Invision (21 page)

“Doesn't really make me feel better to know it's my kid.”

Jaden stiffened at those words. Too late, he realized that his own sons had seen his involuntary reaction.

They exchanged a silent, bitter glare of mutual sibling resentment for their father. While Nick was glad to see them getting along for once, he hated that it was hatred for their father that bonded them and gave them common ground.

Kody cleared her throat in an effort to distract them. “Did you learn anything else from the future?”

“Learn's a bit of a stretch, but we did meet Kyrian's daughter. And Simi's two kids.”

Instant tears welled in Kody's eyes. “Oh my God! Lucy and Amara were there!” she breathed. “They were alive?”

Well, that was as shocking as their initial discovery. “You knew about them?”

Crying even harder, she nodded. “I never mentioned them to you because I assumed they were long dead. So there was no need.” She let out a sharp, hysterical laugh. “I can't believe they survived the attack! I'm so happy they made it out.”

“And did you know Lucien hooks up with my daughter?”

The shock of that stopped her tears instantly. They ended in one sharp, stunned hiccup. “Seriously?”

He nodded.

Sniffing and laughing, she wiped at her eyes. “Well, since I had no idea that
you
had a daughter, no, I didn't know about that.”

“Do you know who their father is?” Caleb asked.

She nodded.

“Care to share?”

Biting her lip, she dabbed daintily at her eyes with her sleeve, then cleared her throat. “Given who they are and the way they get together, I think sharing that with present company would be a profoundly bad idea … that knowledge could alter the future. 'Cause I'm pretty sure, knowing you as I do, that one of you would do something to stop it.”

“Kody—”

“Trust me, Nick. I know what you in particular would do.”

He would argue, but she did know him better than anyone else. “All right. I surrender to your superior common sense.”

But that didn't alleviate the ache in his chest. He turned toward Xev. “I feel like we need to do something. We left them under fire. Charity was hurt. Can't we send some kind of help?”

His eyes sad, Jaden shook his head. “Sorry. Doesn't work that way. Their future is their own.”

“It doesn't seem right.”

Jaden glanced at each of his sons. “Life isn't about fair. It's about survival training. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger.”

Caleb let out a sigh of disgust. “There are some people who should
never
procreate.”

“Amen, brother. Sing it to the choir.” Xev did some kind of odd hand gesture with him that must be the demon equivalent of a fist bump.

“So, Captains?” Nick asked in his best
Star Trek
Bones McCoy impression. “How do we fix the space-time continuum?”

“Ambrose said that the Eye of Ananke was the key.” Kody gestured to where Nick had left it on the floor. “We should start there.”

“Wow!” Jaden cut Nick's path off. “What exactly did the Malachai tell you?”

“That he'd screwed everything up by trying to stop it. He told me to use the Eye as my guide and do everything the way it was supposed to happen to make sure that nothing else got screwed up.”

Caleb curled his lip. “Oh I know that expression.”

“Yeah.” Xev breathed. “It makes me sick to my stomach.”

Nick arched his brows. “What? Clue us in.”

“He knows something vital, Nick, that he's not sharing.” Caleb cut a look of absolute contempt at Xev. “Remember that battle we went into where he conveniently forgot to tell us that our powers weren't going to work?”

“And that our enemies would be twice as strong? Yes, I remember. I still limp from it.”

“That's the look, Nick. Memorize it for future warnings.”

Jaden gave both of his children a droll, irritated stare. “I'm thinking how best to explain it, since you two jackals neglected to tell the child what the Eye was.”

“It's a Fate stone.”

He rolled his eyes at Caleb. “It's more than a Fate stone.” He took a deep, annoyed breath, then went to the Eye and picked it up. “Nick? Do you know who Ananke is?”

“Primordial goddess of fate. Roughly the same as Tiamet.”

That answer appeared to give Jaden an ulcer judging by the grimace he made. It was nice to know his stupidity didn't just annoy and offend his mom and teachers.

Jaden set the Eye down on a broken shelf. “Ananke is compulsion. She's the goddess of inevitability.” He placed three more stones beside the Eye. “Think of her as a fixed point.”

“He knows what pith points are,” Xev said from between clenched teeth. He's not an…” He glanced at Nick. “Well, he can be an idiot, but he's a highly intelligent, high-functioning moron.”

“Thanks. Please, don't attempt to bolster my ego. I can't afford the therapy.”

Jaden cleared his throat to get their attention. “Again, not just a pith point. She is the formless, unseen force that pulls you to your inevitability.”

“So she's like gravity for fate.”

“Exactly. She holds the time sequence together. She's the order to the chaos.”

“But…” Nick paused as he considered what Jaden was saying. “Gravity has an escape velocity.”

“And so does Ananke.”

Nick's jaw went slack. “Are you saying what I'm hearing? Or am I hearing what I want to because I want to believe it?”

“With the right application of force and counterbalance, even a pith point can be altered. Everything, and I do mean
everything
is subject to free will. But shifting a pith point can have devastating, unimaginable consequences.”

“As in unravel the fabric of the universe,” Kody said from behind him. “It's what the zeitjägers guard against.”

“She's right.”

“Yeah, I don't want to do that. I unraveled my sheets once. My butt still stings from the beating my mother gave me. That taught me about messing with things I need to leave alone.”

Pressing his hand to his head, Xev groaned. “Tirade aside … it sounds to me like Ambrose came to that conclusion and screwed up something he couldn't fix.”

“Maybe that's what gave us this Cyprian?” Caleb scratched at his chin.

“Or maybe the Cyprian was always there.” Jaden jerked his chin at Kody. “Think about what an Arel is. What they do.”

Kody screwed her face up at him. “They track and record human history.”

“And?”

“They're the powers who defend and dispense justice.”

Jaden nodded and rolled his hand as if they were all following along, but Nick felt as off-the-tracks as Kody appeared.

Once he realized they were all stumbling in the woods, slamming into trees, including Caleb and Xev who sent extremely rude gestures back at him, he made a sound of supreme exasperation, then extrapolated for them. “Sraosha's original role as Arel was to set things in motion for that history that he kept, to ensure that it moved forward correctly and on time. He was also the judge of the dead, and one of the primary warriors who'd chase away the demons of violence and anger who preyed on mankind.”

“Hence his overwhelming love and adoration of
me,
” Caleb muttered.

Jaden ignored them as he used his powers to lift the stones around the Eye so that they hovered. “We've been assuming that Ambrose failed. But what if he didn't? What if he succeeded?”

He set the stones down in different positions, then looked at them.

“Sraosha would still go crazy.” Kody breathed. “Because the order would be upset.”

Jaden nodded. “Especially if there was a second Malachai and Ambrose had found a way to break that curse.”

“You're speculating.”

Jaden glanced at Xev and shrugged. “So I am. You have a better conjecture?”

“We don't have enough evidence for any kind of conclusion right now.”

“True.”

“But I like where his head is.” Nick bit his lip as his mind whirled with the possibilities of it. For the first time, it gave him hope. “In his version, I'm not the jerkweed who destroys the world.”

“No, your son is.”

He rolled his eyes at Caleb. “Go stand in the corner until you learn to be more positive in your thinking. You need an attitude adjustment, Mr. Daeve!”

“My attitude is fine. What I need is an environmental change where I'm not locked in a hovel with an ass”—he cut a gimlet glare to Jaden, then Nick—“and a pimple.”

Nick scowled at Xev. “Why are you smiling?”

“I'm reveling in the fact he left me off his hate list.”

“So…” Kody spoke in the most diplomatic of tones to get their attention off the matter. “Can we use the Eye to reset the future like Ambrose wanted?”

“See … that's what baffles me most. The Eye doesn't really work that way and Ambrose had to know that. I'm sure Nick's already been experiencing some of its side effects.”

“Are you talking about my spirit channeling?”

He nodded. “So you have been communing with it?”

“Oh yeah. And I don't like it at all. It's like dreaming with my eyes open.”

“Yes, but they're not dreams. They're important insights that relate directly to the matters you're trying to understand. The reason why it's called the Eye of Ananke is that it shows the why of a matter or a person.”

Nick felt so stupid as he finally got it. “It doesn't show the future.”

“It can, but it shows the past. The present or whatever it deems necessary to give you understanding.”

Kody crossed her arms over her chest as she studied the Eye from a distance. “You're right. It doesn't make sense that Ambrose would send us after it, given that that's what it does.”

“And it shows all futures,” Nick muttered. “Which I truly despise. It's like having my mom on steroids.… Don't do that, Nick … I had a friend in high school who did that once. And I'm telling you, you could fall, skin your knee. Get a compound fracture. Break the bone and get blood poisoning. Funky cancer, or rabies, and
die
!” He finished in a mocking, deep voice. “She always has to go to the most morbid and horrendous conclusion imaginable.” He jerked his chin. “So really I didn't need
that
. Already had one from birth that walks around behind me all the time doing it.”

Caleb laughed. “Cherise would kill you if she heard you say that about her.”

“Probably, but it's the truth.”

“You know the one thing it can't do, though, is lie.”

Nick turned back to Jaden. “Come again?”

“I'm thinking … Unlike a person, or a memory that can become distorted by time and emotions. It doesn't fabricate or lie. It never gets misled or misinterprets events. It always gives the cold, unvarnished truth. What you see is what happened or will come into being. Your little tirade on your mother is what made me think about that. Our memories are always faulty. They're tainted by our emotions and perceptions. We filter everything we take in by our experiences. I mean, you said yourself a few minutes ago. Did I say what you thought I did or did you hear what you wanted me to say? It doesn't make me a liar or you a fool. It's just human nature. People see what they want to see and they hear what they need or want to hear. The Eye doesn't do that.”

“Ambrose wanted you to know the truth, whatever it is.” Kody met Nick's gaze. “I think someone other than Ambrose is tampering with the timeline.”

Caleb cursed. “That's what brought out our ugly friends. They were looking for whoever did it. And they thought it was Nick because of Ambrose.”

Kody nodded. “But while he did tamper with the time sequence, it wasn't egregious enough to warrant punishment.”

“They were after the real culprit, whoever it is.”

“Yeah.” Covering her mouth with her hand, she looked as sick as Nick suddenly felt. “What are we dealing with?”

“Same thing we've been dealing with. The end of the world. Only we no longer know how to stop it.” Nick walked around the shattered remains of Menyara's store. “I mean, look at this place. If they could come in here and do this to Mennie … how are we going to stop them?”

Caleb glanced at Xev. “You're up.”

“Not me … Kody.”

“I'm on it.” She went to Nick and wrapped her arms around his waist. “Breathe deep and focus. Shh…”

Nick was having a harder time than normal with his panic attack. He opened his mouth to tell Kody that she wasn't there—that she hadn't seen it, but luckily caught himself before he was that stupid and insensitive.

She'd not only seen it. She'd died there with her family.

And that made it worse for him.

His breathing turned more ragged.

“Beware the seeds that are planted, even in the most fallow of fields. For those we lay with callous hands, might very well prove to be those of our ultimate destruction.”

Nick blinked at Jaden's words. “Pardon?”

“It's something Bathymaas used to say.” Caleb's voice was tight as he spoke. “Those words were often carved on her temple walls as a reminder to use restraint and good judgement in all things. For whatever you plant today, you will ultimately reap tomorrow. Whenever you bring evil into your life or do evil to others, the universe will spit it back at you with a vengeance.”

And if Nick wasn't on edge enough, two seconds after Caleb finished speaking, something hit the front doors so hard, it caused them to rattle.

Worse, blood ran beneath the doors, pooling around his feet.…

 

CHAPTER 13

“Hellooooo? Akra-Menyara Cam lady, quality goddess, you in there? Why you gots all these nasty uglies circling outside your door anyways? Can the Simi eat some? 'Cause they just gonna drive away your good business people and they kind of scaring the tourists. If you ask me, it's just a public service to let the Simi eat them. Hello? Akra-Mennie? You in there? Can you hear me?”