by P. C. Cast
“Jeesh, she’s so damn dramatic.” Aphrodite rolled her eyes. “She already said it’s not a vamp or a fledgling or a horse. So, what the hell? If a gnat dies are we all going to freak the fuck out?”
“What is your problem?” Nicole shook her head at Aphrodite. “Goddess, you’re always such a hag. Why don’t you think instead of running your mouth? Thanatos isn’t talking about bugs and shit like that. She has to be talking about a cat. That’s the only other animal spirit here she’d care about.”
That shut up Aphrodite, creating what seemed like a giant silent vacuum while we all realized Nicole had to be right.
I sucked air. “Oh, Goddess no! Nala!”
Frowning at Nicole, Aphrodite said, “Relax, our cats are at the depot—even that smelly dog. It’s not one of ours.”
“Duchess is not smelly,” Damien said. “But, oh, I’m so glad she and Cammy are safe.”
“I’d just die if something happened to Beelzebub,” Shaunee said.
“I would, too!” Erin added, sounding more defensive than worried.
“I love Nal.” Stevie Rae met my eyes and we both blinked back tears.
“Our familiars are safe.” Darius’s deep voice seemed to anchor me, until Erik spoke.
“Just because the cat wasn’t one of yours doesn’t make its death any less awful.” Erik sounded way more mature than usual. “Wonder who’s on Team Selfish now?”
I sighed, and was going to agree with Erik when Nicole made an exasperated sound and started walking away from us—following the path Thanatos had just taken.
“Where do you think you’re goin’?” Stevie Rae called after her.
Nicole didn’t pause. She didn’t turn around, either, but her voice trailed back to us. “Team Selfish is going to help Thanatos with the dead cat—whosever dead cat it is—because Team Selfish likes animals. They’re nicer than people. The end.”
“I don’t know what she’s talking about,” Aphrodite said.
I rolled my eyes at her.
“This is all some kinda act she’s puttin’ on. That girl can’t be trusted.” Stevie Rae glared after Nicole.
“Well, I can tell you that Nicole almost succumbed to smoke inhalation helping me free the horses,” Lenobia said.
“Her color’s changing,” Shaylin whispered.
“Shhh,” Erik said to her, touching her shoulder.
“She tried to kill me!” Stevie Rae sounded like she was getting ready to explode.
“Oh, for shit’s sake, who hasn’t tried to kill you? Or Zoey. Or me for that matter. Get over it,” Aphrodite clipped, and before Stevie Rae could answer back, she raised her hand, palm out and continued, “Save it. Unless you and Stark and the rest of the burn-up-in-daylight-red-fledglings are planning on spending the day here and under cover, we’d better be reloading the short bus and getting back to the depot. Oh, and birdboy is gonna be one hundred percent bird and zero percent boy pretty soon, too, which I’m sure is awkward in public.”
“I really hate it when she’s right,” Stevie Rae said to me.
“Tell me about it,” I said. “Okay, why don’t you guys gather up everyone who is supposed to go back to the depot? I’ll find out what’s going on with Thanatos and Death and whatnot, and then meet you at the bus. Soon.”
“You mean you and I will find out what’s going on with Thanatos and Death and whatnot, and then meet them at the bus. Soon,” Stark corrected me.
I squeezed his hand. “That’s exactly what I mean.”
“And I,” Kalona said. “I will follow Thanatos with you as well, though I will not be returning to the depot.” His lips turned up just a little as his gaze shifted from me to his son. “Soon, though. I will see you all again soon.”
Stevie Rae let loose of Rephaim’s hand long enough to hurl herself into Kalona’s arms, squeezing him in a giant hug, which seemed to surprise him as much as it did the rest of us, though Rephaim looked on with a humongous grin. “Yeah, we’ll see you real soon. Thanks again for showin’ up for your son.”
Kalona awkwardly patted her back. “You are welcome.”
Then she had a hold of Rephaim’s hand again and was retracing our path to the parking lot. “’Kay, we’ll wait for y’all, but remember, sure as sugar, the sun’s gonna rise real soon.”
Aphrodite shook her head and hooked her arm through Darius’s. “What the hell does ‘sure as sugar’ mean, anyway? Do you think she even graduated from the eighth grade?”
“Just help her get the kids on the bus,” I said.
Thankfully, the wind had picked up along with the rain, and both swallowed Aphrodite’s reply as she and Darius and the rest of my circle, plus Shaylin and Erik, walked off—in theory doing what I asked of them. Which left me alone with Stark, Lenobia, and Kalona.
“Ready?” Stark asked me.
“Yeah, of course,” I lied.
“The field house it is then,” Lenobia said.
Following Thanatos and Nicole, I tried to ready myself for something terrible, but my terrible quota had been filled for the night, and all I could do was wipe the rain from my face and put one foot in front of the other. I wasn’t really ready for anything but bed.
It was warm and dry inside the field house, but it smelled like smoke. The sand under our feet was damp and dirty. Dragon would hate to see his place messed up like this, was what I was thinking when Kalona pointed to the center of the dimly lit arena where I could just make out the vague shapes of Thanatos and Nicole.
“There—out there,” he said.
“We should have lit the torches,” Lenobia was murmuring as we walked across the soggy sand. “The humans extinguished almost all the lanterns along with the stable fire.”
I didn’t want to say anything, but the truth was that I was glad it was hard to see because I knew whatever it was Thanatos and Nicole were gathered around was not going to be pretty. I kept that thought to myself, though, and grabbed Stark’s hand, borrowing strength from his firm grip.
“Have a care where you walk.” When we got close to where she and Nicole were, Thanatos spoke to us without looking up from where she had knelt on the field house floor. “There is evidence of spellwork here. I’ll want it saved and examined so I can discover who is responsible for this atrocity.”
I peeked over her shoulder, not really understanding what I was seeing. A circle had been drawn in the sand. The sand looked weird and dark inside it. In the center of the circle were a couple of furry blobs. To the side of the blobs there were words scratched into the sand. I squinted, trying to make them out.
“What the heck is it?” I asked.
Red vampyres saw way better in the dark, so I knew when Stark’s arm went around me that whatever it was, it was bad. Real bad. Before I could repeat my question, Nicole reached into her pocket and took out her phone. “I got a flash on this thing. It’ll hurt your eyes, but at least it’ll take a picture.”
She was right. I was blinking tears and spots from my vision in the next second. Kalona, whose immortal vision was less susceptible to being messed with by light than any vampyre, spoke solemnly. “I know whose work this is. Can you not feel her lingering presence?”
My vision blinked clear and I moved closer, even though Stark’s grip on me tried to pull me back. Too late, I understood what I was looking at. “Shadowfax! He’s dead!”
“Sacrificed in a dark ritual,” Thanatos said.
“And Guinevere, too,” Nicole added.
I felt like I was going to puke. “Dragon’s cat and Anastasia’s cat? Both of them have been killed?”
Thanatos reached out and gently stroked her hand down Shadowfax’s side, moving from his body to the much smaller cat that was curled up beside him. “This little one did not die sacrificially. She was not part of the ritual. Grief stopped her heart and her breath.” The High Priestess stood and turned to Kalona. “You say you know whose work this is.”
“I do, as do you. Neferet sacrificed the Warrior’s cat. It was done as payment
. Darkness obeys her, but the price of its obedience is blood and death and pain. That price must be paid over and over again. Darkness is never sated.” He pointed to the words. “That proves what I say.”
In the dim light I could see the sad, dead bodies of the cats, but the words written to the side of them were hard for me to make out. I didn’t have to ask. Holding me close to him, Stark read them aloud.
“Through payment of blood, pain, and strife
I force the Vessel to be my knife.”
“The Vessel is what Neferet calls Aurox,” Kalona explained.
“Oh, great Goddess, this proves more than that this is Neferet’s work.” Thanatos’s dark gaze met mine. “Your mother’s death wasn’t simply a random sacrifice to Darkness. It was the payment required to create Neferet’s creature, the Vessel, Aurox.”
My knees turned to rubber and I moved even closer to Stark. It felt like his arm was all that was keeping me standing.
“I knew that damn bull kid was bad news,” Stark said. “No way was he some kind of gift from Nyx.”
“The Vessel is the opposite. He is a creature fashioned from pain and death by Darkness, and controlled by Neferet,” Thanatos said.
I couldn’t tell them what I thought I’d seen in the Seer Stone. How could I, with Stark’s arm around me, Dragon newly dead, and the awfulness of the cats? But I was too raw—too tired and hurt and confused to guard my words anymore to keep from blurting Heath’s name, so instead, like a moron, I babbled. “There has to be more to Aurox than that! Remember what he asked you about after class? He wanted to know who he was—what he was. You said he could decide that for himself and not let his past control his future. Why would a creature who was totally made of Darkness, totally nothing but Neferet’s Vessel, care to question anything about himself?”
“You have a point. I do remember Aurox came to me.” Thanatos nodded. Her gaze moved back to the bodies of the cats. “Perhaps Aurox isn’t completely an empty vessel. Perhaps his interaction with us, and in particular you, Zoey, touched some piece of a conscience within him.”
I felt a rush of emotion that had Stark sending me a startled, questioning look. “He was telling the truth!” I explained. “Tonight, just before Aurox ran off he said ‘I chose a different future. I chose a new future.’ He meant that he hadn’t wanted to hurt Rephaim or Dragon, but he couldn’t help it if Neferet had control of him.”
“It makes sense.” Thanatos nodded, speaking slowly as if working her way verbally through a maze. “The sacrifice of Dragon Lankford’s familiar was needed because Neferet was losing control of her Vessel. We all saw Aurox shift from the bull creature, to the boy, and then begin to shift back to the bull again as he ran off.”
“You also had to have seen how freaked he was when he was Aurox again and he saw what he’d done to Dragon,” I said.
“That doesn’t change the fact that Aurox killed Dragon,” Stark said. I could feel the tension coming from him and I hated that his face had turned into a hard mask.
“What if he only killed Dragon because of Neferet’s awful sacrifice of Shadowfax?” I asked, trying to get Stark to see that there might be more than one right answer.
“Zoey, that doesn’t make Dragon any less dead,” Stark said, dropping his arm from around me and making a small movement away from me.
“Or Aurox any less dangerous,” Kalona said.
“But perhaps less of a threat than we firstly believed,” Thanatos spoke reasonably. “If Neferet must perform a sacrificial ritual, one of this extent, each time she wants to control him, she will have to choose carefully and selectively about how and when she uses him.”
“He said it over and over that he chose a different future,” I insisted.
“Z, that does not make Aurox a good guy,” Stark said, shaking his head at me.
“You know, people can change,” Nicole suddenly spoke up. We all blinked at her. Obviously I wasn’t the only one of us who had forgotten she was there.
I hated to agree with Nicole, so I just chewed my lip silently and worried.
“Aurox is not a person, nor a guy, good or bad.” In the dark field house, Kalona’s deep voice seemed bomb-like, blasting against my already battered nerves. “Aurox is a Vessel. A creature created to be Neferet’s weapon. Could he have a conscience and the capability to change?” He shrugged. “We can only guess at that. And truly, does it matter? It makes no difference whether a spear has a conscience. What is important is who is wielding the weapon. Neferet, clearly, wields Aurox.”
“How long have you known this?” I rounded on Kalona. Stark was staring at me like I was being irrational, but I didn’t stop myself. Even if I couldn’t figure out how to tell them, I believed I had glimpsed Heath’s soul within Aurox through the Seer Stone. “If you knew what Aurox was, why didn’t you say something before now?”
“No one asked me,” Kalona said.
“That’s crap,” I said, totally displacing my anger and frustration and confusion from myself and the Aurox/Heath puzzle and smacking Kalona with it. “What else have you kept from us?”
“What else would you like to know?” he replied without hesitation. “Just be careful, young Priestess, that you truly want to hear the answers to the questions you ask.”
“You’re supposed to be on our team, remember?” Stark said, stepping between Kalona and me.
“I remember more than you realize, red vampyre,” Kalona said.
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Stark shot back at him.
“It means you haven’t always been all goody-goody!” Nicole shouted.
“Don’t you dare talk about him!” I hurled my words at her.
“Again you fight yourselves!” Thanatos shouted, the passion in her voice stirring the air around us. “Our enemy has wreaked havoc on our own house. She has committed murder not once, not twice, but over and over. She has allied herself with the greatest evil this world has ever known. Still you strike out at one another. If we cannot unite she has already defeated us.”
Thanatos shook her head sadly. She turned from us back to the bodies of the two cats. The High Priestess knelt beside them and, once again, swept her hand gently over each of them. This time the air above the cats began to shimmer and the glittering outlines of Shadowfax and Guinevere materialized—only they weren’t the adult cats that lay so still and cold on the area floor. They were kittens. Plump, adorable kittens. “Go to the Goddess, little ones,” Thanatos spoke softly, warmly to them. “Nyx and those you love best await you.” Young Shadowfax reached a fuzzy paw out to bat playfully at the edge of Thanatos’s billowy sleeve before both kittens disappeared in a puff of glitter. I could swear I heard the distant sound of Anastasia’s musical laughter, and I imagined she and Dragon must be having a blast welcoming their kittens to the Otherworld.
The Otherworld …
My mom was there, along with Dragon and Anastasia and Jack and, if I’d been wrong about what I’d seen within Aurox, Heath was there, too. I’d been there. I knew the Otherworld existed as surely as I knew I existed. I also knew it was an amazing, magickal place, and even though it hadn’t been my time to die and stay there, the beauty of it still lingered in my mind and my soul, forming a little bubble of wonder and safety that was the complete opposite of what the real world around me had become.
“Would it be so bad if we lost?”
I hadn’t realized I’d spoken aloud until Stark shook my shoulder. “What are you talking about, Z? We can’t lose because Neferet can’t win. Darkness can’t win.”
I could see his worry and feel his fear. I knew I was freaking him out, but I couldn’t stop myself. I was just so damn tired of everything being a struggle between death and Darkness, love and Light. Why couldn’t it all just end? I’d give anything if it all would just end! “What’s the worst thing that can happen?” I heard myself asking and then kept right on babbling the answer to my own question. “Neferet will kill us. Well, being dead doesn’t seem so awful.” I fla
iled my hand in the direction of where the kittens had so recently manifested.
“Jeesh, give up much?” Nicole muttered under her breath in disgust.
“Zoey Redbird, death is far from the worst thing that could happen to any of us,” Thanatos said. “Yes, Darkness seems overwhelming now, especially after all we have discovered this night, but there is love and Light here, too. Think of what sadness your words would bring Sylvia Redbird.”
I felt a jolt of guilt. Thanatos was right. There were worse things than dying, and those worse things happened to the people you left behind. I bowed my head and stepped closer to Stark, taking his hand in mine. “I’m sorry. You guys are right. I should never have said that.”
Thanatos smiled kindly at me. “Go back to your depot. Pray. Sleep. Find comfort and guidance in the words Nyx spoke to us: Hold to the memory of the healing that happened here this night. You will need that strength and peace for the upcoming fight.” She hesitated, sighed heavily, and added, “You are so very young.”
I wanted to scream I know! I’m way too young to save the world! Instead I stood there silent, feeling stupid and useless while Thanatos bent and gathered the bodies of Shadowfax and Guinevere to her, wrapping them in her voluminous skirts and holding them closely and gently, as if they were sleeping babies. Then she motioned to Kalona saying, “Come with me. I must tell the Sons of Erebus the sad news of the death of their Sword Master. While I do that I would have you begin building a pyre for Dragon and these little ones. It is at the lighting of that pyre that I will officially proclaim you Death’s Warrior.” Without another look at me, Thanatos walked from the field house. Kalona followed her without glancing at Stark or me.
“Your team, by the way, sucks.” Shaking her head, Nicole walked away, too.
I could feel Stark’s eyes on me. His hand seemed stiff in mine. I looked up at him, sure that he was going to shake me or yell at me or at the very least ask what the hell was wrong with me. Again.
