Rephaim looked from her outstretched hand to her face, and back to her hand. Then slowly, almost reluctantly, he grasped it. Not in a modern handshake, but in the traditional vampyre greeting of clasping forearms.
“I owe you a life, Priestess.”
Stevie Rae’s cheeks felt hot. “Just call me Stevie Rae. I don’t feel much like a Priestess right now.”
He bowed his head. “Then it is to Stevie Rae that I owe a life.”
“Do the right thing with yours and I’ll consider myself paid up,” she said. “Merry meet, marry part, and merry meet again, Rephaim.”
She tried to pull her arm from his grasp, but he didn’t let her go. “Are they all like you? All of your allies?” he asked.
She smiled. “Nah, I’m weirder than most of the others. I’m the first red vamp, and sometimes I think that makes me kinda an experiment.”
Still gripping her arm he said, “I was the first of my father’s children.”
Though he held her gaze steadily, she couldn’t read his expression. All she saw in the dim light of the tunnel was the human shape of his eyes and their unearthly red glow—the same red glow that haunted her dreams and sometimes overwhelmed her own vision, tainting everything with scarlet and anger and darkness. She shook her head, and more to herself than to him said, “Being the first can be hard.”
He nodded and finally released her arm. Without another word, he turned and hobbled away into the darkness.
Stevie Rae counted slowly to one hundred, then she raised her arms. “Earth, I need you again.” Instantly her element responded, filling the tunnel with the scents of a springtime meadow. She breathed in deeply before continuing. “Collapse the ceiling. Fill up this part of the tunnel. Close the hole you made for me; plug it up; make it solid again, so that nobody can pass here.”
She stepped back as the dirt in front and above her started to move, and then it rained down, shifting and solidifying until there was nothing but a solid wall of earth in front of her.
“Stevie Rae, what the hell are ya doing?”
Stevie Rae whirled around, pressing her hand over her heart. “Dallas! You scared the livin’ daylights right outta me! Dang, I think you ’bout gave me a heart attack for real.”
“Sorry. You’re so hard to sneak up on I thought you knew I was standing here.”
Heart pounding even harder, Stevie Rae searched Dallas’s face, trying to find a sign that he had even a hint that she hadn’t been alone, but he didn’t look suspicious or mad or betrayed—he just looked curious and kinda sad. His next words reinforced that he hadn’t been there long enough to have caught even a glimpse of Rephaim.
“You sealed it off to keep the rest of them from getting to the abbey, didn’t you?”
Stevie Rae nodded and tried not to let the wave of relief she felt show in her voice. “Yeah. I didn’t think it was smart to give ’em such easy access to the nuns.”
“It would be kinda like an old-lady smorgasbord for them.” Dallas’s eyes glinted mischievously.
“Don’t be gross.” But she couldn’t help grinning at him. Dallas really was adorable. Not only was he her unofficial boyfriend, but he was also a genius with anything to do with electricity or plumbing or basically whatever you’d find at Home Depot.
Grinning back at her, he moved closer and tugged on one of her blond curls. “I’m not being gross. I’m being real. And you can’t tell me you haven’t at least thought about how easy it would be to chomp on these nuns.”
“Dallas!” She narrowed her eyes at him, truly shocked by what he’d said. “Heck no I haven’t thought about eatin’ a nun! It doesn’t even
“Hey, relax, cutie. I’m just messing with you.” He glanced behind her at the wall of earth. “So, how are you going to explain this to Zoey and the rest of them?”
“I’m gonna do what I probably shoulda done a while ago. I’m gonna tell them the truth.”
“I thought you wanted to stay quiet about the rest of the fledglings because you thought they might come around and be more like us.”
“Yeah, well, I’m startin’ to think I’ve messed up with some of my choices.”
“All right, it’s up to you. You’re our High Priestess. Tell Zoey and them whatever you want. Actually, you can do that right now. Zoey just called a meeting in the cafeteria. I came looking for you to tell you about it.”
“How’d you know where to find me?”
He smiled at her again and slipped his arm around her shoulders. “I know you, cutie. It wasn’t very hard to figure out where you’d be.”
They started walking out of the tunnel together. Stevie Rae wrapped her arm around Dallas’s waist. She let herself lean against him, glad that he felt normal and totally guy-like beside her. It was a relief to have her world shift back to what she knew was right. She’d put Rephaim out of her mind. She’d helped someone who’d been hurt, that’s all. And now she was done with him. Seriously, he was just one badly injured Raven Mocker. How much trouble could he cause?
“You know me, huh?” She butted him with her hip.
He pressed right back against her. “Not as well as I wish I knew you, cutie.”
Stevie Rae giggled, ignoring the fact that she sounded kinda manic in her effort to be normal.
She also ignored the fact that she could still smell Rephaim’s dark scent on her skin.
CHAPTER 18
I was in that magical, misty place between awake and asleep when he pulled me against his body. He was so big and strong and hard that the contrast between his physical presence and the soft, sweet breath that tickled the side of my neck along with the gentle kisses he placed there had me shivering.
I was mostly asleep and didn’t want to wake up all the way yet, but I sighed happily and stretched so that he could reach more of my neck. His arms felt so right around me. I loved being close to him and was thinking about how glad I was Stark was my Warrior when I murmured sleepily, “You must really be feeling better.”
His touch became sexier and less gentle.
I shivered again.
Then my groggy mind registered two things simultaneously. First: I wasn’t shivering just because I liked what he was doing, even though I definitely liked what he was doing. I was shivering because his touch was
At that instant he whispered, “Do you see how your soul longs for me? You will come to me. You are fated to do so, and I am fated to wait for you.”
I sucked in a gasp, came wide awake, and sat up.
I was completely alone.
Without thinking about it, I automatically started to control my breathing and steady my emotions, which were definitely in overdrive. Stark wasn’t in the room, and the last thing I wanted him to do was to come running back to me because he could feel how panicked I was, when I was not in any real danger. I might be uncertain about a bunch of things, but I was dead sure about one thing: I didn’t want Stark to start thinking he couldn’t leave my side.
Yeah, I was crazy about him, and glad we shared a bond, but that didn’t mean I wanted him to believe I couldn’t function without him. He was my Warrior, not my babysitter or my stalker, and if he started to think he had to watch me constantly… gawking at me while I slept…
I suppressed a groan of horror.
The door that led to the little bathroom my room shared with the guest room next door opened and Stark strode in, his gaze going straight to me. He had on jeans and a black Street Cats Catholic Charities T-shirt, and he was towel-drying his still-wet hair. I guess I must have calmed myself down and fixed the panicked expression on
