Betrayed

"I hate it in here, too. It's like a damn tomb," Heath said softly between chattering teeth.

Hand in hand, we walked across the basement, passing through the slatted grayish light that reflected down from the world above. We were at the iron door when I heard the distant wail of a police siren. The terrible tension in my body had just begun to relax when Neferet's voice came from the shadows.

"I should have known you would be here."

Heath's body jerked in surprise and my hand tightened in warning on his. As I turned to face her, I was centering myself and could feel the power of the elements begi

"Oh, Neferet! I'm so glad to see you!" I squeezed Heath's hand one more time before I let go of him, trying to telegraph play along with whatever I say through touch. Then I ran, sobbing, into the High Priestess's arms. "How did you find me? Did Detec­tive Marx call you?"

I could see indecision in her eyes as Neferet smoothly disen­tangled herself from my arms. "Detective Marx?"

"Yeah." I sniffed and wiped my nose on my sleeve, forcing my­self to beam relief and trust to her. "That's him coming right now." The sound of the siren was very close, and I could hear that it had been joined by at least two other cars. "Thank you for find­ing me!" I gushed. "It was so terrible. I thought that crazy street person was going to kill both of us." I moved back to Heath's side and took his hand again. He was staring at Neferet, looking a lot like he was in shock. I realized that he was probably remembering pieces of the only other time he'd seen the High Priestess—the night the vampyre ghosts had almost killed him—and imagined his mind was too freaked out for Neferet to make much sense of what was going on inside his head. Good thing, too.

Then car doors were slamming and heavy feet were crunching through the snow.

"Zoey, Heath ..." Neferet moved swiftly to us. She lifted her hands, which glowed with a weird, reddish light, suddenly re­minding me of the undead things' eyes. Before I could run or scream or even take a breath, she grabbed our shoulders. I felt Heath go rigid as pain shot through my body. It blasted against my mind and my knees would have buckled had her hand not been like a vise, holding me up. "You will remember nothing!" The words echoed through my agony-filled mind, and then there was only darkness.

CHAPTER 31

I was in a beautiful meadow that was in the middle of what looked like a dense forest. A warm, soft breeze was blowing the scent of lilacs to me. A stream ran through the meadow, its crys­tal water bubbled musically over smooth stones.

"Zoey? Can you hear me, Zoey?" An insistent male voice in­truded on my dream.

I frowned and tried to ignore him. I didn't want to wake up, but my spirit stirred. I needed to wake up. I needed to remember. She needed me to remember.

But who was she?

"Zoey ..." This time the voice was inside my dream and I could see my name painted against the blue of the spring sky. The voice was a woman's ... familiar … magical … wondrous. "Zoey ..."

I looked around the clearing and found the Goddess sitting on the other side of the stream, gracefully perched on a smooth Ok­lahoma sandstone rock with her bare feet playing in the water.

"Nyx!" I cried. "Am I dead?" My words shimmered around me.

The Goddess smiled. "Will you ask that of me each time I visit you, Zoey Redbird?"

"No, I'm, uh, sorry." My words were tinged pink, probably blushing like my cheeks.

"Don't be sorry, my daughter. You have done very well. I am pleased with you. Now, it is time you awakened. And also I wish to remind you that the elements can restore as well as destroy."

I started to thank her, even though I didn't have a clue what she was talking about, but the shaking of my shoulder and a sud­den blast of cold air interrupted me. I opened my eyes.

Snow swirled all around me. Detective Marx was bending over me, shaking my shoulder. Through the weird fog in my mind I found one word. "Heath?" I croaked.

Marx jerked his chin to his right and I tilted my head to see Heath's still body being loaded into an ambulance.

"Is he …" I couldn't finish.

"He's fine, just banged up. He's lost a lot of blood and they've already given him something for the pain."

"Banged up?" I was struggling to make sense of everything. "What happened to Heath?"

"Multiple lacerations, just like those other two kids. Good thing you found him and called me before he bled to death." He squeezed my shoulder. A paramedic tried to move Marx from my side, but he said, "I'll handle her. She just needs to get back to the House of Night and she'll be fine."

I saw the paramedic give me a look that clearly said freak, but Detective Marx's strong hands were helping me sit up and his tall body blocked my view of the muttering EMT.

"Can you walk to my car?" Marx asked.

I nodded. My body was feeling better, but my mind was still all mushy. Marx's "car" was really a huge, all-weather truck with giant wheels and a roll bar. He helped me up into the front seat, which was warm and comfortable, but before he closed the door I sud­denly remembered something else, even though the effort made my head feel like it was going to split open. "Persephone! Is she okay?"

Marx looked confused for just a second, then he smiled. "The mare?"

I nodded.

"She's just fine. An officer is walking her to the police stables downtown until the roads are clear enough to get a trailer back to the House of Night." His grin widened. "Guess you're braver than the Tulsa police force. None of them volunteered to ride her back."

I rested my head against the seat as he threw the truck into four-wheel drive and navigated slowly through the drifts of snow away from the depot. There must have been ten cop cars, along with a fire truck and two ambulances parked with lights flashing red and blue and white against the empty, snow-curtained night.

"What happened here tonight, Zoey?"

I thought back, and had to squint my eyes against the sudden pain in my head. "I don't remember," I managed to say through the pounding in my temples. I could feel his sharp gaze on me. I met the detective's eyes and remembered him telling me about his twin sister, the vamp who still loved him. He'd said I could trust him, and I believed him. "Something's wrong," I admitted. "My memory is messed up."

"Okay," he said slowly. "Start with the last thing you can easily remember."

"I was grooming Persephone and all of a sudden I knew where Heath was, and that he was going to die if I didn't go get him."

"You two have Imprinted?" My surprise must have been easy to read, because he smiled and continued. "My sister and I talk, and I've been curious about vamp stuff, especially right after she first Changed." He shrugged as if it was no big deal for a human to know all sorts of vampyre info. "We're twins, so we're used to sharing everything. A change of species just didn't make that much difference to us." He glanced sideways at me again. "You have Imprinted, haven't you?"

"Yeah, Heath and I have Imprinted. That's how I knew where he was." I left out the stuff about Aphrodite. No way did I feel up to explaining the whole her-visions-are-real-but-Neferet-has-been...

"Ah!" This time I gasped aloud at the agony inside my head.

"Deep, calming breaths," Marx said, shooting me worried looks whenever he could take his eyes from the treacherous road. "I said whatever was easy for you to remember."

"No, it's okay. I'm okay. I want to do this."

He still looked worried, but continued with his questioning. "All right, you knew Heath was in trouble, and you knew where he was. So, why didn't you just call me and tell me to go to the depot?"