Revealed

to get enough of it.
    She’d followed the echoes in the crone’s mind and begun to ask questions about the Tsi Sgili.
    What Neferet learned was her own story. A Tsi Sgili lived apart from her tribe. They were powerful and delighted in death. They fed on death. They could kill with their minds. That was the
ane li sgi
the old woman had thought of just before her death—death caused by the mind of a powerful being.
    The old woman’s Cherokee husband had inadvertently taught Neferet how to use her gift more fully. He had been less brave than his wife. Thinking to save himself he had opened himself to Neferet. Through the memories he willingly shared with her, Neferet learned much more about the Tsi Sgili. She fed from the tribal stories he had in his memory and discovered it was possible to slide into a mind and stop the beating of a heart while she fed on her victim’s thoughts, energy, power until he was drained dry. Draining the body of energy was so much more satisfying than simply draining it of blood. And so much more effective.
    As Neferet had grown in power, so too had her dreams of the winged immortal, Kalona. He made love to her as she slept. Not as her inadequate human or vampyre lovers had attempted. Kalona had taken possession of her body and used pain for pleasure, and pleasure for pain.
    All the while his whispers painted pictures of a future where they ruled as gods on earth and ushered in a new age of vampyre enlightenment. Where she was his Goddess and he her adoring, powerful, seductive Consort.
    “But first you must free me,”
he had said as his cold fire had deliciously scorched her body.
“Follow the song to Tulsa, and there you will complete the prophecy and find the means to free me!”
    Neferet had listened to him. Oh, but she had found so much more than the means to free him. She had discovered the means to free herself!
    She did not fully understand until she had taken possession of her own House of Night in Tulsa. There was power in that land that had resonated within her. It was there in 1927, and it had remained there after the turn of the twenty-first century.
    The red earth had drawn her with its ancient power, but it was the death of her first fledgling that had truly set her fate.
    Neferet had, of course, witnessed the death of many fledglings before she became High Priestess of Tulsa’s House of Night. She had often been summoned to soothe a dying fledgling’s passage with the gift of her touch. Neferet was revered for her ability to calm a fledgling who was rejecting the Change. Not one vampyre ever guessed that she took as much as she gave. The fledglings knew it, though. In their last moments, as Neferet held them in her arms, they knew she fed from their energy. Of course by that time they were beyond the ability to share that knowledge with anyone else.
    So when the young fourth former who had named herself Crystal began to cough out her life’s blood in the middle of Lenobia’s first equestrian class at the new Tulsa House of Night, Neferet was immediately called for—not just because she was their High Priestess, but because she had been known far and wide to be able to soothe the pain of the dying.
    “Move aside! Make room! Lenobia, take the fledglings to the field house and have Dragon Lankford bring Warriors and a gurney for the child,” Neferet had commanded as she’d rushed into the stables. Then she had turned her attention to Crystal. The fledgling had crumpled to the sand and dirt floor of the arena, convulsing and bleeding from her eyes, nose, mouth, and ears.
    Neferet paid no heed to the blood and mud. She’d pulled the fledgling into her arms, soothing with her magickal touch as she began to slide into Crystal’s mind and to absorb her waning life energy. Neferet had been prepared for the surge of power that came with the absorption of life force. She had not been prepared for the pure and delightful gift that came with the death of
her
first fledgling.
    In her den Neferet’s body trembled in the pleasure of reliving that powerful moment.
    Crystal had stared up at her through blood-soaked eyes. “No!” she’d coughed and gasped and managed to cry, “I’m not ready to die!”
    “Of course you are, my dear. It is time. I am here.”
    “Won’t leave me?” the child had sobbed.
    “
You
won’t leave
me,
” Neferet had whispered as she took Crystal’s mind.
    The fledgling’s life force cascaded into Neferet. So pure, so strong, so sweet,