Betrayed

by P.C. Cast

  An urge to follow him hit me with such strength that I gasped. Almost as if I had no will of my own, I stepped off the sidewalk and hurried after the mysterious person, who had just reached the edge of the tree line that grew along the outside wall.

  My eyes widened. The instant the figure entered the shadows, whoever it was, he or she, began moving with inhuman speed, cloak billowing behind them wildly in the snow-filled wind so that the figure appeared to have wings. Red? Did I see scarlet flashes against glimpses of white skin? Snow stung my eyes and my vision blurred, but I held Nala tighter to me and kicked into a fast jog, even though I could tell that I was being led to the area of the east wall that held the trapdoor. The same place I'd seen the other two ghosts or specters or whatever. The place that I'd told myself I really didn't want to go again, at least not alone.

  Yes, I should have turned to my left and marched directly to the dorm. Naturally, I didn't.

  My heart was thudding like crazy and Nala was grumbling in my ear when I entered the tree line and continued to rush along the wall, all the time thinking how absolutely insane it was for me to be out here chasing what was at best some kid who was trying to sneak away from the school, and at worst a seriously scary ghost.

  I'd lost sight of the person, but I knew I was getting close to the trapdoor, so I slowed down, automatically staying within the deepest shadows and moving from tree to tree. It was snowing even harder now, and Nala and I were covered in white and I was actually starting to feel chilled. What am I doing out here? No matter what my gut was telling me, my mind was saying that I was acting crazy and that I needed to get myself (and my shiver­ing cat) back to the dorm. This was really none of my business. Maybe one of the teachers was checking the ... I dunno … the grounds to make sure some moronic fledgling (like me) wasn't wandering around out in the storm.

  Or maybe someone had just snuck on the school grounds after brutally killing Chris Ford and abducting Brad Higeons, and now they were sneaking off again, and if I confronted him/her I'd be murdered, too.

  Yeah, right. Talk about an overactive imagination.

  Then I heard the voices.

  I slowed way down, practically tiptoeing forward until I finally saw them. There were two figures standing by the open trapdoor. I blinked hard, trying to see more clearly through the curtain of falling white. The person closest to the door was the one I'd been following, and now that he wasn't running (at a ridiculous speed) I could see that he stood weirdly, crouched down with a hunched-back posture. I shifted my attention to the other figure, and I felt the chill that had been brushing my skin with the snow sink into my soul. It was Neferet.

  She looked mysterious, and powerful with her auburn hair fly­ing around her and the snow covering the long black dress she was wearing. She was facing me, so I could see that her expression was stern, almost angry, and she was speaking intently to the cloaked person, using her hands expressively. Silently, I moved closer, glad I had on a dark outfit so that I blended well with the shadows near the wall. From this new position pieces of what Neferet was saying drifted to me on the snow-filled wind.

  "... have more care with what you do! I will not ..." I listened intently, trying to hear through the wailing wind, and realized that the breeze was bringing me more than just Neferet's words. I could smell something, even over the crisp scent of falling snow. It was a dry, moldy smell, weirdly out of place in this cold, wet night. "... much too dangerous," Neferet was saying. "Obey or …" I lost the rest of the sentence, and then she paused. The cloaked figure responded with a weird, grunting sound that was more animal than human.

  Nala, who had been curled up under my chin and seemed to have fallen asleep, again, suddenly whipped her head around. I ducked even farther behind the trunk of the tree in whose shadow I was hiding as Nala began to growl.

  "Shhh," I whispered to her and tried to pet her into being calm. She quieted, but I could feel that the fur on her back had lifted and her eyes were narrowed to angry slits as she stared at the cloaked person.

  "You promised!”

  The guttural sound of the mystery man's voice had my skin crawling. I peeked out from behind the tree in time to see Neferet raise her hand as if she was going to strike him. He cowered back against the wall, causing the hood to fall from his face, and my stomach clenched so hard I thought I might throw up.

  It was Elliott. The dead kid whose "ghost" had attacked Nala and me last month.

  Neferet didn't hit him. Instead she gestured violently at the open trapdoor. She'd raised her voice, so everything she said car­ried to me over the wind.

  "You may not have any more! The time is not right. You can­not understand such things, and you may not question me. Now leave here. If you disobey me again you will feel my wrath, and the wrath of a goddess is terrible to behold.”

  Elliott cringed away from Neferet. "Yes, Goddess," he whim­pered.

  It was him; I knew it was. Even though his voice was rough I rec­ognized it. Somehow Elliott had not died, and he had not Changed into an adult vampyre. He was something else. Something terrible.

  Even as I thought how disgusting he was, Neferet's expression softened. "I do not wish to be angry with my children. You know that you are my greatest joys.”

  Revolted, I watched as Neferet moved forward and caressed Elliott's face. His eyes began to glow the color of old blood, and even from a distance I could see that his entire body was trem­bling. Elliott had been a short, pudgy, unattractive kid with too white skin and carrot red hair that was habitually frizzed out. He was still all those things, but now his pale cheeks were gaunt and his body was hunched, as if it had curled in on itself. So Neferet had to bend down to kiss his lips. Totally grossed out, I heard El­liott moan in pleasure. She straightened and laughed. It was a dark, seductive sound.

  "Please, Goddess!" Elliott whimpered.

  "You know you don't deserve it.”

  "Please, Goddess!" he repeated. His body was shivering vio­lently.

  "Very well, but remember. What a goddess gives, she can also take away.”

  Unable to stop watching, I saw Neferet lift her arm and brush back her sleeve. Then she ran her fingernail up her forearm, leaving a slender scarlet line that immediately began to bead with blood. I felt the draw of her blood. When she held out her arm, offering it to Elliott, I pressed against the rough bark of the tree, forcing myself to stay still and hidden as he fell to his knees before her and, while he made feral grunts and moans, began to suck Nef­eret's blood. I tore my eyes from him to look at Neferet. She'd thrown her head back and her lips were parted as if having the grotesque Elliott creature suck the blood from her arm was a sex­ual experience.

  Deep within me I felt an answering desire. I wanted to slice open someone's skin and .. .

  No! I ducked completely behind the tree. I would not become a monster. I would not be a freak. I couldn't let this thing control me. Slowly and silently I started back the way I'd come, refusing to look at the two of them again.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  I was still feeling shaky, confused, and more than a little sick to my stomach when I finally got to the dorm. Clusters of damp kids pooled around the main room watching TV and drinking hot chocolate. I grabbed a towel from a stack by the door and joined Stevie Rae, the Twins, and Damien sitting around our favorite TV watching Project Runway, and started drying a grumbling Nala. Stevie Rae didn't realize I was being uncharacteristically quiet. She was too busy gushing about how the snowball fight I'd avoided earlier had morphed into a major battle after dinner that had raged until someone had thrown a snowball that had hit one of the win­dows of Dragon's office. Dragon was what everyone called the fencing professor, and he was not a vamp any fledgling would want to piss off.

  "Dragon ended the snow war." Stevie Rae giggled. "But it was real fun until then.”

  "Yeah, Z, you missed one hellacious wicked fight," Erin said. "We knocked the crap outta Damien and his boyfriend," Shaunee said.

  "He's not my boyfri
end!" Damien said, but his little smile seemed to add an unspoken "yet" to the end of the sentence.

  "What ...”

  "… ever," said the Twins.

  "I think he's cute," Stevie Rae said.

  "Me, too," Damien said, turning adorably pink.

  "What do you think of him, Zoey?" Stevie Rae asked.

  I blinked at Stevie Rae. It was like I was inside a fishbowl in the middle of a typhoon, and everyone else was on the outside clue­lessly enjoying lovely weather.

  "Is everything okay, Zoey?" Damien said.

  "Damien, can you get me some eucalyptus?" I said abruptly

  "Eucalyptus?”

  I nodded. "Yeah, some strands of it, and some sage, too. I need both for the ritual tomorrow.”

  "Yeah, no problem," Damien said, watching me entirely too closely.

  "Did you get the ritual all figured out, Z?" Stevie Rae asked.

  "I think so." I paused and took a long breath. Then I met Damien's questioning gaze steadily. "Damien, has there ever been a case of a fledgling who seemed to have died, but later was found alive?”

  To his credit, Damien didn't freak or ask me if I had gone in­sane. I could feel that the Twins and Stevie Rae were staring at me like I'd just announced I was going to be on Girls Gone Wild: Vamp Edition, but I ignored them and kept focused on Damien. We all knew he spent hours studying, and he remembered every­thing he read. If any of us would know the answer to my bizarre question, it would be him.

  "When a fledgling's body starts rejecting the Change there is no stopping it. That's clear in all the books. It's also what Neferet has told us. Zoey," I'd never heard him sound so serious. "What is wrong?”

  "Please, please, please tell me you're not feeling sick!" Stevie Rae practically sobbed.

  "No! It's nothing like that," I said quickly. "I'm fine. I promise.”

  "What's going on?" Shaunee said.

  "You're scaring us," Erin said.

  "I don't mean to," I told them. "Okay, this is coming out all wrong, but I think I saw that Elliott kid.”

  "Huh!"

  "What!" the Twins said together.

  "I don't understand," Damien said. "Elliott died last month.”

  Stevie Rae's eyes suddenly widened. "Like Elizabeth!" she said. Before I could say anything, she blurted, in one long, breathless sentence, "Last month Zoey thought she saw Elizabeth's ghost out by the east wall but we didn't say anything 'cause we didn't want to scare y'all.”

  I opened my mouth to explain about Elliott—and Neferet. And shut it again. I should have realized before I'd said one word to any of them that I absolutely could not tell them about Neferet. Vampyres were all intuitive to some degree. High Priestess Nef­eret was amazingly intuitive. So much so that she often seemed to be able to read actual thoughts. No way could my four friends walk around school knowing that I'd seen her letting some kind of disgusting undead Elliott creature suck her blood without Nef­eret knowing everything in their freaked-out minds.

  What I'd witnessed tonight I would have to keep completely to myself.

  "Zoey?" Stevie Rae put her hand on my arm. "You can tell us." I smiled at her and wished with all my heart that I could.

  "I did think I saw Elizabeth's ghost last month. And tonight I think I saw Elliott's," I finally said.

  Damien frowned. "If you saw ghosts why did you ask me about fledglings recovering from rejecting the Change?”

  I looked my friend in the eye and lied my ass off. "Because it seemed easier to believe than I was seeing ghosts—or at least it did until I said it. Then it sounded crazy.”

  "Seeing a ghost would have freaked me right out,” Shaunee said.

  Erin nodded enthusiastic agreement.

  "Was it like with Elizabeth?" Stevie Rae asked.

  At least this I didn't have to lie about. "No. He seemed more real, but I saw them both in the same place, over by the east wall, and both of their eyes glowed a weird red color.”

  Shaunee shivered.

  "I'm sure as shit staying away from the spooky east wall," Erin said.

  Damien, always the scholar, tapped his chin like a professor. "Zoey, maybe you have yet another affinity. Maybe you can see dead fledglings.”

  I would have thought this was a possibility, even though it was a gross one, if I hadn't seen the supposed ghost, solid and totally real, drinking my mentor's blood. Still, it was a good theory, and an excellent way to keep Damien busy. "You might be right," I said.

  "Ugh," Stevie Rae said. "I hope not.”

  "Me, too. But could you do some research on it for me, Damien?”

  "Of course. I'll also check out any references to hauntings by fledglings.”

  "Thanks, I appreciate that.”

  "You know, I do think I remember reading something in an old Greek history text about vampyre spirits that restlessly prowl the ancient tombs of ...”

  I shut out Damien's lecture, glad that Stevie Rae and the Twins were more involved with listening to his ghost stories than asking me more specific questions. I hated lying to them, especially since I really would have liked to have told them everything. What I saw had truly frightened me. How the hell was I going to face Neferet again?

  Nala rubbed her face against mine and then settled down in my lap. I stared at the TV and petted her while Damien droned on and on about old vamp ghosts. And then I realized what I was seeing and lunged across Stevie Rae for the remote that was sit­ting on the lamp table beside her, causing Nala to mee-uf-ow snort! in annoyance and jump from my lap. I didn't even take time to soothe her, but quickly turned up the volume.

  It was Chera Kimiko again on a repeat of the evening news' lead story.

  "The body of the second Union High School teenager, Brad Hi­geons, was found by museum security guards this evening in the stream that runs along the Philbrook Museum grounds. The cause of death is not being officially reported at this time, but sources have told Fox News that the boy died of blood loss through multiple lac­erations.”

  "No ..." I felt my head shaking back and forth. There was a terrible ringing in my ears.

  "That's the stream we crossed over when we went to the yard of the Philbrook for the Samhain Ritual last month," Stevie Rae said.

  "It's just down the street from here," Shaunee said.

  "The Dark Daughters used to sneak out there all the time for rituals," Erin said.

  Then Damien said what we were all thinking. "Someone is try­ing to make it look like vampyres are killing human kids.”

  "Maybe they are.” I hadn't actually meant to speak my thought aloud, and pressed my lips closed, immediately sorry I'd let that slip.

  "Why would you say that, Zoey?" Stevie Rae sounded utterly shocked.

  "I—I don't know. I didn't really mean it,” I stuttered, not sure what I really meant or why I'd said it.

  "You're freaked, that's all," Erin said.

  "Of course you are. You knew both those kids," Shaunee added. "And on top of all of this, you saw a damn ghost today.”

  Damien was studying me again. "Did you have a feeling about Brad before you heard he was dead, Zoey?" he asked quietly.

  "Yes. No." I sighed. "I thought he was dead as soon as I heard he'd been taken," I admitted.

  "Did any specifics come with the feeling? Do you know any­thing more?" Damien said.

  As if Damien's questions had prodded them from my mem­ory, the snatches of words that I'd heard Neferet speak replayed in my mind:... much too dangerous … You may not have any more … You cannot understand … You may not question me .. . I felt a terrible chill that had nothing to do with the snowstorm outside. "Nothing specific came with the feeling. I have to go to my room," I said, suddenly unable to look at any of them. I hated lying, and doubted I could keep it up if I stayed with them much longer. "I have to finish up the words for the ritual tomorrow," I said lamely. "And I didn't get much sleep last night. I'm really tired.”

  "Okay, no problem. We understand," Damien said.

  They were all so
obviously worried about me that I could barely meet their eyes. "Thanks, guys," I mumbled as I left the room. I was halfway up the stairs when Stevie Rae caught up with me.

  "Do you mind if I come back to the room now, too? I have a really bad headache. I really just want to go to sleep. I won't bug you while you study or anything.”

  "No, I don't mind," I said quickly. I glanced at her. She did look kinda pale. Stevie Rae was so sensitive that even though she didn't know Chris or Brad, their deaths were clearly upsetting her. Add to that my announcement about ghosts, and the poor kid probably was scared to death. I put my arm around her and gave her a squeeze as we came to our door. "Hey, everything's gonna be okay.”

  "Yeah, I know. I'm just tired." She grinned up at me, but she didn't sound as perky as usual.

  We didn't say much while we put on our pajamas. Nala scooted in through the cat door, jumped up on my bed, and was asleep almost as fast as Stevie Rae, which was a relief to me be­cause I didn't have to pretend to be writing words to a ritual I'd already finished. There was something else I had to do, and I didn't want to explain any part of it to anyone, not even my best friend.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  My Vampyre Sociology 415 text was exactly where I left it in the bookshelf over my computer desk. It was a senior or, as they're called here, sixth former level book. Neferet had given it to me shortly after I'd arrived when it was obvious that the Change go­ing on within my body was happening at a different rate than what went on with normal fledglings. She'd wanted to pull me out of my third former Soc class and move me into the upper level section of Soc, but I'd managed to talk her out of it, saying that I was already different enough, I didn't need anything else to make me more of a freak to the rest of the kids here. Our com­promise was that I would go through the 415 level text, chapter by chapter, and ask her questions along the way.