Invision - Sherrilyn Kenyon Page 0,2
we lose! I’ve seen a different solution. I will not sacrifice her life in this. I’d rather die. Just kill me and be done with it.”
Aeron laughed out loud as if the mere suggestion was preposterous. “You’ve got your full Malachai powers, boyo, and Adarian’s dead. There’s no dying for you now. Only slavery. With torture being optional.”
“Until you have a child…” Yeah, Caleb just had to toss that reminder into the mix.
“I have a brother. Can’t I give this to him and let him be the Malachai instead of me?”
Caleb shook his head. “That ship left the harbor when you took the Malachai sword and picked your šarras for your army. You are the full Malachai now, Nick. There’s no undoing it. Not until you have a son who kills you for your powers, and he designates his own generals.”
Pressing the heels of his hands to his eyes, Nick cursed them all. “Why didn’t you stop me from taking that stupid sword from Livia?”
Caleb stood up. “Like you would have listened.”
“I might.”
Kody shook her head. “No, you wouldn’t have. You never do.”
They were right. He just didn’t want to hear it. “If we erase everything, where does that leave me?”
“With a migraine,” Aeron said under his breath.
Before Caleb could answer, the statue beside Kody opened its eyes and turned its head to stare at Nick.
“I knew it!”
They all ignored his Tourette’s as Kody jumped away from the statue to eye it warily.
“Malachai.” It smiled eerily before it stood and headed for Nick.
Both Aeron and Caleb cut its path off.
The statue tsked at them. “Still hiding behind your friends? Shame you don’t have the same loyalty to them.”
Rising to his feet, Nick scowled. “Excuse me? I emphatically disagree. I protect my friends. Always.”
“You can disagree all you want. But I know the truth and so do they.” The statue held its hand out toward Nick and opened its palm. A ball of light hovered there, showing him images of another ally they’d thought had died in their last battle against the demons that had been trying to kill Caleb in his own home. “Zavid isn’t dead, Malachai. He’s only abandoned by you. Have you the nerve to come get him? Or will you stay and protect the princess?” It glanced meaningfully at Kody before it turned back to sneer at Nick. “After all, he who leaves Rome, loses Rome.”
And with those words spoken, the ball vanished and the statue returned to being immobile again.
Nick’s jaw went slack. “Zavid’s not dead?”
“It’s a trap.” Caleb turned to face Nick. “Don’t listen.”
“You knew?”
Caleb shook his head. “It’s not as simple as you think. Noir used his body to attack you. No one survives that kind of possession. Not even an Aamon. While his soul might be with Noir now, his body isn’t.”
In that moment, Nick’s Malachai powers kicked in and fed him the information he needed. The aether around him began to whisper with information and facts. He saw Zavid in the Nether Realm, being tormented in a pit where Noir threw his enemies.
Wincing, he couldn’t believe that no one had told him about this. “I have the powers to bring him back and restore him?”
“Again, not that simple.”
Nick stared aghast at Caleb. “How is it not that simple?”
“You haven’t learned those powers. Yes, you sort of … kind of…” Did Caleb always have to use that mocking tone? “Learned some necromancy—”
“A little bit,” Kody added for emphasis.
“But you’re not at the level where you can actually command those powers with any degree of skill.”
“Yeah, boyo, you could bring him back as a goat.”
“Already did that to Madaug,” Nick mumbled, then louder, “but I got him better and made him human again.”
“Sort of.”
Nick rolled his eyes at Caleb’s sarcastic tone. Was it too much to ask for his friends to have Alzheimer’s? They were old enough to be senile and then some.
But no …
Leave it to him to be surrounded by demons with perfect recall.
“You’re not being helpful.” Nick growled under his breath. “I can’t leave Zavid in Azmodea.” That was a hell realm of unimaginable horrors. He’d only been to it once, and briefly, but it’d been long enough to leave a crappy impression.
Cocking his brow, Caleb crossed his arms over his chest. “Thought you were out of the fight? What happened to drowning your woes with beignets?”
Nick glanced at Kody then Aeron before he met Caleb’s gaze. “That was before I found out one of our own was being held by