Burned (House of Night #7)(74)

"How did you know there's a Raven Mocker in Tulsa?" Dallas said.

Nicole snorted. "He was here. Your precious High Priestess's scent was all over him because she saved his life . He's how we trapped her on the roof. She went up there to save him again ."

"That's bullshit!" Dallas shouted. He pressed his palm against the cement wall. Stevie Rae felt her hair lift in a sudden rush of static electricity.

"Wow, you really have them fooled." Nicole said mockingly.

"That's it. I'm done with this," Stevie Rae said. "Make your choice. Now. Light or Darkness, which will it be?"

"We already made our choice." Nicole's hand went up under her baggy shirt and came out with a snub-nosed gun, which she aimed at the middle of Stevie Rae's head.

Stevie Rae felt one instant of terror, and then she heard cocking sounds and her stunned gaze went from Nicole's gun to the two Kurtis and Starr had raised and pointed at Dallas and Kramisha.

That pissed off Stevie Rae, and everything kicked into fast-forward.

"Protect them, earth!" Stevie Rae cried. Spreading wide her arms and releasing her fists, she imagined the power of earth, chrysalis-like, enclosing them. The air around her glowed a soft, mossy green. And as the barrier manifested, Stevie Rae saw the oily Darkness that was clinging to the ceiling shiver and then dissipate completely.

Dallas yelled, "Ah, hells no. You're not pointing that thing at me!" Closing his eyes and concentrating, Dallas pressed both of his hands against the side of the tunnel wall. There was a crackling sound. Kurtis yelped and dropped his gun. At the same instant, Nicole screamed - a raw, primal sound that was more like the roar of an enraged animal than something that should have come from a fledgling, and she squeezed the trigger.

The gunshots were deafeningly loud. The sound echoed painfully over and over until Stevie Rae lost count of how many real shots there were and how many were just an avalanche of sound, smoke, and sensation.

Stevie Rae didn't hear the screams of the rogue fledglings as the bullets ricocheted off the earth barrier and slammed into their bodies, but she saw Starr fall and watched the terrible blossom of red that bloomed from the side of her head. Two other red-eyed kids slumped to the ground, too.

Pandemonium broke loose, and the unwounded fledglings in the kitchen pushed and shoved and climbed over each other as they fought to get to the narrow entrance that led up to the main depot building above.

Nicole hadn't moved. She was holding the empty gun, looking wild-eyed and still pulling the trigger when Stevie Rae yelled, "No! You've done enough!" Acting on an instinct totally allied to the earth, Stevie Rae clapped her glowing hands together in front of her. With a tearing sound, a raw, gaping hole opened in the far end of the kitchen, where before there had only been the curving side of the tunnel.

"You need to leave here and never come back." Like an avenging goddess, Stevie Rae hurled earth at Nicole and Kurtis and the others who still stood with them, sending a wave of power washing through the kitchen. It lifted all of them and hurled them into the newly opened tunnel. While Nicole snarled curses at her, Stevie Rae calmly waved her hand. In a voice magnified by her element, she said, "Lead them away from here and close behind them. If they don't go, bury them alive."

Stevie Rae's last sight of Nicole was of her screaming at Kurtis and telling him to get his big ass moving.

Then the tunnel sealed, and all was quiet.

"Come on," Stevie Rae said. Not giving herself time to think about what she was walking into, she strode into the kitchen, straight to the broken, bleeding bodies Nicole had left behind. There were five of them. Three, including Starr, had been struck by Nicole's deflected shots. The other two had been trampled. "They're all dead." Stevie Rae thought it was strange that she sounded so calm.

"Johnny B, Elliott, Montoya, and I will get rid of 'em," Dallas said, taking a second to squeeze her shoulder.

"I have to come with you," Stevie Rae told him. "I'm gonna open up the earth and bury them, and I'm not doin' that down here. I don't want them where we're gonna live."

"Okay, whatever you think's best," he said, touching her face gently.

"Here. Roll them into these sleepin' bags." Kramisha picked her way through the rubble and bodies in the kitchen, went to the storage closet, and started filling her arms with sleeping bags.

"Thanks, Kramisha," Stevie Rae said, methodically taking the bags from her and unzipping them. A noise pulled her attention back to the doorway, where Venus, Sophie, and Shannoncompton were standing, white-faced. Sophie was making little sobbing noises, but no tears were coming from her eyes.

"Go to the Hummer," Stevie Rae told them. "Wait for us there. We're goin' back to school. We won't be staying here tonight. 'Kay?"

The three girls nodded and then, holding hands, they disappeared down the tunnel.

"They's probably gonna need counseling," Kramisha told her.

Stevie Rae looked over the top of a sleeping bag at her. "And you won't?"

"No. I used to be a candy striper at St. John's E.R. I seen a whole lot of crazy there."

Wishing she'd had some "whole lot of crazy" experience, Stevie Rae pressed her lips together and tried not to think at all as they zipped the dead kids into five different bags and followed the boys, grunting under the weight of their burdens, out through the main depot building. Silently, they let her lead the way to a dark, deserted area beside the train tracks. Stevie Rae knelt and pressed her hands against the earth.