I've been struck with inspiration! Yipee!
But it was sooo hard to write this chapter cuz it's so boring in comparison with what's to come… (at least to me, anyway…) It's definately not my best chapter.
A BIG thanks to everyone who reviewed!!! You're what keeps me goin'! Thanks to MichaelJacksonScaresMe, Cythia, HeartTheCullens, KwopKilawtley,heatherkw, Tigerlilysmile, trish6911, vampluver19, kriki16, Cierra Hill-Thomas, and Guest for reviewing! You guys are the best!!! (so's everyone else who's reviewed this story in the past, I just suddenly decided to thank all the people who reviewed chapter 11!)
Enjoy!
Stevie Rae
(p.s., I gave up on the accent—you know, doin', thinkin', y'all, ect—stuff…it was pretty dumb anyway)
A sinister smile darkened Stevie Rae's face as she watched her former friend leave the room. Zoey was so gullible! Stevie Rae has actually made her believe that everyone hated her. Yeah, right. Stevie Rae's face contorted into a scowl. Everyone loves Zoey. Any boy that crosses her path falls hopelessly under her spell; even the idiot professor who was supposed to be faking it, Loren Blake. But Zoey would never get Kalona.
Kalona is mine, all mine— Stevie Rae thought possessively, before shaking her head rapidly to snap out of it. She didn't want Kalona, he was like a bazillion years old! She shuddered. Lately, strange thoughts had been making their way into Stevie Rae's head, and it was disturing her. Part of herbelieved that they weren't her thoughts, but the other part didn't know who else's thoughts they could be.
She sat in the darkness of the empty room until she felt a little twinge that meant her plan had worked. She glanced at the clock, only to find that Damien, Jack, Stark, Aphrodite, the Twins, and Darius would be back at any moment. She sat back and waited for them to come, leaning into a chair and crossing her arms. Only a few minutes later, Stevie Rae could hear the group approaching the room, ad the lights flicked on as they filed inside.
"Yeah, he didn't even have the decency to show his stupid, lying—" Shaunee was telling Erin in disgust as the group entered the almost empty room, before coming to a stunned halt at the sight before her.
"Zoey!" Stark cried in horror when he saw the empty bed. He turned his frenzied eyes to Stevie Rae. "Where is she? Did you see her?"
"She got up, apologized, and left," Stevie Rae explained, appearing crestfallen. "I don't know where she went." († Here lies the end of my inspiration. It's awfully sad, dontcha think? But I came back and continued later…)
Stark let out a strangled cry, obviously feeling like he'd let down his lady once again. Damien patted him comfortingly on the shoulder, and told him that she wouldn't have gone far. Shaunee and Erin looked at each other frantically, as if searching for the answer on the other's face. Stevie Rae yawned sadly, suddenly tired, but froze with her mouth wide open when she saw Aphrodite's icy gaze probing her mercilessly.
"Shouldn't we look for her?" Jack interrupted the cold silence that had taken over the room. Stark's face hardened with a new determination, and he nodded stiffly.
"Yeah. Definitely. Um, Shaunee, Erin you search the, uh, the dining hall. Maybe she was just hungry…" Stark sounded like he was trying to convince himself rather than them. "Darius and…Aphrodite, can you go search the grounds? And Damien and Jack, you go…go search the upper floors. I'll search the bottom."
"What about me?" Stevie Rae asked, narrowing her eyes. She had to at least pretend like she cared…
"Can you stay here, in case she comes back?" Stark's eyes held such agony, fear, confusion and pleading that Stevie Rae's heart cried out for him, and she hardly gave a thought to her answer; "Of course."
"Can you try to sense where she is through your warriors bond?" Darius asked suddenly. Stevie Rae's swell of compassion was swept away at his words. If they found Zoey, Neferet's plan would fail!
Whose plan? Stevie Rae thought with uncertainty, before sudden anger flared up in her. It was mine! Not Neferet's!
"Yeah." Stark closed his eyes and spoke quietly as he tried to find his lady.
No! He couldn't find her! It would ruin everything, every carefully thought out detail would be for nothing if—
"I-I'm not getting anything. Not a single emotion, thought, nothing," Stark interrupted Stevie Rae's hectic thoughts in barely a whisper.
"What?" Damien hissed. "That's not possible."
"What does it mean…?" Erin murmured to Darius, seeing as he would know the most about warrior bonds.
"What if it's not even Zoey?" Jack put in, a look of horror on his face. Stevie Rae rolled her eyes—he was sweet, but he was so dang dramatic!
"It was definitely Zoey," Stevie Rae argued, real confusion coloring her face. She knew it was Zoey. It's not that Stevie Rae wanted Stark to find her, but why wasn't he? Had something gone wrong?
"Then why can't I feel her?" Stark demanded angrily.
"What if your bond broke when Zoey's soul shattered?" Aphrodite asked slowly.
"Can that happen?" Stark inquired frantically, his eyes darting to meet Darius' gaze. The large warrior merely shrugged and let out a long sigh.
"It's impossible to tell. I've never before heard of a vampyre's soul shattering."
The room was totally silent. Stevie Rae wished she had a pin, so she could drop it. She shifted uneasily, imagining different scenes of how her ingenious plan could have gone wrong. She would have to check later to make sure it hadn't.
"Well, I guess all we can do right now is search for her," Damien sighed. He motioned for Jack to follow him as he silently left the room, with Darius, Aphrodite, Shaunee and Erin close behind. Stark took one last look at Zoey's empty bed before heading towards the door with his head down.
"Wait!" Stevie Rae cried, grabbing for his wrist before he could leave.
Stark looked at her in bewilderment, and Stevie Rae was suddenly unsure of what to say. Why had she made him stop? A little voice in her mind shouted, Tell him! Tell him where she is! Her eyes narrowed, and Stevie Rae shot back, Heck no! It'd ruin everything. She felt a familiar flood of darkness, and the disagreeable voice was easily extinguished.
She realized that she was still clutching Stark's wrist, and immediately let go. He was still looking at her with mystification.
"Um, I just wanted to know how the...how the hearing went," Stevie Rae saved herself quickly, relieved that she'd come up with something good. Stark's expression became tired, and he suddenly looked older than any vamp Stevie Rae had seen.
"Well, Kalona decided not to show up," Stark explained, "And since Zoey wasn't there, no one really took our side seriously. We tried to explain that Kalona had killed her consort which shattered her soul, but none of them believed us until we proved to them that we had shipped Heath's lifeless body back to his parents in the US. And even then, we only got two—maybe three—of them on our side.
"Neferet looked kind of POd at the beginning of the hearing, but she left about halfway through. With no one on the opposite side to contradict us, we tried to convince them—even showed them pictures Erin took with her camera of Zoey laying lifeless and without any of her marks. And still they blew us off. Well, most of them." Stark concluded quietly, before adding, "Kalona has the High Council under the same spell as the students and teachers of the House of Night, but unfortunately, it looks like only a couple of the High Council members chose good."
"So they still don't believeus?" Stevie Rae asked, her face emotionless.
"Yup," Stark popped the 'p' with a look of sadness and anger clouding his face that didn't match the happy sound.
And Stevie Rae was suddenly unsure which side she was on.
Zoey
I gasped out in pain as the harsh fabric rubbed my already raw wrists. I squirmed ineffectively against my restraints in the cold, darkness of wherever I was. My whole body felt battered, as if I had been kicked around violently, and then run over by a herd of vengeful elephants. The cold floor I was laying on felt good on my throbbing body, the smooth texture reminding me of the basement floor of the house I'd lived in before the House of Night—the step-loser's house.
I groaned as I tried to sit up and a wave of nausea overcame me, and pain started pounding ruthlessly through my skull. I wanted to stand up and find out where the heck I was, but my ankles and wrists were bound together with a very coarse, chafing material. There was a similar material over my mouth. It was bulky, and made it hard to breathe, so I tried to shift it's positioning with my shoulder, since my arms were trapped behind me. I whimpered as the fabric grated against the already sore skin around my mouth, and wondered how long I must've been down here to be so sore already.
Down here. Somehow I knew I was underground. I couldn't see in the blatant darkness surrounding me, but it felt sort of like the tunnels back in Tulsa. But how did I know I wasn't back in Tulsa? For all I knew, I could be in Antarctica. I shivered; it certainly was cold enough to be.
I poked around with my feet to find a wall, or something, when the wave of nausea had almost gone and my headache had settled for a dull, steady pounding. My bare foot came into contact with a hard, stony surface that I took to be a wall. I scooted myself closer to it, and, using my feet to push up and my hands to guide my ascent, I slowly rose to the standing position. And then I was stuck—my legs were bound together so tightly that no matter how hard I tried, I could not escape the terrible cloth tied around my ankles.
I sighed in frustration through my gag, when an idea hit me. I wished I could have smacked myself for my own idiocy. I called Fire to me, and asked it very nicely to burn through my restraints. It's comforting heat enveloped me, and there was an especially big tingle in the areas covered by the brutal material, but nothing other than that seemed to happen. I tugged at the binding fabric, but it didn't fall away as ashes like I'd expected. I wondered if perhaps the element didn't understand my muffled voice. Carefully, I used my shoulder once again to prod the stubborn gag out of the way. After a few minutes of pain, I got it free. I moved my mouth around a bit, wincing at it's sensitivity, before speaking.
"Fire, help me burn away this restraining fabric so that I may be free to do as I please, since the great goddess, Nyx has granted Free Will to all of her children!" I declared in my powerful High Priestess voice. Once again, I felt the same warmth and extra tingles, but when I moved my hands, the fabric was still holding me in place. Fear began to gnaw at me, but I kept trying.
"Wind, use your mighty strength to get this fabric off me! Water, with your mighty currents, help me get rid of my restraints! Fire, help me turn this horrid fabric to ashes! Earth, use your sharpest stones and roughest rocks to free me from these restraints! And Spirit," I paused, wondering what I could say. Then an idea struck me. "Spirit, tell my friends that I'm alright, and tell them where I am!"
I felt a warm gust of wind bluster around me, causing my hair and hospital gown to blow around—luckily, I was wearing something under it—and it almost felt like I was Wind. I smelled the fresh scent of the ocean, and felt as if I was part of it, with the current tossing me gently this way and that. A strong warmth washed over me once again, and I heard the crackle of fire, almost like it was coming from me. My ears and nose were met with the sounds and smells of a meadow, and it felt not as if I was standing in soft grass, but as if I was the soft grass. And yet with Earth, came a strange smell of something burning. I wrinkled my nose, and wondered what had caused that to happen, but as soon as it had begun, the smell was gone. I felt suddenly optimistic and giddy with pure spiritual fullness, and I could feel it as Spirit wandered away from me to warn my friends. My skin under the rough fabric began to tingle like crazy, and I hoped desperately that this would work.
With each element's familiarity, came a glow that was directly linked with the element's candle color. Yellow, blue, red, green and purple shimmered around me, but didn't mix to make a disgusting brown color. I marveled at each separate glimmer, all intertwined with the others in a beautiful aurora of brilliance. I took a swift look at the room around me; it was pretty much a small, ancient basement with no windows and one door. I was confident when I pulled lightly on my restraints. My confidence faltered when they—yet again—did not fall way. I narrowed my eyes, and pulled harder, and nothing happened except the burning of the cruel material against my skin.
My head snapped up in fear when I felt Spirit rejoin with me. It couldn't have gotten there and back that fast! I sent it again, this time keeping my eye on the purple glow that reminded me of my words in the 'Otherworld'. It floated gaily away from me, bounced off what must havebeen a wall, and happily returned to the other elemental glows. I stared at it, my fear escalating. Why couldn't it go to them? I tried to send it; again, and again, and again, to no avail. Each time it came and went, I was reminded more and more of my time in the Otherworld.
Finally, I gave up. I shakily sank back down the wall into a sitting position, and thanked the elements for at least trying. Tears welled up in my eyes, and without the soft glow of the elements, the dark room I was confined to seemed more menacing than ever. I shifted uncomfortably, my arms being stuck in a very painful position. I started to cry as I thanked the last element, Spirit, and had to watch it's soft, purple shimmer disappear. It reminded me more than ever of my words in the Otherworld, and my time with Heath. The last time I would ever spend with him, and it was all my fault. I never should have let him come to Italy. I let my body gently fall sideways so I was laying down.
"Oh, Heath," I whispered into the empty darkness. "I'm so, so sorry."
I cried harder and harder as I remembered and thought more and more about Heath. I remembered the life I'd had with him—before, and after I'd been marked. He's always been there for me—even when I didn't necessarily want him to be. And now he was gone, all because of me. I wondered if they've told his parents yet?
I eventually calmed myself down, and started distracting myself by furiously pulling at the cloth binding me. My wrists soon started to bleed with all my struggling, but I ignored the pain in a feeble attempt to free myself. Every once in a while, I'd try to send Spirit again, except only concentrating on one individual; Stark.
But what if he's ignoring our bond because he's so upset about my imprint with Kalona? I winced at this thought. Stevie Rae had said that they wanted nothing to do with me, but I had thought it would be different with Stark.
I tiredly watched the purple light glide through the air, only to bounce right back to me. Sending Spirit so many times was really taking a toll on me; my entire body was stiff, I was shivering violently—and the cold didn't help my condition. I called Fire to me to warm up, but it took almost everything I had left. I swear I was literally seeing stars when I felt the warmth, until I looked down at my body and realized that it was me. My skin was glowing with a flickering whirl of orangey-yellow colors.
I gasped in wonder at this strange new occurrence. My skin was flashing and dancing as if it had become Fire. Along with the warmth, came a surge of awareness, and I knew what I had to do. I had to act fast, before the attentive state I was in wore off.
"Spirit, one last time," I called almost inaudibly.
I felt it surround and strengthen me, and I returned it's power along with the energy Fire had renewed in me. I used every last bit that I could, even though I knew I would mostlikely end up unconscious. I filled Spirit with all the power I could muster, and all at once, I threw it harder than ever before, along with a message for Stark. Combined, they passed right through the wall and onward to my warrior—or so I hoped. I fell back to the ground in exhaustion, not having realized that I had sat up during the process.
"Stark, help me..." I murmured airily, just for good measure, before I passed out.
I'm sorry! It's another 'unconscious' end to a chapter! Gosh, I hate those...
I don't like writing emotional stuff. I do it when I have to, but I'm more of an intense-action/awesomeness kinda gal. So forgive me if you didn't think there was enough of that.
But it will get better, I promise.
I'm having less and less time to write these days. Would you guys rather have me update with
short chapters more often, or long chapters less often?
Remember to review!
Your Pal,
SuperOreoMan
