“I did it before. I’ll do it again.”

Stevie Rae’s voice came to him as if from a long way off, but it sounded strong, too. Rephaim wondered why the bull didn’t hear her and stop her, but the creature’s moans of pleasure and the piercing pain that radiated from his back gave Rephaim the answer. The bull didn’t consider Stevie Rae a threat, and he was fixated on consuming the intoxicating blood of immortality. Let him keep taking from me; let her escape, Rephaim prayed silently to whichever of the gods might deign to hear him.

“My circle’s unbroken,” Stevie Rae was speaking quickly and clearly. “Rephaim and this disgusting bull came at my command. So I command again, through the power of the earth, I call the other bull. The one who fights this one, and I’ll pay whatever I have to, just get this thing off my Raven Mocker!”

Rephaim felt the creature above him pause in his feeding as a bolt of light speared through the smoky blackness in front of Stevie Rae. He saw Stevie Rae’s eyes go wide and, miraculously, she smiled and then laughed.

“Yes!” she spoke joyously. “I’ll pay your price. And, dang! You’re so black and beautiful!”

Still standing over him, the white bull growled. Tendrils began snaking from the darkness around Rephaim and slithering toward Stevie Rae. Rephaim opened his mouth to shout a warning, but Stevie Rae stepped directly into the shaft of light. There was a sound like a thunderclap, and then another blinding flash. From the middle of the bright explosion stepped an enormous bull, as black as the first was white. But this creature’s darkness wasn’t like that of the inky shadows that cringed away from it. This bull’s coat was the black of a midnight sky filled with the radiance of diamond stars—deep and mysterious and beautiful to behold.

For an instant, the black bull’s gaze met Rephaim’s, and the Raven Mocker gasped. He’d never seen such kindness in his life; he’d never even known such kindness could exist.

“Do not let her have made the wrong choice.” The new voice in his mind was as deep as the first bull’s had been, but filled with a wealth of compassion. “Because whether you are worthy or not, she has paid the price.”

The black bull lowered his head and charged the white bull, hurling it off Rephaim’s body. There was a deafening crash as the two met, and then a silence so deep it, too, was deafening.

The tendrils dissipated like dew from the summer sun. Stevie Rae was on her knees, reaching for him, when the smoke vanished, and the fledgling ran into the circle, knife raised and ready.

“Get back, Stevie Rae! I’m gonna fucking kill it!”

Stevie Rae touched the ground, and murmured, “Earth, trip him. Hard.”

Over Stevie Rae’s shoulder, Rephaim saw the ground rise up right in front of the boy’s feet, and the wiry fledgling fell down face-first—hard.

“Can you fly?” she whispered.

“I think so,” he murmured back.

“Then get back to the Gilcrease,” she said urgently. “I’ll come to you later.”

Rephaim hesitated. He didn’t want to leave her so soon after they’d been through so much together. Was she really well, or had Darkness taken too much from her?

“I’m okay. Promise,” Stevie Rae told him softly as if reading his mind. “Go on.”

Rephaim stood. With one last look at Stevie Rae, he unfurled his wings and forced his battered body to carry him into the sky.

Chapter 14

Dallas was half carrying, half dragging Stevie Rae around the corner of the school, arguing with her about going to the infirmary instead of just back to her room, when Kramisha and Lenobia, who were walking toward Nyx’s Temple, caught sight of them.

“Sweet weeping baby Jesus, you is messed up!” Kramisha yelled, stumbling to a halt.

“Dallas, let’s get her to the infirmary!” Lenobia said. Unlike Kramisha, she didn’t freeze at the bloody sight of Stevie Rae; instead, she hurried to her other side and helped Dallas support her weight, automatically angling them toward the infirmary entrance.

“Look, no, y’all. Just take me to my room. I need a phone, not a doctor. And I can’t find my dang cell phone.”

“You can’t find it because that bird thing ripped almost all your clothes off of you, along with your skin. Your cell’s probably back at the park smooshed in the ground that’s still soaked with your blood. You’re goin’ to the damn infirmary.”

“I have a phone. You can use mine,” Kramisha said, catching up to them.

“You can use Kramisha’s phone, but Dallas is right. You can’t even stand by yourself. You’re going to the infirmary,” Lenobia said firmly.

“Fine. Whatever. Get me to a chair or somethin’ so I can make a call. You have Aphrodite’s number, don’t you?” she asked Kramisha

“Yeah. But don’t think that makes us friends or anything,” Kramisha muttered.

As they headed into the infirmary, Lenobia’s sharp gaze kept returning to Stevie Rae’s battered body. “You’re in bad shape. Again,” she said. Then Dallas’s words seemed to catch up with her, and the Horse Mistress’s gray eyes widened in shock. “Did you say a bird did this?”

“Bird thing,” Dallas said at the same time Stevie Rae said, “No!”

“Dallas, I do not have the time or the energy to argue with you ’bout this right now.”

“You mean you didn’t see what happened to her?” Lenobia asked.

“No. There was too much smoke and darkness; I couldn’t see her, and I couldn’t get into the circle to help her. And when it all cleared she was like this and a bird thing was crouching over her.”

“Dallas, stop talkin’ ’bout me like I’m not here! And he wasn’t crouched over me. He was lyin’ on the ground next to me.”

Lenobia started to speak, but they’d reached the infirmary, and Sapphire, the tall, blond nurse who had been promoted to head of the hospital in the absence of a Healer, greeted them with her usual sour expression, which quickly changed to shock. “Put her in there!” she ordered briskly, pointing into a newly emptied hospital-style room.

They laid Stevie Rae on the bed, and Sapphire started to yank stuff out of one of the metal cabinets. One of the things she grabbed was a baggie of blood she tossed to Lenobia. “Make her drink this immediately.”

No one said anything for the few seconds it took for Lenobia to rip open the blood bag and help support Stevie Rae’s shaking hands as she held it to her mouth and drank greedily.

“I’m gonna need some more of that,” Stevie Rae said. “And, like I said before, a dang phone. Right away.”

“I need to see what’s sliced up your body like that, made you lose entirely too much blood, which you need to replace right away, and figure out why the blood that’s still dripping out of your body smells completely wrong,” said Sapphire.

“Raven Mocker! That’s the name of that thing,” Dallas said.

“A Raven Mocker attacked you?” Lenobia said.

“No. And that’s what I’ve been tryin’ to get through Dallas’s thick skull. Darkness attacked me and a Raven Mocker.”

“And like I said, you’re not making no damn sense. I saw that bird thing. I saw your blood. These definitely look like slash wounds from that beak of his. I didn’t see anything else!” Dallas practically shouted.

“You didn’t see anything because Darkness was covering everything inside the circle, including me and the Raven Mocker while it attacked both of us!” Stevie Rae yelled her frustration at him.

“Why does it sound like you keep standing up for that thing?” Dallas said, throwing up his hands.

“You know what, Dallas, you can just kiss my butt! I’m not standing up for anyone except myself. It’s not like you could manage to get inside the circle to help me out—I had to do it myself!”

There was a long silence while Dallas stared at her with hurt clearly visible in his eyes, and then Sapphire spoke in her sharp, shitty bedside voice, “Dallas, you need to leave. I’m going to cut what’s left of these clothes off her, and it’s not appropriate for you to be in here.”