Hunted (House of Night #5)(3)

"I am Darius, Priestess."

"He's a Son of Erebus warrior," Aphrodite had added, giving him a surprisingly sweet smile. I describe it as surprisingly sweet because Aphrodite is usually selfish, spoiled, hateful, and kinda hard to tolerate in general, even though I'm starting to like her. In other words, she's definitely not sweet, but it was becoming clearer and clearer that she really had a thing for Darius, hence the unusual sweetness.

"Please. His warrior-ness is obvious. He's built like a mountain," Shaunee had said, giving Darius an appreciative leer.

"A totally hot mountain," Erin echoed and made kiss noises at Darius. "He's taken, Twin freaks, so go play with each other," Aphrodite automatically snapped at them, but it had seemed to me that she didn't have her heart in the insult. Actually, now that I was thinking about it again, she'd sounded almost nice.

Oh, by the way, Erin and Shaunee are soul twins, not biological twins, being as Erin is a blond- haired blue-eyed Oklahoma girl and Shaunee is a caramel-colored easterner of Jamaican descent. But genetics didn't mattered with them--they might as well have been separated at birth and then rejoined by twin radar.

"Oh, yeah. Thanks for reminding us that our boyfriends aren't here," Shaunee said.

"'Cause they're probably being eaten by man-bird freaks," Erin said.

"Hey, cheer up. Zoey's grandma didn't say the Raven Mockers actually ate people. She said they just picked them up with their humongous beaks and threw them against a wall or what ever over and over again until every bone in their body was broken," Aphrodite told the Twins with a lighthearted grin.

"Uh, Aphrodite, I don't think you're helping," I said. Though she was right. Actually, as scary as it sounded, she and the Twins both might have been right. I hadn't wanted to think about that too long, so I'd turned my attention back to my injured best friend. She'd looked absolutely horrible--pale, sweaty, and covered with blood. "Stevie Rae, don't you think we should get you to a--"

"I got it! I got it!" Just then Jack had burst into the little side-tunnel area that had been made into Stevie Rae's room, followed closely by the yellow Lab that rarely let the kid out of her sight. He was flushed and brandishing a white briefcase-looking thing that had a big red cross on it. "It was right where you said it'd be, Stevie Rae. In that kinda kitchen tunnel place."

"And as soon as I get my breath I'll tell you how pleasantly surprised I was when I discovered the working refrigerators and microwaves," Damien said, following Jack into the room, breathing heavily and dramatically holding on to his side. "You'll have to explain to me how you managed to get all of that down here, including the electricity to run it." Damien paused, caught sight of Stevie Rae's bloody, ripped shirt and the arrow that still protruded from her back, and his pink cheeks blanched white. "You'll have to explain after you're fixed up and not en brochette anymore."

"En--Huh?" Shaunee said.

"Bro--What?" Erin said.

"It's French for something being skewered, usually food, cretins. `The world going insane and evil letting slip the birds of war'"--he raised his brows at the Twins as he deliberately misquoted Shakespeare, obviously expecting them to recognize it, which they just as obviously didn't--"does not excuse sloppy vocabulary." Then he turned back to Darius. "Oh, I did find these in a not-so-sanitary pile of tools." And lifted what looked like giant scissors.

"Bring the wire cutters and the first aid kit here," Darius said in an all-business voice.

"What are you going to do with the wire cutters?" Jack asked.

"I'm going to cut the quill end of the arrow off so that I can pull it the rest of the way through the priestess's body. Then she can begin to heal," Darius said simply.

Jack gasped and fell back against Damien, who put an arm around him. Duchess, the yellow Lab who had become completely attached to Jack since her original own er, a fledgling kid named James Stark, had died and then un-died and shot an arrow through Stevie Rae as part of an evil plot to let loose Kalona, a nasty fallen angel (yes, looking back on it I see that it's complex and even kinda confusing, but that seems to be typical for evil plots), whined and leaned against his leg.

Oh, Jack and Damien are a couple. Which means they're g*y teenagers. Hello. It happens. More often than you'd expect. Wait, scratch that. It happens more often than parents expect.

"Damien, maybe you and Jack could, uh, go back to that kitchen you found and see if you can whip up something for us to eat," I said, trying to think up things for them to do that didn't include staring at Stevie Rae. "I'll bet we'd all feel better if we ate something."

"I'd probably puke," Stevie Rae said. "That is, unless it's blood." She tried to shrug apologetically, but broke off the movement with a gasp and turned even whiter than her already totally pale complexion.

"Yeah, not really hungry over here, either," Shaunee said, gawking at the arrow that was poking out of Stevie Rae's back with the same kind of fascination that made people rubberneck at car wrecks.

"Ditto, Twin," Erin said. She was looking everywhere but at Stevie Rae.

I was just opening my mouth to tell them I really didn't care if they were hungry or not, I just wanted to keep them busy and away from Stevie Rae for a while when Erik Night hurried into the room.