Betrayed

Or maybe someone had just snuck on the school grounds after brutally killing Chris Ford and abducting Brad Higeons, and now they were sneaking off again, and if I confronted him/her I'd be murdered, too.

Yeah, right. Talk about an overactive imagination.

Then I heard the voices.

I slowed way down, practically tiptoeing forward until I finally saw them. There were two figures standing by the open trapdoor. I blinked hard, trying to see more clearly through the curtain of falling white. The person closest to the door was the one I'd been following, and now that he wasn't running (at a ridiculous speed) I could see that he stood weirdly, crouched down with a hunched-back posture. I shifted my attention to the other figure, and I felt the chill that had been brushing my skin with the snow sink into my soul. It was Neferet.

She looked mysterious, and powerful with her auburn hair fly­ing around her and the snow covering the long black dress she was wearing. She was facing me, so I could see that her expression was stern, almost angry, and she was speaking intently to the cloaked person, using her hands expressively. Silently, I moved closer, glad I had on a dark outfit so that I blended well with the shadows near the wall. From this new position pieces of what Neferet was saying drifted to me on the snow-filled wind.

'... have more care with what you do! I will not ...' I listened intently, trying to hear through the wailing wind, and realized that the breeze was bringing me more than just Neferet's words. I could smell something, even over the crisp scent of falling snow. It was a dry, moldy smell, weirdly out of place in this cold, wet night. '... much too dangerous,' Neferet was saying. 'Obey or …' I lost the rest of the sentence, and then she paused. The cloaked figure responded with a weird, grunting sound that was more animal than human.

Nala, who had been curled up under my chin and seemed to have fallen asleep, again, suddenly whipped her head around. I ducked even farther behind the trunk of the tree in whose shadow I was hiding as Nala began to growl.

'Shhh,' I whispered to her and tried to pet her into being calm. She quieted, but I could feel that the fur on her back had lifted and her eyes were narrowed to angry slits as she stared at the cloaked person.

'You promised!'

The guttural sound of the mystery man's voice had my skin crawling. I peeked out from behind the tree in time to see Neferet raise her hand as if she was going to strike him. He cowered back against the wall, causing the hood to fall from his face, and my stomach clenched so hard I thought I might throw up.

It was Elliott. The dead kid whose 'ghost' had attacked Nala and me last month.

Neferet didn't hit him. Instead she gestured violently at the open trapdoor. She'd raised her voice, so everything she said car­ried to me over the wind.

'You may not have any more! The time is not right. You can­not understand such things, and you may not question me. Now leave here. If you disobey me again you will feel my wrath, and the wrath of a goddess is terrible to behold.'

Elliott cringed away from Neferet. 'Yes, Goddess,' he whim­pered.

It was him; I knew it was. Even though his voice was rough I rec­ognized it. Somehow Elliott had not died, and he had not Changed into an adult vampyre. He was something else. Something terrible.

Even as I thought how disgusting he was, Neferet's expression softened. 'I do not wish to be angry with my children. You know that you are my greatest joys.'

Revolted, I watched as Neferet moved forward and caressed Elliott's face. His eyes began to glow the color of old blood, and even from a distance I could see that his entire body was trem­bling. Elliott had been a short, pudgy, unattractive kid with too white skin and carrot red hair that was habitually frizzed out. He was still all those things, but now his pale cheeks were gaunt and his body was hunched, as if it had curled in on itself. So Neferet had to bend down to kiss his lips. Totally grossed out, I heard El­liott moan in pleasure. She straightened and laughed. It was a dark, seductive sound.

'Please, Goddess!' Elliott whimpered.

'You know you don't deserve it.'

'Please, Goddess!' he repeated. His body was shivering vio­lently.

'Very well, but remember. What a goddess gives, she can also take away.'

Unable to stop watching, I saw Neferet lift her arm and brush back her sleeve. Then she ran her fingernail up her forearm, leaving a slender scarlet line that immediately began to bead with blood. I felt the draw of her blood. When she held out her arm, offering it to Elliott, I pressed against the rough bark of the tree, forcing myself to stay still and hidden as he fell to his knees before her and, while he made feral grunts and moans, began to suck Nef­ eret's blood. I tore my eyes from him to look at Neferet. She'd thrown her head back and her lips were parted as if having the grotesque Elliott creature suck the blood from her arm was a sex­ual experience.

Deep within me I felt an answering desire. I wanted to slice open someone's skin and ...

No!I ducked completely behind the tree. I would not become a monster. I would not be a freak. I couldn't let this thing control me. Slowly and silently I started back the way I'd come, refusing to look at the two of them again.

CHAPTER 17

I was still feeling shaky, confused, and more than a little sick to my stomach when I finally got to the dorm. Clusters of damp kids pooled around the main room watching TV and drinking hot chocolate. I grabbed a towel from a stack by the door and joined Stevie Rae, the Twins, and Damien sitting around our favorite TV watching Project Runway, and started drying a grumbling Nala. Stevie Rae didn't realize I was being uncharacteristically quiet. She was too busy gushing about how the snowball fight I'd avoided earlier had morphed into a major battle after dinner that had raged until someone had thrown a snowball that had hit one of the win­dows of Dragon's office. Dragon was what everyone called the fencing professor, and he was not a vamp any fledgling would want to piss off.

'Dragon ended the snow war.' Stevie Rae giggled. 'But it was real fun until then.'

'Yeah, Z, you missed one hellacious wicked fight,' Erin said. 'We knocked the crap outta Damien and his boyfriend,' Shaunee said.

'He's not my boyfriend!' Damien said, but his little smile seemed to add an unspoken 'yet' to the end of the sentence.

'What ...'

'… ever,' said the Twins.

'I think he's cute,' Stevie Rae said.

'Me, too,' Damien said, turning adorably pink.

'What do you think of him, Zoey?' Stevie Rae asked.

I blinked at Stevie Rae. It was like I was inside a fishbowl in the middle of a typhoon, and everyone else was on the outside clue­lessly enjoying lovely weather.

'Is everything okay, Zoey?' Damien said.

'Damien, can you get me some eucalyptus?' I said abruptly

'Eucalyptus?'

I nodded. 'Yeah, some strands of it, and some sage, too. I need both for the ritual tomorrow.'

'Yeah, no problem,' Damien said, watching me entirely too closely.

'Did you get the ritual all figured out, Z?' Stevie Rae asked.

'I think so.' I paused and took a long breath. Then I met Damien's questioning gaze steadily. 'Damien, has there ever been a case of a fledgling who seemed to have died, but later was found alive?'

To his credit, Damien didn't freak or ask me if I had gone in­sane. I could feel that the Twins and Stevie Rae were staring at me like I'd just announced I was going to be on Girls Gone Wild: Vamp Edition, but I ignored them and kept focused on Damien. We all knew he spent hours studying, and he remembered every­thing he read. If any of us would know the answer to my bizarre question, it would be him.

'When a fledgling's body starts rejecting the Change there is no stopping it. That's clear in all the books. It's also what Neferet has told us. Zoey,' I'd never heard him sound so serious. 'What is wrong?'

'Please, please, please tell me you're not feeling sick!' Stevie Rae practically sobbed.