Found

by P. C. Cast

  The floating immortal jerked back in shock. “Leeches! These are my children!”

  “Oh, indeed? They are so much smaller than mine that I could not be certain what they were—how interesting.” Neferet continued to speak even though the Monstress stared at her incredulously. “I have freed you. It is disappointing that you feel no need to ally with me, but no matter. I have done what I came to this odd world to do. If you cannot keep control of your subjects, I will continue to thwart them in my world. Now, I have prepared a suitable living space for you. It is within walking distance of here.” She shook her head as her gaze swept over her counterpart’s insectile body. “There you will find proper clothing and a rather excellent wine cellar. The décor leaves much to be desired—though it is a definite improvement over your most recent accommodations. Follow me, and I shall show you to it.” Holding her breath, Neferet turned her back on the immortal. She stared into the shadows, trying to see Lynette, hoping that her dearest one would be feeling everything with her—the terror, the danger, and beyond all else, the understanding that they must flee this world and the creature they’d loosed upon it.

  “Wait, Neferet.”

  The Monstress’s strange voice came from closer than before. Neferet turned quickly to see that the creature had drifted down to stand before the destroyed grotto. Her body was undulating back and forth in an odd perversion of a graceful dance, moving to the music that was the madness in her twisted mind.

  “I do not scent immortality on you, but I smell something—someone I recognize—someone who belongs to me. Though you hide her from me, I know she is here.” The immortal continued to sniff the air, and as she did, she skittered forward, angling directly at the shadowy spot in which Lynette was hidden.

  Anger stirred within Neferet, mixing with her terror. “This world belongs to you. I do not. Nor do any of my subjects.” She spoke firmly, preparing herself for what she must do if the Monstress attacked, fisting one hand and pressing a sharp nail against the meat of her palm—ready to draw blood in an instant.

  The immortal’s head swiveled to look at her. She stared at the cut on Neferet’s forehead and scented the air more deeply than before. Her smile was a baring of teeth. “You have Imprinted with her.” She moved closer. “I can smell her blood mixed with yours. Oh, Lynette—dear one—where are you? I am ever so hungry, ravenous really. I know how you hate the children. So as before, I will not let them drink you. I save you for me—always, only for me.”

  Neferet pierced her palm, drawing a rush of blood. As she did so, she sprinted into the shadows that concealed Lynette.

  The Monstress shrieked and surged forward in a bizarre rippling movement that was part insectile, part reptilian. The loyal tendril that had remained with Lynette flew from the shadows at the immortal. It opened its fanged mouth and razor teeth ripped at her face.

  The Monstress screamed and clawed at the tendril. Her long, skeletal fingers closed around its neck and she wrenched her hands until the tendril’s head came off with a spray of blood.

  But that was all the time Neferet needed. She threw the blood that had pooled in her palm on the ground as she stepped into the shadows with Lynette, who limped to her on the injured ankle—white-faced and sobbing—but alive. Neferet put her arms around her friend and commanded, “Oak! Appear! Take us from here!”

  The sprite materialized from the ground, licking Neferet’s blood from her fingers. She looked from Neferet and Lynette through the shadows at the crazed immortal, who shrieked as she sniffed the air and skittered closer and closer to them. The sprite froze, staring at the creature who had once been a High Priestess of Nyx. Neferet almost reached for the annoying sprite to shake her and tell her let’s go when Oak finally spoke.

  “I accept this payment from thee; therefore, as you command, so mote it be!”

  Neferet and Lynette clung to one another as the world around them disappeared.

  Neferet

  Neferet knew the instant her vampyre duplicate and the human, whose blood reeked of her Lynette, were gone. The heat of their scent evaporated, and the shadows that had been obscuring Lynette from view lifted. Neferet went to the place the women had been, crouching to press her hand against the frozen ground. Her nostrils flared as she smelled her palm and brushed the tip of her tongue against it.

  “Yes, that is you, my dear Lynette. It is so lovely to find out there is a version of you in another world and that even there you were drawn to us. Oh, how we shall enjoy draining you—again.” Neferet had spent so much time entombed with her tendrils of Darkness that she was forever linked with them and felt their hunger, their need, as if it were her own.

  Neferet stood and glared around her. “Another ice storm. Well, I suppose we should not let it upset us. Were the weather not atrocious, we would have been seen by now, my dear ones.” Her hand caressed her waist and thigh, taking comfort from the familiar feel of the tendrils pressed against her bare skin. “And we need time to regain our strength, don’t we?” She sighed in irritation. “That smaller, weaker version of us chose an inconvenient time to flee. Could she not have stayed to lead us to our sanctuary? What would it be like to drink myself dry?” Neferet licked her lips in anticipation. “She would have been our appetizer before dear Lynette. Though we might have spared Lynette—at least for a while. We do remember that she was terribly good at planning amusements.” Her gaze went back to the destroyed tomb and the bones scattered around it. “We have the distinct feeling that she had a hand in planning the spectacle that freed us. I am sorry that our view of that amusement was hindered.” She stared fiercely at the wreckage that had been her jail. “No one will ever entrap us again—not as long as I draw breath.”

  As she stared at the bones, Neferet began to salivate. “Enough of this! We must feed, and then we shall plan our future.” She clapped her long, spiderlike hands together. “I know! She said the sanctuary is within walking distance, so she and our Lynette must have walked here. Darlings, it cannot be far. Could you track them for us?”

  Clumps of writhing black worms dropped from her body and slithered through the icy grass, flicking out their tongues to taste the scent of Neferet and Lynette. Then, excitedly, they began to circle around the tomb and crawl up stone stairs to the upper level of the park.

  “Yes, that is it, my darlings. That is it!” Under the cover of a night without illumination from the moon or from mankind’s electricity, Neferet followed a mass of crawling Darkness through the Tulsa Rose Gardens, across Peoria Street, and through the silent, affluent neighborhood to the villa just a few blocks away on Twentieth Street.

  She entered the mansion and explored it, halting in the bedroom suite so recently inhabited by the smaller, weaker Neferet. There was still a carafe of bloody wine waiting on the dressing table, which she helped herself to before she commanded her children.

  “Go out into the neighborhood. Feed, but not from the houses closest to this one. Go to those distasteful apartment buildings that are eyesores on Twenty-First Street. Kill as many of the humans who infest them as you wish. Sate your hunger. We shall expect the homeowners to thank us later.” The tendrils of Darkness fell from her body to glide toward the door. “Darlings! Bring us home something to eat too. Two humans. Try to find ones who are not too terribly old or unattractive. Oh, and be sure they are still alive. We dislike it when our food gets cold. And hurry. You know we cannot abide being alone.”

  She watched the stream of living Darkness disappear, then Neferet drew a bath as she gulped the wine and blood. In the well-appointed—though tastelessly decorated—bathroom, she lit candles and then stood naked before a full-length mirror.

  She was thin and uncommonly pale. Her bones were plainly visible beneath her porcelain skin so that she seemed almost a living skeleton, but what struck her most about her altered appearance was the sheer length of her body and the power she exuded.

  “We are no longer mo
rtal,” she told her reflection as her hands stroked her naked figure. “We are truly the Goddess of Tulsa who has emerged from her cocoon to become goddess of two worlds.” She poured another goblet of bloody wine and drank deeply. “Yes, we shall go to that other world and claim what was ours, and what should be ours. Though I will need to do away with that weaker version of me so that our dear Lynette’s blood is not tainted when we drain her.” Neferet grimaced, which made her look even more alien. “She Imprinted with a human! How obscene. When Lynette was mine, I didn’t Imprint with her.” Neferet added bath salts to the steaming, claw-footed tub before sliding into the water. “We Imprinted once, though never with a human. What was that Warrior’s name?” She shrugged her skeletal shoulders. “No matter. He was insignificant. We do remember he took his own life because he was too weak to be with us.” Her laughter echoed manically from the marble walls, which Neferet decided she rather liked.

  “But now a lesser version of us has Imprinted with our Lynette. Oh, no. That will not do.”

  Neferet sank to her chin in the fragrant water as she plotted a future that included ruling two worlds.

  “It isn’t usurping. It is the survival of the fittest,” she said. “Which means we shall survive. That Neferet is not us, though she did us a favor. We shall thank her by making her end swift and relatively painless. And should she resist, well, perhaps she shall be brought here and gifted to Zoey Redbird and the boring children who follow her. That should keep them busy for some time.”

  She sat up in the tub, sloshing water over the sides. “That is it! That is how we get to the Other World! Oh, and he will be so pleased to see us. But not yet. Not until we have regained our strength. Then we shall call him—then it shall begin.”

  Neferet’s laughter echoed from the walls as she drank and plotted and waited expectantly for dinner to be delivered.

  16

  Zoey

  After midnight Stark and I had finally crawled out of the cocoon we’d made in front of the fireplace—only because we were starving, and I’d remembered the dining hall was serving tacos. “I’m really glad Grandma got stuck here. I know she’s super healthy and all, but I worry about her out there on that farm all by herself.”

  “But I think she likes it out there.” Stark pulled on a sweatshirt with the Andolini’s Pizza logo on it, which didn’t help my hunger level.

  “Yeah, I know she does, and it’s important for her to be independent, but I’ve been thinking about it and what if we start busing fledglings, with vamp supervision of course, to her farm? It could be part of an herbology class that I’ll bet Grandma would really get into teaching.”

  “Which would mean she wouldn’t be so alone. I think it’s a great idea.” Stark kissed my forehead. “I love how close you two are.”

  “It’s the way it should be,” I said as I sat in front of the mirror and gathered my hair into a high ponytail. “There’s no reason for kids to lose their families when they’re Marked—not if their families want to stay connected.”

  “No way was Grandma Redbird going to let a little thing like you turning into a vampyre stop her from being part of your life.”

  I leaned toward the mirror and ran mascara along my lashes as I answered. “Yeah, I was lucky like that, but lots of kids have families who are too intimidated or too filled with lies about what a House of Night is and what happens here to feel the same way. It’s those families I’d like to reach. I think it will only make our adult vampyres happier and healthier if they know the students still have the support of their people back home—along with their new House of Night families.”

  “You’re doing a really good job of opening the door to humans. And don’t worry about that blip at the swim meet with Kacie. If humans want all of the cool things that go along with being close to us—like our artists, storytellers, actors, singers, historians; the list goes on and on—then they’re going to have to accept that some of us die. It’s something fledglings live with every day until their Mark is filled in. It’s past time humans took their heads out of the sand.”

  “Or their butts,” I said.

  He laughed. “Exactly. Come on! You look fantastic, as always. Let’s eat. Damien texted me earlier. They’ve brewed a new batch of blood beer we need to try.”

  “You know how nasty that sounds, right?”

  “But, it’s oh, so good!”

  Holding hands, we left the section of the big stone building that housed the professors’ quarters. Even though changes in weather, particularly the cold, didn’t bother me like before I’d been Marked, I braced myself against what I knew would be a wet, icy Oklahoma winter’s night, and stepped through the arched door Stark held open for me—and instantly started laughing.

  The rear of the House of Night campus held an expansive grassy area that was home to huge, ancient oaks, stone benches, and a large marble statue of Nyx that was positioned across from her temple. In front of Nyx’s Temple there was a circular cobblestone drive. Someone—and I noticed right away that Stevie Rae seemed to be the orchestrator of what was going on—had pulled out a fat green hose and flooded the cobblestone area. The water was now frozen, and fledglings were sorta ice-skating. And by sorta I mean they were slipping and sliding across the frozen, homemade rink, but they weren’t wearing ice skates. They were wearing—

  “Are those slippers on their feet?” Stark said.

  Stevie Rae rushed up to us. “Ohmygoodness, we’re havin’ so much fun! Do you know Rephaim has never ice-skated? Not once. Ever.” She waved at Rephaim, who was tentatively sliding on the ice between Damien and Jack—obviously on standby to grab him whenever he started to fall. He waved back at her, and then they did have to steady him as he windmilled his arms and almost fell on his butt.

  Stevie Rae giggled. Her cheeks were roses and she had ice in her curls, and she looked happier and more relaxed than she had in weeks. With Damien’s help Rephaim righted himself and then the three of them plowed into the middle of a bunch of fledglings as they zoomed across the ice chasing something that looked vaguely puck-like.

  “What kind of puck is that?” Stark asked.

  “The kind your grandma makes you from the lid of a mason jar.” Grandma Redbird grinned like a girl as she joined us. She was carrying one of the puck things, which she’d created with lots of duct tape and weighted with Goddess only knew what.

  Stark looked appalled. “Grandma Redbird, do not tell me you’ve been out there with those kids.”

  “Okay, rooster, I will not tell you.” Grandma winked at me.

  “I’ll tell him,” said Stevie Rae. “Don’t be a fun-sucker. Grandma Redbird is like some kinda genius on the ice.”

  “That is sweet of you, Stevie Rae. But I’ve forgotten more about skating than I remember.”

  I hugged my favorite human tightly. “Grandma, you always amaze me.” I mentally filed away the fact that I needed to get her to a real rink so that she could give me a pointer or twelve. It’d been way too long since she and I had gone ice-skating.

  “Ah oh.” Stevie Rae jerked her chin at someone behind me. “Talk about a fun-sucker. Z, please don’t let her shut this down.”

  I turned to see Aphrodite, with a decidedly fun-sucking expression on her face, doing her best to hurry toward us—though her choice of thigh-high suede stiletto boots was not working for her. Between the ice and the wet she looked like a cat trying to cross a stream on slick rocks.

  When she finally reached us, I intercepted her before she could say anything. “Hey, they’re just having fun. I don’t think we need to cut off anyone’s head or whatever. We can just let them skate around while we—”

  “Oh, for shit’s sake, I do not care one tiny bit if any of those idiots break their necks.” She glanced at Grandma Redbird and added, “Excluding you, of course. But I watched you earlier. You have some moves.”

  “Thank you,” Grandma said.
>
  “This is way more important than the low-rent Holiday on Ice going on out there.” She waved her cell phone in front of Stark. “Is this the human woman you talked to at the park yesterday?”

  “If you would hold it still I could tell you,” Stark said.

  “Here! Jesus! Take it.” Aphrodite handed it to him.

  “What’s this about?” I asked.

  “I’ll tell you, if Bow Boy—”

  “Yeah, that’s her. So?” said Stark.

  “Shit. I need to sit down.” Aphrodite made her way carefully to the ice-covered stone bench near Nyx’s statue and sat heavily. Then she shivered and rolled her eyes. “Goddess, I hate ice.”

  Damien slid up to us on icy slippers. “What’s going on? I can feel your stress all the way from the rink.”

  “It has something to do with her.” Stevie Rae took the phone from Stark and held it so that she, Damien, and I could check it out together.

  “It’s Lynette Witherspoon. Remember her?” Aphrodite said.

  “Ohmygoodness, I remember her!” Stevie Rae said as she sat beside Aphrodite.

  “Ah, hell. I do too,” I said.

  “Who is she, u-we-tsi-a-ge-ya?” Grandma asked as she studied the photo.

  “Was, not is,” Damien looked as ill as I felt.

  When Grandma and Stark both looked confused, I explained. “Remember the woman who escaped the Mayo? Kalona brought her here and then she snuck off campus and returned to Neferet.”

  Stark nodded. “Yeah, I remember. Neferet killed her. But I’m sure that’s who I saw in the park yesterday.”

  “You’re not wrong,” said Aphrodite. “I saw her there too. Only I was a lot farther away from her than you were, but even that glimpse of her jogged my memory and I couldn’t quit thinking about her. So, I went to the damn kitchen and charged my cell, then I did a quick search of news stories from last year.”

  “The internet is working?” Stevie Rae said.