Movement in the air caught Heath's eye, and he noticed hundreds, maybe thousands of sparkling globes that were tumbling down into the gorge. He thought some of them looked like electric pearls, and others like geode balls, and still others were fluorescent colors so bright they almost hurt his eyes.

"Wow! It's awesome up here!" He shaded his eyes with his hand. "What are those thingies?"

"Spirits," Nyx said.

"Really, like ghosts or something?" "A little. Mostly like you or something," Nyx said with a warm smile.

"Well, that's just weird. I don't look anything like that. I look like me."

"Right now you do," Nyx said.

Heath glanced down at himself, just to be sure he was still, well, him. Relieved at what he saw, he looked back at the Goddess. "Should I get ready to change up?"

"That depends entirely upon you," Nyx said. "As you would say in your world: I have a proposition for you."

"Awesome! It's cool to be propositioned by a goddess!" Heath said.

Nxy frowned at him. "Not that kind of proposition, Heath."

"Oh. Uh. Sorry." Heath felt his face getting really warm. Jeeze, he was a retard. "I didn't mean anything disrespectful. I was just kidding..." He stuttered to a stop, wiping his face with his hand.

When he looked at the goddess again, she was smiling wryly at him. "Okay," he started again, relieved she hadn't blasted him with a thunderbolt or something. "About that proposition?"

"Excellent. It's nice to know I have your full attention. My proposition is this: choice."

Heath blinked. "Choice? Between what?"

"I'm so pleased that you asked," Nyx said with only a little teasing sarcasm in her pine voice. "I'm going to give you a choice between three futures. You may choose one of the three, but know before you hear the choices that once you decide upon a path, the outcome is not set--it is only your decision that is set. What happens thereafter is left up to chance and fate and the resources of your soul."

"Okay, I think I get that. I get to pick something, but once I pick it I'm pretty much on my own?" "With my blessing," she added.

Heath grinned. "Well, I hope so."

The Goddess didn't return his smile. Instead she met his gaze, and he saw all humor was gone from her expression. "I give you my blessing, but only if you find my path. I cannot bless a future in which you choose Darkness."

"Why would I do that? It doesn't even make sense," Heath said.

"Hear me out, my son, and consider the choices I offer you; you will understand then."

"Okay," he said, but something about the tone of her voice made his gut tighten.

"Choice one is that you stay here in this realm. You will be content, as you have been. You will frolic eternally with my other joy-filled children."

"Content doesn't mean happy," Heath said slowly. "I'm a jock, but that doesn't mean I'm stupid."

"Of course it doesn't," said the Goddess. "Choice two: you fulfill your original intent and are reborn.

That may mean you stay here and frolic for a century or more, but you will eventually leap from this precipice and return to the mortal realm to be reborn as a human who will eventually find his soul mate again."

"Zoey!" He spoke the one word that filled his mind, and as he spoke her name Heath wondered why it had taken him so long. What was wrong with him? Why had he forgotten her? Why hadn't he--

Nyx's hand touched his arm gently. "Do not punish yourself. The Otherworld can be intoxicating. You did not truly forget your love--you never could. You simply allowed the child within you to rule for a time. He would, eventually, have given way to the adult, and you would have remembered Zoey and your love for her. Under normal circumstances that is the way of things. But the world today is not normal, nor are our circumstances. So, I'm going to ask the child within you to grow up a little more quickly, if you so choose."

"If it has to do with Zo, then I say yes."

"Then hear me out, Heath Luck. You can find your Zoey again if you choose to be reborn as a human; I give you my promise on that. You and she are destined to be together, whether it is as vampyre and mate, or vampyre and consort. It will happen, and you can choose to make it happen in this lifetime."

"Then I--"

Her upraised hand silenced him. "There is a third option from which you may choose. As I speak to you the mortal world is shifting and turning. The great shadow of Darkness in the form of the white bull has gained an unexpected foothold. Good and evil are no longer balanced because of it."