Tempted

hurt ankle and he didn’t seem very steady.
    Stevie Rae kept hold of his hands, giving him a chance to get used to being upright, and while she worried that he might pass out, she thought how weird it was that his hands felt so warm and so human. She’d always thought of birds as cold and flitty. Actually, she didn’t like birds much—never had. Her mom’s chickens tended to scare the bejesus outta her, what with their hysterical flapping and stupid squawking. She had a brief flashback of gathering eggs and having one fat, grumpy hen peck at her and just miss her eyes.
    Stevie Rae shivered, and Rephaim dropped her hands.
    “Are you okay?” she asked to cover up the awkward silence that gathered between them.
    With a grunt, he nodded.
    She nodded, too. “Hang on. Before you try much walkin’, let’s see what I can find to help you.” Stevie Rae looked through the garden stuff, finally settling on a good, sturdy wooden-handled shovel. She came back to Rephaim, measured it against him, and in one swift motion, snapped the handle from the spade end and handed it to him. “Use this like a cane. You know, to take some of the weight off your bad ankle. You can lean on me for a little while, but once we getin the tunnel you’re gonna have to go on by yourself, so you’ll need this.”
    Rephaim took the wooden handle from her. “Your strength is impressive.”
    Stevie Rae shrugged. “It comes in handy.”
    Rephaim took a tentative step forward, using the handle to help carry his weight, and he was actually able to walk, though Stevie Rae could see that it caused him a lot of pain. Still, he hobbled by himself to the door of the shed. There he paused and looked expectantly at her.
    “First, I’m gonna wrap this around you. I’m countin’ on no one seeing us, but on the outside chance that some nosy nun is gawkin’ out a window, she’ll just see me helpin’ someone wrapped in a blanket. Or at least that’s what I hope.”
    Rephaim nodded, and Stevie Rae wrapped the blanket around him, positioning it over his head and tucking it into the side of the bandage across his chest to hold it closed.
    “So here’s my plan: You know about the tunnels we’ve been stayin’ in under the depot downtown, right?”
    “Yes.”
    “Well, I kinda added to them.”
    “I don’t understand.”
    “My affinity is for the element earth. I can control it, more or less. At least some aspects of it I can control. One of the things I recently found out I can do is to make it move—as in creating a tunnel through it. And I did that to link up the depot to the abbey.”
    “It is this type of power that my father spoke of when he talked of you.”
    Stevie Rae definitely didn’t want to discuss Rephaim’s horrible daddy with him, and she didn’t even want to think about why he might have been talking about her and her powers. “Yeah, well, anyway—I opened up part of the tunnel I made so I could climb out of it and come here. It’s not far from this shed. I’m gonna help you get there. Once you’re in the tunnel I want you to follow it back to the depot. There’s shelter there, and food. Actually, it’s pretty dang nice. You can get well there.”
    “And why are the rest of your allies not going to find me in those tunnels?”
    “First, I’m gonna seal up the one that connects the depot to the abbey. Then I’m gonna tell my friends somethin’ that’s gonna make sure they stay outta the depot tunnels for a while. And I’m hopin’ that ‘a while’ translates into enough time for you to get well and get yourself away from here before they start pokin’ around.”
    “What will you tell them that will keep them from going into the tunnels?”
    Stevie Rae sighed and wiped her hand across her face. “I’m gonna tell them the truth. That there’re more red fledglings—that they’re hiding in the depot tunnels—and that they are dangerous because they haven’t made the choice for good over evil.”
    Rephaim was silent for several heartbeats. Finally he said, “Neferet was right.”
    “Neferet! What do you mean?”
    “She kept telling my father that she had allies among the red fledglings—that they could be soldiers in her cause. These red fledglings are the ones she was speaking of.”
    “They must be,” Stevie Rae murmured miserably. “I didn’t want to believe it. I wanted to believe they’d eventually do the right thing—choose humanity over the darkness. They just needed some time to get