P.C. Cast: Tempted

“Hey, uh, Z, don’t go too far. You have the only light, and I wouldn’t want Sister Mary Angela to be left back here in the dark. She might get scared.”

I shook my head and, smiling, turned around, shining the flashlight toward the entrance and illuminating Damien’s worried face and Sister Mary Angela’s serene one.

“You wouldn’t want the nun to be afraid of the dark?”

Damien shifted guiltily.

Sister Mary Angela rested her hand on his shoulder for a moment. “It is kind of you to think of me, Damien, but I have no fear of the dark.”

I was giving Damien a don’t be such a sissy look when the feeling hit me. The air behind me changed. I knew I wasn’t alone in that tunnel anymore. Fear fingered its way up my spine and I had a sudden urge to run—to get out of there as fast as I could and to never, ever come back.

And I did almost run. Then I surprised myself by getting mad. I’d just faced a fallen immortal—a creature I was connected to on a soul-deep level—and I hadn’t run then.

I wasn’t going to run now.

“Zoey? What is it?” Damien’s voice sounded far away as I whirled around to face the darkness.

Suddenly a flickering light, like the glowing eye of an underground monster, materialized. The light wasn’t big, but it was bright, temporarily causing spots in my field of vision and partially blinding me so that when I looked up the monster appeared to have three heads, with a wild, waving mane, and shoulders that looked mismatched and grotesque.

Then I did what any sensible kid would do. I sucked air and let loose with my very best girl scream, which was instantly and creepily echoed by the three mouths of the single-eyed monster. I could hear Damien shrieking behind me, and I swear Sister Mary Angela even squeaked a startled gasp. I was starting to do exactly what I’d just promised myself I wouldn’t do—run like hell, when one of the heads stopped screaming and stepped forward into the beam of the flashlight.

“Shit, Zoey! What is wrong with you? It’s just the Twins and me. You scared us crapless,” said Aphrodite.

“Aphrodite?” My hand clutched my chest over my heart, trying to keep it from pounding out of my body.

“Of course it’s me,” she said, marching past me in disgust. “Goddess! Get a grip.”

The Twins were still standing in the tunnel. Erin was holding a thick pillar candle so tightly her knuckles were white. Shaunee was standing next to her, so close their shoulders were smashed together. They looked frozen and big-eyed.

“Uh, hi,” I said. “I didn’t know you guys were down here.”

Shaunee thawed first. “Ya think?” She wiped a shaking hand delicately across her forehead and turned to Erin. “Twin, did she scare me white?”

Erin blinked at her BFF. “I don’t think that’s possible.” She squinted at Shaunee. “But no, she didn’t. You’re still a gorgeous cappuccino.” Erin’s hand that wasn’t holding the candle flew up to her thick, golden hair and patted through it frantically. “Did she make my hair fall out or turn unattractively and prematurely gray?”

I frowned at the Twins. “Erin, your hair is not falling out or turning gray, and Shaunee, you cannot be scared white. Jeesh, you guys scared me first,” I said.

“Look, next time you need to chase off Neferet and Kalona, just scream like that,” Erin said.

“Yeah, it makes you sound like you lost every bit of your damn mind,” Shaunee said as they swept past me.

I followed them out into the root cellar where Damien was fanning himself and looking gayer than usual, and Sister Mary Angela had just finished crossing herself. I set the flashlight butt end down on a table crowded with stuff in glass jars that looked eerily like floating fetuses in the murky light.

“So, really, what were you guys doing down here?” I said.

“That Dallas kid told us this is how they got here from the depot,” Shaunee said.

“He said it was cool down here and that Stevie Rae had made it,” Erin said.

“So we thought we’d come down here and see for ourselves,” Shaunee said.

“And why are you down here with the Twins?” I asked Aphrodite.

“The Dynamic Duo needed protecting. Naturally they turned to me.”

“How did you guys suddenly appear like that, anyway?” Damien asked before Twin bickering could start.

“Easy-peasy.” Erin walked quickly back down the tunnel, still carrying her candle. She turned to face us after she’d gotten just a few feet farther in than I’d been. “The tunnel makes a sharp left here.” She stepped to the side and her light disappeared, then she stepped back and reappeared. “That’s why we didn’t see each other till the last second.”

“It really is amazing that Stevie Rae somehow did this,” Damien said. I noticed he didn’t move any closer to the tunnel, but stayed by the flashlight.

Sister Mary Angela approached the entrance. She touched the side of the newly hollowed out hole with reverence and said, “Stevie Rae did this, but she did it with divine intervention.”

“By ‘divine intervention,’ are you talkin’ ’bout more of your the-Virgin-Mary-is-just-another-form-of-Nyx stuff?” Stevie Rae’s twang coming from the other side of the root cellar made us all jump.

“Yes, child. That is exactly what I mean.”

“I don’t wanna off end you, but that’s just about the weirdest thing I’ve ever heard,” Stevie Rae said. She walked over to us, and I thought she looked pale. As she got closer to me I smelled something strange, but her grin made her face change to her cute, familiar self. “Z, did that big ol’ girl scream I heard come from you?”

“Uh, yeah.” I couldn’t help grinning back at her. “I was inside the tunnel and I didn’t expect to run into the Twins and Aphrodite.”

“Well, that makes sense. Aphrodite is kinda booger monstery,” Stevie Rae said.

I laughed, and then, grabbing the opportunity to change the subject, I said, “Uh, speaking of monsters, did you find any Raven Mockers left up there?”

Stevie Rae’s eyes shifted from mine.

“It’s all safe. Nothin’ for you to worry about,” she said quickly.

“I’m so glad,” Sister Mary Angela was saying. “Those creatures were such an abomination—mixing man and beast.” She shivered. “I’m relieved we are rid of them.”

“But it wasn’t their fault,” Stevie Rae said abruptly.

“Pardon me?” The nun looked more than a little confused at Stevie Rae’s defensive tone.

“They didn’t ask to be born like they were—all mixed up because of rape and evil. They really were victims.”

“I don’t feel sorry for them,” I said, wondering why Stevie Rae sounded like she was standing up for the nasty Raven Mockers.

Damien shivered. “Do we have to talk about them?”

“Nope, we sure don’t,” Stevie Rae said quickly.

“Good, and anyway, the reason I brought Zoey down here was to show her the tunnel you made, Stevie Rae. I have to tell you—I think it’s astonishing.”

“Thanks, Damien! It was seriously cool when I figured out I could actually do it.” Stevie Rae took a few steps past me and into the mouth of the tunnel, where she was instantly surrounded by the total darkness that stretched behind her like the insides of a huge ebony snake. She raised her arms so that her palms pressed against the dirt walls of the tunnel. Suddenly she reminded me of a scene from Samson and Delilah, an old movie I’d watched with Damien a month or so ago. The image that flashed through my memory was when Delilah had led the blind Samson to stand between massive pillars that held up the stadium filled with awful people taunting him. He’d gotten his magical strength back and ended up pushing the pillars apart and destroying himself and…