The Tsi Sgili might have remained like that—formless, faceless, simply existing—had death not chosen that moment to approach.

Like wind that blows clouds to shroud the sun, death’s approach was invisible, but the Tsi Sgili felt the brush of it before the fledgling began to cough.

Death was even more familiar to the specter than was the school or the place of power. Death drew her up from the pit in the ground. In a rush of excitement the Tsi Sgili’s spirit manifested in the first form that had come to her near the beginnings of her power—that of the ever-questing, ever-curious, ever-resilient eight-legged insect.

The black spiders, moving as one, materialized to seek out and to feed from death.

Ironically, it was the fledglings’ circle that opened the energy conduit which enabled Neferet to gain enough consciousness so that she was able to focus and borrow the ancient power of death and, ultimately, to find herself once more.

I am she who was Emily Wheiler, and then Neferet, and then Tsi Sgili—queen, goddess, immortal being!

Until that moment, finding the familiar had been her focus. As death descended upon the fledgling, the Tsi Sgili’s spirit fed from it, gathering energy so that finally her memories coalesced from fragments of past and present to one true knowing.

The shock of that knowing caused raw energy to surge through her spirit, fragmenting the threads of Darkness and fueling the refashioning of her body. She had been almost fully formed when the elements had expelled her. Exploding from the circle, Neferet fled.

She made it only as far as the iron gate that served as barrier between the human street and the vampyre school grounds. There, her body solidified, and she had burned through all of her siphoned power until she’d been left gasping, weak as a newborn, barely clinging to consciousness. Neferet crumpled against the wall that was boundary to the House of Night.

She must feed!

Hunger was all she knew until she heard his raised voice, spiteful and sarcastic, quipping, “Yes, dear. Of course you’re right. You’re always right. I don’t want to stay for the ridiculous raffle either—I’m absolutely not interested in the five hundred dollars worth of tickets I bought on a chance to win that 1966 T-Bird the vampyres are giving away. No, no problem! And, as you said so many times, we should have called a driver and taken a limo. So, so sorry you’re inconvenienced by waiting for me to walk all the way to where we parked, get our car, and drive it back to pick you up while you sit on a bench and rest yourself. Oh, and I’m so, so glad you were able to allow those two City Council assholes to stare at your boobs while you whispered to them and spread your crazy gossip about Neferet. Ha! Ha! Ha!” His sarcastic laughter drifted to her through the night. “If you actually paid attention to anyone but yourself you would know that Neferet can take care of herself. Penthouse vandals no one so much as got a peek at? Not hardly. That mess looked like the result of a female temper tantrum. I feel sorry for whoever caused Neferet’s temper to explode, but I don’t feel sorry for Neferet.”

Neferet forced herself to sit up, listening with all her being. The human had said her name. It must be a sign that he was a gift from the gods.

The Lexus not ten feet from where she crouched lit up as he touched the key fob and muttered, “Damned woman. All she does is gossip and manipulate, manipulate and gossip. I should have listened to my father and never married her. All I’ve gotten from my twenty-five years with her is high blood pressure, GERD, and an ungrateful daughter. I could’ve been the first single mayor Tulsa’s had in fifty years and had my pick of the young daughters of old oil money if I hadn’t already been chained to her…”

His grumbling trailed off into unintelligible background noise when her supersensitive hearing honed in to his heartbeat.

She sighed gratefully. He did, indeed, sound like dinner. She would not thank the gods of fate who had sent him to her. She would accept their aid as no more than what she deserved—an acknowledgment that they were pleased to have her return to their immortal ranks.

He was opening the door to the sedan when she stood. Neferet put all of her longing and hunger into the one word that was his name: “Charles!”

He paused, straightened, and peered her way, trying to see through the darkness. “Hello? Is someone there?”

Neferet did not need light to see. Her vision moved through the Darkness easily, comfortably. She saw his carefully combed hair, the well-tailored lines of his expensive suit, the sweat on his upper lip, and the pulse in his neck that beat steadily with his life’s blood.

She stepped forward and shook back her long auburn hair, exposing the lushness of her naked body. Then, as if it were an afterthought, she raised her hands in an unsuccessful attempt to shield her most private parts from his widening eyes. “Charles!” Neferet repeated his name. This time she added with a sob, “They’ve hurt me!”

“Neferet?” Obviously confused, Charles took one step toward her before halting. “Is it really you?”

“It is! It is! Oh, Goddess, that it would be you who discovered me out here, naked, wounded, and all alone. It is so terrible! So much more than I can bear!” Neferet wept as she covered her face with her hands, allowing him to get a more thorough look at her body.

“I don’t understand. What has happened to you?”

“Charles!” his name shrilled behind them from the school grounds, making them both pause. “What is taking you so long?”

“Dear, I’ve found—” Charles began to call back to his wife, but Neferet moved quickly toward him. She clutched his hand, cutting off his words. “No! Don’t tell her it’s me. I couldn’t stand for her to know what they’ve done to me,” she whispered desperately.

His gaze was completely focused on Neferet’s bare breasts when he cleared his throat and continued, “Frances, dear, be patient. I dropped the car fob, and just now found it. I’ll have the car there in another minute or two.”

“Of course you dropped it! You’re so damn clumsy!” came the venom-filled retort.

“Go to her! Forget that you ever saw me.” Neferet whimpered as she scrambled back within the shadows beside the school wall. “I can care for myself.”

“What are you talking about? Of course I won’t go and leave you out here naked and hurt. Here, put on my coat. Tell me what has happened to you. I know your penthouse was vandalized. Were you kidnapped?” Charles spoke as he moved to her. Taking off his suit jacket, he held it out to her.

Neferet’s gaze went to his hands where they gripped the jacket, offering it.

“Your hands are so large.” Overwhelmed by images from the past, Neferet found it hard to speak through lips that had gone cold and numb. “Your fingers. So, so thick.”

Charles blinked in confusion. “I suppose they are. Neferet, are you in your right mind? You seem very out of sorts. How can I help you?”

“Help me?” Her ravenous mind thrust Neferet forward from Emily’s past. “I shall show you the only way you may help me.”

Neferet did not waste any more of her energy speaking to him. In a single predatory movement she knocked aside the offered jacket and slammed Charles against the wall. His breath left him in a shocked oof and he fell to the grass, gasping for air. She did not allow him time to recover. She pinned him to the ground with her knees and, making her hands into claws, ripped open his throat. As his thick, hot blood sprayed from his jugular, she fastened her lips over the gash and drank deeply. Even as he died, he did not struggle. Completely under her spell, he moaned and tried to lift his arms to more fully embrace her. His breath gurgled, ending his moans, and his legs kicked spasmodically, but Neferet’s strength grew as he moved more closely to death. She drank and drank, draining him body and spirit, until Charles LaFont, mayor of Tulsa, was no more than a bloodless, lifeless shell.

Licking her lips, Neferet stood, staring down at what was left of him. Energy surged through her. How she loved the taste of death!

“Charles, goddamn it! Do I have to do everything myself?” His wife’s voice was coming closer, as if she were moving toward them.

Neferet lifted her bloody hand. “Mist and darkness, I command thee. Shield my body. Now! Cover me!”

Instead of obeying her and hiding Neferet from seeking eyes, the deepest, darkest of the shadows only quivered restlessly. Through the night she felt more than heard their reply: Your power wanes, reborn Tsi Sgili. Command us now? We shall see … we shall see…

Rage was a luxurious emotion Neferet could not afford. She kept her anger close to her, choosing it over Charles LaFont’s crumpled suit jacket. Clothed only in blood and rage and fading power, Neferet fled. She had reached the ditch on the opposite side of Utica Street when LaFont’s wife began screaming.

Her screams made Neferet smile, and though Darkness did not obey her command and cloak her, the Tsi Sgili ran with the otherworldly litheness of an immortal. As she fled through the opulent midtown neighborhood, Neferet imagined how she must appear to any mortal who might be lucky enough to glance out her window. She was a scarlet wraith, a Banshee from ancient times. Neferet wished she could bring to life the Old Magick curse of the Banshee—that any mortal filled with hubris enough to dare to look upon her would turn to stone.