Hunted (17 page)

“Gotta rest,” I murmured.

“No! There's no resting! Hey, let's pretend like we're in that
Titanic
movie you used to watch over and over again. You know, the one with Leonardo DiStupio.”

“DiCaprio,” I whispered, irritated at the fact that after all these years Heath was still jealous that when I was a kid I'd had a crush on Leonardo. Or as I liked to think of him, “my boyfriend Leo.”

“Whatever,” he said. “Remember how you said if you'd been Rose you would really never have let him go? Okay, well, let's do a little reenactment. I'm the gay-looking DiCaprio and you're Rose. You have to keep your eyes open and on my face, or you'll have let me go and I'll turn into a huge gay Popsicle.”

“Dork,” I managed.

Heath grinned. “Just never let me go, Rose. Okay?”

Okay, it was a stupid reenactment, but I'll admit that he hooked me. It had driven me crazy since the first time I'd seen the movie (and bawled my eyes out—and I do mean one of those shoulder-heaving, ugly snot cries). Stupid Rose says she'll never let him go, but then she does. And why couldn't she have scooted over and let Leo/Jack get on that floating board thing with her? There was plenty of room. So while my foggy mind circled round and round that heart-wrenching
scene from one of my favorite movies, Heath held me tight in his arms and ran.

He'd just followed a gentle curve in the tunnel when Erik found us. Darius was at his shoulder. Heath came to a stop and it was then that I realized how hard he was breathing. Huh. I wondered abstractly if I should be embarrassed that I was heavy.

Darius took one look at me and started barking commands at Erik.

“I'm taking her to Stevie Rae's room. I'll get there well ahead of you, but I'll need this human to join me there, so show him where to go. Then you get the Twins and Damien. Wake up Aphrodite. We may need her, too.” Darius turned to Heath. “I will take Zoey.”

Heath hesitated. I could tell he didn't want to let me go. Darius's stony look softened. “Do not fear. I am a Son of Erebus and I give you my oath that I will always protect her.”

Reluctantly Heath transferred me to Darius's strong arms. The warrior looked grimly down at me. “I'm going to move fast. Remember to trust me.”

I nodded weakly, and even though I knew what was coming next, I was still amazed as Darius took off, moving with a speed that blurred the walls of the tunnel and made my head spin. Once before I'd experienced Darius's amazing ability to practically teleport from one place to another, and it wasn't any less breathtaking the second time.

It seemed only seconds had passed when Darius came to an abrupt halt in front of the blanketed entrance to Stevie Rae's room. He shoved inside. Stevie Rae was sitting up, rubbing her eyes and peering blurrily at us. Then her mouth opened in utter shock and she bounded off the bed.

“Zoey! What happened?”

“Raven Mocker,” Darius said. “Clear those things off that table.”

Stevie Rae knocked the stuff off the table that sat by the end of her bed. I wanted to protest that she really shouldn't make such a mess. I mean, I was sure she'd broken a glass or two and sent a whole bunch
of DVDs flying across the room, but not only was my voice not working right, but I was really busy trying not to pass out from the terrible pain that was slicing through the top part of my body as Darius placed me on the table.

“What can we do? What can we do?” Stevie Rae repeated the question. I thought she looked like a little lost girl and I noticed that she was crying, too.

“Take her hand. Talk to her. Keep her conscious,” Darius said. And then he turned away and started throwing stuff out of the first aid kit.

“Zoey, can you hear me?” I could feel that Stevie Rae had hold of my hand, but just barely.

It took what felt like a superhuman effort, but I whispered, “Yeah.”

Stevie Rae clutched my hand harder. “You're gonna be okay. 'Kay? Nothin' can happen to you, 'cause I don't know what I'd do—” Her voice caught on a sob, and then she said, “You can't die 'cause you've always believed the best of me, so I've tried to be what you believe I am. Without you, well, I'm afraid the good in me will die, too, and I'll give in to the darkness. Plus, there are so many things I still need to tell you. Important things.”

I wanted to tell her not to be silly, that she wasn't making sense and I wasn't going anywhere, but through the pain and the numbness I was starting to get a strange feeling. The only way I could describe it was as a sense of not-rightness. Whatever had happened, whatever was going on with me, that was the source of the not-rightness. And this new feeling, more than the blood—more than the fear in my friends' faces—was telling me that something was so wrong with me that I might, indeed, be going somewhere.

It was then that the pain began to recede, and I decided that if this was what it felt like to die, then it was better than living and hurting like hell.

Heath burst into the room, came straight to me, and took my other hand. He barely looked at Stevie Rae. Instead, he smoothed the hair out of my face.

“How are ya, babe? Still holding on?”

I tried to smile at him, but he seemed so far away that I couldn't make the change in expression reach him.

The Twins ran into the room with Kramisha close behind them.

“Oh no!” Erin stopped several feet from where I was and pressed her hand against her mouth.

“Zoey?” I thought Shaunee looked confused. Then she blinked several times, her gaze traveled down my body, and she burst into tears.

“That don't look good,” Kramisha said. “Not good at all.” She paused and then her eyes went from me to Heath, whose attention was so focused on me I swear he didn't look like he'd notice if a giant white elephant in a tutu danced into the room. “Ain't that the human kid who was down here before?”

I don't know why, but except for my own body, which didn't seem to belong to me anymore, I had become majorly aware of everything that was going on around me. The Twins were holding hands and bawling so hard snot was running from their noses. Darius was still digging through the first aid kit. Stevie Rae was patting my hand and trying (unsuccessfully) not to cry. Heath was whispering silly butchered lines from
Titanic
to me. In other words, everyone was focused on me—except Kramisha. She was staring hungrily at Heath. Little warning bells started ringing in my mind and I tried to struggle to regain awareness of my body. I needed to warn Heath to be on his guard. I needed to tell him he should leave this place before something bad happened to him.

“Heath,” I managed to whisper.

“I'm here, babe. I'm not going anywhere.”

I did a mental eye roll. Heath and his heroics were cute and all, but I was afraid they were going to get him eaten by Stevie Rae's red fledglings.

“Hey, ain't you the human kid who was down here before? The one Zoey came after?” Kramisha had moved closer to Heath. Her eyes had taken on a red tint that was a gigantic warning sign. Was I the only one who could see danger in the intense way she was staring at him?

“Darius!” I finally gasped.

Thankfully, the warrior looked up from rummaging through the first aid kit. I flicked my eyes from his to where Kramisha was practically drooling on Heath and saw understanding cross Darius's face.

“Kramisha. Leave the room. Now,” Darius snapped.

She hesitated, then dragged her red gaze from Heath to look directly at me.
Go!
I mouthed the word. Her eyes didn't change, but Kramisha nodded once and walked quickly from the room.

It was then that Aphrodite slapped the doorway blanket aside and made her grand entrance. Looking seriously like poopie, she scowled at the room.

“Damn it, this Imprint is a pain in the ass! Stevie Rae, could you not get a handle on yourself and keep your emotional bullshit under control and show just a smidge of respect for those of us who can still have hangovers that would kill the average—”She finally managed to focus her blurry vision enough to actually see me. Her face, already pale and hollow-eyed, blanched so that it looked a sickly shade of fish-belly white. “Oh, Goddess! Zoey!”She started shaking her head back and forth, back and forth as she rushed over to me. “No, Zoey. No. I didn't see this.”She was talking earnestly to me. “I never saw this. You beat the first death vision I had. The next one wasn't supposed to be you being cut again. The next was supposed to be you drowning. No! This isn't right!”

I tried to say something, but she'd already rounded on Heath.

“You! What the fuck are you doing here?”

“I—I came to see if she was okay,” Heath stammered, obviously freaked by her intensity.

Aphrodite shook her head again. “No. You aren't supposed to be here. This isn't right.” She paused and her eyes narrowed at Heath. “You caused this, didn't you?”

I watched Heath's eyes fill with tears. “Yeah, I think I did,” he said.

 

 

 

 

Damien, Jack, and Erik ran into the room, followed closely by Duchess. Jack took one look at me, screamed like a girl, and fainted. Damien caught him in time to keep him from falling and bashing his head on the floor. He laid him down on Stevie Rae's bed while the poor confused Lab whined and stared with big, worried brown eyes from Jack to Damien and me, and then back to Jack again. Damien joined everyone else, including Erik, who was crowding around me. Darius waded into the group, parting kids like he was a vampyre Moses and they were the fledgling Red Sea.

“They need to cast a circle and focus the healing powers of the elements on Zoey,” Darius told Aphrodite.

She nodded, touched my forehead gently, and then started snapping commands at my friends.

“Nerd herd! Take your places. Let's get this circle cast.”

Shaunee and Erin stared blankly at her. Damien, his voice thick with tears, said, “I—I don't know which direction is east.”

Stevie Rae squeezed my hand again before letting it go. “I do. I always know where north is, so I can show you where east is, too,” she told Damien.

“Make the circle around the table,” Darius said. “And give me the sheet from that bed.”

Damien grabbed the top sheet from Stevie Rae's bed, murmuring to an awake and crying Jack that it was going to be okay. He handed the sheet to Darius.

“Stay with me, Priestess,” he told me. He glanced at Heath and Erik. “Keep talking to her, both of you.”

Erik took the hand Stevie Rae had let loose. “I'm here, Z.” He threaded his fingers with mine. “You have to make it through this. We need you.” He paused and his beautiful blue eyes met mine. “I need you, and I'm sorry about all that stuff before.”

Then Heath raised my other hand to his lips, kissing it softly. “Hey, Zo, did I tell you I haven't had one drink for more than two months?”

It was seriously weird to have both of my guys there. I was glad they weren't banging their chests at each other, but I understood that might not be a particularly good thing because it meant that I was hurt even worse than I'd realized.

“That's good, huh? I've totally stopped drinking,” Heath said.

I tried to smile at him. It was good. The reason I'd broken up with Heath right before I was Marked was his drinking. It had totally gotten out of control, and—

Darius pulled Erik's wadded-up shirt from my chest and quickly ripped the top of my dress in half so that I felt the cool air of the tunnel against my blood-drenched skin.

“Sweet Goddess, no!” Erik blurted.

“Ah, shit!” Heath was shaking his head back and forth. “This is bad. Really bad. No one can live with—”

“No
human
can live with this kind of wound, but she's not a human and I'm not going to let her die.” Darius interrupted Heath as he (thankfully) covered my naked boobs with the sheet.

I made the mistake of glancing down. Maybe it was a good thing that I didn't have the energy to scream. There was a long laceration that went all the way from the top of my left shoulder, across my chest a couple of inches above my breasts, and didn't end until it sliced through the skin on my right shoulder. The cut was deep and jagged. The edges of my skin flapped sickeningly apart, showing way more muscle and fat and layers of skin than I was ever meant to see. Blood
seeped from all along the terrible wound, but not as much blood as I would expect. Was that because I was running out of it? Hell! It was probably because I was running out! My breath started to come in hysterical little pants.

“Zoey, look at me,” Erik said. When I kept staring down at the wound Darius was pressing thick pads of gauze against, Erik took my chin gently in his hand and turned my face up, forcing me to look at him. “You're going to be fine. You have to be fine.”

“Yeah, Zo. Just don't look at it,” Heath said. “You know, like you told me whenever I messed myself up playing football. You used to say, ‘Just don't look at it and it won't hurt so bad.' ”

Erik let loose of my chin and I managed to nod. Had I been able to talk I would have told both of them
Hell no, I'm not looking at it again!
I'd already scared the crap out of myself. No need to revisit it.

“Get that circle cast,” Darius said.

“We're ready,” Damien said.

I looked around (definitely avoiding glancing down at myself again) to see that Damien, Stevie Rae, and the Twins had taken their positions in a circle around us.

“Then get it cast!” Darius snapped.

There was a pause into which Erin finally spoke. “But Zoey always casts the circles. We never have.”

“I'll do it.” Aphrodite stepped within the circle and marched over to Damien. Damien gave her a look that even I could see was filled with doubt. “You don't have to be a fledgling or a vampyre to cast a circle. All you have to be is attached to Nyx. And I'm attached to Nyx,” she said firmly. “But I need you guys to be behind me on this. Are you?”