Untamed (House of Night #4)(69)

"Oh, Goddess! Are you saying she had something to do with those horrible murders?" Jack gasped.

"I don't know whether she had something to do with them, or whether she just fed off their effects," I said. And I remembered the scene I'd witnessed between Loren and Neferet shortly before he was killed. They'd been lovers--that had been obvious. And he'd been in love with her, but she'd used him to get to me--used her lover to seduce and then Imprint me. How could she really have loved him and sent him to do that?

What if her version of love was as twisted as she had become? Did that mean she could murder what she professed to love?

"But we all thought the People of Faith had something to do with those killings," Shaunee was saying.

"Maybe that's what the Tsi Sgili queen wanted us to think," Damien said, avoiding the use of Neferet's name, which I thought was smart.

"You're right. First those murders, then Aphrodite has a couple whammy visions one right after another about me being killed--and Neferet was definitely involved in at least one of those, and then another vision and this prophecy surfaces? It's too much of a coincidence. Maybe it was supposed to look like a religious hate crime," I said, thinking about the really nice nuns I'd just met who had definitely made me think twice about believing all Christians were narrow-minded jerks out to get anyone who believed differently. "When really it was a power crime," Aphrodite said. "Because Neferet wants Kalona to rise."

"Uh, let's just call her the queen for right now, okay?" I said quickly.

Everyone nodded--Aphrodite shrugged. "Okay with me."

"Wait, the prophecy could mean that the queen's death makes it possible for Kalona to rise. Let's just say we might know this queen, and if she's who we think she might be, no way do I see her sacrificing herself for someone else to come into power," Damien said.

"Maybe she knows only part of the prophecy. I mean, Grandma said that no one had written the Raven Mockers' song down--that it's remembered only in little tiny bits and pieces, so it's basically been lost for a zillion years."

"Uh-oh," Aphrodite said.

We all looked at her. "What?" I said.

"Okay, I might be wrong, but what if Kalona is somehow reaching out from his grave or whatever you want to call it? He's been there a long time. What if the earth that has been holding him is losing its grip? He's an immortal. Maybe he can reach from where he is and get inside people's brains. Nyx can do it. She can whisper things to us. What if he can, too?"

"Whisper! That's what Nyx said--that Neferet was listening to the whispers of someone else." I shivered at the thought and at the gut feeling that told me we were on to something.

"It would be logical that the people whose minds he could reach easiest would be those who were open to death and evil," Damien said.

"Like the Tsi Sgili," Erin said.

"Especially their queen," Shaunee said.

"Ah, crap," I said.

Chapter Twenty-four

"Okay, let's go on to the next stanza," Damien said. Then he read:

Through the hand of the dead he is free Terrible beauty, monstrous sight Ruled again they shall be Women shall kneel to his dark might

"Then, of course, the couplet at the end concludes it." Damien finished it by reading:

Kalona's song sounds sweet As we slaughter with cold heat

"Sadly, most of the rest of it isn't too tough to figure out," Erin said. We all gawked at her. "Okay, I'll admit--under duress--that I actually learned something last semester in Poetry class. So sue me. Anyway, except for the first line, it's just saying that he's gonna start raping and pillaging women again when he's free."

"But it's how he's set free that's described in the first line," Damien said. "Through the hand of the dead, and if we're keeping the first stanza in mind, that hand is going to cause something so bloody and nasty, it'll make the ground bleed."

"Yeah, and in the first stanza it sounds like the person who's gonna cause the ground to bleed is the Queen Tsi Sgili. If she's who we think it is, that doesn't fit here. She's not dead," I said.

"Couldn't it be just symbolism? 'Cause how does something that's already dead cause anything to bleed? It just doesn't make sense, which is yet another reason why I've never liked poetry," Aphrodite said. "Plus, let's say it's all jumbled up into one person and this Tsi Sgili is dead and she bleeds--dead people don't bleed. Or at least not for long after they're dead they don't."

"Oh! Oh, no!" I suddenly knew what the prophecy had to mean, and I sat down on the bed hard as my knees buckled.

"Zoey? What is it?" Damien asked, fanning me with the slip of paper.

"If you puke on my bed, I'm going to kill you," Aphrodite said.

I ignored Aphrodite and grabbed Damien's arm. "It's Stevie Rae--she was dead, and now she's undead. She bleeds. She bleeds a lot. Plus she has psychic powers, along with other major earth powers. What if she's the queen?"

"And she has a red tattoo. Just like in the story about the hot chick the Ghigua women made for Kalona," Erin said. "That's definitely a connection," Shaunee said.

"Stevie Rae! Ohmigod! Stevie Rae!" Jack said, looking even paler than I did.