Revealed (House of Night #11)(73)

“Psaghetti,” he said softly.

My mind told me to tell him to shut up and eat, but my mouth said, “We only call it that when it’s good. Psaghetti madness can’t happen with crappy spaghetti.” I knew I was babbling, but I couldn’t stop myself. “There’s a song and a dance that go with psaghetti madness, too.”

“I know.”

“What else do you know?” I felt hot and cold at the same time.

“That I want to touch you so badly that sometimes I think I might die if you don’t let me,” he said.

My stomach butterflied. “I’m with Stark.”

“I know, and I think you should take a chill pill about that.”

Chill pill! When he said that he sounded so much like Heath I couldn’t breathe.

Neither of us said anything, and then he reached slowly up toward me. One of my hands was resting on the table between us. Gently, he turned it over. With one finger he softly traced the filigree pattern of the tattoo that covered my palm.

“These were gifts from Nyx,” he said.

“Yes.”

“You have more special tattoos.” He moved his finger from my palm to my face, where he stroked the repeated pattern there.

His finger was warm and it brought alive my nerves so that everywhere he touched I tingled. He followed the line of my neck down to the deep vee of my BDG T-shirt, and began to trace the tattoo that stretched over the puckered scar, which ran from one of my shoulders to the other.

“This almost killed you,” he whispered.

“Almost.” The word came out breathy, like I was trying to talk and jog at the same time.

His fingertips still on my body, his eyes met mine. “You Imprinted with Heath and he saved you. That is why this didn’t kill you.”

“Yes.”

“You drank his blood.”

It was too hard to speak, so I just nodded.

“Zo, I want you to drink my blood.”

“Heath, uh, Aurox,” I stuttered, “I can’t. It would hurt Stark and—”

My words broke off when he lifted the knife and pricked the tip of the finger that had been touching my chest. A single drop of scarlet welled. The scent of his blood washed over and through me. It wasn’t human. It wasn’t fledgling or vampyre. It was magick.

I licked the tip of his finger and he moaned my name, “Zo!”

The taste hit my body like a nuclear bomb. My hands covered his, clutching, imprisoning, needing. I closed my eyes and took his finger in my mouth. He leaned forward, his head pressing against mine.

The bell that signaled the end of third hour and the beginning of lunch rang. My eyes opened wide and I realized what I was doing.

“No, this isn’t right! No. Aurox.” Shaking my head, I let loose his hand.

He was breathing as heavily as I was. “I won’t tell anyone. I won’t ever betray you like that.”

I wanted to cry. “If you really care about me you’ll just go. Please.”

He nodded, wrapped a napkin around his bleeding finger, and bolted from the cafeteria.

I drank an entire glass of pop in a single gulp. I wiped my mouth. I smoothed my T-shirt. I picked up a triangle of grilled cheese and forced myself to eat it. And when my friends all crowded into the booth I smiled and talked and let Stark put his arm around me possessively.

No one knew I was screaming inside. No one.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Neferet

Neferet’s eyes moved under her closed lids as she relived the twentieth century. For a time that ultimately brought her such power, and the beginnings of her immortality, it really had been a terrible bore.

Two things had been the exception: her dreams and the old woman. The first had proven to be lies and the second to be spectacularly more than the truth. It was ironic that her dreams were the more enjoyable to revisit.

Neferet had returned to Tower Grove House of Night and to a school all too willing to shower her with concern and compassion. Too close together had been the untimely deaths of her first familiar, little Chloe, and her Warrior. Everyone understood when Neferet withdrew from social events and spent an unusual amount of time in meditation and prayer.

They had no idea that Neferet actually spent her prayer time in a deep, drugged sleep, yearning for the god that came to her only when she was unconscious.

Kalona had been clever. Though he was spectacularly handsome, he came to her dreams as the Faceless God, who asked only that she reveal her fantasies to him and allow him to worship her.

It hadn’t been like dreaming at all. Afterward—after it was far too late—Neferet realized that she had not been dreaming—that Kalona had been entering her subconscious mind and manipulating her. Then, all she had known was the desire his immortal touch ignited within her. She continued to open herself to him, and as her subconscious listened to his whispers, Neferet grew stronger. She began to question the modern ways of the vampyres surrounding her. And, ultimately, to believe that it was her destiny to loose a god from his unjust imprisonment so that she and he could rule side-by-side, Nyx and Erebus on earth. Together they would herald a new age where vampyres would no longer exist in an uneasy, pathetic peace with humans. Quietly, Neferet set about events that would irrevocably change the shape of vampyre-human relations. As the immortal had told her in her dreams: Why do the gods who walk the earth bow to those who should be worshipping them?