P.C. Cast - Burned

The Darkness above them thickened.

“He was part of what almost killed you in the circle!”

“He was what saved me in the circle!” Stevie Rae shouted back at Dallas. “If he hadn’t shown up, that white bull would’ve drained me dry.”

Her words didn’t faze the boy. “You’ve been keeping this thing a secret. You’ve been lyin’ to everybody!”

“Well, heck, Dallas! I didn’t know what else to do!”

“You lied to me, you whore!”

“Don’t you dare talk to me like that!” Stevie Rae slapped him. Hard.

Dallas staggered back half a step. “What the fuck has he done to you?”

“You mean besides savin’ my life twice? Nothin’!” she yelled.

“He’s messed your head up completely!” Dallas yelled. The Darkness above them poured down from the ceiling, like it had suddenly found a weak point in a dam. It slicked around Dallas, covering his head and shoulders, swirling around his waist with a sickening familiarity that reminded Rephaim of razor-edged snakes. But Darkness didn’t cut Dallas. Instead, he seemed oblivious to the glistening blackness that now coated him.

“I’m in charge of my own mind. He hasn’t done anything to me,” Stevie Rae said. Her eyes widened, like she finally noticed the Darkness. She took a step back from the boy, like she didn’t want to be tainted by what was touching him. “Dallas, listen to me. Think. You know me. This isn’t what it seems.”

Rephaim could see the change come over Dallas. It was that withdrawal from him that did it—that coupled with the influence of the Darkness that encased him. Totally incensed, the fledgling screamed, “He’s made you a goddamned whore and a liar! You need some sense knocked into you, girl!” Dallas lifted his hand like he was going to hit Stevie Rae.

Rephaim didn’t hesitate. He leaped, closing the space between him and the boy, knocking him away from Stevie Rae and taking his place in front of her.

“Don’t hurt him!” Stevie Rae was saying as she grabbed Rephaim’s arm and kept him from making another strike against the boy. “He’s just freaked-out. He wouldn’t really hurt me.”

Rephaim let her pull him back. Turning to her, he said, “I think you underestimate the boy.”

“She damn sure does,” Dallas said grimly.

Rephaim didn’t know where the pain came from. He only knew the bright white heat of it. His body convulsed. His back bowed in agony. Dimly, through a graying veil, he could see Dallas, eyes glowing with a scarlet hue that was impossibly bright, holding one of the wires that protruded from the wall.

“Rephaim!” Stevie Rae cried.

She started to reach for him, but then Rephaim saw her pull back. Instead, she ran to Dallas.

“Stop it! Let him go,” she told the boy, pulling on his arm.

His blood red eyes skewered her. “I’m gonna fry him. And then whatever weird control he has over you is gonna be gone. You and me can be together, and I won’t tell anyone shit about what happened here, long as you’re my girl.”

With a detached sense of understanding, Rephaim noted that Darkness was no longer present on the boy’s body. It had soaked into him—it had claimed him. It augmented whatever strength the fledgling wielded.

Rephaim felt sure Dallas was going to kill him.

“Earth, come to me. I need you.”

He heard Stevie Rae’s words through the flickering of his consciousness, like she was candlelight trying to reach him through a gale wind. With a mighty effort, Rephaim focused his vision on her. Their eyes met, and her words came to him, suddenly clear and strong and sure.

“Protect him from Dallas because Rephaim belongs to me.”

She made a motion toward Rephaim, like she was hurling something at him—and she was. A green glow slammed into his body, throwing him backward and breaking whatever it was that Dallas had been channeling into him. Breathing hard, he lay on the ground, crumpled in a heap, as he absorbed what was becoming the familiar, gentle touch of healing earth.

Dallas turned to Stevie Rae.

“You just said that thing belongs to you.”

The fledgling’s voice was like death. Rephaim pressed himself against the ground, opening his shocked body to the earth, willing it to enter him—to heal him enough so that he could reach Stevie Rae.

“Yeah. He does. It’s hard to explain, and I get that you’re pissed. But Rephaim belongs to me.” Her eyes skirted Dallas and met his again. “And I guess I belong to him, weird as that sounds.”

“It doesn’t sound weird. It sounds fucking sick.”

Before Rephaim could get to his feet, Dallas pointed a finger at her. There was a deafening crack, and Stevie Rae was suddenly standing in the middle of a glowing green circle. Her brow was furrowed, and she shook her head slowly back and forth. “You tried to shock me? You really wanted to hurt me, Dallas?”

“You chose that thing over me!” he screamed at her.

“I did what I thought was right!”

“You know what, if that’s what’s right, I don’t want nothin’ to do with it! I want the opposite!”

As soon as Dallas spoke those words, he cried out and, dropping the wire he’d been clutching in his fist, the fledgling fell to his knees and crumpled, facedown.

“Dallas? Are you okay?” Stevie Rae made a hesitant move toward him.

“Stay away from him,” Rephaim rasped as he laboriously gained his feet.

Stevie Rae paused, and then instead of continuing to Dallas, she hurried over to Rephaim, pulling his arm around her shoulders. “Are you okay? You look kinda fried.”

“Fried?” Despite everything, she made him want to laugh. “What does that even mean?”

“This.” Stevie Rae touched one of the feathers on his chest. He was surprised to see that it looked singed. “You’re a little crispy around the edges.”

“You touch it. You probably fuck it, too! Damn, I’m glad it stopped me before we finished doin’ it. I ain’t gonna ever be sloppy seconds to a freak!”

“Dallas, that’s just such a load a’—” Stevie Rae began, but when she looked at Dallas, her words stopped short.

“Yeah, that’s right. I’m no stupid fledgling anymore,” he said.

Brand-new red tattoos in the shape of striking whips framed Dallas’s face. Rephaim thought they looked disturbingly like the tendrils of Darkness that had entrapped Stevie Rae and him within the circle. His eyes glowed an even brighter red, and his body seemed to grow larger, swelling with newly gained power.

“Ohmygood ness, ” Stevie Rae said. “You’ve Changed!”

“In a bunch of different ways!”

“Dallas, you gotta listen to me. Remember Darkness? I saw it grab-bin’ for you. Please try to think. Please don’t let it get you.”

“ It get me ? You can say that when you’re standing beside that thing? Ah, hell no! I’m never gonna listen to your lies again. And I’m gonna make sure no one else does, either!” He sneered the words at her, his voice filled with anger and hate.

As he stood up and began reaching for the wires he’d used before to channel power, Stevie Rae moved. Pulling Rephaim with her, Stevie Rae backed from the kitchen. Stepping outside the entrance, she lifted her hand, took a deep breath, and said, “Earth, close this for me, please.”

“No!” Dallas yelled.

Rephaim got a brief glimpse of him grabbing the wire and pointing at them, and then with a sound like the soughing of wind through autumn boughs, the earth rained down in front of them, closing the tunnel entrance to the kitchen and shielding them from the wrath of Darkness.

“Can you walk okay?” Stevie Rae asked.

“Yes. I’m not hurt badly. Or at least I’m not anymore. Your earth made sure of that,” he said, looking down at her where she stood small, but proud and powerful in the circle of his arm.