by P. C. Cast
“How do you know that for sure?” Aphrodite said.
“Tell them what he calls you,” Darius said to me.
I sighed. “He calls me A-ya.”
“Oh!” Erin said.
“Shit!” Shaunee finished.
“Now that’s seriously bad news,” Damien said.
“He really believes you’re the maiden the Ghigua women used to trap him more than a thousand years ago?” Aphrodite said.
“Apparently.”
“Do you think it would help if you told him you’re no maiden?” Aphrodite flashed me a cocky grin.
I rolled my eyes at her and then, because Aphrodite’s not so subtle mention of my un-virgin state made my thoughts inadvertently start to drift to the guys in my life, I added, “Hey, I wonder why Stark’s so under Kalona’s spell. He has a major gift from Nyx, and before he died he seemed really intuitive.”
“Stark is an absolute asshole,” Shaunee said.
“Yeah, between what we heard from the other kids, and what went on with Becca, we can definitely say he’s seriously bad news,” Erin said.
“Dying and then un-dying might have messed him up, but my vote is that he was a jerk before he croaked and then uncroaked,” Aphrodite said. “We all need to stay far, far away from him. I think his badness is right up there with Kalona and Neferet.”
“Yeah, he’s like a Raven Mocker without the wings,” Erin said.
“Eesh,” Shaunee agreed.
I didn’t say anything. I just sat there and felt really tired and really guilty. I’d kissed him. Again. And my friends all thought he was a monster, probably because he was a monster. And if he’s such bad news, which it seriously looks like he is, how the hell could I think there is anything good left in him?
“Okay, Z has to sleep,” Damien said, getting up with Cameron still in his arms. “We know what we’re supposed to do, so let’s do it and then get out of here.” Damien hugged me. “Forget about Kramisha’s poem,” he whispered. “You can’t save everyone, especially if he doesn’t want to be saved.”
I hugged him back, but didn’t say anything.
“Getting back to those tunnels sounds good to me. We all need to be away from this place.” Damien smiled sadly at me and left the room with the Twins, who called goodbyes to me, too, as their cat trotted after them.
“Come on.” Aphrodite took Darius’s hand and pulled him off the bed. “You’re not going back to your room tonight.”
“I’m not?” he said, smiling warmly at her.
“No, you’re not. There seems to be a scarcity of Sons of Erebus around here, so I’m going to keep my eyes, and a few other parts of my body, on you.”
“Puke,” I said, but I couldn’t help grinning at them.
“You just sleep,” Aphrodite told me. “You’ll need all your strength to deal with the guy mess waiting for you. I have a feeling Erik and Heath are going to be a bigger drain than controlling the elements.”
“Hey, thanks, Aphrodite,” I said sarcastically.
“Don’t mention it. I’m all about helping you out.”
“Good night, Priestess. I wish you a restful sleep,” Darius said right before Aphrodite pulled him out of the room. The last of the cats followed him out, leaving me alone (finally) with my Nala.
I sighed and dug into my pocket for the bottle of blood stashed there. I shook it up like it was one of those yummy cold Starbucks bottled drinks and downed it. The blood felt good spreading like warm fingers through my body, but it didn’t give me the electric jolt I was used to. I was just too exhausted. I dragged myself from the bed, pulled off the stupid hospital clothes, and rattled around in my drawer for my favorite guy’s boxers (the ones with Batman symbols all over them) and a stretched-out old T-shirt. Just before I put on the shirt I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror and froze.
Was that really me? I looked way older than seventeen. All of my tattoos were visible, and they were like a breath of life blown across a corpse. I was so pale! And the circles under my eyes were truly scary. Slowly I allowed my gaze to drift down to check out my wound. It was awful, and so darn big! I mean, it stretched all the way from shoulder to shoulder. No, it wasn’t gaped open anymore like a hideous mouth, but it was a jagged, puckered red ridge that made Darius’s knife wound look like the scratch he liked to call it.
I touched the wound gently and winced at how sore it was. Would it always stay this raised? Okay, I realize it was incredibly shallow of me, but I wanted to burst into tears. Not because all hell was coming against us. Not because Neferet had turned über-dangerous. Not because she and Kalona might very well be threatening the balance of good and evil in the known world. Not because I was a confused mess about Erik and Heath and Stark. But because I was going to have a massively ugly scar, and I’d probably never be able to wear a tank top again. And what about if I ever wanted to let anyone see me, well, naked again? I mean, I’d had one bad experience, but surely some day I was going to be in a great relationship and I’d want him to eventually see me naked. Right? I stared at the nasty-looking, unhealed scar and stifled a sob. Wrong.
Okay, I seriously needed to stop thinking about this, and I definitely was going to quit looking at myself naked. It just can’t be good for me. Hell! It probably wasn’t good for anyone!
I hastily pulled the T-shirt over my head and muttered, “Aphrodite must be rubbing off on me. I swear I didn’t use to be this shallow.”
Nala was waiting for me on my bed in her usual place on my pillow. I slid under the sheets and curled up with her, loving how she snuggled against me and turned on her purr engine. I guess I should have been scared to fall asleep, what with the last Kalona dream visit I’d had, but I was too tired to think, too tired to care. I just closed my eyes and gave myself gratefully up to the darkness.
When the dream started, it wasn’t a meadow, and so, foolishly, I was immediately relieved and relaxed. I was on an incredibly beautiful island, looking out across a lagoon at a skyline that seemed familiar, even though I knew I’d never been there before. The water had a fishy, salty smell. There was a depth and richness to it, a sense of vastness that I recognized as belonging to the ocean, even though I’ve never been to the coast. The sun was setting and the sky was lit up with a fading brilliance that reminded me of autumn leaves. I was sitting on a marble bench the color of moonbeams. It was intricately carved with vines and flowers and felt like it belonged to another time and place. I ran my hand across the smooth back of it, which was still warm from the fading day. It was like I really was there, and not dreaming at all. I glanced over my shoulder, and my eyes widened. Wow! Behind me was a palace with beautiful arched doors and windows, all in pristine white, amazing pillars and wedding cake–like chandeliers peeking out of the elegant windowpanes and twinkling in the predusk.
It was enough to take my breath away, and I was really pleased with my sleeping self for making it all up, but I was also baffled. It all seemed so real. And so familiar. Why?
I turned my face back to the lagoon view, looking across at a domed cathedral and little boats and lots of other amazing stuff that there’s no way I could have imagined all on my own. The soft night breeze was coming off the water, bringing the distinctly rich scents of the dark water. I breathed deeply, enjoying the uniqueness of it. Sure, some people might say it was kinda stinky, but I didn’t think so, I was just—
Holy crap! A terrible skittering of fear fingered down my spine. I knew why this seemed familiar.
Aphrodite had described this place to me just a few days ago. Not in detail. She hadn’t been able to remember everything, but what she had been able to tell me had made a distinct and unsettling impression. So much so that I recognized the water and the palace and the ancient feel of it.
This was the place Aphrodite had glimpsed in the second vision she’d had of my death.
CHAPTER 23
“Here you are. This time you bring me to a place of your choosing, rather than me calling to you.”
&nbs
p; Kalona stepped into view beside the marble bench, as if he had materialized out of the air. I didn’t say anything. I was too busy trying to control the panicked beating of my heart.
“Your Goddess is quite unusual,” he said in a friendly, conversational tone after he sat beside me on the bench. “I can feel the danger in this place for you. It surprises me that she would allow you here, especially because she must know you would call me to you. I imagine she believes she is warning you, readying you, but she is mistaking my intentions. I mean to resurrect the past, and to do so the present must die.” He paused, and with a contemptuous gesture waved away the riches on the shore across the water from us. “All of that means nothing to me.”
I had no clue what he was talking about and when I finally found my voice, all I could manage was a brilliant, “I didn’t call you to me.”
“Of course you did.” He was intimate and flirty, like he was my boyfriend and I was being kinda shy about admitting how much I liked him.
“No,” I spoke without looking at him. “I did not call you to me,” I repeated. “And I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about.”
“My musings are unimportant. All will be clear with time. But, A-ya, if you did not call me, then explain how I joined you in your dream.”
Steeling myself against the allure I already felt from just the sound of his voice, I turned my head to look at him. He was young again, and appeared eighteen or nineteen. He was wearing jeans that were comfortably loose and had that sexy, these-are-my-favorite-pair-because-they-fit-perfectly look. And that was it. He didn’t have shoes or a shirt on. His wings were miraculous. They were the black of a starless sky and glistened in the fading light with a silky beauty all their own. His flawless bronze skin seemed to be lit from within. His body was beyond incredible. It was like his face—so handsome, so perfect, that it was impossible to describe.
With a deep sense of shock I realized that was just like how Nyx’s appearance had seemed to Aphrodite and me. She had been so otherworldly in her beauty that we’d been unable to describe her. And, for some reason, that similarity between Kalona and Nyx made me incredibly sad, sad for what he might once have been and for what he had become.
“What is it, A-ya? What has made you look as if you would weep?”
I started to pick and choose my words carefully and then stopped. If this was my dream—if bringing Kalona to me was somehow my doing—then I was going to be nothing but honest. So I spoke the truth.
“I’m sad because I don’t think you were always what you are now.”
Kalona went utterly still. It seemed the perfection of his features solidified and turned him into the statue of a god.
In the dream I felt timeless, so it might have been a second or a century before he responded. “And what would you do if you knew that I have not always been as I am now, my A-ya? Would you save me or would you entomb me?”
I stared at his luminous amber eyes and tried to see through them into his soul. “I don’t know,” I said honestly. “I don’t think I could do either without some help from you.”
Kalona laughed. The sound danced across my skin. It made me want to throw my head back and my arms wide and embrace the beauty of it. “I think you are correct,” he said, smiling into my eyes.
I looked away first, staring out at the ocean and trying to forget how incredibly seductive he was.
“I like this place.” I could hear the smile in his voice. “I feel power—an ancient power. No wonder they chose to come here. It reminds me of the place of power from which I arose inside the House of Night, though the earth element is not strong here. That is a comfort to me. It is pleasant.”
I focused on the one thing he’d said I could actually understand. “I guess it’s no surprise you’d be more comfortable on an island. Being as you don’t so much like the earth.”
“There is only one thing I like about the earth, and that was resting in your arms, though your embrace lasted too long for even my great capacity for pleasure.”
I looked at him again. He was still smiling gently at me. “You have to know that I’m not really A-ya.”
His smile didn’t falter. “No, I do not know that.” Slowly, he reached out and took a long strand of my dark hair between his fingers. Staring into my eyes, he let my hair slide into his palm.
“I couldn’t be her,” I said a little shakily. “I wasn’t in the earth when you got free. I’d been living on the earth for the past seventeen years.”
He kept caressing my hair as he answered me, “A-ya had been gone for centuries, dissolved once more into the earth that made her. You are simply she, reborn through a daughter of man. That is why you are different from the others.”
“That can’t be true. I’m not her. I didn’t know you when you rose,” I blurted.
“Are you quite sure you didn’t know me?” I could feel the cold of his skin radiating toward my body, and I wanted to lean into him. My heart was beating hard again, only this time it wasn’t from fear. I wanted to be close to this fallen angel worse than I’d ever wanted anything in my life. The desire I felt for him was even more than the pull of Heath’s Imprinted blood. What would it be like to taste Kalona’s blood? The thought made me shiver with the delicious, forbidden impulse. “You feel it, too,” he murmured. “You were made for me; you belong to me.”
His words slashed through the haze of my desire. I stood up and stepped around the end of the bench, putting the marble arm of it between us. “No. I do not belong to you. I don’t belong to anyone except myself and Nyx.”
“You always hearken back to that wretched Goddess!” The seductive intimacy evaporated from his voice, and he was once again the cold, amoral angel whose moods shifted on a whim and who could kill with little more than a thought. “Why do you insist on being loyal to her? She isn’t here.” He spread his arms wide and his magnificent wings rustled around him like a living cape. “When you most need her, she steps away from you and lets you make mistakes.”
“It’s called free will,” I said.
“And what is so wonderful about free will? Humans eternally misuse it. Life can be so much happier without it.”
I shook my head. “But I wouldn’t be me anymore without it. I’d be your puppet.”
“Not you. I would not take your will away.” His face changed instantly, shifting back to loving angel, the being who was so beautiful it was easy to understand why someone might throw away their free will just to be close to him.
Thankfully, that someone wasn’t me.
“The only way you could get me to love you would be to take away my free will and then order me to be with you, like I was your slave.” I braced myself for the explosion I thought my words would cause, but he didn’t yell or jump off the bench or throw any kind of fit. Instead he simply said, “Then we are to be enemies, you and I.”
He didn’t say it like a question, so I decided my best bet was not to answer him. Instead I asked, “Kalona, what do you want?”
“You, of course, my A-ya.”
I shook my head and impatiently brushed aside his answer. “No, I don’t mean that. I mean, why are you here to begin with? You’re not mortal. You…Well…” I paused, not sure how far I could push this subject safely, then finally decided I might as well go for it; he’d already said we were going to be enemies. “You fell, right? From, I don’t know, someplace that must be what many mortals would call heaven.” I paused again, waiting for some kind of response from him.
Kalona nodded slightly. “I did.”
“On purpose?”
He looked vaguely amused. “Yes, it was my choice that brought me here.”
“Well, why did you do it? What do you want?”
Another change came over his features. He blazed with a brilliance that could only be immortal. Kalona stood, threw his arms wide as his wings unfurled, spreading around him with a magnificence that made it hard for me to look at him and impossible for me to look away.
“Everyth
ing!” he cried in the voice of a god. “I want everything!”
And then he was there before me, a shining angel—not fallen at all, just miraculously here, within reach. Mortal enough to touch, but too beautiful to be anything but a god.
“Are you sure you couldn’t love me?” He pulled me into his arms. His wings swept down and enfolded me in their soft darkness, a blanket that was in direct contradiction to the wonderful, painful chill of his body that I was coming to know so well. He bent, and slowly, as if giving me time to pull away, brought his mouth down to mine.
When our lips met, the kiss burned with colbea ^r Ed heat through my body. I felt myself fall. His body, his soul, was all that I knew. I wanted to press myself into him, have him lose himself in me. The question wasn’t, could I love him, but how could I not love him? An eternity of embracing him—possessing him—loving him—couldn’t possibly be enough.
An eternity of embracing him…
The thought speared through me. A-ya had been created to love him and embrace him for eternity.
Oh, Goddess! my mind cried, am I really A-ya?
No. I couldn’t be. I wouldn’t let myself be!
I shoved against him. Our embrace had been such a complete and passionate surrender that my sudden rejection caught him by surprise. He staggered back, letting me slip through the double embrace of his arms and wings.
“No!” I was shaking my head back and forth like a crazy woman. “I am not her! I am Zoey Redbird, and if I love someone, it’s because he’s worth loving, and not because I’m a piece of dirt that’s been brought to life.”
His amber eyes narrowed as anger flashed across his face. He started toward me.
“No!” I screamed.
I was jolted awake to the sounds of Nala hissing like crazy and someone sitting on the side of my bed, trying to defend himself against my flailing arms.
“Zoey! It’s okay. Wake up! Ow! Shit!” the guy said as my fist connected with his cheek.
“Get away from me!” I cried.