Inferno (33 page)

CHAPTER 20

Summoning Caleb to his side, Nick knew he’d changed somehow. He could feel it with every molecule of his body. He was stronger and more confident now. More sure about his powers. That cave and his walk home had done something strange to him. Like some inner cosmic switch had been flipped into overdrive.

But he didn’t have time to investigate it. Not while his mother was missing.

“Caleb!” he shouted.

To his relief, Caleb finally appeared in Nick’s living room by his side.

His gaze suspicious, Caleb raked a slow stare down his body. “It
is
you. Right?”

What kind of question was that? “Who did you think was calling you?” Nick asked sarcastically.

Caleb shrugged. “Had no idea. I knew it wasn’t your father, and though I suspected it was you … you’ve been missing, I didn’t want to pop into a bad situation, blind. So I dragged my feet a little.”

Nick could forgive him that, especially after having seen the wolf and what real captivity could mean for demonkyn. Caleb had a right to be cautious.

Sliding closer to him, Caleb cocked his head as he gave Nick a piercing stare. He looked like he was ready to bolt or fight if Nick made any wrong or sudden move. Part of Nick wanted to say “boo” to see how high the demon would jump in fear. Only respect for Caleb’s quick and deadly overreactions kept his impulse under control.

“What has happened to you?” Caleb asked.

Had his skin turned green? While Nick could feel an inner change, he wondered what Caleb saw on him that made his friend so skittish and hesitant. “What do you mean?”

Caleb took Nick’s chin in his hand and turned Nick’s head so that he could examine him carefully. “You look the same, but you’re different. I can feel it in my gut. You’re more powerful than you were before. Where did you go?”

“Hel,” Nick said bitterly.

Caleb started to roll his eyes, then caught himself as if he realized Nick wasn’t being a smartass for once. He let go of him immediately. “You mean Helheim?”

“You know it?”

“Not personally, but I’ve met a few of its residents over the centuries. Wonderful creatures … if you don’t mind lunatics and serial killers.”

“Yeah. Definitely not a place I’d recommend for a vacation, unless you’re into gruesome and royally screwed up … kind of like high school, only colder.”

Caleb ignored that last bit. “Why were you there?”

“Hel had me Nicknapped so that she could use me as a bargaining chip. Good to be me, eh?”

Caleb ignored his thick sarcasm. “With whom was she bargaining?”

“I don’t know. She didn’t say, and I wasn’t there long enough to find out. I figured it didn’t matter who wanted me, it was better to get away and think about the other later.”

Caleb laughed. “Wise choice. But how did you get free? And don’t you dare tell me it was because you’re too cute to keep.”

He’d been around him too long when he started knowing Nick’s stock sarcastic retorts. But Caleb was right, they didn’t have time to waste on it. “One of her servants let me go.”

Caleb frowned. “Why would one do that?”

“I really don’t know. Didn’t care. Wanted to get home, but if I had to guess, I think it was more an act of defiance on his part to get back at her and to piss her off.”

He laughed. “Then he must have been a demon.”

“Why?” Nick asked.

“We’re the only ones stupid and strong enough to defy our masters so blatantly.”

That explained a lot about Nick’s congenital birth defect—smartmouthitis.
Thanks, Dad.

“You might be interested to know he was the same loup-garu who attacked us earlier on Royal.”

Both of Caleb’s eyebrows shot up as his face drained of all color. “I wasn’t attacked by a loup-garu, Nick. That, I would have killed. What I fought was an Aamon.”

Just what Nick loved most. More vocabulary to learn. And unlike the crap from school, not knowing these words could get him killed. “A what?”

“One of the first and highest order of warrior demons.”

That didn’t sound good. “As in one of the few who can kick
your
ass?”

Caleb gestured toward the bruises on his face and neck that said the wolf had cleaned the street with him. “I assumed he was after your father’s powers. I had no idea someone had sent him to kidnap you. Did he give you his name?”

“No. He said he couldn’t remember it.”

“What do you mean?”

Nick shrugged with a nonchalance he didn’t feel. “From what I gathered, he’s been locked in Hel for a number of centuries. And I think they cock fight him. But the only thing I know for certain is that they don’t hold him with any kind of regard. They have him tied down like a rabid animal and treat him like one.”

He saw his own horror mirrored in Caleb’s eyes, and while Caleb hadn’t seen the abuse, there was something Nick picked up on that said he’d either seen or experienced something very similar in his past.

“I can’t believe you stumbled onto an Aamon.” A tic worked in Caleb’s jaw. “They’re even less people- and demon-friendly than a Malachai.… And there weren’t that many of them to begin with, and even fewer of them who could still be alive today. Amazing.”

“I’m assuming from your tone of voice, they weren’t on your side of the war.”

“No. They were definitely on yours and I’m lucky I got away from him intact tonight. He must have wanted you badly to let me go before ripping my throat out.”

Nick laughed nervously. It was so much fun being the brass ring for hellmonkeys and jerks. “Here lately, everybody does.” Except for supermodels and hot babes.

Dang, if he had to be pursued and locked up, couldn’t it at least be by people he wanted chasing him? Women whose beds he wouldn’t mind being chained to for eternity?

Oh well. Life sucked and then they billed you for it. Kind of like how airlines charged you money
before
you got on a plane so that in the event they screwed up and killed you, they were already paid, and they wouldn’t have to give you a refund.

Nick sighed, then jerked his chin to the mess in his house. “So what happened here? Where’s my mom?”

Caleb visibly cringed. “You know as much as I do.”

And he should have cringed for giving that answer. Nick’s vision darkened as his fury coursed through him, and demanded Caleb’s heart for not protecting his mother. “What have you been doing while I was gone?”

His lip curling, Caleb raked him with a sneer. “Watching soap operas and picking belly lint out of my toes.… What the hell do you think I’ve been doing? I was making preparations to keep your sorry butt alive.”

“And to the devil with my mother and her safety?”

“Yeah, Nick. That’s
exactly
what I was thinking.” Caleb’s voice dripped with sarcasm. “’Cause I knew just how unhinged my lack of action would make
you
. My whole entire thinking process was how I could piss you off and make you go Malachai sooner rather than later. Ah, man, you so busted me.” With a grin that should be worn by a psychotic clown, Caleb clapped him on the back. “So tell me, Nick, did my brilliant thinking work?”

“You better be glad I don’t know how to Force choke you.”

Caleb actually took a whole step back from him. His anger wilted under a wave of actual fear. Now there was something Nick had
never
seen on Caleb’s face before. At least not where he was concerned.

“What happened to you?”

Nick calmed at the wary note in Caleb’s voice. What was he seeing when he looked at him? “I have to find my mother.”

“And you’re the only one who can.”

Nick scowled. “What do you mean?”

“It’s why I didn’t try to find her, Nick. She’s been taken out of this realm.…” He shot back another step as Nick lunged for him, then turned sideways, out of Nick’s immediate range. “She’s not dead. Sheez!” Caleb raised his hands and put an energy shield around himself to keep Nick from beating him. “Calm down and listen. She’s not
my
mother. I have no connection to her, which means no way to track her. Just as I couldn’t track you into Helheim. But now that you’re back, we can get her.”

Nick smacked his fist against the invisible wall protecting Caleb—who should be on his knees in gratitude that Nick couldn’t reach him right now. “Swear to me you’re not lying.”

“If I didn’t think we could get your mother back alive and whole, I wouldn’t be here. I’d be on my way to another hell realm ’cause I know her death would send you off into a massive piranha-style killing frenzy. And the longer you keep trying to rip my head off, the longer she’s staying gone.”

That succeeded in calming him. “Okay. How do we find her?”

Caleb visibly cringed.

Nick’s gut tightened instantly. “What?”

“Take a deep breath. Ride herd on your temper and don’t freak.”

Yeah, that really helped his temper. Like a kick in his head and a stomp to his stones. “What?”

“We need help to do this.”

The sick knot in his stomach twisted even tighter. “I’m seriously not going to like it, am I?”

“Nope. But we have to do it.”

Growling deep in his throat, Nick raked his hand through his hair. “Fine. What is it?”

Caleb’s gaze went over Nick’s shoulder to focus on something behind him.

Curious and suspicious, Nick turned, then froze. Dressed in a black turtleneck and jeans, Kody stood there, holding a small vial. His stomach shot south as bile went north.

“Oh hell to the no!” Nick snapped as he faced Caleb again. Furious, he gestured toward her. “She’s here to kill me.
That
is your solution? You’re like one of those generals who wants to put a house fire out with a nuclear bomb, aren’t you?”

“Nick—”

“Don’t you Nick me, Malphas. You’re not my mother. I—”

“Nick!” Kody shouted, interrupting him.

Enraged over a tone of voice only his mother could get away with using, Nick spun toward her. “What!”

She closed the distance between them. “Breathe,” she said with a calmness he couldn’t fathom. “You have to let go of everything negative inside you. If you want to find your mom, you have to track her with your heart. You can
only
track her with your heart. Hatred destroys everything it touches—it will never allow you to build any kind of bridge from this realm to whatever one she’s been taken to. Your love of her is what will allow you to connect and find her.”

He looked back at Caleb.

“I don’t know how to use those powers, Nick. Like you, I was born for malice. It’s what feeds me.”

Nick swallowed as he finally brought his emotions under control. For his mom alone, he was willing to trust his enemy. “What do I need to do?”

She held her hand out to him.

His first impulse was to slap it away and curse her. But his mother was more important to him than his hatred of Kody. Forcing himself to stay calm, he took her warm hand. The sensation of her flesh touching his sent a heated wave through him. He’d forgotten how soft her skin was. How much she smelled like sunshine and roses.

Kody smiled up at him.

That and her touch succeeded in driving out his hate and anger. The loss of it was so sudden that it left him exhausted. Drained.

Kody pulled him against her and sank her other hand into his hair. Even though he wanted to hate her for what she’d come to do, he laid his head on her shoulder and allowed her to hold him against her. Ever so slowly, she rocked with him in her arms.

“Pax tecum,”
she whispered in his ear, sending chills all over his body.
Peace be with you.

“Et cum spiritu tuo,”
he responded automatically.
And with your spirit.

And when she placed a light, tender kiss to the side of his head, he found a realm of warm serenity that he’d never known before. It was like all was right in the world. Like nothing could harm him or upset him.

She stroked his back.
“Ora pro nobis…”

With those words a dam inside him burst open. In one instant, he could see the fabric of the entire universe and everything in it. He heard the voices of millions of people who had lived and who were alive. It hit him so hard and fast that had she not been holding him, he would have fallen. Instead, her strength kept him balanced while her warmth kept him anchored firmly right here.

The ether screamed out as it did anytime he tried to access it for information. But where it was normally too overwhelming for him to navigate, tonight he fully understood how to find his way through it all. How to focus until he only heard the one voice he sought.

His mother’s.

And yet he couldn’t find her. Nowhere … She was completely silent to him. His anger and panic started mounting, but Kody tightened her arms around him.

“Shh,” she breathed against his ear. “Stay calm.
Sicut erat in principio, et nunc, et semper, et in saecula saeculorum
.”
As it was in the beginning, it is now and will be to the ages of ages.…

Once more, his anger dissipated. He heard the sounds of horrendous fighting coming hard and fast at him.

Afraid for his mother, he followed it. Only it wasn’t a battle for or about her.

He saw himself in his demonic form. His armor glistened in the dull light of a fading sun while he fought against an army that was determined to destroy every last bit of him and his troops. His soldiers pulled back to protect him. But it was too late.

He was about to be defeated.

Dumbfounded, he couldn’t understand how this had happened. No one had ever equaled him. Not even the Sephiroth. He’d killed his archenemy in a matter of minutes.

And then he saw his true nemesis. The one who had bled him and his men the most …

Their leader emerged from the midst of their number. Drunk on his impending victory, he called out to rally his soldiers and push them forward for the last attack.

Nick knew instinctively that if he killed their leader, they would scatter like frightened roaches. The humans would fall.

His eyes flashed red, then the same swirling silver as Acheron’s before he launched himself at the fool who’d left the safe shelter of his army. Focused solely on him, Nick ignored everything else.