Nick frowned at the name of someone he thought was friendly … ish. “The scary dude who helped me out when I was imprisoned in the Nether Realm?”
She nodded.
“Dang, I really liked him, too.” He shook his head. “I don’t understand why he’d be our ally at home and against us here.”
“Free will.”
Nick cocked his head at Savitar’s words. “Say what?”
Savitar ran his hand over a vicious scar on his forearm. “For better or worse, every decision we make, good or bad, small and large, puts us on a course to nightmares we don’t see coming until they’re in our face.” Savitar turned his gaze to the road. “In every universe, we play out different decisions we’ve made for whatever reason. What breaks one person at one time can make them strong at another. And one small variable can have devastating consequences. Timing is everything, kid.”
Kody nodded. “In our world, your mother was attacked by the Malachai and you were born. In this one, there is no Malachai so she was able to live out her life under more normal circumstances.”
“But she still had me.”
“And Bubba’s still your father.”
Nick fell silent as he considered that. In many ways, Kody was right. Bubba was the closest thing to a dad Nick had ever known. And though they weren’t blood related in his world, they were still family. “But what about Kyrian?” He was as much of a mentor and father for Nick as Bubba. “I found out this morning that he’s dead in this world.”
“Nick Burdette didn’t need to meet a Dark-Hunter to put him on the right path, away from the darkness that was trying to claim him. He has Bubba here to keep him straight. He doesn’t need Acheron to watch over him. Or Caleb to guard him from forces he’s not strong enough to fight yet.”
He was struggling to make sense of it all. Everything she said was valid, but … “What about Amanda and Tabitha and Karma? Why are they good in our world and not in this one?”
Kody sighed. “In both worlds, they, like you, were born to walk the line of shadows. One foot in the light and one in the dark. A few are scared enough of both that they stay in the middle and never pick a side. Others are strong enough to choose the light and stay firmly planted there, even while the darkness tries to claim them. And others are too weak or blind to fight the lure of darkness. It overwhelms them with false promises and before they know what’s happened, it owns them. Sometimes, like the Thorn you know in our world, they can battle their way back to the light and put the darkness behind them even though it continues to try and reclaim them. But those people are very rare. I don’t know what kept our Tabby and Amanda on the right side in our world nor do I know what corrupted them here. As Savitar said, it’s a matter of free will. Decisions made at the wrong or right time, for the wrong or right reasons.”
Nick picked her hand up from the seat and studied the scars on her knuckles. Even though she was a veteran warrior, her hands were soft and tiny. Delicate. And yet they held a strength that was unfathomable to him. “How old are you, Kody? Really?”
“I had just turned nineteen when you killed me.”
He sucked his breath in sharply as her words slapped him hard. He wasn’t that far away from turning nineteen himself. Just a little over two years. “And you were fighting the Malachai at that age? Why?”
She snorted. “By the time my father was nineteen, he was an experienced war veteran and a feared general.”
“And he was okay with you following in his footsteps at that age?”
“Not really, but he had no say in it. I became a soldier after you killed him.”
He winced and wondered how she could stand to be in the same car with him right now. Why she didn’t try to claw his eyes out every time she looked at him.
Kody squeezed his fingers as if she knew what he was thinking. “As an infant, my oldest brother was taken from my parents and they weren’t allowed to raise him. For centuries, my father thought him dead while my mother … well, both of them really, were imprisoned by different gods. When they were finally reunited, long after my oldest brother was grown, they had my brother Ari right away.” A bittersweet smile curled her lips. “They were so overprotective of him that I’m told it scarred him for life. And for the longest time, they were afraid to have another child. They just wanted to protect the two they had and make sure nothing bad happened to them.”
“Were you an uh-oh baby?” Nick teased, trying to ease the grief in her eyes.
She wrinkled her nose at him. “No. I wasn’t an uh-oh.” There was a hint of laughter in her voice. “Many centuries later, after Ari was grown and married, my parents decided that they were finally ready to have another baby to viciously overprotect.”
The light faded as sadness darkened her eyes again. “I was only two when something happened to you. I don’t know what. But it unleashed the Malachai and you went crazy on the world. I was sent into hiding and trained to battle your forces while my family rallied their allies and did what they could to keep your army at bay and protect the world.”
Nick ground his teeth at the horrors of her life. Horrors he’d caused for her and all the people they loved. He’d never hated himself more than he did right now. “I’m so sorry I hurt you.”
“You didn’t.”
That wasn’t true, but he appreciated her saying it. At the end of the day, he was the Malachai. Whatever his future self did, it was him, too.
Now he understood why Ambrose was so desperate to change the past. His future self had told him that he could feel the last of the goodness inside him dying. That any day, he expected the Malachai to devour his conscience and render him a merciless monster. Because of it, Ambrose was barely sane at times as he tried to keep Nick from making the same mistakes he’d made at Nick’s age. To steer Nick onto another path that kept him firmly planted in the light.
And once that decency was gone, the Malachai would take over and kill everything and everyone. That was what his species had been born to do.
Man, it sucked.
“You should have told me the truth before now, Kody.”
“You weren’t ready to hear it, and you definitely weren’t ready to accept the reality of what you’re headed toward.”
Who would be? No one in their right mind wanted to be told that they would one day destroy the entire world and everyone who lived in it. That they would kill or cause the death of every being who mattered to them.
And so what if she was right? It still stung that she’d lied to him and kept such a huge secret. “Is that why you came to see me in the hospital after I’d been shot? Were you planning to kill me?”
She looked away. “I was supposed to kill you that first day we met at St. Richard’s.”
That news floored him and flooded him with memories. Even now, he could visualize her clearly that day in his mind when he’d first seen her standing in the office—it seemed like a lifetime ago. She’d looked like a vision. So sweet and innocent. Confused by her new school, or so he’d thought. Meanwhile, there she’d been with the intent of ending his life. “Why didn’t you?”
She laughed bitterly before she met his gaze. “You were so not what I thought you’d be. I went there expecting a cruel Malachai to battle to the death. Someone like Stone.” The bully who’d caused him to be sent to the office. “And instead I found a sweet, bashful, respectful boy who wore the tackiest shirt imaginable just to make his mother happy and not hurt her feelings, even though everyone else mocked him for it. One who gladly took a beating to protect his saintly mother’s reputation. An innocent soul who found humor at the worst of times and who held himself up with hard-won pride even when everyone else was relentlessly trying to knock you down. You have inside you a purity that is so rare. The capacity to love unconditionally and completely. In spite of what you are, and as unbelievable as it is, you are truly decent.”