Destined

His task was to keep the school and its students safe.

A dragon protects its own.

That’s all he had left—the dragon.

“Your death has broken me

The dragon is all I have left to be.”

His own words taunted him. “I was telling you the truth!” he shouted to the emptiness. “Anastasia, you’re gone. I have nothing left except the dragon and my duty.”

“If you are not my mate, kind and true,

how will I ever again find you?”

Anastasia’s answer seemed to drift around him, bringing with it the fecund scent of the land bordering the mighty Mississippi River and a warm brush of humid, summer breezes where sunflowers nodded their heavy heads as if in approval.

“No!” he shouted, dispelling the memory. “That’s all gone. You’re gone. I have nothing left. I didn’t make this choice, your Goddess did when she let you be taken from me because all those years ago I was merciful.” He shook his head. “I will not make that same mistake again.”

Ignoring the emptiness inside him, Dragon Lankford drove on.

Zoey

As we got closer and closer to Grandma’s house I got more and more nervous. My stomach was killing me. I had a headache. My angelica wreath was crap. Stark had to help me finish it. Seriously. Stark. And that boy is not what you’d call skilled at braiding.

My mom is the truth. That’s all I know.

“Remember,” Thanatos said as we turned down Grandma’s familiar lane. “Intent is important. We are here to reveal the truth so that we might bring about justice for a life cut short. Nothing more. Nothing less.” She looked at me. “You can do this. You do not lack courage.”

“Are you sure?”

She smiled just a little. “Your soul was shattered. That should have been a death sentence, yet you lived and you returned to yourself, bringing your Warrior with you. That has never before been done. You do not lack courage,” she repeated.

Stark squeezed my hand. I nodded my head like I was agreeing with her, but inside I was shrieking a different truth: If I’d been really courageous I would have been able to save Heath and my soul wouldn’t have ever shattered and Stark wouldn’t have needed rescuing!

Thankfully, before any of that could slip out of my mouth and mess up everything Thanatos was trying to help us do, Darius stopped the bus and opened the door.

We all just sat there. Finally, Thanatos said, “Zoey, you must touch the earth first. It is your mother who was killed here.”

I got up and, still clutching Stark’s hand, climbed down the bus stairs.

We’d parked in front of Grandma’s house. The bus looked weirdly out of place in the little gravel parking lot beside Grandma’s Jeep.

I guess because I knew Grandma wasn’t staying in her house during the seven-day cleansing ritual, I’d expected it to be dark and strange looking, but it was the opposite. Every room was lit. The place was so bright that I had to squint to look at it straight on. The windows twinkled like the glass had been newly polished. The big front porch was alight, too, showing comfy rocking chairs and little lemonade-ready tables.

And then Grandma was there, pulling me into her arms and filling my world with the scent of my childhood.

“Oh, u-we-tsi-a-ge-ya, it does my heart great joy to see you!” she said after she and I finally were able to let loose of each other.

She was wearing her favorite buckskin dress. I knew it was so old that she and her mom had worked together on the purple and green beadwork that decorated the bodice. She’d often told me the story of how when she was a girl, she’d traded one of the Wise Women of her tribe a belt she’d spent all one winter beading for the shells and glass beads that she’d threaded into the fringe on the sleeves and hem. I remembered when the dress was so pure white that I thought it looked like the clouds, but now it had yellowed. That should have made it old and shabby, but it didn’t. To my eyes it made it look well loved and valuable beyond any price tag in a store or an auction war on eBay.

I also couldn’t help but notice Grandma had lost weight and there were dark shadows under her expressive eyes.

“How are you doing, Grandma?”

“Better now, my daughter. And after tonight’s ritual, I believe I will be even better yet.” Grandma fisted her hand over her heart and respectfully bowed to Thanatos. “Blessed be, High Priestess.”

“Blessed be, Sylvia Redbird. It is a pleasure to meet you face-to-face. I only wish it could be under different circumstances.”

“As do I. I would love to sit and chat with Death,” Grandma said, with a hint of the old sparkle in her eyes.

“You honor me,” Thanatos said. “Though I do not claim to be Death. I only have an affinity for her.”

“Her?” Grandma asked.

“It is a mother who brings each of us into this world. Does it not stand to reason it would be a mother who calls us to pass from this world as well?”

“Huh. I’d never thought of it like that,” Shaunee said.

“It makes it seem kinda nice,” Stevie Rae said.

“That depends on your mother,” Aphrodite said.

“No, Prophetess. It depends on the Mother,” Thanatos corrected.

“Well, that’s good news,” Damien said. “My mom wasn’t the nightmare Aphrodite’s was, but she wasn’t exactly nurturing, either.”

“This conversation is interesting and everything, but shouldn’t we be focusing on the spell?” Stark said. “Isn’t anything else asking for problems?”

“Young Warrior, you are correct,” Thanatos said. “Let us begin. Sylvia, please lead us to the spot where you discovered your daughter’s body.”

“Very well.” Grandma only had to walk a few feet from where we were. The spot was super obvious. There, at the edge of the lavender field that flanked the north side of Grandma’s house, backing to her lawn, was a perfect circle of burned plants. The entire ground was blackened and dead and horrible. Even the plants that framed the circle looked blighted and dying.

“There is no blood,” Thanatos said, holding up her hand so that none of us actually entered the circle of destruction.

“That was one of the oddities the sheriff and his deputies could not explain,” Grandma said.

Thanatos moved so that she stood directly in front of Grandma. She rested a hand on her shoulder, and I saw Grandma take a deep, gasping breath, as if the High Priestess had infused her with energy through her touch.

“I understand this is difficult. But the question is necessary. Exactly what was the manner of your daughter’s death?”

Grandma drew another breath and then said in a clear, strong voice, “My daughter’s throat was slit.”

“Yet they found no blood on the earth surrounding her body?”

“No. None here. None on the porch. None in the house.”

“And in her body itself? Was there blood remaining in her body?”

“The coroner’s report said no. He also said it was impossible. That something more than just a neck slash happened to Linda, but all he had were questions and no answers. That’s all anyone has had.”

“Sylvia Redbird, we are here to get answers if you are strong enough to see them.”

Grandma lifted her chin. “I am.”

“Then so mote it be. All vampyre rituals begin with an altar to our Goddess at their center,” Thanatos told us. I was thinking that we all already knew that, and then her next words stopped the question in my mind. “Sylvia, I would ask that you form the altar at the heart of this ritual. Are you willing to do that?”

“I am.”