P.C. Cast - Burned

Except the red fledglings.

Panic fluttered through her stomach. What the heck was she gonna do if Nicole or one of the other kids told her fledglings about Rephaim? Stevie Rae could imagine the scene. Nicole would be hateful and crude. Her kids would be totally shocked and freaked. They wouldn’t believe she could have—

With a bolt of realization that almost had her gasping out loud, Stevie Rae knew the answer to her problem. Her fledglings wouldn’t believe she’d Imprinted with a Raven Mocker. Ever. She would simply deny it. There wasn’t any proof. Yeah, her blood might smell weird, but she’d already explained that. Darkness had fed from her—that was bound to make her smell weird. Kramisha believed it, so did Lenobia. The rest of the kids would, too. It would be her word, the word of a High Priestess, against a bunch of kids who had gone bad and had tried to kill her.

And what if some of them actually decided to choose good tonight and stayed here with the rest of them?

Then they’ll have to keep their mouths shut, or they don’t stay, was the grim thought that haunted Stevie Rae as she parked in the depot lot and gathered her fledglings around her.

“Okay, we’re goin’ in. Don’t underestimate them,” Stevie Rae said. Without any discussion, Dallas moved to her right, and Johnny B took her left side. The rest of the kids followed closely behind as they pushed aside the deceptively secure-looking grate that gave them easy access to the basement of the abandoned Tulsa depot.

It looked much like it had when they’d been living down there. There was maybe a little more trash, but basically it was a dark, cold basement. They moved to the rear corner entrance, where the tunnels dropped below them into an even deeper darkness.

“Can you see?” Dallas asked her.

“Of course, but I’ll light the wall torches as soon as I find a match or whatever, so y’all can see, too.”

“I got a lighter,” Kramisha said, digging in her giant bag.

“Kramisha, do not tell me you’re smoking,” Stevie Rae said, taking the lighter from her.

“No, I ain’t smokin’. That’s just stupid. But I do believe in bein’ prepared. And a lighter come in handy sometimes—like now.”

Stevie Rae started to lower herself down the metal ladder, but Dallas’s hand on her arm stopped her. “No, I’m goin’ first. They don’t want to kill me .”

“Well, that you know of,” Stevie Rae countered with, but she let him drop down the ladder before she did, Johnny B following closely behind her. “Hang on.” She made both of them wait by the foot of the ladder while she moved with utter confidence in the complete blackness to the first of the old-timey kerosene lanterns she’d helped to hang from old railroad nails on the curved wall of the tunnel. She lit the lantern and turned to smile at her boys, “There, that’s better, huh?”

“Good job, girl.” Dallas grinned at her. Then he hesitated and cocked his head to the side. “Do you hear that?”

Stevie Rae looked at Johnny B, who shook his head while he helped Kramisha down the ladder.

“Hear what, Dallas?” Stevie Rae asked him.

Dallas pressed his hand against the rough concrete wall of the tunnel. “ That! ” he sounded mesmerized.

“Dallas, you ain’t makin’ no sense,” Kramisha told him.

He looked over his shoulder at them. “I’m not sure, but I think I can hear the electrical lines humming.”

“That’s weird,” Kramisha said.

“Well, you have always been super good with electricity and all that kind of guy stuff,” Stevie Rae said.

“Yeah, but it’s never been like this before. Seriously, I can hear the electricity humming through the cables I connected down here.”

“Well, maybe it’s like an affinity for you, and maybe you didn’t realize it before ’cause you were down here all the time, and it just seemed normal,” Stevie Rae said.

“But electricity ain’t from the Goddess. How can it be an affinity gift?” Kramisha said, sending Dallas suspicious looks.

“Why can’t it be from Nyx?” Stevie Rae said. “Truthfully, I’ve known weirder things before than a fledging getting an affinity for electricity. Uh, like a white bull personifying Darkness for one.”

“You got a point there,” Kramisha said.

“So I could actually have an affinity?” Dallas looked dazed.

“ ’Course you could, boy,” Stevie Rae told him.

“If you do, then make it come in handy,” Johnny B said, helping Shannoncompton and Venus down the ladder.

“Handy? Like how?” Dallas asked.

“Well, can you tell from the hummin’ or whatever if those nasty red fledglings have been using electricity down here lately?” Kramisha said.

“I’ll see.” Dallas turned back to the wall, pressed his hands against the concrete, and squeezed his eyes shut. Within just a few heartbeats his eyes popped open, and he gave a surprised gasp, then his gaze went straight to Stevie Rae. “Yeah, the fledglings have been using the electricity. Actually they are right now. They’re in the kitchen.”

“Then that’s where we’re going,” Stevie Rae said.

“Okay, this really pisses me off.” Stevie Rae kicked at another empty liter bottle of Dr Pepper that littered the tunnel.

“They’s nasty and trifling.” Kramisha agreed.

“Ohmygod. If they get me dirty, I’m gonna be so pissed,” said Venus.

“Get you dirty? Girl, did you see what they done to my room?” Kramisha snarled.

“I really think we should focus,” Dallas said. He kept running a hand along the concrete wall. The closer to the kitchen area they got, the more restless he became.

“Dallas is right,” Stevie Rae said. “First we gotta kick them outta here, and then we can worry about gettin’ our stuff back into shape.”

“Pier One and Pottery Barn still have Aphrodite’s gold card on file,” Kramisha told Venus.

Venus looked majorly relieved. “Well, that’ll fix this mess.”

“Venus, you need a lot more than a gold card to fix the mess you’ve turned into.” Sarcasm shot out of the shadows of the tunnel in front of them. “Look at you—you’re all tame and boring. And I used to think you had seriously cool potential.”

Venus, along with Stevie Rae and the rest of her fledglings, came to a halt. “I’m tame and boring?” Venus’s laugh was as sarcastic as Nicole’s voice. “So your idea of seriously cool must be ripping out people’s throats. Please. That can’t even be attractive.”

“Hey, don’t knock it till you’ve tried it,” Nicole said, tucking aside the blanket that had been resting across the entryway to the kitchen.

She was framed in the doorway by lanternlight from within. She looked thinner—harder than Stevie Rae remembered her looking. Starr and Kurtis stood a little way behind her, and behind them at least a dozen red-eyed fledglings gathered, glaring at them maliciously.

Stevie Rae took one step forward. Nicole’s mean, red-tinged eyes darted from Venus to her.

“Oh, did you come back to play some more?” Nicole said.

“I’m not playin’ with you, Nicole. And you’re done ‘playing’ ”—she air quoted the word—“with people around here.”

“You can’t tell us what to do!” the words exploded from Nicole. Behind her, Starr and Kurtis bared their teeth and made noises that were more snarls than laughter. The fledglings in the kitchen stirred restlessly.

It was then that Stevie Rae saw it. It hung near the ceiling over the rogue fledglings like a wavering sea of blackness that seemed to pool and write like a ghost made of nothing but darkness.