P.C. Cast - Awakened

Linda darling, I felt you might be coming, but I couldn’t be sure when you would actually arrive, so I went ahead and took some soaps and sachets and things to the powwow in Tahlequah. I’ll be back tomorrow. As always, please make yourself at home. I hope you’re here when I return. I love you.

Linda sighed. Trying not to feel disappointed and annoyed at her mother, she went inside. “It’s really not her fault. She’d be here if I hadn’t stopped coming by.” She was used to her mother’s weird way of knowing whenever she was going to have a visitor. “Looks like her radar still works.”

For a moment she stood in the middle of the living room, trying to decide what to do. Maybe she should go back to Broken Arrow. Maybe John would leave her alone for a while—or at least long enough for her to get an attorney and get him served with papers.

But she’d broken her rule about no overnights during the week, and the kids were at friends’ houses. She didn’t have to go back. Linda sighed again, and this time with her inhaled breath she took in the scents of her mother’s home: lavender, vanilla, and sage—real scents from real herbs and hand-poured soy candles, so unlike the PlugIns John insisted she use instead of “those sooty candles and those dirty old plants.” And that decided her. Linda marched into her mother’s kitchen and went straight to the little, but well stocked wine rack and pulled out a nice red. She was going to drink an entire bottle of wine and read one of her mother’s romance novels, and then stagger up to the guest loft, and she was going to enjoy every minute of it. Tomorrow her mother would give her an herbal tea concoction to get rid of her hangover, and she’d also help her figure out how to get her life back on the right track—a track that didn’t include John Heffer and did include her Zoey.

“Heffer, what a stupid name,” Linda said, pouring herself a glass of wine and taking a long, slow drink. “That name is one of the first things I’m going to get rid of!” She was looking through her mother’s bookshelf, trying to decide between reading something sexy by Kresley Cole, Gena Showalter, or Jennifer Crusie’s latest, Maybe This Time. That was it—the great title decided her because maybe this time she’d do the right thing. Linda was just settling down in her mother’s chair when someone knocked on the door three times.

In her opinion, it was entirely too late for visitors, but you never knew what to expect at her mother’s house, so Linda went to the door and opened it.

The vampyre who stood there was stunningly beautiful, a little familiar looking, and totally, completely naked.

“You are not Sylvia Redbird.” Neferet looked down her nose disdainfully at the drab woman who had answered the door.

“No, I’m her daughter, Linda. My mother isn’t in right now,” she said, glancing around nervously.

Neferet knew the moment the human’s eyes found the white bull, because they widened in shock and her face drained of all of its sallow color.

“Oh! It’s a … a … b-bull! Is it making the ground burn? Hurry! Hurry! Come inside where it’s safe. I’ll get you a robe to wear and then call animal control or the police or someone. ”

Neferet smiled and turned her head so that she could gaze at the bull, too. He was standing in the middle of the closest lavender field. If one didn’t know better it would, indeed, appear as if he were burning everything around him.

Neferet knew better.

“He isn’t burning the field; he’s freezing it. The withered plants just look scorched. Actually, they’re frozen,” Neferet said in the same matter-of-fact tone she often used in her classroom.

“I’ve— I’ve never seen a bull do that before.”

Neferet lifted one brow at Linda. “Does he truly look like a normal bull to you?”

“No,” Linda whispered. Then she cleared her throat and, obviously trying to sound stern, said to Neferet, “I’m sorry. I’m confused about what’s going on here. Do I know you? May I help you?”

“There is no need for you to be confused or concerned. I am Neferet, High Priestess of Tulsa’s House of Night, and I do most certainly hope you can help me. First, tell me when you expect your mother to return.” Neferet kept her voice affable, though her mind was a jumble of emotions: anger, irritation, and a lovely shiver of fear.

“Oh, that’s why you look familiar. My daughter Zoey goes to that school.”

“Yes, I know Zoey very well.” Neferet smiled smoothly. “When did you say your mother would return?”

“Not until tomorrow. Can I give her a message from you? And would you, uh, like a robe or something?”

“No message and no robe.” Neferet dropped her mask of affability. She lifted her hand and swept several tendrils of Darkness from the shadows surrounding her, then she flung them at the human woman, commanding, “Bind her and bring her out here.” When Neferet felt none of the familiar, painful slice that was the payment for manipulating the lesser threads of Darkness, she smiled at the mammoth bull and dipped her head in acknowledgment of his favor as she approached him.

You shall pay me later, my heartless one, rumbled through her mind. Neferet shivered in anticipation.

Then the human’s pathetic screams intruded on her thoughts and she made a motion over her shoulder, snapping the command, “And gag her! I cannot be expected to bear that noise.”

Linda’s screams stopped as abruptly as they had begun. Neferet stepped into the frozen lavender that encircled the beast, ignoring the cold on her bare feet and against her naked skin as she strode directly up to his great head and stroked one finger down the length of his horn before she dropped to a graceful curtsey before him. When she rose, she smiled into the complete blackness of his eyes and said, “I have your sacrifice.”

The bull’s gaze flicked over her shoulder.

This is not an old, powerful matriarch. This is a pathetic housewife whose life has been consumed by weakness.

“True, but her mother is a Wise Woman of the Cherokee. Her blood flows in this one’s veins.”

Diluted.

“Will she serve as the sacrifice or not? Can you use her to make my Vessel?”

I can, but your Vessel will be only as perfect as your sacrifice, and this woman is far from perfect.

“But will you invest him with power that I can command?”

I will.

“Then my wish is that you accept this sacrifice. I will not wait for the mother when I can have the daughter, and the same blood, now.”

As you wish, my heartless one. I grow weary of this. Kill her quickly and let us move on to other things.

Neferet didn’t speak. She turned and walked over to the human. The woman was pathetic. She wasn’t even struggling. All she was doing was sobbing silently as the tendrils of Darkness cut red swaths across her mouth and face, and all around her body where they bound her.

“I need a blade. Now.” Neferet held out her hand and instantly pain and cold filled it in the shape of a long, obsidian dagger. With one swift motion, Neferet slit Linda’s throat. She watched the woman’s eyes widen and then roll to show only their whites as her life’s blood drained from her.

Catch all of it. Let none of the blood be wasted.

At the bull’s command the tendrils of Darkness writhed all over Linda, attaching to her throat and to any other part of her body from which blood seeped, and began sucking. Mesmerized, Neferet saw that each pulsing tendril had a thread that returned to the bull, dissolving into his body, feeding him the human’s blood.