Hunted (House of Night #5)(6)

I chewed my lip silently, thinking that he was right but still trying to come up with a less horrifying alternative.

"No. I'm not going back up there. Not only is Kalona free, along with his totally gross bird babies, but I can't get caught aboveground when the sun rises, and I can feel that sunrise isn't that far away. I don't think I could survive it already hurting like this. Z, you're just gonna have to do it," said Stevie Rae.

"You want me to push on the arrow while you hold her still?" Aphrodite asked.

"No, watching it will probably be worse than helping with it," I said.

"I'll do my best not to scream too loud," Stevie Rae said.

She'd been serious, which made my heart squeeze then, just like it did now as I thought back. "Oh, honey! Scream all you want. Hell, I'll scream along with you." I looked at Darius. "I'm ready whenever you are."

"I will cut off the feathered end of the arrow that is still protruding from the front of her chest. When I do that, you take this," he handed me a wad of gauze that was wet with alcohol, "and press it over the cutoff end. When I have a good grip on the front of the arrow I'll tell you to push. Push hard while I pull. It shouldus said q I come out fairly easily."

"But it might hurt just a little?" Stevie Rae said, sounding faint.

"Priestess," Darius rested his big hand on her shoulder. "This will hurt quite a bit more than a little."

"That's why I'm here," Aphrodite said. "I'll be holding on to you so you don't flail about as you writhe in pain and mess up Darius's plan." She hesitated, and then added, "But you need to know if you go all crazy from agony and bite me again, I'm going to knock the shit right out of you." "Aphrodite. I'm not gonna bite you. Again," Stevie Rae said.

"Let's just get this over with," I said.

Before Darius ripped off what remained of Stevie Rae's shirt he said, "Priestess, I must bare your br**sts."

"Well, I've been thinkin' about that while you've been workin' on my back. You're kinda like a doctor, aren't you?"

"All of the Sons of Erebus are trained in the medicine field so that we can care for our wounded brothers." He relaxed his stern expression for a moment and smiled at Stevie Rae. "So, yes, you may think of me as a physician."

"Then I'm fine with you seeing my boobies. Doctors are trained not to care about that kind of stuff."

"Let's hope his training hasn't been that thorough," Aphrodite muttered.

Darius gave her a quick wink. I made a gagging sound, which made Stevie Rae giggle and then gasp when the movement caused her pain. She tried to smile reassuringly at me, but she was way too pale and shaky to pull it off.

It was about then that I really started to worry. Back at the House of Night the undead-dead Stark followed Neferet's pain-in-the-butt orders and shot Stevie Rae, blood had spilled out of her body at an alarming rate, so much so that it had made the ground around her look like it was bleeding, which fulfilled the stupid prophecy to free the stupid fallen angel, Kalona, from his gazillion-year imprisonment in the earth. Stevie Rae looked like all of the blood in her body had been left on the ground and even though she'd done pretty well up until then, and been walking and talking and mostly conscious, she was quickly fading into a ghostly white nothing before our eyes.

"Ready, Zoey?" Darius asked, making me jump.

Fear had made my teeth chatter so hard that I barely managed to stutter, "Y-yeah."

"Stevie Rae?" he said gently. "Are you prepared?"

"As I'll ever be, I guess. But I can tell you I really wish stuff like this would quit happenin' to me."

"Aphrodite?" He'd looked to her next.

Aphrodite moved so that she was kneeling on the floor in front of the bed and took both of Stevie Rae's forearms in a strong handhold. "Try not to flail too much," she told Stevie Rae.

"I'll do myN lX"5% best."

"On three," Darius said, with the shears poised to close on the feather end of the arrow. "One...two...three!"

Then everything happened fast. He'd clipped off the end of the arrow like he'd just cut through a tiny twig.

"Cover it!" He barked the command at me, and I'd pressed the gauze against the inch or so of arrow that still stuck out of the front of Stevie Rae's chest squarely between her boobies while he moved around behind her. Stevie Rae's eyes had been squeezed closed. She was breathing in short little panting gasps again, and sweat was beading her face. "Again on three, only this time you push against the end of the arrow," Darius said. I'd wanted to stop everything and scream No, let's just wrap her up and take our chances getting her to a hospital, but Darius had already begun counting. "One...two...three!" I shoved against the hard, newly sliced end of the arrow as Darius, bracing himself with one hand against Stevie Rae's shoulder, pulled the arrow from her body with one swift, awful- sounding, jerk.

Stevie Rae did scream. So did I. So did Aphrodite. And then Stevie Rae slumped forward into my arms.

"Keep the gauze pressed against the wound." Darius quickly and efficiently cleaned the newly exposed hole in Stevie Rae's back.

I remembered repeating over and over, "It's okay. It's okay. It's out now. It's all over now..."