“It?”
I frowned at him. “See, that’s exactly what Heath would have said. I used a complex sentence and lost you.”
“Sorry, Zo.”
“You just did it again! And the it I’m scared of is that I can’t make myself believe that you and Heath aren’t turning into the same kid.”
“Oh.” He paused and I could practically see the wheels turning inside his head. “You still love Heath?”
I met his gaze and told him the absolute truth. “I’ll always love Heath.”
He didn’t look away from me, so when his grin started I saw the beginnings of it and how it made his eyes sparkle with familiar Heath mischief. “That’s good,” he said.
“No, that’s confusing, especially because Stark is my Warrior as well as my boyfriend,” I said.
“But did you not love Heath and Stark together before?”
“Well, yeah, but it was pretty complex. And stressful. For all three of us.”
“Yet you still loved them.”
He hadn’t phrased it like a question, but I answered anyway. “Yeah, and what I’m trying to get you to understand is that I think it’s just too hard to love more than one guy at the same time. I can tell you for sure what Stark would say about me trying that again.”
“Stark was kind to me last night.”
“Well, Stark and Heath ended up being friends. Sort of.”
“Then perhaps we can all be friends again,” he said.
Friends sounded safe. Who doesn’t need more friends? “We can try.”
“You could suck my blood if you wanted to.”
“Aurox! No. No, I do not want to suck your blood,” I lied, remembering how utterly, overwhelmingly awesome it had been to suck Heath’s blood and how much Heath liked it when I did. I narrowed my eyes at the kid. “Aurox, you don’t have Heath’s memories, do you?”
He shook his head. “I don’t think so. Sometimes I say or do things that surprise me because I cannot remember how I know them. There is only one thing I am certain that I have from Heath.”
I knew I shouldn’t ask, but I heard my mouth saying, “What’s the one thing?”
“His love for you, Zo.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Stark
“Are you sure we’re still on his trail?” Stark asked the winged immortal’s back between the panting breaths he was taking as he raced after Kalona.
“Can you not scent his blood?” Kalona glanced over his shoulder and then, obviously seeing that Stark was struggling to keep up with him, slowed to a jog and pointed to the grass of someone’s well-maintained lawn they were cutting through. “There, see where the vampyre’s blood has spattered the ground because it still seeps freely from him? My son did well in clawing his head—head wounds bleed easily and are difficult to staunch.”
“Yeah, especially if you’re moving as fast as he is.” Stark wiped the sweat from his forehead, jogging beside Kalona. “Who knew Dallas could run like this? I would’ve definitely thought we’d have caught up to him by now. He didn’t have that big of a lead on us. The kid can move. I always thought of him as one of those video-games-hands kids—soft and weak unless they’re pretending to be Zorg from the Planet Org, then they can destroy whole worlds with their fat fingers.”Kalona furrowed his brow. “Your world still confuses me sometimes, but I can tell you I know why Dallas moves so quickly. He is fleeing for his life.”
“Hey, Thanatos specifically said you’re not supposed to kill him.”
“That is a shame. It would be just that I finish what my son began,” Kalona said.
“Can’t say I disagree with you.”
Kalona held out his hand, stopping Stark. They’d been following Dallas’s trail that led steadily west, and had run straight into busy Riverside Drive. “There.” Kalona pointed across the street to where the slick surface of the Arkansas River glistened in the moonlight. “He thinks to use the water to spread the scent of his blood downstream, and wash away his trail.”
“Thinks? You mean that won’t work?”
“Not for me it won’t. Blood still seeps from him—it is him I scent as surely as I scent his trail.”
“Huh. That’s good,” Stark said. Following the immortal across the four lanes of Riverside Drive, he was glad it was late and cold enough that joggers and bikers weren’t around. Sure, Kalona had put on a long coat, but those wings weren’t exactly inconspicuous.
Kalona paused after they’d crossed the asphalt bike path, bending to look more closely at the foliage. “Here is where he climbed down to the river.”
Stark looked at the weeds and sniffed, trying to pick up the sight or scent of Dallas’s blood. All he could smell was the muddy, fishy river. But the immortal seemed sure of himself, so Stark shrugged and followed him down to the river. When they reached the bank, Kalona paused again. This time he squatted. He seemed to be gulping big breaths of air while he stared across the lazily moving water. It’d been pretty dry since the ice storm in December, and the river was shallow, showing big stretches of sand bars between the sluggish water.
“I didn’t know you were such a good tracker,” Stark said, crouching beside him.
“I spent eons tracking evil beings that far surpassed this one small vampyre’s ability at subterfuge. It is a skill not easily forgotten,” Kalona said.
Stark watched him from the corner of his eye and wondered, not for the first time, just exactly what Kalona had done for the Goddess before he’d Fallen. And if he’d been so damn good at his job that centuries later he could still track scarily well, why had he Fallen at all?
“There!” Kalona pointed. “Do you see him, there, on the log near the far bank?”
Stark smiled. “I don’t need to see something to hit it. Just give me a little room and get ready to retrieve the asshole after I shoot him, ’cause now I get to do what I’m scarily good at.” He stood, notched an arrow, and drew the bow back. Bury the arrow to the feathers in the thigh of the vampyre named Dallas, Stark focused his specific thought—his specific purpose—and let fly the arrow.
It shot from the bow with a satisfying thrum, whistling through the air, invisible but deadly.
“Aaaah!” Dallas’s scream carried easily across the water.
Stark smiled cockily at Kalona and said, “Fetch.”
Zoey
It didn’t seem like first hour was ever going to end. I usually liked Thanatos’s special class. She wasn’t the most entertaining professor at the school (uh, that would be Erik), but she was super smart and she let us ask just about anything—as long as we were respectful to her and to each other. I squirmed in my chair and glanced behind me. Dallas, of course, wasn’t in class. As far as I knew Stark and Kalona hadn’t returned to campus yet, with or without him. But all the rest of the red fledglings were here. The kids who weren’t part of Dallas’s group, like Shaylin and Kramisha, Johnny B, Ant, and the rest of Stevie Rae’s red fledglings, were sitting up toward the front of class, just behind the first row where my circle and Aphrodite and I sat. Nicole had come in with Shaylin and was sitting beside her. She’d totally ignored her ex-friends, who stared at her like she was road kill when she’d walked past them.
Aurox wasn’t sitting all the way over on the side of the room by himself today. When he’d walked in he’d hesitated as he started past us, and Damien had waved at him and told him since Rephaim was in the infirmary with Stevie Rae, the two seats next to him weren’t taken. Aurox had only paused long enough to glance at me. I’d kinda half shrugged and half nodded, and then he’d thanked Damien and sat beside him. So, there was only Aphrodite and Damien between him and me. I could see him taking notes as Thanatos opened the lecture by talking about the five major rituals discussed in The Fledgling Handbook.
Huh. Maybe Aurox was a good student. That wouldn’t be Heath-like at all. The thought almost made me giggle—as in the beginnings of hysteria, not as in a funny giggle—and I coughed to cover it.
“You okay?” Shaunee asked me softly. She was sitting on my left and I could see that I’d worried her.
“Totally fine. Just a tickle in my throat,” I assured her quickly.
Thanatos had turned to the Smartboard and was pulling up a picture of a super decorative knife on it. From the back of the room a balled-up sheet of paper was tossed onto my desk. I could see that there was writing on it. Frowning, I smoothed it out and read: TO BAD U DON’T DIE.
Aphrodite snatched up the note and crumpled it up, dropping it into her purse. “Ignore them,” she whispered. “Even I can spell better than they can.”
Dallas’s red fledglings hadn’t been as openly jerk-ish as they tended to be with Dallas leading the way. Instead they were a silently simmering pile of pissed off. They didn’t answer any of Thanatos’s questions and they never commented during her lecture. They just did mean stuff like throw notes when her back was turned. And I swear I could feel their beady little red eyes staring at me. I glanced over my shoulder.