Instinct (13 page)

She shook her head and laughed. “Do I look like that cow-faced dog?”

Uh, no. She looked pretty hot, actually. Hot enough to get him into serious trouble if Kody caught her standing this tight to his personal space.

Nick stepped back.

She followed. With an adoring expression, she brushed her hand through his hair. “Do you not feel your connection to me?”

He only felt a traitorous part of his body that wanted to be connected to her. But he knew better than to listen to that part of himself. It had a mind of its own that could get him into all kinds of nightmares if he let it. “Not sure what you mean.”

“Yes, you do. You know exactly of what I speak. You feel the blood that tells you who I am.”

“Nope. I feel nothing.” Except the urge to get away from her before she got him into all kinds of trouble no amount of apologizing could get him out of—not even a shiny object from Jared's. He'd meant what he said. He would never, ever break Kody's trust or her heart.

Not intentionally.

Nick froze mid-step as a peculiar image went through his mind. He saw the girl in ancient armor, wrapped around a multiheaded dragon. An inherited memory that came from one of his Malachai predecessors. In that instant, he knew the goddess's name. “Tiamat.”

She inclined her head to him. “See, you do know me.”

Sort of. And one thing he knew about her … “You're supposed to be dead.”

Her laughter rang like music in his ears. “No one can kill something as powerful as I. You only change my state of being. So why have you summoned me from my slumber, Malachai?”

A chill went down his spine at that question. “I didn't summon you.”

Scowling, she gently fingered his cheek. “It's always about you, Malachai. Haven't you learned that yet? Besides, who else would dare disturb me?”

“Someone with a death wish?”

She laughed aloud at that. “You're a cheeky one, aren't you?”

Not at the moment. At the moment, though, it pained him to admit it even to himself, he was rather afraid. This was one of the most dangerous of the chaos gods. She had birthed more monsters than Echidna.

Come to think of it, she might have even birthed Echidna. He never could keep all that mythology straight.

Lowering her head, she stepped back as if she was listening to the aether voices that constantly drove Nick crazy whenever he tried to understand them. Her eyes glowed a deep, scary red. She dropped her hand from his face. “As much as I would love to stay and chat, I have much to do and little time to work it.”

Before he could blink, she was gone.

Rain poured down over him as soon as she was gone. Crap. He had a bad, bad feeling deep in the pit of his stomach.

Suddenly, everything around him stopped. Even the rain. No. Not stopped. It froze in place like a painting. Nick turned a slow circle as he tried to make sense of what was happening.

He felt so out of sync with everything. Out of time. It was like being in the Nether Realm or the darkness that existed between dimensions. Only he wasn't lost or misplaced. He was in his time and correct plane.

Just not lined up right.

Like a cog that was ever so slightly misaligned. And then he felt it … that presence that had been missing for so long. “Ambrose?”

“Find the Eye.” It was the faintest of whispers.

“What? What eye?”

“The Eye of Ananke.” Ambrose appeared to him as nothing more than a mere translucent shadow with red eyes. The only way he knew for a fact it was him was the faint outline of Artemis's double bow-and-arrow mark on his cheek. It marked the spot where the Greek goddess would one day remove his soul from him.

That familiar red demonic gaze burned into Nick. “I shouldn't have tried to reset the past. We were born a damned abomination that should never have been conceived.”

His breathing labored, Ambrose fell to his knees on the sidewalk beside him. He looked up with an expression of woeful abandon. “Listen to me, Nick. You have to find the Eye and follow your true course. The one we were meant to follow before I screwed up so badly. Fast! It's the only hope we have. You have to stay true to our original course. Trust me on this. Please! Do not stray from our path!”

For a moment, his eyes turned to the shade of blue Nick saw reflected in a mirror whenever he gazed in one. “Of all the mistakes I've made, the one I regret most is robbing you of the years where you were able to dream of normality. At your age, I knew nothing of Kyrian's world. Of Dark-Hunters, ancient gods, and Were-Hunters. I was just a stupid kid, with stupid kid dreams.” He laughed bitterly. “I thought I was going to be a fancy uptown lawyer. That I'd have a wife and kids…” His eyes returned to red. “I'm so sorry I took that from you. I just wanted to save us. Give us something to hope for.”

“Wide is the gate that leads to destruction,” Nick said, quoting his mother's favorite saying, “and many are those who enter through it. But the gate is narrow and the way is straight that leads to life, and few are those who find it.”

Ambrose snorted. “It's why there's a highway to hell, but only a single stairway to heaven.” He looked up at Nick. “I've lost the war. By fighting, I only made it worse. Find the Eye and reset our course. We have to go back in order to move forward. It's the only hope we have. The Riders are out and they are about to take you down, little brother. Move fast, with purpose, or we're both lost. There's so much you have to do, that I can't even begin to tell you how to fix it. But the Eye can.” He rose slowly to his feet. “I won't be able to help after this. You're on your own.”

Nick gave a short half laugh. “I'm good with that. I came into this world alone, and that's how I'll leave it.… I was born standing up and talking back. Cajun proud and Cajun strong from my first breath to my last.”

Wings shot out of Ambrose's back as he changed from human to full Malachai form. His skin marbled red and black as his eyes turned to full-on pret. Fangs and claws flashing, he grabbed Nick's jaw in his fist and tilted his head until they locked gazes. “We are Malachai above all else. Now and forever. Never forget that.” Throwing his head back, he let loose a horrific blast of blue-tinged fire toward the sky before he vanished.

Shaken and trembling, Nick stood there as everything returned to normal and the rain again saturated him. But in his mind, he saw what Ambrose did. Nick saw the bloody future that awaited them, and there in the cold, winter rain, he refused to be intimidated. He refused to allow fate and Ambrose to win.

I will not become you, old man.

He would find this Eye and figure out where Ambrose and the others had gone wrong. He would stop whatever hell-monkey was currently loose and messing with his friends and family.

But most of all, he would make sure that he never fulfilled the destiny that said he would destroy this world. Kody believed in the prophecy that said he was the Malachai who would save their line. And he believed in her.

Since the day he was born, he'd been defying the odds. Today was not the day to stop that trend. Unlike Ambrose, he wasn't about to give up or give in.

So long as there was breath in his body, there was life. So long as there was life, there was hope. And so long as there was hope, there was the possibility of victory.

Life wasn't about just getting by. It was about getting through, no matter what, and making the most of every minute.

A chill went down his spine as he remembered what his father had said to him.
The Malachai will never be forgotten. But it's entirely up to you as to how you'll be remembered.

Nick Gautier would not be remembered as a coward or a villain. He was going out a hero and a champion.

And he would not go down without a vicious, vicious fight.

As he started after Zavid, his phone rang. It was Kody. He answered immediately. “Hey,
cher
. What's up?”

“Where are you?”

“Outside Caleb's. Why? What'cha need?”

“You. Fast as possible. There's something here and it's after your mother.”

 

CHAPTER 8

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.