Of course, some of her freaky feeling could have been because the sky was already starting to shift from black to gray with the coming dawn. In retrospect, that should have stopped her. She should have turned around, gone back down the stairs, climbed into the car she’d borrowed from the school, and driven to the House of Night.
Instead, she’d stepped squarely into her fate and, as Z would have said, then the poopie hit the fan.
She knew there were circular stairs inside the main part of the depot that led up to each tower room—she’d done lots of exploring during the weeks she’d lived there. But no dang way was she going back inside that building and taking a chance that some random red fledgling wouldn’t be tucked into bed and would see her—and question her—and find out the truth.
Plan B led her to a tree that at one time had obviously been decorative, but had long since overgrown its concrete circle so that its roots had broken through the ground below in the parking lot, exposing lots of frozen earth and allowing it to grow taller than it should have. Without its leaves, Stevie Rae didn’t have a clue what kind of tree it was, other than the kind that was tall enough that its branches brushed the roof of the depot, near the first of the two towers that faced out from the roof on the front side of the building, and that was tall enough for her.
Moving quickly, Stevie Rae went over to the tree and jumped to grab the branch closest to her head. She scrambled up the slick, bare bough, shimmying along it until she got to the main part of the tree. From there she made her way up and up, silently thanking Nyx for her red vampyre enhanced strength ’cause if she’d been a normal fledgling, or maybe even vamp, she’d never have been able to make the treacherous climb.
When she was as high up as she could go, Stevie Rae gathered herself and then jumped onto the roof of the building. She didn’t waste time looking in the first of the towers. Pig boy had said Rephaim was in the one farthest from the tree. She jogged across the roof to the other end of the building and then climbed the short distance up so she could look down into the circular space.
He was there. Crumpled in the corner of the tower, Rephaim lay unmoving and bleeding.
Without hesitation, Stevie Rae threw her legs over the stone ridge and then dropped the four feet or so into the room.
He’d been curled up in a ball, his good arm cradling his bad one in its dirty sling. Down the outside of his arm she could see that someone had slashed his skin, which is obviously where Kurtis had fed from him, though he hadn’t bothered to close the cut, and the odd, off smell of his inhuman blood filled the little chamber. The bandage that had immobilized his wing had come loose and it was a torn pile of bloody towels half draping his body. His eyes were closed.
“Rephaim, hey, can you hear me?”
At the sound of her voice his eyes instantly opened. “No!” he said, struggling to sit up. “Get out of here. They’re going to trap—”
Then there had been a terrible pain in the back of her head, and she remembered falling into blackness.
“Stevie Rae, you have to wake up. You have to move.”
She finally felt the hand that was shaking her shoulder and recognized Rephaim’s voice. Carefully she opened her eyes, and the world didn’t pitch and roll, though she could feel her heartbeat throbbing in her head.
“Rephaim,” she rasped. “What happened?”
“They used me to trap you,” he said.
“You wanted to trap me?” Her nausea was a little better, but Stevie Rae’s mind felt like it was working in slow motion.
“No. What I wanted was to be left alone to heal and make my way back to my father. They gave me no choice.” He stood up, moving stiffly, bent at the waist because of the metal grate that made a low, false ceiling. “Move. You have little time. The sun is already rising.”
Stevie Rae looked up at the sky and saw the soft pastels of pre-dawn that she used to think were so pretty. Now the lightening sky filled her with absolute terror. “Oh, Goddess! Help me get up.”
Rephaim grabbed her hand and pulled her to her feet, where she stood unsteadily beside him, bent like he was. Drawing a deep breath, she raised her hands, gripped the cold metal of the grate, and pushed. It rattled a little, but didn’t really move.
“How is it stuck up there?” she asked.
“Chained. They hooked chains through the edges of the metal and then padlocked them to anything on the roof that couldn’t be pulled up.”
Stevie Rae pushed against the grate again. Again it rattled, but held firm. She was trapped up on a roof and the sun was rising! Gathering all her strength, she pushed and pulled, gripping the metal and trying to slide it to one side so that maybe she could crawl through. With each second the sky got brighter. Stevie Rae’s skin shivered like a horse trying to twitch off a fly.
“Break the metal,” Rephaim said urgently. “Your strength can do it.”
“I might be able to if I was underground, or even standing on the earth,” she said between gasping breaths as she continued to struggle impotently against the caging metal. “But up here, a huge building away from my element, I’m just not strong enough.” She looked from the sky to his scarlet eyes. “You should probably stand back away from me. I’m gonna burn, and I don’t know how big the flames will be, but it could get pretty hot in here.”
She watched Rephaim move away and, with a growing sense of hopelessness, went back to struggling with the immovable metal. Her fingers were starting to sizzle and Stevie Rae was biting her lip to keep from screaming and screaming and screaming…
“Over here. The metal is rusted and thinner, weaker.”
Stevie Rae pulled her hands down, automatically clutching them under her armpits and, bent backed, rushed to him. She saw the rusted metal and grabbed ahold of it with both hands, and then pulled with all her might. It gave a little, but her hands had started to smoke, as had her wrists.
“Oh, Goddess!” she gasped. “I’m not gonna make it. Get back, Rephaim, I’m already startin’ to—”
Instead of running from her, he moved as close to her as he could get, spreading his good wing so that it provided some shade. Then he raised his uninjured arm and took hold of the rusted grate. “Think of the earth. Concentrate. Do not think of the sun and the sky. Pull with me. Now!”
In the shadow of his wing, Stevie Rae grabbed the grate on either side of his hand. She closed her eyes and ignored the burning of her fingers and the sensitivity of her skin that was screaming at her to run! Run anywhere, just get out of the sun! Instead she thought about the earth, cool and dark, waiting underneath her like a loving mama. Stevie Rae pulled.
With a metallic snap the grate broke, leaving an opening just big enough for one person at a time to slip out of.
Rephaim stepped back. “Go!” he said. “Quickly.”
The instant Stevie Rae was no longer covered by his wing, her body flushed and, literally, began to smoke. Instinctively, she dropped to the floor and curled into a ball, trying to shield her face with her arms. “I can’t!” she cried, frozen with pain and panic. “I’ll burn up.”
“You will burn if you stay here,” he said.
Then he pulled himself up through the opening and was gone. He’d left her. Stevie Rae knew he was right. She had to get out of there, but she couldn’t push through the paralyzing fear. The pain was too much. It was like her blood was boiling in her body. Just when she thought she couldn’t bear it any longer, a small, cool shadow fell on her.
“Take my hand!”
Squinting against the cruel sun, Stevie Rae looked up. Rephaim was there, crouched on the grate, his good wing spread above her, blocking as much of the sun as possible, his uninjured arm reaching for her.
“Now, Stevie Rae. Do it!”
She followed his voice and the coolness of his dark wing and grabbed his hand. He couldn’t pull her up by himself. She was too heavy and he only had one arm. So she thrust out her other hand, took hold of the metal, and chinned herself up.