21
Aphrodite
Aphrodite was pissed. Really, really pissed.
What fucking right did Zoey Redbird have to speak to her like that? Especially after all Aphrodite had done for her and for the entire damn Nerd Herd. It was bullshit. Not bullpoopie. BULLSHIT.
“This fucking snow. I’m so done with this snow. With this city. With this everything,” she mumbled to herself as she trudged to the front door of the school. “Goddess, I need a hot spiced wine and another Xanax.” She pulled on the door. It didn’t budge. She tried it again. Nothing. “Fucking locked? You have got to be shitting me. We never lock anything.” Just my damn luck. This is ridiculous. Aphrodite banged her fists against the door, but with the wind and the muffling effect of the falling snow, the sound didn’t travel at all. She peered in through the side window. “Hello! Anybody in there?”
Not a single person stirred.
“This sucks. This sucks so damn bad.” Aphrodite plowed her way around the side of the building through the calf-deep drifting snow to the little courtyard that held the fountain and outdoor seating for the fledgling dining hall. There she paused, weaving only a little, and stared in through the semi-frosted-over window. “Not one damn person in there, either. Shit. Alright. To the back entrance I go.”
She got to the entrance to the turret-like tower that housed the Council Chamber and the media center, and was also an entrance to the professors’ quarters.
“Whew. Finally. Home. Or, temp home until Darius and I get the hell out of this backwards, bumpkin city.” She put her hand on the doorknob, turned and pushed. It opened right away. Then it hit her. “Oh, for shit’s sake—the front door wasn’t locked. I was pulling instead of pushing.” She started to laugh and laugh. And laugh some more, until she was leaning against the arched wooden door frame, barely able to remain upright.
There was a flash of light from behind her as the wind stilled and the snow paused at the moment the sun lifted over the horizon. Its reflection caught in the long, rectangular windows that framed the hallway beside the door. Aphrodite blinked, wiped at her eyes, and stared.
Caged in the beveled glass, the rising sun created an aura of silver and gold around Nyx’s Temple, with the goddess, arms raised and cupping the crescent moon, seeming to glisten in the strange, changing light of a snowy dawn. Aphrodite stood still, superimposed on the reflection. As her eyes focused on her own face, the odd light lent a sepia affect to her image as if she were looking through a time camera.
And Aphrodite truly saw herself—saw what she was becoming.
Her thick blond hair was a mess, trailing dank strands across her face and over her shoulders. She was thin, yet she looked puffy—bloated. Her eyes were shadowed, their expression flat—almost dead. She looked hard and mean and much older than her twenty-one years yet so, so familiar.
With a trembling hand, Aphrodite touched her face and the familiar stranger in the reflection did so too.
“Mother?” she whispered. “I am my mother.”
The reflection began to sob brokenly. Aphrodite turned away from it, unable to look any longer—and found she was staring directly at Nyx’s Temple, alight with dawn and snow and the love of a benevolent goddess.
Still sobbing, Aphrodite stumbled across the courtyard to the door of the temple. She pushed it open and staggered inside. Instantly she was surrounded by silence and the peaceful scents of vanilla and lavender. Aphrodite didn’t pause. She made her way to the main altar of the temple where a gorgeous statue of Nyx stood as the focus of the room. All around it were tokens of love: brightly colored beads, crystal gemstones, handmade jewelry, candles, chalices filled with wine, bowls of honey, and fresh fruit.
Aphrodite crumpled at the feet of the goddess. She covered her face and wept inconsolably—wept for her dead father; wept for her hateful, absentee mother who would soon be dead; wept for her lost childhood; and finally, wept for herself. Scenes she hadn’t thought about for years flooded her memory.
She remembered when she was six and so glad to see her father come home from work that she’d climbed up on his lap, wrapped her arms around his neck, and kissed him sweetly on the mouth. Her mother had grabbed her by the arm and yanked her painfully from him, tossing her to the floor, saying she was too old to kiss men on the mouth—that only certain kinds of girls did that to certain kinds of men—said it like she thought her daughter was dirty and disgusting. After that day Aphrodite didn’t remember her father ever kissing her hello or goodbye again.
She didn’t try to remember her mother kissing her. She had no memory of that happening. Ever.
Aphrodite remembered when she was eight and had put on her first two-piece swimsuit. It’d been white and yellow, dotted with daisies. She’d run out to their pool where her mother had been sunning to show off her “big girl suit,” as young Aphrodite had called it. Her mother had given her a disdainful sideways glance and said, “If you’re old enough to wear a two-piece suit, you’re old enough to start holding in that gut of yours.”
She’d been eight. She hadn’t been fat, or even chubby. But from that day forward she’d worried about her weight and skipped meals.
Aphrodite remembered when she was eleven. A boy from down the street had stopped by to ask if she could play kickball with him and some of the other neighborhood kids. Her mother had said no and told their maid to close the door in his face. Aphrodite had cried. Her mother had slapped her. Hard. And called her a little slut.
She hadn’t known what slut meant until that day. She’d googled it, but had still not really understood. She’d never even kissed a boy—never even held a boy’s hand. But her mother had told her she was a slut. So, she believed it. How could she not?
Over and over the memories deluged her, and as they played across her mind’s eye, her tears dried. Her sobs quieted to hiccups. She lifted her face from the marble floor and sat, looking up at the serene goddess, and it was as if the scales fell from her eyes, her mind, her heart—and she was finally able to understand the truth.
“I’m not the problem.”
Aphrodite spoke to the statue of her goddess. At first her voice was trembly, choked with tears and emotion, but as she kept speaking, kept reasoning through a past that had kept her shackled to self-loathing, her words became clearer, stronger, and wiser. Much, much wiser.
“It’s not that I’m not good enough for my mother to love. No one—no child, no husband, no job—would ever be good enough for her because she wasn’t ever good enough for herself. Her life disappointed her over and over again, because it was broken. It was broken because she was broken. She is broken.” Aphrodite brushed her damp hair from her face and wiped her nose. “I can’t fix her. I can’t make her love me. I can only fix myself—love myself. And I have to let Mother go, and let the pain she created in my life go with her, or I will become her. I have to let her go.”
She put her face in her hands and began to weep again, but this time her tears were an outpouring of relief and release because it was at that moment Aphrodite LaFont truly began to live her own life.
“Daughter, I have been waiting to see if you would choose healing or self-destruction. I am infinitely pleased that you have chosen wisely.”
Aphrodite lifted her head from her hands to look up at the statue—which was no more. Instead of a marble replica of Nyx, the goddess herself stood before her, wrapped in gossamer silver and gold. Her dark hair cascaded around her waist, and over it was Nyx’s headdress of stars that glistened so brightly Aphrodite had to lower her eyes, which she did immediately, pressing her forehead to the cool marble in supplication.
“Forgive me, Nyx. I’ve been vain and selfish and cruel—to myself and to the people who love me. I don’t deserve it, but please forgive me.”
Aphrodite felt the goddess’ touch on her head and she was filled with love so complete, so unconditional, that she gasped aloud.
“I do not require your supplication, daughter. I understand you. I’ve understood you from the moment you were Marked. I was simply waiting for you to understand yourself. Rise, Prophetess! Behold your future!”
At Nyx’s command a bolt of pain splintered Aphrodite’s forehead sending shards of white-hot agony across her face. But in the span of a breath, the pain was gone.
Aphrodite lifted her head to see the goddess smiling down on her. Nyx made a graceful, sweeping motion with her hand, and a silver-framed mirror appeared before her, catching Aphrodite’s reflection. Feeling as if she was moving through a fantastical dream, Aphrodite lifted her hand. With trembling fingers she watched her reflection trace the incredibly beautiful tattoo pattern of exploding blue and red fireworks that framed her eyes in a perfect mask.
“W-what is this? I don’t understand.” Her voice trembled with so much emotion she could hardly speak.
“This is the part of my prophetic gift to you that had to wait until you were wise enough to wield it.”
“Forgive me, Nyx, but I still don’t understand.”
“Daughter, you have no need to continue to ask for my forgiveness. You have no way of understanding without my explanation.”
Aphrodite pulled her gaze from her incredibly changed reflection to look into the eyes of her goddess. “What am I?”
Nyx’s smile was sunlight and moonlight married in one harmonious blaze of joy. “Just as Zoey Redbird bridges two worlds—the ancient one of the first of my children, and today’s hectic, mad, modern world—so, too, do you bridge worlds.” The goddess flicked her wrist and the mirror disappeared.
“Worlds? You mean the human and the vampyre worlds?”
“No, daughter. I mean the worlds of my red and blue Marked children. From the moment you sacrificed a piece of your humanity to save Stevie Rae and my children Marked in red, you have been on this path. I hoped that you would be strong enough to heal your past and wise enough to seek a new future—my hope has come to fruition today.”
“So, I’m a bridge?” she said, sounding more like herself.
Nyx laughed and the stars in her headdress twinkled with impossible brilliance. “Yes, but you are also truly a vampyre—fully Changed.”
Aphrodite pressed her hand against her mouth. She felt so filled with happiness that she thought she might explode. The goddess waited with seemingly infinite patience while she sifted through her emotions, savoring a sense of peace and fulfillment that she had never before known. Finally, when she was able to speak again, she lifted her face to her goddess once more.
“Thank you. Those two words aren’t enough, but they are all I have. Thank you, Nyx. I won’t let you down. I won’t be my mother, and I won’t let her hurt me anymore.”
“I know you won’t, Daughter. But do you not wish to know the extent of your prophetess gifts?”
“There’s more than this gorgeous Mark and those visions I get?” Aphrodite gave the goddess a cheeky grin. “Please tell me you took away the bloody tears, pain, and blindness that goes with them.”
“No, Daughter. I cannot tell you that, for with every gift comes a price, and the price for your visions is pain. There is a price for your new gift, too, though I believe you will find it more and less painful than your visions.”
“Now I’m really confused,” she said.
“Then I shall clarify. In these modern worlds where blue and red vampyres collide, I require a Prophetess of Judgment—someone whose past has taught them that not everything that is beautiful is good—and not everything that is plain is bad, for darkness does not always equate to evil, just as light does not always bring good.”
Aphrodite nodded. “My mother and Neferet are beautiful, and both are filled with Darkness. The black bull could easily be seen as a bad guy, but really he is pure love, pure Light. I get it. But what does that have to do with me and with judgment?”
“I do not like to interfere in the life choices of my children because I believe that free will defines humanity. Take free will away, and humans become a race of puppets who will never evolve to find their fullest potential. And yet the events surrounding Kalona’s fall and Neferet’s curse shook me to my core. I realized I was wrong. There are times when divine intervention is not just necessary, but merciful—especially when worlds collide, as they are doing at this moment. You, my wise, witty, irreverent Daughter, are my divine intervention.”
“You know about the zombie apocalypse from the other House of Night world?” Aphrodite shook her head. “What am I saying? You’re our goddess. Of course you know about it. But now I’m scared and confused.”
“Then I shall reassure you and explain. I have granted you the gift of humanity and second chances. There are times when someone who seems unredeemable becomes worthy of an opportunity for redemption. I have given you the power to gift humanity to those who have lost their own so that they might have a second chance.”
Aphrodite gaped at the goddess and blurted, “I don’t want that power!”
“And that, mixed with your past, is why I have chosen you to be my first Prophetess of Judgment. No one worthy would want this power.”
“But how will I know if someone deserves a second chance?”
“You will know.”
“How?” The word came out as a squeak and Aphrodite cleared her throat before continuing. “I’m not really that smart, and I screw up and hurt people’s feelings. Constantly, actually. Even when I don’t mean to.”
“Yes, you are very human. That is part of what I appreciate about you. And you speak your mind clearly with very little niceties. I find that essential in a prophetess. You have a unique wisdom that I appreciate. Depend on that wisdom and depend on your heart.”
“My heart?”
“When you know it here,” the goddess touched Aphrodite’s forehead gently. “As well as here,” her hand rested briefly on Aphrodite’s breast, over her heart. “Then the answer you seek will be the correct one.”
“Okay, I’ll try. I’m not sure how good I’ll be at this, and I’m pretty sure I’m going to screw things up sometimes, but I will try. I give you my promise.”
“I shall keep your promise, Prophetess.”
“You said every gift comes with a price. What’s the price I pay for this gift?”
“Each time you give someone a second chance, you give away a piece of your gift of judgment. You’ll see it happen, for part of your Mark will fade until finally, one day, it will disappear completely leaving you as you were before.”
“Before?”
“Before you were Marked at all. When your tattoo is gone, so too will your term as my prophetess be gone, and you may live out the rest of your life as a human mortal, revered and loved by every House of Night in this world and any other you choose to touch until you die peacefully, surrounded by your children and loved ones, and you return to me.”
Aphrodite felt hot and cold at once. “Children?”
“Many—and grandchildren as well as great grandchildren. You will be beloved by generations of your blood. Your life will be so filled with love and Light and laughter that it will drown out the sorrow of your past. So I have spoken—so shall it be.”
Aphrodite brushed the fresh tears from her cheeks. “I can save Other Jack.”
“You can. You also can save every red fledgling and vampyre who crossed into this world. But, will you, Prophetess? Are they worthy of a second chance?”
She stared at the goddess, her mind whirring. “I—I don’t know. How do I know if they’re worthy? The only one of them I know is Other Jack, and I don’t really know him well. Holy shit, I have no idea what to do!” Then she shook herself and amended, “Sorry about that. I don’t sound very prophetess-ey.”
“Think with your mind and feel with your heart.”
“Well, I know Other Jack and the rest of them are from a crappy world where Neferet’s managed to start a war. A world with no Stevie Rae or Zoey, so there was no one to basically manipulate me into giving my humanity up so that the red fledglings and vamps could choose for themselves whether they followed Light or …” her words faded as her heart agreed with her mind. “I know what to do.”
“What is your decision, Daughter?”
“They never had a choice, so they all deserve a second chance.”
“Does it matter to you how much of your gift you will lose by saving all of them?”
Aphrodite drew a deep breath and let it out slowly. “No. I don’t think I can let it matter. It’s not about me. It’s about them.” She hesitated, and then added, “How much of it will I lose?”
The Goddess answered her question with a question. “And what of your mother? Will you gift her with a second chance?”
Aphrodite jerked back in shock. “My mother? What does this have to do with her? She’s not a red or blue vampyre.”
“Your gift isn’t limited to fledglings and vampyres—your gift is for humanity, and you are all humans, though some of you would like to debate that.”
Aphrodite stood and began to pace back and forth, back and forth in front of the Goddess. She wrapped her arms around herself, as if to keep herself from breaking. Finally, she stopped and faced Nyx. Fresh tears flowed down her face and her voice was filled with despair. “My heart and mind say the same thing. My mother doesn’t deserve a second chance.”
Nyx stepped from the dais and went to Aphrodite. Gently, the Goddess took the young prophetess into her arms and held her close while she sobbed. Nyx stroked her hair and murmured wordless comfort until Aphrodite’s tears dried.
“Thank you,” Aphrodite said, stepping from Nyx’s embrace. “I’m better now. And my answer is still the same. My mother does not deserve another chance. My heart and mind told me that. They also told me that I can’t fix her, and that I have to let her go. So, that’s what I’m doing.”
“You are wise. Frances LaFont has been given many chances for redemption during her life. Selfishness and self-loathing prevented her from taking them. But no child should be made to choose whether their parent deserves redemption. My final gift to you, Prophetess, is twofold. The humanity will be restored to the red fledglings and vampyres from the other world. That gift comes from me. You will not pay a price for it. I also gift your mother with a second chance. So mote it be!”
The Goddess waved her hand, causing a ripple in the air around them that reminded Aphrodite of a stone being thrown into a still pool of clear water. Reality pressed against her, shifting, changing … making it difficult for her to breathe.
Then, just as suddenly as it had begun, the strange shift in reality lifted. Aphrodite gasped and was able to draw breath again.
“Is that it? Is it done?”
“It is, Daughter. I am proud of you, and my pride is truly of a mother for a favorite child. And now I wish you merry meet, merry part, and that we merry meet again.” Nyx’s form faded until only her headdress of stars was all that remained, and then it, too, faded in a glittering rain of diamond sparks.
“I am worth a mother’s love,” Aphrodite whispered.
From the air around her rang the Goddess’ loving words. “Of course you are, my sweet, wise daughter. And may you always blessed be.”