Hunted

before Kramisha went to sleep and read them while Jack and I were on watch,” Damien said.
    “What the hell are you guys talking about?” Aphrodite said.
    “When you were all drunk and disorderly, Z discovered poetry written on the walls of Kramisha’s room,” Erin said.
    “Written by Kramisha, but all of it seemed to be about Kalona, which is totally creepy,” Shaunee said.
    “It’s like she’s channeling abstract images about him,” Damien said. “I think the poems in her room were meant to catch our attention, which means we need to check out everything Kramisha writes.”
    “Oh, great. That’s all we need. More gloom and doom poetry,” Aphrodite said.
    “Well speaking of, here’s two new ones.” Kramisha tried to hand me the couple of sheets of paper the poems were written on, but moving my arms up so I could hold them made me suck air with pain.
    “Here.” Erik smoothly took the papers from her. Then he brought them to me and held them up so that Damien, the Twins, Aphrodite, Jack, and I could read them at the same time. The first one was baffling:

    What once bound him
    Will make him flee
    Place of power—joining of five
    Night
    Spirit
    Blood
    Humanity
    Earth
    Joined not to conquer,
    Instead to overcome
    Night leads to Spirit
    Blood binds Humanity
    And Earth completes.

    “That makes my head hurt. I mean, more than it already does. I cannot tell you how much I hate poetry,” Aphrodite said.
    “Do you have a clue about this?” I asked Damien.
    “I think it’s giving us directions on how we can make Kalona flee, or run away,” he said.
    “We know what ‘flee’ means, Mr. Vocab,” Erin said.
    “It’s kinda depressing that it says flee instead of kill,” Jack said.
    “Kalona can’t be killed,” I said, speaking the words automatically. “He’s immortal. He can be trapped. He can be chased away, although it boggles my mind to think about what might make him run. But he can’t be killed.”
    “Those five thingies together, in a place of power, make him run,” Jack said.
    “Wherever that is, and whatever they are,” I said.
    “They’re people who represent each of those things. Or at least that would be my first guess. See how they’re capitalized? That usually means they are proper nouns, or names,” Damien said.
    “They’re names,” Kramisha said.
    “Do you know anything else about it? Can you tell who they are?” Damien asked.
    Kramisha shook her head, looking frustrated. “No. It’s just when you said that they be people, I knew you was right.”
    “How about the next one?” Damien said. “Maybe it’ll help us make sense of this one.”
    I turned my attention to the other sheet of paper. The new poem wasn’t long, but it made my skin crawl.

    She comes back
    Through blood by blood
    She returns
    Cut deep now
    Like me
    Humanity saves her
    Will she save me?

    “What were you thinking when you wrote this?” I asked Kramisha.
    “Nothin’. I was barely awake. I just wrote the words that come to me with both of ’em.”
    “I don’t like it,” Erik said.
    “Well, it doesn’t help us with the other poem, that’s for sure. Actually, I think it’s talking about you, Zoey,” Damien said. “I think it’s foretelling your wound and your return to the House of Night.”
    “But who’s speaking? Who is this ‘me’ that’s asking if I’ll save him or her?” I was feeling weaker and weaker by the moment, and the long strip of my wound was throbbing in time with the beat of my heart.
    “It could be Kalona,” Aphrodite said. “That’s who the first poem’s about.”
    “Yes, but we’re not so sure Kalona ever had any humanity in him to lose,” Damien said.
    I carefully kept my mouth shut, even though my first impulse was to say that I did think Kalona had not always been like he was now.
    “On the other hand,” Damien continued, “we know that Neferet has turned from Nyx, which could also mean that she’s lost herself, or her humanity. It could be referring to Neferet.”
    “Ugh,” Erin said.
    “She has definitely lost her damn mind,” Shaunee said.
    “Actually, doesn’t it make the most sense that it’s that new undead kid talking?” Erik said slowly.
    “You may be on to something,” Damien said. I could practically see the wheels in his mind turning. “The ‘Cut deep now / Like me’ part could be metaphorical for his death. Zoey’s wound is definitely life threatening, and they’ve certainly both been drawn to the House of