Loved (House of Night Other World #1)(79)

“Do it or we will eat you!” Ben’s anguished shout carried down to them.

The man with the flamethrower turned it on them.

Kevin pulled the grate back over the manhole and fell heavily to the ground as their screams died in flames and sunlight and blood.

Marc hurried to him, pulling him back out of the splotch of sunlight.

“I couldn’t stop them,” Kevin said between heaving breaths. “I tried. But I couldn’t stop them.” He stared up at Marc and David. “Are you going to do it, too? Are you going to commit suicide?”

“I can’t promise that I’ll be able to live with my past, but I need answers,” Marc said. “I’m coming with you, Lieutenant.”

“I’m with you, too. I won’t pretend that I can handle this, but I also need answers,” David said.

“So, our plan?” Marc asked as he sat beside Kevin.

“Wait here until dusk and then go to the House of Night and ask to see my sister.”

“What if they kill us?” David asked.

“Then we’re dead and we don’t have to figure out how to live with our memories,” Kevin said.

“Good point,” Marc said. “I’m in.”

“That’d solve one problem for us. I’m in, too,” David said.



Zoey

There was just enough room for the Escalade to fit beside the TPD transport bus and still be under the covered entrance to the Field House. Shaunee hadn’t even put it into park yet and I was out of the SUV and halfway through the door to the school, with Stark and Shaunee scrambling to catch up with me, when I ran into Aphrodite. Literally. Knocking her smack on her butt.

Well, technically I didn’t knock her on her butt. The door I’d pushed open did. But still, she fell with an ungraceful smack on the tile floor.

“Ouch! Damn, Z. I thought you said my apology was accepted.” She was rubbing her butt as she stood. She tilted her head up to give me a scrunch-faced look and there it was—the most incredible Mark I had ever seen.

“How? Wh—? I don’t—I’ve never seen anything like that!” I blurted when I finally managed to regain control over my mouth.

“Fuck me running, Aphrodite’s a vampyre!” Shaunee said as she slid to a stop behind me.

“Red and blue. Red and blue?” Stark babbled. “How could it be red and blue? And you weren’t even a fledgling anymore.”

“Right?! It’s crazy cool, isn’t it?” Aphrodite said. She shook back her hair so that we could get a better look.

I’ll admit it. I gawked.

Her Mark was spectacular! It looked like one of the handmade, vintage Mardi Gras masks sold in the gorgeous boutiques in Venice—the kind exquisite women held to frame their eyes after their hair was piled on top of their heads and their boobs billowed out of the bodice of their seventeenth-century reproduction gowns. Stark was right—the Mark was in red and blue, and it looked like delicate, glistening fireworks exploding in beauty across her flawless skin.

“I don’t understand,” I said.

“Neither do I,” Stark said.

“Yeah, it’s cool and all, but what the hell are you?” Shaunee asked.

Aphrodite lifted one perfect brow. “I am a bridge.”

“Huh?” I said.

“That’s what Nyx told me. That was pretty much my reaction, too. At first.”

“But why did this happen?” I still couldn’t wrap my mind around it. “Are you still a Prophetess?”

“Uh, yes. Squared. At least. And it happened because I finally let it go,” Aphrodite said.

“Damn, girl. You know we have no clue what it is,” Shaunee said.

“It is a lot of things—but mostly my mother and all the crap she’s done to me. And by letting her go I mean I finally got it. I finally understood that no matter how much I want her to love me and to be a good mom—hell, even an average mom—however much I want that, it’s out of my control. It doesn’t matter what I say or do. I can’t fix her. I can only fix how I react to her—or I’m doomed, through my own decisions and my own actions to repeat her bullshit awful life. That’s it. Then Nyx showed up and this happened and a bunch more.”

“Well put, Aphrodite. Zoeybird, that nice Detective Marx said that you needed to speak with me.” Grandma appeared from the hallway that led to the Field House.

“I do.” I drew a deep breath and blurted, “You know how Other Jack came through from the other House of Night world?”

“Yes.”

“Someone else we recognize came through from that world. It’s Kevin, Grandma. He’s a red vampyre.”

“Oh, dear. Oh, oh, dear.” She swayed a little and Stark rushed to take her arm.

“Steady, there, Grandma. It’ll be okay. We’re going to find him and bring him here. Just like Other Jack is here.”

“Is he like those poor young fledglings? They are all so upset. It’s just terrible what they’re going through.”

“I don’t know what he’s like, Grandma,” I said. “I only saw him for a second, but he called my name. He definitely recognized me.”

“Zoey, there you are!” Marx rushed up from the Field House side of the entrance. “I’m getting crazy reports from downtown. Seems a few red vampyres, the same ones that were in our tunnels, committed suicide.”