Grandma nodded. “So I already heard from Stevie Rae. But it was different with you? More than just this magical allure he has?”
“Yeah. With me it wasn’t so much that I was under his spell.” I swallowed past the dryness in my throat. “I wasn’t tricked into thinking he was Erebus come to earth, and I knew he planned evil with Neferet. I saw his darkness. But I also wanted to be with him—not just because I believed he might still be able to choose to be good, but because I wanted him, even though I knew it was wrong.”
“But you fought against that desire, u-we-tsi-a-ge-ya. You chose your own path, that of love and goodness and your Goddess, and thus the creature was banished. You chose love,” she repeated slowly. “Let that be balm to the wound he has rent in your soul.”
The tight, panicky feeling in my chest began to loosen. “I can follow my own path,” I said with more conviction than I’d felt since first realizing I was A-ya reincarnated. Then I frowned. There was no denying that she and I were connected. Call it essence or soul or spirit or whatever—it tied me to an immortal being as surely as the earth had imprisoned him for centuries. “I’m not A-ya,” I repeated more slowly, “but I’m not through with Kalona. What do I do, Grandma?”
Grandma took my hand in hers and squeezed. “As you said, you follow your path. And right now that path is leading you to a soft, warm bed and a full day’s sleep.”
“One crisis at a time?”
“One thing at a time,” she said.
“And it’s time you followed your own advice, Sylvia,” Sister Mary Angela said as she bustled into the room with a Dixie cup of water in one hand and pills in another.
Grandma smiled wearily up at the nun and took the medicine from her. I noticed that her hands were shaking as she placed the pills on her tongue and drank the water.
“Grandma, I’m going to let you rest now.”
“I love you, u-we-tsi-a-ge-ya. You did well today.”
“I couldn’t have done it without you. I love you, too, Grandma.” I bent and kissed her forehead, and as she closed her eyes and settled back against her pillows with a contented smile, I followed Sister Mary Angela from the room and fired questions at her as soon as we were in the hall. “Did you find rooms for everyone? Are the red fledglings doing okay? Do you have a clue if Stevie Rae got Erik and Heath and whoever else together to check out the area around the abbey? Is everything safe out there?
Sister Mary Angela held her hand up to stop my word flood. “Child, take a breath and let me speak.”
I suppressed a sigh but managed to stay quiet as I followed her down the hallway while she explained that she and the nuns had set up a cozy dormlike area for the red fledglings in the basement, after Stevie Rae had told her they’d be most comfortable down there. My gang was upstairs in the guest dorms, and yes, the kids had given an all clear on the Raven Mockers outside.
“You know, you really are incredible.” I smiled at her as we paused outside a closed door at the end of a long hall. “Thank you.”
“I am my Lady’s servant, and you are most welcome,” she said simply and held the door open for me. “This is the stairwell that leads down to the basement. I’ve been told that most of the kids are down there already.”
“Zoey! There you are. You have to come check this out. You will not believe what Stevie Rae did,” Damien said as he hurried up the stairs toward us.
I felt my stomach clench. “What?” I immediately started down to meet him. “What’s wrong?”
He grinned at me. “Nothing’s wrong. It’s incredible.” Damien took my hand and pulled me with him.
“Damien’s right about that,” said Sister Mary Angela, coming down the stairs after us. “But I think incredible is the wrong word for it.”
“Is the right word more like terrible or horrible?” I asked.
He squeezed my hand. “Stop being such a worrier. You beat Kalona and Neferet tonight; everything’s going to be okay.”
I squeezed his hand back and made myself smile and look less worried, even though I knew deep in my heart, deep in my soul, that what had happened tonight had not been an ending or even a victory. It had been a terrible, horrible beginning.
“Wow.” I stared around in shocked disbelief.
“Wow squared is more like it,” Damien said.
“Stevie Rae really did this?”
“That’s what Jack told me,” Damien said. He and I stood side by side and peered into the darkness of the newly hollowed earth.
“Okay—creepy.” I spoke my thoughts aloud.
Damien gave me an odd look. “What do you mean?”
“Well,” I paused, not entirely sure what I did mean, even though the tunnel definitely made me feel uneasy. “Um, it’s, uh… really dark.”
Damien laughed. “Of course it’s dark. It’s supposed to be dark. It’s a hole in the ground.”
“To me it feels more natural than a hole in the ground,” said Sister Mary Angela as she joined us at the mouth of the tunnel, peering with us down its black length. “For some reason it comforts me. Perhaps it’s the way it smells.”
The three of us sniffed. I smelled, well, dirt. But Damien said, “It smells rich and healthy.”
“Like a newly plowed field,” the nun agreed.
“See, it’s not creepy, Z. I’d definitely hide down here during a tornado,” Damien said.
Feeling overly sensitive and kinda silly, I blew out a long breath and peered into the tunnel, trying to see it with new eyes and feel it with a more accurate instinct. “Could I use your flashlight for a second, Sister?”
“Of course.”
Sister Mary Angela handed me the big, square, heavy-duty flashlight she’d carried with us from the main basement into this little side section she’d called their root cellar. The ice storm that had encased Tulsa for the past several days had knocked out the abbey’s power—as it had most of the city’s power. They did have gas generators, so in the main part of the abbey a few electric lights were on, along with the zillions of candles the nuns liked so much, but they hadn’t wasted electricity in the root cellar, and the only illumination came from the nun’s flashlight. This I shined into the hole in the ground.
The tunnel wasn’t very big. If I spread my arms, I could easily touch both sides of it. I looked up. It only cleared my head by about a foot. I sniffed again, trying to find the sense of comfort the nun and Damien obviously felt. My nose wrinkled. The place reeked of dark and dampness, roots and things that had been stirred up from under the surface. I suspected those things slithered and crawled, which automatically made my skin shiver and crawl.
Then I mentally shook myself. Why should a tunnel in the earth seem so gross? I had an affinity for earth. I could conjure it. I shouldn’t be afraid of it.
Gritting my teeth, I took one step into the tunnel. Then another. And another.
“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.