Hunted

I was thinking that drama class wouldn't be a big deal. One of the pod professors would probably subst a j)Yitute for Erik, who had taken over temporarily for Professor Nolan after she'd been killed. I sat in the desk behind Becca, feeling weirdly d?j? vu-ish, and half expecting to see Erik's pissed-off face calling me up in front of the class to try to seduce or humiliate me.

"Oh! My! God! He was not with me! Even though I sooooo wish he had been!"

Becca's annoying exclamation marks snagged my attention from being disgruntled at Erik. She was talking in little gaspy starts and stops to the girl across the row from her who I recognized as a fifth-former named Cassie. I kinda knew her because she'd placed twenty- fifth in the National Shakespeare Monologue Contest Erik had won, and all the drama kids tended to hang out with each other. Today, though, she wasn't acting like a Shakespearean heroine. She was acting like a pain-in-the-butt giggly girl.

"Well, he wasn't with me, either. But I can tell you, since he bit me I've been dying to do a little biting and sucking of my own on him," Cassie said, and then dissolved into giggles. Again.

"Who are you guys talking about?" I asked, even though I was pretty sure I already knew.

"Stark, of course. He's only the hottest guy at the House of Night. Well, if you don't count Kalona," Becca said.

"CFF--both of them," Cassie said.

"CFF?" I asked.

"Completely freaking fine," Becca said.

I realized afterwards that I should have kept my mouth shut. I mean, I was attempting to converse with what amounted to brainwashed pod people, but I couldn't stay out of it, and yes, I knew that some of my pissed-off-ness came from a totally inappropriate feeling of jealousy.

"Uh, excuse me, Becca," I said, heavy on the sarcasm. "But didn't Darius and I recently save your butt from getting raped and bit by oooh! the hottest guy at the House of Night? Then you were snotting and whimpering."

Shocked at my outburst, Becca opened, shut, and opened her mouth again, reminding me of a fish. "You're just jealous." Cassie didn't look or sound shocked; she looked like a hateful bitch. "Erik's gone. Loren Blake's dead. So now you don't have the two hottest guys at school on your little leash."

I felt my face flush. Had Neferet told everyone about Loren and me? I didn't know what to say, but Becca didn't give me a chance to speak anyway.

"Yeah, just because you're all high and mighty with the elements doesn't mean you can have any guy you want." Becca was giving me the same hateful glare she'd given Damien and the Twins when they'd tried to talk sense into her last night. "The rest of us can actually have a chance once in a while, too."

I clamped down on my urge to shriek at her and tried reason instead. "Becca, you're not thinking clearly. Last night, when Darius and I broke it up between you and Stark, he was forcing you to let him suck your blood, and he was also on the verge of raping you." I hated saying it. I especially hated knowing it was true.

"I don't remember it that way," Becca said. "I remember liking the sucking, and I would have liked the rest of what goes along with Stark sucking a girl's blood. You busted up something good that was none of your business."

"You remember it like that because Stark messed with your mind."

Becca and Cassie laughed, causing lots of heads to turn in our direction.

"The next thing you're going to say is that Kalona is messing with our minds, too, and that's why we think he's so damn hot," Cassie said.

"Are you actually saying you two can't tell that things have been different around here since Kalona broke out of the ground?"

"Yeah. So? He's consort to Nyx's Incarnate. His presence is bound to make things different," Cassie said.

"And of course he came out of the ground. Earth is one of Nyx's elements. Like you don't know that?" Becca said, rolling her eyes at Cassie.

I'd just opened my mouth to try to explain to them that he'd escaped the earth, not been born through it, when the door to the classroom opened and Kalona strode in.

There was a cumulative sigh from every female except me. And, to be completely honest, I'd wanted to sigh and had to clamp my jaws together to stop myself. He was just so utterly gorgeous. Today he was wearing black slacks and a short-sleeved, button-up shirt that was untucked, unbuttoned, and hanging open enough that whenever he moved I could see the flawless bronze of his chest and his yummy six-pack. Someone had slit the back of the shirt, because his magnificent black wings protruded through and then tucked neatly against his broad back. His long dark hair was loose on his shoulders, making him look, despite his modern clothes, like an ancient god.

I wanted to ask Becca or Cassie how old he looked to them, because to me he again seemed only eighteen or nineteen, in the prime of his youth and strength, and not too ancient and mysterious to be out of my reach.

No! Listen to yourself! The next thing you know you'll be sounding as empty-headed as Becca and Cassie and the rest of them. Think! He's your enemy. Don't forget that. Forcing myself to look beyond his physical beauty and the hypnotic allure he radiated, I realized he'd been talking while I'd been yelling at myself.

"That said, I thought I would help direct this class, since it seems you are so very hard on your instructors."

The class's appreciative laughter was warm and welcoming. I raised my hand. His amber eyes widened in surprise, and then he smiled and said, "How delightful that my first question comes from the most special of all the fledglings. Yes, Zoey, what answer may I give you?"

"With you taking over Drama I was just wondering if that meant you expect Erik Night to be gone for quite some time?" Okay, I hadn't wanted to ask him a question, but my instincts had made me raise my hand, just as my instincts were telling me what to say. I knew taunting him with the fact that Erik had escaped was dangerous, but I was doing so in a way that I hoped wouldn't give him a reason for outright anger. I just wasn ~C91't sure why I was being prompted to bait an already volatile immortal.

Kalona didn't look fazed at all by my question. "I believe Erik Night may return to the House of Night sooner than some may think. But, sadly, I've heard he might not be in any shape to resume his duties as a professor, or as anything else for quite some time." His smile got warmer and more intimate, and I could feel Becca and Cassie and the rest of the girls in the room shooting daggered looks of envy at me. I realized with a terrible sense of fear and disbelief that the girls hadn't really heard anything Kalona had said. They couldn't grasp that he had just threatened Erik and said that he was coming back, probably just short of being hauled here in a body bag. All they'd heard was the sound of his beautiful voice. All they knew was that he'd singled me out for his attention.

"Now, sweet Zoey, or as I like to think of you, A-ya, I give you the honor of choosing what piece of work we shall study first. Be wary! The entire class must abide by your choice. And know that I shall play the lead in what ever you choose." He strode over to my side of the room. I was in the desk that sat second to the front, directly behind Becca, and I swear I could see her tremble at his nearness. "Perhaps I will give you a part to play in our little drama."

I stared at him, my heart hammering so violently in my chest that I was sure he must hear it. His being so close was hard on me. It reminded me of my dreams, where he'd come to me and held me in his arms. I could feel the tendrils of cold that snaked from his body...wrapping around me...making me yearn for the blanket of those ebony wings...

He's going to hurt Erik! I clung to that thought and felt the delicious chill slither from me. No matter what was going on between Erik and me, I wasn't about to be cool with anything happening to him.

"I know the perfect play for us to do." I was proud that my voice was calm and strong.

His smile was pure, sensual joy. "I'm intrigued! What is your choice?"

"Medea," I said without hesitation. "Ancient Greek tragedy set in a time when gods still walked the earth. It's about what happens when a man has too much hubris."

"Ah, yes, hubris. When a man exhibits godlike arrogance." His voice was still deep and seductive, but I could see the anger that had begun to burn in his eyes. "I think you will find that hubris only applies when you're dealing with mortals, and not the gods themselves."

"So you don't want to do the play?" I said with exaggerated innocence.

"On the contrary! I believe the play will be amusing. Perhaps I shall let you dramatize Medea herself." He broke eye contact with me and refocused his charisma on the class. "Study this play to night. We will begin acting it tomorrow. Rest well, my children. I look forward to seeing each of you again." He turned and, as abruptly as he'd entered the room, he left.

There was complete silence for what seemed like a long time. Finally, to no one and everyone I said, "Well, I guess I'll try to find some copies of Medea." I got up and went to the back of the room. But not even the sound of opening and closing cabinets and pawing through files of ^ X? old plays and mounds of scripts could cover the whispers that rained around me.

"Why should she get noticed by him?"

"It's not fair!" "If this is Nyx being mysterious, then I'm damn sick of it."

"Yeah, it's crap. If you're not Zoey Redbird, then you're not shit to Nyx."

"Nyx gives her anyone she wants. The Goddess doesn't leave anything for the rest of us."

On and on they muttered, sounding more and more pissed off. The guys were even chiming in. Apparently I made a handy scapegoat for what had to be a massive amount of anger and jealousy they must already have had for Kalona, but weren't allowed to take out on him because he was messing with their minds.

What was more than obvious was that Kalona was methodically tearing down the fledglings' love for Nyx, and he was using me to help him. They couldn't see the love and honor and strength of their Goddess anymore because Kalona's physical presence was blocking their view, like the sun shadows the brilliance of the moon during a lunar eclipse.

I found the box of Medea scripts and carried it over to Becca's desk and plopped it down. As she glared up at me, I said, "Here. Hand these out." Then, without another word, I left the room.

When I got outside I stepped off the sidewalk into the shadow of the school and leaned against the ice-slick side of the stone-and-brick mixture that made up the House of Night buildings and the wall that surrounded campus. I was shaking. With one appearance Kalona had turned an entire class against me. It hadn't mattered that I had obviously not been drooling over him like everyone else. It hadn't even mattered that I'd pissed him off. All that those kids had processed was his hypnotic beauty and that he'd singled me out for special attention, above and beyond any of them.

And they hated me for it.

But it was so much more than them hating me. The most frightening, most unbelievable part of it was that they had begun to hate Nyx.

"I have to get him out of here." I spoke the words out loud, making them an oath. "No matter what, Kalona will leave this House of Night."

I walked slowly toward the stables, and not just because I'd left my last class early so I had time to kill before sixth hour and Equestrian Studies began. I walked slowly because I was going to slip and fall on my butt if I wasn't extremely careful. My luck I'd break something and have to deal with a cast or two along with everything else.

Someone had put a sand and salt mixture on the sidewalk, but it had little effect on a storm that just kept coming. Wave after wave of freezing rain fell, making the world look like a giant cake with crystal icing. It was still beautiful, but in an eerie, dreamlike way. As I slipped and slid and struggled the few yards I had to cross from the drama classroom to the stables, I realized there was no way the six of us were going to be able to walk out of here, not to mention the mile or so we'd have to go to get to the Benedictine Abbey on the corner of Lewis and Twenty-first.

I wanted to sit down in the middle of the cold, wet, slippery mess and burst into tears. How was I going to get us out of here? I needed the Hummer, but I couldn't cloak it. That left only escape on foot, which wasn't fast enough under normal circumstances. During an ice storm that coated the streets and sidewalks of midtown Tulsa with ice and darkness, it was not just slow but impossible.

I was almost at the entrance to the stables when I heard the mocking crooak from the branches of the huge old oak that stood sentry outside the building. My first reaction was to slip and slide quickly to the door and get inside. I actually started to hurry, and then my anger caught up with me. I stopped, drew a deep breath to center myself, and ignored the the bird thing's terrible human eyes staring at me and causing the little hairs on the back of my neck to lift. "Fire, I need you," I whispered, sending my thoughts south, to the direction ruled by that element's flames. Almost instantly I felt heat brush against my skin and there was a waiting, listening quality to the air around me. I turned and looked up into the ice-crusted branches of the proud old oak.

Instead of a Raven Mocker, a terrible, spectral image of Neferet clung to the center of the tree where the massive first branches began to spread. She radiated darkness and evil. There was no breeze, but her long hair was lifting around her, as if the strands had a life of their own. Her eyes glowed a nasty scarlet, more rust than red. Her body was semi-transparent; her skin shimmered with an unearthly light.

I focused on the one thing that allowed my terror to thaw enough for me to speak--if her body looked transparent, then she really wasn't there.

"Don't you have more important things to do than spy on me?" I was glad my voice didn't shake. I even raised my chin and glared at her.

"You and I have unfinished business." Her mouth didn't move, but I heard her voice echo eerily around us.

I mimicked one of Aphrodite's haughty sneers. "Okay, so maybe you don't have anything better to do than spy on me. I, on the other hand, am way too busy to be bothered by you."

"Once again you need a lesson in respecting your elders." As I watched, she began to smile, and her wide, beautiful mouth stretched and stretched and stretched until, with a horrible gagging sound, spiders exploded from that gaping maw and her image broke apart into hundreds and hundreds of seething, multilegged creatures.

I sucked air for a huge scream, and had already started scurrying backwards, when I heard a rustling of wings and a Raven Mocker landed in the crotch of the tree. I blinked, expecting him to be overrun with spiders, but they shimmered and then seemed to soak into the night and disappear. There was only the tree, the Raven Mocker, and my lingering fear.

"Zzzzzoey," the creature hissed my name. Obviously this was one of the bottom-feeding Mockers whose ability to speak wasn't nearly as refined as Rephaim's. "You ssssmell like ssssummer." It opened its dark beak and I saw the forked tongue that flicked out hungrily, like it was tasting my scent.

Okay. Enough was enough. Neferet had scared the bejeezus out of f zfwide, beame. And now this...this...bird boy was going to try to bully me, too? Oh. Hell. No.

"Alright, I am sick and tired of you freaks and the way you and your daddy and nasty Neferet think you can take over everything."

"Father ssssays, find Zzzzzoey, and I find Zzzzzoey. Father ssssays, watch Zzzzzoey. I watch Zzzzzoey."

"No. No. No! If I wanted a pain-in-the-butt dad to follow me around and check up on me, I'd call the Step-loser. So to you, your daddy, the rest of your bird-boy brothers, and even to Neferet, I say: Get. Off. My. Back!" I lifted my hands and flung fire at him. He screeched and took off, flapping wildly and flying erratically out of the tree and away from me as fast as he could go, leaving behind the scent of singed feathers and silence.

"You know, it's not smart to antagonize them," a voice said. "They're normally annoying. Once you ruffle their feathers they're really hard to get along with."

I turned back to the stable building to see Stark standing in the open door.