by P.C. Cast
"Who are you talking about, Stevie Rae?”
"Neferet.”
The name blasted through me and even as I shook my head in denial I felt the truth of it deep within me. "Neferet did this to you, to all of you?”
"Yes. Now get out of here, Zoey!”
I could feel her terror and I knew she was right. If Heath and I didn't leave, we would die.
"I'm not giving up on you, Stevie Rae. Use your element. You still have a connection with the earth, I can feel it. So use your element to stay strong. I'll come back for you, and somehow we'll figure this out—we'll make this okay. I promise." Then I hugged her hard, and after only a little hesitation, she hugged me back.
"Let's go, Heath." I grabbed his hand so I could guide him quickly down the darkness of the tunnel. The light in my palm had gone out when I'd called earth to me, and no way was I going to take a chance on relighting it. It might guide her to us. As we ran down the tunnel I heard Stevie Rae's whispered "Please don't forget me ..." follow us.
Heath and I ran. The surge of energy his blood had given me didn't last long, and by the time we came to the metal ladder that led up to the grate in the basement, I wanted to collapse and sleep for days. Heath was all for rushing up the ladder and into the basement, but I made him wait. Breathing heavily, I leaned against the side of the tunnel and fished my cell phone out of my pants pocket, along with Detective Marx's card. I flipped open the phone and I swear my heart didn't beat until the bars started to light up green.
"Can ya hear me now?" Heath said, grinning at me.
"Sssh!" I told him, but smiled back. Then I punched in the detective's number.
"This is Marx," the deep voice answered on the second ring.
"Detective Marx, this is Zoey Redbird. I only have a second to talk, then I have to go. I've found Heath Luck. We're in the basement of the Tulsa Depot, and we need help.”
"Hang tight. I'll be right there!”
A noise from above made me cut off the connection and switch the phone off. I pressed my finger to my lips when Heath started to speak. Heath put his arm around me, and we tried not to breathe. Then I heard the coo-coo of a pigeon and the fluttering of wings.
"I think it's just a bird," Heath whispered. "I'm going to go look.”
I was too tired to argue with him, plus Marx was on his way and I was sick of the damp, nasty tunnel. "Be careful," I whispered back.
Heath nodded and squeezed my shoulder, then climbed up the ladder. Slowly and carefully he lifted the metal grate, sticking his head up and peering around. Pretty soon he reached down and motioned for me to climb up and take his hand. "It's just a pigeon. Come on.”
Wearily, I climbed to him and let him pull me up into the basement. We sat in the corner by the grate for several long minutes, listening intently. Finally, I whispered, "Let's go outside and wait for Marx there." Heath had already started to shiver, but I remembered the blanket Aphrodite had made me bring. Plus, I'd rather take my chances with the weather than stay in the creepy basement.
"I hate it in here, too. It's like a damn tomb," Heath said softly between chattering teeth.
Hand in hand, we walked across the basement, passing through the slatted grayish light that reflected down from the world above. We were at the iron door when I heard the distant wail of a police siren. The terrible tension in my body had just begun to relax when Neferet's voice came from the shadows.
"I should have known you would be here.”
Heath's body jerked in surprise and my hand tightened in warning on his. As I turned to face her, I was centering myself and could feel the power of the elements beginning to shimmer in the air around me. I drew a deep breath and carefully blanked my mind.
"Oh, Neferet! I'm so glad to see you!" I squeezed Heath's hand one more time before I let go of him, trying to telegraph play along with whatever I say through touch. Then I ran, sobbing, into the High Priestess's arms. "How did you find me? Did Detective Marx call you?”
I could see indecision in her eyes as Neferet smoothly disentangled herself from my arms. "Detective Marx?”
"Yeah." I sniffed and wiped my nose on my sleeve, forcing myself to beam relief and trust to her. "That's him coming right now." The sound of the siren was very close, and I could hear that it had been joined by at least two other cars. "Thank you for finding me!" I gushed. "It was so terrible. I thought that crazy street person was going to kill both of us.” I moved back to Heath's side and took his hand again. He was staring at Neferet, looking a lot like he was in shock. I realized that he was probably remembering pieces of the only other time he'd seen the High Priestess—the night the vampyre ghosts had almost killed him—and imagined his mind was too freaked out for Neferet to make much sense of what was going on inside his head. Good thing, too.
Then car doors were slamming and heavy feet were crunching through the snow.
"Zoey, Heath ..." Neferet moved swiftly to us. She lifted her hands, which glowed with a weird, reddish light, suddenly reminding me of the undead things' eyes. Before I could run or scream or even take a breath, she grabbed our shoulders. I felt Heath go rigid as pain shot through my body. It blasted against my mind and my knees would have buckled had her hand not been like a vise, holding me up. "You will remember nothing!" The words echoed through my agony-filled mind, and then there was only darkness.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
I was in a beautiful meadow that was in the middle of what looked like a dense forest. A warm, soft breeze was blowing the scent of lilacs to me. A stream ran through the meadow, its crystal water bubbled musically over smooth stones.
"Zoey? Can you hear me, Zoey?" An insistent male voice intruded on my dream.
I frowned and tried to ignore him. I didn't want to wake up, but my spirit stirred. I needed to wake up. I needed to remember. She needed me to remember.
But who was she?
"Zoey ..." This time the voice was inside my dream and I could see my name painted against the blue of the spring sky. The voice was a woman's ... familiar … magical … wondrous. "Zoey ...”
I looked around the clearing and found the Goddess sitting on the other side of the stream, gracefully perched on a smooth Oklahoma sandstone rock with her bare feet playing in the water.
"Nyx!" I cried. "Am I dead?" My words shimmered around me.
The Goddess smiled. "Will you ask that of me each time I visit you, Zoey Redbird?”
"No, I'm, uh, sorry." My words were tinged pink, probably blushing like my cheeks.
"Don't be sorry, my daughter. You have done very well. I am pleased with you. Now, it is time you awakened. And also I wish to remind you that the elements can restore as well as destroy.”
I started to thank her, even though I didn't have a clue what she was talking about, but the shaking of my shoulder and a sudden blast of cold air interrupted me. I opened my eyes.
Snow swirled all around me. Detective Marx was bending over me, shaking my shoulder. Through the weird fog in my mind I found one word. "Heath?" I croaked.
Marx jerked his chin to his right and I tilted my head to see Heath's still body being loaded into an ambulance.
"Is he …" I couldn't finish.
"He's fine, just banged up. He's lost a lot of blood and they've already given him something for the pain.”
"Banged up?" I was struggling to make sense of everything. "What happened to Heath?”
"Multiple lacerations, just like those other two kids. Good thing you found him and called me before he bled to death." He squeezed my shoulder. A paramedic tried to move Marx from my side, but he said, "I'll handle her. She just needs to get back to the House of Night and she'll be fine.”
I saw the paramedic give me a look that clearly said freak, but Detective Marx's strong hands were helping me sit up and his tall body blocked my view of the muttering EMT.
"Can you walk to my car?" Marx asked.
I nodded. My body was feeling better, but my mind was still all mushy. M
arx's "car" was really a huge, all-weather truck with giant wheels and a roll bar. He helped me up into the front seat, which was warm and comfortable, but before he closed the door I suddenly remembered something else, even though the effort made my head feel like it was going to split open. "Persephone! Is she okay?”
Marx looked confused for just a second, then he smiled. "The mare?”
I nodded.
"She's just fine. An officer is walking her to the police stables downtown until the roads are clear enough to get a trailer back to the House of Night." His grin widened. "Guess you're braver than the Tulsa police force. None of them volunteered to ride her back.”
I rested my head against the seat as he threw the truck into four-wheel drive and navigated slowly through the drifts of snow away from the depot. There must have been ten cop cars, along with a fire truck and two ambulances parked with lights flashing red and blue and white against the empty, snow-curtained night.
"What happened here tonight, Zoey?”
I thought back, and had to squint my eyes against the sudden pain in my head. "I don't remember," I managed to say through the pounding in my temples. I could feel his sharp gaze on me. I met the detective's eyes and remembered him telling me about his twin sister, the vamp who still loved him. He'd said I could trust him, and I believed him. "Something's wrong," I admitted. "My memory is messed up.”
"Okay," he said slowly. "Start with the last thing you can easily remember.”
"I was grooming Persephone and all of a sudden I knew where Heath was, and that he was going to die if I didn't go get him.”
"You two have Imprinted?" My surprise must have been easy to read, because he smiled and continued. "My sister and I talk, and I've been curious about vamp stuff, especially right after she first Changed." He shrugged as if it was no big deal for a human to know all sorts of vampyre info. "We're twins, so we're used to sharing everything. A change of species just didn't make that much difference to us." He glanced sideways at me again. "You have Imprinted, haven't you?”
"Yeah, Heath and I have Imprinted. That's how I knew where he was." I left out the stuff about Aphrodite. No way did I feel up to explaining the whole her-visions-are-real-but-Neferet-has-been...
"Ah!" This time I gasped aloud at the agony inside my head.
"Deep, calming breaths," Marx said, shooting me worried looks whenever he could take his eyes from the treacherous road. "I said whatever was easy for you to remember.”
"No, it's okay. I'm okay. I want to do this.”
He still looked worried, but continued with his questioning. "All right, you knew Heath was in trouble, and you knew where he was. So, why didn't you just call me and tell me to go to the depot?”
I tried to remember and pain shot through my head, but along with the pain came anger. Something had happened to my mind. Someone had messed with my mind. And that really pissed me off. I rubbed my temples and gritted my teeth against the pain.
"Maybe we should stop for a while.”
"No! Just let me think," I gasped. I could remember the stables and Aphrodite. I could remember that Heath needed me, and the wild, snowy ride on Persephone to the depot basement. But when I tried to remember past the basement the agony that speared through my head became too much for me.
"Zoey!" Detective Marx's concern penetrated through my pain.
"Something has messed with my mind." I wiped tears I hadn't realized I'd shed from my face.
"Pieces of your memory are gone.”
It didn't sound like a question, but I nodded anyway.
He was silent for a while. It seemed he was concentrating on the deserted, snow-covered road, but I thought I knew better, and his next words told me I was right.
"My sister"—he smiled and glanced at me—"her name is Anne, warned me once that if I ever pissed off a High Priestess I would be in serious trouble because they had ways of erasing things, and what she meant by things was people and memories." He glanced from the road to me again, and this time his smile was gone. "So, I guess the question is: what have you done to piss off a High Priestess?”
"I don't know. I ..." My voice trailed off as I thought about what he'd said. I didn't try to remember what had happened that night. Instead, I let my memory drift lazily backward ... to Aphrodite and the fact that Nyx was still blessing her with visions, even though Neferet had spread the word that her visions were false ... to the small, almost imperceptible sense of wrongness that had grown like a fungus around Neferet, until it culminated Sunday night in her undermining the decisions I'd made for the Dark Daughters … to the nasty scene I'd witnessed between Neferet and … and ... I braced myself against the heat that was starting to throb through my head and, along with a flash of piercing pain, remembered the creature Elliott had become feeding from the High Priestess's blood.
"Stop the truck!" I yelled.
"We're almost at the school, Zoey.”
"Now! I'm going to be sick.”
We slid to the side of the empty road. I opened the door and dropped to the snowy street, staggered to the ditch, and puked up my guts into a snowbank. Detective Marx was beside me, pulling back my hair and sounding very dadlike as he told me to breathe and everything would be okay. I gulped air and finally stopped heaving. He handed me a handkerchief, one of those old-fashioned linen ones that was folded neatly into a clean square.
"Thanks." I tried to hand it back to him after wiping my face and blowing my nose, but he smiled and said, "Keep it.”
I stood there, just gulping air and letting the throbbing in my head go away as I stared across a field of untouched snow to some distant oaks that grew along a massive stone and brick wall. And with a start of surprise, I realized where we were.
"It's the east wall of the school," I said.
"Yeah, I thought I'd take you the back way—give you more time to collect yourself, and maybe restore some of that memory.”
Restore ... What was it about that word? Tentatively, I thought hard, trying to remember while I braced myself against the pain I was sure would come. But it didn't, and into my memory came the vision of a beautiful meadow, and the wise words of my Goddess … the elements can restore as well as destroy.
And then I understood what I had to do.
"Detective Marx, I need a minute here, okay?”
"Alone?" he asked.
I nodded.
"I'll be in the truck, watching you. If you need me, call.”
I smiled my thanks, but before he'd turned to go back to the truck I was walking toward the oaks. I didn't need to be under them—to actually be in the school grounds, but being near them helped me center myself. When I was close enough to see how their branches entwined like old friends, I stopped and closed my eyes.
"Wind, I call you to me and this time I ask that you blow clean any dark taint that has touched my mind." I felt a gust of cold, like I was being battered by my own personal hurricane, but it wasn't pressing against my body. It was filling my mind. I kept my eyes tightly closed and blocked out the throbbing ache that had returned to my temples. "Fire, I call you to me and ask that you burn from my mind any darkness that has touched it." Heat filled my head, only it wasn't like the hot spear that I'd felt earlier. Instead it was a nice warmth, like a heating pad on a pulled muscle. "Water, I call you to me and ask that you wash from my mind the darkness that has touched it." Coolness flooded through the warmth, soothing what had been overheated and bringing incredible relief. "Earth, I call you to me and ask that your nurturing strength take from my mind the darkness that has touched it." From the bottoms of my feet, where I was connected firmly to the earth, it was as if a faucet had opened and I imagined putrid darkness running down and out of my body to be consumed by the strength and goodness of the earth. "And, spirit, I ask that you heal what darkness has destroyed in my mind, and restore my memory!" Something snapped within me and a white-hot familiar sensation shot down my back, dropping me heavily to my knees.
"Zoey! Zoey!
My God, are you okay?”
Once again Detective Marx's strong hands were shaking my shoulders and he was helping me to my feet. This time my eyes opened easily and I smiled into his kind face.
"I'm more than okay. I remember everything.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
"You're sure this is how it has to be?" Detective Marx asked for what seemed like the zillionth time.
"Yep." I nodded wearily. "It has to be like this." I was so damn tired I thought I could fall asleep right there in the cop's ginormic monster truck. But I knew I couldn't. The night wasn't over yet. My job wasn't over yet.
The detective sighed, and I smiled at him.
"You're just gonna have to trust me," I said, sounding a lot like he had earlier that day.
"I don't like it," he said.
"I know, and I'm sorry. But I've told you everything I can.”
"That some homeless kook is responsible for Heath and the other two boys?" He shook his head. "Feels wrong to me.”
"Are you sure you're not a little bit psychic?" I smiled tiredly at him.
"If I was, I'd be able to figure out what feels wrong." He shook his head again. "Explain this—what happened to your memory?”
I'd already thought about my answer for this one. "It was the trauma of tonight. It made me block what happened. And then my affinity for the five elements helped me to overcome the block and remember.”
"That's why you had all that pain?”
I shrugged my shoulders. "I guess so. It's gone now anyway.”
"Look, Zoey, I'm pretty sure that there's more going on here than what you're telling me. I want you to know that you really can trust me," he said.
"I know that." I believed him, but I also knew that there were some secrets I couldn't share. Not with this really nice detective. Not with anyone.
"You don't have to deal with whatever it is on your own. I can help you. You're just a kid—just a teenager." He sounded totally exasperated.