Burned

the earth she loved so much and reveled in her connection with the element. Feeling warm and filled with the strength of nature, she said, “Yes! I know you—I can feel myself within you and you within me. Please do somethin’ for me. Please take some of this magic, this awesomeness that is us together, and pour it into the main tunnel under the depot. Let it be like I’m there, so much so that anyone who rests within you would know it.” Stevie Rae closed her eyes and imagined a glowing green bolt of energy leaving her body, traveling through the earth, and pouring into the tunnel right outside her old room in the depot. Then she said, “Thank you, earth. Thank you for being my element. You can go now.”

When she rejoined her fledglings, they were all staring at her with wide eyes.

“What?” she asked.

“That was amazing,” Dallas said, his voice filled with awe.

“Yeah, you was green and all shiny,” Kramisha said. “I never seen anything like it before.”

“It was totally cool,” Johnny B said, while the rest of the kids nodded and smiled.

Stevie Rae smiled back at them, feeling like a real High Priestess. “Well, I’m pretty sure it worked,” she said.

“Ya think?” Dallas said.

“I think,” she said, and they shared a look that made Stevie Rae’s stomach feel quivery. She had to shake herself mentally and refocus, saying, “Uh, okay. Let’s do this.”

The kids scattered to the two vehicles, and Dallas draped his arm around Stevie Rae’s shoulder. She let him draw her close.

“I’m proud of you, girl,” he said.

“Thanks.” She reached around his waist and slid her hand in his back pocket.

“And I’m glad you’re bringin’ us along this time,” he said.

“It’s the right thing to do,” she said. “Plus, we’re stronger together than we are apart.”

Beside the Bug, he stopped and pulled her all the way into his arms. Bending, he murmured against her lips, “That’ right, girl. We are stronger together.” Then he kissed her with a fierce possession that surprised Stevie Rae. Before she really knew it, she was kissing him back—and liking the hot way his hard, familiar, completely normal body was making her feel.

“Could y’all please get a room?” Kramisha called to them as she crawled into the little backseat of the Bug.

Stevie Rae giggled, weirdly light-headed, especially as the thought Get real—you can’t even kiss the other one whispered through her mind.

Dallas reluctantly let her step out of his arms so she could move to the driver’s side of the Bug. Over the roof, he caught her gaze, and said softly, “A room sounds good to me.”

Stevie Rae felt her cheeks get hot, and another giggle escaped her mouth. She and Dallas ducked inside the car. From the backseat, Kramisha grumbled, “I heard that mess about a room soundin’ good, Dallas, and all I’m sayin’ is, you two best keep your minds out the gutter and on the bad kids who like to rip out people’s throats.”

“I said room, not gutter,” Dallas grinned cockily over the seat at Kramisha.

“And I can multitask,” Stevie Rae added with another giggle.

“Whatever. Let’s just go. I got me a weird feelin’ ’bout this,” Kramisha said.

Instantly serious, Stevie Rae glanced at Kramisha in the rearview mirror as she pulled out of the parking lot. “A weird feelin’? Did you write another poem, I mean besides the ones you already showed me?”

“No. And I ain’t talkin’ ’bout those bad kids.”

Stevie Rae frowned at Kramisha’s reflection.

“What else could you be talkin’ ’bout?” Dallas asked.

Kramisha gave Stevie Rae a long look before she answered him. “Nothin’. I just got me some paranoia goin’ on, that’s all. You two face-suckin’ instead of payin’ attention to business ain’t helping.”

“I’m payin’ attention to business,” Stevie Rae said, looking away from Kramisha’s reflection and concentrating on the road.

“Yeah, remember my girl’s a High Priestess, and they can definitely handle a bunch of shit at once.”

“Huh,” Kramisha snorted.

The drive to the depot was short and silent. Stevie Rae was uber-aware of Kramisha in the backseat. She knows about Rephaim. The thought whispered through Stevie Rae’s mind, and she immediately squelched it. Kramisha didn’t know about Rephaim. She only knew there was another guy. Nobody knows about Rephaim.

Except the red fledglings.

Panic fluttered through her stomach. What the heck was she gonna do if Nicole or one of the other kids told her fledglings about Rephaim? Stevie Rae could imagine the scene. Nicole would be hateful and crude. Her kids would be totally shocked and freaked. They wouldn’t believe she could have—

With a bolt of realization that almost had her gasping out loud, Stevie Rae knew the answer to her problem. Her fledglings wouldn’t believe she’d Imprinted with a Raven Mocker. Ever. She would simply deny it. There wasn’t any proof. Yeah, her blood might smell weird, but she’d already explained that. Darkness had fed from her—that was bound to make her smell weird. Kramisha believed it, so did Lenobia. The rest of the kids would, too. It would be her word, the word of a High Priestess, against a bunch of kids who had gone bad and had tried to kill her.

And what if some of them actually decided to choose good tonight and stayed here with the rest of them?

Then they’ll have to keep their mouths shut, or they don’t stay, was the grim thought that haunted Stevie Rae as she parked in the depot lot and gathered her fledglings around her.

“Okay, we’re goin’ in. Don’t underestimate them,” Stevie Rae said. Without any discussion, Dallas moved to her right, and Johnny B took her left side. The rest of the kids followed closely behind as they pushed aside the deceptively secure-looking grate that gave them easy access to the basement of the abandoned Tulsa depot.

It looked much like it had when they’d been living down there. There was maybe a little more trash, but basically it was a dark, cold basement. They moved to the rear corner entrance, where the tunnels dropped below them into an even deeper darkness.

“Can you see?” Dallas asked her.

“Of course, but I’ll light the wall torches as soon as I find a match or whatever, so y’all can see, too.”

“I got a lighter,” Kramisha said, digging in her giant bag.

“Kramisha, do not tell me you’re smoking,” Stevie Rae said, taking the lighter from her.

“No, I ain’t smokin’. That’s just stupid. But I do believe in bein’ prepared. And a lighter come in handy sometimes—like now.”

Stevie Rae started to lower herself down the metal ladder, but Dallas’s hand on her arm stopped her. “No, I’m goin’ first. They don’t want to kill me.”

“Well, that you know of,” Stevie Rae countered with, but she let him drop down the ladder before she did, Johnny B following closely behind her. “Hang on.” She made both of them wait by the foot of the ladder while she moved with utter confidence in the complete blackness to the first of the old-timey kerosene lanterns she’d helped to hang from old railroad nails on the curved wall of the tunnel. She lit the lantern and turned to smile at her boys, “There, that’s better, huh?”