“I was doing what I was told to do. The boss said make her bleed; I made her bleed.”
“Neferet? Is she who’s controlling you?” I asked.
His eyes blazed. “No one’s controlling me!”
“Your bloodlust is controlling you,” Darius said. “If you weren’t under its control, you wouldn’t have had to force yourself on that fledgling.”
“Yeah? Ya think so? Well, you’re wrong. I happen to like my bloodlust! I liked doing whatever I want with that girl. It’s time vampyres stopped slinking around. We’re smarter, stronger, better than humans. We should be in charge, not them!”
“That fledgling isn’t a human.” Darius’s voice was like a naked blade, reminding me that he wasn’t just a big brother-type guy; he was a Son of Erebus and one of the most powerful warriors alive.
“I was thirsty and there wasn’t a human handy,” Stark said.
“Zoey, get the girl into the dorm.” Darius didn’t take his eyes off Stark. “She is done serving his convenience.”
I hurried over to Becca and helped her to her feet. She was a little wobbly but able to walk. As we reached Darius, he moved forward with us, always keeping himself between us and Stark. Just as we were passing by him, Stark spoke with an angry intensity that sent a chill down the back of my neck.
“You know, all I have to do is think about killing you and shoot this arrow. Wherever you are, you’re dead.”
“If that is so, then I will be dead,” Darius said matter-of-factly. “And you will be a monster.”
“I don’t mind being a monster!”
“And I don’t mind dying if it is in the service of my High Priestess and, ultimately, my Goddess,” Darius said.
“If you hurt him, I’ll come against you with everything I have,” I told Stark.
Stark looked at me and his lips tilted up in a ghost of that cute, cocky smile he used to have. “You’re a little bit of a monster yourself, aren’t ya, Zoey?”
I didn’t think that nasty comment was worth a response, and obviously neither did Darius. He kept shepherding us by Stark, opening the front door of the dorm and helping Becca inside. But instead of me following her in, I paused. Intuition was telling me that there was something I had to do, and much as I’d like to ignore my intuition, I knew I shouldn’t. “I’ll be right in,” I told Darius. I could see that he was going to argue with me, but I shook my head and said, “Trust me. I just need a second.”
“I’ll be inside the door,” Darius said, threw Stark a hard look, and then stepped into the dorm.
I faced Stark. I knew I was taking a chance with what I was going to say to him, but I kept remembering Kramisha’s poem and the line that said, “Humanity saves her / Will she save me?” I at least had to try.
“Jack’s taking care of Duchess,” I said without any preamble.
I saw that flash of pain in his eyes again, but his voice wasn’t touched by it. “So?”
“So I’m just telling you that your dog’s fine. She’s had a pretty hard time, but she’s okay.”
“I’m not who I used to be, so she’s not my dog anymore.” This time I heard a quaver in his voice, which gave me enough hope that I took a step toward him.
“Hey, the great thing about dogs is that they give unconditional love. Duch doesn’t care who you are right now. She’ll still love you.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.
“Yeah, I do. I’ve spent some time with your dog. She’s got a really big heart.”
“I wasn’t talking about her. I was talking about me.”
“Well, I’ve spent some time with red fledglings, too. Not to mention that the first ever Changed red vamp is my best friend. Stevie Rae’s different than she used to be, but I still love her,” I said. “Maybe if you spent some time with Stevie Rae and the rest of the red fledglings you could, I don’t know, find yourself again. They have.” I said this with way more confidence than I felt. After all, I had glimpsed fragments of the darkness surrounding Stark down in those tunnels, around those red fledglings, but I couldn’t help believing it would be best to get him away from here, where evil seemed to come and go so easily.
“Sure,” he said too quickly. “Why don’t you take me to this Stevie Rae vamp and I’ll see what happens?”
“Sure,” I said just as quickly. “Why don’t you leave your bow and arrows here and show me how to get off campus without the bird freaks knowing and I’ll do just that?”
His expression hardened and he was a mean stranger again. “I don’t go anywhere without my bow, and no one leaves campus without them knowing.”
“Then it looks like I won’t be taking you to Stevie Rae,” I said.
“I don’t need you to show me where Stevie Rae is. She knows all about their little hideout. When she wants your friend, she’ll have her. If I were you, I’d expect to see Stevie Rae a lot sooner than you thought you would.”
Warning bells were ringing like a fire alarm in my mind, and I definitely didn’t have to ask who the “she” was Stark was talking about. But instead of showing just how upset Stark’s admission made me, I smiled calmly and said, “No one’s hiding out. I’m right here, and Stevie Rae is right where she’s been since she Changed. No big deal. Plus, it’s always great to see her, so if she shows up here, that’s cool.”
“Yeah, whatever. No big deal. And I’m cool staying right where I am.” He looked away from me, out into the icy fog that was drifting lazily around us. “I don’t get why you care anyway.”
And suddenly I knew exactly what to say. “I am just keeping my promises to you.”
“What do you mean?”
“You asked me to promise you two things before you died. One was not to forget you, and I haven’t. The other was to look after Duchess, and I’m letting you know that I’ve made sure she’s okay.”
“You can tell that Jack kid that Duchess is his dog now. Tell him…” Still not looking at me, he paused and drew a shaky breath. “Tell him she’s a good dog and to take care of her.”
Continuing to follow my intuition, I crossed the few feet between us and put my hand on his shoulder, almost exactly as I’d done the night he died. “You know it doesn’t matter what you say or who you give her to, Duchess will always belong to you. When you died, she cried. I was there. I saw it. I didn’t forget. I won’t ever forget.”
He didn’t look at me, but slowly he dropped his bow to the ground and put his hand over mine. We just stood there like that. Touching but not saying anything. I was watching his face carefully, so I saw the entire transformation. As he pressed his hand over mine, he let out a long, slow breath, and his face relaxed. The last hint of red left his eyes, and the strange, shadowy darkness evaporated. When he finally looked at me, he was the kid I’d been so drawn to and who had died while I held him in my arms, listening to him tell me that he’d come back.
“What if there’s nothing left in me worth loving?” He asked it in a voice so low that if I hadn’t been standing close I wouldn’t have heard him.
“I think you can still choose what you are, or at least what you are becoming. Stevie Rae chose her humanity over the monster. I think it’s up to you.”
I know what I did next was stupid. I’m not even sure why I did it. I mean, I already had unresolved issues with Erik and Heath. The last thing I needed was another boy complicating my life, but at that moment there was only Stark and me, and he was himself again—the guy who had agonized over the gift Nyx had given him because he had accidentally caused the death of his mentor; the guy who had been horrified at the thought of hurting anyone again. The guy I’d felt such an immediate and deep connection to I’d thought that just maybe there really were such thing as soul mates, and had considered, at least for a few brief moments, that he might be mine. That’s all I was thinking about as I stepped into his arms. When he bent and hesitatingly pressed his lips to mine, I closed my eyes and kissed him softly and sweetly. He kissed me back, holding me so gently it was as if he thought I might break.