Burned

look at her.
    “Escape?” Neferet scoffed. “I’ve already agreed to be escorted by a group of Sons of Erebus Warriors, and to make regular reports to the Council regarding Erebus’s state of consciousness. After all, my consort isn’t a criminal. It isn’t against our laws for a Warrior to kill a human if he’s in the service of the Goddess.”
    Stark ignored Neferet and concentrated on Duantia. “Don’t let her go. Don’t let her take him. He did more than kill a human guy, and they aren’t in the service of Nyx.”
    “Lies propagated by a jealous teenager, who had so little control over herself that her eternal soul has been shattered!” Neferet snapped.
    “You fucking bitch!” Stark lunged for Neferet, who didn’t so much as flinch. Instead, she lifted one elegant hand and pointed it, palmoutward, at Stark. As he struggled to free himself from Darius’s hold, Stark thought he saw black smoke begin materializing around Neferet’s fingers.
    “Stop it, Stark, you total moron!”
    Suddenly, Aphrodite was there right in front of him. Stark knew she was Zoey’s friend, but if Darius hadn’t had a vise-like hold on him, he wouldn’t have hesitated to knock her aside to get to Neferet.
    “Stark!” Aphrodite yelled at him. “You’re not helping Zoey!” Then the blonde did something that totally shocked him, and by Darius’s sharp intake of breath, she shocked her Warrior, too. She took his face between her smooth palms and forced him to stare into her eyes, whispering words that changed his life. “I know how to help Zoey.”
    “You see how uncontrollable he is! If my consort’s body remains here, who knows what this undisciplined child could do to it?” Neferet spewed her poison as Stark kept his eyes locked with Aphrodite’s.
    “Do you swear?” Stark whispered urgently back to her. “You’re not just talking crap?”
    Aphrodite lifted one blond brow. “If you knew me better, you’d know I never
just talk crap
, but yes. I swear on my new and annoyingly responsible title of Prophetess that I know how to help Zoey, but we need her away from Neferet. Get it?”
    Stark nodded once and quit straining against Darius. Aphrodite took her hands from his face. Looking and sounding every bit a Prophetess of Nyx, she whirled around to face Neferet and the High Council.
    “Why are you all so willing to believe Zoey is going to die?”
    Duantia was first to respond. “Her soul has left her body, and not just on a Spirit Journey to the Otherworld, or in temporary communion with the Goddess. Zoey has been shattered.”
    One of the Council members who had stayed mostly silent until then spoke up. “You must understand what that means, Prophetess. Zoey’s spirit is in the Otherworld in pieces. Past lives have been stripped from her, as have memories and different aspects of her personality. She is becoming one of the Caoinic Shi’, a thing not deadand not alive—a being trapped in the realm of spirits, yet without the comfort of her own spirit.”
    “No. Seriously. Speak American and not this ancient and very fucked-up, confusing olden-day Euro crap.” Aphrodite planted one hand on the curve of her waist, and the other pointed a finger at the Vampyre High Council in general. “Without the confusing woo-woo references, explain why the hell you’re writing Zoey off.”
    Stark heard a few of the Council members draw in breath at Aphrodite’s brash words and registered the smug, “I told you they were out of control” look Neferet shared with several of the vamps, but Thanatos responded smoothly. “What Aether is saying is that the layers of spirit that make Zoey who she is today—her past lives, her past experiences, her personality—have been stripped from her, and without those layers intact, it is impossible for her to rest in the Otherworld, or for her spirit to return to her body here in this world. Think of it as if you had been in a terrible accident and the layers of skin and muscle and bone that protect your heart have been peeled away from your body, leaving that vital organ bare and defenseless. What would happen to you then?”
    Aphrodite paused, and Stark thought she hesitated because she didn’t want to say the obvious answer, but she glanced at him, and when their eyes met, he was surprised to see triumph and excitement in hers. “If my heart didn’t have any protection, it wouldn’t keep beating. So why not get Zoey some protection?”
    Protection! I’m Zoey’s