Awakened

more quickly than do vampyres’.

Neferet smiled. “I know exactly who would be the perfect sacrifice. If you take me to her tonight, I will give her blood to you.”

The bull’s black eyes glinted with what Neferet thought might be amusement. Then he bent his huge forelegs, making his back accessible to her. I am intrigued by your offer, my heartless one. Show me the sacrifice.

“You wish for me to ride you?”

With no hesitation, Neferet rose and walked around to the side of his smooth, slick back. Though he was on his knees, she was still going to have to struggle to mount him. Then she felt the familiar thrill of the power of Darkness. Weightlessly, it lifted her so that she was astride his massive back.

Picture in your mind the place you wish for me to take you—the place where your sacrifice can be found—and I will take you there.

Neferet lay forward, wrapping her arms around his huge neck, and she began picturing lavender fields and a lovely little cottage made of Oklahoma stone with a welcoming wooden porch and large, revealing windows …

Linda Heffer

Linda hated to admit it, but all these years her mother had been right. “John Heffer is a su- li.” She said aloud the Cherokee word for “buzzard,” which is what her mother had called John the first night they’d met. “Well, he’s also a lying, cheating jerk—but a jerk with zero dollars in his savings and checking account,” she said smugly. “Because I drained them today, right after I caught him with the church secretary bent over his office desk!”

Her hands tightened on the steering wheel of their Intrepid and she flicked on her brights as she replayed the terrible scene over in her mind. She’d thought it would be a nice surprise to make him a special lunch and bring it to him at his office. John had been working so many late hours—putting in so much overtime. But even after all those hours at work he still kept up so much volunteer time at church … Linda pressed her lips together.

Well, now she knew what he’d really been doing! Or rather, who he’d really been doing!

She should have known. All the signs were there—he’d stopped paying attention to her, stopped coming home, lost ten pounds, and even bleached his teeth!

He’d try to talk her back. She knew he would. He’d even tried to get her from running out of his office, but it’d been pretty darn hard to chase her with his pants around his ankles.

“The worst part is that he won’t want me back because he loves me. He’ll want me back so he doesn’t look bad.” Linda bit her lip and blinked hard, refusing to cry. “No,” she admitted aloud to herself. “The worst part is that John never loved me. He just wanted to look like the perfect family man, so he needed me. Our family was never anything close to perfect—anything close to happy.” My mother had been right. Zoey had been right, too.

Thinking of Zoey was what finally tipped the tears over to spill down her cheeks. Linda missed Zoey. Of her three children, she’d been closest to Zoey. She smiled through her tears, remembering how she and Zoey used to have geekends where they’d curl up on the couch together, eat lots of junk food, and watch either the Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter movies, or even sometimes Star Wars. How long had it been since they’d done that? Years. Would they ever again? Linda hiccupped a little sob. Could they now that Zoey was at the House of Night?

Would Zoey even want to see her again?

She’d never forgive herself if she’d let John irreparably mess up her relationship with Zoey.

That was one reason she’d gotten in the car, in the middle of the night, and headed to her mother’s house. Linda wanted to talk to her mother about Zoey—about mending her relationship with Zoey.

Linda also wanted to lean on her mother’s strength. She wanted help to stand firm and not let John talk her into a reconciliation.

But mostly, Linda just wanted her mother.

It didn’t matter that she was a grown woman with children of her own. She still needed her mother’s arms to hold her, and her mother’s voice to reassure her that everything really would be all right—that she’d made the right decision.

Linda was so deep in thought that she almost missed the turnoff to her mother’s house. She braked hard and just made the right turn. Then she slowed the car so that it wouldn’t spin out on the dirt road that led between lavender fields to her mother’s house. It’d been more than a year since she’d been here, but it hadn’t changed—and Linda was thankful for that. It made her feel safe and normal again.

Her mother’s porch light was on, and so was one lamp light inside. Linda smiled as she parked and got out of the car. It was probably that 1920s brass mermaid lamp her mother liked to read by late at night—only it wouldn’t be late to Sylvia Redbird. Four in the morning would be early for her, and just about getting up time.

Linda was just going to tap on the windowpane of the door before opening it when she saw the note written on lavender-scented paper and taped on the door. Her mother’s distinctive handwriting said:

Linda darling, I felt you might be coming, but I couldn’t be sure when you would actually arrive, so I went ahead and took some soaps and sachets and things to the powwow in Tahlequah. I’ll be back tomorrow. As always, please make yourself at home. I hope you’re here when I return. I love you.

Linda sighed. Trying not to feel disappointed and annoyed at her mother, she went inside. “It’s really not her fault. She’d be here if I hadn’t stopped coming by.” She was used to her mother’s weird way of knowing whenever she was going to have a visitor. “Looks like her radar still works.”

For a moment she stood in the middle of the living room, trying to decide what to do. Maybe she should go back to Broken Arrow. Maybe John would leave her alone for a while—or at least long enough for her to get an attorney and get him served with papers.

But she’d broken her rule about no overnights during the week, and the kids were at friends’ houses. She didn’t have to go back. Linda sighed again, and this time with her inhaled breath she took in the scents of her mother’s home: lavender, vanilla, and sage—real scents from real herbs and hand-poured soy candles, so unlike the PlugIns John insisted she use instead of “those sooty candles and those dirty old plants.” And that decided her. Linda marched into her mother’s kitchen and went straight to the little, but well stocked wine rack and pulled out a nice red. She was going to drink an entire bottle of wine and read one of her mother’s romance novels, and then stagger up to the guest loft, and she was going to enjoy every minute of it. Tomorrow her mother would give her an herbal tea concoction to get rid of her hangover, and she’d also help her figure out how to get her life back on the right track—a track that didn’t include John Heffer and did include her Zoey.

“Heffer, what a stupid name,” Linda said, pouring herself a glass of wine and taking a long, slow drink. “That name is one of the first things I’m going to get rid of!” She was looking through her mother’s bookshelf, trying to decide between reading something sexy by Kresley Cole, Gena Showalter, or Jennifer Crusie’s latest, Maybe This Time. That was it—the great title decided her because maybe this time she’d do the right thing. Linda was just settling down in her mother’s chair when someone knocked on the door three times.

In her opinion, it was entirely too late for visitors, but you never knew what to expect at her mother’s house, so Linda went to the door and opened it.

The vampyre who stood there was stunningly beautiful, a little familiar looking, and totally, completely naked.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Neferet

“You are not Sylvia Redbird.” Neferet looked down her nose disdainfully at the drab woman who had answered the door.

“No, I’m her daughter, Linda. My mother isn’t in right now,” she said, glancing around nervously.

Neferet knew the moment the human’s eyes found the white bull, because they widened in shock and her face drained of all of its sallow color.

“Oh! It’s a … a … b-bull! Is it making the ground burn? Hurry! Hurry! Come inside where it’s safe. I’ll get you