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“Perhaps you should harm one closer to Zoey. The Red One is like a sister to her,” Kalona said.
“True, and that wretched Aphrodite has become close to her as well,” Neferet said, tapping her chin, considering.
An odd noise coming from his son drew Kalona’s attention to Rephaim. “Did you have something to add, my son?”
“Zoey is hiding on Skye. She believes you ca
“We ca
“You mean like no one was supposed to be able to breach the boundaries of Nyx’s Realm?” Rephaim said.
Neferet skewered him with her emerald eyes. “Do you dare to be impertinent?”
“Make your point, Rephaim,” Kalona said.
“Father, you already breached a seemingly impossible boundary by entering Nyx’s Otherworld, even after the Goddess herself banished you. Use your co
“She is not a High Priestess. She is a fledgling! And the Tulsa House of Night is mine, not hers!” Neferet practically shrieked. “No. I have had enough of your father’s co
“As you wish, my Queen,” Kalona said, sending his son a pointed look. Rephaim met his gaze, hesitated, and then he, too, bowed his head and said softly, “As you wish…”
“Good, then that is that. Rephaim, local news reports say that there has been gang violence near Will Rogers High School. The gang is cutting throats and draining blood. I believe if we follow that gang we’ll find the rogue red fledglings. Do that. Discreetly.”
Rephaim didn’t speak, but he bowed his head in acknowledgment.
“And now I’m going to luxuriate in that lovely marble bathtub in the other room. Kalona, my love, I will join you in our bed very soon.”
“My Queen, did you not wish me to search for the red fledglings with Rephaim?”
“Not tonight. Tonight I need a more personal service from you. We have too long been apart.” She ran one red nail down Kalona’s chest and he had to force himself not to flinch away from her.
She must have seen something of his desire to avoid her touch, though, because her next words were cold and hard. “Do I displease you?”
“Of course not. How could you possibly displease me? I will be ready and willing for you, as always.”
“And you will be in my bed, awaiting my pleasure,” she said. With a cruel smile she spun around and glided into the huge bedchamber that took up half of the palatial penthouse, closing the double doors to the bathroom with a dramatic slam that Kalona thought sounded much like a gaoler closing a prison door.
He and Rephaim remained still and silent for almost one full minute. When the immortal finally spoke his voice was rough with repressed anger.
“There is no price too great to pay to break the hold she has over me.” Kalona swiped his hand down his chest as if he could wipe away her touch.
“She treats you as if you are her servant.”
“Not for all of eternity, she will not,” Kalona said grimly.
“For now she does, though. She even commands you to stay away from Zoey, and you’ve been bound to the Cherokee maiden that shares her soul for centuries!”
The disgust in his son’s voice was mirrored by Kalona’s own thoughts. “No,” he said quietly, speaking more to himself than his son. “The Tsi Sgili may believe she commands my every move, but though she thinks herself a goddess, she is not omniscient. She ca
“It seems logical,” Rephaim said. “The girl hides there to avoid you. Show her your powers are too great for that, whether the Tsi Sgili approves or not.”
“I do not require that creature’s approval.”
“Exactly,” Rephaim said.
“My son, take to the night’s sky and track the rogue fledglings. That will pacify Neferet. What I truly wish you to do is to find and watch Stevie Rae. Observe her carefully. Note where she goes and what she does, but do not capture her yet. I believe her powers are linked to Darkness. I believe she can be of use to us, but first her continuing friendship with Zoey and the House of Night has to be corroded. She must have a weakness. If we watch her long enough we will discover it.” Kalona paused, then he chuckled, though the sound was utterly humorless. “Weaknesses can be so beguiling.”
“Beguiling, Father?”
Kalona looked at his son, wondering at his odd expression. “Beguiling, indeed. Perhaps you have been so long apart from the world that you do not remember the power of a single human weakness.”
“I … I am not human, Father. Their weaknesses are difficult for me to understand.”
“Of course … of course, just find and observe the Red One. I will consider what to do with her from there,” Kalona said dismissively. “And while I await Neferet’s next command”—he spoke the word as a sneer, like the very voicing of it was distasteful—“I will search the realm of dreams and give Zoey—as well as Neferet—a lesson in hide-and-seek.”
“Yes, Father,” Rephaim said.
Kalona watched him open the double doors and step out onto the stone roof. Rephaim strode across the balcony to the balustrade-like wall that ringed the edge, leaped up on its flat ledge, and then opened his huge ebony wings and dropped silently, gracefully, into the night, gliding black and almost invisible against the Tulsa skyline.
Kalona envied Rephaim for a moment, wishing he, too, could leap from the rooftop of the majestic building called Mayo and glide the black, predator’s sky, hunting, searching, finding.
But no. This night there was another hunting job he would complete. It would not take him to the sky, but it would also, in its own way, be satisfying.
Terror could be satisfying.
For an instant he remembered the last time he’d seen Zoey. It was the same moment his spirit had been torn from the Otherworld and returned to his body. The terror then had been his, caused by his failure to keep Zoey’s soul in the Otherworld, thereby killing her. Darkness, under the direction of Neferet’s oath, sealed by her blood and his acceptance, had been able to control him—to seize his soul.
Kalona shuddered. He’d long trafficked with Darkness, but he had never given it dominion over his immortal soul.
The experience had not been pleasant. It hadn’t been the pain that had been so unbearable, though it had, indeed, been great. It hadn’t been the helplessness he’d known as the tendrils of the Beast had encased him. His terror had been caused by Nyx’s rejection.
“Will you ever forgive me?” he’d asked her.
The Goddess’s response had cut him more deeply than had Stark’s Guardian claymore: “If you are ever worthy of forgiving you may ask it of me. Not until then.” But the most terrible blow had been delivered with her next words. “You will pay my daughter the debt you owe her, and then you will return to the world and the consequences awaiting you there, knowing this, my fallen Warrior, your spirit, as well as your body, is forbidden entrance to my realm.”
Then she had abandoned him to the clutches of Darkness, banishing him again without a second glance. It was worse than the first time. When he’d fallen it had been his choice, and Nyx had not been cold and uncaring. It had been different the second time. The terror the finality of that banishment caused would haunt him for an eternity, just as would that last, bittersweet glimpse he’d had of his Goddess.