Burned

“I choose to rule. I will always choose to rule,” he said without hesitation.

As soon as he spoke, Neferet’s eyes changed. The green within them became totally engulfed in scarlet. She turned the glowing orbs on him—holding, entrapping, entrancing. “Then hear me, Kalona, Fallen Warrior of Nyx, by my oath I shall keep your body safe. When Zoey Redbird, fledging High Priestess of Nyx, is no more, I swear to you I will remove these dark chains and allow your spirit to return. Then I will take you to the rooftop of our castle on Capri and let the sky breathe life and strength into you so that you will rule this realm as my consort, my protector, my Erebus.” As Kalona watched, helpless to stop her, Neferet drew one long, pointed fingernail across the palm of her right hand. Cupping the blood that pooled there, she held her hand up, offering. “By blood I claim this power; by blood I bind this oath.” All around her, Darkness stirred and descended on her palm, writhing, shivering, drinking. Kalona could feel the draw of that Darkness. It spoke to his soul with seductive, powerful whispers.

“Yes!” The word was a moan torn deep from his throat as Kalona yielded himself to the greedy Darkness.

When Neferet continued, her voice was magnified, swollen with power. “It is your own choice that I have sealed this oath by blood with Darkness, but should you fail me and break it—”

“I will not fail.”

Her smile was unworldly in its beauty; her eyes roiled with blood. “If you, Kalona, Fallen Warrior of Nyx, break this oath and fail in my sworn quest to destroy Zoey Redbird, fledgling High Priestess of Nyx, I shall hold dominion over your spirit for as long as you are an immortal.”

The answering words came unbidden by him, evoked by the seductive Darkness, which for centuries he’d chosen over Light. “If I fail, you shall hold dominion over my spirit for as long as I am an immortal.”

“Thus I have sworn.” Again Neferet slashed her palm, creating a bloody X in her flesh. The copper scent wafted to Kalona like smoke rising from fire as she again raised her hand to Darkness. “Thus it shall be!” Neferet’s face twisted in pain as Darkness drank from her again, but she didn’t flinch—didn’t move until the air around her pulsed, bloated with her blood and her oath.

Only then did she lower her hand. Her tongue snaked out, licking the scarlet line and ending the bleeding. Neferet walked to him, bent, and gently placed her hands on either side of his face, much as he had held the human boy before delivering his deathblow. He could feel Darkness thrumming around and within her, a raging bull waiting eagerly for his mistress’s command.

Her blood-reddened lips paused just short of touching his. “With the power that rushes through my blood, and by the strength of the lives I have taken, I command you, my delicious threads of Darkness, to pull this Oath Bound immortal’s soul from his body and speed him to the Otherworld. Go and do as I order, and I swear I will sacrifice to you the life of an i

Neferet drew in a deep breath, and Kalona saw the dark threads she’d summoned slither between her full, red lips. She inhaled Darkness until she was swollen with it, and then she covered his mouth with hers and, with that blackened, blood-tainted kiss, blew Darkness within him with such force that it ripped his already wounded soul from his body. As his soul shrieked in soundless agony, Kalona was forced up, up, and into the realm from which his Goddess had banished him, leaving his body lifeless, chained, Oath Bound by evil, and at the mercy of Neferet.

Chapter 2

The sonorous drum was like the heartbeat of an immortal: never-ending, engulfing, overwhelming. It echoed through Rephaim’s soul in time with the pounding of his blood. Then, to the beat of the drum, the ancient words took form. They wrapped around his body so that even as he slept, his pulse allied itself in harmony with the ageless melody. In his dream, the women’s voices sang:

The song was seductive, and like a labyrinth, it circled on and on.

The music was a whispered enticement. A promise. A blessing. A curse. The memory of what it foretold made Rephaim’s sleeping body restless. He twitched and, like an abandoned child, murmured a one-word question: “Father?”

The melody concluded with the rhyme Rephaim had memorized centuries ago:

“. . . slaughter with cold heat.” Even sleeping, Rephaim responded to the words. He didn’t awaken, but his heartbeat increased—his hands curled into fists—his body tensed. On the cusp between awake and asleep, the drumbeat stuttered to a halt, and the soft voices of women were replaced by one that was deep and all too familiar.

“Traitor . . . coward . . . betrayer . . . liar!” The male voice was a condemnation. With its litany of anger, it invaded Rephaim’s dream and jolted him fully into the waking world.

“Father!” Rephaim surged upright, throwing off the old papers and scraps of cardboard he’d used to create a nest around him. “Father, are you here?”

A shimmer of movement caught at the corner of his vision, and he jerked forward, jarring his broken wing as he peered from the depths of the dark, cedar-paneled closet.

“Father?”

His heart knew Kalona wasn’t there even before the vapor of light and motion took form to reveal the child.

“What are you?”

Rephaim focused his burning gaze on the girl. “Begone, apparition.”

Instead of fading as she should have, the child narrowed her eyes to study him, appearing intrigued. “You’re not a bird, but you have wings. And you’re not a boy, but you have arms and legs. And your eyes are like a boy’s, too, only they’re red. So, what are you?”

Rephaim felt a surge of anger. With a flash of movement that caused white-hot shards of pain to radiate through his body, he leaped from the closet, landing just a few feet before the ghost—predatory, dangerous, defensive.

“I am a nightmare given life, spirit! Go away and leave me in peace before you learn that there are things far worse than death to fear.”

At his abrupt movement, the child ghost had taken one small step backward, so that now her shoulder brushed against the low windowpane. But there she halted, still watching him with a curious, intelligent gaze.

“You cried out for your father in your sleep. I heard you. You can’t fool me. I’m smart like that, and I remember things. Plus, you don’t scare me because you’re really just hurt and alone.”

Then the ghost of the girl child crossed her arms petulantly over her thin chest, tossed back her long blond hair, and disappeared, leaving Rephaim just as she had named him, hurt and alone.

His fisted hands loosened. His heartbeat quieted. Rephaim stumbled heavily back to his makeshift nest and rested his head against the closet wall behind him.

“Pathetic,” he murmured aloud. “The favorite son of an ancient immortal reduced to hiding in refuse and talking to the ghost of a human child.” He tried to laugh but failed. The echo of the music from his dream, from his past, was still too loud in the air around him. As was the other voice—the one he could have sworn was that of his father.