to her feet. She was a little wobbly but able to walk. As we reached Darius, he moved forward with us, always keeping himself between us and Stark. Just as we were passing by him, Stark spoke with an angry intensity that sent a chill down the back of my neck.
"You know, all I have to do is think about killing you and shoot this arrow. Wherever you are, you're dead."
"If that is so, then I will be dead," Darius said matter-of-factly. "And you will be a monster."
"I don't mind being a monster!" "And I don't mind dying if it is in the ser vice of my High Priestess and, ultimately, my Goddess," Darius said.
"If you hurt him, I'll come against you with everything I have," I told Stark.
Stark looked at me and his lips tilted up in a ghost of that cute, cocky smile he used to have. "You're a little bit of a monster yourself, aren't ya, Zoey?"
I didn't think that nasty comment was worth a response, and obviously neither did Darius. He kept shepherding us by Stark, opening the front door of the dorm and helping Becca inside. But instead of me following her in, I paused. Intuition was telling me that there was something I had to do, and much as I'd like to ignore my intuition, I knew I shouldn't. "I'll be right in," I told Darius. I could see that he was going to argue with me, but I shook my head and said, "Trust me. I just need a second."
"I'll be inside the door," Darius said, threw Stark a hard look, and then stepped into the dorm.
I faced Stark. I knew I was taking a chance with what I was going to say to him, but I kept remembering Kramisha's poem and the line that said, "Humanity saves her / Will she save me?" I at least had to try.
"Jack's taking care of Duchess," I said without any preamble.
I saw that flash of pain in his eyes again, but his voice wasn't touched by it. "So?"
"So I'm just telling you that your dog's fine. She's had a pretty hard time, but she's okay."
"I'm not who I used to be, so she's not my dog anymore." This time I heard a quaver in his voice, which gave me enough hope that I took a step toward him.
"Hey, the great thing about dogs is that they give unconditional love. Duch doesn't care who you are right now. She'll still love you."
"You don't know what you're talking about," he said.
"Yeah, I do. I've spent some time with your dog. She's got a really big heart."
"I wasn't talking about her. I was talking about me."
"Well, I've spent some time with red fledglings, too. Not to mention that the first ever Changed red vamp is my best friend. Stevie Rae's different than she used to be, but I still love her," I said. "Maybe if you spent some time with Stevie Rae and the rest of the red fledglings you could, I don't know, find yourself again. They have." I said this with way more confidence than I felt. After all, I had glimpsed fragments of the darkness surrounding Stark down in those tunnels, around those red fledglings, but I couldn't help believing it would be best to get him away from here, where evil seemed to come and go so easily.
"Sure," he said too quickly. "Why don't you take me to this Stevie Rae vamp and I'll see what happens?"
"Sure," I said just as quickly. "Why don't you leave your bow and arrows here and show me how to get off campus without the bird freaks knowing and I'll do just that?"
His expression hardened and he was a mean stranger again. "I don't go anywhere without my bow, and no one leaves campus without them knowing."
"Then it looks like I won't be taking you to Stevie Rae," I said.
"I don't need you to show me where Stevie Rae is. She knows all about their little hideout. When she wants your friend, she'll have her. If I were you, I'd expect to see Stevie Rae a lot sooner than you thought you would." Warning bells were ringing like a fire alarm in my mind, and I definitely didn't have to ask who the "she" was Stark was talking about. But instead of showing just how upset Stark's admission made me, I smiled calmly and said, "No one's hiding out. I'm right here, and Stevie Rae is right where