by P. C. Cast
I opened my mouth to tell him that I didn’t loathe him, hell, I didn’t even dislike him, but he held up his hand, stopping my words.
“No, I understand why you loathe me. It’s not because you are a bad person. You are a really good person—a special person. It’s not your fault you feel like you do.” Aurox started to back away from me. “I just wanted to apologize for anything impolite I said last night. I’ll leave you alone now.”
“Aurox, hang on. Don’t go anywhere. I need to say something to you.” I motioned for him to follow me over to one of the many stone benches that were positioned under the huge oaks on the school grounds. “Okay, sit with me a sec and let me figure out how to say this right.”
He sat beside me. Well, not really beside me. Mostly he perched on the very end of the bench, as far away from me as possible. I sighed.
“All right. Here goes.” I took a long breath and blurted, “I feel as drawn to you as you are to me. I think about you. Wait, no, that’s not right. I make myself not think about you because I’m thinking about you.” I sighed again. “Like that’s not confusing. Anyway, here’s the deal—I’m seventeen, and inside of you is the soul of the kid I’ve loved for almost half of my life. But you’re not that kid, which is what I tell myself all the time, and mostly I can believe it. Then you’ll do something like sing the psaghetti song, or call me Zo with that one tone of voice that only Heath had, or get stupid drunk and say something that’s totally Heath-like, and I’m scared I can’t make myself believe it anymore,” I finished in a rush.
“It?”
I frowned at him. “See, that’s exactly what Heath would have said. I used a complex sentence and lost you.”
“Sorry, Zo.”
“You just did it again! And the it I’m scared of is that I can’t make myself believe that you and Heath aren’t turning into the same kid.”
“Oh.” He paused and I could practically see the wheels turning inside his head. “You still love Heath?”
I met his gaze and told him the absolute truth. “I’ll always love Heath.”
He didn’t look away from me, so when his grin started I saw the beginnings of it and how it made his eyes sparkle with familiar Heath mischief. “That’s good,” he said.
“No, that’s confusing, especially because Stark is my Warrior as well as my boyfriend,” I said.
“But did you not love Heath and Stark together before?”
“Well, yeah, but it was pretty complex. And stressful. For all three of us.”
“Yet you still loved them.”
He hadn’t phrased it like a question, but I answered anyway. “Yeah, and what I’m trying to get you to understand is that I think it’s just too hard to love more than one guy at the same time. I can tell you for sure what Stark would say about me trying that again.”
“Stark was kind to me last night.”
“Well, Stark and Heath ended up being friends. Sort of.”
“Then perhaps we can all be friends again,” he said.
Friends sounded safe. Who doesn’t need more friends? “We can try.”
“You could suck my blood if you wanted to.”
“Aurox! No. No, I do not want to suck your blood,” I lied, remembering how utterly, overwhelmingly awesome it had been to suck Heath’s blood and how much Heath liked it when I did. I narrowed my eyes at the kid. “Aurox, you don’t have Heath’s memories, do you?”
He shook his head. “I don’t think so. Sometimes I say or do things that surprise me because I cannot remember how I know them. There is only one thing I am certain that I have from Heath.”
I knew I shouldn’t ask, but I heard my mouth saying, “What’s the one thing?”
“His love for you, Zo.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Stark
“Are you sure we’re still on his trail?” Stark asked the winged immortal’s back between the panting breaths he was taking as he raced after Kalona.
“Can you not scent his blood?” Kalona glanced over his shoulder and then, obviously seeing that Stark was struggling to keep up with him, slowed to a jog and pointed to the grass of someone’s well-maintained lawn they were cutting through. “There, see where the vampyre’s blood has spattered the ground because it still seeps freely from him? My son did well in clawing his head—head wounds bleed easily and are difficult to staunch.”
“Yeah, especially if you’re moving as fast as he is.” Stark wiped the sweat from his forehead, jogging beside Kalona. “Who knew Dallas could run like this? I would’ve definitely thought we’d have caught up to him by now. He didn’t have that big of a lead on us. The kid can move. I always thought of him as one of those video-games-hands kids—soft and weak unless they’re pretending to be Zorg from the Planet Org, then they can destroy whole worlds with their fat fingers.”
Kalona furrowed his brow. “Your world still confuses me sometimes, but I can tell you I know why Dallas moves so quickly. He is fleeing for his life.”
“Hey, Thanatos specifically said you’re not supposed to kill him.”
“That is a shame. It would be just that I finish what my son began,” Kalona said.
“Can’t say I disagree with you.”
Kalona held out his hand, stopping Stark. They’d been following Dallas’s trail that led steadily west, and had run straight into busy Riverside Drive. “There.” Kalona pointed across the street to where the slick surface of the Arkansas River glistened in the moonlight. “He thinks to use the water to spread the scent of his blood downstream, and wash away his trail.”
“Thinks? You mean that won’t work?”
“Not for me it won’t. Blood still seeps from him—it is him I scent as surely as I scent his trail.”
“Huh. That’s good,” Stark said. Following the immortal across the four lanes of Riverside Drive, he was glad it was late and cold enough that joggers and bikers weren’t around. Sure, Kalona had put on a long coat, but those wings weren’t exactly inconspicuous.
Kalona paused after they’d crossed the asphalt bike path, bending to look more closely at the foliage. “Here is where he climbed down to the river.”
Stark looked at the weeds and sniffed, trying to pick up the sight or scent of Dallas’s blood. All he could smell was the muddy, fishy river. But the immortal seemed sure of himself, so Stark shrugged and followed him down to the river. When they reached the bank, Kalona paused again. This time he squatted. He seemed to be gulping big breaths of air while he stared across the lazily moving water. It’d been pretty dry since the ice storm in December, and the river was shallow, showing big stretches of sand bars between the sluggish water.
“I didn’t know you were such a good tracker,” Stark said, crouching beside him.
“I spent eons tracking evil beings that far surpassed this one small vampyre’s ability at subterfuge. It is a skill not easily forgotten,” Kalona said.
Stark watched him from the corner of his eye and wondered, not for the first time, just exactly what Kalona had done for the Goddess before he’d Fallen. And if he’d been so damn good at his job that centuries later he could still track scarily well, why had he Fallen at all?
“There!” Kalona pointed. “Do you see him, there, on the log near the far bank?”
Stark smiled. “I don’t need to see something to hit it. Just give me a little room and get ready to retrieve the asshole after I shoot him, ’cause now I get to do what I’m scarily good at.” He stood, notched an arrow, and drew the bow back. Bury the arrow to the feathers in the thigh of the vampyre named Dallas, Stark focused his specific thought—his specific purpose—and let fly the arrow.
It shot from the bow with a satisfying thrum, whistling through the air, invisible but deadly.
“Aaaah!” Dallas’s scream carried easily across the water.
Stark smiled cockily at Kalona and said, “Fetch.”
Zoey
It didn’t seem like first hour was ever going to end. I usually liked Thanatos’s special class.
She wasn’t the most entertaining professor at the school (uh, that would be Erik), but she was super smart and she let us ask just about anything—as long as we were respectful to her and to each other. I squirmed in my chair and glanced behind me. Dallas, of course, wasn’t in class. As far as I knew Stark and Kalona hadn’t returned to campus yet, with or without him. But all the rest of the red fledglings were here. The kids who weren’t part of Dallas’s group, like Shaylin and Kramisha, Johnny B, Ant, and the rest of Stevie Rae’s red fledglings, were sitting up toward the front of class, just behind the first row where my circle and Aphrodite and I sat. Nicole had come in with Shaylin and was sitting beside her. She’d totally ignored her ex-friends, who stared at her like she was road kill when she’d walked past them.
Aurox wasn’t sitting all the way over on the side of the room by himself today. When he’d walked in he’d hesitated as he started past us, and Damien had waved at him and told him since Rephaim was in the infirmary with Stevie Rae, the two seats next to him weren’t taken. Aurox had only paused long enough to glance at me. I’d kinda half shrugged and half nodded, and then he’d thanked Damien and sat beside him. So, there was only Aphrodite and Damien between him and me. I could see him taking notes as Thanatos opened the lecture by talking about the five major rituals discussed in The Fledgling Handbook.
Huh. Maybe Aurox was a good student. That wouldn’t be Heath-like at all. The thought almost made me giggle—as in the beginnings of hysteria, not as in a funny giggle—and I coughed to cover it.
“You okay?” Shaunee asked me softly. She was sitting on my left and I could see that I’d worried her.
“Totally fine. Just a tickle in my throat,” I assured her quickly.
Thanatos had turned to the Smartboard and was pulling up a picture of a super decorative knife on it. From the back of the room a balled-up sheet of paper was tossed onto my desk. I could see that there was writing on it. Frowning, I smoothed it out and read: TO BAD U DON’T DIE.
Aphrodite snatched up the note and crumpled it up, dropping it into her purse. “Ignore them,” she whispered. “Even I can spell better than they can.”
Dallas’s red fledglings hadn’t been as openly jerk-ish as they tended to be with Dallas leading the way. Instead they were a silently simmering pile of pissed off. They didn’t answer any of Thanatos’s questions and they never commented during her lecture. They just did mean stuff like throw notes when her back was turned. And I swear I could feel their beady little red eyes staring at me. I glanced over my shoulder.
“Stop looking at them,” Aphrodite whispered as Thanatos passed out copies of The Fledgling Handbook to all of us. “They want attention. Don’t give it to them.”
“I wish I knew if Dallas had been caught,” I whispered back.
“He will be. He’s not smart enough to get away from Kalona,” she said.
“I would like to discuss the second of the Major Rituals described in this chapter of your Handbook, Cleopatra’s Protective Ritual.” Thanatos’s commanding voice called our attention to the front of the class. She pointed to the Smartboard and the pictures of the decorative daggers. “Who can tell me what these are called when they are used only for rituals and spellwork?”
Damien’s hand shot into the air.
“Damien?”
“Athame,” he said.
“I knew that,” Aphrodite whispered.
“Correct. Thank you, Damien,” Thanatos said. “You will note that in the purest and most ancient form of Protective Ritual, fire is traditionally the element invoked.” She bowed her head briefly and smiled at Shaunee, who nodded enthusiastically back at her. “As we are fortunate enough to have a fledgling at this school whose affinity is fire, perhaps she can tell us what it is that is utmost in importance in a traditional Ritual of Protection.”
“Oh, that’s easy! It’s the High Priestess who casts the ritual that’s most important. Even though fire is an awesome protection, it’s only as strong as the Priestess who sets the spell,” Shaunee said.
I was super glad she’d answered because all I could remember about the Protective Ritual was that Cleopatra cast it and then messed up because she got all infatuated with Mark Antony and in the end he died and her element turned into a burning snake and ate her. Eesh.
“Absolutely correct, Shaunee. Thank you. So, students, the lesson we need to learn from the Protective Ritual isn’t about protection at all. It is about focus and integrity and purpose,” Thanatos said. “Events at this school have had me considering the lesson of the Protective Ritual carefully. As I meditated on this lesson it came to me that in the ancient world, vampyres tended to be more gifted than today’s vampyres.” Thanatos paused and looked at me. “Though recently the trend toward less gifts and less power in young vampyres seems to be shifting.” I didn’t know what she was getting at, but she definitely had my interest. “Consider, for a moment, the ramifications of such a shift. In ancient times, highly gifted vampyres, such as Cleopatra, were held accountable for their choices and their actions by the power they wielded. As you can read in the Handbook, and as reported by our historians, Cleopatra misused her Goddess-given gift. She stopped listening to her people. She took her affinity for granted. She thought only of her own needs and desires. Ultimately, her element, fire, consumed her.”
I tried not to fidget. Was Thanatos trying to tell me that I was messing up? I mean, I knew I’d been kinda short with people lately—and the whole Aurox/Heath thing was confusing and frustrating—but was she saying that I needed a five-element smackdown?
Hell! I hoped that wasn’t it! I’d been doing my best. Yeah, I’d been frustrated and annoyed, but at least I hadn’t been whining too much. Lately.
Aphrodite’s hand went up, surprising me and shutting off my inner babble.
“Yes, Aphrodite, you have a question?” Thanatos called on her.
“Yeah, I was thinking about what you said—how vampyre gifts were stronger and more frequent in ancient times—and how that looks like it’s changing, and I wondered if you have any idea why the power shift is happening.”
“That’s a good question, Aphrodite. I wish I had a definitive answer for you. I can tell you that I believe the shift has to do with a major change in the balance of Darkness and Light.”
“Maybe Nyx is giving us gifts so that we can fight back and balance things again,” Shaunee said.
“Perhaps,” Thanatos nodded.
“Could it have something to do with Old Magick?” Aurox asked.
We all gawked at him.
“What makes you ask that?” Thanatos said.
He shrugged and looked uncomfortable. “The bulls. Are they not a manifestation of Old Magick?”
“They are,” she said.
“Zoey’s Seer Stone is Old Magick, too. Isn’t it?” Aphrodite said.
I frowned at her.
“That is true as well,” Thanatos said.
“Okay, but does any of us know what Old Magick really is?” I said, irritated at the whole subject.
“Old Magick has not manifested outside the Isle of Skye for longer than I have been Marked,” Thanatos began slowly, as if she were remembering and reasoning aloud at the same time. “From what I know of it, the best description I can give you is that it is energy at its most basic level—raw, powerful, and neutral. Old Magick is creation and destruction at once.”
“Which is probably why ancient spells, like Cleopatra’s Protection Ritual, were so dependent upon the Priestess who cast the spell,” Damien said. “It could be that the five Major Rituals all had roots in Old Magick.”
“That does seem logical,” Thanatos said.
“It still doesn’t explain exactly what it is or why it’s become active again,” Aphrodite said. “But I’d say it’s definitely active again. Wouldn’t you, Z?”
Thankfully, the sound of the classroom door banging open and Kalona striding down the center aisle interrupted her.
The winged immortal bowed respectfully to Thanato
s. “High Priestess, I have returned with your prisoner.”
“You have done well,” she said, and then faced the class. “I want you all to assemble at the center of campus near the pyre site immediately. Class is dismissed.”
As we filed out of class, I watched Thanatos speaking quietly to Kalona. I saw the immortal’s eyes widen, and then he nodded, and bowed to her again—this time unusually low, holding the pose longer than normal. While he was still bowing, Thanatos went to her desk, picked up the phone, and punched a button. Her voice echoed from the school’s intercom system. “All students and faculty will assemble at the center of campus at the pyre site! Professors who are members of our Council will report to the Council Chamber immediately. All classes are suspended until after our assembly.” Then she clicked off and hurried out through the back door to the classroom, with Kalona on her heels.
I had a bad feeling. “I wonder what the hell’s going on?”
“Don’t have a clue,” Aphrodite said. “But whatever it is, it’s going to happen in front of everyone and it gets us out of at least one class, so how bad could it be?”
We went right to the pyre site and formed a big circle around the black burned area that had definitely seen too much use lately. I looked for Stark, but didn’t see him or Kalona. Darius met us, taking Aphrodite’s hand and saying he didn’t know what was going on, either. Just when everyone was starting to get restless and the talking was heading toward the I-have-to-yell-to-be-heard level, the people at the opposite side of the group I was in shifted and then parted.
Thanatos stepped into view first. She’d changed her clothes to a long black velvet dress that was decorated only with the emblem of Nyx in silver thread, hands upraised cupping a crescent moon. Thanatos had let her hair down, and it fell long and dark, in a thick veil around her waist. Within its depths I could see silver glinting, which reminded me of the thread used to embroider Nyx’s emblem. Her face was grim. I thought she looked scary but beautiful—ancient yet timeless.