Tempted

that choosing to save me was making a choice for what you would call evil?”
    Stevie Rae looked at him for a long time before she answered. “Then let that be on your conscience. Your life is what
you
want it to be. Your daddy’s gone. The rest of the Raven Mockers are gone, too. My mamma used to sing a kinda silly song to me when I was a kid and I’d messed up and gotten myself hurt. She’d sing that I needed to pick myself up, dust myself off, and start all over again. And that’s what you need to do. I’m just givin’ you a chance to do it.” Stevie Rae stuck out her hand. “So, here’s hoping that next time we meet, we’re not enemies.”
    Rephaim looked from her outstretched hand to her face, and back to her hand. Then slowly, almost reluctantly, he grasped it. Not in a modern handshake, but in the traditional vampyre greeting of clasping forearms.
    “I owe you a life, Priestess.”
    Stevie Rae’s cheeks felt hot. “Just call me Stevie Rae. I don’t feel much like a Priestess right now.”
    He bowed his head. “Then it is to Stevie Rae that I owe a life.”
    “Do the right thing with yours and I’ll consider myself paid up,” she said. “Merry meet, marry part, and merry meet again, Rephaim.”
    She tried to pull her arm from his grasp, but he didn’t let her go. “Are they all like you? All of your allies?” he asked.
    She smiled. “Nah, I’m weirder than most of the others. I’m the first red vamp, and sometimes I think that makes me kinda an experiment.”
    Still gripping her arm he said, “I was the first of my father’s children.”
    Though he held her gaze steadily, she couldn’t read his expression. All she saw in the dim light of the tunnel was the human shape of his eyes and their unearthly red glow—the same red glow that haunted her dreams and sometimes overwhelmed her own vision, tainting everything with scarlet and anger and darkness. She shook her head, and more to herself than to him said, “Being the first can be hard.”
    He nodded and finally released her arm. Without another word, he turned and hobbled away into the darkness.
    Stevie Rae counted slowly to one hundred, then she raised her arms. “Earth, I need you again.” Instantly her element responded, filling the tunnel with the scents of a springtime meadow. She breathed in deeply before continuing. “Collapse the ceiling. Fill up this part of the tunnel. Close the hole you made for me; plug it up; make it solid again, so that nobody can pass here.”
    She stepped back as the dirt in front and above her started to move, and then it rained down, shifting and solidifying until there was nothing but a solid wall of earth in front of her.
    “Stevie Rae, what the hell are ya doing?”
    Stevie Rae whirled around, pressing her hand over her heart.“Dallas! You scared the livin’ daylights right outta me! Dang, I think you ’bout gave me a heart attack for real.”
    “Sorry. You’re so hard to sneak up on I thought you knew I was standing here.”
    Heart pounding even harder, Stevie Rae searched Dallas’s face, trying to find a sign that he had even a hint that she hadn’t been alone, but he didn’t look suspicious or mad or betrayed—he just looked curious and kinda sad. His next words reinforced that he hadn’t been there long enough to have caught even a glimpse of Rephaim.
    “You sealed it off to keep the rest of them from getting to the abbey, didn’t you?”
    Stevie Rae nodded and tried not to let the wave of relief she felt show in her voice. “Yeah. I didn’t think it was smart to give ’em such easy access to the nuns.”
    “It would be kinda like an old-lady smorgasbord for them.” Dallas’s eyes glinted mischievously.
    “Don’t be gross.” But she couldn’t help grinning at him. Dallas really was adorable. Not only was he her unofficial boyfriend, but he was also a genius with anything to do with electricity or plumbing or basically whatever you’d find at Home Depot.
    Grinning back at her, he moved closer and tugged on one of her blond curls. “I’m not being gross. I’m being real. And you can’t tell me you haven’t at least thought about how easy it would be to chomp on these nuns.”
    “Dallas!” She narrowed her eyes at him, truly shocked by what he’d said. “Heck no I haven’t thought about eatin’ a nun! It doesn’t even
sound
right. And like I told ya before, it’s not smart to think a lot about eatin’ people. It’s not good for you.”
    “Hey, relax,