P.C. Cast - Awakened

Erik nodded and squeezed her hand briefly. “Thanks back at you. I know you don’t like me much, what with the stuff that went down between Zoey and me, but I really am Damien’s friend. Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help.” Erik paused, glancing up and down the hallway, as if to be sure they were alone, and then he took a step closer to Stevie Rae and lowered his voice. “Neferet had something to do with this, didn’t she?”

Stevie Rae’s eyes widened in surprise. “What makes you say that?”

“I know she’s not what she pretends to be. I’ve seen her be her real self, and it’s not pretty.”

“Yeah, well, you’re right. Neferet’s real self isn’t pretty. But just like me you saw that she was right in front of us when Jack died.”

“Still, you think she’s behind this.”

It wasn’t a question, but Stevie Rae nodded a silent yes answer.

“I knew it. This House of Night sucks. I was right to say yes to the L.A. House of Night.”

Stevie Rae shook her head. “So that’s it? That’s what you do when you know somethin’ evil is happening? You run away.”

“What can one vampyre do against Neferet? The High Council reinstated her; they’re on her side.”

“ One vampyre can’t do much. A whole bunch of us joining together can.”

“A few kids and a vamp here and there? Against a powerful High Priestess and the High Council? That’s insanity.”

“No, what’s insanity is steppin’ aside and lettin’ the bad guys win.”

“Hey, I have a life waiting for me—a good one, with a kick-ass acting career, fame, fortune, all that stuff. How can you blame me for not wanting to get mixed up in the Neferet mess?”

“You know what, Erik? All I’m gonna say to you is this: evil wins when good folks do nothing,” Stevie Rae said.

“Well, I’m technically doing something. I’m leaving. Hey, did you ever think about this—what if all the good folks leave and evil gets bored playing all by itself and goes home, too?”

“I used to think you were the coolest guy I’d ever met,” she said sadly.

Erik’s blue eyes glinted with humor and he beamed his one-hundred-watt smile at her. “And now you know I am?”

“Nope. Now I know you’re a weak, selfish boy who’s gotten almost everything he ever wanted just ’cause of his looks. And that’s not cool at all.” She shook her head at his stunned look and began walking away. Over her shoulder she called back, “Maybe someday you’ll find somethin’ you care about enough to stand up for.”

“Yeah, and maybe someday you and Zoey will figure out it’s not really your job to save the world!” he shouted after her.

Stevie Rae didn’t so much as glance back at him. Erik was a tool. The Tulsa House of Night would be better without his weak butt dragging them down. The going was going to get really tough, and that meant the tough needed to get going—and the sissies needed to get gone. Just like John Wayne, it was time to rally the troops.

“And, hell no, it’s not weird that my troops include a Raven Mocker,” Stevie Rae muttered to herself as she hurried out to the parking lot and Z’s Bug. “I’m not really gonna rally him. I’m just gonna get info from him. Again.” Purposefully, she shut her mind to what had happened between her and Rephaim last time she’d “just needed information from him.”

“Hey, Stevie Rae, you and me gotta—”

Not pausing in her rush to the car, Stevie Rae held up a hand and cut Kramisha off. “Not now. I don’t have time.”

“I’m just sayin’ that—”

“No!” Stevie Rae shouted her frustration at Kramisha, who stopped and stared at her. “Whatever it is you want to be sayin’ to me, it can keep. I don’t like soundin’ mean to you, but I have things I have to do and exactly two hours and five minutes until the sun comes up to do them in.” Then she left Kramisha standing in her dust as she jogged the final few feet to the Bug, started it, put it into gear, and practically peeled out of the student parking lot.

It took her exactly seven minutes to get to the Gilcrease grounds. She didn’t drive the car up there. The ice storm had been cleaned up and the electric gate was working again, so everything was shut up tightly. Stevie Rae pulled the Bug off the side of the road behind a big tree. Automatically cloaking herself with the power she filtered from the earth, she went directly to the ramshackle mansion.

The door was no problem. No one had bothered to relock it yet. Actually, as she made her way through the old house and up to the rooftop, she detected very little change from the last time she’d been there.

“Rephaim?” she called his name. Her voice sounded eerie and too loud in the cold, empty night.

The door to the closet where he’d made his nest was open, but he wasn’t crouched within.

She went out onto the rooftop balcony. That, too, was empty. The entire place was deserted. But she’d known he wasn’t here since she’d stepped onto the museum grounds. Had Rephaim been here she would have felt him, just like she’d felt him earlier when he’d been at the House of Night, watching her. Their Imprint connected them—as long as it was there, unbroken, it would tie them together.

“Rephaim, where are you now?” she asked the silent sky. And then Stevie Rae’s thoughts slowed and rearranged themselves, and she had the answer; she’d had it all along. All she’d had to do was to get her pride and her hurt and her anger out of the way and the answer was there, waiting. Their Imprint connected them—as long as it was there, unbroken, it would tie them together. She didn’t have to find him. Rephaim would find her.

Stevie Rae sat down in the middle of the roof and faced north. She drew a long, deep breath and let it out. With her next breath she concentrated on drawing in all of the scents of the earth surrounding her. She could smell the cold dampness of the winter-bare boughs, the crispness of the frozen ground, the richness of the Oklahoma sandstone that littered the grounds. Drawing the earth’s strength with her breath, Stevie Rae said, “Find Rephaim. Tell him to come to me. Tell him I need him.” Then she released the earth power with her exhalation. Had her eyes been open, Stevie Rae would have seen the green glow that hovered around her. She would have also seen that as it rushed off into the night to do her bidding, it was shadowed by a scarlet glow.

He’d been circling the Mayo building, dreading landing and facing Kalona and Neferet, when he felt Stevie Rae’s call. He knew it was her instantly. He recognized the feel of the earth as the power lifted from the ground below and wrapped itself around the air currents to find him.

She calls you …

It was all the prompting Rephaim needed. No matter how angry she was at him. No matter how much she hated him—she was calling him. And if she called, he would answer. In his heart he knew, no matter what, he would always try to answer.

He remembered Stevie Rae’s last words to him.… When you decide your heart matters as much to you as it does to me, come find me again. It should be easy. Just follow your heart …

Rephaim shut off the part of his mind that told him he couldn’t be with her—couldn’t care about her. They’d been apart more than a week. He’d felt every day of that week as if it had been an eon in itself. How had he ever thought he could stay completely away from her? His very blood cried to be with her. Even facing her anger was better than nothing. And he needed to see her. Needed to find a way to warn her about Neferet. And about Father, too.