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  “Oh, absolutely! I’ll be right back!” As Damien hurried past Chera he paused and added, “I really do just love you!”

  Chera beamed a beautiful smile at him and opened her arms. “Damien, you are precious. How about a hug?”

  “Ohmygod, yes!” Damien’s grin lit up his face as he hugged Chera. I heard her whisper, “Adam told me to say hi.”

  “Oooh! Tell him hi for me right back!” Damien finished squeezing her and then he hurried toward Thanatos’s office.

  I swear if he’d been a puppy he would have wagged himself to death.

  “You’re the first red vampyre I’ve seen in person! Your tattoos are quite beautiful.” Chera and the camera were now focused on Stark.

  “Yeah, uh, I’m a red vampyre,” Stark said, glancing nervously back and forth from the camera to Chera.

  “Your name is Stark, right?” Chera asked him.

  “Right.”

  Way conscious of the camera that was blinking the red record light, I’d opened my mouth to try to figure out something to say that didn’t end up with me hysterically shrieking, grabbing Stark, and bolting from the room, but Chera was peering up at Stark, smiling, and looking captivated as she studied his Mark. She moved closer to him. Sounding friendly and totally harmless she said, “The pattern is intriguing. It looks like arrows. You’re not from Broken Arrow, are you?”

  “Uh, no. I’m from Chicago.”

  “Are the arrows symbolic?”

  “Well, yeah, I guess. I’m a pretty good archer,” he said.

  Chera turned her big brown eyes on me and smiled as if she and I were BFFs. “Your tattoos are amazing, too. And you have them everywhere! I think I see birds and flowers and, wow, even flames and waves within that filigree design. You must be a very special young vampyre.”

  I opened and closed my mouth. I had no clue what to say. If Chera had been blunt and pushy and reporter-like it would have been easy to do the whole “no comment” thing and walk away, but she seemed genuinely nice and just politely curious. Sounding as nervous as Stark looked, I said, “Well, I’m not really comfortable with the whole special label, even though our Goddess Marked me with extra tattoos.”

  “Oh, I get it.” Chera motioned to the cameraman. “Jerry, cut that part.” Then she turned her attention back to me. “I apologize. I’m not here to make anyone uncomfortable.”

  “Why are you here?” I asked.

  “To get an inside reaction to the killing of Tulsa’s mayor.”

  “We didn’t kill the mayor,” I said.

  “I didn’t mean to accuse you! Any of you! Not at all,” Chera assured us, sounding as sincere as she looked.

  “Is someone making accusations?” Thanatos hurried up, with Damien following closely behind.

  Chera glanced at the cameraman. “Jerry, stop recording, please.” She held her hand out to Thanatos. “High Priestess, I am Chera Kimiko, Fox 23 News.”

  Thanatos took her hand. “I am Thanatos, this House of Night’s High Priestess. And I recognize you, Miss Kimiko.”

  “Please, call me Chera. I’m not here to accuse anyone of anything. I’m only trying to show the whole story, the real story behind Charles LaFont’s death.” She held out her hand to one of the guys with the lights. “Andy, let me see my iPad.” The guy handed it to her—she tapped the screen and then held it up so that we could see Aphrodite’s mom being interviewed by a concerned-looking man in a suit that didn’t fit very well.

  “Mrs. LaFont, please accept our condolences on the death of your husband, our beloved mayor,” said the reporter.

  “I do appreciate the sentiment, but I will not be consoled until my husband’s vampyre murderer is brought to justice.”

  Diana and I sucked air. Thanatos seemed to turn to stone. Darius and Stark looked like they might explode. But Aphrodite’s mom, Mrs. Charles LaFont, looked beautiful and devastated and mesmerizingly passionate in her sleek black dress and her pearls. She dabbed a lace handkerchief at the corners of her tear-filled blue eyes before she continued.

  “So, you are sure your husband was killed by a vampyre?” the reporter prompted.

  “Absolutely sure. I was there. I found his brutalized, blood-drained body.” Mrs. LaFont looked from the reporter straight into the camera. “Something has to be done about the House of Night.”

  The interview broke for a commercial and Chera tapped the screen off.

  “The only side that is being heard is that of Mrs. LaFont, and while I sympathize with her loss, I am a journalist, and I believe in telling the whole story.”

  “Miss Kimiko, there is no drama and intrigue and the story of a murderer being hidden here. There are only students and professors, and a school day that has been disrupted because of the tragic events of last night.”

  “Please, Thanatos, don’t see me as an enemy. Allow me to tell the rest of the story and film some of your students just going about normal activities. Allow me to show Tulsa who you really are. I have always believed that fear and hatred are fueled by ignorance,” Chera said earnestly, meeting Thanatos’s gaze without wavering. “If our city has nothing to fear from your House of Night, allow my camera to show that. Let it educate Tulsa.”

  “Chera, it does seem that your intentions are good, but as I already said, our students are not going on with normal activities today.”

  “Excuse me, Thanatos.” Damien held up his hand.

  “Yes, Damien. What is it?”

  “Most of the fledglings are still having breakfast in the cafeteria. That’s a normal school activity.”

  “I would love to film your students there!” Chera said.

  “Very well. Damien, you may escort Miss Kimiko to the cafeteria. I will join you, but will remain in the background so that she may film an authentic cafeteria experience.”

  “Ooooh! This will be fantastic!” Damien gushed.

  “That is exactly what I think, too.” Chera smiled at him.

  “Miss Kimiko,” Thanatos said. “We will only film in the cafeteria. That is as much outside interference as my school can tolerate today.”

  “I understand and appreciate even this small opportunity,” Chera said.

  “Then Damien shall lead the way to our cafeteria,” Thanatos said. “Zoey, Stark, Darius, as you were.”

  Relieved to have the focus shifted away from us, I nodded at Thanatos and the three of us scurried out the door, though I felt Chera’s curious gaze follow us.

  “Do you think any publicity is good publicity?” Darius asked.

  “No!” Stark and I said together.

  Kalona

  The winged immortal hated that the human had been killed. Not that he minded that the man had lost his life. From the information Kalona gleaned from the others, the mayor had been a weak, simpering, useless human being. Kalona only minded that it had happened while he was Warrior to the High Priestess of Death, and the human had been killed on his watch.

  Kalona also hated that Neferet had so obviously been the murderer. With a grunt of irritation, Kalona leaned back in the roomy leather chair and threw a dagger into the chipped target that was mounted on the wall across from Dragon Lankford’s desk. It struck true in the center of the blood-colored bull’s-eye.

  “I should have been more vigilant. I should have known the Tsi Sgili would find a way to regain her corporeal form and return to begin her revenge.” As he spoke he threw another knife. It stuck and held beside the first. “But instead of protecting, I was hiding”—he said the word as if it had a foul taste—“lest the local humans be shocked at the sight of me.” His laughter lacked humor. “No, instead of me shocking them, they were treated to two deaths.” Kalona reached for another dagger, and his hand brushed the delicate blown glass sunflower held within a crystal vase on which was etched a likeness of Nyx, arms raised cupping a crescent moon. The movement caused the vase to rock, so that it lost balance, toppled, and fell toward the stone floor.

  A ball of light, bright as the rising sun, exploded within the
office. Time was suspended. The vase and flower paused in their fall, hovering just above the unforgiving stone floor.

  A hand, tanned to burnished gold, reached from the ball of light, and plucked from the air first the flower, and then the Goddess-etched vase, setting them to right on the desk.

  “Brother, you need a job,” Kalona said sarcastically.

  “I have one,” Erebus said, stepping from the ball of light. He sat, slouching irreverently on the edge of Dragon Lankford’s wide wooden desk. “I protect that which is exquisite and beautiful.” He gestured to the crystal vase.

  Kalona snorted. “Are you comparing Nyx to a vase? I’m not entirely sure the Goddess would appreciate the comparison.”

  “And yet it is a valid one,” Erebus said. “The vase is exquisite and beautiful, and you treated it carelessly. Had I not interceded, it would have been broken.”

  “It was I and not Nyx who was broken.”

  “I stand corrected. Comparing the Goddess to a vase is foolish. Nyx could never be so easily broken, especially as she will eternally have me as her protector,” Erebus said.

  “You? The protector of a goddess?” Kalona’s humorless laughter filled the room with the coldness of winter moonlight, causing some of Erebus’s summer brilliance to mute. “Brother, you will always only be one thing, but that is not a Warrior. I was the only one of us who could fulfill more than one duty for the Goddess.”

  “Love is not a duty,” Erebus said.

  “Isn’t it? I wouldn’t think I knew more of love than you, but I do know that sometimes it is a duty to keep love alive, and not to allow its light to dim.”

  “Little wonder you could not keep her,” Erebus said. “Loving a goddess should never be a duty, no matter what rhetoric you attempt to wrap that word in.”

  “It was you who couldn’t keep her. Had you satisfied Nyx so fully, why did she turn to me?” Kalona smiled at his brother.

  Erebus’s light darkened more. “Yet now her image in glass is as close to Nyx as you can get.”

  “But you will not leave me in peace. Why is that, brother? Are you afraid she will turn to me again?”

  Erebus slammed his hand down on the desk, burning his palm print into the wood. Kalona did not flinch, nor did he look away from his brother, though the sight of him blazing with his father’s light burned Kalona’s moonlit eyes.

  “I am here only because you have again made a terrible mistake.”

  Kalona leaned back and crossed his arms over his chest. “I don’t deny that I have made a long list of mistakes. Unlike you, I never claim perfection. Which, in that long list, would you like to discuss?”

  “Your mistakes are, indeed, vast. Your list of wrongs against mankind as well as vampyres and the Goddess is long. But I have neither the time nor the inclination to recount them all. It is your latest mistake of which I must speak. You allowed a troubled High Priestess of Nyx to turn to Darkness and become a tool of evil. That damaged Priestess has become immortal and unspeakably dangerous.”

  “Neferet was intrigued by Darkness long before she knew aught of me.”

  “Neferet was a broken girl who became a broken fledgling. Your whispers were responsible for drawing her to this land and feeding her need for control and power, and eventually encouraging her path to immortality and her descent into madness.”

  “You’re wrong. You know nothing of Neferet. The Priestess was broken and mad before she began listening to my whispers.”

  “I know that Neferet has caused the Goddess much pain, and that means she must be stopped,” Erebus said.

  Kalona laughed again. “And now you prove beyond any doubt you know nothing about Neferet. She has chosen the path of chaos. Not even death can dissuade her from it.”

  “And yet you will dissuade her.”

  “You fool—a week ago the Vessel Aurox, fully in the magickal form of a beast, gored Neferet and hurled her from the balcony of a building as high as a mountaintop. Last night Neferet regained enough of her physical form to manifest on this campus, cause a fledgling to reject the Change, and kill an adult human. Then she disappeared again. She is immortal. She cannot be killed,” Kalona said.

  “And yet something must be done with her. You opened the door to immortal power to her—you will close it.”

  Kalona shook his head, gathering the cold light of the moon close to him. “Who are you to command me? You are my brother, not my Goddess.”

  “I speak for your Goddess!” Erebus’s light flared, burning so brightly that even Kalona could not help but recognize the divine and borrowed power of Nyx he wielded. “When first you Fell from the Otherworld you wreaked havoc upon the humans who attempted to succor you until Nyx heard their cries and answered the prayers of their Wise Women, calling together and allowing them to use the Divine Feminine within them. Thus was fashioned A-ya, she who entrapped you for generations.”

  “I remember well what happened,” Kalona snarled. “I do not need you, or Nyx, to remind me of that dark time.”

  “Silence, you fool! I come with an edict from Nyx!” Erebus blazed. “I do not remind you of the time. I remind you of the reason behind it. You rejected your Goddess, and in your attempt to replace her you used and cast aside many women, until A-ya was created. Then you recognized the spark of Nyx within her. That is why you were vulnerable to her. That is why you loved her.”

  Kalona looked away from Erebus. There had been a time, in the not so distant past, when he would have arrogantly denied his brother’s words and used his own immortal power to cast him from the mortal plane and back to the Otherworld.

  But Kalona had changed. And the truth in what his brother said burned him more than did the harsh light Erebus had inherited from his father, the sun.

  So the winged immortal remained silent, still as a statue, as Erebus’s Goddess-touched words continued to batter him.

  “But you would not remain imprisoned. Even entombed in the earth, wrapped in the arms of she who was breathed to life by Nyx, still you yearned for that which your arrogance had caused you to lose. So you sent out your cloying whispers, seeking another who had been touched by Nyx—one who might fill the emptiness within you. Since the moment she was Marked, Neferet was special to the Goddess, because of, and not in spite of, the horrors she had survived. But she was, indeed, a vulnerable young fledgling. That is why Neferet was susceptible to your call. That is why, after she completed the Change, you convinced her to free you.”

  Kalona wanted to flee—to run from his brother’s hurtful words, but something within him bade him stay and hear the edict Nyx had sent Erebus to proclaim.

  “And because she, too, was only touched by the Goddess and not Nyx incarnate, Neferet failed to fill that emptiness within you. Her failure turned to poison. Do you deny that you thought you loved her, just as you believed you loved the maiden, A-ya?”

  “I deny nothing, just as I acknowledge nothing. Speak your edict and begone. Your words weary me.”

  “Look within yourself. It is not my words that weary you. The day you can admit the truth about your past and accept full responsibility for all the evil you have loosed in this realm, is the day your load will begin to lighten.” The anger in Erebus’s voice softened, though the power of his Goddess-enhanced visage continued to blaze. “Then you met the fledgling, Zoey Redbird, and you were instantly drawn to, and angered by, her connection to Nyx. You wanted to seduce and destroy her.”

  “But I did neither!”

  “Only because Zoey’s connection to Nyx is, indeed, strong, and unlike A-ya, she is a woman, fully formed with a will of her own and, unlike Neferet, she is not damaged. Zoey Redbird’s heart is loyal and true. Though your actions almost destroyed her. Do not forget you shattered the child’s soul. Do not forget you trespassed into the Otherworld, risking Nyx’s wrath. Because of that the Goddess herself interceded on her daughter’s behalf.”

  Kalona looked away again, remembering that brief, bittersweet moment when he, once again, had been in the
presence of Nyx.

  She had not forgiven him, and Kalona had wept tears of bitterness and regret.

  “Neferet trapped my soul and used the power of Darkness to command me to do her bidding. I did not willingly trespass.”

  “Neferet again. Your influence created that creature. She is your responsibility to stop. The Goddess’s edict is thus!” Erebus made a sweeping gesture. The yellow light of the sun shimmered, and became blazing written words burned into the air:

  He who was once beloved of mine

  shall defeat she whose love for me once did shine.

  With this command I do intercede.

  Death’s Warrior must protect those who are in need.

  If his heart doth open, bared again

  forgiveness may conquer hate and love win … win…

  Erebus pressed his palms against the wooden desk and leaned forward so that his face and his brother’s were mere inches apart. Kalona could feel the heat coming from his sunlit body and smell a summer day on his breath as he spoke.

  “I would say that I hope you fail, but I need not waste my hope. An immortal cannot be defeated without a sacrifice that is equal or greater than immortality. You are capable of great anger, great violence, great battles. You have never been capable of great sacrifice. You will fail. Nyx will continue to feel the pain your mistakes have caused, and I will continue to console her.”

  Kalona’s anger finally proved too much for him to contain. With a roar he stood, knocking over his chair and bringing his hands together in a mighty clap that released a frozen blast of moonlight from between his palms. The cold, silver light extinguished Erebus’s ball of sunlight. With a hiss like a sword meeting a blacksmith’s forging waters, Erebus disappeared.

  There was a knock on the door, and Darius’s voice carried easily through the sudden silence. “Kalona? May we have a word with you?”

  CHAPTER SIX

  Kalona

  Kalona righted the chair he had knocked over, sat, smoothed back his hair, and drew a deep breath before saying, “You may enter.”