Sherrilyn Kenyon - Illusion

Tabitha most likely wouldn’t give a warning shot. She’d just geld him.

And speak of the devil, she came out of the back room. Only she was much more sedate. Gone was the Queen of the Damned-and-Emo and in her place was a woman in a muted blue sweater and jeans.

She brushed a hand through her dark auburn hair. “Tabby isn’t here. She and Tia ran off to the rock shop for some new shipment they”—she made air quotes with her fingers—“had to see.” She rolled her eyes. “It’s another box of rocks. Really. What is it with you whackadoodles?”

“You must be Amanda,” Nick said without thinking.

She narrowed a suspicious gaze on him. “Yeah. And you are…?”

“Friend of the whackadoodles,” Selena answered before he could speak. “Ignore the kid in front of the altar.”

“Not a problem. I’ve got plenty of work to do in back. I’m teaching myself to make a Voodoo doll of Tabby I can stab with pins.”

Selena scoffed at her. “That won’t work.”

“Won’t stop me from trying. I obviously adore futility, as I’ve struggled to talk sanity into the lot of you for almost thirty years now.” Amanda returned to the back room. “Don’t touch anything and get cursed while I’m not out front to stop you.”

Strangely amused by Tabitha’s twin, Nick met Selena’s perturbed grimace. “What now?”

She didn’t answer as she began pulling things off the shelves and placing them in a small wicker basket that she’d picked up from the stack of them by the register.

“Are you making a potion?”

Selena held a wrapped package up to smell it before she added it to her stash. “No, I’m out of soap and perfume at home. My aunt makes sure that only the best ingredients go into hers and they’re all natural.”

Ah …

Nick glanced to the door and windows, and remembered Mark and Bubba fighting demons and a Hel Hound from the night before. Gah, it was so strange to be here where no one knew his real life. Knew what he’d been through.

Maybe I am crazy . Maybe this was his real life and the other a delusion. Kind of like The Wizard of Oz. Maybe the demon Caleb was just a manifestation of the boy he’d grown up with and Nick’s subconscious had demonized him for eating a slice of Nick’s pizza or something.

Could happen.

Certainly made a lot more sense than Nick had jumped realities for no reason while he slept.

What is reality, anyway? Really? Was it what he knew or what he thought he knew?

Man, a guy could seriously lose his mind attempting to make sense of it all. Closing his eyes, he tried one more time to tap any of the powers the Grim Reaper had taught him.

Nada .

Not even a burp or hiccup.

He was as powerless as the day he’d been born.

Irritated, Nick moved to the counter, where there was a small display of pendulums. They weren’t that different from the one he had that Grim had taught him to use. Without thinking, he reached for the one made of jet. It should protect him from whatever evil was messing with him.

But the moment he touched it, it shattered into a million pieces. With a Cajun curse, he jumped back to see the blood on his index finger.

Facing him, Selena gaped. “What are you?”

Before he could answer, his chest began burning like someone had set his clothes on fire. Clutching his heart, Nick fell to his knees. Dog, it hurt. Bad.

His breathing ragged, he tried to center himself. To bury the pain so that he could function. But just like earlier at school, he couldn’t. It felt like something was trying to suck him out of here.

Or take him over.

Worse, his hands turned translucent again.

“Nick!”

He heard Selena, yet he had no way of answering her. Words wouldn’t form, no matter what he tried. Someone laughed inside his head. Only it was more like a roar.

With the speed of rapid-fire arrows, images flashed in his mind. He saw his own past and a past he didn’t know at all. Bubba was the same lunatic he knew and at the same time he was the man who was his father here. In another place and time, he was a scarred commando in the jungle, fighting zombies and other things Nick couldn’t identify. He saw his mother dying, over and over, in world after world.

His own future self on a demonic rampage …

Flames leapt around him as he flew through a destroyed New Orleans landscape that was littered with bodies and twisted remains of cars and military transports and weapons.

Sicut erat in principio, et nunc, et semper, et in saecula saeculorum.… Kody’s voice filled his head. As it was in the beginning, it is now and will be to the ages of ages. Closing his eyes, he allowed her gentleness to give him something he could focus on.

Pax tecum , little brother. Ash’s voice joined hers in his mind.

And then a third soothing voice joined theirs. Speak your name, demonspawn, and I will give you what you want most. Peace will be yours. Forever.

Nick scowled. Speak his name? That made no sense. Why was the voice in his head if it didn’t know him?

I am crazy .

“Nick!”

Swallowing hard, he looked up into Selena’s panicked eyes and saw what was to come for him in his world. “You summoned Julian of Macedon for Grace on her birthday. She set him free. And Kyrian…” In six months from now, he’s supposed to meet Amanda . Nick could see it all so clearly.

That was why Ambrose—Nick’s future self—had told him to stay clear of Amanda and Tabitha. Ambrose knew exactly what was to come for them, and by messing with the timeline, Nick could stop Kyrian from finding happiness and breaking free of his pact with Artemis.

Nick could stop Kyrian’s destiny and thereby alter everything.

One life touched thousands. For the first time, Nick truly saw the vastness of it all and fully understood.

Every man is born as many and dies as one. With every choice made, a part of the future died and an opportunity was lost. You narrowed your options and steered yourself down the path of your life.

A path that led Nick straight to a fate he didn’t want. He’d been born to end the world.…

To destroy everything he loved and valued.

Defy your destiny!

“Nick!”

Darkness surrounded him. It breathed into him and pressed against his chest until he feared he was dying. He couldn’t get it to turn him loose. It was here and all it wanted was his life. His powers.

His immortal soul.

Nick shook his head as he struggled for consciousness. But he was losing this battle.

He was losing himself.

Give. Me. Your. Name!

“Houston, we got us a serious problem. All our thrusters are blown and we’re about to combust into a fiery mess.”

Unamused by Caleb’s dire tone, Kody paused in her dressing to switch the phone to her other ear. “What demon inhalant have you discovered now? And who you got crying in the background? Is that Nick? Caleb, what have you done now?”

“Yeah, that be the very problem I’m calling about, and yes, that be your boy you’re hearing. Only the crybaby is not our Nick.”

She held her breath at Caleb’s words. “My patience is out. Speak a language I understand.”

“Fine. Nick ain’t Nick. The Nick you hear woke up this morning, screaming for his mom and—get this—his father, and saying that he’s not in the right place or time. He doesn’t know me. Or Zavid. He’s never seen Nick’s room before, and you don’t want to know what he did when he saw himself in the mirror and saw a face that is not the one he’s used to seeing. Just be glad you were at home, though to be honest, I’m surprised you didn’t hear his supersonic schoolgirl scream all the way over there.”