Hunted

The Twins muttered hasty apologies, shooting Erik guilty looks. Erik, looking like he was carved out of stone, told Aphrodite, "Here, I'll lift her up a little and you can wrap the bandage around her."

"Fine by me," Aphrodite said.

So, without meeting my eyes, Erik slid his hands under my shoulders and gently lifted my torso off the table. While I gritted my teeth against the pain and Aphrodite wrapped the Ace bandage around me, I wondered what the hell I was going to do about Erik and Heath. Erik and I were supposedly back together, but after the scene in the basement I wasn't one hundred percent sure we should be together. I mean, he said he loved me, which was all well and good, but did loving me mean he'd turned all possessive and jerkish? And besides that, was what we had together strong enough to tolerate another Imprint with Heath, especially now that it wasn't just an abstract idea? Now that he'd seen Heath and me together, was there any way Erik and I could be together?

I looked up at him as he held me so carefully. Feeling my gaze on him, his blue eyes shifted to me. He didn't look like a stone man anymore. He just looked sad. Really, really sad. Did I still want to be Erik's girlfriend? The longer I looked into his eyes, the more I thought that maybe I did. Then where did that leave me with Heath? Back to where I was with both of these guys before I'd cheated on them and let Loren trick me into giving him my virginity.

It had been an uncomfortable boyfriend triangle then, and it was even worse now. But what the hell was I going to do? The truth was I cared about both of them.

God, it's exhausting being me.

When Aphrodite was done bandaging me, Erik asked Jack to bring him a pillow from the bed, and then he put me carefully back down with my head and shoulders resting on its softness.

"You guys had better get ready to leave," Erik said to the Twins, Damien, and Aphrodite. "I'll bet Darius will want to get Zoey back to tU we had to) Che House of Night right away."

"That means we have to get our purses from Kramisha's room," Shaunee said.

"Like I would forget my new winter season Ed Hardy purse, Twin?" Erin said.

"Of course not, Twin. I'm just sayin'..." Their voices faded as they hurried from the room.

"I want to go with you," Jack said, looking close to tears.

"I want you to come, too," Darius said. "But it's too dangerous. You have to stay here with Erik and Stevie Rae until we know exactly what we're up against."

"My mind understands that, but my heart says something else," Jack said, leaning his head against Damien's shoulder. "It's just...just..." Jack took a deep breath and finished on a sob, "It's just poop that I can't go!"

"We're going to step down the tunnel a ways," Damien said, putting his arm around Jack. "Just have Darius yell when he's ready." Then Damien led a stricken Jack out of the room, with Duchess trailing sadly along behind.

"I'm going to go find my cat," Aphrodite said. "I'll see if I can find your little orange creature, too."

"Don't you think we should leave the cats here?" I asked.

Aphrodite raised a blond brow at me. "Since when could cats be told what to do?"

I sighed. "You're right. They'd just follow us back and then complain at us for years about leaving them behind."

"Tell Darius I'll be right back." Aphrodite ducked out through the blanket.

That left Erik and me alone.

Without looking at me he started to move toward the doorway saying, "I'm going to--"

"Erik, don't go. Can't we talk for just a second?"

He stopped, his back still to me. His head was bowed and his shoulders were slumped. He looked utterly defeated.

"Erik, please..." He spun around and I saw there were tears pooling in his eyes. "I'm so damn pissed I don't know what the hell to do! And what's worse is that this," he paused, gesturing to the huge Ace bandage hiding the wound that sliced across my chest, "is really my fault."

"Your fault?"

"If I hadn't been such a possessive asshole in the basement, you wouldn't have gone outside with Heath. You were sending him away, but I had to push things and piss you off, so you went out there with him." He ran his hand through his thick dark hair. "It's just that Heath makes me so damn jealous! He's known you since you two were kids. I just--" He hesitated and his jaw clenched and unclenched. "I just didn't want to lose you again, so I acted like a jerk, and not only did you almost die, but I lost you again!"

I blinked de Q] at him. So he hadn't been acting like stone man because he didn't care or because he was mad at me. He'd been hiding his emotions because he thought all of this was his fault. Jeesh--I hadn't had a clue.

I held out my hand to him. "Erik, come here." Slowly he came over to me and took my hand.

"I acted like a jerk," he said.

"Yeah, you did. But I should have shown some sense and not gone outside with Heath."

Erik looked at me for a long time before he spoke. "It was hard to see you with him. To see you drink from him."

"I wish there could have been some other way," I said. I did wish it, and not just because it had been uncomfortable for Erik to watch. I loved Heath, but I'd made the decision not to be with him again, not to ever Imprint with him again. I knew the best thing for both of us, especially for Heath, was to be out of each other's lives, and that's what I'd planned. Sadly, my life rarely goes according to my plans. I sighed and tried to put some of what I was feeling into words. "I can't help loving Heath. He's been part of my life for a long time, and now that we're Imprinted again, he literally carries part of me with him, even though I didn't mean for it to happen."

"I don't know how much of your human boyfriend I can stand," Erik said.

I kept meeting Erik's steady gaze and almost blurted I'm not sure how much of your possessiveness I can stand, but I was too tired. I'd save that till later, after I had more time and energy to think things through. Instead I just said, "He's not my boyfriend. He's the human I've Imprinted with. There's a big difference."

"Consort," Erik said bitterly. "It's called being the High Priestess's human consort. Many of them have one. Often they have more than one."

I blinked in surprise. I sure hadn't gotten to that part in my Vamp Sociology class. I mean, was this consort stuff even covered in the The Fledgling Handbook? Guess I'd have to read the darn thing more carefully. I did remember Darius mentioning something about it being difficult for a human to be involved with a High Priestess the day Heath and I had had our official breakup scene, and Darius had definitely used the word "consort" for the human. "Huh. Um. Does that mean the High Priestess doesn't have a vampyre, uh, consort?"

"Mate," he said quietly. "If he's a human who has Imprinted with a High Priestess, he's called her consort. If he's a vampyre, he's given the title of the High Priestess's mate. And no. It doesn't mean she can't have both."

That seemed like good news to me. Clearly it wasn't such good news to Erik, but at least I was beginning to believe other priestesses had gone through this kind of boyfriend stress before. Maybe I could read up on it or tactfully question Darius when the end-of-the-world stuff was resolved. For the time being I decided to put a Band-Aid on the issue and clean up the consequences later. If there was a later. "Okay, Erik. I don't know what I'm going to do about Heath. It's all a little too much for me to deal with right now on top of everything else. Hell, I don't know whatI 8? I'm going to do about you, either." "We're together," Erik said softly. "And I want us to stay together."

I opened my mouth to tell him I really wasn't totally sure that was the best idea, but Erik bent and kissed me gently on the lips, silencing my comment. Then someone cleared his throat and we looked at the entryway to see Heath standing there, looking pale and pissed.

"Heath! What are you doing here?" I hated how shrill and guilty I sounded as I frantically wondered how much he'd overheard.

"Darius sent me to tell you the roads are too bad. There's no way I can get back to B.A. to night. He and Stevie Rae went to find a four-wheel drive so that he can get you and the rest of the fledglings back to the House of Night." He paused. I recognized a tone I'd only heard in his voice a very few times. He was seriously pissed, but he was also hurt. The last time he'd sounded like this had been when he'd told me I'd killed part of his soul when I'd had sex with Loren and broken our Imprint. "Hey, carry on. Pretend I'm not here, just like you were doing before. Didn't mean to interrupt you two."

"Heath," I began, but just then Aphrodite, followed by a bunch of cats, including my Nala and her hateful white Persian, appropriately named Maleficent, came into the room.

"Awkward. Again," Aphrodite added, looking knowingly from Heath to Erik and me.

I sighed and realized my head was starting to hurt almost as much as the cut across my chest. Then the Twins and Kramisha piled into the room, too.

"Ah, oh," Shaunee said.

"What's ex-boyfriend doing here?" Erin said.

"The roads are too bad. Heath can't get home," I said.

"So that means he be staying here?" Kramisha asked, giving Heath a long look.

"He'll have to. He's safer here than at the House of Night," I said, keeping an eye on Kramisha and adding silently to myself that I wasn't convinced he'd be safe here either. "He and I have Imprinted again," I added for good mea sure.

Kramisha curled her lip. "I know that. I can smell you in his blood. He ain't good for nothin' now 'cept for being your boy toy."

"He's not--" I started, but Heath's sharp voice cut me off.

"No, the girl's right. That's all I am to you," Heath said bluntly.

"Heath. That's not how I think of you," I said.

"Yeah, well, I don't want to say shit more about it. I'm your blood donor, and that's it." He turned away from me and I saw him grab a bottle of wine someone had left by the bed and take a big swig of it.

Damien, a puffy-eyed Jack, and Duchess (causing all of the cats except Nala to hiss like insane creatures) crowded back into the room then.

"Hey, Heath," Jack said. "I thought you were on your way home."00[#p

"I can't get home. Looks like I'm stuck here with you in the left-behind pile."

Jack frowned, close to bursting into tears again. "Damien's not leaving me behind. Not really. I just--I just can't go with him right now this second."

"That's right. We'll be back together as soon as we can," Damien said, putting his arm around Jack. "Okay, I hate to interrupt all this gay-boy romance stuff, but I wrote me some more poems when I woke up and thought you better see them," Kramisha said.

That broke though my confusion about what to do about Heath and Erik. "You're right. I do need to see them," I said. "Damien, did Jack get a chance to explain to you about Kramisha's poetry?"

"Yes. I even got a copy of the poems before Kramisha went to sleep and read them while Jack and I were on watch," Damien said.

"What the hell are you guys talking about?" Aphrodite said.

"When you were all drunk and disorderly, Z discovered poetry written on the walls of Aphrodite's room," Erin said.

"Written by Kramisha, but all of it seemed to be about Kalona, which is totally creepy," Shaunee said.

"It's like she's channeling abstract images about him," Damien said. "I think the poems in her room were meant to catch our attention, which means we need to check out everything Kramisha writes."

"Oh, great. That's all we need. More gloom and doom poetry," Aphrodite said.

"Well speaking of, here's two new ones." Kramisha tried to hand me the couple of sheets of paper the poems were written on, but moving my arms up so I could hold them made me suck air with pain.

"Here." Erik smoothly took the papers from her. Then he brought them to me and held them up so that Damien, the Twins, Aphrodite, Jack, and I could read them at the same time. The first one was baffling:

What once bound him

Will make him flee

Place of power--joining of five

Night

Spirit

Blood

Humanity

Earth

Joined not to conquer,

Instead to overcome

[KrbroughNight leads to Spirit

Blood binds Humanity

And Earth completes.

"That makes my head hurt. I mean, more than it already does. I cannot tell you how much I hate poetry," Aphrodite said.

"Do you have a clue about this?" I asked Damien. "I think it's giving us directions on how we can make Kalona flee, or run away," he said.

"We know what `flee' means, Mr. Vocab," Erin said.

"It's kinda depressing that it says flee instead of kill," Jack said.

"Kalona can't be killed," I said, speaking the words automatically. "He's immortal. He can be trapped. He can be chased away, although it boggles my mind to think about what might make him run. But he can't be killed."

"Those five thingies together, in a place of power, make him run," Jack said.

"Wherever that is, and what ever they are," I said.

"They're people who represent each of those things. Or at least that would be my first guess. See how they're capitalized? That usually means they are proper nouns, or names," Damien said.

"They're names," Kramisha said.

"Do you know anything else about it? Can you tell who they are?" Damien asked.

Kramisha shook her head, looking frustrated. "No. It's just when you said that they be people, I knew you was right."

"How about the next one?" Damien said. "Maybe it'll help us make sense of this one."

I turned my attention to the other sheet of paper. The new poem wasn't long, but it made my skin crawl.

She comes back

Through blood by blood

She returns

Cut deep now

Like me

Humanity saves her

Will she save me?

"What were you thinking when you wrote this?" I asked Kramisha.

"Nothin'. I was barely awake. I just wrote the words that come to me with both of 'em."

"I don't like it," Erik said.

"Well, it doesn't help us with the other poem, that's for sure. Actually, I think it&rsq 1awl.

"But who's speaking? Who is this `me' that's asking if I'll save him or her?" I was feeling weaker and weaker by the moment, and the long strip of my wound was throbbing in time with the beat of my heart.

"It could be Kalona," Aphrodite said. "That's who the first poem's about."

"Yes, but we're not so sure Kalona ever had any humanity in him to lose," Damien said.

I carefully kept my mouth shut, even though my first impulse was to say that I did think Kalona had not always been like he was now. "On the other hand," Damien continued, "we know that Neferet has turned from Nyx, which could also mean that she's lost herself, or her humanity. It could be referring to Neferet."

"Ugh," Erin said.

"She has definitely lost her damn mind," Shaunee said.

"Actually, doesn't it make the most sense that it's that new undead kid talking?" Erik said slowly.

"You may be on to something," Damien said. I could practically see the wheels in his mind turning. "The `Cut deep now / Like me' part could be metaphorical for his death. Zoey's wound is definitely life threatening, and they've certainly both been drawn to the House of Night because of blood."

"And his humanity is missing. Like the rest of the red fledglings," Aphrodite said.

"Hey, I don't know what you talkin' 'bout. I got me plenty of humanity," Kramisha said, clearly offended.

"But you didn't have your humanity when you first rose, did you?" Damien said.

His voice was so clinical that Kramisha's feathers instantly unruffled. "No. You right about that. I had no damn sense about me at first. None of us did."

"Sounds like a good guess about the meaning of the second one," Damien said. "And because we have Kramisha on our side, her gift with words gives us a glimpse into the possible future. The first poem...I don't know. I'll think about it. What we need is to spend some time brainstorming possible meanings--time we don't have right now. But that's really inconsequential. We should still appreciate Kramisha."

"Hey, not a problem," Kramisha said. "It's all part a bein' the Poet Laureate."

"The who?" Aphrodite said.

Kramisha fixed a sharp look on Aphrodite. "Zoey made me the new Vamp Poet Laureate."

Aphrodite opened her mouth, but I beat her to speaking. "Actually, let's have a quick vote of my Prefect Council on whether Kramisha should be our new Poet Laureate." I looked at Damien. "What's your vote?"

"Yes, definitely," Damien said.

"I say 6 V O Dt tyes, too," Shaunee said,

"Ditto. We're due for a female Poet Laureate," Erin said.

"I already gave my yes vote," Erik said.

We all looked at Aphrodite.

"Yeah, yeah, what ever," she said.

"And I can promise Stevie Rae will vote yes, too," I said. "So it's official."

Everyone smiled at Kramisha who looked totally pleased with herself.

"Okay, so, to summarize," Damien said, "we've pretty much decided that Kramisha's first poem is outlining a way Kalona can be forced to run away, even though we don't really have a good understanding of the details provided in the poem. The second is saying that Zoey's return to the House of Night might somehow save Stark." Erik said. "Yeah, that's what it sounds like." I handed the pieces of paper on which the poems were written to Aphrodite. "Would you put those in my purse, please?" She nodded and folded them neatly, tucking them into my cute little bag. "I wish both poems had come with more instructions," I said.

"I think you should start by paying special attention to Stark," Damien said.

"Or at least she should be on her guard around him," Erik said. "The poem does mention being cut, and right now that's way more than a poetic metaphor."

I listened while Damien semi-agreed with him and I looked away from Erik's penetrating gaze and right into Heath's sad brown eyes.

"Let me guess. Stark's another guy, isn't he?" Heath said.

When I didn't answer, he took a long drink from the bottle of wine.

"Well, uh, yeah, Heath," Jack said, sitting next to Heath on the bed and looking concerned. "Stark is a fledgling who, I guess, was kinda a friend of Zoey's before he died and then un- died. He was a new kid, so none of us had gotten to know him very well."

"But you knew things about him no one else did. Like that his gift from Nyx was that he never missed any mark he aimed at, right?" Damien said.

"Yeah. I knew stuff about him no one else knew, except Neferet and the professors," I said, trying not to watch Heath guzzle down the bottle of wine and avoiding Erik's sharp gaze.

"I didn't know that about his gift, and I'm a professor," Erik said.

I closed my eyes and leaned heavily back on the pillow. "Then maybe that was more info Neferet kept to herself," I said wearily.

"So why would he tell you about something that was top secret?" Erik said.

Annoyed that he sounded like he was interrogating me, I didn't say anything, and against my closed eyes I easily recalled the image of Stark's cute, cocky half smile and how I'd felt a sudden connection with him and even kissed him as he died in my arms.

"Well, let's s:

As my friends--well, all of them except for my "consort" and my possible "mate"--mumbled apologies, I kept my eyes closed and wondered just how badly I wanted to get all healed up, because it seemed, once again, I found myself in a "situation" that involved three guys. And that wasn't even counting Kalona.

Well, hell...