Hunted

“What about these?” Aphrodite held up the butterfly Band-Aid packages. “I thought that’s why you needed them.”

“Those bandages are only temporary. She needs real stitches.”

“So stitch me up.” I tried to sound as brave as I could, even though the thought of Darius sewing up my flesh made me want to puke or cry, or both.

“There are no sutures in the kit,” Darius said.

“Can’t we get some?” Erik asked. I noticed as he spoke, he was looking everywhere but at me. “I could drive Heath’s truck to the St. John’s pharmacy and Stevie Rae could do her mind control thing on a doc there. We’d bring back whatever you need, and then you could stitch her up.”

“Yeah, we can do that. I can even grab a doctor if you want and bring him down here, then wipe his memory clean when we return him,” Stevie Rae said.

“Okay, Stevie Rae, that’s a nice offer,” I said, more than a little disturbed that she was talking about what amounted to kidnapping and brainwashing. “But I really don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“It’s not that simple to solve the problem anyway,” Darius said.

“So explain it so it is that simple,” Heath said, propping himself up on his elbows and looking totally like crap even though he smiled sweetly at me.

“Zoey needs more than a doctor’s care. Zoey needs to be around adult vampyres so that the damage to her body doesn’t become fatal.”

“Hang on. I thought you said I was done almost dying,” I said.

“You are done almost dying from this particular wound, but if you don’t get within a coven of vampyres, and I mean more than one or two or three of us, the damage caused to your body will use up your reserves of strength and you will begin rejecting the Change.” Darius paused, letting what he was saying sink in with all of us. “You’ll die from that. You may come back to us, like Stevie Rae and the rest of the red fledglings did, but you may not.”

“Or you may come back like that stupid Stark kid and be a crazed asshole who starts attacking us,” Aphrodite said.

“So you really don’t have any choice,” Darius said. “We have to get you back to the House of Night.”

“Well, hell,” I said.

CHAPTER 14

“But she can’t go back! Kalona’s there,” Erin said.

“Not to mention the Raven Mockers,” Shaunee said.

“One of them did this to her,” Erik said. “Right, Heath?”

“Yeah, the thing was disgusting,” Heath said. He was chugging brown pop from a can Jack had handed him while he stuffed nacho cheese Doritos in his face. I was glad to see he looked lots better, almost completely like himself, which proves Doritos and brown pop really are health foods.

“Then they’ll just attack her again, so taking her there won’t really save Zoey. It’ll just enable them to finish killing her,” Erik said.

“Well, maybe not,” I admitted reluctantly. “The Raven Mocker didn’t attack me, or at least, not on purpose. It was going to attack Heath and I kinda got in the way.” I gave Heath an apologetic smile. “Actually, it freaked when it hurt me.”

“Because it said its dad had been looking for you,” Heath added. “I remember. He did freak right after he cut you. Zoey, babe, I’m sorry I almost got you killed.”

“Didn’t I fucking tell you!” Aphrodite practically snarled at Heath. “What happened was your fault! You shouldn’t have been here!”

“Whoa, Aphrodite, hang on,” I said. I started to put my hands up to make simmer-down motions to her, but Darius shot me a “hold still” look. Plus, it really did hurt whenever I moved too much. So I settled for words with no hand motions, which felt kinda weird. “You kept blaming Heath before. What gives?”

She looked at me and I swear she fidgeted. Aphrodite actually fidgeted.

I frowned at her. “What’s the deal, Aphrodite?”

When she didn’t say anything, Stevie Rae sighed and said, “’Cause she’s know-it-all Vision Girl, and this time she was in the dark.”

“Do not tap into my mind like that!” Aphrodite shouted at Stevie Rae.

“Then answer Z’s question. She feels too crappy to pull it out of you,” Stevie Rae said.

Aphrodite turned her back to Stevie Rae. “It’s just that I expected to get a heads-up if you were going to die, that’s all.”

“Huh?” I said, speaking for all of us who were staring at her with question-mark faces.

She rolled her eyes. “Hello! I’ve had two death visions of you, so it’s only logical to assume if you were going to be all grotesquely close to death, I’d know a little something about it, that’s all. But Nyx didn’t clue me in with any kind of a vision, so I figured Football Joe over there messed things up ’cause the goddess didn’t expect him to be poking around where he’s not supposed to be.” She frowned at Heath and shook her head in disgust. “I mean, come on! Are you special needs, special services or what? Weren’t you almost killed here once before?”

“Yeah, but Zo saved me, so I figured she’d make like a superhero again if things got bad, and we’d be okay,” Heath said. Then his cute, goofy expression changed and he looked like someone had just taken away his birthday. “But I didn’t think I’d be the cause of getting Zoey almost killed.”

“And they say football players aren’t brilliant. Wherever did they come up with that?” Aphrodite said sarcastically.

“All right, that’s enough,” I said. “Heath, you didn’t almost get me killed. The stupid Raven Mocker almost got me killed. Do you think I would have gone willingly with it? Hell no!”

“But I—” he began.

I cut him off. “Heath, if you hadn’t been there I would have eventually stuck my head aboveground. The gross birdman said they were looking for me, which means sooner or later they would have found me and I would have had to fight them. Period, the end. And, Aphrodite, just because you get visions doesn’t mean you know everything. Sometimes stuff happens even you can’t foresee. Get used to it and stop being so darn mean. Plus, this isn’t just about Raven Mockers. Before it attacked, it looked like Neferet,” I finished in a rush.

“What?” Damien said. “How could it have looked like Neferet?”

“I don’t have a clue, but I promise when I looked up she was there. She smiled a terrible, creepy smile at me. I blinked, and then she was gone and there was a Raven Mocker in her place. That’s all I know.” I knew there was something else I needed to remember about what had happened, but my mind was feeling fuzzy with pain and I slumped down, totally exhausted.

“We have to get her back to the House of Night,” Darius said.

“And take her right to Neferet? That doesn’t sound smart,” Heath said.

“Nevertheless, she has to go there.”

I looked up at Darius. “Isn’t there some other way?”

“Not if you want to live,” he said.

“Then Zoey has to go back to school,” Damien said.

“Oh, great! So the Raven Mockers and Neferet have her exactly where they want her!” Aphrodite yelled.

I looked at Aphrodite and saw beyond the hateful demeanor she wore like armor to the sincere worry she had for me. Basically, she was scared. I couldn’t really blame her. I was scared, too—for myself, for my friends. Hell, I was scared for the whole darn world.

“They want me there, but they want me alive,” I said solemnly. “That means before they do anything else, they’ll make sure I’m healed.”

“Are you remembering that the House of Night’s healer is Neferet?” Damien said.

“Of course I remember,” I said irritably. “I’m just hoping Kalona wants me alive worse than she wants me dead.”

“But what if she does something terrible to you after you’re healed?” Aphrodite said.

“Then you guys will have to come get me out of there,” I said.

“Uh, Zoey,” Damien said. “You sound like you think you’re going back there alone. You’re not.”

“Yeah, no way,” Erin said.

“We’re not letting you out of our sight,” Shaunee said.