Shaunee ran to the window, closed it, and then tugged the blackout drapes together, tying them quickly and securely.

She crouched beside Stevie Rae. “Want me to lift you into bed?”

“No. Just get help.”

As Shaunee sprinted from the room Stevie Rae pressed her face against the floor and prayed that she would pass out. 

Neferet

Nyx has taken from me the only thing I love. In her den, the words whispered around her, causing the tendrils of Darkness to quiver against her skin. Cocooned in their cold, sharp touch, Neferet’s consciousness traversed time and dimensions, skipping like a stone over a still lake, as she touched the past.

As a fledgling she had already been respected and valued. After her Change to vampyre, it was inevitable that Neferet would become a High Priestess. She hadn’t had to seek out the title. It had come to her effortlessly, as she so richly deserved.

So, too, did the Warrior come to her.

His name had been Alexander. She remembered her first sight of him at the Summer Games. He’d become a Sword Master that day and defeated all challengers to take the crown that was an olive wreath woven with scarlet ribbons. As the youngest High Priestess of the House, Neferet had placed the wreath on his head and bestowed the ceremonial kiss of victory on his lips.

She remembered she could smell his sweat mixed with the blood of the opponents he had defeated. His eyes had followed her the remainder of the ceremony. Later he told her that he never would have attempted to seduce her that night—not when he was unclean, still covered with gore from the competition pit. But Neferet had seduced him—had not allowed him to wash and prepare himself for her.

He would smile and retell the story over and over—how his High Priestess had been so desirous for him that she hadn’t wanted to wait for him to bathe. What Alexander had not understood until it was too late was that Neferet had been so desirous for him because of the blood and sweat in which he had been covered.

Over the course of the rest of the Summer Games, Alexander became infatuated with her. So infatuated that he petitioned for a transfer from the New York House of Night to St. Louis’s Tower Grove School where Neferet taught the Spells and Rituals class. As newly crowned victor of the Summer Games, his transfer request was granted.

Neferet would have discarded him soon after his arrival, as she had all of her previous lovers, had it not been for the kitten.

Alexander had, of course, heard the tale of Chloe’s death and the great “gift” Neferet had been granted by Nyx that night. So after he arrived at Tower Grove, he took to his knee, bowed reverently before her, and reached into a knapsack slung over his back to pull forth a mewing black kitten who batted at his hand with sharp little claws that glinted from all twelve of her toes.

Neferet reached for the kitten. “A polydactyl! Wherever did you find her?”

“From the wharf on the Manhattan bank of the East River. The sailors prize six-toed cats. They swear they kill twice the rats as normal-toed cats. When I found her, I knew you should belong to her—just as I knew you should belong to me.”

Entranced by the kitten’s mischievous gaze, Neferet had not discarded Alexander.

He was a powerful Warrior. Alexander’s talent with the sword almost matched Neferet’s talent to heal. Neferet liked the irony in his loving her. He could cut men down. Neferet could heal them—even if that healing was no more than a touch that soothed their way to the Otherworld.

Of course Alexander did not cut men down—not unless he or the House of Night was threatened, and in 1899 there were few who would dare threaten the powerful and wealthy Tower Hill House of Night.

Bored, Neferet began ignoring Alexander. She had little Claire—another loving, mischievous cat as her own. She had her duties at the House of Night. And, most important, she had powers that were growing almost daily. Each of those things was more interesting than honorable, dependable, boring Alexander. She hadn’t even needed to use her skills as an empath to predict his declarations of eternal love. She had needed to use her skills in diplomacy not to yawn her way through them.

Early in the year of 1900 Neferet received an unusual invitation. She was the youngest High Priestess to be invited to the Gathering at San Clemente Island during which the High Council would lead a discussion on the direction vampyre society should take in this new century, wherein they believed inventions, science, and technology would advance at an unheard-of rate.

Alexander begged Neferet to allow him to accompany her. She had adamantly refused. She had no intention of tolerating his constant, cloying attention when there would be so many new Warriors from whom to choose. After all, the most decorated and powerful and experienced Warriors were always chosen to protect the Vampyre High Council and the San Clemente Island House of Night.

She did allow him to drive the carriage that would take her to the Mississippi River and the House of Night-owned steamboat that would transport her in the style of a queen—no, better yet, a goddess—to the port at New Orleans. There she would join many other High Priestesses for the Atlantic Crossing.

They had just arrived at the riverboat wharf when the thieves attacked. Mistaking the House of Night’s rich mahogany carriage for that of a wealthy gambler, the six humans, enticed by only one driver and no additional guards for such an opulent carriage, descended upon Alexander. In the darkness they did not see the elaborate tattoos that Marked him forever as vampyre. Too late they did see his sword.

Neferet watched from the window of the carriage, spellbound as Alexander killed all six of the attackers—quickly and brutally. Neferet had thought the sound his sword made as it sliced the air must be like the singing of the mythic Valkyries as they hovered over a Norse battlefield, waiting to choose the dead warriors they would take to Valhalla.

Dripping in gore, he strode to the carriage door, and wrenched it open. Breathing heavily he said, “My Priestess! Thank the Goddess you are unharmed.”

“I shall thank you instead.” She had taken him there, covered with blood, still carrying the sweet stench of battle, his blood and hers burning hot from killing.

Afterward he had fallen to his knees before her and bowed, saying:

“High Priestess Neferet, love of my life, I pledge myself to you as your Warrior, body, heart, mind, and soul. Please accept me!”

“I accept your Oath,” Neferet had heard herself saying while her body still pulsed from his touch. “From here on you shall be my Warrior.”

It took exactly one full day and night for her to regret accepting Alexander’s Oath. Thankfully, Neferet’s empathic gifts enabled her to dam the emotional tide that usually flowed between a bonded Warrior and his Priestess. Alexander bemoaned the fact that he could not sense her needs or hear her emotions. He fretted aloud that should she be in danger, he would not know it as would any other Oath Bound Warrior.

Neferet had only shrugged and said it was an irony that her empathic abilities had somehow negated the Warrior-Priestess psychic sharing. He had been such a fool to believe her. How could he not have seen that it was she who controlled their bond? Had she cared more, Neferet would have explained to him that he should be grateful he couldn’t know her real thoughts and emotions. By the time they reached Venice, Neferet had thought about casting him over the side of the ocean liner a total of three hundred and sixty-one times, though he sailed on, blissfully unaware of the truth.

Neferet had been right about the San Clemente Warriors. They were spectacular. And outshining them all was Artus, the High Council’s Sword Master.