Destined

It made Aurox feel. Part of him felt excited as he anticipated a battle to come and welcomed the rage and power that battle would evoke. But another part of him felt revulsion. Darkness pulsed around Neferet, malevolent and sticky and dangerous. Aurox was pondering the different feelings when Neferet shook off the tendrils and licked her wound closed.

“You have fed.

I will be led.”

The singsong rhyme of Neferet’s spell brushed power against Aurox and he shivered as Darkness writhed and then skittered off leaving a thin ribbon-like trail that was blacker than a new moon night as its signpost.

“Come,” Neferet said.

Aurox did as he was commanded.

They followed the ribbon into the seemingly abandoned hallway, which began to slope down and down, tunnel-like. Eventually they came to a space that widened and dead-ended. There Neferet paused.

Aurox scented them before he saw them. Their odor was vile, rotten, filthy. Death, he thought. They smell of death.

“Unacceptable,” Neferet said angrily under her breath. “Utterly unacceptable.” She strode into the underground room, went to the wall, and flipped a switch. A single bare bulb cast a sickly yellow light.

Aurox thought it looked like a nest.

Mattresses were piled against one another. Bodies were curled around each other under blankets. Some were naked. Some were clothed. It was difficult to see where one ended and another began. One head lifted. The vampyre’s tattoos were red and they looked remarkably like the tendrils of Darkness that had led them to him. His gaze was hard. His voice angry.

“Kurtis, take care of whoever is bothering us.”

A large mound moved sluggishly and a thick broad forehead appeared from the other end of the nest. This one had a red crescent outlined on his forehead—a fledgling.

“It’s barely even day. Just zap ’em with electricity or somethin’ and—”

“And what?” Neferet’s voice was ice. “Kurtis, you were stupid and bumbling before you died. Now you’re stupid and bumbling and you stink.” Neferet glanced at Aurox. “Throw him against the wall.”

Aurox moved to do her bidding, but slowly, giving the fledgling time to feel fear. Aurox fed from that fear, and as his body shifted, changed, grew into something else, something more powerful, the fledgling’s fear shifted, changed, grew into delicious terror. With a roar Aurox lifted the boy from his nest and hurled him into the wall. There was a sick cracking sound and the boy lay still.

“Whoa! Whoa! Wait a second. Neferet! I didn’t know it was you.” The red vampyre stood, shirtless, hands out, facing the Priestess. Aurox felt his fear. It felt good.

He took a step toward the vampyre. His hooves rang against the cold cement floor.

“Halt for now, Aurox,” Neferet commanded. She turned her back to him and concentrated on the vampyre and his nest. “Did you really believe you could hide from me, Dallas?”

“I wasn’t hiding from you! I didn’t know what to do—where to find you.”

“Don’t lie to me.” Neferet’s voice had gone soft and in that softness Aurox heard a black, endless danger. “Don’t ever lie to me.”

“Okay, okay. Sorry,” the vampyre said hastily. “I guess I just didn’t think.”

The nest of fledglings had been stirring, awakening as their vampyre and Neferet had been speaking, and now Aurox could see faces, wide-eyed with fear, staring from Neferet to him.

He longed to crush those staring faces under his hooves.

A rattling cough came from the nest.

Neferet sneered. “How many of you are there?”

“After the depot when Zoey and her assholes fought us, ten are left besides me.” He glanced at Kurtis. “And him.”

“He isn’t dead. Yet,” Neferet said. “So there are eleven fledglings and one vampyre. How many of your fledglings have begun coughing?”

Dallas shrugged. “Two, maybe three.”

“There are too many of them. They need to be around vampyres or they will die. Again,” she added with a cruel smile.

From the fledgling nest more fear washed over Aurox. He ground his teeth together, fighting the urge to feed from it.

“Will you come around us then? Like you used to?”

“No. I’ve had a change in plans. It’s time you joined me. All of you joined me.”

“You mean at the House of Night? That’s impossible. We’re not what we used to be and we don’t want to —”

“What you want is of no consequence to me unless you obey me. And if you do not obey me you will die.”

The vampyre seemed to stand straighter. His anger burned brighter, as did the single electric bulb. “I won’t die. I’ve already Changed. Some of them might,” he gestured to the fledglings that crouched all around his feet, “but I say that’s survival of the fittest.”

“You’re not as smart as I remembered, Dallas. Let me speak plainly and simply then so even you can understand: if you and your fledglings do not obey me you will be the first to die. My creature will kill you. Now. Or whenever I command him to. Make your choice.”

The bulb’s light dimmed. “I choose to obey you,” Dallas said.

“Wise choice. I want you cleaned up and back at the House of Night in time for classes tonight.”

“But how—”

“Use the school’s showers to wash the stench off yourselves. Steal clothing. Clean clothing. Or buy it. At seven thirty, just before classes begin, a House of Night bus will be waiting down the street at the east entrance to the University of Tulsa. You’ll board it. You’ll resume classes. You’ll sleep at the House of Night.” Neferet paused, waving a hand dismissively. “I’ll have windows covered or open a basement or something. But you will live at the House of Night.”

“How will we satisfy our hunger?”

“Carefully. And what you cannot satisfy carefully you will control, at least until the world has turned and changed to embrace your needs.”

“I don’t get it! Why do you even want us there?”

“Rephaim, the Raven Mocker you failed to kill more than once, has been gifted with a human form during the night and has mated with Stevie Rae. He is allowed to attend the House of Night, along with Aphrodite, and the other red fledglings—Stevie Rae’s red fledglings.”

“I’m supposed to go to school with him? And her? Together?”

The bulb glowed brightly again.

“You hate them, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Good. That is the reason I want you there—want you all there.”

“Because we hate them?”

“No, because of what your hatred, controlled by me, will cause,” she said.

“And what’s that?” he asked.

Neferet smiled. “Chaos.”

* * *

They left shortly after Neferet finished instructing the vampyre called Dallas in the ways he could and could not cause chaos. Apparently, his purpose was much like Aurox’s purpose—Neferet commanded and controlled his violence and held his allegiance. He was not to kill—yet. And always, always, there was the underlying thread of seeding dissent and discontent and hatred.

Aurox understood. Aurox obeyed.

When Neferet commanded that he control the beast within him, he obeyed and followed her from the rotting nest up through the cool, clean corridors of the school.

At the front door the old guard lay where Aurox had left him.