by P. C. Cast
“That’s what I thought, too. Now I’m not so sure. I wish I knew the exact right thing to do.”
“I think there are a lot of times when there isn’t one exact right thing to do in a situation.”
Shaylin looked up at Nicole. “You’re really smart.”
“Nah, I’ve just made a ton of mistakes.” Nicole smiled at her. “But I’m not making one right now. I got you to quit crying.”
Shaylin’s smile was tentative. “I guess you did. Thank you. And, by the way, your colors have really turned pretty.”
“See, if you think my colors are pretty that proves what a great Prophetess you are.”
Shaylin was grinning up at Nicole when the fledgling bent and slowly, gently, kissed her on the lips. When Shaylin froze, eyes wide in shock, Nicole leaned away from her and quickly took her arm from around her shoulder. “I’m sorry,” Nicole whispered. Even in the darkness of the basement, Shaylin could see Nicole’s cheeks had turned red. “I don’t know why I did that. I’m really sorry,” she repeated.
Shaylin kept staring at her, seeing the soft beauty of her colors and feeling the soft, lingering warmth of her lips.
“Don’t be sorry. I’m not.” Then she put her arms around Nicole’s slender waist, rested her head on her shoulder, and said, “Would you stay with me and hold me?”
Nicole’s arm slid back around her shoulder. “Shaylin, sweetie, I’ll stay with you forever if you want me to.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
Kalona
TEN MINUTES EARLIER
Kalona was standing by the basement entrance waiting for Aurox to return, and thinking the boy might be a while since Zoey had gone to look for him, when a familiar hot, itchy feeling lodged under his skin.
“Erebus…” he grumbled.
“Did you say something?”
Kalona’s gaze darted down the hallway. “Aphrodite, what may I do for you?” He didn’t fist his hand over his heart or bow. Yes, this girl was a Prophetess of Nyx, but she was also the most annoying human he’d ever known. And Kalona had known many humans.
“I need to talk to Shaylin. She’s in the basement, right?”
“All of the red fledglings are,” he said.
“Except the two you dropped off in the wilderness to die.”
“Is there a point you wish to make?”
“Nope, just stating the obvious. I’m gonna go wake up Shaylin. I’d appreciate it if you’d give us some privacy to talk.”
“As you wish, Prophetess. Is your Warrior within screaming distance in case trouble breaks out below?”
“I don’t need Darius to deal with red fledglings. I have this.” She patted her purse.
“You think to break up a fight with a handbag?” She almost made him laugh.
“No, I think to break up a fight with this.” Aphrodite flipped open her leather bag. Kalona peered within to see a small black cylinder.
“You’re going to throw your perfume container at someone?”
“Oh, please, get with this century. It’s pepper spray, not perfume. I’ve been living under a basement in tunnels downtown. The Brady district and Greenwood and such are undergoing a lovely renovation, but I’ve learned it pays to be protected and prepared.”
“Then I will give you your privacy.” He did bow to her then. Aphrodite was so annoying that he tended to forget how amusing she could be as well. She made a shooing gesture at him with her pink painted fingertips before she ducked down into the basement.
He considered calling after her and telling her Zoey was just outside with Aurox, and then he reconsidered. It really would be amusing to see what would happen if Aphrodite discovered Zoey in Aurox’s arms.
Kalona was chuckling as he left the field house, exiting through the stables. He stood outside, collecting himself, and tried to ascertain from which direction his bastard of a brother would be arriving. It did not take him long to figure it out. Dreading the encounter, but resigned to its inevitability, Kalona headed for Nyx’s Temple.
He didn’t attempt to enter. Truthfully, he averted his eyes as he passed the wide wooden doorway and followed the stone building around to the rear of the temple, hoping that when his brother manifested, in his typically garish fashion, he’d do so wherever Kalona stood and the building would block enough of his light to keep from bringing the entire faculty down upon them.
Kalona did not have to wait long. The ball of sunlight that materialized above the ground was, indeed, garish, but Kalona did not give in to the urge to shield his eyes. Erebus stepped from the blinding rays, nodding and smiling wryly.
“Excellent job coming when I summoned you, brother,” Erebus said.
“It baffles me how you pretend that I want anything to do with you. You have been coming to me. I have existed for centuries without, as they would say in the modern world, giving you a call—or a thought.”
“Or a thought? Really? I believe your thoughts have often turned to the Otherworld since your Fall.”
“You are not Nyx, brother. It also baffles me how you mistake interest in the Goddess for interest in yourself.”
Erebus smiled. “I can end your bafflement with that. Nyx and I are inseparable. Her interests are mine, just as mine are hers.”
“Inseparable? Truly?” Kalona made a big show of searching around his brother. “Is the Goddess hiding in your sun ball? Oh, no. She wouldn’t be. I seem to recall the Goddess prefers the cool, soft touch of moonlight to the vulgar light of the sun.”
“Nyx sent me here!”
Kalona’s smile was slow and satisfied. “Then I welcome you, brother, as the Goddess’s errand boy.”
Erebus unfurled his wings. They spread around him and shimmered like sunlight on gold bullion.
“I come not as a boy, but as an immortal, Consort to the Goddess of Night, and I come with her warning!”
“Impressive,” Kalona said dryly. “But if you don’t stop sparkling and shouting, your warning will be witnessed by all of midtown Tulsa.”
Erebus’s wings folded along his back. His voice lost its Otherworldly volume, but his expression lost none of its immortal self-importance.
“Have you captured Neferet yet?”
“Surely you watch me enough to already know the answer to that question.”
“So, you have ignored Nyx’s edict.”
“I have not ignored anything. I’ve been busy fulfilling my oath bound duties to this House of Night’s High Priestess,” Kalona said.
“You’re out of practice if executing three children can distract you so much that you ignore Nyx’s command and fail to notice that Old Magick is manifesting in the modern world.”
Kalona refused to rise to Erebus’s bait. He didn’t address his remark about Nyx, and only said blandly, “Sgiach has been wielding Old Magick for centuries.”
“Yes, Kalona, but Sgiach is an ancient queen who has been wielding Old Magick for all those centuries on the Isle of Skye, a place that has long been devoted to preserving Old Magick. Tulsa, Oklahoma, is not the Isle of Skye, and there is no ancient vampyre queen here experienced in the use of Old Magick.” Erebus spoke in a patronizing tone as if he lectured the empty-headed village idiot.
“I know exactly where I am and who is with me. My facts are correct, unlike yours. I beheaded a vampyre who had been condemned for attempted murder by my High Priestess. She did not wield Old Magick. She simply invoked ancient law. And the vampyre I executed was not a child,” Kalona added, as usual not appreciating his brother’s tone.
“The boy was barely eighteen.”
“If you wish to take issue with the execution of a confessed murderer, then take issue with Thanatos, the school’s Council, two Prophetesses of Nyx, and Zoey Redbird.”
“Yet none of them lifted the sword that severed the vampyre’s head, just as none of them left two fledglings to certain death,” Erebus said.
“I am sworn Warrior to Thanatos. If she commands something of me I am bound to obey.”
“It is sa
d, for you, that you did not show Nyx that type of blind loyalty while you were her sworn Warrior,” Erebus said.
Kalona met his brother’s amber gaze steadily. “I have learned from the mistakes in my past. Have you?”
Erebus looked away.
“Pass along the warning you were sent here to deliver and begone. You bore me,” Kalona said.
“Very well, you are warned that by invoking ancient laws Old Magick has been awakened. Nyx cautions that you are playing with forces you may not be able to control.”
“Shouldn’t Nyx be telling this to Thanatos? It is her High Priestess who has begun trafficking with those forces.”
“And yet it is you who can tip the scales in a battle between Light and Darkness. The Goddess has seen it happen before near you. Raven Mockers were fashioned from Old Magick.”
Kalona felt a terrible stab of guilt, but still he said, “My sons were fashioned from rape and rage.”
Erebus nodded solemnly. “Yes. Old Magick.”
“Nyx wields Old Magick!” Kalona said.
“Have you become so delusional, so arrogant, that you believe you can wield the same power as the Goddess?”
“I harbor no delusions! My mind has not been so clear since I Fell.” Kalona advanced on Erebus. “And my arrogance is nothing compared to yours, little brother. Without me to provide balance, it is you who believes he is as mighty as Nyx.”
“Balance is exactly my point, brother. The bulls are Old Magick, and should be eternally locked in combat,” Erebus said.
“I have naught to do with the white and black bulls.”
“Do you truly believe that? You were by her side long enough to know that Old Magick is as tricky as it is powerful. Be wise! Be thoughtful! Have a care for the powers you are awakening before it is too late. That is the Goddess’s warning!”
Kalona squinted and looked away as the ball of sunlight engulfed Erebus and then disappeared, leaving annoying gold glitter that the immortal had to brush from his own wings.
“Nyx!” Kalona spoke to the sky. “He calls me arrogant, and yet he disappears in a sunburst of golden glitter. I do not understand how you continue to bear his foppish presence!”
Familiar laughter that had always reminded the immortal of a full harvest moon echoed around Kalona. He closed his eyes against the pain of her absence, even as hope increased his heartbeat.
“You watch me. I know you do,” Kalona whispered.
The laughter faded. Kalona opened his eyes. Feeling as if he carried a great weight, he started walking. He needed to get back to watch over the fledglings. That one thing he could do, and do well.
“No other fledgling will be allowed to do anything stupid enough to be condemned for—not as long as I watch over them,” he spoke his thoughts aloud. What Kalona didn’t say, didn’t even like to admit silently to himself, was how he could not get the two fledglings’ cries for mercy from his mind. Beheading the vampyre hadn’t been difficult. Dallas had attempted to murder a vampyre and had been justly condemned. It was the two fledglings who haunted him. They had been boys who had simply chosen unwisely and followed the wrong leader, he thought.
“Compassion.”
The whispered word halted Kalona’s. “Nyx?”
“Compassion.”
The word was repeated. It was spoken too softly for Kalona to be certain, but the warmth, the infinite love in it, had to be Nyx. And then Kalona realized where he had stopped. He was standing before the wooden door to Nyx’s Temple.
The door that turned from wood to stone under his touch as his Goddess denied him entrance.
Slowly, as if moving up through the centuries of longing for her, Kalona lifted his hand. He pressed his palm against the door and waited for it to turn to unyielding stone.
It remained wood.
Kalona’s hand trembled when it touched the door handle. He turned it and pushed, and with the sound of a woman’s sigh, the wooden door opened.
Kalona stepped into the foyer of Nyx’s Temple. He heard running water, though he hardly glanced at the glistening amethyst fountain that was recessed into the niche in the thick stone wall. He passed beneath an arched doorway and entered the heart of the Goddess’s temple.
Vanilla and lavender scented candles filled the room with sweet, heady fragrance. They were suspended from the ceiling in iron chandeliers. Freestanding tree-shaped chandeliers along the wall held more scented candles. Sconces shaped like a woman’s graceful hand were lit in the corners of the room. An open flame burned from a recess in the stone floor. Kalona barely noticed any of that. His sole focus was on the ancient wooden table in the center of the temple. It held an exquisite marble statue of Nyx. Kalona stumbled forward and knelt before the statue. He stared up at her. She seemed to glisten, and Kalona realized his eyes had filled with tears.
In a voice choked with those tears, he spoke to her. “Thank you. I know I do not deserve to kneel at your feet yet. I may never deserve it. Not after what I have done to us both. But thank you for allowing me entrance to your temple.” Then Kalona bowed his head and, for a very long time, knelt before his Goddess and wept.
Neferet
Neferet curled in upon herself, hugging the threads of Darkness that still covered her, and she relived the end of her journey.
Cascia Hall was what the humans had called the preparatory school that had been built in the heart of midtown Tulsa on the land that so called to Neferet. All male, of course, the human school had been newly founded by an Augustinian branch of the People of Faith. In the year 1927 it was not for sale. That fact had not troubled Neferet. The High Council was not ready to purchase another school in America—at least not in the Tulsa, Oklahoma, that existed in 1927.
Neferet had known that time was in her favor. In the seventy-five years it took for her to manipulate, intimidate, guide, and bribe the High Council into making the Augustine monks an offer they could not refuse, and appointing her High Priestess of the newly acquired House of Night in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Neferet discovered her true nature.
She was Tsi Sgili. No, she was more than a simple Native American ghost story. She was a powerful High Priestess whose gifts were so much more than they had seemed. Neferet was Queen Tsi Sgili.
Little wonder she had been so drawn to Oklahoma. It was through the Cherokee people who had settled there that Neferet discovered a hidden aspect of her intuitive gift. Not only could she read people’s minds—she could also absorb their energy. But only at the moment of their deaths.
The old woman had taught her that. Neferet had done more than steal her thoughts as she’d died. She had absorbed the old woman’s power.
Death became a drug, and Neferet had not been able to get enough of it.
She’d followed the echoes in the crone’s mind and begun to ask questions about the Tsi Sgili.
What Neferet learned was her own story. A Tsi Sgili lived apart from her tribe. They were powerful and delighted in death. They fed on death. They could kill with their minds. That was the ane li sgi the old woman had thought of just before her death—death caused by the mind of a powerful being.
The old woman’s Cherokee husband had inadvertently taught Neferet how to use her gift more fully. He had been less brave than his wife. Thinking to save himself he had opened himself to Neferet. Through the memories he willingly shared with her, Neferet learned much more about the Tsi Sgili. She fed from the tribal stories he had in his memory and discovered it was possible to slide into a mind and stop the beating of a heart while she fed on her victim’s thoughts, energy, power until he was drained dry. Draining the body of energy was so much more satisfying than simply draining it of blood. And so much more effective.
As Neferet had grown in power, so too had her dreams of the winged immortal, Kalona. He made love to her as she slept. Not as her inadequate human or vampyre lovers had attempted. Kalona had taken possession of her body and used pain for pleasure, and pleasure for pain.
All the while his whispers painted pictures of
a future where they ruled as gods on earth and ushered in a new age of vampyre enlightenment. Where she was his Goddess and he her adoring, powerful, seductive Consort.
“But first you must free me,” he had said as his cold fire had deliciously scorched her body. “Follow the song to Tulsa, and there you will complete the prophecy and find the means to free me!”
Neferet had listened to him. Oh, but she had found so much more than the means to free him. She had discovered the means to free herself!
She did not fully understand until she had taken possession of her own House of Night in Tulsa. There was power in that land that had resonated within her. It was there in 1927, and it had remained there after the turn of the twenty-first century.
The red earth had drawn her with its ancient power, but it was the death of her first fledgling that had truly set her fate.
Neferet had, of course, witnessed the death of many fledglings before she became High Priestess of Tulsa’s House of Night. She had often been summoned to soothe a dying fledgling’s passage with the gift of her touch. Neferet was revered for her ability to calm a fledgling who was rejecting the Change. Not one vampyre ever guessed that she took as much as she gave. The fledglings knew it, though. In their last moments, as Neferet held them in her arms, they knew she fed from their energy. Of course by that time they were beyond the ability to share that knowledge with anyone else.
So when the young fourth former who had named herself Crystal began to cough out her life’s blood in the middle of Lenobia’s first equestrian class at the new Tulsa House of Night, Neferet was immediately called for—not just because she was their High Priestess, but because she had been known far and wide to be able to soothe the pain of the dying.
“Move aside! Make room! Lenobia, take the fledglings to the field house and have Dragon Lankford bring Warriors and a gurney for the child,” Neferet had commanded as she’d rushed into the stables. Then she had turned her attention to Crystal. The fledgling had crumpled to the sand and dirt floor of the arena, convulsing and bleeding from her eyes, nose, mouth, and ears.