt so warm and so human. She’d always thought of birds as cold and flitty. Actually, she didn’t like birds much—never had. Her mom’s chickens tended to scare the bejesus outta her, what with their hysterical flapping and stupid squawking. She had a brief flashback of gathering eggs and having one fat, grumpy hen peck at her and just miss her eyes.

Stevie Rae shivered, and Rephaim dropped her hands.

“Are you okay?” she asked to cover up the awkward silence that gathered between them.

With a grunt, he nodded.

She nodded, too. “Hang on. Before you try much walkin’, let’s see what I can find to help you.” Stevie Rae