Yet, Aurox was not enveloped. Slowly, the creatures climbed upward, riding in a magickal whirlpool. The higher they arose from the pit, the faster they moved. It seemed as if they had been summoned and were gradually awakening to a soundless call.

Aurox quieted his fear and the beast within him subsided. They did not want him. They paid him no attention whatsoever. The tail of the cylinder was trailing a black, fetid mist. Not sure what compelled him, Aurox reached out and brushed his hand through it.

His hand became the mist, like they were formed of the same substance. The whirlpool felt like nothing, yet it appeared to have dissolved Aurox's flesh. Wide-eyed, he tried to pull his hand free, but it was gone. He had no hand, and then a shudder went through him as the mist began to absorb his flesh. Helplessly, Aurox watched his forearm disappear, then his bicep, then his shoulder. He tried to awaken the beast-to tap into the power that slumbered within him, but the mist buffered his feelings. It numbed him as it drew him. When it absorbed his head Aurox became the mist. He felt nothing except a vast longing-an unfulfilled seeking-an unrelenting need. For what? Aurox could not tell. All he knew was that the Darkness had engulfed him and was carrying him on a tide of despair.

There must be more to me than this! he thought frantically. I have to be more than mist and longing, darkness and a beast! But it seemed he was no more than those things. Despair overwhelmed him as he realized the truth. He was all of those things and none of those things. Aurox was nothing ... nothing at all ...

Aurox thought the retching sound might be his own. Somewhere, somehow, his body must still be his and it was revolted by what was happening. Then he saw her.

Zoey was there. She held the white stone in front of her. Just like she had the night before, at the ritual where he had tried to make a choice-tried to do the right thing.

He felt the mist shift. It, too, saw Zoey.

It was going to absorb her.

No! His spirit cried deep within him. No! Aurox's mind echoed that cry. Instead of despair, he began to feel something else as he watched Zoey. He felt her fear and her strength. Her resolve and her weakness. And Aurox realized something that surprised him. Zoey felt just as unsure about herself and her place in the world around her as he did. She worried about not having the courage to do the right things. She questioned her decisions and was ashamed of her mistakes. Once in a while even Zoey Redbird, gifted fledgling touched by her Goddess, felt like a failure and considered giving up.

Just as he did.

Compassion and understanding flowed through Aurox, and as it did he felt a surge of white hot power. In a blinding flash, he dropped from the center of the disintegrating whirlpool, landing firmly in his reformed body, gasping for fresh air and trembling all over.

He did not rest there long. Still shaking and weak, Aurox found hand and footholds in the gnarled maze of broken roots. Slowly, he pulled himself up to the lip of the pit. It took a very long time. When he finally reached the top, he hesitated, listening hard.

He heard nothing but the wind.

Aurox lifted himself from the ground, using the broken trunk as concealment. Zoey was gone. He studied the area around him and his eyes were immediately drawn to a huge mound of timbers and planks, topped by a figure wrapped in a shroud. Even though it was encircled by what appeared to be the entire House of Night, Aurox had no trouble recognizing what he was seeing. It is Dragon Lankford's pyre, was his first thought. I killed him, was his second. Like the despair in the magickal mist, the funeral drew him.

It was not difficult to get close to the circle of fledglings and vampyres. Sons of Erebus Warriors were heavily and obviously armed, but everyone's attention was focused within the circle and on the pyre at its center.

Aurox moved stealthily, using the large old oaks and the shadows beneath them as cover until he was close enough to make out the words Thanatos was saying. Then he gathered himself and leaped. Grasping a low-hanging limb, Aurox climbed up and out, which was where he crouched, having an unimpeded view of the macabre spectacle.

Thanatos had just finished the casting of the circle. Aurox could see that four of the vampyre professors were holding candles and representing each of the elements. He expected to see Zoey in the center of the circle, near the pyre, and was surprised instead to see that Thanatos was holding the purple spirit candle in one hand, and a large torch in the other.

Where was Zoey? Had the creatures in the mist captured her? Was that what had caused their dissipation? Frantically, he searched the circle. When he found her standing beside Stark, surrounded by her circle friends she looked sad, but unwounded. She was watching Thanatos attentively. There appeared to be nothing wrong with her except that she mourned the loss of the Sword Master. Aurox became so weak with relief that he almost lost his perch in the tree.