P.C. Casr - Betrayed

"Keep to the right," I whispered. Then I shut up because even that little sound echoed around me. I turned to the right and started to walk as quickly as I was able.

Heath had been telling the truth. There were lots of tunnels. They split off over and over again, reminding me of worm holes burrowed into the ground. At first I saw more evidence that homeless people had been down here, too. But after a few right-hand turns, the boxes and scattered trash and blankets stopped. There was nothing but damp and dark. The tunnels had gone from being smooth and round and as civilized as I imagined well-made tunnels could be to absolute crap. The sides of the walls looked like they had been gouged out by very drunk Tolkien dwarfs (again, I am aware that I'm a dork). It was cold, too, but I didn't really feel it.

I kept to the right, hoping that Heath had known what he was talking about. I thought about stopping long enough to concen­trate on his blood so that I could hook into our Imprint again, but the urgency I felt wouldn't let me stop. I. Had. To. Find. Heath.

I smelled them before I heard the hissing and rustling and actu­ally saw them. It was that musty, old, wrong scent I'd noticed every time I'd seen one of them at the wall. I realized it was the smell of death, and then wondered how I didn't recognize it earlier.

Then the darkness that I'd become so accustomed to gave way to a faint, flickering light. I stopped to focus myself. You can do this, Z. You've been Chosen by your Goddess. You kicked vampyre ghost ass. This is something you can definitely handle.

I was still trying to "focus" (aka, talk myself into being brave) when Heath screamed. Then there was no more time for focusing or internal pep talks. I ran forward toward Heath's scream. Okay, I probably should explain that vampyres are stronger and faster than humans, and even though I'm still just a fledgling, I'm a very weird fledgling. So when I say I ran—I mean I seriously moved fast—fast and silent. I found them in what must have been seconds, but felt like hours. They were in the little alcove at the end of the crude tunnel. The lantern I'd noticed before was hanging from a rusty nail, throwing their shadows grotesquely against the crudely curved walls. They had formed a half circle around Heath. He was standing on the dirty mattress and his back was pressed to the wall. Somehow he'd gotten the duct tape off his ankles, but his wrists were still securely bound together. He had a new cut on his right arm and the scent of his blood was thick and seductive.

And that was my last goad. Heath belonged to me—despite my confusion about the whole blood issue, and despite my feel­ings for Erik. Heath was mine and no one else was ever, ever go­ing to feed from what was mine.

I burst through the circle of hissing creatures like I was a bowl­ing ball and they were brainless pins, and moved to his side.

"Zo!" He looked deliriously happy for a split second, and then, just like a guy, he tried to push me behind him. "Watch out! Their teeth and claws are really sharp." He added in a whisper, "You re­ally didn't bring the SWAT team?"

It was easy to keep him from pushing me anywhere. I mean, he's cute and all, but he is just a human. I patted his bound hands where he clutched my arm and smiled at him, and with one slash of my thumbnail I cut through the gray tape that held his wrists. His eyes widened as he pulled his hands apart.

I grinned at him. My fear was gone. Now I was just incredibly pissed. "What I brought is better than a SWAT team. Just stay be­hind me and watch."

I pushed Heath to the wall and stepped in front of him as I turned to face the closing circle of ...

Eesh! They were the most disgusting things I'd ever seen. There were probably a dozen or so of them. Their faces were white and gaunt. Their eyes glowed a dirty red. They snarled and hissed at me and I saw that their teeth were pointed and their fingernails! Ugh! Their fingernails were long and yellow and dangerous-looking.

"It’sss just a fledgling," hissed one of them. "The Mark doesn't make her a vampyre. It makesssss her a freak."

I looked at the speaker. "Elliott!"

"I wasss. I'm not the Elliott you knew anymore." Snakelike his head wove back and forth as he spoke. Then his glowing eyes flat­tened and he curled his lip. "I'll ssshow you what I mean ..."

He started to move toward me with a feral, crouching stride. The other creatures stirred, gaining bravery from him.

"Watch out, Zo, they're coming for us," Heath said, trying to step around in front of me.

"No they're not," I said. I closed my eyes for just a second and centered myself, thinking of the power and warmth of flame—the way it can cleanse as well as destroy—and I thought of Shaunee. "Come to me, flame!" My palms started to feel hot. I opened my eyes and raised my hands, which were now glowing with a brilliant yellow flame.

"Stay back, Elliott! You were a pain in the ass when you were alive, and death hasn't changed anything." Elliott cringed back from the light I was producing. I took a step forward, ready to tell Heath to follow me so we could get the hell outta there, but her voice made me freeze.

"You're wrong, Zoey. Death has changed some things." The crowd of creatures parted to let Stevie Rae through.

The flame in my palms sputtered and faded as shock broke my concentration. "Stevie Rae!" I started to take a step toward her, but the truth of her appearance hit me and I felt my body go cold and still. She looked terrible—worse than she had in the dream vision I'd had. It wasn't so much her pale thinness and the awful wrongness of the smell that clung to her that made her appear so changed. It was her expression. In life, Stevie Rae had been the kindest person I'd ever known. But now, whatever she was—dead, undead, bizarrely resurrected—she was different. Her eyes were cruel and flat. Her face devoid of any emotion except one, and that one emotion was hatred.

"Stevie Rae, what happened to you?"

"I died." Her voice was only a twisted, malformed shadow of what it had once been. She still had her Okie twang, but the soft sweetness that had filled it was totally gone. She sounded like mean trailer trash.

"Are you a ghost?"

"A ghost?" Her laugh was a sneer. "No, I ain't no damn ghost."

I swallowed and felt a dizzy wash of hope. "So you're alive?"

She curled her lip in a sarcastic sneer that looked so wrong on her face it made me physically sick. "You'd say I'm alive, but I'd say it's not that simple. Then again I'm not as simple as I used to be."

Well, at least she hadn't hissed at me like that Elliott thing had. Stevie Rae is alive. I held tightly to that miracle, swallowed my fear and revulsion, and moving so quickly that she didn't have time to jerk away (or bite me or whatever), I grabbed her and, ig­noring the horrid way she smelled, hugged her hard. "I'm so glad you're not dead!" I whispered to her.

It was like hugging a smelly piece of stone. She didn't jerk away from me. She didn't bite me. She didn't react at all, but the crea­tures surrounding us did. I could hear them hissing and mutter­ing. I let go of her and stepped back.

"Don't touch me again," she said.

"Stevie Rae, is there someplace we can go so we can talk? I need to get Heath home, but I can come back and meet you. Or maybe you could come back to the school with me?"

"You don't understand anything, do you?"

"I understand that something bad has happened to you, but you're still my best friend, so we can figure this out."

"Zoey, you're not going anywhere."

"Fine," I purposefully pretended to misunderstand her threat. "I guess we could talk here, but, well ..." I looked around at the grossly hissing creatures. "It's not very private, and it's also dis­gusting down here."