Hidden (House of Night Novels) (17 page)

“It’s okay. We’re going to figure out this old magick crap. I’m
not
going to let anything happen to you.”

Stark squeezed my hand and I squeezed back. I wanted to believe him. I did believe
in
him—his strength and his love. It was the other side that I was worried about. The unknown side that Darkness sat squarely in the middle of. It kept creeping up and picking off people I loved.

I was thinking about how much I didn’t want to lose anyone else when the stupid Seer Stone began heating up. I stopped, pulling Stark to a halt with me. I pressed my hand over the spot it was warming on my chest.

“What?” he asked.

“It’s getting hot.”

“Why?”

“Stark, I have no clue. You’re supposed to be helping me figure that out, remember?”

“Okay, right. Yeah. We can do this.” He started looking around. “So, let’s figure it out.”

“How?”

“Well, I’m thinking,” he said.

I sighed and tried to think, too. We’d stopped under one of the big trees just outside the perimeter of the east side of the stables. I glanced up quickly, suddenly worried about lurking things with no eyes and sewn shut mouths. But there was nothing above us. Actually, it was really peaceful around us. All I could think of was that there was nothing to think of. Voices drifted to us from the stables and I could hear equipment and stuff running—like tractors and whatnot were being used to drag things away and clear up the debris. I heard the sound of another motor, this one coming from somewhere behind us and getting closer.

“That’s weird,” Stark said, looking back over my shoulder. “Taxis don’t come here.”

I followed his gaze and saw the beat-up, maroon-colored car with boxy black letters spelling
TAXI
on the side of it. Stark was right. It was super weird to see a taxi at the House of Night. Hell, Tulsa wasn’t exactly known for its awesome taxi service. I mentally shrugged—the Midtown trolley was cooler anyway.

Then Lenobia stepped from the side entrance to the stables and practically ran to the car. She opened the back door and reached down to help guide the tall, bandaged cowboy out. The taxi sped away. Travis and Lenobia just stood there looking at each other.

My Seer Stone felt like it was going to burn a hole in my shirt. I pulled it out and held it away from my skin. I didn’t say anything, though. Stark and I were too busy staring at Travis and Lenobia. They weren’t real close to us, but still it felt like an invasion of their privacy to be gawking at them—even though we kept standing there gawking at them.

Then it hit me. I bumped Stark’s arm and, keeping my voice low, said, “The stone got super hot as soon as Travis got out of the cab.”

Stark looked from Travis and Lenobia to the stone and then to me. He put a firm hand on my shoulder and said, “Do it. Look through the stone at him. I’ve got you. I’m not going to let anything happen to you. If something tries to suck time from you I’m going to stop it.”

I nodded and, like ripping off a Band-Aid in one quick pull, I lifted the Seer Stone, framing Travis and Lenobia within its circle.

It started like what happened at the tree, at first my vision of the two of them remained exactly the same. I watched Lenobia’s hands fluttering nervously over Travis’s bandaged hands. They looked like big white mittens, and I could see that the gauze wraps went up his forearms. Even from where we stood, his face looked abnormally red and shiny, like he’d gotten a bad sunburn and had put a bunch of aloe gel on it. But he didn’t look like he was in pain. He was smiling. A lot. At Lenobia. I was getting ready to drop the Seer Stone and tell Stark that I was, indeed, Crazy Universe, when Travis bent and kissed Lenobia.

Everything changed then. There was a brightness that caused me to blink and when my sight cleared Travis was gone. In his place was a really hot, young, black guy. He had long hair that was pulled back in a low ponytail and shoulders so broad he looked like a linebacker. He was kissing Lenobia as if it were his last kiss in the world. And she was kissing him back—only it was a different Lenobia. She looked young, like she was only sixteen or so. She wrapped her arms around him like she’d never let go. All around them the air wavered and shimmered, like I was watching them over the top of a bubbling pot. Only instead of steam rising, I swear there were robin’s egg blue spirits of happiness flitting around them. The happiness swelled within me and started bubbling, as if the pot was my head and the water my emotions. The ground fell away beneath my feet. I was floating in joy and love and blue bubbles.

Then my head got real dizzy and my stomach totally rebelled.

“Zoey! Stop! That’s enough. Put! It! Down!”

I realized Stark was yelling at me and pulling at the Seer Stone. I felt the earth under my feet again. The blue bubbles evaporated and the joy went away, leaving me sick and drained and super shaky. I dropped the Seer Stone in time to bend over and puke beside the tree.

“You’re okay. You’re okay. I got you, Z. Everything’s fine.” Stark was holding my hair back while I continued to retch and heave up my guts.

“Stark? Zoey?” Lenobia was coming toward us, sounding breathless and worried. I could hear Travis close behind her asking what was wrong. I couldn’t answer, though. I was too busy barfing.

“Zoey! Oh, Goddess, no!” Lenobia’s concern skyrocketed when she realized I was puking.

“She’s not rejecting the Change. She’s okay,” Stark reassured her while I took yet another tissue he offered me and wiped my mouth. Finally done puking I leaned against the tree, embarrassed and grossed out. I seriously hate to puke.

“Then what is it? Why are you sick?”

With Stark on one side and Lenobia on the other, they guided me to a wrought iron bench that wasn’t far away from the big tree (but far enough away so that we wouldn’t smell my puke—eesh).

“Should I get someone?” Travis asked.

“No,” I said quickly. “I’m fine. I’m better now that I’m sitting.” I glanced at Stark questioningly. He nodded. “Whatever you saw, tell her. We trust her.”

I looked from him to Lenobia. “And you trust Travis?”

She didn’t hesitate. “With my life.”

The big cowboy smiled and stepped closer to her. Their shoulders touched.

“Okay, what happened is my Seer Stone started heating up. When Travis got out of the car it got
really
hot. Stark was here, so we decided I should look through it at, well, you guys and see if that would help me start to understand what it shows me. So I looked through it at you two.”

“Seer Stone?” Travis asked. He didn’t sound freaked out at all. He just sounded curious.

“It’s an old magick amulet given to Zoey by an ancient vampyre queen,” Lenobia explained. “What did you see?”

“Well, nothing but you two until you kissed.” I smiled sheepishly. “Sorry for watching you while you were kissing.”

Travis smiled and put a bandaged arm around Lenobia’s shoulders. “If I have my way about it, little missy, you’ll be seein’ a whole lot me of me kissin’ this pretty girl.”

I waited for Lenobia to strike him dead with her death-ray vision. Instead she looked adoringly up at him, pressed her hand to his chest over his heart, and rested her head, carefully, against his shoulder. Then she repeated, “What did you see when we were kissing?”

“Travis turned into a big black guy and you turned into a younger version of yourself. And all around you there were these wispy, bubbly, happy things that were blue. I’m pretty sure they were sprites of some sort.” My eyes widened. “Actually, now that I think about it, the bubbles reminded me of the ocean. Huh. Weird. Anyway, I got all caught up in it, like it lifted me from the earth and put me in a happy blue ocean bubble. Sorry. I know that sounds crazy.” I held my breath, waiting for Lenobia to laugh and Travis to scoff.

They didn’t do either. Instead, Lenobia began to cry. I mean, seriously. She did the big, shoulder-shaking, snot bawl that I tend to be prone to. Travis just held her closer to him. He looked down at her as if she was a miracle personified. “I’ve known you before. That’s why you feel like home to me.”

Lenobia nodded. Then, through her tears, she told me, “Travis is my only human mate, my only love, returned to me after two hundred and twenty-four years. I vowed never to love another after him, and I have not. We met and fell in love on the ocean in a ship that carried us from France to New Orleans.”

“So the Seer Stone showed me the truth?”

“Yes, Zoey. It absolutely did,” Lenobia said before she turned her face into Travis’s chest and wept while he held her, releasing two centuries of waiting and loss and pain.

I stood and took Stark’s hand again, pulling him away so that the two of them could be alone. As we walked into the stables he said, “This does not mean Aurox is Heath come back to you. You know that, right?”

Stevie Rae saved me by rushing up and gushing, “Ohmy
goodness!
Where have you been? I can’t wait to tell you ’bout Lenobia and Travis.”

“Been there. Done that,” Stark said. “Where are Aphrodite and Darius?”

“They’re already in front of Nyx’s Temple at the funeral pyre,” Stevie Rae said. “We’re meeting them there real soon.”

“I’ll go find Erin and Shaunee and Damien. We need to get going.”

“What’s up with him?” Stevie Rae asked, watching Stark stride away.

“Heath may really be inside Aurox,” I said.

Stevie Rae echoed my thoughts exactly by saying, “Ah, hell!”

CHAPTER TWELVE

Kalona

Being on the side of Light wasn’t as interesting as he remembered. Truth be told, Kalona was bored. Yes, he understood why Thanatos had told him to stay in the background and not draw attention to himself until after Dragon’s funeral. It was then that she was going to announce to the school that he was her new Warrior, and would take the position of Sword Master and Leader of the Sons of Erebus at the Tulsa House of Night. Until then his presence would be confusing, if not insulting to the other Warriors.

The problem was Kalona had never minded being insulting. He was a powerful immortal. Why should he be bothered by the inconsequential feelings of others?

Because those I find most inconsequential sometimes surprise me: Heath, Stark, Dragon, Aurox, Rephaim.
The last name in his mental list startled him. Rephaim had seemed inconsequential to him at one time, but he’d been wrong. Kalona had realized he loved his son—needed his son.

What else had he been wrong about?

Probably quite a lot of things.

The thought depressed him.

He paced back and forth along the darkest, most shadowy side of Nyx’s Temple. There he was within hearing distance of Dragon’s pyre, so he could come when Thanatos called, but he was also out of sight.

Being told what to do annoyed him. It had always annoyed him.

And there was this fledgling who had an affinity for fire, Shaunee. She seemed to have the ability to prod him, to make him consider things he was unused to spending his time considering.

She’d done it before. He’d meant to manipulate her—to get information about Rephaim and the Red One. What had happened was that she had gifted him with something ridiculously mundane and simple: a cell phone. That small gift had saved his son’s life.

Now she’d made him think about all those eons he’d spent apart from Nyx.

“No!” he spoke the word aloud, causing the little grove of redbuds that had been planted on the west side of Nyx’s Temple to shake as if a storm threatened them. Kalona focused his thoughts and quieted his temper. “No,” he repeated using a voice that was no longer filled with otherworldly power. “I will not think of the centuries I have spent apart from her. I will not think of her at all.”

Laughter danced around him, causing the redbud grove to shimmer, shift, and then burst into full bloom as if the summer sun had suddenly beamed down upon them. Kalona clenched his fists and looked up.

He was sitting on the stone eaves of the temple. There was little light on that side of the building, which was why Thanatos had commanded he wait there, but Erebus was a light unto himself.

Erebus—his brother—Nyx’s immortal Consort. The one being in this universe who was most like him, and the one being in this universe Kalona hated even more than he hated himself. Here! In the mortal realm after all these eons?
Why?

Kalona hid his shock with disdain. “You are shorter than I remembered.”

Erebus smiled. “Good to see you, too, brother.”

“As usual, you put words in my mouth.”

“I apologize. I do not need to. Not when your own words are so interesting.
I will not think of her at all.”
Not only was Erebus almost a mirror image of Kalona, he also mimicked his brother’s voice perfectly.

“I was speaking of Neferet.” Kalona quickly collected his thoughts and lied easily. It had been eons, but he used to be good at lying to Erebus. Kalona found he still had the knack.

“I doubt you not, brother.” Erebus leaned forward, spread his golden wings, and floated gracefully to the ground before Kalona. “You see,
that
is exactly why I made this little visit.”

“You came to the earthly realm because I was Neferet’s lover?” Kalona crossed his arms over his broad chest and met his brother’s amber gaze.

“No, I came because you are a liar and a thief. The rape of the last of Neferet’s goodness is just one of your many crimes,” Erebus said. He, too, crossed his arms over his chest.

Kalona laughed. “You have not been spying well enough if you believe rape had anything to do with what Neferet and I shared. She was more than willing, more than ready for my body.”

“I was not speaking of her body!” Erebus’s voice had risen and Kalona could hear the sound of vampyres calling, questioning what was happening over by Nyx’s Temple.

“As usual, brother, you have appeared to cause problems for me. I was supposed to remain in the shadows, unseen and waiting to be summoned. Though, as I consider more fully, it will be amusing to watch you deal with mortal discovery. A quick word of advice—even vampyres tend to overreact when meeting a god.”