Awakened (10 page)

Stevie Rae watched Neferet press one slim hand against her throat, as if to hold back the pounding of her heart at the terrible thought that something could have happened to Stark.

Stevie Rae wanted to slap her. Neferet could have received a dang Academy Award for Best Fake Tragic Performance by a Lead Bitch.
That’s it.
She wasn’t going to let her get away with this crap.

But Stevie Rae didn’t get a chance to confront Neferet. The moment Dragon opened the door to the hallway a cacophony of sound flooded everyone. Fledglings were rushing toward the Council Chamber. Most of them were crying and shouting, but above all of the noise—above even the horrible howling—one sound became distinctly recognizable: that of a person keening in grief.

Within the grief, Stevie Rae recognized the voice.

“Oh, no,” she said, rushing down the hallway. “That’s Damien.”

Stevie Rae was ahead of even Dragon, and when she wrenched open the outside door of the school, she barreled into Drew Partain with such force that both of them tumbled to the ground. “Jeeze Louise, Drew! Get outta my—”

“Jack’s dead!” Drew shouted, scrambling to his feet and pulling her up with him. “Over there by the broken tree at the east wall. It’s bad. Really bad. Hurry—Damien needs you!”

Stevie Rae felt a surge of nausea as she processed what Drew was saying. And then she was swept with Drew in a tide of vampyres and fledglings as they all rushed across campus.

When Stevie Rae got to the tree she had a terrible moment of déjà vu. The blood. There was so much blood everywhere! She flashed back to the night Stark’s arrow had opened her body and drained practically all of her life’s blood out of it at this very spot.

Only this time it wasn’t her. This time it was kind, sweet Jack and he really was dead, so it was terrible times ten. For a second the scene didn’t seem to make sense to her because no one moved—no one spoke. There were no sounds except Duchess’s howling and Damien’s keening. The boy and the dog were crouched beside Jack, who lay, facedown, on the blood-soaked grass, with the point of a long sword protruding several feet from the back of his neck. It had run through him with such force that it had almost severed his head from his body.

“Oh, Goddess! What has happened here?” It was Neferet who unfroze everyone. She hurried up to Jack, bending to rest her hand gently on his body. “The fledgling is dead,” she said solemnly.

Damien looked up. Stevie Rae saw his eyes. They were filled with pain and horror and maybe, just maybe, even a shadow of madness. As he stared at Neferet she watched his already pale face blanch almost colorless, and that jolted her.

“I’m thinkin’ you should leave him alone,” Stevie Rae said, moving so that she stood between Neferet and Jack and Damien.

“I am High Priestess here. It is my place to deal with this tragedy. What’s best for Damien is for you to step aside and let adults sort all of this out,” Neferet said. Her tone was reasonable, but Stevie Rae was looking into her emerald eyes and she saw something stir there that made her skin crawl.

Stevie Rae could feel everyone watching her. She knew there was some rightness in what Neferet was saying—she hadn’t been a High Priestess long enough to know how to deal with something as horrible as what had happened tonight. Heck, she was really only a High Priestess because there weren’t any other red fledgling girls who had Changed. Did she have any right to speak up as Damien’s “High Priestess”?

Stevie Rae stood there, silent and struggling with her own insecurities. Neferet ignored her and crouched beside Damien, taking his hand and forcing him to look at her. “Damien, I know you are in shock, but you must get control of yourself and tell us how this happened to Jack.”

Damien blinked blindly at Neferet, and then Stevie Rae saw his vision clear and he focused on her. He snatched his hand from hers. Shaking his head back and forth, back and forth, he started sobbing, “No! No! No!”

That was it. Stevie Rae had had enough. She didn’t care if the whole damn universe couldn’t see through Neferet’s bullshit. She wasn’t gonna let her terrorize poor Damien.

“What happened?
You’re
asking what happened? Like it’s just a coincidence that Jack is murdered at the same time you show up back here at school?” Stevie moved back to Damien’s side, taking his hand. “You can trick-or-treat the blind-as-bats High Council. You can even talk some of these good folks into believin’ you’re still on our side, but Damien and Zoey and”—she paused when she heard two very similar gasps of horror as the Twins ran up. “—and Shaunee and Erin and Stark and I. We do not effing believe you’re a good guy. So why don’t
you
explain what happened here?”

Neferet shook her head, looking sad and tragically beautiful. “I feel sorry for you, Stevie Rae. You used to be such a sweet, loving fledgling. I do not know what happened to you.”

Stevie Rae felt rage rush through her. Her body trembled with the force of it. “You know better than anyone on this earth what happened to me.” She couldn’t help herself. The anger was too much. Stevie Rae started to move toward Neferet. At that moment she wanted nothing so much as to wrap her hands around the vampyre’s throat and press and press and press until she no longer breathed—was no longer a threat.

But Damien didn’t loosen his hold on her hand. That link of touch and trust between them, as well as Damien’s broken whisper, held her back. “She didn’t do it. I saw it happen and she didn’t do it.”

Stevie Rae hesitated, glancing down at Damien. “What do you mean, honey?”

“I was way over there. Just outside the field house door. Duchess wouldn’t let me jog. She kept pulling me back toward here. I finally gave in to her.” Damien’s voice was rough and he spoke in sharp bursts of words. “She made me worried. So I was looking. I saw it.” He started to sob again. “I saw Jack fall from the top of the ladder and land on the sword. There was no one around him. No one at all.”

Stevie Rae turned to Damien and pulled him into her arms. As she did so she felt two more pairs of arms enfolding them as the Twins joined their circle, holding them tightly.

“Neferet was with us in the Council Chamber when this horrible accident happened,” Dragon said solemnly, touching Jack’s hair gently. “She was not responsible for this death.”

Stevie Rae couldn’t look at Jack’s poor broken body, so she was watching Neferet when Dragon spoke. Only she saw the flash of smug victory that passed over her face, quickly replaced by a practiced look of sadness and concern.

She killed him. I don’t know how, and I can’t prove it right now, but she did.
Then, as quickly as that thought formed, another came on its heels:
Zoey would believe me. She’d help me figure out how to expose Neferet.

Zoey has to come back.

So, Stark and I had done
it.

“I don’t feel any different,” I told the nearest tree. “I mean, except for feeling closer to Stark and kinda sore in unmentionable places, that is.” I walked over to a little stream that bubbled cheerily through the grove and peered down. The sun was in the process of setting, but it had been an unusually clear, cold day on the island and the sky still held enough of its dramatic coral and gold light that I could see my reflection. I studied myself. I looked like, well,
me.
“Okay, so technically I’d done
it
once before, but that had been a whole different thing.” I sighed. Loren Blake had been a giant mistake. James Stark was totally different, as was the commitment we’d made to each other. “So, shouldn’t I look different now that I am in a Real Relationship?” I squinted at my reflection. Didn’t I look older? More experienced? Wiser?

Actually, no. The squint just made me look nearsighted. “And Aphrodite would probably say it’ll give me wrinkles, too.”

A little pang went through me as I remembered saying bye to Aphrodite and Darius the night before. She’d been predictably sarcastic, and more than a little bitchy about me not going back to Tulsa with her, but our hug had been tight and genuine, and I knew I’d miss her. I already missed her. I missed Stevie Rae and Damien, Jack and the Twins, too.

“And Nala,” I told my reflection.

But did I miss them enough to go back to the real world? Enough to face everything from resuming school to possibly fighting Darkness and Neferet?

“No. No, you don’t.” Saying it made it even truer. I could feel some of the
I miss them
being diluted by the serenity of Sgiach’s island. “It’s magick here. If I could send for my cat, I swear I’d stay forever.”

Sgiach’s laughter was soft and musical. “Why is it we tend to miss our pets more than we miss people?” She was smiling as she joined me at the stream.

“I think it’s ’cause we can’t Skype them. I mean, I know I can go back to the castle and talk to Stevie Rae, but I’ve tried doing the computer video thing with Nala. She just looks confused and even more disgruntled than she usually does, which is pretty darn disgruntled.”

“If cats understood technology and had opposable thumbs, they’d rule the world,” said the queen.

I laughed. “Don’t let Nala hear you say that. She
does
rule her world.”

“You’re right. Mab believes she rules her world, as well.”

Mab was Sgiach’s giant, long-haired black and white tuxedo cat who I was just getting to know. I think she was possibly, like, a thousand years old and mostly stayed only semi-conscious and barely moving on the end of the queen’s bed. Stark and I had started calling her Dead Cat, but not within Sgiach’s hearing.

“By world you mean your bedroom?”

“Exactly,” Sgiach said.

Both of us laughed, and then the queen walked over to a large moss-covered boulder not far from the stream. She sat gracefully and patted the chair-sized area next to her. I joined her, wondering vaguely if my movements would ever be graceful and regal like hers—and doubting it.

“You could send for your Nala. Vampyre familiars fly as companion animals. It would only be a matter of showing her vaccination record to get her into Skye.”

“Wow, seriously?”

“Seriously. Of course that means you would need to commit yourself to staying here for at least several months. Cats don’t travel particularly well—and moving them from one time zone to another, and then back again, really isn’t good for them.”

I looked into Sgiach’s eyes and said exactly what I was thinking, “The longer I stay here the more I’m sure that I don’t want to leave, but I know it’s probably irresponsible of me to hide from the real world like that. I mean”—I hurried on when I saw the concern grow in her gaze—“it’s not like Skye isn’t real and all. And I know I’ve been through a bunch of bad stuff lately, so it’s okay for me to take a break. But I am still in school. I suppose I do have to go back. Eventually.”

“Would you feel that way if school came to you?”

“What do you mean?”

“Since you’ve come into my life I’ve begun to reflect on the world—or rather on how disassociated I’ve become from it. Yes, I have the internet. Yes, I have satellite TV. But I don’t have new followers. I don’t have student Warriors and young Guardians. Or at least I didn’t until you and Stark arrived. I find that I’ve missed the energy and input from young minds.” Sgiach looked away from me and deeper into the grove. “Your arrival here has awakened something that was sleeping on my island. I feel a change coming in the world, greater than the influence of modern science or technology. I can ignore it and let my island go back to sleep, perhaps to become completely separate from the world and its problems, perhaps even to be lost to the mists of time—like Avalon and the Amazons. Or I can open myself to it, meeting the challenges it might bring.” The queen met my gaze again. “I choose to allow my island to awaken. It is time Skye’s House of Night accepted new blood.”

“You’re going to take down the protective spell?”

Her smile was wry. “No, as long as I live and, hopefully, as long as my successor and, eventually her successors, live, Skye will remain protected and separate from the modern world. But I did think I would put out a Warrior’s Call. At one time Skye trained the best and brightest of the Sons of Erebus.”

“But then you broke from the Vampyre High Council, right?”

“Correct. Perhaps I could begin, slowly, to mend that break, especially if I had a young High Priestess as one of my trainees.”

I felt a stirring of excitement. “Me? You mean me?”

“I do, indeed. You and your Guardian have a connection to this Isle. I’d like to see where that connection takes us.”

“Wow, I’m seriously honored. Thank you so much.” My mind was whirring! If Skye became an active House of Night it wouldn’t be like I’d be hiding from everyone here. It would be more like I’d transferred to another school. I thought about Damien and the rest of the gang and wondered if they’d think about coming to Skye, too.

“Would there be a place here for fledglings who aren’t Warriors in training?” I asked.

“We could discuss that.” Sgiach paused, seemed to come to a decision, and added, “You do know, don’t you, that this island is rich in magickal tradition that encompasses more than just Warrior training and my Guardians?”

“No. I mean, yes. Like it’s obvious that
you’re
magick, and you’re basically this island.”

“I’ve been here so long that many do see me as the island, but I am more the caretaker of its magick than the possessor of it.”

“What do you mean?”

“Find out for yourself, young queen. You have an affinity for each of the elements. Reach out and see what the island has to teach you.”

When uncertainty had me hesitating, Sgiach coaxed, “Try the first element, air. Simply call it to you and observe.”

“Okay. Well, here goes.” I stood up and moved a couple of feet from Sgiach, into a mossy area that was kinda clear of rocks. I took three deep, cleansing breaths, settling into the familiar feeling of being centered. Instinctively, I turned my face to the east and called: “Air, please come to me.”

I was used to the element responding. I was used to it stirring the breeze around me like an eager puppy, but all of my experience with my affinities didn’t prepare me for what happened next. Air didn’t just respond—it engulfed me. It swirled around me powerfully, feeling strangely tangible, which should have really been crazy because air isn’t tangible. It’s unseen yet everywhere. And then I gasped because I realized
air had become tangible!
Wafting around me, in the midst of the blustering wind that had sprung to me at my call, were the forms of beautiful beings. They were bright and ethereal, a little see-through. As I gawked at them they changed form—sometimes looking like lovely women, sometimes looking like butterflies, and then they’d change and look more like gorgeous fall leaves drifting in a wind of their own.