Adarian paused his rough cleaning to stare down at him with a fierce, frightening scowl. “You have your mother’s eyes.”
Nick duplicated his father’s frown. “Yeah. I know.”
His features softening, Adarian cupped Nick’s face with his cold, dry hand. “I never noticed that before. All I ever saw in you was me, and I hated you for it.” He took Nick’s hand in his and studied it as if it were an alien object. “How can she love you like she does when you look so much like me … after what I did to her?”
“I wonder that same thing every day.” Nick swallowed hard as he stared up at his father. “She tells me that she hated you with everything she had until the moment I was born. And from then on, she couldn’t hate you ever again.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Yeah, me either. Some reason, she’s delusional and thinks that my sorry butt is the best thing that’s happened to her. It’s why she’s tolerated you ever since and why she used to take me to visit you in prison, even though she’s terrified of you. Without you, she wouldn’t have me. And for that, she says she’s eternally grateful to you. Go figure, right?”
Adarian shook his head. “But for you, I would have never seen her again, would I?”
“Doubtful. Like I said, you scare the bejesus out of her. I can’t even raise my voice in happiness that she doesn’t jump back in fear. It was bad when I was a kid. Now that I dwarf her, I have to be careful to make no sudden moves, ’less it startles her.”
Adarian winced in pain as he gentled the tight hold he had on Nick. “I’m sorry I tried to kill you.”
Nick had no idea how to respond to that. Gee, thanks? Yeah, that didn’t quite cover the mixed emotions at war inside him. They had never been father and son.
Or even friendly.
But even so, Nick had always wanted to have a dad like other kids did. He’d wondered countless times what it would be like to hold his head up with pride at school functions and proudly introduce his progenitor to his friends and teachers. He had no idea what that felt like. Only the sick cringing dread in his stomach whenever someone asked him what his father did for a living. He would dodge the question as best he could, and when he couldn’t, he’d tell them that his father worked in the prison system.
Not really a lie. Just not the whole truth.
It wasn’t something anyone wanted to admit to, especially not a kid who feared other people thinking he’d grow up and be a criminal, just like his father.
Now, Adarian held him as if he actually cared. As if Nick mattered to him. But he knew better. He was nothing to his father. He never had been.
Despising that truth, Nick started to pull away from his father, yet Adarian refused to let go.
“You have seen the future, Nicholas. Noir will not rest until he has you in custody. And as strong as you think you are, he will break you. When you rise to subdue your generals in your world, he will know you as the Malachai. No one can spare you that. And he will send everything he has after you.”
“Can’t wait,” Nick said, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “Been needing a good party to attend. Nice to know I won’t have to pay for it myself.”
Adarian snorted. “I was arrogant like you once. After I killed my father, I thought nothing could touch me. That I was without equal. The strongest, most powerful Malachai ever conceived.” He laughed bitterly. “There’s a reason I spent the last two hundred years in and out of human prisons. Why I spent centuries in hiding. While we are the most powerful of all demonkyn, we are not gods. And we cannot kill the ones who created us. The best we could hope is to imprison them, and that is impossible for us. They made sure of it.”
“But I’ve seen the future where I’ve—”
“No,” Adarian snapped, interrupting him. “You’ve seen your rampage against the gods who hold your leash. Every year we live, we lose more sanity. The hatred inside us grows exponentially. Because of your mother, yours has been tied down and mitigated. Without her … nothing will stop it from taking you over, and it will accelerate. In ways you can’t even begin to conceive. You will turn on everyone near you and especially those who are close to you. You won’t be able to stop yourself. And you will learn the lesson that was spoon-fed to me by my own whore mother.”
Nick so loved the rosy landscape his father painted. “And that was?”
“We came into this world alone and that’s exactly how we’ll leave it. Don’t expect the years in between to be any different. No one can be trusted. You only have friends until you look the other way. That is the truth of all species. But never more true than it is for our kind. Every Malachai born has been betrayed … starting with his own mother. And the one thing I learned at the business end of Noir’s whip is that fear, pain, and intimidation will ensure your safety and make sure that nothing and no one ever goes for your throat. They won’t dare so long as they fear the fact that you will get back up and come for them the way they went for you.”
Nick didn’t believe that. Not for a minute. He’d never had an enemy yet whose jugular he wouldn’t go for if exposed. It didn’t matter how much they beat or bullied him. He would not be intimidated by them and he refused to give them his fear. To the devil with that. No one would ever hold that kind of power over his mind and soul.
No one.
But his mother, Caleb, Acheron, Kyrian, Kody … there was nothing he would do to hurt them. Ever. He would die to protect their lives. And they had all proven the same loyalty where he was concerned. It was love that bound them together much tighter than hatred and fear ever could. As Kody so often said to him—into all gardens rain will fall. But the heart and the love it’s capable of will give us shelter from even the worst storms.
Love and respect kept someone in check a lot more than fear and hatred. He would explain it, yet he knew better than to waste the breath. His father had no concept of those emotions. He never would.
Suddenly, Nick’s head started spinning. He felt like he was falling again.
His father tightened the grip he had on him. “You’re fading back to the false body. It won’t hold you. It can’t. But the spell that separated you is strong. You have to unlock your powers, son. Protect your mother. Be the man for her that I should have been. Not the beast that hurt her. I deserve no mercy and she deserves no sadness. Whatever you do, Nicholas, don’t become me.” And then his father did the most unbelievable thing of all.
He kissed Nick’s cheek.
As he pulled back, his father’s black, inhuman gaze bored into him. “The Ambrose Malachai will never be forgotten. But it’s up to you as to how he’ll always be remembered.”
Nick wanted to speak. Nothing would leave his throat. He reached out for his father.
It was too late. One heartbeat he was in the land of dark nothing and in the next he was back with Kody, who held him just like his father had. Worry creased her brow as her green eyes warmed him.
Had it all been a delusion? Had his mind transposed Kody’s actions into his subconscious and made him think that his father held him while in reality it’d never happened?
Was it a dream?
“See, Akra-Kody, the Simi done told you that he’d be alive and licking again.”
Nick grimaced at Simi’s messed-up syntax. “You mean alive and kicking.”
It was Simi’s turn to make a disgruntled expression. “No. Why you want to kick something when you can put barbecue sauce on it and lick it? You human-like people make no sense to the Simi’s demon mind.”
Nick grinned at her. “That’s okay. You make none to me, either.” He shook his head as he tried to clear his blurry vision. “Are we still under fire from Thorn?”