Page 2 (1/2)

The crowd erupted in panic

Everything was happening at once; Thea couldn’t sort out the different i The other half were yelling

"Call nine-one-one-"

"It got Eric-"

"I told you to kill it!"

The red-headed boy was darting forith his stick Other kids were rushing around, looking for rocks The group had beco wildly, a terrifying sizzling sound It was in a frenzy, ready to strike again at anyThea could do

"Hey!" The voice startled her It cauys Josh, giveto the redhead with the forked branch "It didn’t bite me It just struck"

Thea stared at hi to hi her rock

"Just let et hold of it then I can take it out into the brush where it won’t hurt anybody"

Definitely crazy He was talking in such ato try to pin the snake doith that stick Somebody had to act fast

A flash of ruby-color caught Thea’s eye Blaise was in the croatching with pursed lips Thea made her decision

She dove for the snake

It atching the stick Thea grabbed for itsits body-which kept it immobilized for the instant she needed to seize it just below the head She hung on while its jaws gaped and its body lashed

"Grab the tail and we’ll get it out of here," she said breathlessly to Eric the crazy guy

Eric was staring at her grip on the snake, duo It can twist in a second"

"I know Grab it!"

He grabbed it Most of the crowd scattered as Thea wheeled around with the snake’s head held tightly at arth Blaise didn’t run, she just looked at the snake as if it smelled bad

"I need this," Thea whispered hastily as she passed her cousin She snatched at Blaise’s necklace with her free hand The fragile gold chain broke and Thea’s fingers closed around a stone

Then she was heading out into the scrub brush, the weight of the snake dragging on her arm She walked fast, because Eric didn’t have rounds behind the school sloped up and then doard, getting wilder and ht, Thea stopped

"This is a good place," Eric said His voice was strained

Thea glanced back and saw that he looked pale Brave and very, very crazy, she thought "Okay, we let go on three" She jerked her head "Throw it that way and back up fast"

He nodded and counted with her "One two three"

Giving it a slight swing, they both let go The snake flew in a graceful arc and landed near a cluled ihtest hint of gratitude Thea felt its cool, scaly ht, That smell that shade safety

She let out the breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding

Behind her, she heard Eric sit down abruptly "Well, that’s that" His own breathing was fast and irregular "Now could I ask you a favor?"

He was sitting with his long legs straight out, his skin even paler than before Perspiration beaded on his upper lip

"You know, I’m not really sure it didn’t bite me," he said

Thea knew-and knew Eric knew-that it had Rattlers did so, and did so venom But not this time What she couldn’t believe was that any huo untreated

"Let ," she said

"Actually, I think maybe you’d better just call the paramedics"

"Please letin front of hi slowly The way she’d approach a scared ani

There it was, the little double wound in the tanned skin Notalready Even if she ran back to the school, even if the parah Sure, they’d save his life, but his leg would swell up like a sausage and turn purple and he’d have days of unbelievable pain

Except that Thea had in her hand an Isis bloodstone A deep red carnelian engraved with a scarab, syyptians had put the stones at the feet of hten passion But it was also the most powerful purifier of the blood in existence

Eric groaned suddenly His ar Weakness, nausea, disorientation She felt sorry for hie

She pressed her hand to the wounds, the carnelian hidden between her tightly closed fingers Then she started to hu what she wanted to happen The thing about gems was that they didn’t work on their own They were just ait to a certain purpose

Find the poison, surround it, dispel it Purify and elie the body’s natural defenses Finally, soothe away the swelling and redness, sending the blood back where it belonged

As she knelt there, feeling the sun on the back of her head, she suddenly realized that she’d never done this before She’d healed ani and cats with spider bites-but never a person Funny how she’d known instinctively that she could do it She’d almost felt that she had to do it

She sat back on her heels, pocketing the bloodstone "How are you feeling?"

"Huh?" He took his arm away from his eyes "Sorry-I think I sort of blanked out there for a ht "But how do you feel now?"

He looked at her as if he were struggling under pressure to be gentle He was going to explain to her that people who got bitten by rattlesnakes felt sick But then his expression changed "I feel it’s weird I think one numb" He peered doubtfully at his calf

"No, you were just lucky You didn’t get bitten"

"What?" He scraher Then he just stared The flesh was shtest trace ot redness left "I was sure"

He lifted his eyes to hers

It was the first tiotten a chance to look at hiuy, lean and sandy-haired and sweet-faced Long legs And those eyes deep green with gray flecks Just now they were both intense and bewildered, like those of a startled kid

"How’d you do that?" he said

Thea was shocked speechless

He wasn’t supposed to respond like this What rong with hiain, she said, "I didn’t do anything"

"Yes, you did," he said, and now his eyes were clear and direct, full of an odd conviction Suddenly his expression changed to so so different about you"

He leaned forward slowly, as if entranced And then Thea experienced an odd duality She was used to seeing herself through the eyes of ani, hairless creature in false skins But now she saw herself as Eric saw her A kneeling girl with yellow hair falling loose over her shoulders and soft brown eyes A face that was too gentle, with a very worried expression

"You’re beautiful," Eric said, still wondering "I’ve never seen anybody but it’s like there’s a mist all around you You’re sostillness see so hard that it shook her body What was happening?

"It’s like you’re part of everything out here," he said in that wise, childlike voice "You belong to it And there’s so much peace"

"No," Thea said There was no peace at all in her She was terrified She didn’t knoas going on, but she knew she had to get away

"Don’t go," he said, when she shifted He had the stricken expression of a heartbroken puppy

And then he reached for her Not roughly His fingers didn’t close on her wrist They just brushed the back of her hand, sliding ahen she jerked

But it didn’t ht touch had raised all the hairs on Thea’s forearreen eyes, she knew he’d felt it, too

A sort of piercing sweetness, a dizzying exhilaration And-a connection As if so communicated