Revealed (28 page)

It gave me a seriously creepy feeling.

“I got you grilled cheese sammiches and tomato poop.” Aurox smiled happily as he slid in beside me, plopping a tray filled with soup and sandwiches in front of us.

All I could do was stare at him.

His smile faded. He looked at the grilled cheese and soup, and then at me. “I thought you would like this. I can take it back. They have turkey and cheese, too, and the cook said they’re almost done making cobb salads.”

“It’s not that. I love grilled cheese. And the soup.”

“Then why do you look like that?”

“Grilled cheese sammiches and tomato poop. Why did you call them that?”

His brow scrunched. “It just came out of my mouth. That’s not what you call them?”

“Aurox, it’s what I’ve called them since grade school. It’s also what Heath called them. It was our favorite lunch because our school made seriously crappy spaghetti.”

“Psaghetti,” he said softly.

My mind told me to tell him to shut up and eat, but my mouth said, “We only call it that when it’s good.
Psaghetti madness
can’t happen with crappy spaghetti.” I knew I was babbling, but I couldn’t stop myself. “There’s a song and a dance that go with
psaghetti madness,
too.”

“I know.”

“What else do you know?” I felt hot and cold at the same time.

“That I want to touch you so badly that sometimes I think I might die if you don’t let me,” he said.

My stomach butterflied. “I’m with Stark.”

“I know, and I think you should take a chill pill about that.”

Chill pill! When he said that he sounded so much like Heath I couldn’t breathe.

Neither of us said anything, and then he reached slowly up toward me. One of my hands was resting on the table between us. Gently, he turned it over. With one finger he softly traced the filigree pattern of the tattoo that covered my palm.

“These were gifts from Nyx,” he said.

“Yes.”

“You have more special tattoos.” He moved his finger from my palm to my face, where he stroked the repeated pattern there.

His finger was warm and it brought alive my nerves so that everywhere he touched I tingled. He followed the line of my neck down to the deep vee of my BDG T-shirt, and began to trace the tattoo that stretched over the puckered scar, which ran from one of my shoulders to the other.

“This almost killed you,” he whispered.

“Almost.” The word came out breathy, like I was trying to talk and jog at the same time.

His fingertips still on my body, his eyes met mine. “You Imprinted with Heath and he saved you. That is why this didn’t kill you.”

“Yes.”

“You drank his blood.”

It was too hard to speak, so I just nodded.

“Zo, I want you to drink my blood.”

“Heath, uh, Aurox,” I stuttered, “I can’t. It would hurt Stark and—”

My words broke off when he lifted the knife and pricked the tip of the finger that had been touching my chest. A single drop of scarlet welled. The scent of his blood washed over and through me. It wasn’t human. It wasn’t fledgling or vampyre. It was magick.

I licked the tip of his finger and he moaned my name,
“Zo!”

The taste hit my body like a nuclear bomb. My hands covered his, clutching, imprisoning, needing. I closed my eyes and took his finger in my mouth. He leaned forward, his head pressing against mine.

The bell that signaled the end of third hour and the beginning of lunch rang. My eyes opened wide and I realized what I was doing.

“No, this isn’t right! No. Aurox.” Shaking my head, I let loose his hand.

He was breathing as heavily as I was. “I won’t tell anyone. I won’t ever betray you like that.”

I wanted to cry. “If you really care about me you’ll just go. Please.”

He nodded, wrapped a napkin around his bleeding finger, and bolted from the cafeteria.

I drank an entire glass of pop in a single gulp. I wiped my mouth. I smoothed my T-shirt. I picked up a triangle of grilled cheese and forced myself to eat it. And when my friends all crowded into the booth I smiled and talked and let Stark put his arm around me possessively.

No one knew I was screaming inside. No one.

Neferet’s eyes moved under her closed lids as she relived the twentieth century. For a time that ultimately brought her such power, and the beginnings of her immortality, it really had been a terrible bore.

Two things had been the exception: her dreams and the old woman. The first had proven to be lies and the second to be spectacularly more than the truth. It was ironic that her dreams were the more enjoyable to revisit.

Neferet had returned to Tower Grove House of Night and to a school all too willing to shower her with concern and compassion. Too close together had been the untimely deaths of her first familiar, little Chloe, and her Warrior. Everyone understood when Neferet withdrew from social events and spent an unusual amount of time in meditation and prayer.

They had no idea that Neferet actually spent her prayer time in a deep, drugged sleep, yearning for the god that came to her only when she was unconscious.

Kalona had been clever. Though he was spectacularly handsome, he came to her dreams as the Faceless God, who asked only that she reveal her fantasies to him and allow him to worship her.

It hadn’t been like dreaming at all. Afterward—after it was far too late—Neferet realized that she had
not
been dreaming—that Kalona had been entering her subconscious mind and manipulating her. Then, all she had known was the desire his immortal touch ignited within her. She continued to open herself to him, and as her subconscious listened to his whispers, Neferet grew stronger. She began to question the modern ways of the vampyres surrounding her. And, ultimately, to believe that it was her destiny to loose a god from his unjust imprisonment so that she and he could rule side-by-side, Nyx and Erebus on earth. Together they would herald a new age where vampyres would no longer exist in an uneasy, pathetic peace with humans. Quietly, Neferet set about events that would irrevocably change the shape of vampyre-human relations. As the immortal had told her in her dreams:
Why do the gods who walk the earth bow to those who should be worshipping them?

Neferet used the loss of her Warrior as an excuse to travel, to not be tied to the tedious job of being a professor. Seeking, always seeking that which filled her dreams but eluded her in life, Neferet had smiled when they began to call her an ambassador of Nyx, whose visits blessed each House of Night in a special way.

Neferet thought of herself as an ambassador of power.

She used her psychic gift to know which High Priestesses wanted,
needed,
to be flattered or challenged, threatened or praised, adored or ignored, and then she gave them what they wanted: information, a healing touch, insight, excitement … the list of High Priestess needs and wants had been endless. While Neferet “served,” she gained standing in the vampyre community. She thought of herself as a powerful, alluring chameleon. She learned how to make her people see in her what each of them most trusted, respected, and ultimately, worshipped.

And always, always, Neferet was drawn to the heart of the nation—to Oklahoma, the land the color of old blood, and the young city, Tulsa, where she had buried the record of her human past, and where Kalona’s dreams, whispers, and touch kept pulling her.

Seek my release … seek my release …
His whispers had filled her dreams and haunted her life.

It was the twenty-second of April in the year 1927 when the wealthy human couple, Waite and Genevieve Phillips, issued an invitation for vampyre High Priestesses to attend the grand gala they were holding to celebrate the completion of the mansion that was being called Philbrook.

Neferet made quite sure she was among those who accepted the invitation. Philbrook did not interest her, nor did the philanthropic, liberal human couple and their wealthy socialite friends.

The city did interest Neferet. It smelled of oil and alcohol, money and blood and power—always power.

It was the scent of power, like the essence of her dreams, that had her leaving the Phillips party that night and wandering through the city. Newly completed oil mansions dotted the landscape. Neferet drifted past them, unseen. She hardly glanced in their windows—barely noticed the leaded glass and the ice-like sparkling of the new electrical chandeliers. Instead she was pulled away from the glittering mansions, following a melodic little brook that seemed to be whispering a song to her.

The mansion appeared suddenly, as if it had materialized especially for Neferet. It was enormous, set in the middle of immaculately tended grounds dotted by oak trees. Neferet remembered thinking how odd it was that there was only an iron gate at the entrance from the street and not a wall surrounding it.

Then she saw the sign and realized that, though it appeared to have been fashioned after a European villa, or perhaps even a castle, the massive stone building was a private school.

Neferet was drawn to it even before she saw the old woman. She entered the campus, her interest completely aroused. There were two main buildings, both built from a uniquely textured stone. The campus appeared new, so new that it looked dark and uninhabited. It was as she wandered through the slumbering campus that the whispering song she had been hearing all night became reality and Neferet’s dream coalesced.

She heard the sonorous beat of the drum first. Neferet had followed it to a far easterly spot at the very edge of the campus grounds. There the scent of sage and sweetgrass led her to an enormous oak, big enough even to shield the light of a campfire. She noticed that birds filled the limbs of the oak.
Ravens,
she remembered identifying them with an afterthought.
Odd, ravens aren’t usually seen at night.

Neferet circled around the tree and saw the campfire.

Then the drumbeat filled the clearing and all of Neferet’s attention had focused on the crone. She knelt near the fire with a large drum before her, which she beat with a simple stick wrapped in hide she held in her right hand. In her left hand she held a hatchet. Every few drumbeats she chopped a fist-sized section from a long, thick rope of dried herbs that lay beside her. The fire hissed as it ate the herbs, belching sweetly scented smoke.

The woman’s dress, though yellowed with age, had an unexpected beauty to it. Delicate beadwork reflected the firelight, and long fringe swayed gracefully with each drumbeat. Her face was ancient, her thick braid of hair completely silver, but her voice was as clear as a girl’s. She began to sing and Neferet had been entranced by her words.

Neferet moved silently toward the old woman as the song pounded through her body in time with her heartbeat.

Neferet stepped within the firelight. The crone looked up at her through rheumy eyes that might have once been blue. Her song faltered.

“No,” Neferet had insisted. “Keep singing. It is a lovely song.” The old woman’s expression had tightened, but she’d continued:

Kalona! The name of the god had pierced Neferet. “Sing it again, old woman,” she had commanded.

“I have finished. I go.”

The old woman began to rise, but Neferet had moved swiftly to stop her. It had been too easy to take the hatchet from the crone—too easy to press it to her throat.

“Do as I command or I will slit your throat and leave you here for the birds to pick your ancient bones clean.”

The old woman had closed her eyes; drawn a deep, shaky breath; and then began to sing, over and over, until Neferet was certain she had the song memorized. Only then did she allow the woman to stop. Only then did she probe within the crone’s mind.

“You think of yourself as a Ghigua. What is that?” Neferet had asked.

The old woman’s eyes had widened. She hadn’t answered Neferet, but her mind had suddenly been washed in panic and strange words:
Ane li sgi
,
demon, Tsi Sgili, soul-eater, man-killer.
That tide of words had been carried to Neferet on a wave of dread and terror.

“You’re very frightened of me.” Neferet had smiled and sat closer to the old woman, resting the hatchet in the small space between them.

“You hear what is in my mind,” said the woman.

“I hear more than that,” Neferet said. “Your song—I believe I understand what it means.”

“I sing this song each new moon as a warning.”

“Certainly, to some it would be a warning. To me it is a promise.” Neferet had probed the old woman’s mind further. “You do not fear me because I am vampyre.”

“I have no fear of vampyres.”

“Yet you fear me,” Neferet had said. “And you sing of my lover. Let me see, how did that song go—
The mark strikes true; Queen Tsi Sgili will devise
. Tell me, old woman, who and what is Queen Tsi Sgili?”

You are, demon! Delighter in pain! Feeder from death!

The condemnation echoed from the old woman’s mind to Neferet, but the crone said only, “I have spoken enough for one night. Now I will say no more.” Then she had pressed her thin, wrinkled lips into a stubborn line.

Neferet had smiled silkily at her. “Ah, but I do not need you to speak in words. Your mind is shouting quite loudly enough. I can glean all I need without you uttering a syllable, old woman.”

But Neferet hadn’t had time to rape the woman’s mind as she had intended. With an ear-piercing war cry, the crone had snatched up the hatchet and sliced it across her own throat, opening her carotid artery.