Burned: A House of Night Novel Read online

  Stevie Rae sighed. A massive headache had started to throb between her temples. “I don’t have a clue, but getting that answer almost killed me, so it has to mean somethin’ important.”

  “Then Stark better figure it out.” Aphrodite hesitated before saying, “If the black bull is so super good, why don’t you just call it back again and—”

  “No!” Stevie Rae spoke with such force she caused everyone in the room to jump. “Never again. And you shouldn’t let anyone else conjure either of those bulls. The price is too much.”

  “What do you mean, the price is too much?” Aphrodite said.

  “I mean they’re too powerful. They can’t be controlled, whether they’re good or bad. Aphrodite, there’re some things that weren’t meant to be messed with, and those bulls are part of those things. Plus, I’m not so sure one can be called up without the other eventually showing up, and believe me, you don’t want to ever, ever meet that white bull.”

  “Okay, okay—relax. I get what you’re saying, and I can tell you I have a kinda creepy feeling just talking about those bulls. I think you’re right. Don’t stress. No one’s gonna do anything except try to help Stark find a blood bridge to the Isle of Skye.”

  “Aphrodite, I don’t think it’s a blood bridge. That doesn’t even sound right.” Stevie Rae rubbed her face and was surprised to see that her hand was shaking.

  “Enough for now,” Lenobia whispered. “You’re strong, but you’re not immortal.”

  Stevie Rae’s gaze shot to hers, but she saw nothing in the Horse Mistress’s gray eyes except concern.

  “Hey, uh, I gotta go for now. I’m not feelin’ so good.”

  “Oh, for crap’s sake. You’re not almost dying again, are you? It’s seriously inconvenient when you do that.”

  “No, I am not almost dyin’. Not anymore. And you are not even almost nice. At all. I’ll call you later. Tell everyone I said hi.”

  “Yeah, I’ll spread the love. Goodbye, bumpkin.”

  “Bye.” Stevie Rae punched the CALL END button, gave Kramisha her phone, and then leaned heavily back on her pillow. “Uh, do y’all mind if maybe I sleep for a while?”

  “Drink one more of these.” Sapphire gave Stevie Rae another bag of blood. “Then sleep. Both of you need to leave and let her rest.” The vampyre nurse swept the bloody alcohol cotton balls into a trash bag, snapped off her latex gloves, went to the doorway, and stood, tapping her foot and giving Lenobia and Kramisha the stank eye.

  “I’ll come back and check on you after you’ve rested,” Lenobia said.

  “Sounds good.” Stevie Rae smiled at her.

  Lenobia squeezed her hand before leaving. When Kramisha leaned close to her, Stevie Rae thought for one awkward, shocked second the kid was going to hug her—or worse, maybe even kiss her. Instead, Kramisha met her eyes and whispered:

  “See with the soul and not your eyes

  because to dance with beasts you

  must penetrate their disguise.”

  Stevie Rae suddenly felt cold. “I guess I should have listened to you better. Maybe I would’ve known I was callin’ the wrong cow,” she whispered back.

  Kramisha’s gaze was sharp and knowing. “Maybe you still should. Somethin’ inside me says you ain’t done dancing with beasts.” Then she straightened up, and in a normal voice, said, “Get some sleep. You gonna need all your good sense tomorrow.”

  When the door closed, leaving her alone, Stevie Rae breathed an exhausted sigh of relief. Methodically, she drank the last baggie of blood and then pulled the hospital blanket up around her neck and curled on her side and, with a sigh, slowly twirled a blond curl around and around one finger. She was utterly exhausted. Apparently all of the power in Rephaim’s blood had worn her the heck out while it fixed her.

  Rephaim . . .

  Stevie Rae would never, ever forget what he looked like when he’d confronted Darkness for her. He’d been so strong and brave and good. It didn’t matter that Dallas and Lenobia and the whole dang world believed he was on the side of Darkness. It didn’t matter that his daddy was a fallen Warrior of Nyx who had chosen evil centuries ago. None of that mattered. She’d seen the truth. He’d willingly sacrificed himself for her. He might not have chosen Light, but he had definitely rejected Darkness.

  She’d been right to save him that day outside the abbey, and she’d also been right to call the white bull and save him today—no matter the cost to her.

  Rephaim was worth saving.

  Wasn’t he?

  He had to be. After what had happened today, he had to be.

  Her finger stilled, and her eyes started to flutter shut even though she didn’t want to think anymore or to dream—didn’t want to remember that terrifying Darkness and the pain that had been so unimaginable.

  But her eyes did close, and the memory of Darkness and what he’d done to her did come. As she struggled against the unyielding pull of utter exhaustion, from the middle of that circle of terror Stevie Rae heard his voice again: “I’m here because she’s here, and she belongs to me.” And that simple statement chased her fear away, allowing the memory of Darkness to give way to the rescue of Light.

  Just before Stevie Rae fell into a deep, dreamless sleep, she thought of the beautiful black bull and the payment he had exacted from her, and, again, Rephaim’s words played through her mind: “I’m here because she’s here, and she belongs to me.”

  With her last waking thought, she wondered if Rephaim would ever know how ironically true his words had suddenly become for them . . .

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Stark

  As Stark awoke, just for a second he didn’t remember. All he knew was that Zoey was there, in bed, beside him. He smiled sleepily and turned, reaching an arm out to pull her close to him.

  The chilled, lifeless feel of her unresponsive flesh brought him fully awake, and reality crashed and burned the last of his dreams.

  “Finally. You know, you red vampyres might be all strong and whatever at night, but during the day you sleep creepily like the dead. Hello, I have one word for you: stereotypical.”

  Stark sat up, scowling at Aphrodite, who was sitting in one of the cream-colored velvet chairs, long legs crossed gracefully, sipping a cup of steaming tea.

  “Aphrodite, why are you in here?”

  Instead of answering him, her gaze went to Zoey. “She hasn’t moved at all since it happened, has she?”

  Stark got out of bed and gently tucked the blanket back around Zoey. He touched her cheek with his fingertips and kissed the only Mark left on her body, an ordinary fledgling’s crescent tattoo in the middle of her forehead. It’s okay if you come back as a regular fledgling. Just come back, he thought as his lips brushed her Mark. Then he straightened and faced Aphrodite. “No. She hasn’t moved. She can’t. She’s not here. And we have seven days to figure out how to get her back.”

  “Six,” Aphrodite corrected.

  Stark swallowed hard. “Yeah, you’re right. It’s six now.”

  “Okay, come on then. Clearly we don’t have time to waste.” Aphrodite got up and started out of the room.

  “Where’re we going?” Stark started following her but kept glancing back over his shoulder at Zoey.

  “Hey, you gotta snap out of it. You said it yourself: Zoey’s not here. So stop gawking at her like you’re a little lost puppy.”

  “I love her! Do you even know what the hell that means?”

  Aphrodite stopped and turned to face him. “Love doesn’t have shit to do with it. You’re her Warrior. That means more than ‘I heart Zoey,’ ” she said sarcastically, using air quotes. “I have my own Warrior, so I do know what that means, and here’s the truth: if my soul was shattered, and I was stuck in the Otherworld, I wouldn’t want Darius to boo-hoo about it and be all heartbroken. I’d want him to get the hell to work and figure out how to do his job, which is to stay alive and protect me so that I can figure out a way to get home! Now are you coming or not?” She flipped her hair, tur
ned her back to him, and started twitching down the hall.

  Stark closed his mouth and went after her. They walked silently for a while as Aphrodite led him down some stairs, around increasingly narrow corridors, and down more stairs.

  “Where are we going?” Stark asked again.

  “Well, it feels like a dungeon. Smells like mold and kinda weird b.o., the institutional decor is suitable for either a prison or a hospital psych ward, and it makes Damien think he’s died and gone to dork heaven. So take a guess.”

  “We’re going back to human high school?”

  “Close,” she said, her lips lifting in a hint of a smile. “We’re going to a really old library filled with the frantically studying nerd herd.”

  Stark let out a long breath in a loud sigh to keep himself from laughing. Sometimes he almost liked Aphrodite—not that he’d ever admit it.

  Stark

  Aphrodite had been right—the basement of the palace did remind him of a tacky public school media center, minus the foldout windows and cheap, ratty mini-blinds, which was weird as hell because the rest of San Clemente Island was over-the-top rich. Down in the basement, though, there were just a bunch of worn wooden tables, hard benches, bare white stone walls, and tons and tons of shelves filled with a zillion different sizes, shapes, and styles of books.

  Zoey’s friends were clustered around one big table that was overflowing with books, pop cans, crumpled bags of chips, and one humongous tub full of red licorice whips. Stark thought they looked tired but totally wired on sugar and caffeine. As he and Aphrodite walked up, Jack was holding up a large leather book and pointing to an illustration.

  “Check it out—this is a copy of a painting of a Greek High Priestess named Calliope. It says she was also the Poet Laureate after Sappho. Doesn’t she look exactly like Cher?”

  “Wow, that’s insane. She does look just like young Cher,” Erin said.

  “Yeah, before she started wearing those white wigs. What the hell’s up with that?” Shaunee said.

  Damien gave the Twins a look. “There is nothing wrong with Cher. Absolutely. Nothing.”

  “Uh-oh,” Shaunee said.

  “Stepped on a gay nerve,” Erin agreed.

  “I had a Cher Barbie doll. I loved that doll,” Jack said.

  “Barbies, herd of nerd? Seriously? You’re supposed to be saving Z, remember?” Aphrodite said, shaking her head in disgust and curling up her lip at the licorice whips.

  “We’ve been at it all day. We’re just taking a little break. Thanatos and Darius went out for more food,” Damien said. “We have made some headway, but I’ll wait until they get back to report everything.” He waved at Stark, and his “hi” was echoed by the other kids.

  “Yeah, don’t be so judgmental, Aphrodite. We’ve been working hard, you’ll see.”

  “You’re talking about dolls,” Aphrodite said.

  “Barbies,” Jack corrected her. “And just for a second. Plus, Barbies are cool and an important part of American culture.” He nodded in emphasis and clutched the “Cher” portrait to his chest. “Especially celebrity Barbies.”

  “Celebrity Barbies would only be important if they had interesting accoutrements you could buy with them,” Aphrodite said.

  “Accoutre-whats?” Shaunee said.

  “You sound like you swallowed a French guy and are trying to spit him out,” Erin said, and the Twins giggled.

  “Left and right brain—listen up. Interesting accoutrements equals cool stuff, like unusual accessories,” Aphrodite said, picking delicately at a chip.

  “Okay, if you don’t know anything about Barbies, your mother seriously hated you,” Erin said.

  “Not that we don’t understand that,” Shaunee added.

  “ ’Cause everyone who even had one Barbie knows you can buy stuff for them,” Erin finished.

  “Yeah, cool stuff,” Jack agreed.

  “Not cool by my definition,” Aphrodite said with a superior smirk.

  “What’s cool by your definition?” Jack asked, making Shaunee and Erin groan.

  “Well, since you asked—I’d say it would be cool if Barbie made a Barbra Streisand doll, but you’d have to buy her fingernails and nose separately. And her fake nails would come in lots of different color choices.”

  There was a shocked silence, and then Jack, sounding awed, whispered, “That would be cool.”

  Aphrodite looked smug. “And how about a bald Britney Spears doll that had extras like an umbrella, a fat suit, weird wigs, and, of course, optional panties.”

  “Eww,” Jack said, and then giggled. “Yeah, and a Paris Hilton doll that had an optional brain.”

  Aphrodite raised her brow at him. “Don’t go all crazy. There are some things even Paris Hilton can’t buy.”

  Stark stood there, dumbfounded, and when they all burst into giggles, he thought his brain was going to explode.

  “What the hell is wrong with all of you?” he yelled at them. “How can you laugh and joke like this? You’re focusing on toys when Zoey is days away from dying!”

  Into the shocked silence, Thanatos’s voice sounded abnormally loud. “No, Warrior. They’re not focusing on toys. They’re focusing on life and being among the living.” The vampyre stepped from the doorway, where she and Darius had been silently observing the kids. Darius followed her, placing a tray filled with sandwiches and fruit in the middle of the table. He then joined Aphrodite’s side of the wooden bench. “And take it from someone who knows more than a little about death—focusing on life is what you should do if you want to keep drawing breath in this world.”

  Damien cleared his voice, calling Stark’s glare to him. Unruffled, the fledgling met his eyes, and said, “Yeah, that’s just one of the things we learned from all the studying we’ve been doing.”

  “While you were sleeping,” Shaunee murmured.

  “And we weren’t,” Erin added.

  “So, what we found out from our research,” Damien broke in before Stark could say anything to the Twins, “is that whenever a High Priestess suffered such a shock that her soul shattered, her Warrior didn’t seem to be able to stay alive.”

  Barbies and bickering Twins forgotten, Stark’s face was a question mark as he stared at Damien and tried to make sense of what he was hearing. “Do you mean the Warriors all dropped dead?”

  “In a way,” Damien said.

  “Some of them killed themselves so that they knew they could follow their High Priestesses to the Otherworld and continue to protect them there,” Thanatos took up the explanation.

  “But it didn’t work because none of the High Priestesses returned, right?” Stark said.

  “Correct. What we know from Priestesses who, through their affinity for spirit, have journeyed to the Otherworld is that those lost High Priestesses couldn’t bear the death of their Warriors. Some of them were able to heal their souls in the Otherworld, but they chose to remain there with their Warriors.”

  “Some of them healed,” Stark said slowly. “What happened to the High Priestesses who didn’t?”

  Zoey’s friends shifted uncomfortably, but Thanatos’s voice remained steady. “As you learned yesterday, if a soul remains shattered, the person becomes Caoinic Shi’, a being that will never rest.”

  “It’s like a zombie, without the eating people part,” Jack said softly and then shuddered.

  “That can’t happen to Zoey,” Stark said. He’d sworn to protect Zoey, and if he had to, he would follow that Oath into the Otherworld to be sure she didn’t become some kind of horrible zombie thing.

  “But even though the end result was the same, not all of the Warriors killed themselves to follow their High Priestesses,” Damien said.

  “Tell me about the others,” Stark said. Unable to sit, he paced back and forth in front of the table.

  “Well, it was pretty obvious that no Warrior or High Priestess returned when the Warrior killed himself, so we found records of Warriors who had done lots of different things to try to get
themselves into the Otherworld,” Damien said.

  “Some of them were crazy—like one who starved himself until he was delirious, then he kinda left his body,” Jack said.

  “He died,” Shaunee said.

  “Yeah, the story was gross. He did lots of screaming and was hallucinating and stuff about his High Priestess and what she was going through before he actually croaked,” Erin said.

  “You. Are. Not. Helping,” Aphrodite told them.

  “Some of the Warriors did drugs to put themselves in a trancelike state, and they actually managed to get their spirits to leave this world,” Damien continued, while the Twins rolled their eyes at Aphrodite. “But they couldn’t enter the Otherworld. We know because they came back to their bodies long enough to tell witnesses that they’d failed.” Damien stopped there, glancing at Thanatos.

  She took up the story. “Then the Warriors died. Each of them.”

  “Failing to protect their High Priestesses killed them,” Stark said, his voice completely expressionless.

  “No, turning their back on life killed them,” Darius corrected.

  Stark turned to him. “Wouldn’t you? If Aphrodite died because you couldn’t protect her, wouldn’t you choose death rather than live life without her?”

  Aphrodite didn’t give Darius a chance to answer. “I would be super pissed if he died! That’s what I was trying to tell you upstairs. You can’t keep looking behind you—not at Zoey, not at the past, not even back to your Oath. You have to go forward and find a new way of living, a new way of protecting her.”

  “Then tell me something, anything that you found in all these damn books that can help me instead of just showing me how other Warriors failed.”

  “I’ll tell you something I didn’t read in a book. Stevie Rae accidentally evoked the white bull last night.”

  “Darkness! A fledgling called Darkness into this world?” Thanatos looked like Aphrodite had just exploded a bomb in the middle of the room.

  “She’s not a fledgling. She’s like Stark, a red vampyre, but yes. She did. In Tulsa. It was an accident.” Ignoring Thanatos’s shocked stare, Aphrodite pulled a slip of paper from her pocket, and read: “The bull said: ‘The Warrior must look to his blood to discover the bridge to enter the Isle of Women, and then he must defeat himself to enter the arena. Only by acknowledging one before the other will he join his Priestess. After he joins her, it is her choice and not his whether she returns.’” Aphrodite looked up. “Anyone have a clue what that might mean?” She waved the paper around, and Damien took it, already rereading as Jack peeked over his shoulder.