“Yes, Fath—I mean, Kalona,” Rephaim said. “That is why we need your help defeating her. The Tsi Sgili has come from our world to this one, and she threatens the balance of Light and Darkness in both of our worlds. Please stay. Please be our champion against Darkness.”
Kalona’s sigh was heartbreaking. He tilted his face up and said, “My only love, Nyx, Goddess of Night, be patient but a moment longer. Your Warrior has an earthly job to do before he may return home.”
When an answer came it was on the wings of several pearl-breasted doves that flew from the oak. Neferet’s soul lifted, and she felt hot and cold at once as Nyx’s voice fluttered through the air. Filled with love, it drifted down to them and settled into their hearts.
My Consort, my love, my Kalona. I have waited lonely centuries for you. My arms ache with your absence, but greater than my ache is the world’s need for your mighty onyx lance. Know that when your battle is over, my arms will be open and eager to hold you once more. Blessed be, my love—and may my favorite children blessed be as well.
Kalona bowed his head, and Neferet saw that he actually wiped away tears before he looked up and lifted his hand. A great black lance materialized, and the winged immortal grasped it.
Neferet was staring at the incredible weapon when she was distracted by Zoey, who was rubbing a turquoise bracelet around her right wrist as if it was causing her pain. Her gaze went from both Starks to the kids who still stood in their places of the circle. Each of them had a similar bracelet—and they, too, were either rubbing it or shaking their wrists.
“Tell me, where is this demon that I must defeat?” Kalona was saying.
Neferet lowered her voice and asked Zoey, “What is wrong with your wrists?”
Zoey looked at Stark and her gaze snapped around the circle as she noticed that her friends were being bothered by their bracelets.
“Ah, hell!” she said.
At that moment an explosion rocked the House of Night. Stone shrapnel fell among them as a section of the east wall shattered not far from where they stood.
“Lynette!” Neferet shouted, and her dearest tore herself from Anastasia, but before she reached Neferet, a piece of the rock wall smashed into her shoulder and she dropped hard to the ground. “No!” Neferet ran to her and pulled Lynette into her arms. “Dearest! Answer me! Dearest!”
Lynette’s eyes fluttered open. “I’m—I’m okay. It’s just my arm.” Her trembling hand reached up and touched Neferet’s cheek. “Oh, my lady, I thought you were dead.”
“It would take more than one of these children to kill me.” She wiped away Lynette’s tears.
Around them was chaos. No one could see through the smoking mess that had been the wide east wall. Dragon was shouting at the Sons of Erebus. Zoey had called her circle, in which Neferet and Lynette were roughly the center of, and she was hastily invoking the elements again as Anastasia and James ran inside the circle to join them. James and Stark had their bows up and ready with arrows nocked.
Then there was a series of popping sounds that utterly confused Neferet, and Dragon began shouting. “Sons of Erebus! Barricade the dorms! The rest of you, to me!”
“What is that? What’s happening?” Lynette’s voice shook with panic.
“It’s gunfire,” Stark said grimly. “Whoever it is has—”
Lynette screamed. Her eyes were huge with terror, and she was staring over Neferet’s shoulder at the broken wall.
Neferet shifted around so that she could follow her gaze, and what she saw made her so physically ill that she had to swallow bile to keep from vomiting in fear. Climbing over the still-smoking rubble of the wall was the Monstress. Her elongated limbs made her look insectile, and hundreds of tendrils of Darkness slithered with her. Toxic and menacing, they bared their teeth and hissed as they swarmed into the school grounds.
“Tsi Sgili, abomination! Return to the Darkness that spawned you!” Kalona roared as he took flight. He hurled his onyx spear. Laughing, Neferet raised her own spear—an evil-looking thing that was the white of dead eyes, curved and pointed at both ends.
The Monstress easily parried the blow and laughed. “Ah, Kalona, my old lover. So very good to see you again.”
Kalona hovered in the air above them, reached his hand out and his spear appeared in it instantly. “I have never been your lover, demon.”
The Other’s emaciated face looked skeletal as she pouted. “Oh, I do hate it when I get my worlds mixed up. But, no matter. Soon they shall both be ruled by me, and I need not keep them straight. Children, destroy everyone who stands against us!”
Her tendrils began attacking the Sons of Erebus Warriors, ripping huge pieces of flesh from them as they toyed with them cruelly.
“You have to help them,” Lynette said.
Real fear filled Neferet. “Then who will protect us, dearest?”
“That doesn’t matter right now. What matters right now is stopping that monster.”
“We must get out of here!” Neferet insisted.
Lynette shook her head. “No, my lady. We must help them. It’s the right thing to do.”
“But we could be killed.”
“You won’t be killed,” Zoey said. She’d returned to the center of the circle and invoked spirit. “Neferet, I give you my word that my circle and I will protect Lynette—and you.”
Neferet pointed over Zoey’s shoulder at the monster that used to wear her face. “You’re not stronger than that thing! She’ll kill us all.”
Lynette touched Neferet’s cheek. “Then we’ll die knowing we did the right thing. But I believe in you, my lady—your strength and your power. She’s just a bad version of you, but she’s still like you somewhere inside all of that horror. You can defeat her. I know you can. I know you will.”
“Stay within the circle,” Neferet said as she stood. “Children! Show yourselves!” Around Neferet, hundreds of her tendrils suddenly materialized.
“Holy shit! When did they grow eyes?” Aphrodite
