Burned

Stark

“Yeah, I’m listening to you, Aphrodite. You want me to memorize that poem.” Stark spoke to her through the helicopter’s headsets, which he wished he knew how to shut off. He didn’t want to listen to her run her mouth; he didn’t want to talk to Aphrodite or to anyone. He was totally preoccupied with turning over and over in his mind his strategy for getting himself and Zoey on the island. Stark stared out of the window of the helicopter, trying to see through darkness and fog for a first glimpse of the Isle of Skye where, according to Duantia and just about the entire High Council, he was going to meet his certain death sometime in the next five days.

“Not that poem, idiot. That prophecy. I wouldn’t ask anyone to memorize a poem. Metaphor, simile, allusion, symbolism . . . blah . . . blah . . . ugh. It makes my hair hurt thinking about all that crap. Not that a prophecy sucks any less, but it is—sadly—important. And Stevie Rae has a point about this one. It does read like a confusing poetic map,” Aphrodite said.

“I am in agreement with Aphrodite and Stevie Rae,” Darius said. “Kramisha’s prophetic poems have given Zoey guidance before. This one could do the same thing.”

Stark dragged his gaze from the window. “I know.” He looked from Darius to Aphrodite, then his eyes went to Zoey’s apparently lifeless body, where she was strapped in on a narrow litter between the three of them. “She already found Kalona on water. She has to purify him through fire. Air has to whisper to her something spirit already knows, and if she keeps following truth, she’ll be free. I already memorized the damn thing. I don’t care if it’s a poem or a prophecy. If there’s a chance it can help her, I’ll get it to Zoey.”

The pilot’s voice came through the headsets to all of them. “I’m putting it down now. Remember, all I can do is let you out. The rest is up to you. Just know if you step one foot on the island itself without Sgiach’s permission, you will die.”

“I got that the first dozen times you assholes said it,” Stark muttered, not caring that the pilot gave him a dark look over her shoulder.

Then the helicopter landed, and Darius was helping him unbuckle Zoey. Stark dropped to the ground. Darius and Aphrodite carefully handed Zoey to him, and he cradled her in his arms, trying to shield her from the worst of cold, wet wind whipped up by the helicopter’s massive blades. Darius and Aphrodite joined him, and they all hurried away from the helicopter, though the pilot hadn’t been exaggerating. They weren’t even on the ground for a minute when the copter took off.

“Pussies,” Stark said.

“They’re just following their instincts,” Darius said, looking around them as if he expected the bogeyman to jump out of the mist.

“No shit. This place is super creepy,” Aphrodite said, moving closer to Darius, who tucked her hand through his arm possessively.

Stark frowned at them. “Are you two okay? Don’t tell me the doom-and-gloom vamps got to you.”

Darius looked him up and down, and then shared a glance with Aphrodite before answering. “You don’t feel it, do you?”

“I feel cold and wet. I feel pissed off that Zoey’s in trouble and I haven’t been able to help her, and I feel annoyed that dawn is only an hour or so away and my only shelter is a shack the vamps said is a thirty-minute walk back the way we came. Are any of those things the “it” you’re talking about?”

“No,” Aphrodite answered for Darius, though the Warrior was also shaking his head. “The “it” Darius and I feel is a strong desire to run away. And I do mean run. Now.”

“I want to take Aphrodite out of here. To get her away from this island and never to come back,” Darius said. “That is what all my instincts are telling me.”

“And you don’t feel any of that?” Aphrodite asked Stark. “You don’t want to carry Zoey the hell outta here?”

“Nope.”

“I think that’s a good sign,” Darius said. “The warning that is inherent in the land is somehow passing over him.”

“Or Stark’s just too muscle-brained to be warned,” Aphrodite said.

“On that upbeat thought, let’s get going with this. I don’t have time to waste on spooky feelings,” Stark said. Still carrying Zoey, he started toward the long, narrow bridge that stretched between an outcropping of the Scottish mainland and the island. It was lit by torches that could barely been seen through the soupy mixture of night and mist. “Are you two coming? Or are you going to run screaming like girls away from here.”

“We’re coming with you,” Darius said, catching him in a couple of strides.

“Yeah, and I said I wanted to run. I didn’t say shit about screaming. I’m not a screamer,” Aphrodite said.

They’d both sounded pretty tough, but Stark hadn’t even gotten to the halfway point of the bridge when he heard Aphrodite whispering to Darius. He glanced at the two of them. Even in the dim torchlight he could see how pale the Warrior and his Prophetess had become. Stark paused. “You don’t have to come with me. Everyone, even Thanatos, said there’s absolutely no way Sgiach is going to let you guys on the island. Even if all of them are wrong, and you do get on, there’s not much you can do. I have to figure out how to get to Zoey. Alone.”

“We can’t be at your side while you’re in the Otherworld,” Darius said.

“So we’re watching your back, and there’s nothing you can do about it. Zoey would be totally pissed at me when she gets back in there”—Aphrodite pointed at Zoey’s body—“and found out Darius and I had let you do all this crap alone. You know how she is with her one for all, all for one, mentality. The vamps wouldn’t bring the whole nerd herd here, something I can’t really blame them for, so Darius and I are picking up their slack. Again. Like you said, stop wasting time you don’t have.” She waved her hand at the darkness in front of them. “Go on, I’m just gonna ignore the crashing black waves below us and the fact that I know for damn sure this bridge is going to break any moment and drop us into the fucking water, where sea monsters will drag us under the spooky black waves and suck out our brains.”

“That’s really what this place is making you feel?” Stark tried, unsuccessfully, to hide his smile.

“Yes, asstard, it is.”

Stark looked at Darius, who nodded in agreement because instead of speaking, he was obviously choosing to clench his jaw and shoot suspicious glances downward at the “spooky black waves.”

“Huh.” Stark quit even attempting to hide his smile and grinned at Aphrodite. “Just water and a bridge to me. Damn shame it’s freaking you out so badly.”

“Walk,” Aphrodite said. “Before I forget you’re holding Zoey, and I push you off this bridge so that Darius and I can run back the way we came, screaming or not.”

Stark’s grin only lasted a few more feet. It didn’t take an ancient “go away” spell to sober him up. All it took was Zoey’s unmoving weight in his arms. I shouldn’t be messing with Aphrodite. I need to focus. Think of what I decided to say to them and, please oh please, Nyx, let me be right. Let me say what will get me on that island. Unsmiling and resolute, Stark led them across the bridge until they stopped in front of an imposing archway made of an ethereally beautiful white stone. The torchlight caught veins of silver in what Stark thought had to be a rare marble, so that the arch glittered seductively.

“Oh, for crap’s sake, I can barely look at it,” Aphrodite said, turning her head from the archway and averting her eyes. “And I usually love sparkly things.”

“It is more of the spell.” Darius’s voice was rough with tension. “It’s meant to repel.”

“Repel?” Aphrodite glanced at the archway, shuddered, and then looked hastily away again. “‘Repulse’ is a better word.”

“It doesn’t affect you, either. Does it?” Darius asked Stark.