"Maybe you should expand your fashion sense. Little Black Dress on Cherry Street is closer, and they got them some cute jeans that ain't from the nineties," Kramisha said.

Three pairs of eyes shifted momentarily to her.

"What?" she shrugged. "Everbody knows Stevie Rae needs a make-over."

"Thanks, Kramisha. That makes me feel lots better, seein' as how I just almost died and all ." Stevie Rae rolled her eyes at Kramisha as she stifled a smile. But the truth was that Kramisha had made her feel better - normal better. And then Stevie Rae realized that she was, truly, feeling better. The blood had warmed her, and she didn't feel nearly as weak as she had just minutes before. Actually, she was kinda buzzing inside, like her blood was pumping super strong and surging all throughout her body. It's Rephaim's blood - the part of it that's mixed with mine is feeding off the human blood and giving me power.

"Stevie Rae, you seem to be awake and aware," Lenobia said.

Stevie Rae refocused on her external world to find the Horse Mistress studying her carefully. "Yeah, I'm definitely feelin' better, and I need a phone. Kramisha, let me borrow - "

"I'm cleaning these wounds first, and I promise you that you're not going to be able to chat on the phone while I do that," Sapphire said with what Stevie Rae thought was too much smug satisfaction.

"So wait until after I call Aphrodite to mess with me," Stevie Rae said. "Kramisha, dig in that giant bag of yours and get me your dang phone."

"It can not wait," Sapphire snapped. "Your wounds are severe. You have lacerations from your ankles to your waist. They need to be cleansed. Many of them need stitches. You need to drink more blood.

Actually, it would be preferable if we brought in one of the human volunteers for you to feed from directly - that would help in the healing process."

"Human? Volunteers?" Stevie Rae gulped. Stuff like that went on at the House of Night?

"Don't be na?ve," was all Sapphire said.

"I'm not drinking from some stranger!" Stevie Rae said with more vehemence than she'd meant to show, drawing raised-eyebrow looks from Lenobia and Kramisha. "What I mean is - I'll be fine with blood baggies. It's too weird to think about drinking from someone I don't know, 'specially so soon after, well, you know . . ." She trailed off. The three women would think she was talking about the recent breaking of her Imprint with Aphrodite.

But she wasn't thinking of Aphrodite - that was ridiculous.

Stevie Rae was thinking that the only one she wanted to drink from, needed to drink from, was Rephaim.

"Your blood smells wrong," Lenobia said.

Stevie Rae's thoughts cleared, and her gaze went immediately to the Horse Mistress. "Wrong? What do you mean?"

"There is something strange about it," Sapphire agreed as she began cleaning the deep slashes with the alcohol-drenched cotton balls Kramisha handed her.

Stevie Rae sucked in a breath at the pain. Through gritted teeth, she said, "I'm a red vampyre. My blood's different than yours."

"Nope, they's right. Your blood smells weird," Kramisha said, averting her eyes from Stevie Rae's wounds and wrinkling her nose.

Stevie Rae thought quickly, and said, "It's because he drank from me."

"Who? The Raven Mocker!" Lenobia said.

"No!" Stevie Rae denied, then hurried on. "Like I kept tryin' to tell Dallas, the Raven Mocker didn't do

anything to me. He was a victim, too."

"Stevie Rae, what happened to you?" Lenobia asked.

Stevie Rae drew a deep breath and launched into a mostly true story. "I went to the park 'cause I was tryin' to get info from the earth that would help Zoey because Aphrodite asked me to. There're these really old vamp beliefs, somethin' Warrior-based and not cool anymore, that she thinks can help Stark get himself to Zoey in the Otherworld."

"But Stark can't enter the Otherworld without dying," Lenobia said.

"Yeah, that's what everyone says, but recently Aphrodite and I found out about this really old stuff that might help him get there alive. The religion, or whatever you want to call it, was supposed to be represented by cows - I mean bulls. A white one and a black one." Remembering, Stevie Rae shuddered. "Aphrodite, bein' a total pain in the butt, failed to tell me the dang white bull was bad and the dang black bull was good, so I called up the bad bull accidentally."

Lenobia's face had gone so pale it almost looked transparent. "Oh, Goddess! You evoked Darkness?"