Destined (17 page)

Lenobia unobtrusively retreated as Gaea launched into a lengthy explanation about timing and grass cutting and the phases of the moon. Travis, once again, fell into step beside her.

He cleared his throat.

Without looking at him, Lenobia said, “Go ahead. Say whatever it is you want to say.”

“Well, ma’am, seems to me there’s an awful lot of job confusion going on at this school.”

“Seems the same to me,” Lenobia said.

“Your boss doesn’t appear to be—”

“Neferet is
not
my boss,” Lenobia interrupted.

“All right, I’ll rephrase that. It appears
my
boss has been doin’ a lot of hiring without tellin’ the people those hirings most affect anything about it. So, I’m wonderin’, does this have anything to do with the rough times you mentioned before?”

“It might,” Lenobia said. By this time they’d made their way back to the main door that led to the stables. She stopped and faced Travis. “You should get used to not being surprised by confusion and chaos. There can be a lot of both around here.”

“But you’re not going to give me specifics. Am I right about that?”

“You are,” Lenobia said.

Travis cocked his hat back. “How ’bout elaboratin’ on those birds with the red eyes?”

“Raven Mockers,” Lenobia said. “That’s what they’re called. Horses don’t like them; they don’t like horses. They’ve caused problems here lately.”

“What are they?” Travis said.

Lenobia sighed. “Not human. Not bird. Not vampyre.”

“Well, ma’am, sounds like they’re not good in general. Do I shoot if they come around the horses?”

“Shoot if they attack the horses.” Lenobia met his gaze steadily. “My general rule is: protect the horses first, ask questions later.”

“Good rule,” Travis said.

“I think so.” Lenobia nodded her head in the direction of the stables. “Do you have everything you need in there?”

“Yes, ma’am. Bonnie and me don’t need much.” He paused and then added, “Will you want me to change my sleeping hours around to match yours?”

“Well, I’ll want you to change your sleep pattern, but you’ll be matching the entire school, not just me,” Lenobia said quickly, wondering why what he said had embarrassed her. “And you’ll be surprised how quickly Bonnie will adapt to the night and day switch.”

“Bonnie and I have done our fair share of night riding.”

“Good, then you’re already a little prepared for the change.” There was an awkward moment when they both just stood there, and then Lenobia said, “Oh, my quarters are up there.” She pointed to the tall second story over the stables. “The rest of the professors are back there.” Lenobia jerked her chin toward the main campus building. “I prefer to be closer to the horses.”

“Seems you and I see eye to eye on at least one thing.”

She raised her brows in a silent question.

Travis smiled. “Preferring horses.” He opened the door for her.

Lenobia went into the stables and they walked together for a little way until they reached the stairwell that led to the upper level. “I suppose I’ll see you at dusk,” she said.

Travis tipped his hat to her. “Yes, ma’am, you will. Good night to you.”

“Good night,” Lenobia said, and then hurried up the stairway feeling his eyes on her back long after she was out of his sight.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Aurox

Aurox followed his Priestess from the professors’ building out into the waning sunlight of evening. Though it was winter, and the light held no warmth, and, truth be told, little light, she cringed as if it caused her pain. He watched her pull the cowl of her green robe more fully over her head so that it fully swathed her face.

“Sunlight!” Neferet made the word sound as if it tasted bitter. “I shall make them pay for causing me to take this trip in the sunlight.” She glanced at him before donning dark, mirrored glasses. “Actually, you shall make them pay for me.”

“Yes, Priestess,” he said automatically.

Imperiously, she walked out to the large black vehicle she’d commanded he learn how to drive and stood before the door, waiting for him to open it, which he did quickly. Aurox noted that even in the daylight hours Neferet cast a shadow that was preternaturally dark.
Darkness always travels with her,
he thought.

After he’d turned on the vehicle she punched a button in the rearview mirror and a voice asked, “Yes, Neferet, where may OnStar take you today?”

“Will Rogers High School, Tulsa, Oklahoma,” she said in response to the voice, then to him she commanded, “Follow their directions exactly.”

“Yes, Priestess,” was all he was required to say.

*   *   *

From the moment he’d parked in front of it, Aurox had found the light-colored brick and stonework building pleasing to his eye. He followed Neferet inside, entering the first of its gleaming, wide hallways and he was taken aback by the feel of the place. It was almost as if the building was sentient. It had a wise, listening quality that Aurox found surprisingly calming.

But how could that be? How could a building make him feel anything?

There had been only one elderly security guard. He’d approached Aurox and Neferet, walking slowly and with a limp, more curious and polite than cautious.

“May I help y’all?”

“Yes, does the school have an underground area? A large basement or tunnel system?” Neferet had asked, pulling back her hood and taking off her dark glasses.

The guard’s eyes had widened first at her beauty and then fixated on her sapphire-colored tattoo.

“We have some old tunnels in the basement that haven’t really been used since bomb shelter days. That is, other than as a hidey-hole from a tornado now and then. Why do you—”

“How do you reach the tunnels?” Neferet cut him off.

“I’m sorry, I’d need to get administrative permission for any—”

“That won’t be necessary.” This time she added a seductive smile to her words. “I’m simply compiling historical information about the school building. The tunnels are still accessible, aren’t they?”

The man looked equally as confused by her question as he was dazzled by her smile. “Oh, yes. They’re easy to get to. Just follow this here main hall ’til you pass the library.” He gestured to their right. “There’re stairs in the corner of the intersecting hallway. Take them down a flight. The access is through an old music room about midway through the next hall on the right. I got the master key right here. I don’t suppose it’d hurt anything if I gave you a quick look. It’s not like classes are going on right now or—”

“Incapacitate him, but do not kill him,” Neferet had ordered. “Oh, and give me that key.”

Aurox hit him hard enough to make him unconscious. He didn’t believe the old man was dead, but he wasn’t certain. There was no time to check. He handed Neferet the jangling keys and she began hurrying in the direction the man had unwisely indicated. She paused when she came to the large room on their left, glancing in the windows of the closed doors. Aurox looked with her. It was an elegent room. Large, decorative lights hung over tables and bookshelves.

Strange that Aurox perceived a waiting quality from within.

“Library,” she said. “All this Art Deco architecture is utterly wasted on human teenagers.” Neferet dismissed the building’s beauty and majesty. She nodded at the intersecting hallway ahead of them. “This is the correct way.”

Almost reluctantly, Aurox followed her.

“This a school, just as the House of Night is a school?” Aurox had to give voice to some of the questions that were circling around his mind.

Neferet didn’t even glance at him. “It is a human school—a public school.
Not
like the House of Night.” She shuddered delicately. “I can practically see the hormones and testosterone. Why do you ask?”

“I am simply curious,” he said.

She did look at him then, briefly. “Do not be.”

“Yes, Priestess,” he said softly.

They wove their way farther within the quiet building, and the hall became less and less touched by sunlight. The shadows around Neferet stirred as she stopped in front of a door with musical notes painted on it. “This is it,” she said, as she unlocked the door, and stepped into a dingy area that smelled of dust and neglect. To their left was a room filled with metal stands and chairs. Before them was a cluttered area that led into more darkness. Neferet hesitated and made a low sound of frustration. “I grow weary of searching.”

Neferet lifted her right hand, pressed the sharp nail of her left middle finger against her palm, slicing open a wound that wept red.

“To the red ones I command you lead me;

my blood your payment will be.”

With a sense of fascination Aurox watched Darkness release from within the shadows beneath and around Neferet as well as the corners of the room. Questing tendrils slithered to her. Twining around her body they crawled up her skin to the blood that pooled in her palm. Darkness fed there, causing Neferet to shiver and moan as if in pain, though the Priestess did not close her hand. Did not pull away.

It made Aurox
feel
. Part of him felt excited as he anticipated a battle to come and welcomed the rage and power that battle would evoke. But another part of him felt revulsion. Darkness pulsed around Neferet, malevolent and sticky and dangerous. Aurox was pondering the different feelings when Neferet shook off the tendrils and licked her wound closed.

“You have fed.

I will be led.”

The singsong rhyme of Neferet’s spell brushed power against Aurox and he shivered as Darkness writhed and then skittered off leaving a thin ribbon-like trail that was blacker than a new moon night as its signpost.

“Come,” Neferet said.

Aurox did as he was commanded.

They followed the ribbon into the seemingly abandoned hallway, which began to slope down and down, tunnel-like. Eventually they came to a space that widened and dead-ended. There Neferet paused.

Aurox scented them before he saw them. Their odor was vile, rotten, filthy.
Death,
he thought.
They smell of death.

“Unacceptable,” Neferet said angrily under her breath. “Utterly unacceptable.” She strode into the underground room, went to the wall, and flipped a switch. A single bare bulb cast a sickly yellow light.

Aurox thought it looked like a nest.

Mattresses were piled against one another. Bodies were curled around each other under blankets. Some were naked. Some were clothed. It was difficult to see where one ended and another began. One head lifted. The vampyre’s tattoos were red and they looked remarkably like the tendrils of Darkness that had led them to him. His gaze was hard. His voice angry.

“Kurtis, take care of whoever is bothering us.”

A large mound moved sluggishly and a thick broad forehead appeared from the other end of the nest. This one had a red crescent outlined on his forehead—a fledgling.

“It’s barely even day. Just zap ’em with electricity or somethin’ and—”

“And what?” Neferet’s voice was ice. “Kurtis, you were stupid and bumbling before you died. Now you’re stupid and bumbling and you stink.” Neferet glanced at Aurox. “Throw him against the wall.”

Aurox moved to do her bidding, but slowly, giving the fledgling time to feel fear. Aurox fed from that fear, and as his body shifted, changed, grew into something else, something more powerful, the fledgling’s fear shifted, changed, grew into delicious terror. With a roar Aurox lifted the boy from his nest and hurled him into the wall. There was a sick cracking sound and the boy lay still.

“Whoa! Whoa! Wait a second. Neferet! I didn’t know it was you.” The red vampyre stood, shirtless, hands out, facing the Priestess. Aurox felt his fear. It felt good.

He took a step toward the vampyre. His hooves rang against the cold cement floor.

“Halt for now, Aurox,” Neferet commanded. She turned her back to him and concentrated on the vampyre and his nest. “Did you really believe you could hide from me, Dallas?”

“I wasn’t hiding from you! I didn’t know what to do—where to find you.”

“Don’t lie to me.” Neferet’s voice had gone soft and in that softness Aurox heard a black, endless danger. “Don’t ever lie to me.”

“Okay, okay. Sorry,” the vampyre said hastily. “I guess I just didn’t think.”

The nest of fledglings had been stirring, awakening as their vampyre and Neferet had been speaking, and now Aurox could see faces, wide-eyed with fear, staring from Neferet to him.

He longed to crush those staring faces under his hooves.

A rattling cough came from the nest.

Neferet sneered. “How many of you are there?”

“After the depot when Zoey and her assholes fought us, ten are left besides me.” He glanced at Kurtis. “And him.”

“He isn’t dead. Yet,” Neferet said. “So there are eleven fledglings and one vampyre. How many of your fledglings have begun coughing?”

Dallas shrugged. “Two, maybe three.”

“There are too many of them. They need to be around vampyres or they will die. Again,” she added with a cruel smile.

From the fledgling nest more fear washed over Aurox. He ground his teeth together, fighting the urge to feed from it.

“Will you come around us then? Like you used to?”

“No. I’ve had a change in plans. It’s time you joined me. All of you joined me.”

“You mean at the House of Night? That’s impossible. We’re not what we used to be and we don’t want to—”

“What you
want
is of no consequence to me unless you obey me. And if you do not obey me you will die.”

The vampyre seemed to stand straighter. His anger burned brighter, as did the single electric bulb. “I won’t die. I’ve already Changed. Some of them might,” he gestured to the fledglings that crouched all around his feet, “but I say that’s survival of the fittest.”

“You’re not as smart as I remembered, Dallas. Let me speak plainly and simply then so even you can understand: if you and your fledglings do not obey me
you
will be the first to die. My creature will kill you. Now. Or whenever I command him to. Make your choice.”