Illusion: Chronicles of Nick (24 page)

Nick so loved the rosy landscape his father painted. “And that was?”

“We came into this world alone and that’s exactly how we’ll leave it. Don’t expect the years in between to be any different. No one can be trusted. You only have friends until you look the other way. That is the truth of all species. But never more true than it is for our kind. Every Malachai born has been betrayed … starting with his own mother. And the one thing I learned at the business end of Noir’s whip is that fear, pain, and intimidation will ensure your safety and make sure that nothing and no one ever goes for your throat. They won’t dare so long as they fear the fact that you will get back up and come for them the way they went for you.”

Nick didn’t believe that. Not for a minute. He’d never had an enemy yet whose jugular he wouldn’t go for if exposed. It didn’t matter how much they beat or bullied him. He would not be intimidated by them and he refused to give them his fear. To the devil with that. No one would ever hold that kind of power over his mind and soul.

No one.

But his mother, Caleb, Acheron, Kyrian, Kody … there was nothing he would do to hurt them. Ever. He would die to protect their lives. And they had all proven the same loyalty where he was concerned. It was love that bound them together much tighter than hatred and fear ever could. As Kody so often said to him—
into all gardens rain will fall. But the heart and the love it’s capable of will give us shelter from even the worst storms.

Love and respect kept someone in check a lot more than fear and hatred. He would explain it, yet he knew better than to waste the breath. His father had no concept of those emotions. He never would.

Suddenly, Nick’s head started spinning. He felt like he was falling again.

His father tightened the grip he had on him. “You’re fading back to the false body. It won’t hold you. It can’t. But the spell that separated you is strong. You have to unlock your powers, son. Protect your mother. Be the man for her that I should have been. Not the beast that hurt her. I deserve no mercy and she deserves no sadness. Whatever you do, Nicholas, don’t become me.” And then his father did the most unbelievable thing of all.

He kissed Nick’s cheek.

As he pulled back, his father’s black, inhuman gaze bored into him. “The Ambrose Malachai will never be forgotten. But it’s up to you as to how he’ll always be remembered.”

Nick wanted to speak. Nothing would leave his throat. He reached out for his father.

It was too late. One heartbeat he was in the land of dark nothing and in the next he was back with Kody, who held him just like his father had. Worry creased her brow as her green eyes warmed him.

Had it all been a delusion? Had his mind transposed Kody’s actions into his subconscious and made him think that his father held him while in reality it’d never happened?

Was it a dream?

“See, Akra-Kody, the Simi done told you that he’d be alive and licking again.”

Nick grimaced at Simi’s messed-up syntax. “You mean alive and kicking.”

It was Simi’s turn to make a disgruntled expression. “No. Why you want to kick something when you can put barbecue sauce on it and lick it? You human-like people make no sense to the Simi’s demon mind.”

Nick grinned at her. “That’s okay. You make none to me, either.” He shook his head as he tried to clear his blurry vision. “Are we still under fire from Thorn?”

“No.” Kody brushed his hair back from his face to feel for a fever. “Ash and Savitar, along with Simi, routed them.”

Simi made a sound similar to a horse. “Bah! Akra-Kody helped us a lot, too. She a good helper in a fight.”

Those words of praise brought a slight blush to Kody’s cheeks. “Savitar and Ash are still out, making sure our enemies don’t come back any sooner than necessary.” She stood up, then helped him to his feet. “So what happened to you? You were saying all kinds of crazy things while you were out.”

He could just imagine. “At least tell me I didn’t snore.”

Kody laughed. “You didn’t snore, but you did call me by your father’s name. I hope that’s not some weird psycho thing you have where you subliminally want to date your father.”

Nick choked and shuddered. “Hardly. Besides, I look so much like him, that’d be narcissism to the extreme. And while I occasionally like myself, I definitely don’t
love
myself. In
any
sense of that word.”

Taking a deep breath, he surveyed the damage around him, which wasn’t as bad as it could have been. Bubba and Mark were tending wounds not far away and restocking weapons. Nick had to say that they’d looked better. ’Course, they’d also looked a lot worse.

“Where’s my mom?” he asked them.

Bubba set his Neosporin aside and jerked his chin toward the fortified door. “She’s in the shelter with Topher looking out for her, under severe death threats. I don’t know how long Acheron and Savitar can hold Thorn and them off. Thorn promised he’d be back and I’m pretty sure the psycho meant it. Hell-monkeys be danged. I don’t think anything is going to stop him for long. Not even your friends.”

Nick bit his lip as he considered the best course of action. Bubba was right. Thorn would return as soon as he could. They had to move fast.

“Kode? If we had Caleb here, could the two of you reverse whatever it was you did to my powers?”

“Maybe. But we don’t have Caleb.”

“Or do we?”

She arched a brow at him. “Did you hit your head again, sweetie? I’ve warned you about the dangers of concussions.”

He grinned. “Kind of, but I did learn something that I hope isn’t a lie.”

“And that is?”

Praying his father wasn’t setting him up for slaughter or a ton of therapy-inducing humiliation, Nick took a deep breath then called out. “Cabal. Cabal. Cabal. I summon you to me. Now.”

Simi and Kody exchanged a look that said he was as crazy as he suddenly felt when nothing happened.

Great, Dad. I can look stupid on my own. Didn’t really need you to help out on that front.

That was his thought until he heard a curse and something slammed into him, knocking him against the wall. Nick shoved his attacker away, then froze as he looked into a pair of familiar, startled brown eyes. Now
this
was the giant, badass-tough demon that Nick was used to.

“Malphas?”

Tense and braced to fight, Caleb turned around slowly, surveying every aspect of his new surroundings. He paused as he faced Kody and Simi. “Where the heck am I? And how did I get here?”

Kody pointed to Nick. “Apparently, Nick summoned you.”

“Nick?” Caleb glanced right past Nick and kept searching the room with his gaze. “
Our
Nick? Where is the little booger?”

She gestured even more exaggeratedly at Nick’s position. “Right there.”

Caleb’s jaw went slack as he faced him. “Nick?”

“Caleb?”

The word had barely left his lips before Caleb grabbed him into a bear hug and held him tight. Which was extremely awkward and gross. Completely weirded out by it, Nick tried to disentangle himself from the demon. It wasn’t like Caleb to show any emotion toward him other than irritation or frustration. Sometimes anger.

Okay, a lot of times anger.

Still, affection toward anything other than food …

Completely unnatural.

“Stop, C! If you’re going to hug me like this, you got to buy me dinner first, boy. And it’s got to be someplace nice, like Antoine’s or Brennan’s. I ain’t easy or cheap.”

Laughing, Caleb stepped back and narrowed his eyes on Nick as he held him by his arms. “Dude … did you lose a bet with a sorcerer or something?”

Nick gave him a droll smirk. “Don’t taunt me now that I know your real name. I’m told I can do some damage to you with that. Make you fetch my slippers and stuff.”

Now it was Kody’s turn to gape as she understood. “Cabal? His summoning name is Cabal? Really?”

Caleb visibly cringed. “Don’t, Nekoda. Just don’t. I can wreck your day, too, you know?”

She held her hands up in surrender. “Yes, you can. Please don’t. I’ve already forgotten I ever heard it.”

“Good woman.”

Nick tilted his head as he took in Caleb’s bruised face. “What got ahold of you?”

“A lot of things that were trying to snatch your body from my custody. And we can’t leave Zavid alone with it. He’s extremely likely to throw it out the door and let the others have you to save his own hide. Unlike me, he’s not real attached to you, and I don’t like or trust untested loyalty.”

Neither did Nick. “I have been told by countless dead people today that you and Kody have to free my powers first.”

“Countless dead people?” Caleb asked.

“Long story.” Nick inclined his head to Kody. “Can you two fix me?”

She met Caleb’s gaze. “I was told we needed the Magus Stone to restore his powers. It’s what they used to do this to him.”

Caleb choked on that. “Apollymi’s necklace? Are you nuts?”

“Ooo,” Simi breathed. “The sparkly, shiny one. I know that necklace. Akra used to pacify the Simi with it when she was a very little simi. It’s why the Simi loves her sparklies so.”

Kody sucked her breath in sharply. “Do you think you could borrow it?”

Simi burst out laughing, then sobered. “Oh. You were actually serious with the Simi and not making a joke.… Um, no. Akra need it to feed her Daimons and she’d pull the Simi’s wings off if I tried to take it. That mean old Stryker would probably help, too. He bad that way. And no offense, but the Simi done like her wings. They make traveling very nice and very easy. Much faster than walking. And I know you know what I mean.”

Caleb crossed his arms over his chest. “It wouldn’t matter if we had it. Nick would still need his powers. It’s worthless to us without those.”

“How so?” Kody asked. “I have the blood of Set in me. Shouldn’t it work if I used it?”

“Want to bet our lives on it?”

“Uh, not really, and especially not with our combined luck.” Kody sighed. “Fine. Let’s try to unlock his powers and see where it gets us.”

“Hopefully not the hospital,” Nick mumbled under his breath.

Bubba cleared his throat to get their attention. “Whatever you have planned, you might want to step it up a notch and be quick about it. We have bad guys heading in again and they’re moving double-time.”

Nick moaned out loud. “Can’t we catch a break?”

Caleb snorted. “Pretty sure one of them would be willing to break a knee or any other bone they can reach.”

“Ha, ha.”

Kody held her hand out to Caleb. “Let’s do this.”

While Caleb took it, Nick glanced over to the monitor that Bubba and Mark were watching via webcams stationed down the street. His eyes bugged at the sight of their impending doom. Bubba wasn’t exaggerating even a little bit. Thorn was back with a lot of reinforcements. Reinforcements that were dragging, bound in chains, a number of Acheron’s hell-monkeys in their wake.

And then he realized what else they were carrying.

No … it couldn’t be.

“Is that—”

“Our former allies?” Mark asked, confirming Nick’s worst fear. “Yes, it is.”

Horrified by the sight of Savitar and Acheron in Thorn’s custody, Nick barely heard the words Caleb and Kody chanted behind him. He was too transfixed by the fact that they were all about to die a painful and grotesque death.

Rising up from the others, Thorn flew at the house and threw a fireball that slammed against the fortified front door. It was so powerful that it shook the entire structure. Mark and Bubba went pale. Without a word, Mark hurriedly finished arming himself. Bubba continued to sit in his chair as if unable to cope with what was coming for them now.

Simi started for the door, but Nick stopped her. “It’s me they want. Maybe I should just hand myself over and stop this.”

The Goth demon tsked at him. “Akri-Nicky, on the grand scale of stupid, that would be epic. And lethal.” She patted his shoulder. “Trust the Simi, you don’t want to do that. It’d ruin your clothes and you look very nice out of your ugly shirts.”

He smiled at her, until he felt the hot stab of something going through him. For a second, he thought he’d been shot. He felt his stomach for blood.

Nothing was there.

Apprehensive, he glanced over to Caleb and Kody. And as he did so, he felt that light-headed sensation again. His hands turned translucent.

The Malachai power resides with your spirit and soul. It can never be separated from that.
He looked around for his father, but he saw nothing. Just the voice in his head.

Suddenly, that familiar warmth filled his entire body. That indescribable je ne sais quoi he had whenever he tapped into his demonic inheritance. Leaning his head back, he closed his eyes and let it wash over him. The ether roared in his ears as he heard a million voices at once.

Someone grabbed him from behind. Instead of fighting, Nick leaned against them and allowed them to hold him while he swayed with the weight and pain of everything.

“Just breathe, baby. Just breathe.” He felt Kody’s gentle hand on his cheek as she whispered in his ear. “I have you and I’m not letting go. Don’t fight it. Remember that your powers are a part of you. Like breathing.”

He tried to do what she suggested and not tense or fight the flow of power inside him. At first he thought he was settling down and returning to normal. Until his stomach heaved. Nick staggered away from Kody and ran to the bathroom. He’d barely made it to the toilet before his stomach unloaded itself with a violence that would make the girl in
The Exorcist
movie proud. Over and over, his stomach spasmed with no mercy given to his dignity.

To his complete shock, Kody knelt by his side and stroked his back until he was finally finished. With a shaking hand, he flushed the toilet.

She gave him a small damp towel that he pressed to his lips. “Better?”

His breathing ragged, he nodded, then shook his head. “You have an iron constitution, you know that?”

Laughing, she brushed the hair back from his forehead. “Compared to what you see in battle, vomit’s not so bad.”

He heard the pain in her voice that belied her light tone. Honestly, he didn’t want to know what horrors she’d been through that this was preferable to them.