The instant Nick appeared in his living room, he was violently lifted off his feet and slammed so hard onto the wood floor that it knocked the breath out of him. Flat on his back, he moaned out loud while his ears rang violently. Ah, dang, it hurt! All he could do was choke and wheeze. It felt like he’d been mowed down by an eighteen-wheeler traveling faster than the speed of sound.
Or tackled by Bubba for prematurely interrupting an episode of Oprah.
Someone, grab me an inhaler and shove it in my mouth. Yeah, okay, he wasn’t asthmatic, but he was willing to learn and at this point, he definitely felt that bronchial burn.
“Oh no! Akri-Nicky! You okay? The Simi didn’t know it was her favorite blue-eyed demon boy when she hit him so hard so as to protect his precious akra-mama. Oh no!” Simi leaned over him with her red-and-black pigtails framing her adorable face as she slapped at his cheeks to revive him. “You still living and breathing and not broken? ’Cause if you not, can the Simi eat your dead, meaty remains? Please, please, please? Maybe some of them bones, too, ’cause the marrow can be quite tasty in its own right.”
Now, to a normal person, that might seem like an odd request. But to those a little behind on the schematics, there really wasn’t anything normal about Nick’s life or those in it. Being a Charonte demon, Simi had a fondness for human meat, but luckily for humanity, she wasn’t allowed to chow down on it without express permission of either the donor or her father. Which her main akri tended not to give her.
Thank goodness for that.
Nick stared up into her bright, friendly eyes. For all her bloodthirsty cravings, she was quite adorable, and loyal to a scary fault. Like a fluffy killer attack bunny.
Dressed in a short black-and-white skull tank dress, she wore a rose-lace hoodie over it. Her red-and-black-striped leggings matched her hair and she had on a pair of black and red floral Doc Martens.
“Sadly for you, I think I’m going to live, Simi,” he choked out with a wheeze. “You can stop slapping me now. I’ve already lost enough sense. Can’t afford to lose any more brain cells. I really really need my last three before I forget how to spell my name. It’s hard enough to pronounce.”
“Well, poo.” She sat back with an adorable pout. “Not poo that you’ll live, ’cause the Simi would probably miss you if you died, but poo that I’ll miss all that good old salty boy meat.” She poked at his ribs. “Though we needs be fattening you up some to make you really good eats. Hmmm.” She licked her lips as if imagining what he’d taste like basted in barbecue sauce—Simi’s prime condiment of choice.
Yeah. Okay. Not wanting to think about that, Nick pushed himself up to face Xev with a grimace. “Y’all could have warned me about the attack Simi you had on door duty.”
Xev shrugged nonchalantly. “I wasn’t completely sure it was you. Besides, she was a lot more gentle in her attack on you than I’d have been.” He swept a bitterly amused glance over Nick’s body. “With her, you’re still in one piece. So stop whining like a baby before I have Simi burp you.”
Crossing his arms over his chest, Xev inclined his head toward the bedroom. “Kody’s with your mother, who’s unconscious for some unknown reason. No matter what we try, we can’t seem to get Cherise to wake up again.”
“Could it be Tiamat? I saw her just before I came here.”
Xev went so still that for a moment, Nick thought everything had frozen again.
Until Xev blinked ever so slowly. “Nyria?”
Her features completely ashen, Kody came out of the room. “What did you call me?”
He ignored her question. “Tiamat is free.”
The color drained from her face, too. “What?” She looked to Nick for confirmation. “Are you sure?”
Nick nodded. “She was at Caleb’s. She thought I’d summoned her.”
“Did you?”
Should he be offended by the way she asked that? A part of him thought so, given that only an outright moron would do something that stupid. And while he’d been known to pull some award-winning acts of dumb, he’d never been quite that asleep at the wheel.
At least, not yet, that he knew of.
“I don’t make it a habit of summoning gods I don’t know, no offense. Especially not one I’ve never heard of before. I don’t even play those video games after what happened with Madaug. How slow on the uptake do I look, and don’t answer that. I have a very fragile male ego where you’re concerned.” Nick scowled as Xev carried his unconscious mother out of the bedroom and placed her on the couch, between them. “What are you doing, champ?”
“I am not letting her out of our sight. I will not be blamed for her harm, and I will allow no harm to come to her while she’s in my custody.” Xev placed a small round pillow beneath her head, then covered her with the pink crocheted blanket she kept tossed over the back of the couch, and took up a post at her feet, facing her with his right hand on her leg.
Okie-dokie, he was just a little paranoid.
And in that moment, the full weight of Xev’s true trauma hit Nick. The ancient ex-god was in the middle of an all-out panic attack. A bad one, too, by the looks of it. Kind of like Nick whenever his chemistry teacher sprang a pop quiz on him at school.
“Xev?”
He didn’t hear him. His breathing labored, he wasn’t really with them. Instead, he appeared to be in a waking nightmare of some kind.
Nick exchanged a concerned look with Kody before he closed the distance between him and Xev. “Xevikan!” Still, he didn’t respond as he kept looking around as if seeking an unseen attacker.
Or several thousand of them.
Pulling Xev’s hand from his mother’s leg, Nick forced him to take a step back. “Daraxerxes!” Gah, he hoped he pronounced that name right.
Only then did Xev focus on Nick’s face. But he still wasn’t completely recovered.
“They’re coming.” His voice was firm and intense. “We have to secure the children and women. They’ll hit where we’re weakest. You stay here with the others. I have to get to Lil and warn her. She’ll be their first target. If they reach her first, they can neutralize Caleb’s forces and crash the gates.”
Nick winced at the anguish in his voice. Lil would have been Caleb’s wife. Lilliana. The one Caleb blamed Xev for allowing to die. But from those words and the way Xev was acting, it didn’t sound like Xev had betrayed him and led the enemies inside the gate to take them out. More like he’d done his best to keep her safe.
“Xevikan!” he tried again.
Flinching, Xev turned as one of the symbols on the wall lit up. Recognition widened his eyes before they darkened with the bitterest hatred. He hissed like a cat and backed away from it.
Kody approached him slowly. “Xev?” Gingerly, she touched his chest. “Are you with us?”
His breathing still labored, he covered her hand with his and held it as if she were as precious to him as she was to Nick. A tic started in his jaw before he gave a slow nod. “You feel that?”
“Feel what?” Kody asked.
He looked to Simi. “Charonte?”
“Cursed god?” she shot back in irritation.
Xev rolled his eyes before he went to the door to take a defensive position behind the hinges. He manifested fireballs around his hands as someone knocked on it.
Nick scowled. “You know, X, from my experience, the bad guys don’t usually knock.”
A snide smile curved his lips. “They do when their brand of evil has to be invited in in order to enter.”
And now his gut was back to producing diamonds. Xev had a very valid point with that. There were Daimons and certain other entities who definitely required specific invitations into domiciles to wreak havoc and harm. Nick really wished he lived a life where he didn’t have to know that.
Great. Just great. More nightmares to worry about.
Hoping for the best, Nick went to the peephole to glance out, then passed a droll stare to Xev. “Put away your paranoia. It’s just my godmother. No doubt, the police contacted her about the attack on my mom, and she wanted to check on us. She’s barely five feet tall, and ninety pounds soaking wet. I don’t think we have anything to fear. And she’s probably terrified. Last thing she needs is for you to give her a heart attack.”
Unlocking the door, he opened it and pulled the tiny Creole midwife who’d helped bring him into the world into his arms for a tight hug. “Hey, Aunt Mennie.”
She squeezed him back while her sisterlocks tickled his nose. “Hey, Boo. I hope you don’t mind. But given all the weirdness I wanted to come by and check on you and your…” Her voice trailed off as her gaze went past his shoulder to Xev. Instantly bug-eyed, she gasped audibly.
Not thinking anything about her reaction, since most people tended to greet Xev like a cross between a leper and Bigfoot’s bigger and nastier older brother who was jacked up on steroids, Nick shut the door. “Menyara, this is—”
“We know each other, don’t we, Cam?” Xev’s voice was so cold, they could have used it to flash-freeze helium popsicles on the Pontchartrain Bridge in August.
Menyara staggered back and would have fallen had Nick not been there to catch her.
“Mennie? Are you all right?”
“What have you done, Nick?” she breathed in a horrified tone as she continued to stare at Xev as if he was the devil incarnate. “What have you done?” she repeated.
Xev glared at her. “Interesting that you would blame him, when this all started with you and your siblings.”
Shaking her head, Menyara dragged her gaze to each of them in turn—Xev, Simi, Kody, Cherise, and Nick—before she closed her eyes. “Who unlocked Nick’s powers? For the love of the Source, why would you do such a thing? Have you any idea what you’ve done?”
Sheepish, Kody bit her lip before she explained their actions. “We had no choice. Nick’s ousia had been split from his body by his enemies who wanted to weaken him enough to kill him. It was the only way to save him and return him to this dimension and save his life. Had we not moved fast, he’d be dead now.”
Menyara let out a weary sigh as she sat down on the armchair and hung her head in her hands. “You should have come to me before you acted.”
“I tried. I really did.” Kody started forward, but Xev stopped her.
When he spoke again, his tone was like that of a patient parent to a beloved child. “This isn’t on you, little one. This started long before you were sent here to kill Nick. Long before you were recruited to your cause. Don’t let her put her sins on your innocent shoulders.”
His eyes flashing bright red, Xev curled a furious lip as he neared Menyara. “How could you do such a thing to them? Have you learned nothing over the centuries about tampering with human fate and free will? About playing with lives when you should leave well enough alone?”
Looking up, Menyara met his gaze without flinching. “We had no choice. You’ve no idea how powerful Adarian had grown. How incredibly dangerous he was to everyone and everything he came into contact with.”
“And whose fault was that?”
She ignored his question. “We couldn’t control him anymore. He’d been unleashed on this world. An unstoppable monster. We had no other way of even finding him. Everything we tried, failed. He was becoming such a threat that at any moment, he could have come for us and won. Torn out our throats and laughed about it as he drank our blood from his own fists. It was our only hope of fighting him. The only way we could think to even slow him down long enough to put him back in chains.”
“By making his powers stronger? Who thought that was a good idea?”
“It was meant to negate his powers.”
Xev scoffed angrily. “You had no right to involve an innocent life without telling her what you were doing! Without asking her permission!” He paced the floor like a caged beast looking for a way to attack its taunter, who in this case appeared to be Menyara.
“We had every right to do whatever it took to protect all the innocents of this world. One sacrifice for millions of others. It was an equitable exchange.”
Still, Xev denied her logic and clung to his steadfast argument. “It wasn’t your place to make that call.”
She ignored his fury. “Mankind couldn’t stand against the ušumgallu centuries ago when they knew about them and were prepared to fight them. Now … they’re completely helpless against the Malachai and his allies. They don’t even know of them. Never mind raise an army to fight him, or use magic and the elements to bind him! What would you have had us do? Stand aside and watch all of you mow the humans down for your sick pleasure?”
Slack-jawed, Xev froze in response to her question as if he’d just realized something. His breathing labored, he met Menyara’s furious glower. “Her father isn’t Verlyn. He can’t be. I would have sensed it instantly were we siblings.”
“No. Azura keeps him sterile for fear he will father a child who can kill or enslave her.”
“Rezar?”
“Has been missing for centuries. No one knows what happened to him.”
Absolute horror washed over his face as he turned toward Nick. He looked at him as if he’d never seen him before. As if he was looking at him through new eyes.
His gaze fell to Nick’s mother and for a moment, Nick thought Xev might actually kill Menyara.
Or toss his cookies.
“You chose a warrior of light for the task.” It was a flat, whispered statement, not a question.
“There was no one else. We needed a father born directly from the Kalosum Source powers. He was the closest to them who could still father a daughter for the cause.”
Biting his lip, Xev winced. “They’re people, not disposable pawns for your selfish games, Cam.”
She glared at him. “No one knows that better than I. Everything I’ve ever done was for the protection of others. For the protection and benefit, and my love of this world, and all those who dwell in it. I was the one who stayed here in this hole, to watch over and protect. To be here every step of the way. For them all.”
And still Xev’s gaze condemned her for her actions. “Does he even know he’s a father?”
“Of course not. It would have been a disaster on multiple levels had he ever learned the truth. His daughter was conceived, delivered, and raised under the guise of a completely normal, orphaned human, and appears so to all. No one has ever suspected that she is more than she seems. She never even knew she was an adopted orphan. For all she knows, her adoptive parents are the ones who birthed her.”
Xev laughed bitterly. “And yet you did it without his knowledge or consent. You broke every supreme law we once lived by. Used him and her mother. Did the mother ever know? Did any of them?”
“No. We couldn’t afford for them to have any idea. They could have tipped off Adarian if they had. The mother met him one time … in a bar, and took him home. As far as she knew, he was a human, just passing through her town for the night.”
He cursed her under his breath. “How very typical of you all. You put them in the line of fire without warning or defense. Without full knowledge or understanding. How could you?”
Nick whistled, interrupting them. “Hello? Who here has the faintest clue what they’re talking about?”
Not even Simi held her hand up, which said it all. Simi usually knew everything.
But for once, she simply shrugged.
Nick turned his attention back to the only two who did.
Menyara and Xev.
“All right. In that case, could one of you catch the room up? Please? Especially since this seems to be my life and family you’re discussing? And I have a really bad feeling about this?”
“You should.” Xev crossed his arms over his chest as he continued to glare at Menyara. “Your conception and birth were no accident, Nick. Your entire existence was a trap set for your father.”
That had better be a joke. “Excuse me?”
Nodding slowly, Xev turned to face him. “It’s what makes you so powerful and dangerous, and sets you apart from all the Malachais who’ve come before you. You’re not just born of the Mavromino. Like the very first Malachai who started this, you, too, through your mother, carry the blood of a Sephiroth warrior.”
Those words hit Nick like a fist to his gut. “Excuse me?”
Kody sucked her breath in audibly as Simi gaped so wide, she exposed her fangs.
“It’s what gives us hope for him.” Menyara stood to face Nick. Wringing her hands, she swallowed hard. “But it wasn’t supposed to happen like it did. None of it.”
Fret knitted her brow as Menyara tried to explain it to them. “You have to understand, child. We never meant to hurt you or your mother. That wasn’t our intent. We only meant to curb Adarian’s powers. To leash his anger and fulfill a prophecy that was given to us long ago.”
Stunned breathless, Nick exchanged a frown with Simi as he took Kody’s hand. Just knowing she was there kept him anchored and grounded as he struggled to come to terms with what Menyara was trying to tell him. Part of him had always suspected this truth, but the other part was angry and hurt. “I’m so confused.”
“The Simi bewildered, too. I done gots lost around the block a whiles ago.”
Xev laughed bitterly as he spread his arms out and braced his hands on the couch to lean against it. His eyes turned a bright, flaming red as they blazed hot with his own anger and hatred. “It’s what they’ve done to us since the dawn of time, Nick. We who are born of darkness are creatures of great power. Tiamat. Braith. Caleb. Me. You. Your father. The list goes on infīnitās. It is hatred, pain, bitterness, and rage that feeds our strength. Adversity is the stone on which we hone our swords for battle. What breaks lesser beings and sends them sniveling to their graves fuels us to victory. The cruelty of others doesn’t faze us even a little. It’s all we know. It is why we are invincible. Why they,” he jerked his chin toward Menyara, “can’t stand toe-to-toe in battle with us. And they know it. So they break us with the one thing we have no defense against.” His gaze went to Kody and then to their locked hands.
Nick frowned. “I don’t understand.”
Xev swallowed hard before he spoke again. “Because of who we are and how we are born and raised, we tell ourselves that we need nothing. We want nothing. We are nothing. That we are despised creatures of darkness. And that’s okay by us. We don’t need or want the approval or acceptance of them.” His gaze fell to the floor at Kody’s feet. “But there is one thing that will always draw us out against our will, and make us weak.”
“The light,” Kody breathed.
He gave a subtle nod. “No one will ever take us in battle. We know how to fight against all odds. How to stand strong in any maelstrom. We know how to deal with insults. Cruelty. And viciousness. That is and will always be our mother’s milk.”
Xev gestured toward Nick’s unconscious mother. “Sadly, it’s unexpected kindness that disarms us. A simple smile that throws us completely off guard. Innocent love that renders us defenseless and sends us to our knees. That’s how they cripple and defeat us. Not with war. But with friendship.”
Kody shook her head. “Love is never a weakness.”
He laughed cruelly. “Your own mother would be the first to violently disagree with that statement, Nyria.” His gaze went to Nick. “It’s what killed your father, Malachai. It’s what enslaved me and Caleb to our enemies, and it’s what will kill us all in the end.”
Menyara snorted rudely. “How dare you speak to them of love when you know nothing of it.”
He twisted his lips into the cruel mockery of a smile. “Yes, I had all of you to thank for that, didn’t I, Cam? You were all so kind and understanding of me when I was a boy, needing comfort and finding only the coldness of your rebuffs at best … the backs of your hands at worst. Your harsh brutality tutored me well on the subject, until all I knew was the hatred that filled me full from tip to root.”
Guilt darkened her eyes before she looked away from Xev. “How could we ever trust you? You were suckled by evil incarnate.”
“Actually, my wet nurse was a she-fox warrior demon, who took pity on me when no one else would. Or so I’m told. My mother couldn’t be bothered with my needs or feeding, as she couldn’t have cared less if I lived or died once my father told her I should be left out to the elements, for he, a shining bastion of all-good and light, had no intention of ever claiming me as his son.”
He met Nick’s gaze. “By the way, I lied earlier when I told you why I fought for the side I did. It wasn’t to anger my mother. I truly never cared what she thought of me, one way or another. I betrayed the Malachai and my mother, and fought for the Kalosum, solely to keep faith with my wife. She was the only being I would never in my life disappoint. The only one I would bleed or die for.”
Menyara sneered at him. “You’re lying! You never had a wife.”
But the anguish in his red-tinged, rust-colored eyes said that Xev spoke from his heart. No, that wasn’t a lie. Even though Xev had told Nick himself that he’d never known love, Nick knew that look. Every instinct he possessed told him that Xev was being honest with him, right now. That was the same exact light Caleb had in his eyes whenever he spoke of his Lilliana.
The same expression Kyrian had with Theone. Bubba with Melissa.
That was true love. The kind people wrote sonnets and songs about. The kind that broke your heart and left it shattered for eternity.
“What was her name?” Nick asked.
Xev didn’t pause or hesitate with his answer. And when he spoke, his voice softened with reverence, adding further proof that he was telling the truth. “Myone.”
Menyara shot to her feet. “Liar! Myone would have never had anything to do with one such as you! She was one of the purest souls I’ve ever known.” Her anger made Nick wonder who Myone was, but this wasn’t the time to ask.
Xev met Menyara’s gaze without flinching or backing down. “Do not dishonor her memory by speaking her name with your tainted tongue when you know nothing of her true beauty or character! You’re just as delusional and hypocritical as my father. You think because you are born of light that you’re somehow better and kinder than those who aren’t, but you’re not. It merely makes you more sanctimonious in your cruelty. Makes you feel entitled in your wrongful actions against others. But you’re no better than my mother. If anything, you’re worse, because you think your viciousness is justified against us.”
He drew a ragged breath, and turned back toward Simi, Kody, and Nick. “And that’s why my wife and I had to keep our marriage a secret. Why we had to deny we ever had any kind of relationship at all, and why I had to let her go after only six months, to protect her from my enemies, including my own mother and father, who would have killed her to get back at me. They would never have left us in peace, never allowed her to retain her place of honor. Even though she would have never done anything to betray the Kalosum. None of them would have believed it. I couldn’t afford for anyone to know that she held my heart. That I even had one. Good or bad. Light or dark. It mattered not. Had anyone ever learned the truth, we would have been destroyed. Just as Caleb was for daring to hope for a better life with his Lilliana. Just as Adarian was for loving you and your mother. For hoping Cherise could somehow see something more in him besides the monster he’d been born. Like us, he was a pathetic moth dragged against his will to a sweet, vibrant light he couldn’t resist or understand. But one he knew he needed in order to live and feel warm.”
His gaze dropped to where Nick’s hand was wrapped around Kody’s. “They beguile us so with their precious ways. And for a moment’s worth of warmth in a lifetime of coldness, we are burned and extinguished. Pathetic creatures from our cradles to our graves.” He laughed bitterly. “We are ever helpless against them.”
For a full minute, Nick couldn’t breathe as those bitter, heartfelt words and their implication hit him hard. Could it possibly be true?
Could his mother truly be that innocent orphan who’d been conceived and sent by the Kalosum for no other purpose than to trap his father?
“Mennie? Tell me you didn’t do that to my mom.”
Closing her eyes, she turned her face away from him, letting him know that Xev was telling him the truth.
Shattered by the revelations, Nick stepped away from Kody and Simi to approach the woman who’d helped bring him into this world. A woman he’d thought he could always trust. One who’d always promised him that she would never lie or be dishonest.
Not for anything.
When everyone else had turned their back on him and his mom, Menyara had always been there for them. She’d said it was because taking them in like family and helping them was the right thing to do. That she couldn’t turn her back on them like everyone else and let them suffer. Not when they needed help.
But she’d left out some seriously vital details.
Sick to his stomach, Nick was quickly learning that Livia had been right. Everyone in his life had lied badly to him. Menyara had kept much, much more from him than just the secret of his father and birth.
She’d hidden her real identity from them. Her real role in both their lives.
His gaze went to his mother and he felt as sick as Caleb had been at school.
How could Menyara do this to her? His mother had no idea she was adopted and had no idea who her real parents were. For that matter, he didn’t really know, other than her father was a Sephiroth. That knowledge would kill her. She’d never, ever believe him if he tried to tell her.
His head reeling, he scowled at Menyara. “Who’s my real grandmother?”
“It doesn’t matter. She died three days after she gave your mother up for adoption, in a car wreck. As did your real grandfather, supposedly in another wreck before the birth. It’s why the Gautiers never told her she was adopted. Why bother? With both birth parents dead, there was no reason to ever let Cherise know the truth. For all intents and purposes, the Gautiers are your grandparents. That’s all you and your mother ever need to know. The truth would only hurt her.”
Maybe, but he was leaning toward Xev with this. His mother had a right to know. And it explained why her parents had been so quick to toss her out when she’d become pregnant as a teenager. The fact that her parents had thrown her away like garbage had played a number on his mother’s head. If she knew they weren’t really her birth parents, that might make this better.
But then again, it might not. If she found out the truth, she’d have two sets of parents who’d given her up. That might be a lot worse in her mind.
Yeah, life was ever complicated. Ambrose had taught him that. And people didn’t always react the way you expected them to. As Acheron so often said, emotions didn’t have brains.
And right now, his emotions were all over the place and were definitely not thinking clearly as he tried to make sense of all this.
Which led him back to one other thing he wanted to clarify while Menyara felt the need to come clean with her lies. “Are you really the goddess Cam?”
She nodded.
Cam had been one of the original six primal gods who’d started the first great war of the immortals. A war that had almost ended the world and mankind. She and her siblings had been the ones who’d called for Nick’s race to be put down like rabid dogs. All except his one ancestor.
One cursed Malachai.
One cursed Sephiroth.
Tied together for eternity and doomed to fight one last battle that would eventually end the world.
Now, if what Xev said was true, Mennie had used that last Sephiroth to impregnate Nick’s grandmother and birth his own mother as a trap for his father, knowing his father wouldn’t be able to resist her. Cherise was the yin to Adarian’s yang. An innocent human with the blood of a Sephiroth. A human who had no knowledge of the inhuman creatures who shared this world with mankind.
Unable to believe it, Nick glanced from Menyara to his mother. “You set my mother up?”
“I’m so sorry, Nicholas.”
Stunned, he struggled to breathe as he again had that feeling of being out of sync with time. Of everything slowing down. “Is that why she’s so pure of heart? So incorruptible and unwilling to believe in anything supernatural?”
Mennie nodded. “For some reason, she can’t see it and has an unreasonable reaction to it whenever we try to explain it to her. I tried to hint about it once when she was a girl and she reacted so violently that I erased it from her memory, and have kept her from anything to do with it ever since. She simply can’t handle it.”
Now he understood why his mother had reacted so badly when Ambrose had tried to tell her the truth about the paranormal world around them. It must have triggered something inside her that had been unable to deal with the fact that she wasn’t completely human. That she’d literally been so ill-conceived.
Ambrose must not have ever experienced this moment where he learned the truth about her birth and his heritage.
And maybe that was why his mother was unconscious now. Because she was part Sephiroth, whatever was infecting Caleb might be infecting her, too.
Menyara sighed before she spoke again. “It’s also why Cherise is incapable of seeing the evil in others. Why she’s like a beacon that calls out to so many who need kindness. Acheron. Caleb. Kyrian. The Peltiers. Like all Sephirii, she’s innately soothing and gentle to be around. A spiritual balm. Unless they’re in battle and are defending what they love, the Sephirii can calm the most restless of souls.”
And that made him furious. Because of what they’d done to her, his mother had been attacked and thrown out of her home. As a teen, she’d been homeless and pregnant. Abandoned.
Yes, Menyara had taken her in, but now that he knew the truth …
Nick wanted blood.
He glared at Menyara. “How could you do that to my mother? You cost her everything!”
“It wasn’t supposed to happen the way it did, Nicholas. We had her hidden, in safety, we thought. She was given a good home, with a kind, loving family, who cared deeply for her. But her light burns so bright that it can’t be disguised or denied. Somehow, she summoned Adarian before we were ready for it. He found her years before she was meant to find him.” She reached out to brush the hair back from his face. “I am so sorry for the pain we caused you and Cherise. We never meant for that to happen. You have to believe me.”
Nick’s gaze fell to his mother’s unconscious body. She looked so young. And she was. Most women her age were just starting their families, not saddled with a teenager. “I’m not the one you should apologize to, Mennie. I’m not the one you hurt. You ruined her life.”
Worse than that, Mennie let him ruin it. And that was what hurt most of all.
Menyara shook her head in denial. “She would be the first to disagree. You know that, Nicholas. That’s what makes her so incredibly special. What gives us hope that you might be able to have a different outcome from the other Malachais before you. You are the only one since the firstborn who was raised by a mother who loves you. A Malachai who unites both the light and the dark. You do not have to strictly be a force of destruction. Because of your mother’s love, you can choose to be a force for good, instead.”
Honestly? Right now, he wasn’t thinking good, happy thoughts. He was all about doing harm to everyone who’d had a hand in setting his mom up for this life.
But Menyara’s words made him flinch as he remembered the sight of Ambrose earlier. His future self hadn’t predicted a happy outcome by any means. He’d been on the brink of conversion. And his premonitions didn’t give him a whole lot to look forward to, either.
From the way things were looking, he was basically screwed. And there was no way to avert his destiny.
Yeah, he was feeling pretty dang defeated.
Lied to. Kicked in the stones.
And extremely pissed off by all of this. “I don’t even know you anymore, lady. Everything you’ve ever told me was a lie. And I do mean every single thing out of your mouth. Even your name. Now you expect me to believe this? To trust you? How can I trust you ever again?”
“I’m still your aunt Mennie.”
Yeah, right. Was she?
Was she Menyara, the Voodoo priestess and Creole midwife who delivered him, or the Egyptian goddess Ma’at, who was related to Kody? Or the ancient primal goddess Cam, related to Caleb and Xev?
How could she just keep changing her identities and relationships like people discarded their socks? It completely boggled those last three brain cells that rattled around his head.
“No. You’re a stranger to me. Someone who used my mother for her own gain, and seriously hurt her, all the while telling her she could trust you.” Nick dodged her hand as she reached to touch him. He wasn’t in the mood for it. Too much was happening, too fast.
Honestly, he didn’t know whom to trust, at this point.
Except himself. While he knew Ambrose wasn’t exactly sane, he knew he’d never lie to himself. Especially not about his mother and her well-being. That was the only thing he could bank on for certain. Ambrose only wanted to save his mother.
Everyone else, even Kody, could be lying to him, for all he really knew. He didn’t want to be that jaded, but he had to face the fact that it could be true. Livia had been one hundred percent right.
No one could be trusted.
He didn’t know what was what anymore. Everything and everyone around him seemed like a lie. His head spun from it all. Truthfully? He just wanted to feel grounded again. To have some kind of anchor he could count on that wouldn’t leave him feeling lost and adrift.
“Am I even Cajun?”
Menyara laughed. “Yes, Nicholas. That you are. Your real grandmother was a true blue zydeco-playing backwoods Cajun that would have made you proud.”
Well, at least he still had that. Thank goodness. He wasn’t sure he could have handled learning he was something weird like the grandson of millionaire mining tycoon.
Thunder clapped and the lights blinked as they tried to come on.
Sadly, the darkness returned and reminded him what he needed to do. “I have to find the Eye of Ananke to straighten this mess out. Has anyone heard of it?”
Four pairs of eyes glanced around aimlessly and refused to meet his gaze, letting him know that as usual he, alone, was the idiot in the room. “What?”
“Where did you hear that term?” Mennie asked.
Nick started not to answer her. He really didn’t owe her any answers given how many lies she’d told him over the years. But at this point …
Why bother? He was worn out by the lies and tired of playing games. “Ambrose told me to find it.”
Mennie scowled. “Ambrose?”
“Yeah. Future me. Apparently, centuries from now, after I get pimp-slapped with a Dark-Hunter bow on my face—really wish Artemis had chosen a better location on my body to mark me with that—and I’m on the brink of morphing into the full soulless Malachai who’s bent on binge-punishing humanity, I eat a demon that has time-traveling abilities. Sad to say, they don’t last long, and I just used the last of it to come here and tell me to get the Eye, and use it to reset whatever it is we screwed up.” He glanced to Kody. “So what is this thing and where is it?”
Giddy with excitement, Simi raised her hand. “Ooo, ooo, ooo, the Simi finally knows an answer! It in that scary, scary room, in that scary temple in the lowest level of Hades’s domain. Least it used to be and I doubts anybody’s moved it ’cause that ugly, snarly dogs thing with all them heads gets really nasty whenever someone goes down there. And them dragons and snake-headed people not real happy ’bout it neither.”
Kody nodded. “Uh, yeah, that would be correct. Cerberus and the gorgons can be a little territorial whenever someone ventures into Tartarus to disturb it.”
It was her turn to be gaped at.
“What?” She blinked innocently. “I played hide-and-seek there as a kid. Uncle Hades holds great Halloween parties. But … I can’t exactly go waltzing in there right now as no one knows who I am, since I won’t be born for another few hundred years.”
Menyara sighed. “I’m definitely not welcomed there. During my tenure as the Egyptian goddess Ma’at, my pantheon was at war with the Olympians. They would know the instant I stepped foot in their realm, and attack me full-on.”
Xev crossed his arms over his chest. “The one thing my childhood taught me was how to hide my powers and pass through realms where I wasn’t wanted. It was how I was able to visit my wife undetected beneath the noses of the Sephirii, who were well trained to hunt and kill my kind.”
He locked gazes with Kody. “While I know what it is, I don’t know what it looks like. If someone can tell me what I’m looking for and where it’s located, I can retrieve it.”
Menyara scoffed at his offer. “It’s not that simple. Only a god of fate can touch it without being destroyed by it.”
Kody chewed her lip. “I share your bloodline through my mother. Can I touch it?”
“Given your father’s blood, I don’t know. Especially since he once shared a womb with Acheron. You’re also no longer in your true body.… I have no idea what would happen to you should you touch it. It’s not worth the chance of finding out.”
Nick let out a nervous laugh. “Personally, I vote Girlfriend stays here with Simi to watch over my mother in the event whatever nabbed her before comes back for Round Two.”
Xev shook his head. “Either Girlfriend or Charonte will be needed to lead us both in to retrieve it, since I know nothing of Hades.” He arched a brow at Menyara. “What is this Hades, anyway?”
“The Olympians were children of the Titans, who became Greek gods after you were cursed and banished.”
Kody passed an irritated smirk to Nick. “Why can’t Simi and I both go?”
Nick gestured at the non-working lights. “Hello? Unnatural storm? We have Yrre on the loose. Memitims at the windows. Zeitjägers in the corners. Now Tiamat. A spewing Caleb. Unconscious Mom. Zavid’s AWOL, and I don’t know what to think about Livia. Anyone else want to add anything to my growing super-sized ulcer?”
A sudden knock on the door made Nick jump with an undignifying sound he really wished Kody hadn’t heard. For that matter, he hated that anyone had witnessed it. Disgusted with himself, he glared up at the ceiling. “Hello, up there? That was not meant as a personal challenge.”
Cringing, he went to open the door, forgetting about the peephole. A mistake he realized too late when he opened the door and learned that yeah, evil did, in fact, knock politely.
And a whole lot of it stood in his hallway, engulfed by flames, glaring straight at him.