“If I keep you here, do you both swear to protect me and mine? And by mine, I mean those I hold dear, including Caleb, Zavid, Kody, Simi, and crew?”
“Nick…” Caleb growled in warning.
Ignoring him, Xevikan narrowed his eyes suspiciously. “You would trust us, Malachai?”
Nick touched the St. Nicholas and St. Christopher medallions his mother had given him that he kept around his neck. “I’m willing to go on a little faith.”
Livia smiled. “I knew I liked you better than Adarian. I’m in.” She threw herself against Nick then kissed him.
Nick quickly disentangled himself. “No offense, there will be none of that while you’re here. I’m spoken for.” At least he hoped and prayed he could still say that.
“Oh. Sorry.” She sedately straightened herself.
Nick turned his attention to Xevikan, who had yet to commit. “What about you?”
He looked at Nick’s outstretched hand as if it offended him. Just when Nick was sure he was going to tell him to stick it in any available orifice, he nodded and shook it.
“Until you betray me, Malachai, you have my loyalty.”
Caleb cursed then mumbled under his breath. “I knew I should have killed you when I had a chance. I don’t care what your daddy or your test scores say … moron.”
Nick turned to face his irritable compadre. “C’mon, Caleb. Would you really have done that to them?”
He looked past Nick to lock gazes with Xevikan. “In a heartbeat. And in his case, I’d have sealed the case for eternity so that no one could ever open it again.”
Xevikan said something to Caleb in a language Nick couldn’t translate.
Caleb snorted. “Pray I don’t take your proverbial hatchet and bury it someplace fatal.” He indicated Nick with a tilt of his chin. “Can we finish the ritual before any more of your friends show up?”
“Sure. What do we need to do?”
Caleb glanced to Simi. “Sim? Can you do me a favor and watch this crew while I take Nick to the cemetery?”
“Absolutely, Akri-Caleb. We can have an ice-cream and barbecue party while you quality akris take your time and do what’s you gots to.”
Caleb still looked constipated as he swept his gaze around to Zavid, Livia, and Xevikan. “I weep that I’m going to live to regret this.” And with that, he vanished with Nick in tow.
Simi turned to them with a bright, fanged smile. “So who be hungry?”
“Me!” Livia said enthusiastically. “Can we really have food?”
“Oh, she-demon … Akri-Caleb like his food almost as much as the Simi. You come on, child, and let the Simi educate you on the best eats in New Orleans!”
Xevikan hung back as the women left.
When Zavid started after them, he pulled him to a stop. “What’s the deal with this Malachai?”
“I don’t know. I just joined him myself. But he seems level. Decent, even.”
He wasn’t so sure about that. He didn’t believe in decency anymore. From anyone. “He’s with a half-daeve turncoat, a Charonte, and an Aamon, and you don’t find that off?”
Zavid laughed. “Wait until you meet his Arel girlfriend, lunatic mother, and the two human homicidal maniacs he calls family. Buddy, everything about the Malachai ain’t right.”
Xevikan screwed his face up as he digested those incomprehensible words. “The Malachai has a mother and he hasn’t eaten her?”
“No. He worships the ground she walks on.”
That was even more peculiar to him than this house they were in.
Without another word, Zavid headed after the women.
Still baffled, Xevikan took a moment to strengthen the spell shielding Malphas’s home. Although why he wasted his own powers to protect someone who hated him, he had no idea.
But then, they were family.
Or at least, they’d been born so.
Nick shivered from the cold rain that poured down on them while they stood in the center of the dark cemetery. The sharp winds tore at them with an almost hurricane force. “So what is it with you and Xevikan?”
Caleb paused to look up while he was anointing the circle with the oils he’d brought. “I was one of the judges who had his powers and wings stripped.”
Nick’s jaw went south. “What? Why?”
Caleb returned to sanctifying the circle. “He betrayed his oath, his brethren, and his family. He should have been put to death. It’s what I lobbied for.”
Man, that was harsh, and it wasn’t like Caleb to be so heartless. Not without a good cause. “What exactly did he do?”
Caleb’s eyes turned to a demonic orange that glowed in the darkness. “He snuck our enemies inside our walls and allowed them to lay waste to everything we held dear.”
Nick felt sick as he realized what must have happened. “Is that how your wife died?”
“I don’t want to talk about it, Gautier. Suffice it to say, he’s not to be trusted. Not for anything. And definitely not with anyone you want to keep alive.”
Nick knew he should leave this topic alone, but he couldn’t. He wanted to understand what would make someone do something so horrific. “Did he say why he did it?”
Caleb stood up and glared at him in the darkness. “Does it matter? Really? Would you put your mother in harm’s way for any reason?”
No. He doubted he’d even do that for Kody.
“That is what Xevikan did. He allowed our innocent families, his innocent family, our children, to be slaughtered while they slept. In cold blood. And you,” he sneered the word, turning it into the vilest of insults, “have embraced him as a brother.”
“Because you didn’t share any of this earlier.”
“Would it have mattered?”
“Probably … Maybe … Yes. Yes, it would have. Why didn’t you tell me this?”
Caleb growled. “I don’t know what’s worse. Your humanity or your demonkyn. Both are liable to kill you and get the rest of us slaughtered in the process. Would you just listen to me once in a while when I try to tell you something?”
Nick rolled his eyes. “Gah, you sound like my mother.”
“And you sound like an idiot.”
That went over him like a bucket of ice. For a moment, he almost lashed out at Caleb. Only the fact that he knew the demon was in pain kept him from hitting him. “I don’t have to take this from you, Cay. I really don’t.”
Caleb slung the oils out and threw his head back so that he could let loose a bellow that shook the massive tombs around them even harder than the thunder did. His soaking-wet skin mottled from human into its demon orange. His black wings shot out as he gave in to a rage the likes of which Nick had never seen before. Caleb was always in control. Always calm in any crisis.
But this …
This was a terrifying reminder of what Caleb really was.
Deadly.
And it was several more heartbeats before Nick realized the demon wasn’t really angry. Caleb was crying. His agony reached out and wrapped itself around Nick like it was his own.
Wanting to comfort his friend, Nick approached him slowly. “I’m sorry, Caleb. I didn’t know.”
His breathing ragged, Caleb glared at him while the rain poured down over them both, drenching them. “Of all the people in all the worlds, you picked the one being I truly cannot stand. The one whose name makes me sick to hear or to say. And it’s one I cannot banish from my nightmares no matter how hard I try.”
“And again, I’m sorry. You know I would never hurt you. Not intentionally.”
Caleb let out a tired breath as he wiped at the tears on his cheeks that blended in with the rain. “Why are we fighting?”