She'd forgiven Rephaim? How could that be?

Almost at a loss for words, the immortal blurted, "You spoke to Rephaim?"

Nisroc bobbed his enormous raven's head up and down. "Yessss."

"He actually said he is in Nyx's service?"

"Yessss." Nisroc bowed to him, but his eyes were bright and sly. "For you he refused to sssspy." Kalona gave him a sharp look and then glanced at the battered Raven Mocker who stood innocuously behind him, suddenly realizing there was only one brother when there should have been two.

"Where is-" Kalona had to pause to remember which of his sons was missing. "Maion? Why did he not return with you?"

"Dead." Nisroc pronounced the world flatly, with no emotion.

"Rephaim killed him?" Kalona's voice was as cold as his heart.

"No. The creature. Killed him it did."

"What creature? Speak clearly!"

"The Tsi Sgili's creature."

"A vampyre?"

"No. First human, then bull."

Kalona's body jerked in surprise. "Are you quite sure? The creature took on the form of a bull?"

"Yesss."

"Did Rephaim join with it to attack you?"

"No."

"He fought beside you against it?"

"No. Nothinng he did," Nisroc said.

Kalona's jaw clenched and unclenched. "Then what stopped the beast?

"The Red One."

"Then did she and Neferet battle?" Kalona snapped the questions, silently cursing himself for sending lesser beings to witness what he should have seen.

"No. No battle happened. We flew."

"Yet you say the bull was Neferet's creature."

"Yesss."

"Then it is true. Neferet has given herself over to the white bull." Kalona paced again. "She has no idea of the forces she is awakening. The white bull is Darkness in its purest, most powerful form." Somewhere deep within Kalona something stirred, something that had not surfaced since he'd fall en. For a brief moment, just the length of a heartbeat, the ancient Warrior of the Goddess of Night, the winged immortal who had defended his Goddess against the onslaught of Darkness for uncounted centuries, had an automatic desire to go to Nyx-to warn her-to protect her.

Kalona shook off the ridiculous impulse almost as quickly as he'd felt it. He began pacing again. Thinking aloud he mused, "So Neferet has an ally that ties her to the white bull, but she must be disguising him as something else to the House of Night, or you would have seen at least the beginnings of a major battle."

"Yessss, her creature."

Kalona ignored Nisroc's repetitive comments and kept reasoning aloud. "Rephaim has entered the service of Nyx. She has gifted him with a human form." His jaw clenched and unclenched. He felt doubly betrayed-by his son and by the Goddess. He'd asked, practically begged Nyx to forgive him. And what had her answer been? "If you are ever worthy of forgiving, you may ask it of me. Not until then." The memory of his sojourn in the Otherworld and his glimpse of the Goddess caused a terrible ache in his heart. Instead of feeling it-thinking of it-acting on it-Kalona opened the gates to the anger that always boiled just below the levees in his soul. As anger flooded through him it washed away any other gentler, more honest, feelings.

"My son needs to learn a lesson about loyalty," Kalona said.

"Loyal I am!" Nisroc cried.

Kalona's lip curled up contemptuously. "I don't speak of you. I speak of Rephaim."

"Sssspy Rephaim will not," Nisroc repeated.

Kalona cuffed him and the Raven Mocker stumbled back against his brother. "Rephaim has done much more than spy for me in the past. He has been a second pair of fists, a second pair of eyes, almost an extension of me. It is habit that has me searching the sky for him. I am finding habit is a hard thing to break. Perhaps Rephaim is finding it difficult as well." The winged immortal turned his back on his sons and stared off to the east, over the wooded ridges, toward sleeping Tulsa. "I should visit Rephaim. We do, after all, have a common enemy."

"The Tsi Sgili?" Nisroc asked, subservient and docile.

"That's right. The Tsi Sgili. Rephaim would not call it spying if we were serving a common goal-to depose Neferet."

"Rule in her stead you would?"

Kalona turned amber eyes to his son. "Yes. I would always rule. We rest now. At sunset I depart for Tulsa."

"With ussss?" the Raven Mocker asked.