Kalona knew she was playing on his weaknesses. Silently, he cursed himself for allowing her to have learned too much about his deepest desires. Hed trusted her, so Neferet knew that because he wasnt Erebus he could never truly rule beside Nyx in the Otherworld, and he was driven to re-create as much of what hed lost here in this modern world.
You see, my love, when you consider it logically, it is only right that you follow Zoey and sever the link between her soul and her body. Doing so simply serves your ultimate desires. Neferet spoke nonchalantly, as if the two of them were discussing the choice of material for her latest gown.
How am I even to find Zoeys soul? He tried to match her matter-of-fact tone. The Otherworld is a realm so vast, only the gods and goddesses can traverse it.
Neferets bland expression tightened, making her cruel beauty terrible to behold. Do not pretend you dont have a connection to her soul! The Tsi Sgili immortal drew a deep breath. In a more reasonable tone, she continued, Admit it, my love; you could find Zoey even if no one else could. What is your choice, Kalona? To rule on earth at my side, or to remain a slave to the past?
I choose to rule. I will always choose to rule, he said without hesitation.
As soon as he spoke, Neferets eyes changed. The green within them became totally engulfed in scarlet. She turned the glowing orbs on himholding, entrapping, entrancing. Then hear me, Kalona, Fallen Warrior of Nyx, by my oath I shall keep your body safe. When Zoey Redbird, fledging High Priestess of Nyx, is no more, I swear to you I will remove these dark chains and allow your spirit to return. Then I will take you to the rooftop of our castle on Capri and let the sky breathe life and strength into you so that you will rule this realm as my consort, my protector, my Erebus. As Kalona watched, helpless to stop her, Neferet drew one long, pointed fingernail across the palm of her right hand. Cupping the blood that pooled there, she held her hand up, offering. By blood I claim this power; by blood I bind this oath. All around her, Darkness stirred and descended on her palm, writhing, shivering, drinking. Kalona could feel the draw of that Darkness. It spoke to his soul with seductive, powerful whispers.
Yes! The word was a moan torn deep from his throat as Kalona yielded himself to the greedy Darkness.
When Neferet continued, her voice was magnified, swollen with power. It is your own choice that I have sealed this oath by blood with Darkness, but should you fail me and break it
I will not fail.
Her smile was unworldly in its beauty; her eyes roiled with blood. If you, Kalona, Fallen Warrior of Nyx, break this oath and fail in my sworn quest to destroy Zoey Redbird, fledgling High Priestess of Nyx, I shall hold dominion over your spirit for as long as you are an immortal.
The answering words came unbidden by him, evoked by the seductive Darkness, which for centuries hed chosen over Light. If I fail, you shall hold dominion over my spirit for as long as I am an immortal.
Thus I have sworn. Again Neferet slashed her palm, creating a bloody X in her flesh. The copper scent wafted to Kalona like smoke rising from fire as she again raised her hand to Darkness. Thus it shall be! Neferets face twisted in pain as Darkness drank from her again, but she didnt flinchdidnt move until the air around her pulsed, bloated with her blood and her oath.
Only then did she lower her hand. Her tongue snaked out, licking the scarlet line and ending the bleeding. Neferet walked to him, bent, and gently placed her hands on either side of his face, much as he had held the human boy before delivering his deathblow. He could feel Darkness thrumming around and within her, a raging bull waiting eagerly for his mistresss command.
Her blood-reddened lips paused just short of touching his. With the power that rushes through my blood, and by the strength of the lives I have taken, I command you, my delicious threads of Darkness, to pull this Oath Bound immortals soul from his body and speed him to the Otherworld. Go and do as I order, and I swear I will sacrifice to you the life of an innocent you have been unable to taint. So thee for me, I mote it be!
Neferet drew in a deep breath, and Kalona saw the dark threads shed summoned slither between her full, red lips. She inhaled Darkness until she was swollen with it, and then she covered his mouth with hers and, with that blackened, blood-tainted kiss, blew Darkness within him with such force that it ripped his already wounded soul from his body. As his soul shrieked in soundless agony, Kalona was forced up, up, and into the realm from which his Goddess had banished him, leaving his body lifeless, chained, Oath Bound by evil, and at the mercy of Neferet.
Chapter 2
Rephaim
The sonorous drum was like the heartbeat of an immortal: never-ending, engulfing, overwhelming. It echoed through Rephaims soul in time with the pounding of his blood. Then, to the beat of the drum, the ancient words took form. They wrapped around his body so that even as he slept, his pulse allied itself in harmony with the ageless melody. In his dream, the womens voices sang:
Ancient one sleeping, waiting to arise
When earths power bleeds sacred red
The mark strikes true; Queen Tsi Sgili will devise
He shall be washed from his entombing bed
The song was seductive, and like a labyrinth, it circled on and on.
Through the hand of the dead he is free
Terrible beauty, monstrous sight
Ruled again they shall be
Women shall kneel to his dark might
The music was a whispered enticement. A promise. A blessing. A curse. The memory of what it foretold made Rephaims sleeping body restless. He twitched and, like an abandoned child, murmured a one-word question: Father?
The melody concluded with the rhyme Rephaim had memorized centuries ago:
Kalonas song sounds sweet
As we slaughter with cold heat
. . . slaughter with cold heat. Even sleeping, Rephaim responded to the words. He didnt awaken, but his heartbeat increasedhis hands curled into fistshis body tensed. On the cusp between awake and asleep, the drumbeat stuttered to a halt, and the soft voices of women were replaced by one that was deep and all too familiar.
Traitor . . . coward . . . betrayer . . . liar! The male voice was a condemnation. With its litany of anger, it invaded Rephaims dream and jolted him fully into the waking world.
Father! Rephaim surged upright, throwing off the old papers and scraps of cardboard hed used to create a nest around him. Father, are you here?
A shimmer of movement caught at the corner of his vision, and he jerked forward, jarring his broken wing as he peered from the depths of the dark, cedar-paneled closet.
Father?
His heart knew Kalona wasnt there even before the vapor of light and motion took form to reveal the child.
What are you?
Rephaim focused his burning gaze on the girl. Begone, apparition.
Instead of fading as she should have, the child narrowed her eyes to study him, appearing intrigued. Youre not a bird, but you have wings. And youre not a boy, but you have arms and legs. And your eyes are like a boys, too, only theyre red. So, what are you?
Rephaim felt a surge of anger. With a flash of movement that caused white-hot shards of pain to radiate through his body, he leaped from the closet, landing just a few feet before the ghostpredatory, dangerous, defensive.
I am a nightmare given life, spirit! Go away and leave me in peace before you learn that there are things far worse than death to fear.
At his abrupt movement, the child ghost had taken one small step backward, so that now her shoulder brushed against the low windowpane. But there she halted, still watching him with a curious, intelligent gaze.
You cried out for your father in your sleep. I heard you. You cant fool me. Im smart like that, and I remember things. Plus, you dont scare me because youre really just hurt and alone.
Then the ghost of the girl child crossed her arms petulantly over her thin chest, tossed back her long blond hair, and disappeared, leaving Rephaim just as she had named him, hurt and alone.
His fisted hands loosened. His heartbeat quieted. Rephaim stumbled heavily back to his makeshift nest and rested his head against the closet wall behind him.
Pathetic, he murmured aloud. The favorite son of an ancient immortal reduced to hiding in refuse and talking to the ghost of a human child. He tried to laugh but failed. The echo of the music from his dream, from his past, was still too loud in the air around him. As was the other voicethe one he could have sworn was that of his father.
He couldnt sit anymore. Ignoring the pain in his arm and the sick agony that was his wing, Rephaim stood. He hated the weakness that pervaded his body. How long had he been here, wounded, exhausted from the flight from the depot, and curled into this box in a wall? He couldnt remember. Had one day passed? Two?
Where was she? Shed said she would come to him in the night. And yet here he was, where Stevie Rae had sent him. It was night, and she hadnt come.
With a sound of self-loathing, he left the closet and his nest, stalking past the windowsill in front of which the girl child had materialized to a door that led to a rooftop balcony. Instinct had driven him up to the second floor of the abandoned mansion, just after dawn, when hed arrived. At the end of even his great reservoir of strength, hed thought only of safety and sleep.
But now he was all too awake.
He stared out at the empty museum grounds. The ice that had been falling for days from the sky had stopped, leaving the huge trees that surrounded the rolling hills on which sat the Gilcrease Museum and its abandoned mansion with bent and ruined branches. Rephaims night vision was good, but he could detect no movement at all outside. The homes that filled the area between the museum and downtown Tulsa were almost as dark as they had been in his postdawn journey. Small lights dotted the landscapenot the great, blazing electricity that Rephaim had come to expect from a modern city. They were only weak, flickering candlesnothing compared to the majesty of the power this world could evoke.
There was, of course, no mystery to what had happened. The lines that carried power to the homes of modern humans had been snapped just as surely as had the ice-burdened boughs of the trees. Rephaim knew that was good for him. Except for the fallen branches and other debris left on the roadways, the streets appeared mostly passable. Had the great electric machine not been broken, people would have flooded these grounds as daily human life resumed.
The lack of power keeps humans away, he muttered to himself. But what is keeping her away?
With a sound of pure frustration, Rephaim wrenched open the dilapidated door, automatically seeking open sky as balm to his nerves. The air was cool, and thick with dampness. Low around the winter grass, fog hung in wavy sheets, as if the earth was trying to shroud herself from his eyes.
His gaze lifted, and Rephaim drew a long, shuddering breath. He inhaled the sky. It seemed unnaturally bright in comparison to the darkened city. Stars beckoned him, as did the sharp crescent of a waning moon.
Everything within Rephaim craved the sky. He wanted it under his wings, passing through his dark, feathered body, caressing him with the touch of the mother hed never known.
His uninjured wing extended itself, stretching more than a grown mans body length beside him. His other wing quivered, and the night air Rephaim had breathed in burst from him in an agonized moan.
Broken! The word seared through his mind.
No. That is not a certainty. Rephaim spoke aloud. He shook his head, trying to clear away the unusual weariness that was making him feel increasingly helplessincreasingly damaged. Concentrate! Rephaim admonished himself. Its time I found Father. He still wasnt well, but Rephaims mind, though weary, was clearer than it had been since his fall. He should be able to detect some trace of his father. No matter how much distance or time separated them, they were tied by blood and spirit and especially by the gift of immortality that had been Rephaims birthright.
Rephaim looked up into the sky, thinking of the currents of air on which he was so used to gliding. He drew a deep breath, lifted his uninjured arm, and stretched forth his hand, trying to touch those elusive currents and the vestiges of dark Otherworld magick that languished there. Bring me some sense of him! He made his plea urgently to the night.
For a moment he believed he felt a flicker of response, far, far off to the east. And then weariness was all he could feel. Why can I not sense you, Father? Frustrated and unusually exhausted, he let his hand drop limply to his side.
Unusual weariness . . .
By all the gods! Rephaim suddenly realized what had drained his strength and left him a broken shell of himself. He knew what was keeping him from sensing the path his father had taken. She did this. His voice was hard. His eyes blazed crimson.
Yes, hed been terribly wounded; but as the son of an immortal, his body should have already begun its repair process. Hed slepttwice since the Warrior had shot him from the sky. His mind had cleared. Sleep should have continued to revive him. Even if, as he suspected, his wing was permanently damaged, the rest of his body should be noticeably better. His powers should have returned to him.
But the Red One had drunk of his blood, Imprinted with him. And in doing so, she had disturbed the balance of immortal power within him.
Anger rose to meet the frustration already there.
Shed used him and then abandoned him.
Just like Father had.
No! he corrected himself immediately. His father had been driven away by the fledgling High Priestess. He would return when he was able, and then Rephaim would be at his fathers side once more. It was the Red One who had used him, then cast him aside.