Burned

He tried not to think as he flew. He tried to keep his mind utterly clear. He wanted only to feel the night under his wings—to have the cool, sweet air brush his body.

But Stevie Rae intruded again.

Her sadness reached him. Rephaim knew she was crying. He could feel her sobs as if they were in his own body.

He flew faster. What had made her weep? Was she crying because of him again?

Rephaim flew past Gilcrease without hesitating. She wasn’t there. He could feel that she was away, farther to the south.

It was as his wings beat the night air that Stevie Rae’s sadness changed, shifting into something that at first confused him, and then when Rephaim realized what it was, his blood boiled.

Desire! Stevie Rae was in the arms of someone else!

Rephaim didn’t stop to think like a creature of two worlds who was neither man nor beast. He didn’t remember that he’d been born from rape and sentenced to know nothing except Darkness and violence and service to his hate-driven father. Rephaim didn’t think at all. He only felt. If Stevie Rae gave herself to another, he would lose her forever.

And if he lost her forever, his world would go back to the dark, lonely, joyless place it had been before he’d known her.

Rephaim couldn’t bear that.

He didn’t call on his father’s blood to lead him to Stevie Rae. Rephaim did the opposite. From deep within him, he conjured an image of a sweet-faced Cherokee maiden who hadn’t deserved to die in a flood of blood and pain. Keeping the girl he’d dreamed as his mother in his mind, he flew on instinct, following his heart.

Rephaim’s heart led him to the depot.

The sight of the place sickened him. Not simply because he remembered the rooftop and how close Stevie Rae had come to death. He hated the place because he could feel her there—inside— under the earth, and he knew she was in another’s arms.

Rephaim tore the grate from the opening. Without hesitation, he strode through the basement. Following the link that bound him to her, he entered the familiar tunnels. His breath came hard and fast. His blood pounded through his body, fueling his anger and despair.

When he finally found her, the boy was atop her, rutting against Stevie Rae, oblivious to everything else in the world. What a fool he was. Rephaim should have hurled him from her. He wanted to. The Raven Mocker in him wanted to slam the fledgling against the wall again and again until he was battered and bloody and no longer a threat.

The man within him wanted to weep.

Flooded with feelings he could neither understand nor control, he found himself frozen in place, staring, with horror and hatred as well as desire and despair. As he watched, Stevie Rae readied herself to drink the boy’s blood, and Rephaim knew two things with utter certainty: first, what she was doing would break their Imprint. Second, he did not want their Imprint to be broken.

Without conscious thought, he shouted, “Do not do this to us, Stevie Rae!”

The boy’s response was quicker than Stevie Rae’s. He leaped up, pushing her naked body behind him.

“Get the fuck outta here, you freak!” The boy kept himself positioned between Rephaim and Stevie Rae.

The sight of the fledgling shielding her, protecting his Stevie Rae from him, sent a wave of possessive fury through Rephaim.

“Begone, boy! You’re not needed here!” Rephaim crouched defensively and began moving slowly toward him.

“What the—?” Stevie Rae said, shaking her head as if she was trying to clear it while she grabbed Dallas’s shirt from the floor and hastily pulled it on to cover herself.

“Stay behind me, Stevie Rae. I won’t let it get you.”

Rephaim stalked the boy, following him as he moved back, pushing Stevie Rae with him. Rephaim saw her eyes widen as she peered around the boy and finally truly saw him.

“No!” she cried. “No, you can’t be here!”

Her words stabbed him.

“But I am here!” His anger was at the boiling point. The boy kept moving back, keeping Stevie Rae behind him. Following him, Rephaim entered the kitchen. As he did, a flickering motion caught his attention, and he glanced upward.

Darkness writhed in a sick black pool that clung to the ceiling.

Rephaim wrenched his attention back to Stevie Rae and the fledgling. He wouldn’t think of Darkness now. He couldn’t even consider the possibility that the white bull had returned to claim the rest of his debt.

“Stay back!” the boy cried. Unbelievably, the fledgling made a shooing motion at Rephaim, as if he were an annoying bird that had fluttered into someone’s home.

“Sssstep aside! You are keeping me from what’s mine!” Rephaim hated to hear the bestial hiss in his voice, but he couldn’t help it. The damned boy was pushing him to the edge of his patience.

“Rephaim, just go. I’m fine. Dallas isn’t doin’ anything bad to me.”

“Just go? Leave you?” the words burst from Rephaim. “How can I?”

“You’re not supposed to be here!” Stevie Rae shouted, looking like she was on the verge of tears.

“How could I not be? How could you believe I wouldn’t know what you were about to do?”

“Get outta here!”

“You mean run away? Like you did from me? No. I won’t do that, Stevie Rae. I choose not to do that.”

The boy had reached the wall. While he looked from Rephaim to Stevie Rae, he was feeling behind him for cords that poked from a hole that had been chiseled there.

“You know each other. You really do,” the boy said.

“Of courssse we do, fool!” Rephaim hissed again, hating the ungovernable beast in his voice.

“How?” The fledgling hurled the word at Stevie Rae.

“Dallas, I can explain.”

“Good!” Rephaim shouted as if she’d spoke to him and not the fledgling. “I want you to explain what happened today.”

“Rephaim.” Stevie Rae looked around Dallas to him and shook her head like she was beyond frustrated. “This is so not the right time.”

“You know each other.”

Rephaim noticed the change in the boy’s voice before Stevie Rae did. The fledgling’s tone had hardened—gone cold and mean. The Darkness above them quivered as if in gleeful anticipation.

“Yeah, okay, we do. But I can explain. See, he—”

“You’ve been with him all along.”

Stevie Rae frowned. “All along? No. It’s just that I found him when he was real hurt; I didn’t know what—”

“All this time I’ve been treatin’ you like you was some kind of queen or somethin’, like you was a real High Priestess,” he interrupted Stevie Rae again.

Stevie Rae looked shocked and hurt. “I am a real High Priestess. But like I was tryin’ to tell ya, I found Rephaim when he was hurt bad, and I just couldn’t let him