Tempted

She went to her empty cot and pulled the blanket off it. Then retraced her steps down to the cellar and moved with preternatural confidence in the unrelieved darkness to the mouth of the tu

Stevie Rae followed the tu

“Earth, you are mine, just like I am yours. I call you to me.” The tu

She raised her arms and pointed her fingers at the low, dirt ceiling of the tu

Instinct had her jumping back into the protective shadows of the tu

Stevie Rae wrapped the blanket around her shoulders and began the short climb up the collapsed side of the tu

She shook off the unease and got her bearings quickly, sighting the shed where she’d left Rephaim a little way off to her left. Putting her head down against the stinging pellets of frozen rain, she jogged to the shed. Just like the night before, as she touched the latch she couldn’t help but think Please let him be dead… It’d be easier if he was dead…

The shed was warmer than she’d imagined, and it smelled strange. Along with the scents of the lawn mower and other oiled and gassed yard equipment, as well as the various pesticides and fertilizers stored on the shed’s shelves, there was something else. Something that made her skin crawl. She’d just made her way around the lawn-implement obstacle course and was moving slowly to the back of the shed when Stevie Rae realized what the scent reminded her of, and that realization made her steps falter and then stop completely.

The shed, perfumed by Rephaim and his blood, smelled like the darkness that had surrounded her after she had un-died and her humanity had been almost totally destroyed. It reminded her of that black time and those days and nights that had been filled with nothing but anger and need, violence and fear.

She stifled a little gasp of realization as she made the rest of the scent co

“Again you come to me alone,” Rephaim said.

CHAPTER 17

Stevie Rae

Rephaim’s words drifted to her out of the darkness. Without seeing the monster he was, his voice had a quality that made him sound hauntingly, heartbreakingly human. That was, after all, what had saved him the day before. His humanity had reached Stevie Rae, and she hadn’t been able to kill him.

But today he sounded different, stronger than he had before. That relieved and worried her at the same time.

Then she shook off the worry. She wasn’t some helpless kid who went ru

“And who’d ya expect? John Wayne and the cavalry?” Pretending to be her mom when one of her brothers was being sick and a

He cocked his head slightly to the side. “Who is John Wayne and cavalry?”

“The cavalry. It just means the good guys comin’ to the rescue. Don’t get excited, though. There isn’t an army comin’. All you got is me.”

“Don’t you consider yourself one of the good guys?”

He surprised her with his ability to have an actual conversation with her, and she thought if she could close her eyes or look away from him, she might almost fool herself into thinking he was just a normal guy. Of course she knew better. She could never close her eyes around him or look away, and he definitely wasn’t a normal anything.

“Well, yeah, I’m good, but I’m not exactly an army.” Stevie Rae made an obvious show of looking him over. And he did still look like crap—definitely battered and bloodied and broken—but he wasn’t lying on his side in a crumpled heap anymore. He was sitting up, leaning, mostly on his uninjured left side, against the back of the shed. He’d arranged the towels she’d left with him over his body like pieces of a blanket. His eyes were bright and alert and never wavered from her face. “So, you are feelin’ better?”

“As you said, I am not dead. Where are the others?”

“I told ya before, the rest of the Raven Mockers left with Kalona and Neferet.”

“No, I mean the other sons and daughters of man.”

“Oh, my friends. They’re sleepin’ mostly. So we don’t have much time. This isn’t go

“I will do what I need to do.”

“Now what the heck does that mean? Just give me a simple yes or no. It’s kinda important.”

“Yessss.”

Stevie Rae swallowed hard at the sound of his hissed word and decided she’d been wrong about the whole if-she-didn’t-look-at-himhe’d-seem-normal thing. “All right, well, let’s get goin’ then.”

“Where are you taking me?”

“All I could think of was that I need to get you someplace where you can be safe and heal. You can’t stay here. They’ll find you for sure. Hey, you don’t have your daddy’s problem with bein’ underground, do ya?”

“I prefer the ssssky to the earth.” He sounded bitter, practically biting off the words and adding a special hissing emphasis to “sky.”

Stevie Rae put her hands on her hips. “So does that mean you can’t go underground?”

“I prefer not to.”

“Well, do you prefer to stay alive and hidden underground, or up here and about a minute away from bein’ found and dead?” Or worse, she thought but didn’t say aloud.