Awakened

by P. C. Cast

  Kalona envied Rephaim for a moment, wishing he, too, could leap from the rooftop of the majestic building called Mayo and glide the black, predator’s sky, hunting, searching, finding.

  But no. This night there was another hunting job he would complete. It would not take him to the sky, but it would also, in its own way, be satisfying.

  Terror could be satisfying.

  For an instant he remembered the last time he’d seen Zoey. It was the same moment his spirit had been torn from the Otherworld and returned to his body. The terror then had been his, caused by his failure to keep Zoey’s soul in the Otherworld, thereby killing her. Darkness, under the direction of Neferet’s oath, sealed by her blood and his acceptance, had been able to control him—to seize his soul.

  Kalona shuddered. He’d long trafficked with Darkness, but he had never given it dominion over his immortal soul.

  The experience had not been pleasant. It hadn’t been the pain that had been so unbearable, though it had, indeed, been great. It hadn’t been the helplessness he’d known as the tendrils of the Beast had encased him. His terror had been caused by Nyx’s rejection.

  “Will you ever forgive me?” he’d asked her.

  The Goddess’s response had cut him more deeply than had Stark’s Guardian claymore: “If you are ever worthy of forgiving you may ask it of me. Not until then.” But the most terrible blow had been delivered with her next words. “You will pay my daughter the debt you owe her, and then you will return to the world and the consequences awaiting you there, knowing this, my fallen Warrior, your spirit, as well as your body, is forbidden entrance to my realm.”

  Then she had abandoned him to the clutches of Darkness, banishing him again without a second glance. It was worse than the first time. When he’d fallen it had been his choice, and Nyx had not been cold and uncaring. It had been different the second time. The terror the finality of that banishment caused would haunt him for an eternity, just as would that last, bittersweet glimpse he’d had of his Goddess.

  “No. I will not think of it. This has long been my path. Nyx has not been my Goddess for centuries, nor would I want to return to my life as her Warrior, forever second to Erebus in her eyes.” Kalona spoke to the night sky, staring after his son, and then he closed the door on the cold January night and with it, once again, closed his heart to Nyx.

  With renewed purpose the immortal strode through the penthouse, past the stained glass windows, gleaming wood bar, the dangling light fixtures, and the velvet furnishings, and into the lush bedchamber. He glanced at the closed double doors to the bathing room, through which he could hear water running, filling the huge tub in which Neferet so loved to luxuriate. He could smell the scent she always added to the steaming water, oil that was a mixture of night-blooming jasmine and clove made especially for her at the Paris House of Night. The scent seemed to slither under the door and fill the air around him like a smothering blanket.

  Disgusted, Kalona turned and retraced his steps through the penthouse. With no hesitation he went to the closest set of glass doors that led to the rooftop, opened them, and gulped in the clean, cold night air.

  She would have to come to him, seek him out, find him here, under the open sky, when she deigned to stoop so low as to actually look for him. She would punish him for not being in her bed, awaiting her pleasure as if he were her whore.

  Kalona growled.

  It was not so long ago that, drawn by his power, she had been enthralled with him.

  He wondered briefly if he would decide to enslave her to him when he broke her hold over his soul.

  The thought gave him some pleasure. Later. He would consider it later. Now time was short and he had much to accomplish before he had to, once again, placate Neferet.

  Kalona walked to the thick stone railing that was ornate as well as strong. He spread his huge, dark wings, but instead of leaping from the rooftop and tasting the night air, the immortal lay on the stone floor, closing his wings over him, cocoon-like.

  He ignored the coldness of the stone beneath him and felt only the strength of the limitless sky above and the ancient magicks that floated free and alluring within the night.

  Kalona closed his eyes and slowly … slowly … breathed in and then out. As the breath left him Kalona also released all thoughts of Neferet. When he drew in his next breath he pulled, within his lungs his body and his spirit, the invisible power that filled the night over which his immortal blood gave him authority. And then he drew to him thoughts of Zoey.

  Her eyes—the color of onyx.

  Her lush mouth.

  The strong stamp of her Cherokee foremothers that informed her features and so reminded him of that other maiden whose soul she shared and whose body had once captured and comforted him.

  “Find Zoey Redbird.” The fact that Kalona pitched his voice low made it no less commanding as he conjured from his blood and the night a power so ancient it made the world seem young. “Take my spirit to her. Follow our connection. If she is in the Realm of Dreams, she cannot hide from me. Our spirits know each other too well. Now go!”

  This leave-taking of his spirit was nothing like what had befallen him when Darkness, bidden by Neferet, had stolen his soul. This was a gentle lifting—a pleasurable sensation of flight that was familiar and enjoyable. It wasn’t sticky tentacles of Darkness he followed, but instead the swirling energy that hid in the folds between the currents of the sky.

  Kalona’s released spirit moved swiftly and with purpose to the east at a speed not comprehensible by the mortal mind.

  He hesitated briefly when he reached the Isle of Skye, surprised that the protective spell Sgiach had laid on the island so long ago could give even him pause. She was, indeed, a powerful vampyre. He thought what a pity it was that she had not answered his call instead of Neferet.

  Then he wasted no more time on idle thoughts and his spirit swatted away Sgiach’s barrier and let himself float down, slowly but resolutely, toward the vampyre queen’s castle.

  His spirit was given pause once more as it passed the grove that grew lush and deep and close to the castle of the Great Taker of Heads and her Guardians.

  The Goddess’s fingerprint was all over it. It made his soul quiver with a pain that transcended the physical realm. The grove didn’t stop him. It didn’t forbid him from passing. It simply caused him an agonizing moment of remembrance.

  So like Nyx’s grove that I will never again see …

  Kalona turned from the verdant proof of Nyx’s blessing on someone else and allowed his spirit to be drawn to Sgiach’s castle. He would find Zoey there. If she was sleeping, he would follow their connection and enter the mystical Realm of Dreams.

  As he passed over its grounds he glanced with approval at the human heads and the obvious battle-ready state of the ancient place. Sinking down through the thick gray stone that was speckled with the sparkling marble of the isle, Kalona considered how much he’d rather be living there instead of the gilded cage of the Mayo’s penthouse in Tulsa.

  He needed to complete this task and force Zoey back to the House of Night. Like moves in an intricate game of chess, this was just one more queen that had to be captured so that he could be free.

  His spirit sank lower and lower. Using his soul sight, the power through which his immortal blood made visible to him the layers of reality that lifted and shifted, roiled and surged all around the mortal world, he focused on the Realm of Dreams, that fantastical sliver of reality that wasn’t completely corporeal, nor was it only spirit, and pulled taut the thread of connection he’d been following, knowing that when the cacophony of colors shifting realities caused cleared, he would be joined to Zoey there.

  Kalona was relaxed and confident and therefore utterly unprepared for what happened next. He felt an unfamiliar tug, as if his spirit had become grains of sand being forced through the narrow funnel of an hourglass.

  Sight first, his senses began to stabilize. What he saw shocked him so badly he almost lost the thread o
f the spirit journey altogether and was jolted back to his body. Zoey smiled up at him with an expression filled with warmth and trust.

  By the shades of reality surrounding him, Kalona knew immediately he hadn’t entered the Realm of Dreams. He stared down at Zoey, hardly daring to breathe.

  And the sense of touch returned to him. She was wrapped in his arms, her naked body, pliant and warm, pressed against him. She touched his face, letting her fingers linger over his lips. His hips automatically lifted to her and she made a small sound of pleasure as her eyes fluttered closed and she raised her lips to his.

  Just before she kissed him and he settled deeply within her body, Kalona’s sense of hearing returned.

  “I love you, too, Stark,” she said, and began to make love to him.

  The pleasure was so unexpected—the shock so intense—that the connection was severed. Breath ragged, Kalona pulled himself to his feet and leaned against the rooftop balustrade. Blood pumped hot and fast through his body. He shook his head in disbelief.

  “Stark.” Kalona spoke the name to the night, reasoning aloud. “The connection I followed wasn’t to Zoey at all. The connection was to Stark.” He understood, and then felt a fool for not anticipating what had happened. “In the Otherworld I breathed the spirit of my immortal soul within him. Some of that spirit has, obviously, remained.” The smile that broke over the immortal’s face was as fierce as his raging blood. “And now I have access to Zoey Redbird’s Guardian and Oath Sworn Warrior.” Kalona spread his wings, threw back his head, and let his triumphant laughter ring into the night.

  “What is so amusing and why are you not awaiting me in my bed?”

  Kalona turned to see Neferet standing naked in the doorway to the suite, a look of irritation on her haughty face. But that look quickly changed as she gazed at his fully aroused body.

  “I am not amused, I am joyous. And I am here because I wish to take you on the roof with the open sky stretching above us.” He strode to Neferet, lifted her, carried her back to the balcony railing, closed his eyes, and imagined dark hair and eyes as he made her cry out in pleasure over and over again.

  Stark

  The first time it happened so quickly Stark couldn’t be sure, totally, absolutely sure, it had happened at all.

  But he should have listened to his instincts. His gut told him something had gone wrong, very wrong, even if it was only for a few minutes.

  He’d been in bed with Zoey. They’d talked and laughed and basically just been having a good time being alone. The castle was awesome. Sgiach and Seoras and the rest of the Warriors were great, but Stark was really a loner. Here on Skye, no matter how cool it was, someone was always around. Just because the place was withdrawn from the “real” world didn’t make it any less busy. There was shit going on constantly—training and castle maintenance, trading with the locals and such. And that’s not even taking into account that he’d been teamed with Seoras, which meant he was more or less the old dude’s slave/errand boy/fodder for comedy.

  Then there were the garrons. He’d never really been a horse guy, but the highland garrons were amazing animals, even if they did seem to produce an amount of horse crap that was totally out of proportion with their size. Stark should know. He’d spent most of that evening shoveling it, and when he’d made a couple offhanded comments that, sure, might have sounded like complaining, Seoras and some other old Warrior with an Irish accent, bald head, and a ginger-colored beard had started calling him Ach, poor wee Mary with the sweet, smooth hands of a lassie.

  Needless to say he was seriously glad to be alone with Z. She smelled so damn good and felt so damn good that he had to keep reminding himself it wasn’t a dream. They weren’t still in the Otherworld. This was real and Zoey was his.

  It had happened between deep, hot make-out kisses that made him feel like he was going to explode. He’d just told her he loved her, and Z had been smiling up at him. All of a sudden something inside him had changed. He’d felt heavier yet weirdly stronger. And there was a strange sense of shock that jolted all along his nerve endings. She’d kissed him then and, as usual when Z kissed him, it’d been more than kinda hard for him to think, but he’d known something was off.

  He’d felt shocked.

  And that was bizarre as hell because he and Z had been kissing and more—lots more—for a while. It was like somewhere inside him, but apart from him, there was a guy who was totally blown away by what was going on between him and Z.

  Then he’d started making love to Z and there was a sizzling sense of utter astonishment. It had felt strange, but everything was intensified when he touched Zoey. And it had gone away almost as quickly as it had started, leaving Z in his arms, melting into him so that the only thing filling his heart, mind, body, and soul was her … only her.

  Afterward Stark tried to remember what it had been that had seemed so weird—what bothered him so much. But by that time the sun was rising, he was drifting into a happily exhausted sleep, and it just didn’t seem so important anymore.

  After all, why should he worry? Zoey was tucked away safely in his arms.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Rephaim

  The Raven Mocker let himself fall from the seventeenth-story rooftop of the Mayo building. Wings outstretched, he soared over the city center, his dark plumage making him almost invisible.

  As if humans ever looked up—poor, earthbound creatures. Odd that even though Stevie Rae was earthbound, he never thought of her as one of the rest of the unwinged, pathetic horde.

  Stevie Rae … His flight faltered. His speed slowed. No. Don’t think of her now. I have to get well away first and be certain my thoughts are my own. Father must not guess anything is amiss. And Neferet can never, ever know.

  Rephaim closed his mind to everything except the night sky and purposefully made a long, slow circle, assuring himself Kalona had not changed his mind and defied Neferet to join him. When he knew he had the night to himself, he positioned himself so that he was headed northeast on a flight path that would take him first to the old Tulsa depot and then to Will Rogers High School and the scene of supposed gang violence that had recently been plaguing that part of the city.

  He agreed with Neferet that the cause of the attacks was most likely the rogue red fledglings. That was all he agreed with Neferet on, though.

  Rephaim flew soundlessly and quickly to the abandoned depot building. Circling it, he used his sharp vision to look for even a breath of movement that might betray the presence of any vampyre or fledgling, red or blue. He studied the building with an odd mixture of anticipation and reluctance. What would he do if Stevie Rae had come back and reclaimed the basement and the labyrinthine series of tunnels below it for her fledglings?

  Would he be able to remain silent and invisible in the night sky, or would he let himself be known to her?

  Before he could formulate an answer a truth came to him: he wouldn’t have to make that decision. Stevie Rae wasn’t there at the depot. He would know if she was near. The knowledge settled over him like a shroud, and with a long exhalation of breath Rephaim dropped to the roof of the depot.

  Finally completely alone, he allowed himself to think of the terrible avalanche of events that had begun that day. Rephaim folded his wings tightly to his back and paced.

  The Tsi Sgili was weaving a web of fate that could unravel Rephaim’s world. Father was going to use Stevie Rae in his war with Neferet for dominion over his spirit. Father would use anyone to win that war. The moment after Rephaim had the thought he instantly rejected it, automatically reacting as he would have before Stevie Rae had entered his life.

  “Entered my life?” Rephaim laughed humorlessly. “It’s more like she entered my soul and my body.” He paused in his pacing, remembering how it’d felt to have the beautiful, clean power of the earth flow into and heal him. He shook his head. “Not for me,” he told the night. “My place is not with her; it is impossible. My place is as it has always been, with my father in the Darkness.�
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  Rephaim stared down at his hand, resting on the rusted edge of a metal grate. He wasn’t man or vampyre, immortal or human. He was monster.

  But did that mean he could look idly on as Stevie Rae was used by his father and abused by the Tsi Sgili? Or worse, could he take part in her capture?

  She wouldn’t betray me. Even if I captured her, Stevie Rae wouldn’t betray our connection.

  Still staring at his hand, Rephaim realized where it was he was standing, on which grate his hand was resting, and he jerked back. It was here that the rogue red fledglings had entrapped them—here that Stevie Rae had almost lost her life—and here that she’d been so mortally wounded he had allowed her to drink from him … Imprint with him …

  “By all the gods, if only I could take it back!” he shouted to the sky. The words echoed around him, repeating, mocking. His shoulders slumped and his head bowed as his hand smoothed over the surface of the rough iron grate. “What am I supposed to do?” Rephaim whispered the question.

  No answer came, but he didn’t expect one. Instead he withdrew his touch from the unforgiving iron and collected himself.

  “I will do what I have always done. I will follow the commands of my father. If I can do that and, at least by some small measure, protect Stevie Rae, then so be it. If I cannot protect her, then so be it. My path was chosen at my conception. I cannot deviate from it now.” His words sounded as cold as the January night, but his heart felt hot, as if what he had said made his blood boil at the core of his body.

  With no more hesitation, Rephaim leaped from the roof of the depot and continued on his easterly route, flying the short miles from downtown to Will Rogers High School. The main building was set on a little rise beside an open field space. It was large and rectangular and made of light-colored brick that looked like sand in the moonlight. He was drawn to the centralmost part of the structure, the first of two large, ornately carved square towers lifting from it. That was where he landed. That was also where he immediately assumed a defensive crouch.