Burned

“As usual, you have it wrong, Nicole. I’m not go

“How about you choose to take your pussy asses back to the House of Night with the rest of the spineless fucks who call themselves vampyres,” Nicole said.

“You know I ain’t no pussy,” Dallas said, stepping closer to Stevie Rae.

“Neither am I,” rumbled Joh

“Nicole, I never did like you much. I always thought you had you a bad case of head-up-your-ass-itis. Now I’m sure of it,” Kramisha said, moving up to stand closer to Stevie Rae’s other side. “And I do not like the way you talkin’ to our High Priestess.”

“Kramisha, I do not give one single shit for what you like or don’t like. And she ain’t my High Priestess!” Nicole shouted, spraying white spittle from her lips.

“Seriously gross,” Venus said. “You might want to rethink this whole evil-fledgling thing. It’s making you ugly, in more ways than one.”

“Power is never ugly, and I have power,” Nicole said.

Stevie Rae didn’t have to look up to tell that the Darkness seeping from the ceiling of the kitchen was getting thicker.

“Okay, that’s enough. Y’all clearly can’t be nice, so this needs to be done. Here’s your choice—and each of you need to make it for yourself.” Stevie Rae looked behind Nicole as she spoke, meeting each set of glowing scarlet eyes, hoping beyond hope that she might get through to at least one of them. “You can embrace Light. If you do, that means you choose goodness and the way of the Goddess, and you can stay here with us. We’ll be starting back to school at the House of Night Monday, but we’ll be livin’ here in our tu

“You can’t make us do that!” Kurtis said from behind Nicole.

“I can,” Stevie Rae lifted her hands, squeezing them into glowing fists. “And it won’t be just me. Lenobia is tellin’ the High Council ’bout y’all. You’ll be officially banished from every House of Night in the world.”

“Hey, Nicole, like Venus said before, you be lookin’ kinda rough. How you feelin’?” Kramisha suddenly said. Then she raised her voice, talking to the kids over Nicole’s shoulder. “How many a you been coughin’ and feelin’ like crap? Ain’t no vampyre been ’round y’all for a while now, right?”

“Ohmygood ness, I don’t know how I could’ve forgotten ’bout that,” Stevie Rae said to Kramisha, then she turned her attention back to the kids in the kitchen, speaking right past Nicole. “So, how many of you wa

“Looks like bein’ a red fledgling is really just another kind of fledgling,” Dallas said.

“Yeah, you might die if you’re around vamps,” Joh

“But you for sure will die if you not around them,” Kramisha said, with more than a hint of smugness in her tone. “But you know ’bout that ’cause y’all already died once. Wa

“So y’all need to choose,” Stevie Rae said, still holding up her glowing fists.

“We sure as hell ain’t choosing you for our High Priestess!” Nicole spat the words at her. “And neither would any of you if you knew the truth about her.” With a Cheshire cat smile, she spoke the words Stevie Rae had feared most anyone hearing. “I’ll bet she didn’t tell you she saved a Raven Mocker, did she?”

“You’re a liar,” Stevie Rae said, meeting Nicole’s red gaze steadily.

“How did you know there’s a Raven Mocker in Tulsa?” Dallas said.

Nicole snorted. “He was here. Your precious High Priestess’s scent was all over him because she saved his life. He’s how we trapped her on the roof. She went up there to save him again.”

“That’s bullshit!” Dallas shouted. He pressed his palm against the cement wall. Stevie Rae felt her hair lift in a sudden rush of static electricity.

“Wow, you really have them fooled.” Nicole said mockingly.

“That’s it. I’m done with this,” Stevie Rae said. “Make your choice. Now. Light or Darkness, which will it be?”

“We already made our choice.” Nicole’s hand went up under her baggy shirt and came out with a snub-nosed gun, which she aimed at the middle of Stevie Rae’s head.

Stevie Rae felt one instant of terror, and then she heard cocking sounds and her stu

That pissed off Stevie Rae, and everything kicked into fast-forward.

“Protect them, earth!” Stevie Rae cried. Spreading wide her arms and releasing her fists, she imagined the power of earth, chrysalis-like, enclosing them. The air around her glowed a soft, mossy green. And as the barrier manifested, Stevie Rae saw the oily Darkness that was clinging to the ceiling shiver and then dissipate completely.

Dallas yelled, “Ah, hells no. You’re not pointing that thing at me!” Closing his eyes and concentrating, Dallas pressed both of his hands against the side of the tu

The gunshots were deafeningly loud. The sound echoed painfully over and over until Stevie Rae lost count of how many real shots there were and how many were just an avalanche of sound, smoke, and sensation.

Stevie Rae didn’t hear the screams of the rogue fledglings as the bullets ricocheted off the earth barrier and slammed into their bodies, but she saw Starr fall and watched the terrible blossom of red that bloomed from the side of her head. Two other red-eyed kids slumped to the ground, too.

Pandemonium broke loose, and the unwounded fledglings in the kitchen pushed and shoved and climbed over each other as they fought to get to the narrow entrance that led up to the main depot building above.

Nicole hadn’t moved. She was holding the empty gun, looking wild-eyed and still pulling the trigger when Stevie Rae yelled, “No! You’ve done enough!” Acting on an instinct totally allied to the earth, Stevie Rae clapped her glowing hands together in front of her. With a tearing sound, a raw, gaping hole opened in the far end of the kitchen, where before there had only been the curving side of the tu

Stevie Rae’s last sight of Nicole was of her screaming at Kurtis and telling him to get his big ass moving.

Then the tu

“Come on,” Stevie Rae said. Not giving herself time to think about what she was walking into, she strode into the kitchen, straight to the broken, bleeding bodies Nicole had left behind. There were five of them. Three, including Starr, had been struck by Nicole’s deflected shots. The other two had been trampled. “They’re all dead.” Stevie Rae thought it was strange that she sounded so calm.