Invincible Chronicles of Nick - By Sherrilyn Kenyon Page 0,71

He shoved another piece of paper into Nick’s face. “Remember I told you Devus coached the Tech team against Georgia?”

“Yeah, and the next day they were all killed.” Nick was now holding the article that had been written about it.

“Exactly.” Mark gave him a third piece of paper with another football team on it. The date on this photograph was a year later and …

Holy snikes …

It was Devus again. This time standing in front of the players. Nick stared in disbelief.

Surely there was some mistake.

He lined the pictures up side by side and compared them. While he did that, Madaug brought pages with the photos blown up larger so that he could see all the details in their faces.

Yeah, there was no denying it. They were all the same man. “How can this be?”

Mark rubbed his chin. “Apparently, that’s his MO. Coach appears to lead a team to victory and a championship. Then the day after they win, all the players and the coach die.” He handed Nick more pages. “Year, after year, after year.”

Nick shook his head. “No, no, no. It’s not possible. Why would he let them photograph him and keep records? For that matter, why keep his name the same? Wouldn’t that be stupid?”

“He didn’t keep his name all the time,” Mark said. “If you look at the articles—and believe me, we have—he has a list of names he recycles. I think Walter Devus was his real name, but honestly we don’t know. He’s used a lot over the last century.”

Well, that made more sense. If you wanted to hide, you couldn’t always be you. “Okay, but why have your picture made?” Especially if you don’t want people knowing you’re immortal.

Nick had noticed that Kyrian didn’t have one single photo of himself stashed anywhere at all. Not even a painting, bust. Nothing.

“I’m voting cocky arrogance.” Madaug pulled out another paper where they’d charted all the schools Devus, if it was Devus, had taught at. “Think about it. Before now, pictures weren’t all that clear, and they damaged easy. Once you left your little town, the chances of the next one having seen your photograph were pretty slim. It’s only now that we have Photoshop and computers that we can clean the images up and compare them. More than that, we have online libraries, archives, and depositories where we can pull out the most obscure information imaginable. There’s no hiding today, and once it goes online, it’s there forever, just waiting for someone to stumble on it. So remember that the next time you take a picture of you mooning someone and want to post it somewhere.”

Why did everyone have to keep bringing that up?

One little mistake …

Endless humiliation.

Mark brought his attention back to the subject at hand. “And once we’d figured out his MO, it was easy to start looking for a championship football team that won one night, then died the next day. Every year, like clockwork, there’s always one team. The venue varies from college to high school all the way down to Little League. But it’s always the same sequence of events.”

That news sickened him most of all. Little League? “He kills kids?” As soon as he said that, he realized how stupid his statement was. Of course he killed kids. Dave was lying in a morgue right now because of him. “We have to stop this.”

“We know,” they said in unison.

Nick gestured to the papers around them. “We’ll take this to the police and—”

“We can’t.”

He gaped at Mark. “What do you mean we can’t? We’ve proved—”

“Nothing.” Madaug handed him other articles. “During the gangster era, when the media was exploding and national coverage began to boom along with newsreel footage that was shown in movie theaters across the country, Devus wised up and stopped having his picture made. He also learned to kill off an existing coach and then step in just long enough to win the championship and supposedly die with his team. No doubt to avoid any long-term relationships or questions.”

“Or media coverage,” Mark added.

Maybe, but Nick kept coming back to one thing. “Then how do you know it’s him?”

Madaug gave him a duh stare. “Really? You asked me that? What are the odds that every single year across the country, one team and one team only has a coach who dies under bizarre circumstances right as they’re heading to the play-offs? Then the school or rec center is desperate for an experienced replacement. Out of the blue, here comes