goddess, and even I was struck speechless at her raw beauty. Her smooth white shoulders were bared by an exquisite black silk dress that molded to her graceful body. Her thick auburn hair was free, tumbling in waves down around her slim waist. Her green eyes flashed--her lips were the deep red of fresh blood.
"You ask us to accept a perversion of nature as something the Goddess made?" she spoke in her deep, beautifully modulated voice. "Those creatures were dead. They should be dead again."
The anger that spiked within me shattered her magnetism. "You should know about these creatures, as you call them." I squared my shoulders and faced her. I might not have her well-trained voice, or her incredible beauty, but I had truth and I had my Goddess. "You tried to use them. You tried to twist them. It was you who kept them as prisoners until through us Nyx healed and then freed them."
Her eyes widened in a perfect look of surprise. "You blame me for these monstrosities?"
"Hey, me and my friends aren't monstrosities!" came Stevie Rae's voice from behind me.
"Silence, beast!" Neferet commanded. "Enough is enough!" Neferet turned so that her gaze swept the stunned crowd. "Tonight I discovered another of the creatures Zoey and her people were raising from the dead." She bent and picked up something that lay at her feet, tossing it into the circle. I recognized Jack's satchel as it landed, opening to spill out the nanny cam monitor and the camera itself (which should have been safely hidden in the morgue). Neferet's eyes scoured the crowd until they found him; then she snapped, "Jack! Do you deny that Zoey made you plant this in the morgue, where you locked the body of the recently dead James Stark, so that she could watch to see when her wicked spells would resurrect him?"
"No. Yes. It wasn't like that," Jack squeaked. Duchess, who was pressed against his legs whined pitifully.
"Leave him alone!" Damien shouted from his place in the circle.
Neferet rounded on him. "So you continue to be blinded by her? You continue to follow her rather than Nyx?"
Before he could answer, Aphrodite spoke from beside me. "Hey, Neferet. Where's your Goddess insignia?"
Neferet looked from Damien to Aphrodite, and her eyes narrowed in anger. But everyone was now looking at Neferet and noticing what Aphrodite had said--that Neferet's exquisite black dress had no badge of Nyx over her breast. And then I noticed something else. She was wearing a pendant I'd never seen before. I blinked, not sure if I was seeing it correctly, and then, yep, I decided, I sure was. Dangling from a golden chain around her neck were wings--big, black, raven wings carved from onyx.
"What's that around your neck?" I asked.
Neferet's hand moved automatically to stroke the black wings hanging between her breasts. "The wings of Erebus, Nyx's consort."
"Um, excuse me, but, no, they're not," Damien said. "Erebus's wings are made of gold. They're never black. You taught me that yourself in Vamp Soc class."
"I have had enough of this meaningless babble," Neferet snapped. "It is time this little charade came to an end."
"You know, I think that's a darn good idea," I said.
I was just starting to scan the crowd to find Shekinah when Neferet stepped aside, crooking her finger at a shadowy shape that seemed to materialize behind her. "Come to me and show what it is they created tonight."
Duchess's howl of agony and her pitiful whines that followed will be forever be imprinted in my mind with my first sight of the new Stark. He moved forward like a ghost. His skin was eerily pale, and his eyes the red of old blood. The crescent on his forehead was red, too, like the fledglings who filled my circle, but he was different than they were. The thing Stark had become stood there beside Neferet, glaring, madness shining in his eyes. Looking at him, I felt like I was going to be sick. "Stark!" I meant to call his name loud and strong, but it came out of my mouth as little more than a broken whisper.
Still he turned his face in my direction. I saw the blood color in his eyes fade, and for just a moment I thought I glimpsed the boy I knew.
"Zzzzoey . . ." He said my name in something like a hiss, but it gave me an instant of hope.
I took a stumbling step toward him. "Yes, Stark, it's me," I said, trying