Ignoring the tendrils of Darkness that were cowering around her, Neferet approached Sylvia, climbing the steps up to her porch as she spoke. "You are vastly mistaken, old woman. I am the only goddess listening. I am the immortal to whom you should be begging protection."

Neferet stepped onto the smoke-filled porch when Sylvia spoke again. The old woman's voice had changed. Before it had been powerful as she evoked the one she called Earth Mother. Now her voice had gentled, become softer. Her arms were no longer spread. Her face no longer raised in supplication. Instead her dark eyes met Neferet's gaze steadily. "You are no goddess. You are a mean-spirited, broken little girl. I pity you. What happened to you? Who broke you, child?"

Neferet's anger was so intense that she felt as if she would explode. Threads of Darkness forgotten, she struck out at Sylvia, wanting to connect flesh with flesh-to gouge and cut and bite this insolent hag.

With a movement so quick it belied her age, Sylvia lifted her arms defensively before her face, meeting Neferet's blows.

Pain burned through the Tsi Sgili's body, radiating from her hands. Neferet shrieked and jerked back, staring at the bloody marks left on her fists, burned in the exact shape of the blue stones in the bracelets that circled her withered arms.

"You dare to strike out at me! A goddess!"

"I strike at no one. I only defend myself through the stones of protection the Great Mother has gifted me with." Never breaking her gaze, and keeping her turquoise and silver swathed arms raised, the old woman began singing again.

Neferet wanted to tear her to shreds with her hands. But as she circled closer to the Cherokee she could feel the wave of heat that radiated from the blue stones in which she was covered. It was as if they pulsed with a fire equal to her own fury.

She needed the white bull! His frigid Darkness would extinguish the old woman's flames. Perhaps the odd energy she wielded would surprise him, and he would, again, lend Neferet his alluring might.

Controlling her anger, Neferet stepped back, outside the ring of smoke and heat that engulfed Sylvia. She studied the old woman, watched her dance, listened to her song. Old. Ancient. Everything about Sylvia Redbird said she, and the earth power she was wielding, had been here for a very long time.

The white bull was ancient as well.

This Indian would not surprise him.

"I will deal with you myself." Still meeting Sylvia Redbird's gaze, Neferet lifted her hands and, without so much as flinching, used her sharpened fingernails to gouge the wounds already formed by the old woman's protective turquoise. Her blood flowed freely, spattering the porch. Neferet shook her hands, raining scarlet through the smoke cloud, dispersing it, and painting the old woman with bright dots of red, which were a garish, stark contrast to the earthy greens and blues she wore. Then Neferet turned her hands, cupping her palms and letting her blood pool there. "Come, my Dark children, drink!" The tendrils were hesitant at first, but after the first taste of Neferet's blood, they were emboldened.

Neferet watched Sylvia's eyes widen and saw fear shadow them. The old woman's gaze did not waver, but her song faltered. Her voice began sounding old ... weak ... tremulous ...

"Now, children! You have tasted my blood and Sylvia Redbird has been anointed by it. Entrap her-bring me the old woman!" Neferet's voice changed, and became rhythmic. Darkly she mirrored Sylvia's earthy war song.

"You need not kill.

You need only sate my rage.

You drank your fill.

Now create for me a cage.

I'll make old new.

You'll feast on youth, vibrant, strong.

To me be true.

And kill this old woman's song!"

The tendrils obeyed Neferet. They avoided the old woman's turquoise stones. They wrapped around her naked, unadorned feet, halting her rhythmic dance. Like the floor of a jail cell, Darkness formed from her feet, spreading, and then growing up and up and up, caging Sylvia, and finally, finally her song was silenced, replaced by an agonized scream as they lifted her and, moving through shadow and mist, carrying the terrible cage and its prisoner, Darkness followed their mistress.

Aurox

Aurox waited until the sun was high in the winter sky before he climbed from the pit again. The morning had dawned cloudy and gray, but as the endless hours passed the winter sun had broken through the mist and shadows. At noon, when the sun was highest in the sky, Aurox emerged.

He did not allow the sense of urgency that skittered under his skin to make him careless. Aurox used the sinuous muscles of his arms to hold firm to the roots and hang, partially belowground, partially aboveground. He used all of his paranormal senses to seek. I must get away without being seen, was foremost in his mind.