Invision (20 page)

They were taking him over in a way they hadn't done since the early days of when they'd first become unlocked. And he was powerless against them.

No longer in control. He felt his breathing turn frenetic as that familiar heat burned through him and his black wings snapped out of his spine. His vision darkened and his heartbeat pounded in his ears like a war drum. Fast. Furious. Thumping. Rolling, he came to his feet, head down to glare at his friends in the manner of a rabid dog trying to decide whose throat he was going to rip out first.

Fangs filled his mouth and the blood craving whet his appetite …

Kody swallowed hard as she saw Nick's eyes change over. No longer blue, they were all demon black now. His skin changed to that deep bloodred that was marked by ancient black symbols so that it formed an elegant, swirling pattern all over his body. Strangely beautiful and at the same time, terrifying. Black lines cut across both of his eyes and down his cheeks into sharp points. And the same bloodred laced through his black hair, just as it did his eyes, until they glowed in the dim light.

The Malachai was a creature of exquisite death.

And when those blood-streaked eyes met hers, she trembled, but not in fear. Somehow she knew he wouldn't hurt her. Even though the Nick she knew had receded behind the monster in front of her, there was something about him that said she was safe.

“Ambrose?”

His black wings fluttered, stirring the air around them and sending dust and debris rattling.

Jaden took a step toward her.

Hissing, Nick grabbed her into a tight, protective embrace. He literally wrapped his entire body around her and lifted her from the floor. He held her cradled against his chest with an ease that was truly, truly terrifying. With his wings flapping in a slow, rhythmic arcing motion, they hovered in a far corner of the shop.

Nick closed his eyes and pressed his cheek against the top of her head. He held her as if she were unspeakably precious. As if he'd lost her and had finally found her again. She had the impression that he wasn't going to allow anyone to come near her or remove her from his arms.

And while he held her like that, she saw why …

They were no longer in New Orleans. Rather she was in an ancient Hurrian city, on top of a hill that overlooked the capital where people were in the process of rebuilding structures that had been damaged by a savage war. Even the temple where she stood hadn't been spared. The walls around her still bore the charred scarring of god-bolts and one of the pillars had yet to be replaced that had collapsed under a fierce assault.

Oblivious to it, she stood on the balcony with a Charonte demon who reminded her a great deal of a taller Simi, except her skin was a swirling prism of red and white. Dressed in black armor, she wore her ebony hair braided with red feathers and gold beads. She even had gold tips on the edge of her pointed, pixie ears.

“I've a bad feeling, Rubati. You should do as Monakribos wants and run with him.”

“I'm not afraid, Xi. His mother will protect us. Braith won't allow her child to be harmed. It was the promise the other gods made to her and his father when Kissare gave up his life so that Monakribos could be born. They swore that they would never ask for her to sacrifice more of her blood to them.” She cupped her stomach that was just beginning to show the signs of her pregnancy. “We're safe from their wrath.”

Suddenly, the sky grew dark overhead. Thunder clapped so hard, it shook the building around them.

Rubati stumbled, then extended her white wings to catch her balance so that she wouldn't harm her unborn baby. “Are we at war again?”

“I'm not sure, but I'm being summoned. You should hide!” Xiamara leapt from the balcony to fly down toward the city.

Just as Rubati started to leave, she saw Monakribos come into the room, through the doors.

Relief flooded her. “My love!” She rushed to him only to have him backhand her so hard that the blow lifted her from her feet and sent her skittering across the floor.

Stunned senseless, she barely remained conscious as he seized her.

He lifted her up in a cruel fist. “Damn you for what you've done!”

She grabbed his hand in both of hers and tried to loosen his grip. “Kri? What's wrong with you?”

But her words didn't seem to register as he set upon her with a warrior's vengeance.

By the time the drug he'd been given cleared his blood and he came to his senses, it was too late.

Rubati barely clung to life.

Monakribos pulled back in horror as he took in the whole scene and saw what he'd done to the female he'd loved above all others. He saw his bloodstained hands and her battered body. “Ru?”

Her breath rattled in her chest as she stared up at him, too weak and broken to move. Tears fell from the corners of her eyes, leaving streaks in the blood on her face. She swallowed hard before she spoke in the faintest of pain-filled whispers. “I was going to tell you about the baby I carry. But it's too late now. You've killed us both.”

With those words spoken, she expelled one final breath. And the light that had always shone so bright in her eyes, faded and left them glassy and hollow.

Empty. Devoid of the only love he'd ever really known.

Throwing his head back, Monakribos bellowed in rage and grief. Unimaginable pain shredded every fiber of his soul.

He pulled her against his chest and held her there as tightly as he could. In that instant, his heart and soul shattered.

Damn them! They'd told him the price of the cessation of war. That all of his army would have to be put down.

For peace, he'd done it. Without question. Without fail. He'd callously killed friend and foe alike.

But he'd refused to harm his wife and he'd told them as much. Her life had been the one he'd warned them to leave alone. Like his mother, he was a creature of great fury and bitter destruction. They all knew this to be true.

And they should have heeded his warnings.

His plan had been to take his wife and run from this place. To hide somewhere they couldn't find them.

Rather than let him go, they'd tricked him.

Now …

“You will pay for this!” he snarled up at the ceiling above. “So help me, if it's the last thing I do! Every last one of you will taste my vengeance as I ram it down it your throat!”

He ran his fingers over Rubati's lips until they were coated, then used her blood to paint binding sigils on his body—they were identical to those that marked Nick's Ambrose form. “By the blood of my wife and unborn child, I swear that my sons shall all remember this and that they will carry forth my powers, my strength, my hatred, and my wrath. Each one will know you for what you've done here this day. We will never forget and with each generation we shall grow stronger until we have enough power to put you all down and reign over you! We will not rest, will not falter until the day comes that we are avenged for this wrong you've done us. Let our wrath rain down on you! So mote it be!”

And as he continued to chant and call for vengeance against the gods who'd wronged them while he held her, he felt something striking against his stomach.

With a fierce grimace, he pulled back to see that her blood had begun to spin and twist with his. More than that, the winds picked up his cries.

Suddenly, a piercing light erupted from her body, tearing through her chest where her heart had once fed life to her.

Monakribos shrank away and held his hand up to shield his eyes. The light danced and spun, coming together until it formed a beautiful young woman. One who bore a striking resemblance to his wife.

Only where Rubati had been fair and pale, this creature was her darker counterpart.

A perfect shadow creature of his beautiful wife.

With the grace and dignity of a fully grown goddess, she rose to stand before him. Yet for all the appearance of a woman, she glanced about in utter confusion and bewilderment. She was a lost child who knew nothing of the world she'd just been born into.

Monakribos rose slowly to his feet. “Rubati?”

She frowned at him as if she understood nothing he said.

When he reached for her, she shrank away.

“Step away from her … she's not your wife.”

With a heated curse, he turned toward Cam, intending to kill her. But she wasn't alone.

She stood in his mother's temple with the rest of her pantheon.

With her gold and pearl skin gleaming, Cam approached him slowly. “She has no heart, Monakribos. She's merely a shell conjured by your grief. A physical manifestation of all the emptiness you feel inside.”

“Then let her be called Bathymaas. For she shall be my promise of a plague of unending misery on this earth. As you've all damned me, I curse you in return. None of you will know peace or love or happiness. Ever. Not until the day you do right by me and make amends for what you've wrongfully stolen. Damn you all! Damn you!”

With those words spoken, he manifested his Malachai sword and descended on the gods with his full fury. One way or another, he wasn't leaving the room until he'd slaughtered them all!

Not until the floors ran red with
their
blood.

They had thought the war was over. But it was only just beginning …

 

CHAPTER 12

Kody gasped as she felt Nick's memory fading away from her until she was again aware of being inside Menyara's store, and in his arms.

With a ragged breath, she finally understood why she felt so connected to him. “My mother is Bathymaas reborn,” she whispered.

Caleb nodded. “She's the empty shell. When she met your father, he gave her the heart she was missing and completed her. Which allowed you to be born as her completed whole … the part of her that was Rubati. It's what makes you the anchor for the Malachai. Even when he's like that, he feels you for who and what you really are.”

Kody laid her hand on Nick's cheek. “Can you understand me?”

Nick blinked slowly before he nodded. Still in his Malachai form, he slowly lowered them to the floor and set her on her feet.

“Better?”

“I have my powers … for the moment. So I think the answer is yes.” He narrowed his gaze on Jaden. “But you didn't explain what Grim and Laguerre have to do with this.”

“It was their daughter who drugged Monakribos,” Jaden said quietly. “Needless to say, he went a little crazy.”

“And you have a hole in your memory, Nick.” Xev slid a glance to his father. “No Malachai before you has ever known what happened to Monakribos.”

He scowled. “Yeah, you're right. I know the fate of all of them. But his is missing.”

Xev nodded. “Because my father and his friends ripped Monakribos apart.”

Jaden sputtered. “
I
had nothing to do with that. If you recall, I was against it since I didn't know what Monakribos's death would do to Jared. I was the one who risked everything to bring him back!”

“So you were.”

Nick felt his powers waning again as dread washed over him. This had disaster written all over it and catastrophe as a master seal. “Bring him back how?”

Jaden sighed heavily. “A new Malachai—Jeros—sprang out of Monakribos's blood, in much the same way that Bathymaas had done with Rubati's. I foolishly thought he'd be the same exact way that she'd been. Innocent and ignorant. Harmless.”

“Boy, were they all surprised,” Caleb said sarcastically.

Xev let out a bitter laugh. “True to Kri's curse, he came back all kinds of pissed off and wanting vengeance. His first course was to hunt down Grim and Laguerre's daughter and exact an ugly revenge on her.”

Nick could see where this was headed. “So they killed him again.”

“I'm sure they wanted to,” Xev said. “But no. They weren't allowed. So they cursed him to die by the hand of his own son. Which is the part you know, as it falls to you now.”

Caleb saluted him. “And so when
Jeros's
son, Evander, was born and killed Jeros, then realized that one day his son would do the same, Evander decided the best way to exact revenge for that juicy little curse was to capture the two creatures who'd put it on his bloodline and to make them subservient to him and his progeny for all eternity. Better still, he decided to use their powers to feed his own and make them his generals, to serve him and his army.”

“Well, that explains Grim's nasty attitude toward me.” No longer a god of death, he was now completely dependent on the will of the Malachai for his duties. Yeah, Nick would have a bit of a wedgie over it, too. “He told me when we first met that he was an angel of death.”

Caleb snorted. “In a manner of speaking, he is. Even as a god, he wasn't a major deity, but rather an escort of sorts. Over the centuries, after the degradation of what Evander had done to him died down, he realized he had a better gig under the Malachai's banner. Still, the role reduction was always a bit of a rub.”

Nick was finally in control enough to return to his human body. “And I pissed him off even more when I slighted him.”

“Yeah, you did,” Caleb said belligerently. “But pissing people off is what you do best, Gautier.”

“Thanks.”

“S'okay. It's what I do best, too. Why we get along.”

Nick snorted, knowing Caleb was right. And still his head was reeling from information overload as he tried to sort through it all. “Is there any way to go back and help Charity and the others? I don't like leaving her wounded.”

Sympathy darkened Jaden's freaky eyes. “That's not your battle, kid. Sorry.”

“But, if you change what happens … if we find out what went wrong, that won't be her world anyway.”

Nick considered Xev's words. “All this time we've been trying to stop Ambrose.”

Xev nodded. “And it wasn't Ambrose. You were right the whole time.
You're
not the problem.”