“Wouldn’t you know if they’d killed him? Wouldn’t they have control of you now?”

“Not necessarily. It could just mean they haven’t summoned me yet. They may not even realize that they have a slave. But you are right about one thing. We need to secure your mom until this is over. Not because of your father, but because she’s your weakest link. Whoever has her, has you by the stones.”

Nick glanced down to Bubba’s store. His first thought was to put his mom with him. Bubba would protect her with his life. He knew it. But the cops were all over the Triple B, and were interrogating both him and Mark about what had happened.

That left him with only one other person he could trust. Pulling his phone out, he called Kyrian, who answered on the second ring.

“What do you need, Cajun?”

“Can you meet me at my house? I just heard from the police that my dad escaped jail and I’m afraid he might come after my mom.”

Kyrian didn’t hesitate with his response. “I’ll be there in five minutes.”

Nick hung up and slid his phone back into his pocket. He met Caleb’s bemused stare that silently asked if Nick had heard a word he’d said about his father’s real situation. “It’s the only thing we can use that will get my mom to cooperate,” he explained. “Otherwise, she’d refuse to stay at Kyrian’s. But if she thinks my father might show up at our doorstep and hurt me…”

“Good thought.”

“Yeah, I know. Some days I’m not totally stupid.” Nick headed for home with a sick feeling in his gut. Was all of this the harvester playing havoc with his life or was this something else?

Someone new?

Every day seemed to bring a more powerful enemy out of the ether to screw with him. It was worse than playing the ultimate level of a video game with no more spare lives.

And no cheat codes.

“I’m too young for this crap,” he said under his breath.

“If it’s any condolence you handle it like a man, and better than anyone I’ve fought beside in a very long time.”

Caleb’s rare praise stunned him. Unsure what had motivated it, he frowned at his friend. “Will it ever get easier?”

“I could lie and say yeah, but honestly? Life isn’t supposed to be easy. Ever. But with the hardest challenges go the greatest rewards. And every incredible moment of my life came only after I did something that made my gut clench with fear.”

Nick scoffed at his words. “You’re full of more crap than a sewage plant.”

Caleb laughed. “I know it feels like everything in the universe is out to get you, and in your case it’s actually true, but—”

“No offense, Caleb, pep talks are not your forte. Please stop. Any more and I’ll be knotting a noose around my throat.”

“Let me finish, jerkweed. We all have moments when we’re sure the gods in power have chosen us to be their personal whipping boys, but if you take a step back, you’ll see the way out, and years later when you look at it with some perspective—”

“If you tell me it won’t seem so bad, I swear to God, in the mood I’m in, I’m going to punch you.”

“I wasn’t going to say that. There will be many an event in your life that no amount of time will ever take the sting out of it. Days when you know your heart has been brutally ripped out and thoroughly stomped. But every one of those events is a defining moment in our lives that, for better or worse, changes us forever and carves a scar on our souls. They will leave us angry, bitter, shell-shocked and bleeding—that is a guarantee from a cold, brutal universe that hates us.”

Nick really didn’t want to hear this.

But there was no stopping Caleb when he was on a roll. “We don’t have a choice in how or when our bad days will blindside us. But what we do choose is how we allow them to leave us once they’re gone. You can use those moments as a catalyst to spur you on to greater things or you can let it be the event that breaks you and leaves you shattered and forever lost in darkness. That, my friend, is the curse of free will. You can blame it all on fate and the universe, but in the end you alone decide if you’re going to lie down and let hell take you under, or if you’re going to stand strong in defiance of it all with your middle finger raised.”

Caleb stopped on the sidewalk to pierce him with a fiery gaze. “If you muster that courage to stand under fire and not go down, you will amass an inner strength that no one can touch. You won’t be another faceless, nameless, forgotten human in a long historical line of the defeated. You will be a steeled warrior, and a force to be forever reckoned with. And beneath the pain that lingers, you will have the comfort of knowing that you are strongest of all. That when others caved and broke, you kept fighting even against hopeless odds.”

Nick scoffed. “And that’s really supposed to make me feel better? Seriously?”

“No one can take your dignity or hold you down, Nick, unless you let them. I was once the most feared commander in an army of demons and am now a slave to a creature I would rather gut than look at. Every morning when I get up and have to ready myself to face the horror of putrid human high school, condescending teachers, and hormonal teenagers so that I can protect your worthless hide, is a morning I want to paint the walls behind me with my brain matter.”

“Thanks, Cay,” Nick said bitterly. “Way to motivate. You should think about charging admission.”

“But…” Caleb held his finger up in front of Nick’s face to silence him. “I don’t pull that trigger because I know that even though I don’t see an end to my hell right now, nothing is ever final or eternal. Not success, and definitely not failure. High school will pass and we’ll move on to the next phase. I can’t guarantee what’s going to happen or what crap the universe will decide to gut me with, but I do control whether I’m a fighter or a victim … and I will never be a victim.”

“Neither will I.”

“And that is why I fight for you, Nick. Even when I have an urge to kill you.”

Nick shook his head at the surliness of that last comment. “You really do suck at this.”

Caleb laughed. “But I don’t suck at everything, and we need to get to your mother and secure her safety.”

As they started forward, Nick heard a deep, low growl. He searched the darkness for the source. “Is that the Mara again?”

Caleb picked up the pace and pushed Nick to walk directly in front of him. “No. It’s something worse.”

“One day you need to write down the hierarchy of spooky crap for me.”

Caleb didn’t comment as he shoved his bag into Nick’s hands. “Get to your mother and send her with Kyrian to his house. You don’t leave that condo until I come for you. Understood?”

“Yeah, but I don’t—”

Caleb pushed him with both hands. “Run!”

Nick hesitated as a huge black wolf that was the size of a horse launched itself for his throat. Right before it would have bit Nick, Caleb caught it by the neck and tackled it to the ground. With glowing purple eyes, the snarling wolf sank its teeth into Caleb’s arm.

Caleb cursed in pain.

Nick started forward to help, but Caleb’s orange eyes flared in the darkness as he summoned his demon powers. “Get to safety, Nick. Dammit, boy, move!”

Even though the very idea of running stuck hard in his craw, Nick turned and did what Caleb ordered, knowing that if he stayed, he’d only be a distraction that could get Caleb seriously hurt or killed. He clutched at the bag so he didn’t lose anything, and didn’t slow down until he reached the locked iron door of their condo. As he punched in the code, he felt a stirring in the air behind him.

Please be Kyrian.…

He turned to see a giant black shadow closing in.

Definitely not his boss. The pungent scent of sulfur choked him. It was so dense he could taste it. Get in, get in.…

Why was it anytime you needed to hurry, electronics slowed down to a crawl and lagged? How did they know?

He finally heard the light beep, followed by the whir of the lock opening.

Just as he grabbed the door handle, the blackness seized him and threw him to the side of the building.

Nick hit the brick so hard, dancing lights clouded his vision. Caleb’s supplies scattered everywhere, rolling across the sidewalk. The creature grabbed him by the throat, cutting his air off.

His eyes widened as his gaze focused on her perfect, translucent features. Ethereal and ghostly, she floated above the ground like some graceful angel with tendrils of ribbon spiraling around her. But her stark white eyes were pitiless as she leaned in to kiss him.

Only it wasn’t a kiss. The instant she placed her lips to his, he felt her pulling his breath out of his body with the force of a full-blown hurricane. Her laughter echoed in his head as his very soul was ripped from its foundations.

Nick tried to fight her off, but since she had no real form, there was nothing to hit or push against. No way to stop her from suffocating him. How she was holding him down without a body made no sense, yet he couldn’t escape her. He tried his best to breathe, yet no air would fill his lungs. It only left them.

With no choice and growing weaker by the heartbeat, he fell to the sidewalk. Still, he fought on, crawling his way back to the stairs so that he could get inside to where Menyara had painted her symbols of protection. They would get this thing off him.…

They had to.

After what seemed like an eternity, he reached the door again, only to discover it’d relocked itself, and jammed shut. There was no way he could stand up under her onslaught to reach the keypad.

His head spinning, he knew was dying.

And there was nothing he could do to stop it.

CHAPTER 16

“We have a serious problem.”

Grim opened his eyes to see Wynter Laguerre in front of him while he sat on his cold throne that was made from the bones of fallen heroes. Even now, he could hear their whispers as they’d tried to barter with him for their lives.

Mmmm, how he loved the sound of hopeless misery. No matter how brave the soul, they all had a tendency to turn craven when they knew their death was imminent.

When they learned firsthand that Death didn’t negotiate.

But that wasn’t what he needed to focus on. “You have nerve waking me from my slumber, War. Of all creatures, you should know better.” Because he very seldom slept, Grim was never a happy morning person. Rather, he woke up with bloodlust and rage.

War, however, had no natural fear of him since they were ancient allies, and he relied on her to feed him a steady diet of victims. “Oh … well then,” she said nonchalantly, “return to your sleep. It’ll wait.” She started to leave.

Her frigid tone told him that whatever it was, it was urgent. “What will wait?”

She tossed her long dark hair over her shoulder. Even though it was pitch-black in his study, he saw her perfectly because nothing could ever hide from death. “You said you wanted your rest. Far be it from me to disturb you.”

Grim rubbed at his eyes and squashed his natural inclination to snap at her. She was trying to pick a fight with him. It was what she lived for and he had no intention of giving it to her. “I’m awake now. The damage is done. Tell me what brings you to my humble abode.”

She cast her gaze around his massive throne room where he’d amassed some of the world’s greatest treasures. “Yeah, your shack is such a dump. You should hire a maid.”

He sighed irritably. “Are you really here to discuss my spring cleaning?”

“No … I’m here to warn you that Thorn knows someone freed his pet from his pit, and is furious over it. He’s already summoned his army to go after it, and return Holler to his hole immediately.”

Grim cursed under his breath. Thorn was an aptly named pain in his nether region. Much like the Dark-Hunters Grim loathed, Thorn helped the humans by leading a group called Hellchasers—damned souls Thorn had bargained for so that they could earn their redemption by returning the worst preternatural escapees to whatever hell or prison realm they’d escaped from.… He was an even bigger bleeding heart than Acheron.

But what stung the most was that Thorn had once been Grim’s biggest ally. Until the day, during the greatest plague of all time, the beast had turned against Grim and snatched Holler from his side, then imprisoned Holler in Thorn’s dungeon and dared Grim to release him.

They’d been at war with each other ever since.

He glared at War. “How did he find out?”

“Do I look like a crystal ball?”

Oh to relive the past when he’d been able to take an ax to her for that kind of snark. Such fond memories he had, but they were worthless right now when he had to deal with her and her quirks.