P.C. Cast - Awakened

The bull moaned in pleasure.

When the human was drained to a husk of herself, and the bull was thrumming and swollen with her death, Neferet gave herself to Darkness, utterly and completely.

“Go long, Neal!” Heath drew back his arm and aimed for the receiver in the Golden Hurricane’s jersey with the name SWEENEY in bold letters across his back.

Sweeney caught it, and then feinted and dodged around a bunch of guys in crimson and cream OU uniforms to make the touchdown.

“Yeah!” Heath raised his fist, laughing and shouting. “Sweeney could catch a gnat off a fly’s back!”

“Are you enjoying yourself, Heath Luck?”

At the sound of the Goddess’s voice Heath put away his fist pump and gave Nyx a semi-guilty smile. “Uh, yeah. It’s great here. There’s always a game I can quarterback—awesome receivers, great fans, and when I get tired of football there’s that lake just down the street. It’s stocked with bass that would make a pro fisherman cry.”

“What about girls? I see no cheerleaders, no fisher women. ”

Heath’s smile faltered. “Girls? No. Well. I only have one girl and she’s not here. You know that, Nyx.”

“I was just checking.” Nyx’s smile was radiant. “Would you sit and talk with me a moment?”

“Yeah, sure,” Heath said.

Nyx waved her hand and the old-school replication of a college football stadium disappeared. Suddenly Heath found himself standing on the precipice of an enormous canyon, so deep that the river that roared through the bottom of it looked like only a thin silver thread. The sun was rising over the opposite bank of the ridge, and the sky was shaded with the violets and pinks and blues of a beautiful new day.

Movement in the air caught Heath’s eye, and he noticed hundreds, maybe thousands of sparkling globes that were tumbling down into the gorge. He thought some of them looked like electric pearls, and others like geode balls, and still others were fluorescent colors so bright they almost hurt his eyes.

“Wow! It’s awesome up here!” He shaded his eyes with his hand. “What are those thingies?”

“Spirits,” Nyx said.

“Really, like ghosts or something?”

“A little. Mostly like you or something,” Nyx said with a warm smile.

“Well, that’s just weird. I don’t look anything like that. I look like me.”

“Right now you do,” Nyx said.

Heath glanced down at himself, just to be sure he was still, well, him. Relieved at what he saw, he looked back at the Goddess. “Should I get ready to change up?”

“That depends entirely upon you,” Nyx said. “As you would say in your world: I have a proposition for you.”

“Awesome! It’s cool to be propositioned by a goddess!” Heath said.

Nxy frowned at him. “Not that kind of proposition, Heath.”

“Oh. Uh. Sorry.” Heath felt his face getting really warm. Jeeze, he was a retard. “I didn’t mean anything disrespectful. I was just kidding…” He stuttered to a stop, wiping his face with his hand. When he looked at the goddess again, she was smiling wryly at him. “Okay,” he started again, relieved she hadn’t blasted him with a thunderbolt or something. “About that proposition?”

“Excellent. It’s nice to know I have your full attention. My proposition is this: choice.”

Heath blinked. “Choice? Between what?”

“I’m so pleased that you asked,” Nyx said with only a little teasing sarcasm in her divine voice. “I’m going to give you a choice between three futures. You may choose one of the three, but know before you hear the choices that once you decide upon a path, the outcome is not set—it is only your decision that is set. What happens thereafter is left up to chance and fate and the resources of your soul.”

“Okay, I think I get that. I get to pick something, but once I pick it I’m pretty much on my own?”

“With my blessing,” she added.

Heath grinned. “Well, I hope so.”

The Goddess didn’t return his smile. Instead she met his gaze, and he saw all humor was gone from her expression. “I give you my blessing, but only if you find my path. I cannot bless a future in which you choose Darkness.”

“Why would I do that? It doesn’t even make sense,” Heath said.

“Hear me out, my son, and consider the choices I offer you; you will understand then.”

“Okay,” he said, but something about the tone of her voice made his gut tighten.

“Choice one is that you stay here in this realm. You will be content, as you have been. You will frolic eternally with my other joy-filled children.”

“Content doesn’t mean happy,” Heath said slowly. “I’m a jock, but that doesn’t mean I’m stupid.”

“Of course it doesn’t,” said the Goddess. “Choice two: you fulfill your original intent and are reborn. That may mean you stay here and frolic for a century or more, but you will eventually leap from this precipice and return to the mortal realm to be reborn as a human who will eventually find his soul mate again.”

“Zoey!” He spoke the one word that filled his mind, and as he spoke her name Heath wondered why it had taken him so long. What was wrong with him? Why had he forgotten her? Why hadn’t he—

Nyx’s hand touched his arm gently. “Do not punish yourself. The Otherworld can be intoxicating. You did not truly forget your love—you never could. You simply allowed the child within you to rule for a time. He would, eventually, have given way to the adult, and you would have remembered Zoey and your love for her. Under normal circumstances that is the way of things. But the world today is not normal, nor are our circumstances. So, I’m going to ask the child within you to grow up a little more quickly, if you so choose.”

“If it has to do with Zo, then I say yes.”

“Then hear me out, Heath Luck. You can find your Zoey again if you choose to be reborn as a human; I give you my promise on that. You and she are destined to be together, whether it is as vampyre and mate, or vampyre and consort. It will happen, and you can choose to make it happen in this lifetime.”

“Then I—”

Her upraised hand silenced him. “There is a third option from which you may choose. As I speak to you the mortal world is shifting and turning. The great shadow of Darkness in the form of the white bull has gained an unexpected foothold. Good and evil are no longer balanced because of it.”

“Well, can’t you just zap something and fix that?”

“I could if I hadn’t gifted my children with free will.”

“You know, sometimes folks are stupid and they need to be told what to do,” Heath said.

Nyx’s expression remained serious, but her dark eyes sparkled. “If I begin taking away free will and controlling the decisions of my sons and daughters, when does it end? Will I not simply become puppet master, and my children marionettes?”

Heath sighed. “I guess you’re right. I mean, you are a goddess and all, so I’m pretty sure you know what you’re talkin’ about, but it does sound easier.”

“Easier is rarely better,” she said.

“Yeah, I know. And that sucks,” Heath said. “So what about my third choice? Are you trying to tell me it has something to do with good and evil?”

“I am. Neferet has become an immortal, a creature of Darkness. This night she has allied herself with the purest evil that can manifest in the mortal realm, that of the white bull.”

“I know about that. I saw something like that try to get to us when I was first dead.”

Nyx nodded. “Yes, the white bull was awakened by the shifts of good and evil in the mortal world. It has been eons since he roamed between realms as he is doing today.” Heath was disturbed to see the Goddess shiver.