All of this explains why the last time I'd spent any time with Venus she was more than kinda disgusting looking since she was very nastily undead. But now she'd been fixed--or at least sort of--and I knew that she'd hung with Aphrodite before she died (and un-died), which means she had to have been totally gorgeous because Aphrodite didn't believe in ugly friends.

Okay, before I sound like an ?ber-jealous freak let me explain: Erik Night is to-die-for hot in a Superman?Clark Kent kind of way and, to carry through with the superhero analogy, he's also talented and honestly a good guy. Er, vampyre. Recently Changed vampyre at that. He is also my boyfriend. Er, ex-boyfriend. Recently ex-boyfriend at that. Sadly, that means I'm going to be ridiculously jealous of anyone, even one of the kinda freaky red fledglings, who might be catching too much of his interest (too much = any).

Darius's businesslike voice had, thankfully, interrupted my inner babbling.

"The radio can wait. Right now, Stevie Rae must be attended to. She will need a clean shirt and blood as soon as I get through with this." Darius spoke as he put the first aid kit on Stevie Rae's bedside table, opened it, and busily pulled out gauze and alcohol and some scary stuff.

That had definitely shut everybody up.

You know I love y'all like white bread, don't you?" Stevie Rae said, giving us a brave smile. My friends and I had nodded woodenly. "Okay, so you won't take it the wrong way if I say that all of y'all but Zoey need to go find somethin' to keep yourselves busy while Darius yanks this arrow outta my chest."

"All of them except me? No no no no no. Why do you want me to stay?"

I saw humor in Stevie Rae's pain-filled eyes. "'Cause you're our High Priestess, Z. You gotta stay and help Darius. Plus, you've already seen me die once; how much worse could this be than that?" Then she paused and her eyes widened as she stared at the palms of my still dorkishly raised hands and blurted, "Holy crap, Z, look at your hands!"

I turned my hands over so I could see what the hell she was staring at, and felt my own eyes widen. Tattoos spread across my palms, the same beautiful intricate pattern of latticework swirls that decorated my face and neck and stretched down either side of my spine and around my waist. How could I have forgotten? I'd felt the familiar burning flash across my palms as we all escaped into the safety of the tunnels. I'd realized then what that burning meant. My goddess, Nyx, the personification of Night, had Marked me again as exclusively hers. Had set me apart, again, from all the other fledglings and vampyres in the world. No other fledgling had a filled-in, expanded Mark. That only happened after a kid went through the Change, and then the outline of the crescent moon on the forehead was filled in and expanded to a unique, one-of-a-kind tattoo that framed the face, proclaiming to the world that he or she was a vampyre.

So my face proclaimed that I was a vampyre, but my body said I was still a fledgling. And the rest of my tattoos? Well, that was something that had never happened before--not to a fledgling and not to a vamp, and even now I wasn't one hundred percent sure what it meant.

"Wow, Z, they're amazing," Damien's voice came from beside me. Hesitantly, he touched my palm.

I looked up from my hands to his friendly brown eyes, searching them for any trace of a change in the way he saw me. I looked for signs of hero worship or nervous ness or, even worse, fear. And what I had seen was just Damien--my friend--and the warmth of his smile.

"I felt it happening before, when we first got down here. I--I guess I just forgot," I said.

"That's our Z," Jack said. "Only she could forget something that's practically a miracle."

"More than practically," Shaunee said.

"But it's a Zoey miracle. They happen pretty much all the time," Erin said matter-of-factly.

"I can't keep a tattoo and she's covered in them," Aphrodite said. "Figures." But her smile took the bite from her words.

"They are the Mark of our Goddess's favor, showing that you are, indeed, traveling the path she would choose for you. You are our High Priestess," Darius spoke solemnly. "The one Nyx has Chosen. And, Priestess, I need your aid with Stevie Rae." "Ah, hell," I muttered, chewing my lip nervously and balling my hands into fists, hiding myd , c exotic new tattoos.

"Oh, for crap's sake! I'll stay and help," Aphrodite marched over to where Stevie Rae was sitting on the edge of her bed. "Blood and pain don't bother me at all as long as they're not mine."

"I should take this closer to the entrance to the tunnels. I'd probably have more luck getting reception there," Erik said, and without so much as a glance at me, or a word about my new tattoos, he disappeared through the blanket door.