Burned

with blood baggies. It’s too weird to think about drinking from someone I don’t know, ’specially so soon after, well, you know . . .” She trailed off. The three women would think she was talking about the recent breaking of her Imprint with Aphrodite.
    But she wasn’t thinking of Aphrodite—that was ridiculous.
    Stevie Rae was thinking that the only one she wanted to drink from, needed to drink from, was Rephaim.
    “Your blood smells wrong,” Lenobia said.
    Stevie Rae’s thoughts cleared, and her gaze went immediately to the Horse Mistress. “Wrong? What do you mean?”
    “There is something strange about it,” Sapphire agreed as she began cleaning the deep slashes with the alcohol-drenched cotton balls Kramisha handed her.
    Stevie Rae sucked in a breath at the pain. Through gritted teeth, she said, “I’m a red vampyre. My blood’s different than yours.”
    “Nope, they’s right. Your blood smells weird,” Kramisha said, averting her eyes from Stevie Rae’s wounds and wrinkling her nose.
    Stevie Rae thought quickly, and said, “It’s because he drank from me.”
    “Who? The Raven Mocker!” Lenobia said.
    “No!” Stevie Rae denied, then hurried on. “Like I kept tryin’ to tell Dallas, the Raven Mocker didn’t do anything to me. He was a victim, too.”
    “Stevie Rae, what happened to you?” Lenobia asked.
    Stevie Rae drew a deep breath and launched into a mostly true story. “I went to the park ’cause I was tryin’ to get info from the earth that would help Zoey because Aphrodite asked me to. There’re these really old vamp beliefs, somethin’ Warrior-based and not cool anymore, that she thinks can help Stark get himself to Zoey in the Otherworld.”
    “But Stark can’t enter the Otherworld without dying,” Lenobia said.
    “Yeah, that’s what everyone says, but recently Aphrodite and I found out about this really old stuff that might help him get there alive. The religion, or whatever you want to call it, was supposed to be represented by cows—I mean bulls. A white one and a black one.” Remembering, Stevie Rae shuddered. “Aphrodite, bein’ a total pain in the butt, failed to tell me the dang
white
bull was bad and the dang
black
bull was good, so I called up the bad bull accidentally.”
    Lenobia’s face had gone so pale it almost looked transparent. “Oh, Goddess! You evoked Darkness?”
    “You know about this stuff?” Stevie Rae asked.
    In what seemed like an unconscious movement, one of Lenobia’s hands lifted to touch the back of her neck. “I know a little of Darkness, and as Mistress of Horses, I know more than a little about beasts.”
    Sapphire swabbed at the cut that snaked around Stevie Rae’s waist, making her wince. “Ah, crap, that hurts!” She closed her eyes momentarily, trying to focus through the pain. When she opened them, she saw that Lenobia was studying her with an expression she couldn’t read, but before she could form the right question, the Horse Mistress asked one of her own.
    “What was the Raven Mocker doing there? You said it didn’t attack you, but it certainly wouldn’t have any reason to attack Darkness.”
    “ ’Cause they on the same side,” Kramisha added, nodding thoughtfully.
    “I don’t know about sides and all, but the bad bull attacked theRaven Mocker.” Stevie Rae drew a deep breath, and continued, “Actually, the Raven Mocker showin’ up was what saved me. He just kinda fell from the sky and distracted the bull long enough for me to draw power from the earth so I could call up the good bull.” Stevie Rae couldn’t help smiling as she talked about that amazing beast. “I’d never seen anything like him before. He was so beautiful and kind and so, so wise. He went after the white bull, and both of them disappeared. Then Dallas was able to get inside the circle to me, and the Raven Mocker flew away.”
    “But what you’re saying is that before the Raven Mocker got there, the white bull drank your blood?” Lenobia said.
    Stevie Rae had to suppress another shudder of remembered revulsion. “Yeah. He said I owed him payment because he answered my question. That’s probably why my blood smells weird, ’cause you can still smell him on me, and let me tell you, he reeked. And that’s also why I need to make that phone call. The bull
did
answer my question, and I gotta talk to Aphrodite.”
    “You might as well let her call. She don’t need them stitches anyway. Her cuts are closing up already,”