Tempted

He didn’t speak for quite a while and Stevie Rae began to wonder if maybe Rephaim didn’t really want to live, which was a thought she hadn’t considered. She guessed it might make sense, though. His own folks had left him for dead and the modern world was like a zillion times different than it had been when he’d been alive and in the flesh before—and terrorizing Cherokee villages. How badly had she messed up by not just letting him die?

“I prefer to live.”

By the look on his face, Stevie Rae thought that maybe his a

“Okay. Fine. Then I need to get you outta here.” She took a step toward him, but stopped. “Do I need to make you promise to be good again?”

“I am too weak to be a danger to you,” he said simply.

“All right, then I’ll just consider your word that you gave me earlier still holding. Just don’t try anything stupid and we might get through this.” Stevie Rae walked over to him and squatted down. “I better take a look at your bandages. They might need to be changed or tightened before we leave.” She checked him over methodically, all the while keeping up a ru

“Ah, shoot! Sorry. I know the wing’s bad.”

“Wrap more of the cloth around me. Tie it more tightly against my body. I will not be able to walk if you do not completely immobilize it.”

Stevie Rae nodded. “I’ll do what I can.” She ripped more lengths from one of the towels and then he leaned forward so that she had access to his back. She gritted her teeth and worked as quickly and gently as she could, hating the way he trembled and kept stifling moans of pain.

When she’d finished with the wing, she ladled out some water and helped him drink it. After he stopped trembling, she stood and held out her hands to him. “Okay, let’s cowboy up.”

He gazed at her and even in his strange face she could read confusion. She smiled. “It just means stepping up and doin’ what you need to do, even when it’s hard as hell.”

He nodded, and then slowly reached up and clasped her hands. Bracing herself, she pulled, allowing him time to shift his weight and gather himself. With a painful gasp, he managed to stand, though he put little weight on his hurt ankle and he didn’t seem very steady.

Stevie Rae kept hold of his hands, giving him a chance to get used to being upright, and while she worried that he might pass out, she thought how weird it was that his hands felt so warm and so human. She’d always thought of birds as cold and flitty. Actually, she didn’t like birds much—never had. Her mom’s chickens tended to scare the bejesus outta her, what with their hysterical flapping and stupid squawking. She had a brief flashback of gathering eggs and having one fat, grumpy hen peck at her and just miss her eyes.

Stevie Rae shivered, and Rephaim dropped her hands.

“Are you okay?” she asked to cover up the awkward silence that gathered between them.

With a grunt, he nodded.

She nodded, too. “Hang on. Before you try much walkin’, let’s see what I can find to help you.” Stevie Rae looked through the garden stuff, finally settling on a good, sturdy wooden-handled shovel. She came back to Rephaim, measured it against him, and in one swift motion, snapped the handle from the spade end and handed it to him. “Use this like a cane. You know, to take some of the weight off your bad ankle. You can lean on me for a little while, but once we get in the tu

Rephaim took the wooden handle from her. “Your strength is impressive.”

Stevie Rae shrugged. “It comes in handy.”

Rephaim took a tentative step forward, using the handle to help carry his weight, and he was actually able to walk, though Stevie Rae could see that it caused him a lot of pain. Still, he hobbled by himself to the door of the shed. There he paused and looked expectantly at her.

“First, I’m go

Rephaim nodded, and Stevie Rae wrapped the blanket around him, positioning it over his head and tucking it into the side of the bandage across his chest to hold it closed.

“So here’s my plan: You know about the tu

“Yes.”

“Well, I kinda added to them.”

“I don’t understand.”

“My affinity is for the element earth. I can control it, more or less. At least some aspects of it I can control. One of the things I recently found out I can do is to make it move—as in creating a tu

“It is this type of power that my father spoke of when he talked of you.”

Stevie Rae definitely didn’t want to discuss Rephaim’s horrible daddy with him, and she didn’t even want to think about why he might have been talking about her and her powers. “Yeah, well, anyway—I opened up part of the tu

“And why are the rest of your allies not going to find me in those tu

“First, I’m go

“What will you tell them that will keep them from going into the tu

Stevie Rae sighed and wiped her hand across her face. “I’m go

Rephaim was silent for several heartbeats. Finally he said, “Neferet was right.”

“Neferet! What do you mean?”

“She kept telling my father that she had allies among the red fledglings—that they could be soldiers in her cause. These red fledglings are the ones she was speaking of.”

“They must be,” Stevie Rae murmured miserably. “I didn’t want to believe it. I wanted to believe they’d eventually do the right thing—choose humanity over the darkness. They just needed some time to get things straight in their heads, that’s all. I think I was wrong.”

“It is these fledglings that will keep your friends from the tu

“Kinda. Really, it’s more me that’ll keep them out. I’m go

Stevie Rae knew Rephaim had to be in terrible pain as they walked haltingly from the shed toward the opening in the ground she’d created to the tu