saw his blazing amber eyes and how his teeth were bared in a feral smile, and I understood that he was enjoying slowly choking the life from Darius.
At that moment Kalona's true self was revealed to me. He was not a misunderstood hero who was waiting for love to bring out his good side. Kalona didn't have a good side. Whether he had always been like this or not wasn't important. What he'd become--what he was now-- was evil. The spell he had worked over me shattered like a dream made of glass. I hoped desperately that it was too broken to ever be pieced back together again.
Drawing a deep breath, I raised my hands, palms out, not caring that the sheet fell away from my body, leaving me standing there naked. Then I used the last of my strength to evoke, "Wind and fire, come to me. I need yot 3d oveu." Instantly I felt the presence of the two elements, and beyond their presence I could sense Damien and Shaunee and had a brief flash of the two of them concentrating with their eyes closed as they added their combined wills to strengthen their elements. That little burst of power was all I needed. I narrowed my eyes and put everything I had into my command. "Make the winged guy get off Darius!" I threw my hands at Kalona, focusing the elements on the movement, and at the same time thinking how fire and wind had gotten me out of some pretty tight spots with those stupid Raven Mockers, so using them against their daddy should work, too.
The effect of the blast of hot air was immediate. It caught Kalona's outstretched wings and tossed him up and back, and there was a weird sizzling sound as the heated air touched his naked skin, actually causing mist to form in the air around him.
Darius had fallen heavily to the floor, but he was gasping for air while he tried to stand, putting his body between Kalona, Rephaim, and me. I couldn't do much more than try to control my breathing and blink hard to clear the weird little bright spots from my vision. Fire and wind had gone, leaving me barely able to stay on my feet.
A movement at the edge of my vision had me glancing at the open door and I gasped in surprise as Stark ran into the room, his bowstring already notched with a deadly-looking arrow. He lifted it to take aim at Darius, and then hesitated, shook his head like he was trying to clear it, and stared at me.
At the first sight of him I felt a wonderful rush of happiness. He looked like himself again! His eyes weren't glowing red. He didn't seem crazed and wasn't hollow-cheeked and skeletal. Then I realized I was standing there completely naked as he and I stared at each other. I grabbed the sheet pooling at my feet and hurriedly wrapped it around me, bath towel?style. Even in the middle of the big mess and stress that was going on around me, I could tell that my face was blazing red with embarrassment. I should have said something, anything to him, and instead my mind was frozen by the fact that he had just seen me completely naked.
Recovering his composure sooner than me, Stark lifted his bow again, renotching the arrow and sighting it at Darius.
"Stark! Don't shoot him!" I cried. I didn't bother to try to block his view of Darius. If Stark shot, he wouldn't miss no matter what I did. He couldn't miss. Unlike Kalona, my Goddess didn't take back a gift once she'd given it.
"If you are meaning to kill the person who threw me across the room, then that arrow will strike the priestess and not the warrior," Kalona said. He had gotten to his feet and he sounded perfectly normal. His expression was calm, but the skin of his naked chest looked flushed and kinda odd, like he'd suddenly gotten a sunburn. Small wisps of vapor were still lifting lazily from his exposed skin, even though both elements had left the room. "And it is not the priestess I want killed. It is the warrior."
Before Stark could fire his deadly arrow, I turned to Kalona, beseeching him, "Darius was just protecting me. It was a Raven Mocker who did this." I pointed to the long wound across my chest that was no longer gaping nastily open, but was instead an