“Stop?” He chuckled again. “It seems you have lost your truth. You do not wish I would stop. Your body yearns for my touch. You cannot deny it. So shake off this foolish re sis tance. Accept me and your place by my side. Join me and together we will create a new world.”
I swayed toward him, but managed to whisper, “I can’t.”
“If you do not join me you will be my enemy, and I will burn you with the rest of the chaff.” As he’d been speaking his gaze had moved from my face down to my breasts. Now he cupped both of them in his hands. His amber eyes had gone all soft and looked unfocused as he caressed me, sending icy waves of unwanted desire through my body, and sickness through my heart, my mind, and my soul.
I was trembling so hard my words sounded shaky. “This is a dream… only a dream. This is not real.” I spoke as if to convince myself.
His lust for me made him even more seductive. He smiled intimately at me while he continued to stroke my breasts. “Yes, you dream. Though there is truth and reality here, as well as your deepest, most secret desires. Zoey, in this dream you are free to do anything you wish—
“I do want to be with you,” I said. Kalona’s smile was fierce with victory, but before he could lock me within his immortal and all-too-familiar embrace, I added, “But the truth is no matter how bad I want you, I’m still Zoey Redbird and not A-ya, and that means in this lifetime I have chosen to follow Nyx. Kalona, I will not betray my Goddess by giving in to you!” As I shouted the last words I threw myself backward, so that I fell from the roof of the castle and plummeted toward the rocky seashore far, far below.
Through my screams I could hear Kalona crying my name.
CHAPTER 13
I sat straight up in bed, screaming like someone had just tossed me into a pit of spiders. My ears were ringing and my body was shaking so hard that I thought I would be sick, but somewhere through my panic I realized mine wasn’t the only voice screaming. I peered around in the darkness, made myself shut up, sucked air, and tried to get my bearings. Where the hell was I? At the bottom of the sea? Smashed dead on the rocks of the island?
No… no… I was at the Benedictine Abbey… in the dorm room they’d assigned me with Aphrodite… who was currently in the bed across from me screaming like a crazy woman.
“Aphrodite!” I yelled over her shrieks. “Stop! It’s me. Everything’s okay.”
Her scream broke off, but she was breathing in short little panicky gasps. “Light! Light!” she said, sounding like she’d taken up residence in the Land of Panic Attacks. “I need light! I need to see!”
“Okay—okay! Hang on.” Remembering the pillar candle on the end table between our beds, I fumbled awkwardly around until I felt a lighter. I had to steady my right hand by grasping my wrist with my left so that I could get the candle lit, and still it took five tries before the wick caught and the warmth of candlelight illuminated Aphrodite’s ghostly white face and completely blood-filled eyes.
“Ohmygod! Your eyes!”
“I know! I know! Shit! Shit! Shit! I still can’t see,” she sobbed.
“Don’t worry—don’t worry—this happened last time. I’ll get you a wet cloth and a drink of water, just like I did before and—” my words shut off as I realized the exact meaning of Aphrodite’s scarlet eyes, and I froze halfway between the bed and the sink. “You had another vision, didn’t you?”
She didn’t say anything. She just put her face in her hands and nodded while she sobbed.
“It’s okay. It’s gonna be okay,” I kept repeating over and over as I hurried to the sink, grabbed a hand towel, soaked it in cold water, and filled up one of two nearby glasses. Then I rushed back to Aphrodite. She was still sitting on the edge of the bed with her face in her hands. Her sobs had gone from hysterical snot-crying to pitiful little gasps. I reached around behind her and plumped her pillows. “Here, drink this. Then I want you to lie back so I can put this wet towel across your eyes.”
She took her hands from her face and reached blindly for the glass. I guided her to it and then watched as she guzzled down the whole thing. “I’ll get you more in a second. Lie back first and put this over your eyes.”
Aphrodite leaned back against the propped-up pillow. She blinked blindly up at me. She looked scarily horrible. Her eyes were completely bloody and looked bizarre and ghostly framed by her too-white face.
“I can see the outline of you, just a little,” she said faintly. “But you’re all red, like you’re bleeding.” Aphrodite finished on a hiccupy sob.
“I’m not bleeding; I’m fine. This happened before, remember? And you were okay after you closed your eyes and rested for a while.”
“I remember. I just don’t remember it being this bad.”
She closed her eyes. I folded the towel and placed it gently across them. Then I lied, “It was this bad last time, too.”
Her hands fluttered by the towel for a second before they dropped to her sides. I went back to the sink and filled up the glass again. Watching her reflection in the mirror I said, “Was the vision terrible?”
I saw her lips quiver. She drew a long, shaky breath. “Yes.”
I came back to the bed. “Do you want more water?”
She nodded. “I feel like I’ve just run a marathon through a blazing desert—not that I ever would. All that sweating is so unattractive.”
Glad she was sounding more like herself, I smiled and guided her hand to the glass of water again. Then I sat on my bed facing her and waited.
“I can feel you looking at me,” she said.
“Sorry. I thought I was being patient by not saying anything.” I paused. “Do you want me to go get Darius? Or maybe Damien? Or both of them?”
“No!” Aphrodite said quickly. I saw her swallow a couple of times, and then, in a calmer voice, she continued. “Don’t go anywhere for a little while, okay? I don’t want to be alone right now—not when I can’t see.”
“Okay. I won’t go anywhere. You want to tell me about the vision?”
“Not particularly, but I suppose I have to. I saw seven vampyres. They looked important—powerful, all obviously High Priestesses. They were in a seriously gorgeous place. Definitely old money and none of that nouveau riche crap that tends to decorate with questionable taste.” I rolled my eyes at her, which she, sadly, couldn’t see. “At first I didn’t even know it was a vision. I thought it was a dream. I was watching these vamps sitting in chairs that looked like thrones and waiting for something freakily dreamish to happen, like they all turn into Justin Timberlake, jump up, and start stripping for me and singing about bringing sexy back.”
“Huh,” I said. “Interesting dream. He is totally dorkishly hot, even though he’s getting old.”
“Oh, give it a rest. You already have way too many boys to even dream about another one. Leave Justin to me. So, anyway, they didn’t turn into Justin, nor did they strip. I was just wondering what was going on when it became mega-obvious I was having a vision because Neferet walked in.”
“Neferet!”
“Yeah. Kalona was with her. She did all the talking, but the vamps weren’t watching her. They couldn’t stop gawking at Kalona.”
I didn’t say so, but I knew how they felt.
“Neferet was saying something about accepting the changes she and Erebus brought, moving everything, bringing old ways back… blah… blah…”
“Erebus!” I interrupted her blah-blahing. “She’s still claiming Kalona is Erebus?”
“Yeah, and she was also calling herself Nyx Incarnate, which she shortened to just Nyx, but I didn’t catch everything she was saying because it was about then that I started to burn up.”
“Burn up? Like you caught on fire?”
“Well, it wasn’t
