“Good job, girl.” Dallas grinned at her. Then he hesitated and cocked his head to the side. “Do you hear that?”
Stevie Rae looked at Johnny B, who shook his head while he helped Kramisha down the ladder.
“Hear what, Dallas?” Stevie Rae asked him.
Dallas pressed his hand against the rough concrete wall of the tunnel. “
“Dallas, you ain’t makin’ no sense,” Kramisha told him.
He looked over his shoulder at them. “I’m not sure, but I think I can hear the electrical lines humming.”
“That’s weird,” Kramisha said.
“Well, you have always been super good with electricity and all that kind of guy stuff,” Stevie Rae said.
“Yeah, but it’s never been like this before. Seriously, I can
“Well, maybe it’s like an affinity for you, and maybe you didn’t realize it before ’cause you were down here all the time, and it just seemed normal,” Stevie Rae said.
“But electricity ain’t from the Goddess. How can it be an affinity gift?” Kramisha said, sending Dallas suspicious looks.
“Why can’t it be from Nyx?” Stevie Rae said. “Truthfully, I’ve known weirder things before than a fledging getting an affinity for electricity. Uh, like a white bull personifying Darkness for one.”
“You got a point there,” Kramisha said.
“So I could actually have an affinity?” Dallas looked dazed.
“ ’Course you could, boy,” Stevie Rae told him.
“If you do, then make it come in handy,” Johnny B said, helping Shannoncompton and Venus down the ladder.
“Handy? Like how?” Dallas asked.
“Well, can you tell from the hummin’ or whatever if those nasty red fledglings have been using electricity down here lately?” Kramisha said.
“I’ll see.” Dallas turned back to the wall, pressed his hands against the concrete, and squeezed his eyes shut. Within just a few heartbeats his eyes popped open, and he gave a surprised gasp, then his gaze went straight to Stevie Rae. “Yeah, the fledglings have been using the electricity. Actually they are right now. They’re in the kitchen.”
“Then that’s where we’re going,” Stevie Rae said.
Chapter 22
“Okay, this really pisses me off.” Stevie Rae kicked at another empty liter bottle of Dr Pepper that littered the tunnel.
“They’s nasty and trifling.” Kramisha agreed.
“Ohmygod. If they get me dirty, I’m gonna be so pissed,” said Venus.
“Get
“I really think we should focus,” Dallas said. He kept running a hand along the concrete wall. The closer to the kitchen area they got, the more restless he became.
“Dallas is right,” Stevie Rae said. “First we gotta kick them outta here, and then we can worry about gettin’ our stuff back into shape.”
“Pier One and Pottery Barn still have Aphrodite’s gold card on file,” Kramisha told Venus.
Venus looked majorly relieved. “Well, that’ll fix this mess.”
“Venus, you need a lot more than a gold card to fix the mess you’ve turned into.” Sarcasm shot out of the shadows of the tunnel in front of them. “Look at you—you’re all tame and boring. And I used to think you had seriously cool potential.”
Venus, along with Stevie Rae and the rest of her fledglings, came to a halt. “I’m tame and boring?” Venus’s laugh was as sarcastic as Nicole’s voice. “So your idea of seriously cool must be ripping out people’s throats. Please. That can’t even be attractive.”
“Hey, don’t knock it till you’ve tried it,” Nicole said, tucking aside the blanket that had been resting across the entryway to the kitchen.
She was framed in the doorway by lanternlight from within. She looked thinner— harder than Stevie Rae remembered her looking. Starr and Kurtis stood a little way behind her, and behind them at least a dozen red-eyed fledglings gathered, glaring at them maliciously.
Stevie Rae took one step forward. Nicole’s mean, red-tinged eyes darted from Venus to her.
“Oh, did you come back to play some more?” Nicole said.
“I’m not playin’ with you, Nicole. And you’re done ‘playing’ ”—she air quoted the word—“with people around here.”
“You can’t tell us what to do!” the words exploded from Nicole. Behind her, Starr and Kurtis bared their teeth and made noises that were more snarls than laughter. The fledglings in the kitchen stirred restlessly.
It was then that Stevie Rae saw it. It hung near the ceiling over the rogue fledglings like a wavering sea of blackness that seemed to pool and write like a ghost made of nothing but darkness.
Darkness . . .
Stevie Rae swallowed down the bile of fear and forced her eyes to focus on Nicole. She knew what she had to do. She needed to end this now, before Darkness got a better hold than it already had on them.
Instead of responding to Nicole, Stevie Rae drew a deep, cleansing breath and said, “Earth, come to me!” When she felt the ground beneath her feet and the curved sides of the tunnel around her begin to warm, she turned her attention to Nicole.
“As usual, you have it wrong, Nicole. I’m not gonna tell you what to do.” Stevie Rae spoke in a calm, reasonable voice. She knew from Nicole’s widened eyes that she was probably taking on that green glow that had surrounded her at the House of Night, and she began lifting her hands, drawing more of the rich, vibrant energy of her element to her. “I’m gonna give you a choice, and then y’all are gonna take the consequences for what you choose. Just like all of us have to.”
“How about you choose to take your pussy asses back to the House of Night with the rest of the spineless fucks who call themselves vampyres,” Nicole said.
“You know I ain’t no pussy,” Dallas said, stepping closer to Stevie Rae.
“Neither am I,” rumbled Johnny B from behind Dallas.
“Nicole, I never did like you much. I always thought you had you a bad case of head-up-your-ass-itis. Now I’m sure of it,” Kramisha said, moving up to stand closer to Stevie Rae’s other side. “And I do not like the way you talkin’ to our High Priestess.”
“Kramisha, I do not give one single shit for what you like or don’t like. And she ain’t my High Priestess!” Nicole shouted, spraying white spittle from her lips.
“Seriously gross,” Venus said. “You might want to rethink this whole evil-fledgling thing. It’s making you ugly, in more ways than one.”
“Power is never ugly, and I have power,” Nicole said.
