Invincible Chronicles of Nick - By Sherrilyn Kenyon Page 0,1
accepted him. Why don’t you trust me?”
Acheron Parthenopaeus was a giant immortal … something. But even so, he’d been nothing other than nice to Nick and his mom. And most important … “He don’t got no fangs.”
“Yes, he does. He’s just better at hiding his than I am mine. He’s also my boss.”
Nick would argue he was full of cow manure, but that explanation actually made sense in a weird way. Ash was more than eleven thousand years old and had seemed a peculiar friend for Kyrian to have. But if the immortal giant was Kyrian’s boss …
That explained it.
Still, Nick wasn’t a fool, and he accepted nothing at face value. For all he knew, Kyrian was lying his fangs off. “What line of work are you in?”
“People protection.”
“Like saving punk kids getting beat to death by people who’re supposed to be their friends?” I.e. me getting shot by Alan and stomped into the ground by Tyree and Mike a couple of weeks ago. That had been how the two of them had met and what had led to his working part-time for Kyrian after school.
Kyrian inclined his head to him. “Exactly.”
Nick relaxed a degree as he reminded himself how much he owed Kyrian. But for Kyrian, he’d be dead right now. “So you’re not going to attack my mother or suck my blood?”
“Good gods, no. I don’t need the indigestion. You’ve caused me enough of a headache for one night. I don’t need any more.”
Nick sat in Kyrian’s chair, staring up at him. If Kyrian wanted to kill him, he’d had plenty of opportunities. Instead, he’d protected both Nick and his mother and allowed them to spend the night in his mansion.
“If you want to know the correct term for me, I’m a Dark-Hunter.”
Nick digested that word slowly. “Which means what? You hunt darkness?”
“Yes, Nick. That’s exactly what I do. There’s just not enough of it.” Now, there was some sarcasm you could cut with a knife.
Nick wasn’t amused by it. “So you going to explain it or not?”
“We’re immortal warriors who sold our souls to the goddess Artemis. For her, we fight and protect humanity from whatever stalks the night, trying to prey on them. For the most part, that means we track and slay Daimons.”
“Which are?”
“To put it in terms you can relate to, they’re vampires who live on human souls. Instead of blood, they take your soul into their body, and once it’s there, it starts to wither and die. We have to kill the Daimon before the soul is completely used up.”
“I don’t understand. Why take souls?”
Kyrian shrugged. “It’s what nourishes them. They have to keep a living soul in them or they die.”
That was harsh. For them and especially for the person they killed to get it.
“How do they take souls?” Nick asked.
“No idea. I asked Acheron that question once, and he refused to answer. He’s good at that.”
“So did he teach that to you, too?”
Kyrian smiled, not the tight-lipped smiles of the past, this was a full-blown one that showed off his fangs. “He did, indeed.”
“I give you an A-plus, then.”
Kyrian cocked his head, watching him as if waiting for Nick to run again. “Are we good?”
Nick considered it. He probably should be terrified and bolting for the door, but Kyrian had been there with him, fighting zombies and protecting his friends tonight. He’d opened his house to Nick’s mom.
He seemed okay.…
You can trust him. For the first time, Nick knew who that weird deep voice in his head belonged to.
Ambrose—his whacked-out uncle who swore he was here to help him. Strange, how everyone kept claiming that. But—
“Nick?”
They both jumped at the sound of Nick’s mom in the hallway, calling his name.
Kyrian went to the door and opened it. “We’re in here, Mrs. Gautier.”
Stepping into the room, she looked around suspiciously, as if she expected to catch them doing something illegal, unethical, or unnatural. Tiny, petite, and beautiful with bright blue eyes, his mom had always reminded him of an angel, especially when she wasn’t wearing makeup—something he hated on her. Her blond hair was rumpled and she was dressed in a black T-shirt that went all the way to her knees. It looked like Kyrian had loaned it to her to sleep in. At twenty-eight, she was really young to have a kid his age. But that had never mattered. It’d always been the two of them against a hostile world.