Hunted

CHAPTER 13

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 tu

“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 ru

“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?”

Damien paused long enough to look at me. With an effort that seemed to sap the last of my strength, I nodded at him. He smiled at me and nodded back.

“I’m behind you,” Damien told Aphrodite.

Aphrodite looked from him to the Twins. “We’re with you, too.” Erin spoke for both of them.

Finally she turned to Stevie Rae, who wiped her eyes, sent me a big, confident smile, and then she said to Aphrodite, “You’ve saved my life twice. I’m trusting that you can do the same for Zoey.”

I saw Aphrodite’s face flush, her chin lift, and her shoulders straighten and knew that for the first time in a very long time she felt like an accepted part of a group.

“Okay, let’s do this,” Aphrodite said. “It’s the first element, the one we all embrace from our first breaths to our last. I call wind to the circle!” Sure enough, I saw a sudden breeze begin to lift Aphrodite’s and Damien’s hair, and with a look of obvious relief, she moved clockwise around the circle to Shaunee.

And then I stopped paying attention—or rather my attention started to narrow, getting all gray and tu

“Zoey, are you still with us?” Darius asked as he pressed more gauze against my chest.

I couldn’t answer him. My head felt really light, but the rest of my body was unbelievably heavy, like some moron had parked a Mack truck on top of me.

“Z?” Erik was saying. “Z, look at me!”

“Zoey? Babe?” Heath looked like he was going to cry again.

Okay, I really wanted to say something to make them feel better, but it just wasn’t possible. I couldn’t make my body work anymore. It was like I’d become a distant spectator in the game that was going on around me. I could watch, but I couldn’t play.

“All the elements but spirit have been evoked,” Aphrodite said. She was standing beside Darius. “That’s the element Zoey always personifies, and I feel weird calling it in her place.”

“Call it,” Darius said. He glanced up from me and looked around the circle at my friends. “Concentrate the power of your element on Zoey. Think about filling her with strength and warmth and life.”

Vaguely I heard Aphrodite evoking spirit, although I didn’t feel the quickening its presence usually gave me. I briefly felt a distant warmth and thought for a second that I also smelled rain and cut grass, but that was gone quickly while the gray framing my vision became thicker and thicker.

“Are you the human Zoey was Imprinted with?” I heard Darius talking to Heath. I listened, but couldn’t manage to care too much about what they were saying.

“Yes,” Heath said.

“Good. Your blood would be even better than Aphrodite’s for her.”

“That’s the first good news I’ve heard in ages,” Aphrodite mumbled, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand.

“Are you willing to allow Zoey to drink from you?”

“Of course!” Heath said. “Just tell me what I need to do.”