“Skye, like in Scotland?” Damien said.
“Yes. It is there that the very first vampyre Warriors were trained,” Darius said.
“But not anymore, right?” Damien said, looking from Darius to Stark. “I mean, Warrior training goes on at all the Houses of Night. Like Dragon Lankford trains a bunch of Warriors who come from all over, and he’s definitely not in Scotland.”
“You are correct, Damien. In the modern world the training of Warriors takes place at the House of Night schools throughout the world,” Thanatos said. “Around the turn of the nineteenth century, the High Council decided that would a more convenient way of doing things.”
“More convenient and more civilized, I bet,” Aphrodite said.
“You, too, are correct, Prophetess,” Thanatos said.
“That’s it, then. I take Zoey to the Isle of Women and Sgiach,” Stark said.
“And then what?” Aphrodite asked.
“Then I get uncivilized so that I can figure out how to fight my way into the Otherworld without dying, and, once I’m there, I do whatever I have to do to bring Zoey back to us.”
“Huh,” said Aphrodite. “That actually doesn’t sound like a bad idea.”
“If Stark is allowed to enter the Isle,” Darius said.
“It’s a House of Night. Why wouldn’t they let Stark come in?” Damien said.
“It’s a House of Night like none other,” Thanatos said. “The High Council’s decision to move the training of the Sons of Erebus from Skye and spread them out among the Houses of Night worldwide was a decision that was the culmination of many, many years of tension and unease between the reigning Sgiach and the High Council.”
“You make her sound like a queen,” Jack said.
“In a way she is—a queen whose subjects were Warriors,” Thanatos said.
“A queen in charge of the Sons of Erebus? I know the vamp High Council wouldn’t like that, not unless Queen Sgiach was part of the High Council, too,” Aphrodite said.
“Sgiach is a Warrior,” Thanatos said. “And Warriors are not allowed on the High Council.”
“But Sgiach is a woman. She should be able to be voted onto the Council,” Damien said.
“No,” Darius said. “No Warrior can sit on the Council. That is vampyre law.”
“And that probably pissed off Sgiach,” Aphrodite said. “I know it’d piss me off. She should be able to sit on the High Council.”
Thanatos bowed her head in acknowledgment. “I agree with you, Prophetess, but many did not. When the training of the Sons of Erebus Warriors was taken from her, Sgiach withdrew to the Isle of Skye. She spoke to no one about her intention, but she didn’t need to. We all felt her anger. We also felt the protective circle she cast around her Isle.” Thanatos’s eyes were filled with the shadows of memories of the past. “No one had experienced its like since the mighty vampyre Cleopatra cast a protective circle around her beloved Alexandria.”
“No one enters the Isle of Women without the permission of Sgiach,” Darius said.
“If they attempt to do so—they die,” Thanatos said.
“Well, how do I get permission to enter the Isle?” Stark asked.
There was a long, awkward silence, and then Thanatos said, “Therein lies the first of your problems. Since Sgiach cast her protective circle, no outsider has been given permission to enter her Isle.”
“I’ll get permission,” Stark said firmly.
“How are you going to do that, Warrior?” Thanatos asked.
Stark blew out a long breath, and said, “I know how I’m not going to do it. I’m not going to be civilized. And right now that’s about all I know.”
“Hang on,” Damien said. “Thanatos, Darius, you both know things about Sgiach and this ancient barbaric religion. So, where did you learn it?”
“I’ve always liked to read.” Darius shrugged. “So I was drawn to the old scrolls at the House of Night where I studied the blade. In my off time, I read.”
“Dangerous and sexy. That’s an excellent combination,” Aphrodite purred, snuggling into him.
“Okay, we’ll all barf later,” Erin said.
“Yeah, right now, stop interrupting,” Shaunee said.
“What about your knowledge of the bulls and Sgiach?” Damien asked Thanatos, giving the Twins and Aphrodite “be quiet” looks.
“From ancient texts here in the palace archives. When I first became a High Priestess, I spent many hours studying here by myself. I had to; I had no mentor,” Thanatos said.
“No mentor? That’d be hard,” Stark said.
“Apparently our world only needs one High Priestess at a time who has been gifted with an affinity for death,” Thanatos said with a wry smile.
“That’s a sucky job description,” Jack said, and then clamped his hand over his mouth, and squeaked, “Sorry!”
Thanatos’s smile widened. “I take no offense at your words, child. To be allied with Death is not an easy career path.”
“But because of that, and because Darius is a reading Warrior, we have something to go by,” Damien said.
“What are you thinking?” Aphrodite said.
“I’m thinking that I’m really good at one thing—and that’s studying.”
Aphrodite’s blue eyes widened. “So we just need to point you to something to study.”
“The archives. You need access to the palace archives,” Thanatos said, already heading toward the door. “I’ll speak with Duantia.”
“Excellent. I’ll get ready to study,” Damien said.
“I’ll help,” Jack said.
“Nerd herd, as much as I hate it, it looks like we’re all gonna get ready to study.”
Stark watched Thanatos go. He vaguely registered that the rest of the kids were excited that they had somewhere to focus their energy, but his gaze went back to Zoey’s pale face.
And I’ll get ready to ally myself with death.
Zoey
Nothing seemed right.
It wasn’t like I didn’t know where I was. I mean, I knew I was in the Otherworld but not dead, and that I was with Heath, who definitely was dead.
Goddess! It was so weird that it was becoming more and more normal to think of Heath as DEAD.
Anyway, besides that, stuff just wasn’t right.
At this moment I was curled up with Heath. We were spooning like an old married couple at the base of a tree on a mossy mattress made by the joining of ancient roots in a roughly bedlike oval. I should have been majorly comfortable. The moss was definitely soft, and it really did seem like Heath was alive. I could see him, hear him, touch him—he even smelled like Heath. I should be able to relax and just be with him.
So why, I wondered as I stared at a gaggle of dancing blue-winged butterflies, am I so restless and generally “out of sorts” as Grandma would say?
Grandma . . .
I did miss her. Her absence was like a mild toothache. Sometimes the feeling went away, but I knew it was there, and it would come back—probably worse.
She must really be worried about me. And sad. Thinking of how sad Grandma would be was hard, and my mind skirted away from it quickly.
I couldn’t keep lying there. I moved away from Heath, careful not to wake him up.
Then I started to pace.
That helped. Well, it seemed to for a little while. I walked back and forth, back and forth, making sure I could see Heath. He did look cute while he slept.
I wished I could sleep.
I couldn’t, though. If I rested—if I closed my eyes—it was like I lost pieces of myself. But how could that be? How could I be losing myself? It reminded me a little of the time I had strep throat and such a high fever that I had a super weird dream where I kept spinning around and around until pieces of my body started to fly off me.
I shivered. Why was that so easy to remember when a bunch of other stuff in my head was so foggy?
Goddess, I was really tired.
Distracted, I kinda tripped ove
r one of the pretty white rocks that jutted up out of the grass and moss, and caught myself from falling by throwing up a hand and grabbing the side of the closest tree.
That’s why I saw it. My hand. My arm. It didn’t look right. I stopped and stared, and I swear my skin rippled, like in one of those gross horror movies where nasty stuff gets under an almost naked girl’s flesh and crawls around, making her—
“No!” I wiped frantically at my arm. “No! Stop!”
“Zo, babe, what’s wrong?”
“Heath, Heath—look.” I held my arm out for him to see. “It’s like a horror movie.”
Heath’s gaze went from my arm to my face. “Uh, Zo, what’s like a horror movie?”
“My arm! My skin! It’s moving.” I flailed at him.
His smile didn’t hide the worry on his face. He reached out and slowly ran his hand down my arm. When he got to my hand, he threaded his fingers with mine.
“There’s nothing wrong with your arm, babe,” he said.
“You really don’t think so?”
“Really, seriously, I don’t think so. Hey, what’s going on with you?”
I opened up my mouth to tell him that I thought I was losing myself—that bits of myself were floating away—when something caught my eye at the edge of the tree line. Something dark.
“Heath, I don’t like that,” I told him, pointing a shaking hand at the spot of shadows.
The breeze stirred the wide green leaves of the trees that seemed suddenly not as thick and sheltering as they had moments ago, and the scent came to me, sickening and ripe, like three-day-old roadkill. I felt Heath’s body jerk, and knew I wasn’t imagining it.
Then the shadows out there stirred, and I was sure I heard wings.
“Oh, no,” I whispered.
Heath’s hand tightened on mine. “Come on. We need to get farther inside here.”
I felt frozen and numb all at the same time. “Why? How can trees save us from whatever that is?”
Heath took my chin in his hand and made me look at him. “Zo, can’t you feel it? This place, this grove, is good, purely good. Babe, can’t you feel your Goddess in here?”
The tears that filled my eyes made him all blurry. “No,” I said softly, as if I could barely form the words. “I can’t feel my Goddess at all.”
He pulled me into his arms and hugged me tight. “Don’t worry, Zo. I can feel her, so it’ll be okay. I promise.” Then, while I was still cradled by one of his arms, Heath guided me deeper into Nyx’s grove as my tears overflowed and fell wet and hot down my cold cheeks.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Stevie Rae
“Skye? Really? Where is that? Ireland?” Stevie Rae said.
“It’s Scotland, not Ireland, retard,” Aphrodite said.
“Aren’t they kinda the same thing? And don’t say ‘retard.’ It’s not nice.”
“How about if I say bite me? Is that nice enough? Just listen and try not to be so asstarded, bumpkin. I need you to go back and do more of your weird commune with the earth or whatthefuckever it is you do, and see if you can come up with some info about Light and Darkness—you know, with a capital L and D. Also pay attention if a tree or whatnot says something about two bulls.”
“Bulls? You mean like cows?”
“Are you not from the country? How is it that you don’t know what a bull is?”
“Look, Aphrodite, that’s an ignorant stereotype. Just ’cause I’m not from a big city does not mean I automatically know about cows and stuff. Heck, I don’t even like horses.”
“I swear you’re a mutant,” Aphrodite said. “A bull is a male cow. Even my mom’s schizophrenic Bichon Frise knows that. Focus, would you, this is important. You need to go ask the fucking grass about an ancient and entirely too barbaric and therefore unattractive mythology or religion or some such that includes two fighting bulls, a white one and a black one, and a very guylike, violent, unending struggle between good and evil.”
“What does this have to do with gettin’ Zoey back?”
“I think it might somehow open a door for Stark to the Otherworld, without him actually dying because, apparently, that doesn’t so much work for Warriors protecting their High Priestesses there.”
“The cows can do that? How? Cows can’t even talk.”
“Bulls, double retard. Stay with me. I’m not just talking about animals, but the rawness of the power that surrounds them. The bulls represent that power.”
“So they’re not gonna talk?”
“Oh, for shit’s sake! They might and they might not—they’re super old magick, stupid! Who the hell knows what they can do? Just get this: to make it to the Otherworld, Stark can’t be civilized and modern and all nicey-nice. He’s got to figure out how to be more than that to reach Zoey and to protect her without getting both of them killed, and this olden-time religion might be a key to that.”
“I guess that makes sense. I mean, when I think about Kalona, I don’t exactly think of a modern guy.” Stevie Rae paused, acknowledging only to herself that she was truly thinking of Rephaim and not his father. “And he’s definitely got some raw power.”
“And definitely in the Otherworld without being dead.”
“Which is where Stark needs to be.”
“So, go talk to flowers about bulls and such,” Aphrodite said.
“I’ll go talk to flowers,” Stevie Rae said.
“Call me when they tell you something.”
“Yeah, okay. I’ll do my best.”
“Hey, be careful,” Aphrodite said.
“See, you can be nice,” Stevie Rae said.
“Before you go all strawberries and cream on me, answer this question: who’d you Imprint with after ours broke?”
Stevie Rae’s body went ice-cold. “No one!”
“Which means someone totally inappropriate. Who is it, one of those red fledgling losers?”
“Aphrodite—I said no one.”
“Yeah, that’s what I figured. See, one of the things I’m learning about because of this new Prophetess stuff, which is mostly a pain in the ass, by-the-by, is that if I listen without my ears, I know things.”
“Here’s what I know—you’ve lost your dang mind.”
“So, again, be careful. I’m getting weird vibes from you, and they’re telling me you might be in trouble.”
“I think you’ve just made up a big ol’ story to cover up that whole lot of crazy you got going on inside your head.”
“And I think you’re hiding something. So let’s just agree to disagree.”
“I’m goin’ to talk to flowers about cows. Goodbye, Aphrodite.”
“Bulls. Goodbye, bumpkin.”
Stevie Rae opened the door to leave her dorm room, still frowning about Aphrodite’s comments, and almost ran smack into Kramisha’s hand, raised to knock on her door. They both jumped and then Kramisha shook her head. “Don’t do weird shit like that. Makes me think you ain’t normal no more.”
“Kramisha, if I’d known you were out here, I wouldn’t have jumped when I opened the door. And none of us are normal—at least not anymore.”
“Speak for yourself. I’m still me. Meaning they’s nothin’ wrong with me. You, on the other hand, look like one hot messatude.”
“I almost burned up on a roof two days ago. I think that gives me the right to look like crap.”
“I don’t mean you look bad.” Kramisha cocked her head to the side. Today she was wearing her bright yellow bob wig, which she’d coordinated with sparkly fluorescent yellow eye shadow. “Actually, you lookin’ good—all pink like white folks get when they real healthy. It kinda reminds me of cute little baby pigs with they pinkness.”
“Kramisha, I swear you’re makin’ my head hurt. What are you talkin’ about?”
“I’m just sayin’ that you look good, but you ain’t doing good. In there, and there.” Kramisha pointed from Stevie Rae’s heart to her head.
“I’ve got a lot on my mind,” Stevie Rae said evasively.
“Yeah, I know that, what with Zoey totally jacked up and all, but you gotta keep your shit together just the same.”
“I’m tryin’.”
“Try harder. Zoey needs you. I know you ain’t there with her, but I got this feelin’ that you can help her. So you gotta be using your good sense.”
Kramisha was staring at her with an intensity that made Stevie Rae want to fidget. “Like I said, I’m tryin’.”
“You up to somethin’ crazy?”
“No!”
“You sure? ’Cause this is for you.” Kramisha held up a piece of purple notebook paper that had something written on it in her distinctive mixture of cursive and printing. “And it feels like a whole bunch of crazy to me.”
Stevie Rae snatched the paper from her hand. “Dang it, why didn’t you just say you were bringin’ me one of your poems?”
“I was gettin’ ’round to it.” Kramisha crossed her arms and leaned against the doorway, obviously waiting for Stevie Rae to read the poem.
“Isn’t there somethin’ you need to go do?”
“Nope. The rest of the kids is eatin’. Oh, ’cept for Dallas. He’s working with Dragon on some sword stuff, even though school ain’t starting again officially, and I do not see no need to rush things, so I do not get why he in such a hurry to go to class. Anyway, just read the poem, High Priestess. I ain’t goin’ nowhere.”
Stevie Rae stifled a sigh. Kramisha’s poems tended to be confusing and abstract, but they were also often prophetic, and just thinking about one of them being obviously for her had Stevie Rae’s stomach feeling like she’d eaten raw eggs. Reluctantly, her eyes went to the paper and she started to read:
The Red One steps into the Light
girded loins for her part in
the apocalyptic fight.
Darkness hides in different forms
see beyond shape, color, lies
and the emotional storms.
Ally with him; pay with your heart
though trust cannot be given
unless the Darkness you part.
See with the soul and not your eyes
because to dance with beasts you
must penetrate their disguise.
Burned Page 10