he looked completely innocent and oblivious. “What did you see there? Did you find Ambrose?”
“No.” Xev gestured at Nick. “There’s another Malachai who reigns after Ambrose. He’s not the last one!”
Utter silence rang out in the room.
Caleb sat up slowly. “I beg your pardon? Are you on meth?”
Xev turned slowly toward his brother. “You heard correctly. It’s confirmed. I saw it myself. Nick saw it. Ambrose falls to another Malachai. And that Malachai is the one who opens the gate to Azmodea. Not Ambrose.” He faced Kody. “But it doesn’t mesh with your memories. At all.”
Nick’s head pounded. Though whether it was from trying to sort this out or from the time travel or being slammed around on hard concrete repeatedly, he didn’t know. “Could Kody be from an alternate future? Would that explain why she doesn’t know about this other Malachai?”
Jaden narrowed his gaze on them. “There’s one way to find out for sure.”
Xev threw his hand up to his father to put an invisible wall between Jaden and Kody. “Don’t you even! You take one step toward her and I’ll rip out your heart.”
Jaden gave him a look that dared him to try it. One that said he’d feed Xev his own heart if he attempted it. “Don’t you want an answer?” he asked bitterly.
“Not at that cost.”
Kody bit her lip. “What’s the cost?”
Xev glanced at her over his shoulder. “A blood donation that would tie you to my father. Forever.”
“That doesn’t seem so bad.”
“Noir and Azura would be able to use it to track Nick and you through him.”
“Oh.”
“Exactly. We can’t afford to let them near either of you. Not until we know who the mother of his son is. It could be you or another—we were pulled back before we could ask that, or how this new Malachai comes into being.” Xev moved toward Nick. “What did Charity say to you?”
“Only the name of the Malachai. Cyprian.”
“Her brother?”
Nick shrugged. “I assume. I mean, he would have to be, right? He has to be a son of my bloodline, too.”
Kody gaped at Nick and the disclosure they’d just blindsided her with. “Wait … what? Back this up. Charity was your daughter?”
Nick held his hands out in hopeless despair, not quite sure how to explain it to her without really making her mad. Not that he blamed her since he had no way of knowing when he’d fathered his children or with whom. “Believe me, no one’s more shocked about this than me, especially given how a Malachai is supposed to be conceived. I can’t imagine any circumstance where I’d hurt someone, especially a woman.”
“Unless he wasn’t.”
They all scowled at Jaden.
“Come again?” Xev approached his father slowly.
Jaden pressed his fist to his lips. “C’mon, you two remember how Grim and Laguerre were cursed to become the šarru-namuš and the šarratum-ippīru.”
“They might, but it was a few hundred thousand years before either Nick or I was born. So would you please explain for us?” Kody asked.
Jaden let out a bitter laugh. “It’s ironic really. I think it’s why you can’t kill Nick, little Kody. Even though you were ordered to. Even though you know it will ultimately cost you everything you’ll ever have or love. You just can’t. Because, over and over, no matter how hard the gods keep trying to come between you, the two of you find each other in spite of all obstacles.”
Kody’s scowl matched Nick’s. “Pardon?”
Caleb sighed heavily. “He’s right. Remember how I reacted the first time I saw your bow and realized you were the daughter of Bathymaas?”
“Yeah?”
“Kody?” Nick breathed as his head began to swim. He stumbled back away from her, and fell.
“Nick? What’s going on?”
Something about Caleb’s words had triggered a seizure in his brain. Worse? It’d snapped the Malachai fury and returned his powers with a vengeance.
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