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I squeezed his hand. “That’s exactly what I mean.”

“And I,” Kalona said. “I will follow Thanatos with you as well, though I will not be returning to the depot.” His lips turned up just a little as his gaze shifted from me to his son. “Soon, though. I will see you all again soon.”

Stevie Rae let loose of Rephaim’s hand long enough to hurl herself into Kalona’s arms, squeezing him in a giant hug, which seemed to surprise him as much as it did the rest of us, though Rephaim looked on with a humongous grin. “Yeah, we’ll see you real soon. Thanks again for showin’ up for your son.”

Kalona awkwardly patted her back. “You are welcome.”

Then she had a hold of Rephaim’s hand again and was retracing our path to the parking lot. “’Kay, we’ll wait for y’all, but remember, sure as sugar, the sun’s gonna rise real soon.”

Aphrodite shook her head and hooked her arm through Darius’s. “What the hell does ‘sure as sugar’ mean, anyway? Do you think she even graduated from the eighth grade?”

“Just help her get the kids on the bus,” I said.

Thankfully, the wind had picked up along with the rain, and both swallowed Aphrodite’s reply as she and Darius and the rest of my circle, plus Shaylin and Erik, walked off—in theory doing what I asked of them. Which left me alone with Stark, Lenobia, and Kalona.

“Ready?” Stark asked me.

“Yeah, of course,” I lied.

“The field house it is then,” Lenobia said.

Following Thanatos and Nicole, I tried to ready myself for something terrible, but my terrible quota had been filled for the night, and all I could do was wipe the rain from my face and put one foot in front of the other. I wasn’t really ready for anything but bed.

It was warm and dry inside the field house, but it smelled like smoke. The sand under our feet was damp and dirty. Dragon would hate to see his place messed up like this, was what I was thinking when Kalona pointed to the center of the dimly lit arena where I could just make out the vague shapes of Thanatos and Nicole.

“There—out there,” he said.

“We should have lit the torches,” Lenobia was murmuring as we walked across the soggy sand. “The humans extinguished almost all the lanterns along with the stable fire.”

I didn’t want to say anything, but the truth was that I was glad it was hard to see because I knew whatever it was Thanatos and Nicole were gathered around was not going to be pretty. I kept that thought to myself, though, and grabbed Stark’s hand, borrowing strength from his firm grip.

“Have a care where you walk.” When we got close to where she and Nicole were, Thanatos spoke to us without looking up from where she had knelt on the field house floor. “There is evidence of spellwork here. I’ll want it saved and examined so I can discover who is responsible for this atrocity.”

I peeked over her shoulder, not really understanding what I was seeing. A circle had been drawn in the sand. The sand looked weird and dark inside it. In the center of the circle were a couple of furry blobs. To the side of the blobs there were words scratched into the sand. I squinted, trying to make them out.

“What the heck is it?” I asked.

Red vampyres saw way better in the dark, so I knew when Stark’s arm went around me that whatever it was, it was bad. Real bad. Before I could repeat my question, Nicole reached into her pocket and took out her phone. “I got a flash on this thing. It’ll hurt your eyes, but at least it’ll take a picture.”

She was right. I was blinking tears and spots from my vision in the next second. Kalona, whose immortal vision was less susceptible to being messed with by light than any vampyre, spoke solemnly. “I know whose work this is. Can you not feel her lingering presence?”

My vision blinked clear and I moved closer, even though Stark’s grip on me tried to pull me back. Too late, I understood what I was looking at. “Shadowfax! He’s dead!”

“Sacrificed in a dark ritual,” Thanatos said.

“And Guinevere, too,” Nicole added.

I felt like I was going to puke. “Dragon’s cat and Anastasia’s cat? Both of them have been killed?”

Thanatos reached out and gently stroked her hand down Shadowfax’s side, moving from his body to the much smaller cat that was curled up beside him. “This little one did not die sacrificially. She was not part of the ritual. Grief stopped her heart and her breath.” The High Priestess stood and turned to Kalona. “You say you know whose work this is.”

“I do, as do you. Neferet sacrificed the Warrior’s cat. It was done as payment. Darkness obeys her, but the price of its obedience is blood and death and pain. That price must be paid over and over again. Darkness is never sated.” He pointed to the words. “That proves what I say.”

In the dim light I could see the sad, dead bodies of the cats, but the words written to the side of them were hard for me to make out. I didn’t have to ask. Holding me close to him, Stark read them aloud.

“Through payment of blood, pain, and strife

I force the Vessel to be my knife.”

“The Vessel is what Neferet calls Aurox,” Kalona explained.

“Oh, great Goddess, this proves more than that this is Neferet’s work.” Thanatos’s dark gaze met mine. “Your mother’s death wasn’t simply a random sacrifice to Darkness. It was the payment required to create Neferet’s creature, the Vessel, Aurox.”

My knees turned to rubber and I moved even closer to Stark. It felt like his arm was all that was keeping me standing.

“I knew that damn bull kid was bad news,” Stark said. “No way was he some kind of gift from Nyx.”

“The Vessel is the opposite. He is a creature fashioned from pain and death by Darkness, and controlled by Neferet,” Thanatos said.

I couldn’t tell them what I thought I’d seen in the Seer Stone. How could I, with Stark’s arm around me, Dragon newly dead, and the awfulness of the cats? But I was too raw—too tired and hurt and confused to guard my words anymore to keep from blurting Heath’s name, so instead, like a moron, I babbled. “There has to be more to Aurox than that! Remember what he asked you about after class? He wanted to know who he was— what he was. You said he could decide that for himself and not let his past control his future. Why would a creature who was totally made of Darkness, totally nothing but Neferet’s Vessel, care to question anything about himself?”

“You have a point. I do remember Aurox came to me.” Thanatos nodded. Her gaze moved back to the bodies of the cats. “Perhaps Aurox isn’t completely an empty vessel. Perhaps his interaction with us, and in particular you, Zoey, touched some piece of a conscience within him.”

I felt a rush of emotion that had Stark sending me a startled, questioning look. “He was telling the truth!” I explained. “Tonight, just before Aurox ran off he said ‘I chose a different future. I chose a new future.’ He meant that he hadn’t wanted to hurt Rephaim or Dragon, but he couldn’t help it if Neferet had control of him.”

“It makes sense.” Thanatos nodded, speaking slowly as if working her way verbally through a maze. “The sacrifice of Dragon Lankford’s familiar was needed because Neferet was losing control of her Vessel. We all saw Aurox shift from the bull creature, to the boy, and then begin to shift back to the bull again as he ran off.”

“You also had to have seen how freaked he was when he was Aurox again and he saw what he’d done to Dragon,” I said.

“That doesn’t change the fact that Aurox killed Dragon,” Stark said. I could feel the tension coming from him and I hated that his face had turned into a hard mask.

“What if he only killed Dragon because of Neferet’s awful sacrifice of Shadowfax?” I asked, trying to get Stark to see that there might be more than one right answer.

“Zoey, that doesn’t make Dragon any less dead,” Stark said, dropping his arm from around me and making a small movement away from me.

“Or Aurox any less dangerous,” Kalona said.

“But perhaps less of a threat than we firstly believed,” Thanatos spoke reasonably. “If Neferet must perform a sacrificial ritual, one of this extent, each time she wants to control him, she will have to choose carefully and selectively about how and when she uses him.”

“He said it over and over that he chose a different future,” I insisted.