by P. C. Cast
It was then that Aurox began to change. Even though Rephaim watched it happening he could hardly comprehend it.
Its body became bigger, thicker.
It grew horns.
Its fists solidified.
Its skin rippled, shifted, pulsed as if something beneath was trying to come forth.
It bent and, almost gracefully, twisted off his brother’s head.
Even Dragon Lankford paused in his attack to stare.
Forcing his mind to think through the shock and horror, Rephaim shouted at Nisroc. “Go! Fly away!”
With a cry of despair, Nisroc, followed by one brother, lifted from the blood-soaked ground.
The transformed creature bellowed and leaped, trying, futilely, to knock them from the sky. When he crashed back to earth, his massive cloven hooves biting into the winter grass, he turned blazing moon-colored eyes on Rephaim.
Wishing he had wings or a weapon, Rephaim crouched defensively and readied himself for the creature’s onslaught.
“Rephaim! Watch out!”
He heard her voice and his fear spiked hot and thick as Stevie Rae, followed closely by Zoey, ran toward him.
The creature lowered its head and charged.
Zoey
I was close behind Stevie Rae as we ran up on the fighting. Jeesh, all I can say is that it was disgusting and horrifying and totally confusing.
I could hardly tell what was happening. Two Raven Mockers were screaming and flying away overhead. I could see the headless (eesh!) body of another Raven Mocker twitching and oozing seriously odd-smelling blood at Dragon’s feet. Rephaim stood a little away from them, as if he’d been watching but not involved in the fight. Somehow Neferet was there, too, looking super crazy and smiling in a very weird way.
In the middle of the whole thing was a creature that was kinda human and kinda not. The instant I saw him the middle of my chest started to feel hot. I reached up and felt the hard, hot marble circle that hung from a silver chain around my neck. “My seer tone,” I muttered to myself. “Why again? Why now?”
As if in answer, my gaze was drawn to the bizarre creature. He had horns and hoofs, but his face was guy-like. His eyes were glowing. He’d been trying to grab a Raven Mocker out of the sky, but when he failed, he turned his attention to Rephaim, lowered his head, and charged.
“Rephaim! Watch out!” Stevie Rae yelled and sprinted toward him. She flung out her arms and I could hear her asking earth to come to her.
“Spirit!” I called, trying to keep up with her. “Strengthen Stevie Rae!” I felt the element respond as it swirled past me into Stevie Rae, along with her own element, earth. Like she was throwing a big ball, she heaved, and a glowing green wall cascaded like reverse waterfall from the earth upward, blocking Rephaim from the charging creature.
The creature hit the green wall and bounced, falling onto his back. Stevie Rae, strong and straight and proud, stood next to Rephaim. She took his hand. She raised her other hand, and when the creature tried to get up she made a smacking motion and said, “No! Stay down.” A wave of glowing green washed against him, pinning him to the ground.
“Enough!” Neferet said, marching over to the creature. “Aurox is not the enemy here. Free him immediately.”
“Not if he’s gonna charge Rephaim,” Stevie Rae said. She turned to Dragon and asked, “Was Rephaim in league with the Raven Mockers?”
Without even a glance at Rephaim, Dragon said, “He was talking with them, but he did not attack with them.”
“They did not attack!” Rephaim said. “They were here to see me—nothing more. You attacked them!”
Dragon finally looked at Rephaim. “Raven Mockers are our enemies.”
“They’re my brothers.” Rephaim’s voice sounded incredibly sad.
“You’re going to have to decide whose side you’re on,” Dragon said solemnly.
“I have already done that.”
“And that is something the Goddess seems to believe as well,” Neferet said. “Aurox,” she spoke to the creature who was still lying on his back, encased in the power of the earth, “the battle is over. There is no need to protect or attack.” She turned her emerald gaze to Stevie Rae. “Now, release him.”
“Thank you, earth,” Stevie Rae said. “You can go now.” With a wave of her hand the green glow evaporated allowing the creature to stand.
Except a creature wasn’t what was left standing. A boy stood there—a beautiful, blond boy who had eyes like moonstones and a face like an angel.
“Who’s that? And what the hell’s going on with all that blood?” Stark’s voice, suddenly beside me, made me jump.
“Oh, for shit’s sake. It’s a dead Raven Mocker,” Aphrodite said as she and Darius and what seemed like most of the school crowded around us.
“And it’s a very pretty human kid,” Kramisha said, giving him a look.
“He’s not human,” I said, holding onto my seer stone.
“What is he?” Stark asked.
“Old magick,” I said as the puzzle pieces in my mind fitted together.
“This time you are correct, Zoey.” Neferet stepped up beside the guy and with a flourish announced, “House of Night, this is Aurox—the gift Nyx gave me proving her forgiveness!”
Aurox stepped forward. His strange-colored eyes met mine. Facing the crowd, but looking only at me, he fisted his hand over his heart and bowed.
“No damn way is he a gift from Nyx,” Stevie Rae muttered.
For once agreeing with Stevie Rae, Aphrodite snorted.
All I could do was stare. All I could feel was the heat from the seer stone.
“Zoey, what is it?” Stark said softly.
I didn’t answer Stark. Instead I forced my gaze from Aurox and faced Neferet. “Where did he really come from?” My voice was hard and strong, but I felt like my stomach was trying to turn inside out.
Somewhere in the back of my mind I could hear the buzz and whispers of the kids around me, and I knew forcing a confrontation with Neferet here and now wasn’t smart. But I couldn’t stop myself. Neferet was lying about this Aurox thing, and for some reason that was all that mattered to me.
“I already told you where he came from. And, Zoey, I must say this is exactly why you need to be back in school, attending class and refocusing on studying. I do believe you have lost the ability to listen.”
“You said he’s old magick.” I ignored her passive-aggressive crap. “The only old magick I know of is on the Isle of Skye.” And that, I told myself, was what I’d seen the night before when I’d looked through the stone at Stark—the old magick of the Guardian Warriors that still clung to him from the Isle of Skye. Mind whirring, but still confronting Neferet I continued, “Are you telling me he came from the Isle of Skye?”
“Silly child, old magick isn’t restricted to an island. You know, you might think twice about believing everything you hear, especially when it’s coming from a vampyre who calls herself Queen and hasn’t left an island in centuries.”
“And you still haven’t answered my question. Where did he come from?!”
“What magick could be older than that which comes from the Goddess herself? Aurox is my gift from Nyx!” Neferet looked knowingly at the crowd and laughed off my questioning as if I was nothing more than an irritating child and they were all in on the adult joke with her.
“What was he changing into?” I couldn’t stop myself, even though I knew I was coming off as totally snotty and bitchy, like I was one of those girls who always has one more thing to say—and that one more thing was always negative.
Neferet’s smile was magnanimous. “Aurox was changing into the Guardian of the House of Night. You didn’t think you were the only one who was worthy of a Guardian, did you?” She spread her arms wide. “We all are! Come, greet him, and then let us get back to class and to that on which the House of Night was founded, the business of learning.”
I wanted to scream that he was no Guardian! I wanted to scream that I was sick
of Neferet twisting my words. I couldn’t stop staring at Aurox as the fledglings (mostly girls) began approaching him, careful to step around the disgusting blood and Raven Mocker remains.
Actually, I didn’t know why, but I just wanted to scream.
“You won’t win this one,” Aphrodite said. “She’s got the crowd and the pretty boy on her side.”
“That’s not what he is.” Still clutching my burning seer stone I turned away from the ridiculous scene and started walking back to school. I could feel Stark looking at me, but I kept my eyes straight ahead.
“Z, what is your problem? So he’s not just a pretty guy. That’s so awful?” Aphrodite said.
I stopped and turned to face them. They were all there, trailing along after me like baby ducks: Stark, Aphrodite, Darius, the Twins, Damien, Stevie Rae, and even Rephaim. It was to Rephaim I addressed my question, “You saw it, too, didn’t you?”
He nodded soberly. “If you mean his change, yes.”
“Saw what?” Stark asked, sounding exasperated.
“He was turning into a bull,” Stevie Rae said. “I saw it, too.”
“That pretty white boy was turnin’ hisself into a bull? That ain’t right,” Kramisha said, peeking back at the crowd we’d left behind.
“White boy—white bull,” Stevie Rae said. Then, sounding a lot like me she added, “Ah, hell.
CHAPTER SIX
Erik
He’d been walking slowly back to the drama room, wishing hard that instead of entering a class he was going to be making a grand entrance to a movie set in L.A., New Zealand, Canada … Hell! Anywhere but Tulsa, Oklahoma! He’d also been wondering how he’d gone from the hottest fledgling on campus and the next Brad Pitt according to the top vampyre casting agent in L.A., to a Drama Professor and a vampyre Tracker.
“Zoey,” Erik mumbled to himself. “My shit started to go downhill the day I met her.”
Then he felt crappy about saying that, even if there was no one around to hear him. He really was okay with Z. They were kinda even friends. What he wasn’t okay with was all the crazy stuff that went on around her. She’s a damn freak magnet, he thought to himself. No wondered they’d broken up. Erik was no freak.
He rubbed the palm of his right hand.
Several fledglings rushed past him and he reached out and snagged one kid by the scruff of his plaid school jacket. “Hey, what’s the rush and why aren’t you in class?” Erik scowled fiercely at the kid, more because he was pissed that he sounded like one of those teachers, the get-back-to-class-young-man kind, than that he actually cared where the fledgling was going.
Annoying Erik even more, the kid cringed and looked like he was going to piss his pants.
“Somethin’s going on. Some fight or somethin’.”
“Go on.” Erik let go of him with a little push and the kid scampered off.
Erik didn’t even consider following him. He knew what he’d find. Zoey in the middle of a mess. She had plenty of people to help get her out of her mess. She wasn’t his damn responsibility, just like ridding the whole damn world of Darkness wasn’t his damn responsibility.
It was as he reached for the doorknob of his classroom that his right palm began to burn. Erik shook it. Then he stopped and stared.
The spiral labyrinth-like mark had become raised, like a fresh brand.
Then the compulsion hit him. Hard.
Erik gasped, turned, and started jogging toward the student parking lot and his red Mustang. As the urge increased to a level that was feverish, he couldn’t stay quiet and thoughts burst from him in jagged pieces of sentences.
“Broken Arrow. Twenty-eight-oh-one South Juniper Avenue. Walking. In thirty-five minutes. Gotta get there. Gotta be there. Shaylin Ruede. Shaylin Ruede. Shaylin Ruede. Go go go go go…”
Erik knew what was happening to him. He’d been prepared. The House of Night’s last Tracker, who called himself Charon, had told him exactly what to expect. When it was time for him to Mark a fledgling his palm would burn; he would know a place, a time, and a name; he would have an uncontrollable compulsion to go there.
Erik had thought he’d been ready, but he hadn’t realized the depth of the yearning that would come over him—the singular power of the focus that pounded through him in time with the pulse beat he felt hot and urgent in his palm.
Shaylin Ruede would be the first fledgling he would ever Mark.
It took him thirty minutes to get from midtown Tulsa to the little condo complex tucked within the quiet suburb of Broken Arrow. Erik pulled into a visitor’s spot in the parking lot. His hands were shaking as he got out of his Mustang. The compulsion pulled him to the sidewalk that ran in front of the complex, parallel to the street. The condo complex had soft white lights that looked like giant opaque fishbowls resting on wrought iron poles, so pools of cream illumination were thrown on the sidewalk. Mature cedars and oaks lined the street side of the walkway. Erik glanced at his watch. It was 3:45 A.M. A weird time and place to Mark a kid. But Charon had told him the Tracker compulsion would never be wrong—that all he had to do was to follow it, to let his instincts lead him, and he’d be fine. Still, there was absolutely no one around and Erik was starting to panic when he heard a small tap-tap-tap-tap. In front of him a girl turned the corner from inside the complex and came into view. She moved slowly down the sidewalk, coming toward him. Each time she walked through the bubbles of light, Erik studied her. She was small—a petite girl with lots of dark brown hair. So much hair, in fact, that he was actually distracted for a moment by how thick and shiny it was and he didn’t notice anything else about her—until the tapping sound broke into his consciousness. She was holding a long white cane that she kept continually sweeping in front of her, tap-tap-tapping, so that it was by sound and touch that she navigated her way. Every few feet she stopped and gave a terrible, wet cough.
Erik knew two things at once. First, this was Shaylin Ruede, the teenager he was meant to Mark. Second, she was blind.
He would have stopped himself if he could have, but no mortal power and, according to Charon, no magickal power, either, could take Erik from this kid until after he’d Marked her. When the girl was just a few feet in front of him he raised his hand, palm out, and pointed at her. He opened his mouth to speak, but she beat him to it.
“Hi? Who is it? Who is there?”
“Erik Night,” he blurted. Then he shook his head and cleared his throat. “No, that’s not right.”
“You’re not Erik Night?”
“Yes. I mean no. Wait, that’s not right, either. This isn’t what I’m supposed to be saying.” His hands were shaking and he felt like he was going to be sick.
“Are you okay? You don’t sound so good.” She coughed. “Do you have the same flu I have? I’ve felt awful all day.”
“No, I’m fine. It’s just that I have to say something else to you, and it’s not supposed to be my name or anything like that. Oh, man. I’m really messing this up. I never screw up lines. This is all wrong.”
“Are you practicing for a play?”
“No. And you don’t even know how ironic that question is,” he said, rubbing his sweaty face and feeling confused.
She cocked her head to the side and frowned. “You aren’t going to mug me, are you? I know it’s late and all, and I’m blind and not supposed to be out here by myself. But it’s the easiest time of day for me to go on a walk alone. I don’t get much alone time.”
“I’m not going to mug you,” he said miserably. “I wouldn’t do that.”
“Then what are you doing out here, and what have you messed up?”
“This is so not going the way it’s supposed to!”
“And kidnapping me won’t do you any good. I’m living here with my foster mom. She doesn’t have any money at all. Actually, since I’ve been working after school at the South BA Library down the street, I have more money than her. Uh, not that I have any of it with me at this second.”
“Kidnap you? No!” Then Erik doubl
ed over, holding on to his gut. “Crap! Charon didn’t tell me it’d hurt if I didn’t do it.”
“Charon? Are you in a gang? Am I supposed to be an initiation sacrifice?”
“No!”
“Good, ’cause that would really suck.” She smiled in his general direction, and then started to turn back the way she’d come. “Okay, well, then. If that’s all. It was nice to meet you, Erik Night. Or at least I think that’s your name.”
With a huge effort, Erik straightened up enough to lift his hand again, palm out. “This is what I’m supposed to be doing.” In a voice that was suddenly filled with magick and mystery and purpose, Erik Night intoned the ancient Tracker words, “Shaylin Ruede! Night has Chosen thee! Thy death will be thy birth! Night calls to thee; harken to Her sweet voice. Your destiny awaits you at the House of Night!”
All of the heat that had been building in his gut, making him feel sick and confused and too hot shot out of his palm. He could actually see it! It smacked right into Shaylin’s forehead. She made a small, surprised, “Oh!” sound and dropped gracefully to the ground.
Okay, he knew he was supposed to be very vampyre-like and melt into the shadows and return to the House of Night, letting the fledgling find her own way there. Charon told him that’s how it was done. Or at least that’s how it was done in the modern world.
Erik thought about melting into the shadows. He even started to back away, and then Shaylin lifted her head. She’d fallen in the middle of a splotch of light, so her face was illuminated. She looked absolutely perfect! Her full pink lips tilted up in a surprised smile and she was blinking as if to clear her vision. If she hadn’t been blind he would have sworn she was staring at him with those huge black eyes. Her pale skin was flawless, and in the middle of her forehead her new Mark seemed to glow a bright, beautiful scarlet.
Scarlet?
The color jolted through him and he started to move to her saying, “Wait, no. That’s not right.” At the same time Shaylin said, “Ohmygod! I can see!”
Erik hurried over to her and then stood helplessly, not sure what to do, as she collected herself and got to her feet. She was a little wobbly, but she was blinking and staring all around them, a huge smile filling her pretty face.