Awakened (31 page)

Well, now she knew what he’d
really
been doing! Or rather,
who
he’d really been doing!

She should have known. All the signs were there—he’d stopped paying attention to her, stopped coming home, lost ten pounds, and even bleached his teeth!

He’d try to talk her back. She knew he would. He’d even tried to get her from running out of his office, but it’d been pretty darn hard to chase her with his pants around his ankles.

“The worst part is that he won’t want me back because he loves me. He’ll want me back so he doesn’t look bad.” Linda bit her lip and blinked hard, refusing to cry. “No,” she admitted aloud to herself. “The worst part is that John never loved me. He just wanted to look like the perfect family man, so he needed me. Our family was never anything close to perfect—anything close to happy.”
My mother had been right. Zoey had been right, too.

Thinking of Zoey was what finally tipped the tears over to spill down her cheeks. Linda missed Zoey. Of her three children, she’d been closest to Zoey. She smiled through her tears, remembering how she and Zoey used to have geekends where they’d curl up on the couch together, eat lots of junk food, and watch either the Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter movies, or even sometimes Star Wars. How long had it been since they’d done that? Years. Would they ever again? Linda hiccupped a little sob. Could they now that Zoey was at the House of Night?

Would Zoey even
want
to see her again?

She’d never forgive herself if she’d let John irreparably mess up her relationship with Zoey.

That was one reason she’d gotten in the car, in the middle of the night, and headed to her mother’s house. Linda wanted to talk to her mother about Zoey—about mending her relationship with Zoey.

Linda also wanted to lean on her mother’s strength. She wanted help to stand firm and not let John talk her into a reconciliation.

But mostly, Linda just wanted her mother.

It didn’t matter that she was a grown woman with children of her own. She still needed her mother’s arms to hold her, and her mother’s voice to reassure her that everything really would be all right—that she’d made the right decision.

Linda was so deep in thought that she almost missed the turnoff to her mother’s house. She braked hard and just made the right turn. Then she slowed the car so that it wouldn’t spin out on the dirt road that led between lavender fields to her mother’s house. It’d been more than a year since she’d been here, but it hadn’t changed—and Linda was thankful for that. It made her feel safe and normal again.

Her mother’s porch light was on, and so was one lamp light inside. Linda smiled as she parked and got out of the car. It was probably that 1920s brass mermaid lamp her mother liked to read by late at night—only it wouldn’t be late to Sylvia Redbird. Four in the morning would be early for her, and just about getting up time.

Linda was just going to tap on the windowpane of the door before opening it when she saw the note written on lavender-scented paper and taped on the door. Her mother’s distinctive handwriting said:

Linda darling, I felt you might be coming, but I couldn’t be sure when you would actually arrive, so I went ahead and took some soaps and sachets and things to the powwow in Tahlequah. I’ll be back tomorrow. As always, please make yourself at home. I hope you’re here when I return. I love you.

Linda sighed. Trying not to feel disappointed and annoyed at her mother, she went inside. “It’s really not her fault. She’d be here if I hadn’t stopped coming by.” She was used to her mother’s weird way of knowing whenever she was going to have a visitor. “Looks like her radar still works.”

For a moment she stood in the middle of the living room, trying to decide what to do. Maybe she should go back to Broken Arrow. Maybe John would leave her alone for a while—or at least long enough for her to get an attorney and get him served with papers.

But she’d broken her rule about no overnights during the week, and the kids were at friends’ houses. She didn’t have to go back. Linda sighed again, and this time with her inhaled breath she took in the scents of her mother’s home: lavender, vanilla, and sage—real scents from real herbs and hand-poured soy candles, so unlike the PlugIns John insisted she use instead of “those sooty candles and those dirty old plants.” And that decided her. Linda marched into her mother’s kitchen and went straight to the little, but well stocked wine rack and pulled out a nice red. She was going to drink an entire bottle of wine and read one of her mother’s romance novels, and then stagger up to the guest loft, and she was going to enjoy every minute of it. Tomorrow her mother would give her an herbal tea concoction to get rid of her hangover, and she’d also help her figure out how to get her life back on the right track—a track that didn’t include John Heffer and did include her Zoey.

“Heffer, what a stupid name,” Linda said, pouring herself a glass of wine and taking a long, slow drink. “That name is one of the first things I’m going to get rid of!” She was looking through her mother’s bookshelf, trying to decide between reading something sexy by Kresley Cole, Gena Showalter, or Jennifer Crusie’s latest,
Maybe This Time.
That was it—the great title decided her because maybe this time she’d do the right thing. Linda was just settling down in her mother’s chair when someone knocked on the door three times.

In her opinion, it was entirely too late for visitors, but you never knew what to expect at her mother’s house, so Linda went to the door and opened it.

The vampyre who stood there was stunningly beautiful, a little familiar looking, and totally, completely naked.

“You are not Sylvia Redbird.” Neferet looked down her nose disdainfully at the drab woman who had answered the door.

“No, I’m her daughter, Linda. My mother isn’t in right now,” she said, glancing around nervously.

Neferet knew the moment the human’s eyes found the white bull, because they widened in shock and her face drained of all of its sallow color.

“Oh! It’s a … a … b-bull! Is it making the ground burn? Hurry! Hurry! Come inside where it’s safe. I’ll get you a robe to wear and then call animal control or the police or
someone.
”

Neferet smiled and turned her head so that she could gaze at the bull, too. He was standing in the middle of the closest lavender field. If one didn’t know better it would, indeed, appear as if he were burning everything around him.

Neferet knew better.

“He isn’t burning the field; he’s freezing it. The withered plants just look scorched. Actually, they’re frozen,” Neferet said in the same matter-of-fact tone she often used in her classroom.

“I’ve— I’ve never seen a bull do that before.”

Neferet lifted one brow at Linda. “Does he truly look like a normal bull to you?”

“No,” Linda whispered. Then she cleared her throat and, obviously trying to sound stern, said to Neferet, “I’m sorry. I’m confused about what’s going on here. Do I know you? May I help you?”

“There is no need for you to be confused or concerned. I am Neferet, High Priestess of Tulsa’s House of Night, and I do most certainly hope you can help me. First, tell me when you expect your mother to return.” Neferet kept her voice affable, though her mind was a jumble of emotions: anger, irritation, and a lovely shiver of fear.

“Oh, that’s why you look familiar. My daughter Zoey goes to that school.”

“Yes, I know Zoey very well.” Neferet smiled smoothly. “When did you say your mother would return?”

“Not until tomorrow. Can I give her a message from you? And would you, uh, like a robe or something?”

“No message and no robe.” Neferet dropped her mask of affability. She lifted her hand and swept several tendrils of Darkness from the shadows surrounding her, then she flung them at the human woman, commanding, “Bind her and bring her out here.” When Neferet felt none of the familiar, painful slice that was the payment for manipulating the lesser threads of Darkness, she smiled at the mammoth bull and dipped her head in acknowledgment of his favor as she approached him.

You shall pay me later, my heartless one,
rumbled through her mind. Neferet shivered in anticipation.

Then the human’s pathetic screams intruded on her thoughts and she made a motion over her shoulder, snapping the command, “And gag her! I cannot be expected to bear that noise.”

Linda’s screams stopped as abruptly as they had begun. Neferet stepped into the frozen lavender that encircled the beast, ignoring the cold on her bare feet and against her naked skin as she strode directly up to his great head and stroked one finger down the length of his horn before she dropped to a graceful curtsey before him. When she rose, she smiled into the complete blackness of his eyes and said, “I have your sacrifice.”

The bull’s gaze flicked over her shoulder.

This is not an old, powerful matriarch. This is a pathetic housewife whose life has been consumed by weakness.

“True, but her mother is a Wise Woman of the Cherokee. Her blood flows in this one’s veins.”

Diluted.

“Will she serve as the sacrifice or not? Can you use her to make my Vessel?”

I can, but your Vessel will be only as perfect as your sacrifice, and this woman is far from perfect.

“But will you invest him with power that I can command?”

I will.

“Then my wish is that you accept this sacrifice. I will not wait for the mother when I can have the daughter, and the same blood, now.”

As you wish, my heartless one. I grow weary of this. Kill her quickly and let us move on to other things.

Neferet didn’t speak. She turned and walked over to the human. The woman was pathetic. She wasn’t even struggling. All she was doing was sobbing silently as the tendrils of Darkness cut red swaths across her mouth and face, and all around her body where they bound her.

“I need a blade. Now.” Neferet held out her hand and instantly pain and cold filled it in the shape of a long, obsidian dagger. With one swift motion, Neferet slit Linda’s throat. She watched the woman’s eyes widen and then roll to show only their whites as her life’s blood drained from her.

Catch all of it. Let none of the blood be wasted.

At the bull’s command the tendrils of Darkness writhed all over Linda, attaching to her throat and to any other part of her body from which blood seeped, and began sucking. Mesmerized, Neferet saw that each pulsing tendril had a thread that returned to the bull, dissolving into his body, feeding him the human’s blood.

The bull moaned in pleasure.

When the human was drained to a husk of herself, and the bull was thrumming and swollen with her death, Neferet gave herself to Darkness, utterly and completely.

“Go long, Neal!” Heath drew back his arm and aimed for the receiver in the Golden Hurricane’s jersey with the name
SWEENEY
in bold letters across his back.

Sweeney caught it, and then feinted and dodged around a bunch of guys in crimson and cream OU uniforms to make the touchdown.

“Yeah!” Heath raised his fist, laughing and shouting. “Sweeney could catch a gnat off a fly’s back!”

“Are you enjoying yourself, Heath Luck?”

At the sound of the Goddess’s voice Heath put away his fist pump and gave Nyx a semi-guilty smile. “Uh, yeah. It’s great here. There’s always a game I can quarterback—awesome receivers, great fans, and when I get tired of football there’s that lake just down the street. It’s stocked with bass that would make a pro fisherman cry.”

“What about girls? I see no cheerleaders, no fisher
women.
”

Heath’s smile faltered. “Girls? No. Well. I only have one girl and she’s not here. You know that, Nyx.”

“I was just checking.” Nyx’s smile was radiant. “Would you sit and talk with me a moment?”

“Yeah, sure,” Heath said.

Nyx waved her hand and the old-school replication of a college football stadium disappeared. Suddenly Heath found himself standing on the precipice of an enormous canyon, so deep that the river that roared through the bottom of it looked like only a thin silver thread. The sun was rising over the opposite bank of the ridge, and the sky was shaded with the violets and pinks and blues of a beautiful new day.

Movement in the air caught Heath’s eye, and he noticed hundreds, maybe thousands of sparkling globes that were tumbling down into the gorge. He thought some of them looked like electric pearls, and others like geode balls, and still others were fluorescent colors so bright they almost hurt his eyes.

“Wow! It’s awesome up here!” He shaded his eyes with his hand. “What are those thingies?”

“Spirits,” Nyx said.

“Really, like ghosts or something?”

“A little. Mostly like you or something,” Nyx said with a warm smile.

“Well, that’s just weird. I don’t look anything like that. I look like me.”

“Right now you do,” Nyx said.

Heath glanced down at himself, just to be sure he was still, well,
him.
Relieved at what he saw, he looked back at the Goddess. “Should I get ready to change up?”

“That depends entirely upon you,” Nyx said. “As you would say in your world: I have a proposition for you.”

“Awesome! It’s cool to be propositioned by a goddess!” Heath said.

Nxy frowned at him. “Not that kind of proposition, Heath.”

“Oh. Uh. Sorry.” Heath felt his face getting really warm. Jeeze, he was a retard. “I didn’t mean anything disrespectful. I was just kidding…” He stuttered to a stop, wiping his face with his hand. When he looked at the goddess again, she was smiling wryly at him. “Okay,” he started again, relieved she hadn’t blasted him with a thunderbolt or something. “About that proposition?”

“Excellent. It’s nice to know I have your full attention. My proposition is this: choice.”

Heath blinked. “Choice? Between what?”

“I’m so pleased that you asked,” Nyx said with only a little teasing sarcasm in her divine voice. “I’m going to give you a choice between three futures. You may choose one of the three, but know before you hear the choices that once you decide upon a path, the outcome is not set—it is only your decision that is set. What happens thereafter is left up to chance and fate and the resources of your soul.”