Hunted

I was sobbing as I crawled over to Darius. I had just reached him when I heard a terrible sound coming from the doorway. I looked up to see Stark. He still grasped his bow in one hand. The other was holding on to the doorpost so tight that his knuckles had turned white, and I swear I could see his fingers making indentations in the wood. His eyes were blazing red and he was bent slightly over, as if his stomach was causing him pain.

"Stark? What is it?" I wiped the back of my hand across my eyes, trying to clear the tears from my vision.

"The blood...can't bear it...have to..." He spoke in broken starts and stops and then, as if against his will, he took a staggering step into the room.

On the floor beside me Darius got to his knees. He grabbed the knife from the floor where Kalona had dropped it and faced Stark. "You should know I only share my blood with those I have invited to taste of me," Darius's voice was steady and strong. Had I not been looking at him I would never have known that a river of blood was gushing down his face from a terrible knife slash. "And I have offered you no such invitation, boy. Back away before what happened here gets any worse."

There was a dark struggle going on within Stark that was reflected in his entire body. From the glowing red of his heated eyes to the feral grimace of his lips to the tightrope tension that radiated from him, he looked like he was on the brink of an explosion.

But here's the deal: I'd had just about enough. Saying my reaction to Kalona's kiss had freaked me out was the new understatement of the year. My body still ached. My head was woozy. I was so weak I didn't think I'd win an arm-wrestling contest with, well, Jack. Now Darius was hurt, and I didn't have a clue as e sp do Fto how badly. Seriously, you could stick a fork in me and call me so done with all this stress.

"Stark, just get the hell out of here!" I rounded on him, glad my voice sounded lots stronger than I felt. "I don't want to zap the crap outta you with fire, but if you take one more step into this room, I swear I'm going to burn your butt up."

That got through to him. Stark's red eyes locked on me. He looked pissed and dangerous. There was a darkness that surrounded him like an aura, making the red in his eyes blaze. I stood, glad that the sheet was staying tucked around my body, and lifted my arms, holding them up and ready. "Do not push me right now. I promise you won't like it if I lose my temper."

Stark blinked a couple of times at me, like he was trying to clear his vision. The scarlet of his eyes faded, the darkness in the air around him dissipated, and he wiped a shaky hand across his face. "Zoey, I--" he began, sounding almost normal. Darius shifted in his defensive stance, taking a step closer to me. Stark snarled at him--actually snarled--like he was more animal than human, spun around, and ran out of the room.

I somehow managed to stagger to the door and slam it closed, then dragged a chair from near the bedside and propped it under the door handle, just as I'd seen people do in the movies, before I went back to Darius.

"I am glad you are on my side, Priestess," he said.

"Yeah, that's me. I'm fierce." I tried to pretend I wasn't close to passing out by sounding like Christian from Project Runway. I was pretty sure Darius didn't know Project Runway from a science project, but it did make him chuckle as we helped each other over to the end of the bed, where he sat heavily and I stood beside him, concentrating on not swaying like I was drunk. Which, sadly, I wasn't anymore.

"There should be first aid supplies in the cabinet over there." He motioned to the long stainless steel cabinet that stretched halfway across the far wall. There was also a sink built into it and a bunch of scary hospital-looking items (they were sharp and very stainless steel) stored neatly in trays and whatnot beside the sink.

Wearily, I ignored the sharp things and started pulling open drawers and cabinets, which was when I noticed my hands were shaking like crazy.

"Zoey," Darius called, and I glanced over my shoulder at him. He looked terrible. The left side of his face was a bloody mess. The slash extended from his temple, all the way down his jawline, messing up the bold geometric design of his tattoo. But his eyes smiled at me and he said, "I'm going to be just fine. This is little more than a scratch."

"Well, it's a big scratch," I said.

"I believe it will annoy Aphrodite," he said.

"Huh?"

He started to smile, but ended the attempt with a grimace as the movement caused more blood to pour from the wound. He pointed at his face. "She won't like the scar."

When I had a bunch of bandages and alcohol wipes and gauze and stuff, I came back to him. "If she gives you crap about it, I'll,&rd ? kick her butt. After I've rested up." I stared at the awful "scratch," ignoring the delicious scent of his blood and swallowing hard to keep myself from puking.

Okay, yes, it does sound like a total contradiction: the fact that I love the taste and smell of blood, but that seeing it pouring out of a friend's body grosses me out. Wait, no. Maybe it's not a contradiction, because, hello! I don't eat my friends! I thought about Heath and decided to amend my thought: I don't eat my friends under normal circumstances and unless they give me their permission.

"I can clean it," Darius said, reaching for the alcohol wipe I was balling up in my fisted hand.

"No," I said, then repeated more firmly, shaking my head to try to clear away the wooziness in it. "No, that's ridiculous. You're hurt; I'll do it. Just walk me through what I need to do." I paused, before I continued, "Darius, we have to get out of here."

"I know," he said solemnly.

"You don't know all of why. I overheard Kalona and Neferet talking. They said they were planning some kind of a new future, and then said it would involve `swaying the Council.'"

Darius's eyes widened in shock. "Nyx's Council? As in the High Council of Vampyres?"

"I don't know! They didn't say anything else about it. I guess they could have been talking about the Council here at the House of Night."

He studied my face. "But you do not believe that is what they were referring to?"

I shook my head slowly.

"Sweet Nyx! It cannot be done!"

I frowned, wishing my gut wasn't disagreeing with him. "I'm afraid there's a chance it can be done. Kalona is powerful, and he has that magical draw-people-to-him thing going on. Look, the bottom line is we can't be trapped under Neferet's control while she and the bird guy put their disgusting plan in motion--whatever that plan might be." Actually, I was scared that they'd already put their disgusting plan in motion, but saying it out loud felt like a spell that would make it be true. "So can't we just get you fixed up, grab Aphrodite, the Twins, and Damien, and go back to the tunnels?" I felt precariously close to bursting into tears. "I'm all better, and I think it's worth the chance of drowning in my own blood to get the hell out of here."

"Agreed, and I believe Neferet has healed you enough that you will not be in danger of rejecting the Change, even if you are not among a full fold of vampyres."

"Are you okay enough to leave?"

"I told you I am fine, and I was speaking the truth. Let us get this cleaned up and then we will leave this place."

"I like the tunnels better." I surprised myself by admitting out loud what I had been thinking, but Darius nodded solemnly in agreement. "It is because it feels safe there, and it is definitely no longer safe here," he said.

"Did you notice Neferet?" I asked him.

"If you mean did I notice the Priestess's power seems to have increased--yes, I did."

"Great. I almost wish I was just imagining things," I muttered.

"Your instincts are good, and they've been warning you about Neferet for quite a while." He paused. "Kalona's hypnotic power is unusual. I've never felt anything like it before."

"Yeah," I said, cleaning the blood off his face. "But I think I've broken what ever hold he was having over me." I refused to admit, even to myself, that though the hypnotic effect was gone, I still had had a powerful reaction to his kiss. "Hey, did Kalona look different to you?"

"Different? How so?" "Younger, like he's not even as old as you." I guessed that Darius was somewhere in his early to mid-twenties--or at least that's how old he appeared to me.

Darius gave me a long, considering look. "No, Kalona appeared the same as when first I'd seen him--ageless, but not in a way that could ever be mistaken for a teenager. Perhaps he has the ability to alter his appearance to please you."

I wanted to deny it, and then I remembered what he'd called me just before he kissed me. It had been the same name he'd called me during my nightmare. My response to him is almost automatic, as if my soul recognizes him, my mind whispered traitorously. A terrible fear shivered through my body, causing the little hairs on my arms and the back of my neck to stand straight up. "He calls me A-ya," I said.

"The name sounds familiar. What does it mean?"

"It's the name of the maiden the Ghigua women created to trap Kalona."

Darius sighed deeply. "Well, at least we now know why he's so intent upon protecting you. He thinks you are the maiden he loved."

"I think it was more obsession than love," I said quickly, not wanting to even consider the idea that Kalona could possibly have loved A-ya. "Plus, we have to remember that A-ya did trap him, causing him to be imprisoned in the earth for more than a thousand years."

Darius nodded. "So his desire for you could very easily change to violence."

My stomach clenched. "Actually, the reason he wants me might be just to get back at A-ya. I mean, I don't know what he's actually planning to do with me. Neferet was all for killing me, but he stopped her because he said he can use my power."

"But you would never turn from Nyx to him," Darius said.

"And once he realizes that, I can't see him keeping me around."

"He'll view you as a powerful enemy, one who might find a way to entrap him again," Darius said.

"Okay, so explain to me what to do to get you fixed up, and then let's find the others and get the hell out of here."

Darius walked me through a very gross cleaning of the long slash wound, during which I actually had to pour alcohol into his cut f height="reated t elesh to, as he put it, flush out any infection that might have been caused by the Raven Mocker's blood. I'd totally forgotten that the same knife had been imbedded in Rephaim's chest and it definitely had nasty mutant man-bird blood all over it. So I cleaned the cut and then Darius helped me find this weird but cool stuff called Dermabond, better known as liquid stitches, which I squirted in a line down the length of his cut, mushed the sides of the wound together, and, ta-da! except for a big not- yet-healed cut, Darius said he was good as new. I was slightly more skeptical, but (as he reminded me) I really wasn't a credible nurse to begin with.

Then he and I searched though the cabinets because I was not going anywhere with a sheet wrapped around me. Okay, you would not believe the gross, paper-thin, backless hospital "gowns" (oh, please, they are so not real gowns) we found in one drawer. Why is it hospitals make you wear ugly, too revealing stuff when you already feel awful? It just makes no sense. Anyway, we finally found a pair of green hospital scrubs that were way too big for me, but what ever. They were seriously better than being wrapped up in a sheet. I completed my look with some booties. I asked Darius if he'd seen my purse, and he said he thought it was still in the Hummer. It was probably shallow of me, but I spent quite a few minutes stressing that if my purse was lost I'd have to get a new driver's license and cell phone, and wondered briefly if I'd remember the exact right shade of the cool Ulta lip gloss I was going to have to replace.

Sometime after I put on the scrubs (while Darius's back was turned) and started worrying about my purse being missing, I realized I was sitting on the bed staring off into space and almost falling asleep.

"How are you feeling?" Darius asked. "You look..." His words trailed off as I'm sure he tried and vetoed words like "crappy" and "hideous."

"I look tired?" I volunteered helpfully.

He nodded. "You do."

"Well, that's a not-so-amazing coincidence because I am tired. Really tired."

"Perhaps we should wait and--"

"No!" I interrupted. "I meant it when I said I wanted to go. Plus, there's no way I can get any real sleep as long as we're here. I just don't feel safe."

"Agreed," Darius said. "You aren't safe. None of us are safe."

Unspoken was the understanding that we would still not be safe even if we managed to get away from the House of Night, but it was better for morale if neither of us mentioned that.

"Alright, let's get the others," I said.

I checked the clock on the wall before we left the room and realized that it was a little after 4:00 A.M. It was a shock to see how much time had passed, especially since I must have been out for several hours, even though I didn't feel rested at all. If things were normal at the House of Night, fledglings should be finished with classes. "Hey," I told Darius, "it's about dinnertime. They might be in the cafeteria."

He nodded, moved the propped-up chair, and opeuo;t y z3ned the door slowly.

"Hallway's empty," he murmured.

While he'd been peeking down the hall, I'd been checking him out. So, instead of following him out of the room, I grabbed his sleeve and held him back. He gave me a questioning look.

"Uh, Darius, I'm thinking that we really need to change clothes before we make a grand entrance in the middle of the cafeteria, or even my dorm. I mean, you're more than a little bloody, and I'm wearing what looks like a big green trash bag. We're not exactly inconspicuous."

Darius glanced down at himself, taking in the dried blood that was splattered all down his shirt and jacket. The blood plus the newly closed laceration on his face plus my hospital scrubs definitely equaled conspicuous, a conclusion Darius obviously came to easily.

"Let's take the stairs up to the next floor. That's where the Sons of Erebus are housed. I'll change, then get you quickly to your dorm so you can be rid of those." He gestured at my outfit. "If we get lucky we'll find Aphrodite and the Twins in the dorm and will just have to scout out Damien and then slip from the school grounds."

"Sounds good. I never thought you'd hear me say that I was looking forward to getting back to those tunnels, but right now that feels like the best place to be," I said.

Darius grunted what I assumed was guy language for agreeing with me, and I followed him into the hall, which really was deserted. It was just a short way to the stairwell. Okay, going up a flight of steps just about did me in, and I ended up leaning heavily on Darius's arm. I could tell by the worried glint in his eyes that he was seriously considering picking me up and would have (despite my protests) if we hadn't gotten to the next floor about then.

"So," I said between gasps, "is it always this quiet up here?"

"No," Darius said grimly. "It's not." We passed a common area that had a fridge, a big, flat- screen TV, some comfy couches, and a bunch of guy stuff like free weights, a dartboard, and a pool table. It, too, was deserted. His face set into unreadable lines, Darius led me to one of the many doors that opened off the hall.

His room was just about as I'd imagined a Son of Erebus's room would be--clean and simple, with hardly any knickknacks. He did have some trophies that were for winning knife-throwing competitions, and a whole collection of Christopher Moore's hardback books, but no framed pictures of friends or family, and the only art on the walls was of Oklahoma landscapes, which probably came with the room. Oh, he also had a mini-fridge like Aphrodite's, which kinda annoyed me. Did everyone have a fridge except me? Jeesh. There was a big, heavily draped picture window that I wandered over to, pulling back a corner of the curtains and looking out so Darius could change his clothes without causing a jealous Aphrodite to disembowel either of us.

It should have been a busy time. Classes were out and kids should have been going from the academic part of the school to the dorms, rec room, cafeteria, and just in general hanging out and being teenagers. Instead, I only saw a couple of people doing their best slip and slide down the sidewalk as they hurried from one building to another.

Even though my intuition was nO ftk telling me there was way more to it than that, I wanted to blame the dead quiet of the school on the weather. The dark sky was still spitting icy rain, and despite the isolating effects of the storm, I was enthralled with how magical the shining coating of frozen water made everything look. Trees bowed under the crystalline weight that entombed their branches. The soft yellow of the gaslights flickered over slick walls and sidewalks. The coolest thing was the ice-encapsulated grass. It stuck up in brittle spikes all over, glistening when light hit it just right, making the ground look like it had grown a field of diamonds.

"Wow," I said, more to myself than Darius, "I know the ice storm is a pain in the butt, but it really is pretty. It makes everything look like a whole different world."

Darius was pulling a sweatshirt on over a clean T-shirt as he joined me at the window. His frown said that he saw the pain-in-the-butt part of the storm more than the ice magic of it.

"I don't see one sentry," he said, and I realized that his frown hadn't been directed just at the ice but at the boundaries of the walls, which we could see from his window, too. "We should be able to see at least two or three of my brother warriors from here, but there is no one." Then I felt him stiffen.

"What is it?"

"I spoke too soon, and you were correct. This is a whole different world. There are sentries posted. They are just not my brothers." He pointed at a spot on the wall to our right where it curved behind Nyx's Temple, which was situated right across from the building we were in. There, between the shadow of an ancient oak and the rear of the temple, the darkness shifted to reveal the bent shape of a Raven Mocker crouched on the wall. "And there," Darius motioned down the wall a little way to another spot. I'd overlooked it as nothing more than a natural fold of darkness on this stormy night, but as I stared, it, too, moved slightly, revealing another terrible man-bird creature.

"They're all over," I said. "How are we going to get out of here?"

"Can you disguise us with the elements, as you did before?"

"I don't know. I'm so tired, and I feel weird. My cut is better, but it's like I keep getting drained and never really refilled." Then my stomach sank further as I realized something else. "After I used fire and wind to knock Kalona off you, I didn't have to release the elements. They just weren't there anymore. That's never happened before. They've always hung around until I bid them depart."

"You're exhausting yourself. The ability to conjure and control the elements is your gift, but it doesn't come without a price. You're young and healthy, so under normal circumstances you probably hardly notice the drain it causes in you." "I have a couple of times before, but it's never been like this."

"You've never been close to death before. Add to that the fact that you haven't had time to rest and recuperate, and that's a dangerous combination."

"In other words, we may not be able to count on me to sneak us out of here," I said.

"How about we call you Plan C, and we F.Won me to stry to come up with Plans A and B."

"I'd rather be Plan Z," I grumbled.

"Well, this will help, even if it's just a temporary fix." He went to the mini-fridge and pulled out what looked like two water bottles, only the bottles were filled with a thick red liquid I recognized very well. He handed me one. "Drink up."

I took it and frowned at him. "You have blood in water bottles in your fridge?"

He raised his brows at me, then cringed a little as the cut that stretched down the entire side of his face pulled. Finally he said, "I am a vampyre, Zoey. You will be one soon. To us having bottled human blood is the same as having bottled water. Only there is a lot more kick to blood." He lifted his bottle to me and then drained it.

I shut off my mind and did the same. As always, the blood hit my system like an explosion, giving me a kick of energy and making me feel suddenly very much alive and invincible. My woozy head cleared, and the ache that had been radiating from my wound diminished, letting me draw a big, deep, pain-free breath.

"Better?" Darius said.

"Totally," I said. "Let's go get me some real clothes and find the others while this buzz lasts."

"That reminds me." He turned back to the fridge, grabbed another bottle of blood, and tossed it to me. "Stick that in your pocket. Drinking blood won't replace sleep and the time your body needs to heal, but it will keep you on your feet. Or at least I hope it will."

I shoved the bottle in one of the huge pockets of my baggy scrub pants. Darius strapped on his knife holster, grabbed a clean leather jacket, and he and I left his room, hurried down the stairs, and walked to the door of the building--all without seeing anyone else. It felt wrong, but I didn't want to pause to talk about it. I didn't want to do or say anything that might keep us there for even one more second than we had to be.

As Darius reached the front door of the building, I hesitated. "I don't think it's smart for the Raven Mockers to see that I'm up and walking around." I kept my voice low, even though there was no one visible around us.

"You are probably right," he said. "Can you manage it?"

"Well, it's really not very far to the dorm. Plus, the weather's already nasty. I'll just call in some mist and increase the rain. That should do a pretty good job of hiding us. Remember to think that you're made of nothing but spirit. Try to imagine blending in with the storm. That usually makes it easier for me."

"Will do. I'm ready whenever you are."

I drew a deep breath, grateful that my chest was almost completely pain-free, and centered myself. "Water, fire, and spirit, I need you," I said. I flung wide one of my arms, as if receiving a hug from a friend, and hooked the other through Darius's arm. Immediately I felt the three elements surge around and through me and, hopefully, Darius, too. "Spirit, I ask you to cloak us...hide us...let us blend with the night. Water, fill the air around us, bathe us and conceal us. Fire, I need you just a little--just enough to heat the ice so th

I'd been right about one thing: the weather was nasty. I'd definitely liked it more looking out from inside the warm, dry building. It had been bad before, but as the elements responded to my command the storm increased in intensity. I glanced around us, trying to discover if the Raven Mockers had noticed us, but the elements were working together well, and Darius and I walked in what felt like the middle of a blinding snow globe turned to ice. The ice and wind were so bad that I would have fallen right on my butt if Darius hadn't had the reflexes of a cat and somehow managed to keep both of us on our feet.

Which reminded me, as he and I walked quickly but carefully down the frozen sidewalk, shrouded in a sudden mist that had blown up all around us, heads bent against the icy onslaught, I did not see one single cat. Okay, yeah, the weather was awful, especially after I'd messed with it, and cats don't like anything wet, but I didn't remember once in the months I'd lived at the House of Night walking anywhere on campus and not seeing at least a couple cats chasing after each other.

"There aren't any cats around," I said.

Darius nodded. "I already noticed."

"What does it mean?"

"Trouble," he said.

But I didn't have time to think about what the absence of cats might mean (and to worry about where my Nala might be). I was already feeling the drain of energy. I had to focus all of my strength and concentration to keep a running whispered litany going to wind, fire, and water. "We are the night, let the spirit of night cover us...shroud us with mist...blow, wind, and keep evil eyes from seeing us..."

We were almost to the dorm when I heard the girl's voice. I couldn't make out what she was saying, but the high, nervous tone definitely meant that something was wrong. The tension in Darius's arm, and the way he was peering around, trying to see through the elemental soup surrounding us, told me that he'd heard it, too.

As we got closer to the dorm, the voice got clearer and louder, and the words began to make sense.

"No, really! I--I just wanta get back to my room," the frightened girl's voice said.

"You can get back. After I'm done with you."

I froze, pulling Darius to a stop with me as I recognized the guy's voice even before the girl answered him.

"How about later, Stark? Then maybe we can--" Her words were abruptly cut off. I heard a little scream that ended in a gasp, and then there was an awful wet sound, and the moans began.