Destined (House of Night #9)(47)

He loosened his grip with one of his arms, with the other he ran up and down her back as he looked over her shoulder, being sure there were no tendrils there-no sticky memories from his dream.

"Stark, hey stop." She grabbed his hand and stared into his eyes. "What the heck is wrong?"

"Massively bad dream. Like of apocalyptic proportions. And then I woke up and you were saying the exact same words you said to me in the dream right before Darkness got you."

"First, eew, Darkness getting me is disgusting. How'd it happen?"

"You don't want to know," he said.

"Yes, I most certainly do. It could be a prophetic dream, and if it is I need to know what to avoid."

"Yeah, that's what I was thinking, too. Actually, I was trying not to think that, but you're right." He leaned back and ran his hand through his hair, trying to shake off sleep and foreboding. "It might be prophetic and you could need to know; Darkness got you like Shelob got Frodo, only worse," he said.

Stark watched Zoey's face drain of color. "As a girl who is deathly afraid of spiders, I don't know how that dream could be much worse."

"Make the spider Neferet and its web Darkness."

"Okay, well, you're right. That is worse." She gave him what he knew was a brave smile. "But you saved me, right?" He didn't say anything. He couldn't.

"hello, big strong Guardian! You. Saved. Me. Right?"

"No," he admitted. "I tried, but the Darkness Neferet controlled was too much for me."

"Well, hell," Zoey said. "I hate when that happens." Then she shook her head and added firmly, "Hey, it didn't really happen. For now at least it's just a dream."

"Too damn many things that seem like they could only happen in dreams have turned out to be real," he said grimly. "And there was something else. Someone was telling me that what I dreamed would really happen unless you start standing up to Neferet." Zoey frowned. "Hey, I do stand up to Neferet! All the darn time. And what do you mean 'someone' was telling you that? Was it Nyx? Did the Goddess speak to you?"

Stark thought back, trying to recall the dream voice, but even though the horror of it was fresh, the specifics were already fading back into his subconscious. "I can't really remember, but I don't think it was Nyx's voice, or at least not a voice of hers I recognized."

"I think you'd know for sure if it'd been the Goddess. Plus, like I said, I do stand up to Neferet, so I don't know what your dream voice was talking about."

"Actually, right now you are kinda in a truce with her," Stark said slowly.

"I supposed that depends on your definition of truce. If it means I-can't-kick-Neferet-out-of-the-House-of-Night-'cause-the-High-Council-forgave-her, then yeah, we're in a truce."

"Hey." He touched her cheek. "I didn't mean to piss you off. That dream scared me, that's all." She snuggled into his arms and he felt the tension in her body begin to relax. "You didn't really piss me off. You just surprised me. I mean, I thought you and I were on the same page about Neferet."

"We are." He held her tight. "We know Neferet's evil and crazy, and we know all of us on Nyx's side have to watch out for what-thehell-ever she's gonna do next."

Zoey shuddered and buried her face in his shoulder. "Makes me want to run back to Skye."

"Makes me want to take you back to Skye." He hesitated and almost didn't say anything else, but something in the back of his mind wouldn't allow him to let it go. "The dream, Z. Darkness got you and I couldn't save you. I think it was a warning; I really do. And the most sense I can make of it is that you've got to keep standing up to Neferet."

"I will," she said, tilting her head back to look at him. "You look tired and you're up early." He gave her his cocky smile. "I'm up early so that you and I can spend some quality time alone before we have to catch the short bus, and I may look tired, but I'm not that tired." He slid his hand up under the big, baggy T-shirt she was wearing and tickled her ribs with a light caress. Zoey giggled. He caught the sweet, happy laugh with his lips and turned it into a long, hot kiss. And then his hand quit tickling and almost all of the worry his dream had caused disappeared as he loved her ... almost ...

Zoey

"Ah, hell," I muttered as Darius pulled the bus into the long driveway that wound through the rear of the House of Night and led to the parking lot.

We'd just turned onto campus and I saw Neferet, Dragon, and five Sons of Erebus Warriors standing there as if they were a weird vampyre welcome wagon. "Slow down," I told Darius. "We need to get ready for this."

"Yeah, it don't look good," Kramisha said.

"Wow, you would not believe all the colors." Shaylin was gawking open-mouthed out the window at the group of professors. "Eek, and there's the Dead Fish Eye Lady, so gross!"

"Dead Fish Eye Lady-I like that," Aphrodite said. "It suits her."

"Dead Fish Eye Lady is super intuitive," I was reminding everyone, even though I was speaking specifically to Shaylin.

"And we all decided it's best if she doesn't know much about Shaylin's gift," Stevie Rae said, walking up from her seat with Rephaim in the back of the bus. "Z, you want to call spirit and ask it to help shield Shaylin's thoughts, at least until we get past Neferet right now?"