Hunted

He didn’t say it like a question, so I decided my best bet was not to answer him. Instead I asked, “Kalona, what do you want?”

“You, of course, my A-ya.”

I shook my head and impatiently brushed aside his answer. “No, I don’t mean that. I mean, why are you here to begin with? You’re not mortal. You…Well…” I paused, not sure how far I could push this subject safely, then finally decided I might as well go for it; he’d already said we were going to be enemies. “You fell, right? From, I don’t know, someplace that must be what many mortals would call heaven.” I paused again, waiting for some kind of response from him.

Kalona nodded slightly. “I did.”

“On purpose?”

He looked vaguely amused. “Yes, it was my choice that brought me here.”

“Well, why did you do it? What do you want?”

Another change came over his features. He blazed with a brilliance that could only be immortal. Kalona stood, threw his arms wide as his wings unfurled, spreading around him with a magnificence that made it hard for me to look at him and impossible for me to look away.

“Everything!” he cried in the voice of a god. “I want everything!”

And then he was there before me, a shining angel—not fallen at all, just miraculously here, within reach. Mortal enough to touch, but too beautiful to be anything but a god.

“Are you sure you couldn’t love me?” He pulled me into his arms. His wings swept down and enfolded me in their soft darkness, a blanket that was in direct contradiction to the wonderful, painful chill of his body that I was coming to know so well. He bent, and slowly, as if giving me time to pull away, brought his mouth down to mine.

When our lips met, the kiss burned with colbea ^r Ed heat through my body. I felt myself fall. His body, his soul, was all that I knew. I wanted to press myself into him, have him lose himself in me. The question wasn’t, could I love him, but how could I not love him? An eternity of embracing him—possessing him—loving him—couldn’t possibly be enough.

An eternity of embracing him…

The thought speared through me. A-ya had been created to love him and embrace him for eternity.

Oh, Goddess! my mind cried, am I really A-ya?

No. I couldn’t be. I wouldn’t let myself be!

I shoved against him. Our embrace had been such a complete and passionate surrender that my sudden rejection caught him by surprise. He staggered back, letting me slip through the double embrace of his arms and wings.

“No!” I was shaking my head back and forth like a crazy woman. “I am not her! I am Zoey Redbird, and if I love someone, it’s because he’s worth loving, and not because I’m a piece of dirt that’s been brought to life.”

His amber eyes narrowed as anger flashed across his face. He started toward me.

“No!” I screamed.

I was jolted awake to the sounds of Nala hissing like crazy and someone sitting on the side of my bed, trying to defend himself against my flailing arms.

“Zoey! It’s okay. Wake up! Ow! Shit!” the guy said as my fist co

“Get away from me!” I cried.

He trapped both of my wrists in one of his hands. “Get a grip!” Then he reached out and flipped on my bedside light.

I blinked up at the guy who was sitting on my bed rubbing his cheek.

“Stark, what the hell are you doing in my room?”

CHAPTER 24

“I was walking by in the hall out there and I heard your cat yowling and hissing, and then you started yelling. I thought you were in trouble.” Stark glanced over at my heavily draped window. “Thought maybe a Raven Mocker had gotten in here. Cats really hate them, you know. Anyway, that’s why I came busting in.”

“You just happened to be walking by my room at—” I glanced at my clock. “At noon?”

He shrugged, and his lips tilted up in that cocky smile of his that I liked so much. “Well, I guess it was more pla

“You can let go of me now,” I said.

Reluctantly, his hold on my wrists relaxed, but he didn’t actually let go of me. I had to pull my hands from his.

“That must have been one awful nightmare,” he said.

“Yeah, it was.” I scooted back so that I leaned against the headboard of my bed. Nala had settled down and was curled against my side.

“So, what was it about?”

I ignored his question and said, “What are you doing here?”

“I told you. I heard noise from in here and—”

“No, I mean why were you outside my door to begin with? And, it’s noon. All the red fledglings I know don’t do well in the sunlight and are seriously sound asleep right now.”

“Yeah, I could sleep, but whatever. And there’s no sunlight out there. Everything’s all gray and icy.”

“Jeesh, the ice storm’s still going on?”

“Yeah, another front is moving through today. It would suck to be a human trying to deal with this mess without all the generators and stuff this school has.”

What he said made me wonder whether the nuns had a generator at their abbey. I really needed to talk to Sister Mary Angela. Talk to her? Hell, I needed to go there. I missed my grandma, and I was seriously sick of feeling like I was in danger all the time. Unbelievably tired, I sighed. How long had I slept? I counted in my head about five hours. Ugh. And a bunch of that time had been spent in a weird dream place with Kalona, which couldn’t be all that restful.

“Hey, you look tired,” Stark said.

“You haven’t answered my question. Why did you come here? I mean really.”

He stared at me and blew out a long breath. Then he said, “I needed to see you.”

“Why?”

His brown eyes met mine. He looked so much like the pre-dead undead Stark that it was disconcerting. At that moment his eyes were normal, and there was no scary darkness pulsing from the shadows around him. Only the red outline of his tattoo reminded me that he was different from the kid who had told me secrets and asked for my help in the field house just a few nights ago.

“They’ll make you hate me,” he blurted.

“Who’s they? And no one is going to make me feel anything.” As soon as I said it, a picture of me in Kalona’s arms flashed through my mind, but I purposely shoved the all-too-graphic image away.

“They—Everyone,” he said. “They’ll tell you I’m a monster, and you’ll believe them.”

I kept looking at him, silently and steadily. He was the first to look away.

“I gotta think that maybe you doing stuff like biting Becca and hanging around Kalona with your I-can’t-miss-anything-I-aim-at bow strapped to your back and ready to shoot might have a little something to do with making them think you’re not such a nice guy anymore,” I said.

“Do you always say exactly what you’re thinking?”

“Well, no, but I try to be honest. Look, I’m really tired, and I just had an awful dream. The stuff that’s happening around here is not good. I&rsquoT CF tyou;m confused about a bunch of things. And you came to me. I didn’t call you up and say, ‘Hey, Stark, why don’t you sneak into my room?’ So I’m really not in the mood to play games.”

“I didn’t sneak,” he said.

“I don’t think that part is what’s really important,” I said.

“I came here because you make me feel,” he blurted all in one big breath.

“I make you feel what?”

“Just feel.” He rubbed a hand across his brow like he might have a headache. “Since I died and then came back, it’s like part of me stayed dead. I haven’t been able to feel anything. Or at least not anything good.” He was talking in short, clipped sentences, as if what he was saying was hard for him to get out. “Okay, yeah, I have urges. Especially when I haven’t had any blood recently. But that’s not really feeling. It’s just a reaction. You know—eat, sleep, live, die. It’s automatic.” He grimaced and looked away from me. “It’s automatic for me to take what I want. Like from that girl.”