walked down the long line of stalls until I found Persephone. I slid the door open and entered the warm, dark stall. Persephone was sleeping the way horses do, standing with one leg cocked and her head low, eyes half-lidded. She barely moved when I went to her and wrapped my arms around her neck and sobbed into her thick, soft mane.
What was happening to me?
The guys in the park had been jerks, but they couldn’t have hurt me. Sure, they preyed on girls, scaring them into throwing cash their way, but they couldn’t have hurt me. I could’ve walked away and made an anonymous call to the police, given a description of them, and told the cops that they were loitering in the park, threatening girls. The cops would’ve run them off.
Instead I exploded on them.
I hadn’t even thought it through. I hadn’t done it on purpose. It had just happened. My anger had literally exploded through the Seer Stone at them.
What was it Aphrodite had been trying to tell me? Something about her vision and Old Magick and me losing control of my anger. I hadn’t listened to her. I’d cut her off and believed she’d betrayed me. I’d let anger control me.
“Oh, Goddess, that was wrong—so wrong of me,” I cried.
Then, through my sobs and the thunderstorm that roiled in the sky, I heard a siren. It wasn’t a fire truck. It wasn’t an ambulance. It was a police car. And it wasn’t speeding past the school toward Woodward Park. Its siren was getting closer and closer. It had to have entered our gate and pulled up to the school.
As if I were walking through a dream, I unwrapped myself from Persephone’s consoling neck. I dropped the towel. I left the stable and made my way outside to the sidewalk that led to the entrance foyer of the school.
Rain pelted me, but I didn’t pay any attention to it.
“Z! There you are! Shit, you’re soaking wet.” Stark ran up behind me, holding a big coat over himself.
“You shouldn’t be out here,” I told him woodenly. “The sun’s up. You’ll burn.”
He gave me a weird look. “I’m tired and it’s not real comfortable, but the clouds are covering enough of the sun that I can be out here. Well, at least for a little while. Z, get under my coat with me and let’s go back to our room. I know something’s wrong with you, but I don’t know what it is.”
I shook my head. “No. I have to go to them.” I kept walking toward the front of the school. There were two police cars, lights still on, parked there.
“Them who?” Stark asked, trying to hold his coat over my head and his.
“Stark, go back to bed. You can’t help me out of this.”
“Zoey, what are you talking about? What’s going on?”
I put my hand on the front door. “Go back,” I repeated. “You can’t save me anymore.”
He looked scared. Really scared.
I didn’t let myself feel anything. I turned my back on him and opened the door.
Thanatos was there. Darius was, too. As well as Aphrodite. For an instant I was surprised to see them, then I realized that Aphrodite must have gone to Thanatos after I’d taken off. It was the right thing for her to do. I would have done it if I’d been in her place. If I’d been thinking like myself, like Normal Zoey.
Detective Marx was there with two officers in uniforms.
“Z, did you get done walking the perimeter with Aurox?” Aphrodite spoke quickly, walking up to me. “I was telling Thanatos that I was worried about you out there in the thunderstorm. There’re even tornado warnings for Tulsa County.”
“Don’t,” I told her. “I don’t ever want you to lie for me.” I looked from her to Darius. “I don’t ever want any of you to lie for me.” Then I met Detective Marx’s gaze. “Why are you here?”
“Two men were just murdered in Woodward Park. Someone with supernatural power killed them—power no human has. That’s why the officers and I came directly here.” His face was grim. His voice lacked any emotion.
“And I was reminding the detective that our school is under lockdown. No fledgling or vampyre has left the campus since the night the mayor was killed,” Thanatos said.
“I left campus. I went to Woodward Park. I slammed those two guys against the stone wall at the bottom of the ridge. I killed them.” My voice sounded as dead as the men, as dead as I felt.
“Zoey! Why the hell would you say something like that?” Stark grabbed me and gave my shoulders a shake. “Snap out of it!”
I stared at him, hardening my heart, freezing my feelings. “You need to stay here. I don’t want to see you again. I don’t want to see anyone. I did this. I deserve this.” I moved out of his grasp. As I walked toward Detective Marx I reached up, grasped the Seer Stone, and pulled, breaking the silver chain that held it. I handed it to Aphrodite. “Don’t let anyone except you or Sgiach touch this thing. You were right. It’s awake, and it’s bad.”
Then I faced Detective Marx. “I’m ready to go with you.”
He glanced from me to Thanatos. “I’ll wait for you to contact the High Council and abrogate their legal claim to responsibility for this fledging so that I can take her into custody.”
“No,” I said. “Before this happened I had broken from the High Council. I don’t recognize their jurisdiction over me. I don’t recognize Thanatos’s jurisdiction over me. Treat me the same way you would anyone else who has confessed to being a murderer.”
He sighed deeply and then pulled the handcuffs from his back pocket. “Zoey Redbird, you are under arrest for the murders of Richard Williams and David Brown.” He closed the cold cuffs around my wrists. “You have the right to remain silent. Should you give up that right, anything you say can and will be used against you. You have the right to have an attorney present at your questioning. Should you not be able to afford one, an attorney will be appointed for you. Do you understand your rights?”
“Yes. I don’t need an attorney. I confess that I killed those two men. I deserve to go to jail,” I said as
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
When she was finally ready to emerge from the den, rain bathed Neferet, cleansing her of the blood and dirt in which she had been clothed. The area was in utter chaos. Despite the rain, a fire raged in the park above her.
Neferet thought it was a delightful greeting.
She fed off the death and destruction around her, and used the energy she gleaned to conceal herself.
Her auburn hair was slick against her body, like a living cloak. Neferet’s faithful threads, sated and pulsing with power, lifted her. As if she had commanded a thundercloud to do her bidding, Neferet floated from the park within a veil of thunder and lightning, mist and madness.
She threw her head back, loving the caress of the rain as it slid down her bare skin, cleansing her. Her arms lifted, and tendrils of Darkness wrapped around them. She laughed at their cold, wicked touch.
“Let us go home. We have so very much to do!” Moving through Midtown, the storm that was Neferet drifted toward downtown Tulsa and the penthouse she had made her own at the Mayo.
“Ah, but not so quickly,” she purred to the Darkness that cradled her. “Shall we not go to dinner? I find that I am simply starving!”
The threads of Darkness quivered with excitement, impatiently awaiting her command.
Neferet reached out with her mind. Seeking … seeking … perverting the gift she had been given so many decades ago.
She followed Fifteenth Street to the west, still seeking. It was at Boston Avenue that she felt the pull to the north.
“True north! And all of those delicious souls pretending to be so very, very good!” Neferet shivered in pleasure. “All gathered together so very, very conveniently for me. It is as if they already knew to worship me.” She made a sweeping gesture to her right. “Take me there!”
