Hunted (House of Night #5)(59)

The effect of the blast of hot air was immediate. It caught Kalona's outstretched wings and tossed him up and back, and there was a weird sizzling sound as the heated air touched his naked skin, actually causing mist to form in the air around him.

Darius had fallen heavily to the floor, but he was gasping for air while he tried to stand, putting his body between Kalona, Rephaim, and me. I couldn't do much more than try to control my breathing and blink hard to clear the weird little bright spots from my vision. Fire and wind had gone, leaving me barely able to stay on my feet.

A movement at the edge of my vision had me glancing at the open door and I gasped in surprise as Stark ran into the room, his bowstring already notched with a deadly-looking arrow. He lifted it to take aim at Darius, and then hesitated, shook his head like he was trying to clear it, and stared at me.

At the first sight of him I felt a wonderful rush of happiness. He looked like himself again! His eyes weren't glowing red. He didn't seem crazed and wasn't hollow-cheeked and skeletal. Then I realized I was standing there completely naked as he and I stared at each other. I grabbed the sheet pooling at my feet and hurriedly wrapped it around me, bath towel?style. Even in the middle of the big mess and stress that was going on around me, I could tell that my face was blazing red with embarrassment. I should have said something, anything to him, and instead my mind was frozen by the fact that he had just seen me completely naked.

Recovering his composure sooner than me, Stark lifted his bow again, renotching the arrow and sighting it at Darius.

"Stark! Don't shoot him!" I cried. I didn't bother to try to block his view of Darius. If Stark shot, he wouldn't miss no matter what I did. He couldn't miss. Unlike Kalona, my Goddess didn't take back a gift once she'd given it.

"If you are meaning to kill the person who threw me across the room, then that arrow will strike the priestess and not the warrior," Kalona said. He had gotten to his feet and he sounded perfectly normal. His expression was calm, but the skin of his naked chest looked flushed and kinda odd, like he'd suddenly gotten a sunburn. Small wisps of vapor were still lifting lazily from his exposed skin, even though both elements had left the room. "And it is not the priestess I want killed. It is the warrior."

Before Stark could fire his deadly arrow, I turned to Kalona, beseeching him, "Darius was just protecting me. It was a Raven Mocker who did this." I pointed to the long wound across my chest that was no longer gaping nastily open, but was instead an angry, jagged red line. "When Darius heard me scream and he saw Rephaim bending over me, it was only logical for him to assume I was being attacked again." Kalona had held up a hand to Stark, halting the shot. With the fal } sig fal len angel's attention fully on me, I continued, "Darius has sworn to protect me. He was just doing his job. Please don't kill him for that."

I held my breath during a long pause. Kalona stared at me, and I stared right back at him. The weird, hypnotic allure I'd felt for him hadn't returned. Not that he wasn't totally the most gorgeous man I'd ever seen. He definitely was. Then I felt a little start of surprise as I realized exactly what I was seeing as I gawked at him.

Kalona had gotten younger.

When he'd first risen from his imprisonment in the earth, he'd been utterly and completely handsome, but he'd also been a man. Well, one that was abnormally big and had huge black wings, but still, a man. He'd had an ageless look about him, appearing anywhere from thirty to fifty. But that had changed. If I had to guess his age, I'd say he was about eighteen. Definitely no older than twenty-one.

He's the perfect age for me...

Finally Kalona stopped staring at me and slowly turned to Rephaim, who was crouched in the corner of the room, his terrible human hands pressed around the knife that still protruded from his bird chest.

"Is this true, my son? Did one of my children cause the priestess's wound?"

"I have no way of knowing, Father. Not all of the sentries have returned," Rephaim spoke between short, panting breaths.

"It is true," Darius said.

"Of course that is what you would say, Warrior," Kalona said.

"I give you my word as a Son of Erebus that I tell you the truth," Darius said. "And you have seen Zoey's wound. Surely you recognize an injury made by the claws of one of your own children."

I was glad to see that Darius wasn't all puffed up and ready to continue the fight, like an idiot teenage boy would have been (hello, Heath and Erik!), and then I understood. Darius was still protecting me. If Kalona knew a Raven Mocker had almost killed me, without getting the rest of the story about it having been an accident, then maybe he would at the very least not leave me alone with one of them, and at the most warn his nasty children to stay away from me. That is, if Kalona still wanted me alive.

Then I quit babbling anything in my mind because Kalona was closing the space between us. I stood very still, staring straight ahead at his bare chest as he reached out, stopping just short of touching me. Slowly, with one finger he traced the path of my wound without actually stroking my skin, but still I could feel the chill that came from his body. I had to grit my teeth hard to keep myself from either shivering and cringing back or looking up into his eyes and taking the chance that I would lean forward just enough for his cold finger to touch my heated flesh.

"It is the mark of one of my sons," he said. "Stark, this time do not kill the warrior." I had just heaved a long sigh of relief when Kalona added, "Of course, I cannot allow him to wound my beloved son without redress. But I prefer to admonish him myself."