Zephyra clapped her hands together commandingly. "All right, I need the two of you up. Medea, gather your things. We're going to stay with your father for a bit."
She was aghast at Zephyra's declaration. "Why?" she asked Stryker.
He bristled under her tone. "I'm your father. You don't question me."
She shot to her feet.
Zephyra sighed aloud. "Medea, stop your anger and do as he says." She turned to face Stryker with an evil glare. "And you need to remember that she's the daughter you've never met. Not one of your soldiers to be ordered about."
Davyn rose more slowly. "If it makes you feel better, Medea, his tone was much nicer when he barked at you than when he barks at us."
Stryker cut a murderous look in his direction. "You need to stay out of this."
"Yes, my lord."
Medea paused by her mother's side. "I don't see why we have to run from demons."
"Not demons, love. War. And we're not running. We're strategically taking the high ground so that we can hold him off until we find his weakness. Now get your things."
NICK JUMPED AS HE WALKED PAST A MIRROR and caught sight of himself. "Holy shit," he breathed. His skin was blood red and covered with ancient black symbols. But it was his face that held him paralyzed.
His hair was black, streaked with red that came down into his face. Black lines cut across both his eyes and down his cheeks. His ebony eyes flashed red.
Stunned, he looked down to see his arms and hands were also red marked by black.
"What the hell is going on?"
"It's your true form."
He turned to see Menyara, only he didn't see the older woman who'd raised him. Now she was taller than him and looked to be in her early twenties. She was dressed in a black halter top with tight black pants, her long hair swept up into a stylized ponytail.
"Who are you? Really?"
Menyara tossed him one of the two staves she held. "I've been known by many names over the centuries. But you would know me best by Ma'at."
Nick's heart skipped as he remembered the Egyptian goddess. She was the one who upheld the order of the universe. Goddess of justice and truth. Menyara had given him a statue of her on his seventh birthday.
"She will protect you from harm, Nicholas. Put her by your bed and no one will ever harm you while you sleep. She will watch over you. Always." He could still remember her telling him that.
Bitter anger swept though him. "For a goddess of truth, you've lied your ass off to me."
Menyara smiled. "Not lied, sweetie. I merely withheld a few facts from you and your mother. If it makes you feel better, I'm the reason Cherise was never suspicious of your Dark-Hunters. I kept her carefully shielded from all the paranormal events in her life. Just as I tried to do with you. But fate is a bitch who won't be denied. You were meant to ascend to your powers and not even mine could keep you sheltered forever."
"I would say thanks for keeping my mother blind to my extracurricular activities, but that's part of what got her killed." He tested the weight of the staff. "What am I supposed to do with this?"
She brought hers down across his face, forcing him to block the stroke with his staff. "You have to learn to fight."
"I was born fighting." This time, he barely countered her move before she hit his head.
"People, but not the powers who will come for you now." She swung at him again.
Nick blocked and twisted the staff from her grip. He smiled proudly as he disarmed her. "Told you. I'm the best there ever was."
She snorted at his arrogance. "And I'm a goddess of truth, not of war. Beating me shows you can defeat an old woman. Nothing more. Don't get cocky."
Nick curled his lip. "You know, if you were going to shield me and my mother, you should have shielded us from poverty." Pain ripped through him as he remembered the defeated look on his mother's face every time she brushed her hand through his hair, then took the stage to strip her clothes off so that she could feed him. She'd once told him that the only reason she took him to work with her was to remind her why she had to do what she did. Otherwise she would have run for the door.
Guilt ate at him. It always had. He'd ruined his mother's life, and then his own stupidity had ended it.