Awakened (House of Night #8)(37)

It was then that Rephaim realized the direction he'd been flying was too far south to take him back to the downtown Mayo. Instead he was gliding over midtown Tulsa, passing the dimly lit abbey of the Benedictine nuns, cutting over Utica Square, and silently approaching the stone wall?protected campus. His flight faltered. Vampyres would look up.

Rephaim beat against the night air, lifting up and up. Then, too high to be easily seen, he skirted the campus, ping soundlessly outside the east wall into a pool of shadow between streetlights. From there he moved from shadow to shadow, using the darkness of his feathers to blend with the night. He heard the eerie howling before he reached the wall. It was a sound so filled with despair and heartbreak that it cut even him to the bone. What is making that terrible howl?

He knew the answer almost as quickly as he'd formulated the thought. The dog. Stark's dog. During one of her sessions of nonstop talking, Stevie Rae had told him how one of her friends, the boy named Jack, had more or less taken ownership of Stark's dog when he'd turned into a red fledgling, and how close the boy and the dog had become and what a good thing she thought that was for both of them because the dog was so smart and Jack was so sweet. As he remembered Stevie Rae's words, everything slid into place. By the time he reached the school's boundary and heard the crying that accompanied the terrible howling, Rephaim knew what he'd see when he carefully and quietly scaled the wall and peered down at the scene of devastation before him.

He looked. He couldn't stop himself. He wanted to see Stevie Rae--just see her. After all, he couldn't do anything except look--Rephaim definitely couldn't allow any of the vampyres to see him. He'd been correct; the innocent whose blood had fulfilled Neferet's debt to Darkness had been Stevie Rae's friend Jack.

Under the shattered tree through which Kalona had escaped his earthen prison, a boy knelt, sobbing "Jack!" over and over beside a howling dog in the middle of bloodstained grass. The body wasn't still there, but the bloodstain was. Rephaim wondered if anyone else would be able to detect the fact that there was a lot less blood than there should have been. Darkness had fed deeply from Neferet's gift.Beside the weeping boy the school's Sword Master, Dragon Lankford, stood silently, his hand on his shoulder. The three of them were alone. Stevie Rae wasn't there. Rephaim was trying to convince himself that was for the best. It really was a good thing that she hadn't been there--maybe hadn't seen him--when a wave of feelings slammed into him: sadness, worry, and hurt foremost among them.

Then, arms filled with a big wheat-colored cat, Stevie Rae rushed up to the mourning trio. It was so good to see her that Rephaim almost forgot to breathe.

"Duchess, you gotta stop this now." Her distinctly accented voice washed over him like a spring rain in the desert. He watched her crouch beside the big dog, depositing the cat between her legs. The feline instantly started rubbing against the dog, as if he were trying to wipe away her pain. Rephaim blinked in surprise when the dog actually quieted and began licking the cat. "There's a good girl. Let Cameron help you." Stevie Rae looked up at the Sword Master. Rephaim saw him nod almost imperceptibly.

She turned her attention to the sobbing boy. Digging into the pocket of her jeans, she pulled out a wad of tissues, and handed it to him. "Damien, sweetie, you gotta stop this now, too. You're gonna make yourself sick."

Damien took the tissue and wiped quickly across his face. In a shaking voice he said, "I d-don't care."

Stevie Rae touched his cheek. "I know you don't, but your cat needs you, and so does Duchess. Plus, honey, Jack would be real upset if he saw you like this."

"Jack won't ever see me again." Damien had stopped crying, but his voice sounded terrible. It seemed to Rephaim that he could hear the boy's heart breaking within it.

"I do not believe that for one hot second," Stevie Rae said firmly. "And if you really think about it, neither do you."

Damien looked at her with haunted eyes. "I can't think right now, Stevie Rae. All I can do is feel." "Some of the sadness will pass," Dragon said in a voice that sounded as heartbroken as Damien's. "Enough so that you will be able to think again."

"That's right. Listen to Dragon. When you can think again, you can find a thread of the Goddess inside you. Follow that thread. Remember there is an Otherworld we can all share. Jack's there now. Someday you'll see him again there."

Damien looked from Stevie Rae to the Sword Master. "Have you been able to do that? Does it make losing Anastasia any easier?"

"Nothing makes her loss easier. Right now I am still searching for the thread to our Goddess." Rephaim felt a horribly sick jolt within him as he realized he had caused the pain the Sword Master was feeling. He had killed the spells and rituals professor, Anastasia Lankford. She had been Dragon's mate. He had done it so coldly, with an absolute lack of any feeling except, perhaps, annoyance at being detained for the short time it had taken him to overpower and destroy her.

I killed her with no thought for anything or anyone except my need to follow Father, to do his bidding. I am a monster.

Rephaim couldn't stop looking at the Sword Master. He carried his pain like a cloak around him. He could almost literally see the empty hole his mate's absence had left in his life. And Rephaim, for the first time in his centuries- long life, felt remorse for his actions.