by P. C. Cast
In her opinion, it was entirely too late for visitors, but you never knew what to expect at her mother’s house, so Linda went to the door and opened it.
The vampyre who stood there was stunningly beautiful, a little familiar looking, and totally, completely naked.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Neferet
“You are not Sylvia Redbird.” Neferet looked down her nose disdainfully at the drab woman who had answered the door.
“No, I’m her daughter, Linda. My mother isn’t in right now,” she said, glancing around nervously.
Neferet knew the moment the human’s eyes found the white bull, because they widened in shock and her face drained of all of its sallow color.
“Oh! It’s a … a … b-bull! Is it making the ground burn? Hurry! Hurry! Come inside where it’s safe. I’ll get you a robe to wear and then call animal control or the police or someone.”
Neferet smiled and turned her head so that she could gaze at the bull, too. He was standing in the middle of the closest lavender field. If one didn’t know better it would, indeed, appear as if he were burning everything around him.
Neferet knew better.
“He isn’t burning the field; he’s freezing it. The withered plants just look scorched. Actually, they’re frozen,” Neferet said in the same matter-of-fact tone she often used in her classroom.
“I’ve— I’ve never seen a bull do that before.”
Neferet lifted one brow at Linda. “Does he truly look like a normal bull to you?”
“No,” Linda whispered. Then she cleared her throat and, obviously trying to sound stern, said to Neferet, “I’m sorry. I’m confused about what’s going on here. Do I know you? May I help you?”
“There is no need for you to be confused or concerned. I am Neferet, High Priestess of Tulsa’s House of Night, and I do most certainly hope you can help me. First, tell me when you expect your mother to return.” Neferet kept her voice affable, though her mind was a jumble of emotions: anger, irritation, and a lovely shiver of fear.
“Oh, that’s why you look familiar. My daughter Zoey goes to that school.”
“Yes, I know Zoey very well.” Neferet smiled smoothly. “When did you say your mother would return?”
“Not until tomorrow. Can I give her a message from you? And would you, uh, like a robe or something?”
“No message and no robe.” Neferet dropped her mask of affability. She lifted her hand and swept several tendrils of Darkness from the shadows surrounding her, then she flung them at the human woman, commanding, “Bind her and bring her out here.” When Neferet felt none of the familiar, painful slice that was the payment for manipulating the lesser threads of Darkness, she smiled at the mammoth bull and dipped her head in acknowledgment of his favor as she approached him.
You shall pay me later, my heartless one, rumbled through her mind. Neferet shivered in anticipation.
Then the human’s pathetic screams intruded on her thoughts and she made a motion over her shoulder, snapping the command, “And gag her! I cannot be expected to bear that noise.”
Linda’s screams stopped as abruptly as they had begun. Neferet stepped into the frozen lavender that encircled the beast, ignoring the cold on her bare feet and against her naked skin as she strode directly up to his great head and stroked one finger down the length of his horn before she dropped to a graceful curtsey before him. When she rose, she smiled into the complete blackness of his eyes and said, “I have your sacrifice.”
The bull’s gaze flicked over her shoulder.
This is not an old, powerful matriarch. This is a pathetic housewife whose life has been consumed by weakness.
“True, but her mother is a Wise Woman of the Cherokee. Her blood flows in this one’s veins.”
Diluted.
“Will she serve as the sacrifice or not? Can you use her to make my Vessel?”
I can, but your Vessel will be only as perfect as your sacrifice, and this woman is far from perfect.
“But will you invest him with power that I can command?”
I will.
“Then my wish is that you accept this sacrifice. I will not wait for the mother when I can have the daughter, and the same blood, now.”
As you wish, my heartless one. I grow weary of this. Kill her quickly and let us move on to other things.
Neferet didn’t speak. She turned and walked over to the human. The woman was pathetic. She wasn’t even struggling. All she was doing was sobbing silently as the tendrils of Darkness cut red swaths across her mouth and face, and all around her body where they bound her.
“I need a blade. Now.” Neferet held out her hand and instantly pain and cold filled it in the shape of a long, obsidian dagger. With one swift motion, Neferet slit Linda’s throat. She watched the woman’s eyes widen and then roll to show only their whites as her life’s blood drained from her.
Catch all of it. Let none of the blood be wasted.
At the bull’s command the tendrils of Darkness writhed all over Linda, attaching to her throat and to any other part of her body from which blood seeped, and began sucking. Mesmerized, Neferet saw that each pulsing tendril had a thread that returned to the bull, dissolving into his body, feeding him the human’s blood.
The bull moaned in pleasure.
When the human was drained to a husk of herself, and the bull was thrumming and swollen with her death, Neferet gave herself to Darkness, utterly and completely.
Heath
“Go long, Neal!” Heath drew back his arm and aimed for the receiver in the Golden Hurricane’s jersey with the name SWEENEY in bold letters across his back.
Sweeney caught it, and then feinted and dodged around a bunch of guys in crimson and cream OU uniforms to make the touchdown.
“Yeah!” Heath raised his fist, laughing and shouting. “Sweeney could catch a gnat off a fly’s back!”
“Are you enjoying yourself, Heath Luck?”
At the sound of the Goddess’s voice Heath put away his fist pump and gave Nyx a semi-guilty smile. “Uh, yeah. It’s great here. There’s always a game I can quarterback—awesome receivers, great fans, and when I get tired of football there’s that lake just down the street. It’s stocked with bass that would make a pro fisherman cry.”
“What about girls? I see no cheerleaders, no fisherwomen.”
Heath’s smile faltered. “Girls? No. Well. I only have one girl and she’s not here. You know that, Nyx.”
“I was just checking.” Nyx’s smile was radiant. “Would you sit and talk with me a moment?”
“Yeah, sure,” Heath said.
Nyx waved her hand and the old-school replication of a college football stadium disappeared. Suddenly Heath found himself standing on the precipice of an enormous canyon, so deep that the river that roared through the bottom of it looked like only a thin silver thread. The sun was rising over the opposite bank of the ridge, and the sky was shaded with the violets and pinks and blues of a beautiful new day.
Movement in the air caught Heath’s eye, and he noticed hundreds, maybe thousands of sparkling globes that were tumbling down into the gorge. He thought some of them looked like electric pearls, and others like geode balls, and still others were fluorescent colors so bright they almost hurt his eyes.
“Wow! It’s awesome up here!” He shaded his eyes with his hand. “What are those thingies?”
“Spirits,” Nyx said.
“Really, like ghosts or something?”
“A little. Mostly like you or something,” Nyx said with a warm smile.
“Well, that’s just weird. I don’t look anything like that. I look like me.”
“Right now you do,” Nyx said.
Heath glanced down at himself, just to be sure he was still, well, him. Relieved at what he saw, he looked back at the Goddess. “Should I get ready to change up?”
“That depends entirely upon you,” Nyx said. “As you would say in your world: I have a proposition for you.”
“Awe
some! It’s cool to be propositioned by a goddess!” Heath said.
Nxy frowned at him. “Not that kind of proposition, Heath.”
“Oh. Uh. Sorry.” Heath felt his face getting really warm. Jeeze, he was a retard. “I didn’t mean anything disrespectful. I was just kidding…” He stuttered to a stop, wiping his face with his hand. When he looked at the goddess again, she was smiling wryly at him. “Okay,” he started again, relieved she hadn’t blasted him with a thunderbolt or something. “About that proposition?”
“Excellent. It’s nice to know I have your full attention. My proposition is this: choice.”
Heath blinked. “Choice? Between what?”
“I’m so pleased that you asked,” Nyx said with only a little teasing sarcasm in her divine voice. “I’m going to give you a choice between three futures. You may choose one of the three, but know before you hear the choices that once you decide upon a path, the outcome is not set—it is only your decision that is set. What happens thereafter is left up to chance and fate and the resources of your soul.”
“Okay, I think I get that. I get to pick something, but once I pick it I’m pretty much on my own?”
“With my blessing,” she added.
Heath grinned. “Well, I hope so.”
The Goddess didn’t return his smile. Instead she met his gaze, and he saw all humor was gone from her expression. “I give you my blessing, but only if you find my path. I cannot bless a future in which you choose Darkness.”
“Why would I do that? It doesn’t even make sense,” Heath said.
“Hear me out, my son, and consider the choices I offer you; you will understand then.”
“Okay,” he said, but something about the tone of her voice made his gut tighten.
“Choice one is that you stay here in this realm. You will be content, as you have been. You will frolic eternally with my other joy-filled children.”
“Content doesn’t mean happy,” Heath said slowly. “I’m a jock, but that doesn’t mean I’m stupid.”
“Of course it doesn’t,” said the Goddess. “Choice two: you fulfill your original intent and are reborn. That may mean you stay here and frolic for a century or more, but you will eventually leap from this precipice and return to the mortal realm to be reborn as a human who will eventually find his soul mate again.”
“Zoey!” He spoke the one word that filled his mind, and as he spoke her name Heath wondered why it had taken him so long. What was wrong with him? Why had he forgotten her? Why hadn’t he—
Nyx’s hand touched his arm gently. “Do not punish yourself. The Otherworld can be intoxicating. You did not truly forget your love—you never could. You simply allowed the child within you to rule for a time. He would, eventually, have given way to the adult, and you would have remembered Zoey and your love for her. Under normal circumstances that is the way of things. But the world today is not normal, nor are our circumstances. So, I’m going to ask the child within you to grow up a little more quickly, if you so choose.”
“If it has to do with Zo, then I say yes.”
“Then hear me out, Heath Luck. You can find your Zoey again if you choose to be reborn as a human; I give you my promise on that. You and she are destined to be together, whether it is as vampyre and mate, or vampyre and consort. It will happen, and you can choose to make it happen in this lifetime.”
“Then I—”
Her upraised hand silenced him. “There is a third option from which you may choose. As I speak to you the mortal world is shifting and turning. The great shadow of Darkness in the form of the white bull has gained an unexpected foothold. Good and evil are no longer balanced because of it.”
“Well, can’t you just zap something and fix that?”
“I could if I hadn’t gifted my children with free will.”
“You know, sometimes folks are stupid and they need to be told what to do,” Heath said.
Nyx’s expression remained serious, but her dark eyes sparkled. “If I begin taking away free will and controlling the decisions of my sons and daughters, when does it end? Will I not simply become puppet master, and my children marionettes?”
Heath sighed. “I guess you’re right. I mean, you are a goddess and all, so I’m pretty sure you know what you’re talkin’ about, but it does sound easier.”
“Easier is rarely better,” she said.
“Yeah, I know. And that sucks,” Heath said. “So what about my third choice? Are you trying to tell me it has something to do with good and evil?”
“I am. Neferet has become an immortal, a creature of Darkness. This night she has allied herself with the purest evil that can manifest in the mortal realm, that of the white bull.”
“I know about that. I saw something like that try to get to us when I was first dead.”
Nyx nodded. “Yes, the white bull was awakened by the shifts of good and evil in the mortal world. It has been eons since he roamed between realms as he is doing today.” Heath was disturbed to see the Goddess shiver.
“What’s going on? What’s happening down there?”
“Neferet is being gifted with a Vessel, an empty, golem-type creature, created by Darkness through a terrible sacrifice and lust and greed and hatred and pain—that she can control completely. He will be her ultimate weapon, or at least that is what she desires. Had her sacrifice been more perfect, the Vessel would be the perfect weapon of Darkness, but there is a flaw in his creation, and that is where your choice comes in, Heath.”
“I don’t get it,” Heath said.
“The Vessel is meant to be a soulless machine, but because the sacrifice that fed his creation went awry, I am able to touch him.”
“Like he has an Achilles’ heel?”
“Yes, a little like that. Should you choose this option I would use the flaw in the creature’s creation, and through that weakness I would insert your soul into an otherwise empty Vessel.”
Heath blinked, trying to take in the enormity of what the Goddess was saying. “Would I know I’m me?”
“You would only know that which all reborn souls know—the most refined essence of what you are. That never fades, no matter how many lifetimes you circle through.” Nyx paused, smiled, and added, “And, of course, should you choose, you will also know love. That, too, never fades. It is only suppressed or missed or set aside to circle back around.”
“Wait, hang on. This creature is in Zoey’s world? Right now?”
“He is being created this night in Zoey’s modern world, yes.”
“By Neferet, Zo’s enemy?”
“Yes.”
“So Neferet is gonna use this guy against my Zo?” Heath felt totally pissed.
“I am quite sure that is her intent,” Nyx said.
“Huh,” he snorted. “With me inside him, she can try, but she’s not gonna get very far.”
“Before you make your final choice, you must understand: you will not know yourself. Heath will be gone. Only your essence will remain—not your memories. And you will be dwelling within a being created to destroy that which you love most. You may very well succumb to Darkness.”
“Nyx, bottom line: does Zo need me?”
“She does,” the Goddess said.
“Then I pick the third choice. I want to be put in the Vessel,” Heath said.
Nyx’s smile was radiant. “I am proud of you, my son. Know that you return to the modern world with my very special blessing.”
From the air above her, the Goddess plucked a single strand of something that Heath thought looked like a shimmering thread of silver so bright and shining and beautiful that it made him gasp. She circled her fingers, so that the strand grew to a quarter-sized orb that glistened and glowed with an ancient, special light like a moonstone illuminated from within.
“That’s so totally cool! What is it?”
“Magick of the oldest kind. It is rarely present in the modern world; it does not suffer civilization well. But the white bull’s ancient magick created the V
essel, so it is only right that my ancient magick be there, too.”
As Nyx continued to speak, her voice took on a singsong tone that seemed to mix with and complement the beauty of the orb.
A window within the soul to see
Light and Magick I send with thee
Be strong, be brave, make the right choice
Though Darkness shouts with a terrible voice
Know that I am watching from above
And that always, always, the answer is love!
The Goddess flung the glowing orb at him and it filled Heath’s eyes, blinding him with its magick light and causing him to stagger backward so that he felt himself toppling over the edge of the gorge and falling, falling …
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Neferet
Her body ached, but Neferet didn’t mind. The truth was, she enjoyed the pain. She drew in a deep breath, automatically pulling to her the remnants of the white bull’s power that slithered in the shadows forming in the gloaming of predawn. Darkness strengthened her. Neferet ignored the gore that covered her skin. She stood.
The bull had left her on the balcony of her penthouse suite. Kalona was not within. But that mattered little to her. She didn’t want him anymore because after tonight she wouldn’t need him.
Neferet faced north, the direction allied with the element earth. She raised her arms and began weaving her fingers through the air, combing invisible, powerful, ancient threads of magick and Darkness. Then, in a voice devoid of all emotion, Neferet spoke the incantation as the bull had instructed her.
From earth and blood you have been born
A pact with Darkness I have sworn
Filled with power you’ll hear only my voice
Your life is mine; you have no choice
Complete the bull’s pledge this night
And always, always revel in his terrible Dark light!
The Tsi Sgili flung the inferno of Darkness that had swarmed to her hands down before her. It hit the stone balcony floor and pillar-like erupted up, swirling, writhing, changing …