Who or what would replace him.
That was the true nightmare that stayed with her. The one that rode her with spurs and without letup.
Kody locked gazes with Karma. “Because it wasn’t Nick who destroyed my family. It’s what he will one day become.” She gestured toward the door Nick had left through. “That boy possesses one of the purest hearts I’ve ever encountered. He’s not like the other Malachai I’ve fought.”
“You’re hoping to save him?”
Kody nodded. “And I’m hoping to save myself.”
“From death?”
In part. But there were things far worse than death. She knew that better than anyone. “From becoming a monster.”
Karma scowled at her. “I don’t understand.”
Kody laughed nervously as the true horror of what she faced came home to roost. It wasn’t something she liked thinking about. Yet it was more than just a possibility.
It was a probability of the worst sort.
“Whoever kills the Malachai will absorb his powers.”
“Ah,” Karma said as she finally understood. “You’re afraid of becoming one yourself.”
Again, Kody nodded. “And with the powers I already hold and knowledge I have … No one will be able to stop me. I will tear the entire universe apart. But if I save Nick, if I can keep him grounded and human—”
“You will save everyone, including yourself.”
“Exactly.” Most of all, she could reset the deaths of her family and not lose them. Not have Ari’s and Urian’s souls imprisoned by a creature who lived to torment them.
Karma pursed her lips. “I’m still not sure I should believe you.”
“You’ve been lied to before by a demon.” One that had almost stolen Karma’s soul.
“Yeah. It kind of destroys the whole trust factor.”
And that was why Karma kept everything in her home locked down. So that no evil would ever be released into the world again. At least not from something she did.
“What can I do to convince you?”
“Show me your real form.”
Kody tsked at her. “You know I’m forbidden from doing that.”
“You’re not in your realm and it’s the only way I’ll believe you. A demon of any species is incapable of assuming the form of an Arel.”
Because they were the essence of good. Only the purest of hearts and most uncorrupted soul could be one. Therefore a demon had no way of duplicating their forms. They couldn’t hold it without being burned from the inside out.
If it was anyone else, this would be off the table. But Karma was a human version of the Arelim. What harm could there be in allaying her fears?
Kody inclined her head to Karma before she stepped back and spread her arms wide. White light engulfed her as she unfurled her white, iridescent wings that matched her skin and hair. Snow-white armor covered her entire body.
Gasping, Karma stumbled back, falling against the wall behind her. “Oh my God, it’s true!”
Kody leaned her head back and allowed her form to return to that of a high school girl. To the face and body that had been hers before the Malachai had killed her.
When she returned her gaze to Karma, she saw the fear and resolve inside the woman. “Release me from your home. I have to get to Nick and protect him.”
“We might have a problem with that.”
Kody scowled at the note in Karma’s voice. “How so?”
Karma glanced up the staircase. All of a sudden, there was a raw, unmistakable presence of evil in the room. It made the air heavy and tainted it with the sour stench of sulfur.
Dread filling every part of her, Kody turned to see what Karma was looking at.
Kody’s jaw went slack as she saw the last thing she wanted to deal with. Tall, blond, and stunning, the demonspawn on the stairs had eyes so green they all but glowed. Even on his best day, he was hard to deal with and viciously unpredictable. Acerbic and sarcastic.
And with every step he took toward her, the air grew heavier.
Deadlier.
“What are you doing here?” Kody asked.
He arched a brow at her question as he slowly descended the stairs with an arrogant swagger that harkened back to the days when he’d been an early medieval warlord who had led his army on a voracious killing spree throughout all of Europe. “Do we know each other?”
Kody hesitated as she reminded herself that the people and preternatural beings here most likely wouldn’t know her. Aside from the fact that this wasn’t her world, this wasn’t her time. She wouldn’t be born for many more centuries.
And Thorn had no idea that one day he’d be reading her bedtime stories and rocking her to sleep.
That memory was so incongruous with the fierce, powerful demon lord in front of her that she had to bite back a smile. “I might have you mistaken for someone else.”
Karma laughed until she met Thorn’s gaze. “She’s the Malachai’s protector.”
A slow smile spread across his face. “So this is what he summoned as a protector while he was fighting me? Really? She seemed bigger when she slammed me into the wall.”
Karma slid a sideways glance toward Kody. “She’s an Arel.”
Thorn’s eyes turned the color of blood as his fangs descended. There was a cold spark of delight in his green eyes. “An Arel … it’s been a long time since I fed on one of those.”
Fear rose up inside Kody as she realized the horrendous mistake she’d made because of her memories and her past with these people. All of that had happened in a different realm, and none of the people she knew in her past were the same here as they’d been in her world.
Karma and her sisters weren’t her allies. And neither was Thorn.
In this realm, they were her enemies.
And Nick was alone and defenseless, in the custody of two people who would now hand him over to the very things her family had died fighting against.
By trying to save Nick, Kody had just unleashed the Malachai in a world where he would do even more damage.
And into the hands of people who wanted to use him for evil.
CHAPTER 7
Something wasn’t right. Even though Nick lacked his powers, he knew it with every molecule of his body. And when the twins stopped at Erzulie’s, that feeling multiplied.
Confused, he scratched his head as Amanda turned off the car. “I thought we were going to the cathedral.”
Tabitha unbuckled her belt. “Quick pit stop for supplies. You don’t want to be defenseless there, do you?”
Honestly? He didn’t want to be defenseless anywhere. It was never a good idea, especially when you lived his fun-filled life of epic madness. He couldn’t even trust the shadows not to try and end him. Many people were afraid of the dark. Nick had been attacked by the dark, the light, and everything in between.
“Guess not.” Still, he hesitated as they got out of the car. There was a sense deep inside his gut that made it tight and apprehensive. What did he feel? What was the universe trying to tell him?
Caleb had warned him to always listen to his instincts, not his human rationale. And Madaug—the son of two neurobiologists—had further elaborated on why. The subconscious mind, whether human or preternatural, took in more stimuli than the brain could process consciously. Unbeknownst to the individual, their brain, like a supercomputer, ran those billions of details from all five senses against its experiences and knowledge base, and then produced the chemicals that made a person cautious or wary, depending on the environment they were in. Those “gut feelings” were actually the brain picking out minute danger signs and trying to warn its host that it was time to run or to fight.
Even when the person saw no logical reason why.
It was all primal instinct. A dog doesn’t know why it barks or growls. It just knows something about its environment isn’t right and it reacts.