Marked (House of Night, Book 1): A House of Night Novel

by P. C. Cast

  Neferet clamped her hands on Aphrodite’s trembling shoulders. “Awaken!” She spared hardly a glance over her shoulder at me to say, “Go now, Zoey. Her vision is confused. Elliott’s death has upset her. I need to be certain she is herself once more.”

  I didn’t need to be told twice. Heath’s obsession forgotten, I got the hell outta there and headed to Spanish class.

  I couldn’t concentrate on school. I kept replaying the weird scene with Neferet and Aphrodite over and over in my head. She’d obviously been having a vision about people dying, but from Neferet’s reaction it hadn’t behaved like a normal vision (if there was such a thing). Stevie Rae had said that Aphrodite’s visions were so clear that she could direct people to the right airport and even the specific plane she’d seen crashing. Yet today, all of a sudden, nothing was clear. Well, nothing but seeing me and saying weird stuff, and then screaming her brains out at Neferet. It so didn’t make sense. I was almost looking forward to seeing how she’d act tonight. Almost.

  I put away Persephone’s curry brushes and picked up Nala, who’d been perched on top of the horse’s feeder watching and making her weird me-eeh-uf-ows at me, and started slowly back to the dorm. This time Aphrodite didn’t hassle me, but when I rounded the corner by the old oak Stevie Rae, Damien, and the Twins were huddled together doing a lot of talking—that suddenly shut up when I came into view. They all looked guiltily at me. It was pretty easy to guess who they’d been talking about.

  “What?” I said.

  “We were just waiting for you,” Stevie Rae said. Her usual perkiness was missing.

  “What’s wrong with you?” I asked.

  “She’s worried about you,” Shaunee said.

  “We’re worried about you,” Erin said.

  “What’s going on with your ex?” Damien asked.

  “He’s buggin’, that’s all. If he didn’t bug, he wouldn’t be my ex.” I tried to speak nonchalantly, without looking any of the four of them in the eye too long. (I’ve never been a particularly good liar.)

  “We think I should go with you tonight,” Stevie Rae said.

  “Actually, we think we should go with you tonight,” Damien corrected.

  I frowned at them. No possible way I wanted all four of them to watch me drink whatever loser kid’s blood they managed to mix into the wine tonight.

  “No.”

  “Zoey, it’s been a really bad day. Everyone’s stressed. Plus, Aphrodite is out to get you. It makes sense that we should stick together tonight,” Damien said logically.

  Yeah, it was logical, but they didn’t know the whole story. I didn’t want them to know the whole story. Yet. The truth was, I cared too much about them. They made me feel accepted and safe—they made me feel like I fit in here. I couldn’t risk losing that right now, not when all of this was still so new and so scary. So I did what I had learned to do too well at home when I was scared and upset and didn’t know what else to do—I got pissed and defensive.

  “You guys say that I have powers that will someday make me your High Priestess?” They all nodded eagerly and smiled at me, which squeezed my heart. I gritted my teeth and made my voice real cold. “Then you need to listen to me when I say no. I don’t want you there tonight. This is something I have to deal with. Alone. And I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”

  And then I stomped away from them.

  Naturally, within half an hour I was sorry I’d been so awful. I paced back and forth under the big oak that had somehow become my sanctuary, annoying Nala and wishing that Stevie Rae would show up so I could apologize. My friends didn’t know why I didn’t want them there. They were just looking out for me. Maybe . . . maybe they would understand about the blood thing. Erik seemed to understand. Okay, sure, he was a fifth former, but still. We were all supposed to go through it. We were all supposed to start craving blood—or we died. I brightened a little and scratched Nala’s head.

  “When the alternative is death, blood drinking doesn’t seem so bad. Right?”

  She purred, so I took that as a yes. I checked the time on my watch. Crap. I had to go back to the dorm, change my clothes, and go meet the Dark Daughters. Listlessly, I started following the wall back. It was a cloudy night again, but I didn’t mind the darkness. Actually, I was starting to like the night. I should. It was going to be my element for a very long time. If I lived. As though she could read my morbid thoughts, Nala “me-eeh-uf-owed” grumpily at me as she trotted along beside me.

  “Yeah, I know. I shouldn’t be so negative. I’ll work on that right after I—”

  Nala’s low growl surprised me. She’d stopped. Her back was arched and her hair was standing on end, making her look like a fat little puffball, but her slitted eyes were no joke, and neither was the ferocious hiss that snaked from her mouth. “Nala, what . . .”

  A terrible chill fingered its way down my spine even before I turned to look in the direction my cat was staring. Later, I couldn’t figure out why I didn’t scream. I remember my mouth opening so I could gulp air, but I was absolutely silent. It seemed I’d gone numb, but that was impossible. If I’d been numb there’s no way I could have been so thoroughly petrified.

  Elliott was standing not ten feet from me in the darkness that shadowed the space next to the wall. He must have been heading in the same direction Nala and I were walking. Then he’d heard Nala, and half turned back toward us. She hissed again at him and, with a frighteningly quick movement he whirled around to fully face us.

  I swear I couldn’t breathe. He was a ghost—he had to be, but he looked so solid, so real. If I hadn’t watched his body rejecting the Change, I would have thought he was just looking especially pale and . . . and . . . weird. He was abnormally white, but there was more wrong about him than that. His eyes had changed. They reflected what little light there was and they glowed a terrible rust red, like dried blood.

  Exactly as the ghost of Elizabeth’s eyes had glowed.

  There was something else different about him, too. His body looked strange—thinner. How was that possible? The smell came to me then. Old and dry and out of place, like a closet that hadn’t been opened in years or a creepy basement. It was the same smell I’d noticed just before I’d seen Elizabeth.

  Nala growled and Elliott dropped into an odd, half crouch and hissed back at her. Then he bared his teeth, and I could see that he had fangs! He took a step toward Nala as if he was going to attack her. I didn’t think, I just reacted.

  “Leave her alone and get the hell out of here!” It amazed me that I sounded like I wasn’t doing anything more exciting than yelling at a bad dog, because I was definitely scared totally shitless.

  His head swiveled in my direction and the glow of his eyes touched me for the first time. Wrong! The intuitive voice inside me that had become familiar was screaming. This is an abomination!

  “You . . .” His voice was horrible. It was raspy and guttural, as if something had damaged his throat. “I will have you!” And he began to come toward me.

  Raw fear engulfed me like a bitter wind.

  Nala’s battle yowl rent the night as she hurled herself at Elliott’s ghost. In complete shock I watched, expecting the cat to go spitting and clawing through empty air. Instead she landed on his thigh, claws extended, scratching and howling like an animal three times her size. He screamed, grabbed her by the scruff of her neck, and threw her away from him. Then, with impossible speed and strength he literally leaped to the top of the wall, and disappeared into the night that surrounded the school.

  I was shaking so hard that I stumbled. “Nala!” I sobbed. “Where are you, little girl?”

  Puffed up and growling, she padded over to me, but her slitted eyes were still focused on the wall. I crouched beside her, and with shaking hands checked to make sure she felt all in one piece. She felt unbroken, so I scooped her up and began jogging away from the wall as fast as I could.

  “It’s okay. We’re okay. He’s gone. What a brave girl you were.” I kept talking
to her. She perched halfway over my shoulder so that she could see behind us, and she continued to growl.

  When I got to the first gaslight, not far from the rec hall, I stopped and shifted Nala’s position so that I could look more closely to see that she was really okay. What I found made my stomach clench so hard I thought I was going to throw up. On her paws was blood. Only it wasn’t Nala’s. And it didn’t smell delicious like other blood had smelled. Instead it carried the scent of musty dryness, old basements. I forced myself not to retch as I wiped her paws on the winter grass. Then I picked her up again and hurried down the sidewalk that led to the dorm. Nala never stopped looking behind us and growling.

  Stevie Rae, the Twins, and Damien were all conspicuously absent from the dorm. They weren’t watching TV—they weren’t in the computer room or the library, and they weren’t in the kitchen, either. I climbed quickly up the stairs, hoping desperately that at least Stevie Rae would be in our room. No such luck.

  I sat on my bed, petting the still distraught Nala. Should I try to find my friends? Or should I just stay here? Stevie Rae would eventually come back to our room. I looked at her gyrating Elvis clock. I had about ten minutes to get changed and to the rec hall. But how could I go on to the ritual after what had just happened?

  What had just happened?

  A ghost had tried to attack me. No. That wasn’t right. How could ghosts bleed? But had it been blood? It didn’t smell like blood. I had no idea what was going on.

  I should go directly to Neferet and tell her what had happened. I should get up right now and take myself and my freaked-out cat to Neferet and tell her about Elizabeth last night and now Elliott tonight. I should . . . I should . . .

  No. This time it wasn’t a scream within me. It was the strength of certainty. I could not tell Neferet, at least not at that moment.

  “I have to go to the ritual.” I said aloud the words that were echoing through my mind. “I have to be at this ritual.”

  As I pulled on the black dress and searched around the closet for my ballet flats I felt myself becoming very calm. Things here didn’t play by the same rules as they did in my old world—in my old life—and it was time I accepted that and started getting used to it.

  I had an affinity for the five elements, which meant that I had been gifted with incredible powers by an ancient goddess. As Grandma had reminded me, with great power comes great responsibility. Maybe I was being allowed to see things—like ghosts that didn’t act or look or smell like ghosts should—for a reason. I didn’t know what that meant yet. Actually, I didn’t know much besides the two thoughts that were clearest in my mind: I couldn’t tell Neferet, and I had to go to the ritual.

  Hurrying to the rec hall I tried to at least think positively. Maybe Aphrodite would not show up tonight, or be there but forget to harass me.

  It turned out, as my luck would have it, neither was the case.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  “Nice dress, Zoey. It looks just like mine. Oh, wait! It used to be mine.” Aphrodite laughed a throaty, I’m-so-grown-up-and-you’re-just-a-kid laugh. I really hate it when girls do that. I mean, yes, she’s older, but I have boobs, too.

  I smiled, purposefully putting an extra dose of cluelessness into my voice and launched into a gihugic lie, which I think I pulled off pretty well considering I’m a bad liar, I had just been attacked by a ghost, and everybody was staring at us and listening in.

  “Hi, Aphrodite! Gosh, I was just reading the chapter in the Soc 415 book Neferet gave me about how important it is for the leader of the Dark Daughters to make every new member of the group feel welcome and accepted. You must be proud that you’re doing your job so well.” Then I stepped a little closer to her and lowered my voice so she alone could hear me. “And I must say you look better than you did the last time I saw you.” I watched her pale and was sure fear flickered through her eyes. Surprisingly, it didn’t make me feel victorious and smug. It just made me feel mean and shallow and tired. I sighed. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”

  Her face hardened. “Fuck off, freak,” she hissed. Then she laughed as though she’d just made a huge joke (at my expense), turned her back on me, and with a hateful flip of her hair walked to the middle of the rec hall.

  Okay, I didn’t feel bad anymore. Hateful cow. She raised one slim arm, and everyone who had been gawking at me now turned their attention (thankfully) to her. Tonight she had on an antique-looking red silk dress that fit her as if it had been painted on. I’d like to know just exactly where she got her clothes. Goth ho store?

  “A fledgling died yesterday, and then another one died today.”

  Her voice was strong and clear, and sounded almost compassionate, which surprised me. For a second she really did remind me of Neferet, and I wondered whether she was going to say something profound and leader-like.

  “We all knew both of them. Elizabeth had been nice and quiet. Elliott had been our refrigerator for the past several rituals.” She smiled suddenly; it was feral and mean, and any resemblance she might have had to Neferet ended. “But they were weak, and vampyres do not need weakness in their coven.” She shrugged her scarlet-covered shoulders. “If we were humans we’d call it survival of the fittest. Thank the Goddess we’re not humans, so let’s just call it Fate, and be happy tonight that it didn’t kick any of our asses.”

  I was totally grossed out to hear sounds of general agreement. I hadn’t really known Elizabeth, but she’d been nice to me. Okay, I admit that I hadn’t liked Elliott—no one had. The kid was annoying and unattractive (and his ghost or whatever seemed to be carrying on those traits), but I was not glad he died. If I’m ever leader of the Dark Daughters I won’t make fun of the death of a fledgling, no matter how insignificant. I made the promise to myself, but I was also conscious of sending it out like a prayer. I hoped Nyx heard me, and I hoped she approved.

  “But enough gloom and doom,” Aphrodite was saying. “It’s Samhain! The night when we celebrate the end of the harvest season and, even better, it is the time when we remember our ancestors—all the great vampyres who have lived and died before us.” The tone of her voice was creepy, like she was getting into the show she was putting on way too much, and I rolled my eyes as she continued. “It’s the night when the veil between life and death is thinnest and when spirits are most likely to walk the earth.” She paused and looked around the audience, being careful to ignore me (like everyone else was). I had a moment to wonder about what she’d just said. Could what have happened with Elliott have something to do with the veil between life and death being thinnest, and the fact that he had died on Samhain? I didn’t have time to wonder any more about it because Aphrodite raised her voice and shouted, “So what are we going to do?”

  “Go out!” the Dark Daughters and Sons yelled back.

  Aphrodite’s laugh was way too sexual to be appropriate, and I swear she touched herself. Right there in front of everyone. Jeesh, she was nasty.

  “That’s right. I’ve chosen an awesome place for us tonight, and we even have a new little refrigerator waiting for us there with the girls.”

  Ugh. By “the girls” did she mean Warlike, Terrible, and Wasp? I glanced quickly around the room. Didn’t see them anywhere. Great. I could only imagine what those three plus Aphrodite would consider “awesome.” And I didn’t even want to think about the poor kid who had somehow been talked into being their new refrigerator.

  And, yes, I was going to be in total denial about the fact that my mouth watered when Aphrodite mentioned that there was a refrigerator waiting for us, which meant I was going to get to drink blood again.

  “So let’s get out of here. And remember, be silent. Focus your minds on being invisible, and any human who happens to still be awake will simply not see us.” Then she looked right at me. “And may Nyx have mercy on anyone who gives us away, because we certainly won’t.” She smiled silkily back at the group. “Follow me, Dark Daughters and Sons!”

  In silent pairs and small
groups, everyone followed Aphrodite out the back door of the rec hall. Naturally, they ignored me. I almost didn’t follow them. I really didn’t want to. I mean, I’d had enough excitement for one night. I should go back to the dorm and apologize to Stevie Rae. Then we could find the Twins and Damien, and I could tell them about Elliott (I paused to consider whether my gut feeling was warning me against telling my friends, but it stayed silent). Okay. So. I could tell them. That sounded like a better idea than following bitchy Aphrodite and a group of kids who couldn’t stand me. But my intuition, which had been quiet when I’d thought about talking to my friends, suddenly reared up again. I had to go to the ritual. I sighed.

  “Come on, Z. You don’t want to miss the show, do you?”

  Erik was standing by the back door, looking like Superman with his blue eyes smiling at me.

  Well, hell.

  “Are you kidding? Hateful girls, totally cliquish drama-trauma, and the possibility for embarrassment and bloodletting. What’s not to love? I wouldn’t miss a minute of it.” Together Erik and I followed the group out the door.

  Everyone was walking quietly to the wall behind the rec hall, which was too close to where I’d seen Elizabeth and Elliott for me to feel comfortable. And then, weirdly, the kids seemed to disappear into the wall.

  “What the—?” I whispered.

  “It’s just a trick. You’ll see.”

  I did. It was actually a trap door. Like the kind you see in those old murder movies, only instead of a door in a library wall or inside a fireplace (as in one of the Indiana Jones movies—yes, I’m a dork), this trap door was a small section of the thick, otherwise solid-looking school wall. Part of it swung out, leaving an open space just big enough for one person (or fledgling or vamp or possibly even a freakishly solid ghost or two) to slip through. Erik and I were the last ones through. I heard a soft whoosh, and looked back in time to see the wall closing seamlessly.