“Really? In what universe do you think it’s okay for two men to ask a girl, who’s all by herself in a deserted park, for money?” As I spoke I felt my anger heat up again.
“Hey, what’s it to you?” the guy with the garbage bag said. “You’re a vampyre. It’s not like we scare you.”
I knew they thought I was a full vampyre. I knew that made them afraid of me.
I was glad.
“So, you’re used to scaring human girls into giving you some cash?” What total jerks!
The second guy shrugged. “If a girl don’t want to be scared, she shouldn’t be out here alone.”
“Oh, it’s the girl’s fault?” I’d meant the question hypothetically, but the garbage bag guy didn’t get that.
“Yeah, it’s the girl’s fault!”
“But we won’t scare nobody if they just give us some cash.”
“We don’t take no credit cards, though.” Garbage bag guy laughed and smacked his friend on the arm.
“You’re jerks. You’re both jerks. How about you get jobs instead of messing with little girls?”
“Messing with little girls pays better,” said the garbage bag guy.
“I was sitting here, minding my own business. You two need to remember that. You brought this on yourselves.” I stood. My whole body felt hot. I was really pissed. “Guess what? You should’ve picked another little girl to mess with today.”
“Hey, we wasn’t messing with you. We was just passin’ by,” said the second guy. He grabbed his friend’s arm and started pulling him away.
“Relax, girlie. No harm, no foul,” said the garbage bag guy, sending me a sarcastic grin and flashing his black, broken teeth.
So they thought they were going to slither off and find a real girl, a normal girl, to scare?
I felt like my heart was going to blaze out of my chest.
“No! Not today you’re not!” I threw my anger at them. It was a glowing blue ball of light. It slammed into the two guys, lifting them off their feet and hurling them against the stone wall of the ridge.
I was breathing hard and feeling good about what I’d done. They’d think twice before they messed with any other girl! Assholes!
Thunder cracked above me and a fork of lightning stabbed into the center of the park, making the hair on my forearms lift. It was then I realized I had my fist wrapped around the Seer Stone.
I blinked and shook my head. Wait, what had just happened?
I stared at the men. They were still there, lying in the shadow of the stony ridge. They weren’t yelling back at me or brushing themselves off and getting up, or even taking off because I’d scared the crap out of them.
I couldn’t see that they were moving at all.
Holy crap! I’d used Old Magick to attack the two men. It had been just like when I’d knocked Shaylin off her feet. I’d done it automatically after the burn of my anger had become unbearable. But the burn hadn’t been my anger, it had been the Seer Stone heating up, penetrating my body, feeding from my emotions and then striking out.
I let loose the stone and looked at my palm. A perfect circle had been burned into it.
Dazed, I looked up, seeing smoke coming from the heart of the park above me. The air smelled of electricity and fire and I realized lightning must have struck a tree, or maybe even one of the park buildings. Woodward Park was on fire.
Firemen would be coming soon. So would the police.
My knees were wobbly and my head hurt as I stumbled forward, getting closer to the men, staring at the two shapes that were crumpled at the base of the ridge. One of them moaned. The other’s arm twitched.
The sky opened and ropes of rain began falling, so that I couldn’t tell if the wetness was water or blood or my tears.
I didn’t think. I just ran.
I didn’t need to call mist and shadow to me. The thunderstorm cloaked me. No one noticed a lone girl, running through the rain, away from the burning park, especially since emergency vehicles and the police were swarming in the opposite direction.
I ran around the school wall, entering back through the hidden door. And I kept running until I was inside the stables, gasping and shivering. I went to the tack room and got a clean towel. Wrapping it around myself, I walked down the long line of stalls until I found Persephone. I slid the door open and entered the warm, dark stall. Persephone was sleeping the way horses do, standing with one leg cocked and her head low, eyes half-lidded. She barely moved when I went to her and wrapped my arms around her neck and sobbed into her thick, soft mane.
What was happening to me?
The guys in the park had been jerks, but they couldn’t have hurt me. Sure, they preyed on girls, scaring them into throwing cash their way, but they couldn’t have hurt me. I could’ve walked away and made an anonymous call to the police, given a description of them, and told the cops that they were loitering in the park, threatening girls. The cops would’ve run them off.
Instead I exploded on them.
I hadn’t even thought it through. I hadn’t done it on purpose. It had just happened. My anger had literally exploded through the Seer Stone at them.
What was it Aphrodite had been trying to tell me? Something about her vision and Old Magick and me losing control of my anger. I hadn’t listened to her. I’d cut her off and believed she’d betrayed me. I’d let anger control me.
“Oh, Goddess, that was wrong—so wrong of me,” I cried.
Then, through my sobs and the thunderstorm that roiled in the sky, I heard a siren. It wasn’t a fire truck. It wasn’t an ambulance. It was a police car. And it wasn’t speeding past the school toward Woodward Park. Its siren was getting closer and closer. It had to have entered our gate and pulled up to the school.
As if I were walking through a dream, I unwrapped myself from Persephone’s consoling neck. I dropped the towel. I left the stable and made my way outside to the sidewalk that led to the entrance foyer of the school.
Rain pelted me, but I didn’t pay any attention to it.
“Z! There you are! Shit, you’re soaking wet.” Stark ran up behind me, holding a big coat over himself.
“You shouldn’t be out here,” I told him woodenly. “The sun’s up. You’ll burn.”
He gave me a weird look. “I’m tired and it’s not real comfortable, but the clouds are covering enough of the sun that I can be out here. Well, at least for a little while. Z, get under my coat with me and let’s go back to our room. I know something’s wrong with you, but I don’t know what it is.”
I shook my head. “No. I have to go to them.” I kept walking toward the front of the school. There were two police cars, lights still on, parked there.
“Them who?” Stark asked, trying to hold his coat over my head and his.
“Stark, go back to bed. You can’t help me out of this.”
“Zoey, what are you talking about? What’s going on?”
I put my hand on the front door. “Go back,” I repeated. “You can’t save me anymore.”
He looked scared. Really scared.
I didn’t let myself feel anything. I turned my back on him and opened the door.
Thanatos was there. Darius was, too. As well as Aphrodite. For an instant I was surprised to see them, then I realized that Aphrodite must have gone to Thanatos after I’d taken off. It was the right thing for her to do. I would have done it if I’d been in her place. If I’d been thinking like myself, like Normal Zoey.
Detective Marx was there with two officers in uniforms.
“Z, did you get done walking the perimeter with Aurox?” Aphrodite spoke quickly, walking up to me. “I was telling Thanatos that I was worried about you out there in the thunderstorm. There’re even tornado warnings for Tulsa County.”
“Don’t,” I told her. “I don’t ever want you to lie for me.” I looked from her to Darius. “I don’t ever want any of you to lie for me.” Then I met Detective Marx’s gaze. “Why are you here?”
“Two men were just murdered in Woodward Park. Someone with supernatural power killed them—power no human has. That’s why the officers and I came directly here.” His face was grim. His voice lacked any emotion.
“And I was reminding the detective that our school is under lockdown. No fledgling or vampyre has left the campus since the night the mayor was killed,” Thanatos said.
“I left campus. I went to Woodward Park. I slammed those two guys against the stone wall at the bottom of the ridge. I killed them.” My voice sounded as dead as the men, as dead as I felt.
“Zoey! Why the hell would you say something like that?” Stark grabbed me and gave my shoulders a shake. “Snap out of it!”
I stared at him, hardening my heart, freezing my feelings. “You need to stay here. I don’t want to see you again. I don’t want to see anyone. I did this. I deserve this.” I moved out of his grasp. As I walked toward Detective Marx I reached up, grasped the Seer Stone, and pulled, breaking the silver chain that held it. I handed it to Aphrodite. “Don’t let anyone except you or Sgiach touch this thing. You were right. It’s awake, and it’s bad.”