by P. C. Cast
“Z! Come on!” Stevie Rae’s voice broke through my train of thought.
“Okay! Okay!” I quit gathering wool, as Grandma would say, and followed Stevie Rae, Aphrodite, and Jack to the paddleboat loading dock. Our guys—Rephaim, Darius, Damien, and Stark were already standing beside the little boats waiting to help us climb aboard.
“Rephaim, did you get popcorn? I love watchin’ the fireworks with popcorn!” Stevie Rae squealed happily as Rephaim helped her into their little boat and then handed her a big bag of visibly buttery popcorn.
Stark took my hand and I hopped into our boat. “Did you get me popcorn?”
“Nope. Better. I got you this.” Stark grinned and handed me a giant pickle wrapped up like a corn dog.
Before I snatched it from his hand I kissed him—long and hard. “You are my hero.”
“That’s right. I am. And I know my Z hearts her some giant pickles,” Stark laughed as we began pedaling out on the lake.
“Hey, wait for us! You know how I feel about physical exertion,” Aphrodite called from somewhere behind us.
“Work those legs, girl!” Stevie Rae yelled back.
“Come on, Aphrodite!” Jack called. “We’re just gonna paddle to the fireworks platform. Then we’ll stop and watch the sparkles!”
I heard Aphrodite mutter, “Sparkles. Goddess, he’s just like Jack,” making me almost spew pickle out of my nose.
Jack and Damien’s boat was in place first, and the rest of us fell in beside them, stopping our boats and facing the fireworks platform. It was easy to stay together. There was almost no wind on this strangely warm January night.
“It’ll probably snow tomorrow,” said Stark, tilting back his head and staring up at the star-filled Oklahoma sky.
“Or ice. We haven’t had an icepocalypse in a year. We’re due,” I said around a mouthful of pickle.
“You look ridiculously cute eating that.” Stark reached across the small space between us to tuck an escaping piece of hair behind my ear.
“Is that a phallic comment?” I waggled my eyebrows at him.
Stark laughed. “Um, no. Your lips look all pickled and your breath is not great when you eat those things.”
“So, not dead sexy?”
“Will you settle for dead cute?”
“If you kiss me I will,” I teased.
“I’ll take that challenge!” Stark leaned over and tried to give me a gentle, sweet peck on the cheek and I turned my head, meeting his mouth with my pickle lips and kissing him thoroughly—with my pickle tongue.
He sputtered and wiped his mouth, but he also took my hand in his and kissed it, grinning at me. “I love you—pickle mouth and all.”
“Well, if I didn’t believe it before, I definitely do now that you’ve passed the pickle test.”
“Oh, good. I’ve passed. Does that mean I don’t have to take this particular test again?”
“Only if you get super lucky.”
“Ooooh! It’s going to start! It’s going to start!” Jack cheered from the boat to our right, clapping happily.
“I like this part of paddleboating,” Aphrodite said.
I glanced to my left where she and Darius sat still beside us. “You mean because you’re doing no paddling?”
“Exactly,” she said. “And my Warrior brought my fave snack.” She lifted a champagne flute and the minibottle that Darius had brought for her that held about a glass and a half of champagne.
“Hey,” I caught her attention so I didn’t have to shout what I wanted to say. “You’re doing a real good job of watching your drinking. I just wanted you to know I noticed.”
“It’s weird. After Nyx gave me this special Mark,” she pointed to her intricate tattoo of red and blue—the only mixed red and blue tattoo in vampyre history, “I realized I could drink as much booze and take as many pills as I want, and neither one would hardly affect me. But I didn’t want to anymore. A glass—maybe two—is enough. And pills? Now that I’m responsible for giving people second chances I don’t think it’s very smart to mess up my mind. And I am smart. Time I act like it.”
I nodded. “You’re being a good Prophetess.”
She tilted her head as she looked at me. “Thanks, Z. I appreciate you saying that.” Aphrodite leaned to her right so that she and I were closer, and she lowered her voice. “I wanted to talk to you about my visions—or, more accurately, my lack of visions.”
“It hasn’t been that long since you’ve had one. Has it?”
“Well, no. But since the other day when I talked to Ice Cream Shoes and we had that weird double premonition about her new abilities and something coming, I’ve started to wonder if maybe Nyx is going to give me a different kind of vision now.”
“You mean visions that don’t involve your eyes bleeding, crushing headaches, and being inside the body of whoever is being murdered?”
“Yeah. Exactly. It’d be a super nice change to not ever feel—” Aphrodite’s words broke off in a gasp and a small shriek. “Goddess! Snake!”
Darius and I looked down at where she was pointing and, sure enough, I caught the sinuous reflection of the dark water rolling gently around the thick body of an even darker snake as it slithered past us.
“You know snakes are nothing to be afraid of,” I said.
“That is a water moccasin. We should be afraid—very afraid. They’re poisonous and mean.” Aphrodite shuddered. “And they remind me of those disgusting tendrils of Darkness Neferet called her children. It’s just so damn gross that I can’t even see a snake without thinking about—”
Then, right in the middle of her sentence, it happened. Aphrodite began to tremble—at first it was just a slight shaking of her hand. Just enough for her champagne to slosh over the sides of the glass and into the lake. She looked up from frowning at her hand, obviously confused. Her trembling increased, and she dropped the flute into the water.
“Oh, shit!” she said. “Not here!”
And then her eyes filled with blood before they rolled into the back of her head as she sagged against her seat. It happened so fast that Darius had to scramble to catch her so she didn’t follow her champagne glass into the lake.
“I’m coming!” I dropped my half-eaten pickle and stood. Balancing precariously, I quickly told Stark, “She’s having a vision! Get me closer to their boat.”
“Will do. Hang tight just a sec, Darius, Z’s coming!”
“Damien! Stevie Rae!” I shouted as Stark expertly paddled our boat so that it brushed the side of Aphrodite’s. “Aphrodite! Vision!”
As I scrambled over to join Aphrodite and Darius, I saw Stevie Rae and Damien understand instantly what was happening. While the fireworks exploded overhead, I held Aphrodite tight as Darius’s powerful legs propelled us back to the dock.
Zoey
“Goddess, that was embarrassing.” Aphrodite was reclining on the couch in her suite with a wet washcloth pressed against her eyes.
“I don’t think hardly anyone noticed,” Stevie Rae said. “What, with all the fireworks goin’ off and everythin’.”
“You are a Prophetess of Nyx. Anyone who witnesses one of your visions should count themselves blessed,” said Darius.
He was sitting beside Aphrodite on the couch with her bare feet in his lap—grounding her, comforting her. I thought, not for the first time, what a great couple they made—though somehow it made me feel a little disloyal to my brother from another world to think it.
“Can you talk about your vision yet?” Jack was hovering around Aphrodite. He’d brewed her some ginger tea that’d he’d brought from the suite he and Damien shared. He said it would help settle her stomach, and her hands had finally stopped trembling enough to hold the mug.
Aphrodite nodded shakily. “Yeah. I can talk now. Could I have more of this tea, though? It is really helping my stomach set
tle.”
“Oh goodie! I’ll brew you some more.” Jack took her porcelain teacup and hurried back to the kitchenette.
I sat on the coffee table and scooted close to her. Stevie Rae was standing beside me. Stark and Rephaim were sitting on the two chairs in front of the fireplace. Everyone had done their part to help Aphrodite recover—by now the Nerd Herd was a well-oiled machine when it came to her visions and the painful aftermath. But Aphrodite was always the same. She sifted through the pain and the horror of each vision as quickly as possible.
“Is it any of us?” I asked as Damien pulled out his phone and got ready to take notes.
“No. The vision was strange. I don’t know who I was. It was a woman. I know that for sure, but she was so panicked that I could barely get her to glance down at her body. When she did I could tell it wasn’t any of us, and that she was older, like probably in her forties, but that’s it. And then I did manage to catch a quick glimpse of her reflection, but it was weird—like she was looking into a mirror that was distorted and dark. I still didn’t recognize her, but she seemed familiar.”
“A mirror?” I asked. “So, you were inside a house?”
Aphrodite grimaced and rearranged the washcloth so that it covered her light-sensitive eyes more completely. “No. I was outside and it was dark, but I was able to recognize where I was.” She drew a deep breath before finishing in one quick burst of words. “The vision took place at Woodward Park.”
“Was Neferet in it?” Stevie Rae’s voice sounded as trembly as I felt.
“Definitely.” Aphrodite paused as a shudder pulsed through her body. “She was so damn gross. Well, part of the time she was. When she was killing that poor woman, she was disgusting.”
“Do you mean literally, as in physically disgusting? Or just her normal sociopathic level of disgusting?” I asked.
“Both. Here’s what happened. Remember the water moccasin I saw?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“And how I said it reminded me of Neferet’s tendrils of Darkness?”
“Yeah, for sure.”
“Well, that’s how the vision started. The snake suddenly changed and became a whole nest of writhing tendrils that came slithering out of Neferet’s tomb. They looked different than last time we saw them. Remember how they were really big and thick, like huge, eyeless black snakes?”
“Yeah, I do.” I shivered. “They were all teeth.”
“Really gross,” Stevie Rae said.
“Yeah, but in my vision, even though there were a lot of them, they were small. Like no bigger than the length of my hand, and about the width of a finger. But they were still every bit as destructive. They came from everywhere—through the cracks in the rocks, up out of that brackish water—they even seemed to be slithering from Neferet’s body. And she was covered in them, like they were living clothes.” She shuddered. “It was super disgusting.”
“She broke out of her tomb? How?” I’m not sure how I managed to keep my voice steady because my insides were totally in revolt and I felt sick with fear.
“I didn’t see that part. Probably because the woman’s death didn’t happen as Neferet broke out. It was like she had already escaped. So, at first, Neferet was completely naked except for the nauseating, slithering worm clothes. Her body was emaciated. Remember how she looked that night? Like her arms and legs were too long?”
Stevie Rae’s voice shook. “I-I’ll never forget how she looked.”
Damien’s face was the color of spoiled milk. “It was terrible,” he said.
“None of us will ever forget,” said Stark, wiping an unsteady hand across his face like he wished he could wipe away the memory.
“Well, that’s how she looked in my vision. Only worse. Then I blinked, and she looked normal, dressed all in black—boots, slacks, and a black sweater, cashmere, I think—which was weird because I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen her in anything but Silver Screen movie-star glam dresses. Oh, and she had her hair piled on top of her head in an exquisite updo.
“Then, it was like she kept shifting back and forth. And the woman whose body I was in wasn’t always terrified. In the beginning, she was just hanging out drinking red wine with Neferet. They were at the park, but the woman wasn’t afraid of her at all. It was really strange. I got the distinct feeling that they were friends. Maybe even more than friends.”
“You mean the woman and Neferet were lovers?” I was amazed at even the thought of Neferet taking a middle-aged human as her lover—be it a man or a woman.
“No, not lovers either. I wasn’t with the good part long enough to understand it, but I can say for sure the woman and Neferet are close—really close. Then I got this weird flash and the scene changed and Neferet changed. I watched her hover above her broken tomb with her tendrils writhing all around her. That’s when the woman I was in panicked, and things got super confusing. Neferet kept flickering back and forth from normal to nightmare. Then the woman died.” Aphrodite’s chin trembled as she spoke. “Horribly—and it took awhile.”
“How?” I really didn’t want to know, but like Aphrodite—it was my duty. I had to know. I had to help. I had to try to stop whatever awful thing was going to happen.
“The normal Neferet was nowhere to be seen and the disgusting snakelike Neferet sent her tiny, revolting tendrils to burrow into the woman’s body and basically eat her from the inside out. It was really, really nasty. She was absolutely hysterical, and in an incredible amount of pain. It took a long time for her to die.” Aphrodite swallowed. “And that was the good part of the vision.”
“The good part?” Like her legs could no longer hold her, Stevie Rae sat heavily beside me on the coffee table.
“Yeah. The instant she died, Neferet stopped shifting back and forth between looking like herself and looking like a giant spidery nightmare. She was all nightmare. Darkness poured from her body. Like a tsunami, it crashed into Tulsa, completely enveloping the House of Night and Utica Square—and it kept spreading like an unstoppable virus. I saw it cover all of Tulsa, then Oklahoma, and then the entire country.”
“And you’re sure it was our House of Night and our world? You didn’t see Other Kevin or anything that might’ve made you think you were getting a vision from the Other World?” I tried not to hold my breath as I waited for her reply.
“It was our world for sure. It was our grotto—exactly how it looks now. Unless it was walled up in the Other World?”
“Nope,” I shook my head. “Their Woodward Park looks like ours before we trapped Neferet. And I’m pretty sure you’d realize it if it had been a vision from Kev’s world. It’s darker there. Less people are walking around. It’s gloomy.”
“No. It wasn’t like that. It was all familiar. I’m sure it was a vision from this world.”
Stark stood and went to the fireplace. Steadier now, he ran his hand through his hair and said, “So, Neferet escapes. And she can shift between looking normal and looking like a monster. The escape part is surprising, but the fact that she can change her appearance really isn’t. She’s immortal. Who the hell knows the extent of her powers?”
“Did you get any clue about a time frame for her escape?” I asked.
“Yes,” Darius said. “Did you see any trees? Try to remember if there were leaves on the trees at the park or not.”
Thinking, Aphrodite paused and then shook her head, which made her suck in her breath in pain. She pressed the washcloth against her burning eyes and said, “There were definitely no leaves on the trees, but there may have been buds.”
Damien continued to take notes as he spoke. “So, she’s either going to escape in the next couple months—or some other winter or early spring.”
“My visions usually happen within weeks—tops a month or two.”
“I suppose there’s no chance Nyx is givin’ us a year or so warnin’?” Stevie Rae asked
hopefully.
“That’d be nice, but my intuition says this vision will happen sooner rather than later. I did get a sense of one thing very strongly. The focus of the vision was not Neferet. It was the woman her tendrils attacked. If that woman dies, we’re doomed. I have zero clue why—I do not know who she is and I do not know how the death of one human could make such a difference to Neferet. All I know is that I am completely sure that if Neferet kills her, our world is going to be covered in Darkness.”
“Then we have to figure out who she is,” I said. “Once we do that all we need to do is keep her away from Neferet.”
Darius sat up straighter, meeting my gaze. “We can stop the whole thing by being sure Neferet doesn’t escape from her tomb.”
“That’s going to happen. I have no doubt about that at all,” said Aphrodite.
Jack returned from the kitchenette and put the fresh cup of tea on the coffee table beside Aphrodite. “Honey, let this cool for a little while.” He went to Damien and sat on the arm of his chair, looking as pale as his lover. “But Neferet doesn’t have to escape, right? Your visions are warnings. They can be stopped. Damien told me you guys have stopped them a bunch of times. You even saw me killing him in one, and that definitely did not happen.” He took Damien’s hand and held it like he had no intention of ever letting it go.