Tempted

“I’ll get you more in a second. Lie back first and put this over your eyes.”
    Aphrodite leaned back against the propped-up pillow. She blinked blindly up at me. She looked scarily horrible. Her eyes were completely bloody and looked bizarre and ghostly framed by her too-white face.
    “I can see the outline of you, just a little,” she said faintly. “But you’re all red, like you’re bleeding.” Aphrodite finished on a hiccupy sob.
    “I’m not bleeding; I’m fine. This happened before, remember? And you were okay after you closed your eyes and rested for a while.”
    “I remember. I just don’t remember it being this bad.”
    She closed her eyes. I folded the towel and placed it gently across them. Then I lied, “It was this bad last time, too.”
    Her hands fluttered by the towel for a second before they dropped to her sides. I went back to the sink and filled up the glass again. Watching her reflection in the mirror I said, “Was the vision terrible?”
    I saw her lips quiver. She drew a long, shaky breath. “Yes.”
    I came back to the bed. “Do you want more water?”
    She nodded. “I feel like I’ve just run a marathon through a blazing desert—not that I ever would. All that sweating is so unattractive.”
    Glad she was sounding more like herself, I smiled and guided her hand to the glass of water again. Then I sat on my bed facing her and waited.
    “I can feel you looking at me,” she said.
    “Sorry. I thought I was being patient by not saying anything.” I paused. “Do you want me to go get Darius? Or maybe Damien? Or both of them?”
    “No!” Aphrodite said quickly. I saw her swallow a couple of times, and then, in a calmer voice, she continued. “Don’t go anywhere for a little while, okay? I don’t want to be alone right now—not when I can’t see.”
    “Okay. I won’t go anywhere. You want to tell me about the vision?”
    “Not particularly, but I suppose I have to. I saw seven vampyres. They looked important—powerful, all obviously High Priestesses. They were in a seriously gorgeous place. Definitely old money and none of that nouveau riche crap that tends to decorate with questionable taste.” I rolled my eyes at her, which she, sadly, couldn’t see. “At first I didn’t even know it was a vision. I thought it was a dream. I was watching these vamps sitting in chairs that looked like thrones and waiting for something freakily dreamish to happen, like they all turn into Justin Timberlake, jump up, and start stripping for me and singing about bringing sexy back.”
    “Huh,” I said. “Interesting dream. He is totally dorkishly hot, even though he’s getting old.”
    “Oh, give it a rest. You already have way too many boys to even dream about another one. Leave Justin to me. So, anyway, they didn’t turn into Justin, nor did they strip. I was just wondering what was going on when it became mega-obvious I was having a vision because Neferet walked in.”
    “Neferet!”
    “Yeah. Kalona was with her. She did all the talking, but the vamps weren’t watching her. They couldn’t stop gawking at Kalona.”
    I didn’t say so, but I knew how they felt.
    “Neferet was saying something about accepting the changes she and Erebus brought, moving everything, bringing old ways back . . . blah . . . blah . . .”
    “Erebus!” I interrupted her blah-blahing. “She’s still claiming Kalona is Erebus?”
    “Yeah, and she was also calling herself Nyx Incarnate, which she shortened to just Nyx, but I didn’t catch everything she was saying because it was about then that I started to burn up.”
    “Burn up? Like you caught on fire?”
    “Well, it wasn’t
me
exactly. It was some of the vamps. It was weird—one of the weirdest visions I’ve ever had, actually. One part of me was watching Neferet talking to the seven vamps, and at the same time another part of me was leaving the room, one by one, with them. I could feel that not all of them believed what Neferet was saying, and it was those vamps I stayed with. Until they burned.”
    “Do you mean they just caught on fire?”
    “Yeah, but it was real strange. One second I could tell that they were thinking negative things about Neferet, and the next they were on fire, but when they burned they were in the middle of a field. And it wasn’t just them burning.” Aphrodite paused and drained the rest of the glass of water. “Lots of other people burned with them—humans, vamps, and fledglings. All of them were