Hidden: House of Night: Book 10

the dim light I could see the sad, dead bodies of the cats, but the words written to the side of them were hard for me to make out. I didn’t have to ask. Holding me close to him, Stark read them aloud.
“
Through payment of blood, pain, and strife
    I force the Vessel to be my knife
.”
    “The Vessel is what Neferet calls Aurox,” Kalona explained.
    “Oh, great Goddess, this proves more than that this is Neferet’s work.” Thanatos’s dark gaze met mine. “Your mother’s death wasn’t simply a random sacrifice to Darkness. It was the payment required to create Neferet’s creature, the Vessel, Aurox.”
    My knees turned to rubber and I moved even closer to Stark. It felt like his arm was all that was keeping me standing.
    “I knew that damn bull kid was bad news,” Stark said. “No way was he some kind of gift from Nyx.”
    “The Vessel is the opposite. He is a creature fashioned from pain and death by Darkness, and controlled by Neferet,” Thanatos said.
    I couldn’t tell them what I thought I’d seen in the Seer Stone. How could I, with Stark’s arm around me, Dragon newly dead, and the awfulness of the cats? But I was too raw—too tired and hurt and confused to guard my words anymore to keep from blurting Heath’s name, so instead, like a moron, I babbled. “There has to be more to Aurox than that! Remember what he asked you about after class? He wanted to know who he was—
what
he was. You said he could decide that for himself and not let his past control his future. Why would a creature who was totally made of Darkness, totally nothing but Neferet’s Vessel, care to question anything about himself?”
    “You havea point. I do remember Aurox came to me.” Thanatos nodded. Her gaze moved back to the bodies of the cats. “Perhaps Aurox isn’t completely an empty vessel. Perhaps his interaction with us, and in particular you, Zoey, touched some piece of a conscience within him.”
    I felt a rush of emotion that had Stark sending me a startled, questioning look. “He was telling the truth!” I explained. “Tonight, just before Aurox ran off he said ‘I chose a different future. I chose a new future.’ He meant that he hadn’t wanted to hurt Rephaim or Dragon, but he couldn’t help it if Neferet had control of him.”
    “It makes sense.” Thanatos nodded, speaking slowly as if working her way verbally through a maze. “The sacrifice of Dragon Lankford’s familiar was needed because Neferet was losing control of her Vessel. We all saw Aurox shift from the bull creature, to the boy, and then begin to shift back to the bull again as he ran off.”
    “You also had to have seen how freaked he was when he was Aurox again and he saw what he’d done to Dragon,” I said.
    “That doesn’t change the fact that Aurox killed Dragon,” Stark said. I could feel the tension coming from him and I hated that his face had turned into a hard mask.
    “What if he only killed Dragon because of Neferet’s awful sacrifice of Shadowfax?” I asked, trying to get Stark to see that there might be more than one right answer.
    “Zoey, that doesn’t make Dragon any less dead,” Stark said, dropping his arm from around me and making a small movement away from me.
    “Or Aurox any less dangerous,” Kalona said.
    “But perhaps less of a threat than we firstly believed,” Thanatos spoke reasonably. “If Neferet must perform a sacrificial ritual, one of this extent, each time she wants to control him, she will have to choose carefully and selectively about how and when she uses him.”
    “He saidit over and over that he chose a different future,” I insisted.
    “Z, that does
not
make Aurox a good guy,” Stark said, shaking his head at me.
    “You know, people can change,” Nicole suddenly spoke up. We all blinked at her. Obviously I wasn’t the only one of us who had forgotten she was there.
    I hated to agree with Nicole, so I just chewed my lip silently and worried.
    “Aurox is not a person, nor a guy
,
good or bad.” In the dark field house, Kalona’s deep voice seemed bomb-like, blasting against my already battered nerves. “Aurox is a Vessel. A creature created to be Neferet’s weapon. Could he have a conscience and the capability to change?” He shrugged. “We can only guess at that. And truly, does it matter? It makes no difference whether a spear has a conscience. What is important is who is wielding the weapon. Neferet, clearly, wields Aurox.”
    “How long have you known