Chosen

lifting in the breeze that swirled restlessly around me. "Blow them the hell outta here!" I flung my hands out toward the two men, letting my anger explode with my words. The wind obeyed instantly, crashing into them with such force that they were swept, yelling and cussing, off their feet and hurled away from me. I watched with a kind of detached fascination as the wind dropped the two men down in the middle of Twenty-first Street.
    I didn't even flinch when the truck hit them.
    "Zoey, what did you do!"
    I looked down at Heath. His neck was still bleeding and his face was pale, his eyes wide and shocked.
    "They were going to hurt you." Now that I'd flung the anger out of me I was feeling weird, kinda numb and confused.
    "Did you kill them?" His voice sounded all wrong, scared and accusing.
    I frowned at him. "No. All I did was get them away from us. The truck did the rest. And anyway, they might not be dead." I glanced back at the road. The truck had come to a skidding, tire-squealing halt. Other cars had stopped, too, and I could hear people shouting. "And Saint John's Hospital is like less than a mile down the street." Sirens started wailing not far away. "See, the ambulance is coming already. They'll probably be okay."
    Heath pushed me off his lap and scooted away from me, pressing the sleeve of his sweater against the cut on his neck. "You have to leave. There will be cops all over here pretty soon. They shouldn't find you here."
    "Heath?" I lifted my hand toward him, but dropped it when he flinched away from me. The numbness was fading and I had started to shake. My god, what had I just done? "Are you afraid of me?"
    Slowly, he reached out, taking my hand and pulling me to him so he could wrap his arm around me. "I'm not afraid of you. I'm afraid for you. If people find out all the stuff you can do, I—I don't know what might happen." He leaned back a little, not taking his arm from around me, but looking into my eyes. "You're changing, Zoey. And I'm not sure what you're changing into."
    My eyes filled with tears. "I'm becoming a vampyre, Heath. That's what I'm Changing into."
    He touched my cheek, and then he used his thumb to wipe away the rest of the concealer so that my Mark was completely visible. Heath bent to kiss the crescent moon in the middle of my forehead. "I'm okay with you being a vampyre, Zo. But I want you to remember that you're still Zoey, too. My Zoey. And my Zoey isn't mean."
    "I couldn't let them hurt you," I whispered, really shaking now as I realized how cold and horrible I'd just been. I might have just caused the deaths of two men.
    "Hey, look at me Zo." Heath took my chin in his hand and forced me to meet his eyes. "I'm almost six one. I'm a kick-ass starting quarterback for a 6A school. OU is offering me a full-ride football scholarship. Would you please remember that I can take care of myself?" He let loose of my chin and touched my cheek again. His voice was so serious and grown-up that he suddenly reminded me weirdly of his dad. "When I was away with my parents, I did some reading up on your vampyre goddess, Nyx. Zo, there's a lot of stuff written about vampyres, but I didn't find anything that said your goddess is mean. I think you should keep that in mind. Nyx has given you a bunch of powers, and I don't think she'd like it if you used them in the wrong way." His eyes glanced over my shoulder to the distant road and the awful scene that was playing out there. "You shouldn't be mean, Zo. No matter what."
    "When did you get so old?"
    He smiled. "Two months ago." Heath kissed my lips softly, and then stood up, pulling me to my feet. "You gotta get out of here. I'm gonna go back the way we came. You should probably cut through the rose gardens and get back to school. If those guys aren't dead they're gonna talk, and that's not gonna be good for the House of Night."
    I nodded. "Okay, yeah. I'll get back to the school." Then I sighed. "I was supposed to break up with you."
    His smile turned into a full grin. "Not happening, Zo. It's you and me, baby!" He kissed me good and hard, and gave me a little shove in the direction of the Tulsa Rose Garden, which bordered Woodward Park. "Call me and we'll meet next week. 'Kay?"
    " 'Kay," I mumbled.
    He started to back away so that he could watch me leave. I turned and walked toward the rose garden. Automatically, like I'd been doing it for decades, I called mist and night, magic and darkness, to cover me.
    "Wow! Cool, Zo!" I heard him yell from