Nick licked his lips as the smell hit him. Whenever one Malachai consumed another, he took his powers. His strengths, but none of his weaknesses. If he were to mix Adarian’s with his …
He laughed. No one would ever be able to command him then. He wouldn’t have to fear Noir or anyone else.
With that thought foremost in his mind, he took a step forward.
Adarian turned and vanished.
Nick started after him. But just as he spread his wings to take flight, he felt that precious hand on his arm.
“Let him go.”
Still, he didn’t listen.
Not until her lips grazed his. That shattered his bloodlust and started a new fire inside him.
Kody smiled at him, then grimaced as if something pained her. It was only then he realized that his father’s spear had gone straight through him, into Kody.
No …
Not her.
“Nekoda?”
Her legs buckled.
Nick scooped her up in his arms. Her blood was smeared across his armor and her beautiful skin. Her features paled.
She lifted her hand to touch his lips. “Your blood is poison to my kind.”
His stomach shrank. “I’ll get you help.”
“You can’t. I can’t go to a human doctor.” She closed her eyes.
“Stay with me,” he growled fiercely.
A small tear fell down her cheek. One that ripped him apart. She was always so tough and larger than life that he forgot just how tiny she was. She barely weighed anything in his arms.
“You’re a creature of death, Nick. You can’t command me to live. That power doesn’t belong to you.”
Unimaginable grief tore through him as he thought about living without her. The hole it would leave inside him. It was bleak and painful …
He couldn’t breathe.
And it was then he knew the truth.
He loved her. She was the strength that got him through his hardest days. The sound of her voice … the touch of her hand. Those were what he craved most. Not her blood.
Her life.
I love her. Now he understood what people had tried to tell him. This was what love felt like. But it wasn’t pleasant. It stabbed him with more ferocity than his father had done. Gah, it sucked to realize that someone else meant more to you than you did. No wonder Acheron disdained it so.
The Atlantean was right. You gave a part of yourself to another. A part you couldn’t reclaim. And it was gone before you even knew it.
He had no idea when or how he’d given her his heart. But he couldn’t deny the desolation inside him with the thought of losing her forever.
I have to find help.
Bring her to me, Malachai, and I’ll save her for you.
This time, he knew whose voice taunted him. “Noir?”
Yes. Come to me, Ambrosius. And I’ll take care of you both.
Nick started to obey, then caught himself. Streetwise and tough, he wasn’t anyone’s fool. “I’ll take care of you both” sounded like a threat to him.
Kody gasped, drawing his attention back to her and the seconds of her life that were running out of her and down his arms.
What should he do? She would die any minute now.
Her life or an eternity of slavery for him?
Kody’s words haunted him now. Sometimes our choices are only between lesser evils. But they are our choices alone to make.
Was this fate or free will?
He didn’t know. And honestly, right now, he didn’t care. A decision had to be made, right or wrong.
Life or death?
Slavery or freedom?
CHAPTER 13
Kody came awake in the softest bed she’d ever been in. Panic tore her apart as she remembered what had happened. She’d gone after Nick to protect him and had been stabbed by his father.
The last thing she remembered was Nick in his demon’s form. The form that kept him from feeling anything for anyone. Yet the fierce Ambrosius Malachai had been crying as he held her and begged her not to die.
Noir …
He’d offered Nick a bargain for her life.
“Oh Nick,” she whispered. Please tell me you didn’t.
Glancing around the room, she frowned. She lay on an old-fashioned Rice bed. The hand-carved testers rose almost the whole way to the ornate ceiling that formed a dome over her. The lower part of the tray was painted sky blue with clouds. In the high arch overhead, someone had painted it to look like an ancient temple. Her heavy down cover was a deep, rich navy laced with gold and burgundy threads.
She sat up, then immediately wished she hadn’t as a wave of nausea and pain hit her. It was only then she saw that she was wearing a white flannel nightgown. Warm and toasty, granted, but …
This was starting to freak her out. Who had removed her clothes? What had happened to her?
Where was she? She knew she wasn’t dead. Somehow she’d returned to the human realm. But how?
Looking inside her gown, she saw the jagged scar where she’d been stabbed. All right, their fight in the Fringe Realm hadn’t been a dream.…
And now she was starting to get angry. Who had dared to touch her while she’d been unconscious?
What had happened to Nick? And most important, where was Nick now?
“So you’re back among the living.”
She lifted her head out of her gown to find Caleb standing in the doorway. He had his dark hair brushed back from his face, which only emphasized how handsome a man he was.
If he just didn’t have that little demon infestation problem …
“I’m at your house?” she asked.
“You don’t have to sound so offended. I do have people clean it, you know?”
“Sorry.” She sighed wearily. “You have no idea how confusing it is to wake up in a strange place with no idea how you got there.”
Caleb laughed. “Sure I do. Happens to me frequently.”
She rolled her eyes at his frightening lifestyle. “Yes, but I woke up in this bed alone.”
He sucked his breath in sharply. “Low blow, Kode.”
Maybe, but … “Are you going to tell me how I got here and who undressed me?”
He held his hands up in surrender. “That be your boy, not me. You want to bitch-slap somebody, I’ll fetch Nick. He’s the one who brought you here.”
That concerned her even more. “Did he say anything to you about what happened?”
“Only that you two were attacked, and you went down. He needed someplace safe to put you until you could heal. We both decided taking you to his place would be a huge mistake. His mom would ground him until retirement if he did that, not to mention, she’d want to know how you got stabbed, and why you both weren’t in the hospital.
True. On all accounts.
And none of this was allaying her fears. She should be dead. How had he saved her?
Not one of the possibilities appealed to her. They all ended with Nick doing himself harm.
“Where is he now?”
Caleb checked his watch. “As of an hour ago, Sanctuary. He and his mom should be heading over to school in a few, for parent-teacher conferences.” He dropped his arm and narrowed his gaze at her. “You’re making me nervous with the intensity of your interrogation. What do you know that I don’t?”
“Noir offered him a bargain. We need to know if he took it.”
Caleb went white as a sheet before he started cursing under his breath. “He seemed like normal Nick to me when I saw him. But now you have me worried, too. That boy finds more trouble…”
She wouldn’t argue that. Much like Bubba and Mark, you couldn’t leave Nick alone for five minutes that he wasn’t getting into something he shouldn’t. Or that something wasn’t trying to eat him. Either way, watching his back was a full-time job.