Redeemed (House of Night #12)(32)

“That means nothing. He can bring an entire Oklahoma National Guard armory with him. They cannot penetrate my protective curtain.”

“He hasn’t brought an army, Goddess. He’s brought a vampyre who is making the air around her glow while a large man who appears to have wings hidden under his trench coat paces nearby.”

“Why did you wait until now to tell me?” Neferet shrieked. “Children! Come with me!” Lifted by the fully visible nest of slithering vipers, the Goddess glided to the front doors.

Lynette’s body went cold. She slipped out of her chic heels so that she could sprint quietly around the mezzanine, heading for the large picture windows that overlooked the front of the building, trying not to think at all, but especially trying not to hope.

CHAPTER NINE

Zoey

“Holy crap, the Mayo looks awful!” I blurted.

“Like it’s dripping with death.” Damien sounded as horrified as I felt.

“Not with death,” Thanatos said. “Death is inevitable for all mortals. It is neither good nor evil; it is simply part of the great spiral of life. What Neferet has coated that building in is pain and fear, blood and despair.”

Her voice sounded weird. Grandma, Stark, Shaylin, and I were all smushed into the middle row of seats of the school’s Hummer, and Thanatos was sitting up front with Marx. I’d noticed that the closer we’d gotten to the Mayo, the more restless the High Priestess had appeared. She was literally fidgeting, which was super strange for her—Thanatos was usually like a mountain of calm.

Her obvious nervousness had my stomach clenching like crazy.

“Chaos,” Kalona said. I glanced over my shoulder where he was sitting with Damien and Shaunee (they were super smushed because his wings were taking up way too much room) to see him shaking his head in disgust. “Neferet has used the threads of Darkness to create chaos, and that is protecting her.”

“Well, chaos smells bad,” I said, wrinkling my nose.

“Fetid and horrible,” Damien agreed. “And we don’t even have a window cracked.”

“Sorry,” Marx said. “I meant to warn you about the stink.”

“No need to be sorry, Detective,” Grandma said. “I don’t believe there is any way you could have prepared us for this.”

“You’re probably right, but I better mention that we can’t be sure if all the body parts have been cleared from the area,” Marx added. “So watch where you step.”

“Body parts?” My voice squeaked.

Marx nodded. “The snake-things killed a lot of people when they came over the edge of the balcony and spread blackness and guts down the building. All evening Neferet’s been tossing pieces of people, drained of blood, off the penthouse balcony.”

“I can feel the spell she has bound in blood and death and Darkness,” Thanatos said. “She used the deaths of those poor people to make a barrier.”

“Neferet cast the spell, but she wouldn’t dirty her hands with the cleanup,” Kalona said grimly. “Which means she has people in there who are still alive and doing whatever she tells them to do.”

“Does it really matter who’s doing the tossing? Especially if Neferet’s holding them all hostage?” Shaunee said.

“What truly matters is that everyone remember if we stop Neferet, we stop all this madness,” Thanatos said.

We nodded in grim agreement.

Marx had driven through the police barricade areas and pulled up over the curb, parking across the street from the Mayo on the wide sidewalk in front of the ONEOK building, where we sat and gawked.

“We’ve set up two command posts inside the ONEOK. The one on the third floor has all the audiovisual equipment. The one on the roof has the snipers,” Marx explained as we sat stared at the gore-coated building across the street.

“Snipers can’t kill Neferet,” Kalona said.

“Yeah, we’ve figured that out,” Marx said dryly. “But they can kill people, even people who are under her spell.”

“You can’t shoot those people! They’re victims,” Grandma said, shifting beside me in agitation. “They’re not responsible for their actions—Neferet is.”

“Yes, ma’am, I know that and I don’t want to shoot anybody, but if Neferet commands a group of her minions, or whatever you want to call them, to attack us or any of Tulsa’s citizens, we’re going to be forced to stop them.”

“She would like that,” Thanatos said as she stared at the building. She sounded pissed. I thought she looked paler than usual, but she’d been a vampyre for, like, a gabillion years. She always looked white, so I couldn’t be sure. “It would give her power from their deaths, as well as the satisfaction that she had forced you to kill innocents.” Thanatos shifted her gaze to Kalona. “We can’t allow that.”

“Agreed,” Kalona said.

“Good,” she said. “Enough sitting and speculating. I need to be out there. I need to understand exactly what it is we’re dealing with.”

Thanatos exited the Hummer, slamming the door behind her and leaving the rest of us to follow—reluctantly.

Kalona moved quickly to her side. In the distance I could hear calls of, “Hey, there’re some vampyres!” and “Focus the camera in—something’s going on in front of the Mayo!”