P.C. Cast - Hidden

“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.

“Z, that does not make Aurox a good guy,” Stark said, shaking his head at me.

“You know, people can change,” Nicole suddenly spoke up. We all blinked at her. Obviously I wasn’t the only one of us who had forgotten she was there.

I hated to agree with Nicole, so I just chewed my lip silently and worried.

“Aurox is not a person, nor a guy , good or bad.” In the dark field house, Kalona’s deep voice seemed bomb-like, blasting against my already battered nerves. “Aurox is a Vessel. A creature created to be Neferet’s weapon. Could he have a conscience and the capability to change?” He shrugged. “We can only guess at that. And truly, does it matter? It makes no difference whether a spear has a conscience. What is important is who is wielding the weapon. Neferet, clearly, wields Aurox.”

“How long have you known this?” I rounded on Kalona. Stark was staring at me like I was being irrational, but I didn’t stop myself. Even if I couldn’t figure out how to tell them, I believed I had glimpsed Heath’s soul within Aurox through the Seer Stone. “If you knew what Aurox was, why didn’t you say something before now?”

“No one asked me,” Kalona said.

“That’s crap,” I said, totally displacing my anger and frustration and confusion from myself and the Aurox/Heath puzzle and smacking Kalona with it. “What else have you kept from us?”

“What else would you like to know?” he replied without hesitation. “Just be careful, young Priestess, that you truly want to hear the answers to the questions you ask.”

“You’re supposed to be on our team, remember?” Stark said, stepping between Kalona and me.

“I remember more than you realize, red vampyre,” Kalona said.

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Stark shot back at him.

“It means you haven’t always been all goody-goody!” Nicole shouted.

“Don’t you dare talk about him!” I hurled my words at her.

“Again you fight yourselves!” Thanatos shouted, the passion in her voice stirring the air around us. “Our enemy has wreaked havoc on our own house. She has committed murder not once, not twice, but over and over. She has allied herself with the greatest evil this world has ever known. Still you strike out at one another. If we cannot unite she has already defeated us.”

Thanatos shook her head sadly. She turned from us back to the bodies of the two cats. The High Priestess knelt beside them and, once again, swept her hand gently over each of them. This time the air above the cats began to shimmer and the glittering outlines of Shadowfax and Guinevere materialized—only they weren’t the adult cats that lay so still and cold on the area floor. They were kittens. Plump, adorable kittens. “Go to the Goddess, little ones,” Thanatos spoke softly, warmly to them. “Nyx and those you love best await you.” Young Shadowfax reached a fuzzy paw out to bat playfully at the edge of Thanatos’s billowy sleeve before both kittens disappeared in a puff of glitter. I could swear I heard the distant sound of Anastasia’s musical laughter, and I imagined she and Dragon must be having a blast welcoming their kittens to the Otherworld.

The Otherworld …

My mom was there, along with Dragon and Anastasia and Jack and, if I’d been wrong about what I’d seen within Aurox, Heath was there, too. I’d been there. I knew the Otherworld existed as surely as I knew I existed. I also knew it was an amazing, magickal place, and even though it hadn’t been my time to die and stay there, the beauty of it still lingered in my mind and my soul, forming a little bubble of wonder and safety that was the complete opposite of what the real world around me had become.

“Would it be so bad if we lost?”

I hadn’t realized I’d spoken aloud until Stark shook my shoulder. “What are you talking about, Z? We can’t lose because Neferet can’t win. Darkness can’t win.”