Betrayed

neck was so stiff. But being temporarily uncomfortable didn't really matter because I'd actually figured out what I was going to do for the Full Moon Ritual. It was a huge weight lifted from my mind. I was still nervous, and didn't spend too much time considering the fact that when I performed the ritual I'd be doing so in front of a bunch of kids, the majority of whom were probably not thrilled that I had taken over leadership from their buddy Aphrodite. I just needed to stay focused on the ritual itself, and remember the amazing feelings that filled me whenever I invoked the five elements. The rest would work itself out. Hopefully.
    I pushed open the heavy front door of the school and walked out into a different world. It was snowing steadily, and must have been for the entire time I was in the media center. The school grounds were completely blanketed by a comforter of downy white. The wind had whipped up and visibility was terrible. The gaslights that marked the obscured path were not much more than glowing pinpoints of yellow against the white darkness. I probably should have gone back in the building and made my way along the school's hall toward the dorm, staying inside for as long as I could, and then making a quick run from the far side of the school to the girls' dorm, but I really didn't want to. I thought about how right Stevie Rae had been. Snow really was magical. It changed the world, made it quieter, softer, more mysterious. As a fledgling, I already had quite a bit of an adult vampyre's natural protection against the cold, which used to creep me out. I mean, it made me think of cold, dead creatures who existed by drinking the blood of the living—totally gruesome, even if I was bizarrely drawn to the thought. Now I knew more about what I was becoming, so I understood that my protection against the cold was more about a heightened metabolism than about being undead. Vampyres aren't dead. They're just Changed. It was humans who liked to fuel the scary myth of the walking dead, which I was beginning to find more than slightly annoying. Anyway, I really enjoyed being able to walk around in a blizzard without feeling like I was going to freeze. Nala burrowed herself against me, purring loudly when I wrapped my arms around her protectively. The snow muffled my steps and it seemed for that moment that I was alone in a world where black and white had mixed together to form a unique color just for me.
    I'd only walked a few steps when I sighed and would have popped myself in the forehead if my arms hadn't been filled with my cat. I needed to go by the school spells and rituals store and get some eucalyptus. From what I'd read in the old ritual book, eucalyptus was associated with healing, protection, and purification—three things I thought important to evoke during my first ritual as leader of the Dark Daughters. I supposed I could get the eucalyptus tomorrow, but I was going to need it knotted into a rope as part of the spell I planned to cast, and .. . well … it was probably smart that I practiced so I didn't drop anything during the spell or, worse, suddenly discover that eucalyptus wasn't as flexible as I'd expected and it fell to pieces when I tried to knot it and then I'd turn bright red and want to crawl under the rec hall and curl up in a fetal position crying .. .
    I shoved that lovely picture from my mind, turned around, and began to trudge back to the main building. That's when I saw the shape. It caught my eye because it didn't belong—and not just because it was unusual that another fledgling was silly enough to be out walking in the snowstorm. What struck me as weird was that the person, because it definitely wasn't a cat or a bush, wasn't walking on the sidewalk. He was heading in the general direction of the rec hall, but was cutting across the far lawn. I stopped and squinted against the falling snow. The person was wearing a long, dark cloak with a hood pulled up like a cowl.
    An urge to follow him hit me with such strength that I gasped. Almost as if I had no will of my own, I stepped off the sidewalk and hurried after the mysterious person, who had just reached the edge of the tree line that grew along the outside wall.
    My eyes widened. The instant the figure entered the shadows, whoever it was, he or she, began moving with inhuman speed, cloak billowing behind them wildly in the snow-filled wind so that the figure appeared to have wings. Red? Did I see scarlet flashes against