“They must be,” Stevie Rae murmured miserably. “I didn’t want to believe it. I wanted to believe they’d eventually do the right thing—choose humanity over the darkness. They just needed some time to get things straight in their heads, that’s all. I think I was wrong.”
“It is these fledglings that will keep your friends from the tunnels?”
“Kinda. Really, it’s more me that’ll keep them out. I’m gonna buy time—for you and for them.” She met his eyes. “Even if I’m wrong.” Without saying anything else, she opened the door, went to his side, lifted his arm, wrapped it around her shoulders, and the two of them stepped out into the icy dusk.
Stevie Rae knew Rephaim had to be in terrible pain as they walked haltingly from the shed toward the opening in the ground she’d created to the tunnel. But the only sound he made was his panting breath. He leaned heavily on her, and Stevie Rae was again surprised by his warmth and by the familiar feel of a guy’s arm around her shoulder, mixed with the feathered body she was helping to support. She kept glancing around them, almost holding her breath in fear that someone, like annoying gotta-prove-how-macho-I-am Erik, had slipped outside. The veiled sun was setting. Stevie Rae could feel it leaving the ice-shrouded sky. It was just a matter of time before the fledglings, vamps, and nuns started to stir.
“Come on, you’re doing good. You can make it. We gotta hurry.” She kept murmuring to him, encouraging Rephaim and trying to calm her own guilty fears.
But no one yelled after them. No one ran up to them, and in much less time than Stevie Rae had anticipated, the opening to the tunnel gaped at their feet.
“Climb down backward, with your hands and feet. It’s not far. I’ll hold on to you for most of the way to help steady you.”
Rephaim didn’t waste time or energy on words. He nodded, turned, flung the blanket off of him, and then, as Stevie Rea held on to his good arm—glad that though he was big and appeared strong and solid, he actually weighed less than she did—with her help he slowly and painfully disappeared down into the earth. Stevie Rae followed him.
In the tunnel, Rephaim leaned against the dirt wall, trying to catch his breath. Stevie Rae wished she could let him rest there, but the crawling sensation in the back of her neck was screaming that the others would be waking up and coming to look for her, and finding her and her Raven Mocker!
“You gotta keep going. Now. Get out of here. Go that way.” She pointed into the darkness in front of them. “It’s gonna be really dark. Sorry ’bout that, but I don’t have time to get a lamp for you. Are you okay in the dark?”
He nodded. “I have long preferred the night.”
“Good. Follow this tunnel until you come to the place where it changes from dirt to cement walls. Then turn to your right. It’s gonna be confusing ’cause the closer you get to the depot, the more tunnels there are. But stay in the main one. It’ll be lit—or at least I hope it’s still lit. Either way, if you keep goin’, you’ll find lanterns and food and rooms with beds and everything.”
“And there are dark fledglings.”
He didn’t phrase it as a question, but Stevie Rae answered him. “Yeah, there are. While the other red fledglings and I were livin’ there, they stayed away from the main tunnels and our rooms and such. I don’t know what they’re doin’ now that we’re not there and I honestly don’t know what they’ll do with you. I don’t think they’ll want to eat you—you don’t smell right. But I can’t tell for sure. They’re—” she paused, searching for the right words. “They’re different than I am—than the rest of us.”
“They are of the darkness. As I said, I am well acquainted with that.”
“All right. Well, I’m just gonna believe you’ll be okay.” Stevie Rae paused again, not knowing what to say and finally blurting out, “So, I guess I’ll see ya around sometime.”
He stared at her and said nothing.
Stevie Rae fidgeted. “Rephaim. You gotta go. Now. It’s not safe here. As soon as you’re down the tunnel a ways, I’m gonna collapse this part so that no one can follow you from here, but you still gotta hurry.”
“I do not understand why you would betray your people to save me,” he said.
“I’m not betraying anyone; I’m just not killing you!” she yelled, and then lowered her voice and continued. “Why does letting you go have to mean I betrayed my friends? Can’t it just mean that I choose life over death? Look, I chose good over evil. How is me lettin’ you live any different than that?”
“Did you not consider that choosing to save me was making a choice for what you would call evil?”
Stevie Rae looked at him for a long time before she answered. “Then let that be on your conscience. Your life is what you want it to be. Your daddy’s gone. The rest of the Raven Mockers are gone, too. My mamma used to sing a kinda silly song to me when I was a kid and I’d messed up and gotten myself hurt. She’d sing that I needed to pick myself up, dust myself off, and start all over again. And that’s what you need to do. I’m just givin’ you a chance to do it.” Stevie Rae stuck out her hand. “So, here’s hoping that next time we meet, we’re not enemies.”
Rephaim looked from her outstretched hand to her face, and back to her hand. Then slowly, almost reluctantly, he grasped it. Not in a modern handshake, but in the traditional vampyre greeting of clasping forearms.
“I owe you a life, Priestess.”
Stevie Rae’s cheeks felt hot. “Just call me Stevie Rae. I don’t feel much like a Priestess right now.”
He bowed his head. “Then it is to Stevie Rae that I owe a life.”
“Do the right thing with yours and I’ll consider myself paid up,” she said. “Merry meet, marry part, and merry meet again, Rephaim.”
She tried to pull her arm from his grasp, but he didn’t let her go. “Are they all like you? All of your allies?” he asked.
She smiled. “Nah, I’m weirder than most of the others. I’m the first red vamp, and sometimes I think that makes me kinda an experiment.”
Still gripping her arm he said, “I was the first of my father’s children.”
Though he held her gaze steadily, she couldn’t read his expression. All she saw in the dim light of the tunnel was the human shape of his eyes and their unearthly red glow—the same red glow that haunted her dreams and sometimes overwhelmed her own vision, tainting everything with scarlet and anger and darkness. She shook her head, and more to herself than to him said, “Being the first can be hard.”
He nodded and finally released her arm. Without another word, he turned and hobbled away into the darkness.
Stevie Rae counted slowly to one hundred, then she raised her arms. “Earth, I need you again.” Instantly her element responded, filling the tunnel with the scents of a springtime meadow. She breathed in deeply before continuing. “Collapse the ceiling. Fill up this part of the tunnel. Close the hole you made for me; plug it up; make it solid again, so that nobody can pass here.”
She stepped back as the dirt in front and above her started to move, and then it rained down, shifting and solidifying until there was nothing but a solid wall of earth in front of her.
“Stevie Rae, what the hell are ya doing?”
Stevie Rae whirled around, pressing her hand over her heart. “Dallas! You scared the livin’ daylights right outta me! Dang, I think you ’bout gave me a heart attack for real.”
“Sorry. You’re so hard to sneak up on I thought you knew I was standing here.”
Heart pounding even harder, Stevie Rae searched Dallas’s face, trying to find a sign that he had even a hint that she hadn’t been alone, but he didn’t look suspicious or mad or betrayed—he just looked curious and kinda sad. His next words reinforced that he hadn’t been there long enough to have caught even a glimpse of Rephaim.
“You sealed it off to keep the rest of them from getting to the abbey, didn’t you?”
Stevie Rae nodded and tried not to let the wave of relief she felt show in her voice. “Yeah. I didn’t think it was smart to give ’em such easy access to the nuns.”