“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
