Tempted

“Come on, you’re doing good. You can make it. We gotta hurry.” She kept murmuring to him, encouraging Rephaim and trying to calm her own guilty fears.

But no one yelled after them. No one ran up to them, and in much less time than Stevie Rae had anticipated, the opening to the tu

“Climb down backward, with your hands and feet. It’s not far. I’ll hold on to you for most of the way to help steady you.”

Rephaim didn’t waste time or energy on words. He nodded, turned, flung the blanket off of him, and then, as Stevie Rea held on to his good arm—glad that though he was big and appeared strong and solid, he actually weighed less than she did—with her help he slowly and painfully disappeared down into the earth. Stevie Rae followed him.

In the tu

“You gotta keep going. Now. Get out of here. Go that way.” She pointed into the darkness in front of them. “It’s go

He nodded. “I have long preferred the night.”

“Good. Follow this tu

“And there are dark fledglings.”

He didn’t phrase it as a question, but Stevie Rae answered him. “Yeah, there are. While the other red fledglings and I were livin’ there, they stayed away from the main tu

“They are of the darkness. As I said, I am well acquainted with that.”

“All right. Well, I’m just go

He stared at her and said nothing.

Stevie Rae fidgeted. “Rephaim. You gotta go. Now. It’s not safe here. As soon as you’re down the tu

“I do not understand why you would betray your people to save me,” he said.

“I’m not betraying anyone; I’m just not killing you!” she yelled, and then lowered her voice and continued. “Why does letting you go have to mean I betrayed my friends? Can’t it just mean that I choose life over death? Look, I chose good over evil. How is me lettin’ you live any different than that?”

“Did you not consider that choosing to save me was making a choice for what you would call evil?”

Stevie Rae looked at him for a long time before she answered. “Then let that be on your conscience. Your life is what you want it to be. Your daddy’s gone. The rest of the Raven Mockers are gone, too. My mamma used to sing a kinda silly song to me when I was a kid and I’d messed up and gotten myself hurt. She’d sing that I needed to pick myself up, dust myself off, and start all over again. And that’s what you need to do. I’m just givin’ you a chance to do it.” Stevie Rae stuck out her hand. “So, here’s hoping that next time we meet, we’re not enemies.”

Rephaim looked from her outstretched hand to her face, and back to her hand. Then slowly, almost reluctantly, he grasped it. Not in a modern handshake, but in the traditional vampyre greeting of clasping forearms.

“I owe you a life, Priestess.”

Stevie Rae’s cheeks felt hot. “Just call me Stevie Rae. I don’t feel much like a Priestess right now.”

He bowed his head. “Then it is to Stevie Rae that I owe a life.”

“Do the right thing with yours and I’ll consider myself paid up,” she said. “Merry meet, marry part, and merry meet again, Rephaim.”

She tried to pull her arm from his grasp, but he didn’t let her go. “Are they all like you? All of your allies?” he asked.

She smiled. “Nah, I’m weirder than most of the others. I’m the first red vamp, and sometimes I think that makes me kinda an experiment.”

Still gripping her arm he said, “I was the first of my father’s children.”

Though he held her gaze steadily, she couldn’t read his expression. All she saw in the dim light of the tu

He nodded and finally released her arm. Without another word, he turned and hobbled away into the darkness.

Stevie Rae counted slowly to one hundred, then she raised her arms. “Earth, I need you again.” Instantly her element responded, filling the tu

She stepped back as the dirt in front and above her started to move, and then it rained down, shifting and solidifying until there was nothing but a solid wall of earth in front of her.

“Stevie Rae, what the hell are ya doing?”

Stevie Rae whirled around, pressing her hand over her heart. “Dallas! You scared the livin’ daylights right outta me! Dang, I think you ’bout gave me a heart attack for real.”

“Sorry. You’re so hard to sneak up on I thought you knew I was standing here.”

Heart pounding even harder, Stevie Rae searched Dallas’s face, trying to find a sign that he had even a hint that she hadn’t been alone, but he didn’t look suspicious or mad or betrayed—he just looked curious and kinda sad. His next words reinforced that he hadn’t been there long enough to have caught even a glimpse of Rephaim.

“You sealed it off to keep the rest of them from getting to the abbey, didn’t you?”

Stevie Rae nodded and tried not to let the wave of relief she felt show in her voice. “Yeah. I didn’t think it was smart to give ’em such easy access to the nuns.”

“It would be kinda like an old-lady smorgasbord for them.” Dallas’s eyes glinted mischievously.

“Don’t be gross.” But she couldn’t help gri

Gri

“Dallas!” She narrowed her eyes at him, truly shocked by what he’d said. “Heck no I haven’t thought about eatin’ a nun! It doesn’t even sound right. And like I told ya before, it’s not smart to think a lot about eatin’ people. It’s not good for you.”

“Hey, relax, cutie. I’m just messing with you.” He glanced behind her at the wall of earth. “So, how are you going to explain this to Zoey and the rest of them?”

“I’m go

“I thought you wanted to stay quiet about the rest of the fledglings because you thought they might come around and be more like us.”