hollow-eyed, blanched so that it looked a sickly shade of fish-belly white. "Oh, Goddess! Zoey!" She started shaking her head back and forth, back and forth as she rushed over to me. "No, Zoey. No. I didn't see this." She was talking earnestly to me. "I never saw this. You beat the first death vision I had. The next one wasn't supposed to be you being cut again. The next was supposed to be you drowning. No! This isn't right!"
I tried to say something, but she'd already rounded on Heath.
"You! What the fuck are you doing here?"
"I--I came to see if she was okay," Heath stammered, obviously freaked by her intensity.
Aphrodite shook her head again. "No. You aren't supposed to be here. This isn't right." She paused and her eyes narrowed at Heath. "You caused this, didn't you?"
I watched Heath's eyes fill with tears. "Yeah, I think I did," he said.
Chapter Thirteen
Damien, Jack, and Erik ran into the room, followed closely by Duchess. Jack took one look at me, screamed like a girl, and fainted. Damien caught him in time to keep him from falling and bashing his head on the floor. He laid him down on Stevie Rae's bed while the poor confused Lab whined and stared with big, worried brown eyes from Jack to Damien and me, and then back to Jack again. Damien joined everyone else, including Erik, who was crowding around me. Darius waded into the group, parting kids like he was a vampyre Moses and they were the fledgling Red Sea.
"They need to cast a circle and focus the healing powers of the elements on Zoey," Darius told Aphrodite. She nodded, touched my forehead gently, and then started snapping commands at my friends.
"Nerd herd! Take your places. Let's get this circle cast."
Shaunee and Erin stared blankly at her. Damien, his voice thick with tears, said, "I--I don't know which direction is east."
Stevie Rae squeezed my hand again before letting it go. "I do. I always know where north is, so I can show you where east is, too," she told Damien.
"Make the circle around the table," Darius said. "And give me the sheet from that bed."
Damien grabbed the top sheet from Stevie Rae's bed, murmuring to an awake and crying Jack that it was going to be okay. He handed the sheet to Darius.
"Stay with me, Priestess," he told me. He glanced at Heath and Erik. "Keep talking to her, both of you."
Erik took the hand Stevie Rae had let loose. "I'm here, Z." He threaded his fingers with mine. "You have to make it through this. We need you." He paused and his beautiful blue eyes met mine. "I need you, and I'm sorry about all that stuff before."
Then Heath raised my other hand to his lips, kissing it softly. "Hey, Zo, did I tell you I haven't had one drink for more than two months?"
It was seriously weird to have both of my guys there. I was glad they weren't banging their chests at each other, but I understood that might not be a particularly good thing because it meant that I was hurt even worse than I'd realized.
I tried to smile at him. It was good. The reason I'd broken up with Heath right before I was Marked was his drinking. It had totally gotten out of control, and--
Darius pulled Erik's wadded-up shirt from my chest and quickly ripped the top of my dress in half so that I felt the cool air of the tunnel against my blood-drenched skin.
"Sweet Goddess, no!" Erik blurted.
"Ah, shit!" Heath was shaking his head back and forth. "This is bad. Really bad. No one can live with--"
"No human can live with this kind of wound, but she's not a human and I'm not going to let h6 k?)er die." Darius interrupted Heath as he (thankfully) covered my naked boobs with the sheet.
I made the mistake of glancing down. Maybe it was a good thing that I didn't have the energy to scream. There was a long laceration that went all the way from the top of my left shoulder, across my chest a couple of inches above my breasts, and didn't end until it sliced through the skin on my right shoulder. The cut was deep and jagged. The edges of my skin flapped sickeningly apart, showing way more muscle and fat and layers of skin than I was ever meant to see. Blood seeped from all along