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