Revealed (House of Night #11)(6)

Like wind that blows clouds to shroud the sun, death’s approach was invisible, but the Tsi Sgili felt the brush of it before the fledgling began to cough.

Death was even more familiar to the specter than was the school or the place of power. Death drew her up from the pit in the ground. In a rush of excitement the Tsi Sgili’s spirit manifested in the first form that had come to her near the beginnings of her power—that of the ever-questing, ever-curious, ever-resilient eight-legged insect.

The black spiders, moving as one, materialized to seek out and to feed from death.

Ironically, it was the fledglings’ circle that opened the energy conduit which enabled Neferet to gain enough consciousness so that she was able to focus and borrow the ancient power of death and, ultimately, to find herself once more.

I am she who was Emily Wheiler, and then Neferet, and then Tsi Sgili—queen, goddess, immortal being!

Until that moment, finding the familiar had been her focus. As death descended upon the fledgling, the Tsi Sgili’s spirit fed from it, gathering energy so that finally her memories coalesced from fragments of past and present to one true knowing.

The shock of that knowing caused raw energy to surge through her spirit, fragmenting the threads of Darkness and fueling the refashioning of her body. She had been almost fully formed when the elements had expelled her. Exploding from the circle, Neferet fled.

She made it only as far as the iron gate that served as barrier between the human street and the vampyre school grounds. There, her body solidified, and she had burned through all of her siphoned power until she’d been left gasping, weak as a newborn, barely clinging to consciousness. Neferet crumpled against the wall that was boundary to the House of Night.

She must feed!

Hunger was all she knew until she heard his raised voice, spiteful and sarcastic, quipping, “Yes, dear. Of course you’re right. You’re always right. I don’t want to stay for the ridiculous raffle either—I’m absolutely not interested in the five hundred dollars worth of tickets I bought on a chance to win that 1966 T-Bird the vampyres are giving away. No, no problem! And, as you said so many times, we should have called a driver and taken a limo. So, so sorry you’re inconvenienced by waiting for me to walk all the way to where we parked, get our car, and drive it back to pick you up while you sit on a bench and rest yourself. Oh, and I’m so, so glad you were able to allow those two City Council ass**les to stare at your boobs while you whispered to them and spread your crazy gossip about Neferet. Ha! Ha! Ha!” His sarcastic laughter drifted to her through the night. “If you actually paid attention to anyone but yourself you would know that Neferet can take care of herself. Penthouse vandals no one so much as got a peek at? Not hardly. That mess looked like the result of a female temper tantrum. I feel sorry for whoever caused Neferet’s temper to explode, but I don’t feel sorry for Neferet.”

Neferet forced herself to sit up, listening with all her being. The human had said her name. It must be a sign that he was a gift from the gods.

The Lexus not ten feet from where she crouched lit up as he touched the key fob and muttered, “Damned woman. All she does is gossip and manipulate, manipulate and gossip. I should have listened to my father and never married her. All I’ve gotten from my twenty-five years with her is high blood pressure, GERD, and an ungrateful daughter. I could’ve been the first single mayor Tulsa’s had in fifty years and had my pick of the young daughters of old oil money if I hadn’t already been chained to her…”

His grumbling trailed off into unintelligible background noise when her supersensitive hearing honed in to his heartbeat.

She sighed gratefully. He did, indeed, sound like dinner. She would not thank the gods of fate who had sent him to her. She would accept their aid as no more than what she deserved—an acknowledgment that they were pleased to have her return to their immortal ranks.

He was opening the door to the sedan when she stood. Neferet put all of her longing and hunger into the one word that was his name: “Charles!”

He paused, straightened, and peered her way, trying to see through the darkness. “Hello? Is someone there?”

Neferet did not need light to see. Her vision moved through the Darkness easily, comfortably. She saw his carefully combed hair, the well-tailored lines of his expensive suit, the sweat on his upper lip, and the pulse in his neck that beat steadily with his life’s blood.

She stepped forward and shook back her long auburn hair, exposing the lushness of her naked body. Then, as if it were an afterthought, she raised her hands in an unsuccessful attempt to shield her most private parts from his widening eyes. “Charles!” Neferet repeated his name. This time she added with a sob, “They’ve hurt me!”

“Neferet?” Obviously confused, Charles took one step toward her before halting. “Is it really you?”

“It is! It is! Oh, Goddess, that it would be you who discovered me out here, naked, wounded, and all alone. It is so terrible! So much more than I can bear!” Neferet wept as she covered her face with her hands, allowing him to get a more thorough look at her body.

“I don’t understand. What has happened to you?”

“Charles!” his name shrilled behind them from the school grounds, making them both pause. “What is taking you so long?”

“Dear, I’ve found—” Charles began to call back to his wife, but Neferet moved quickly toward him. She clutched his hand, cutting off his words. “No! Don’t tell her it’s me. I couldn’t stand for her to know what they’ve done to me,” she whispered desperately.