Sherrilyn Kenyon - Illusion

“Yeah, but they should.”

Zavid scowled at them. “What do you two know that I don’t?”

Kody glanced to the unconscious Nick before she answered. “Ever heard the term ‘ušumgallu’?”

“The great snake? Yeah? What about it?”

“The door on its prison is now open for business and they’re being summoned together.” Caleb jerked his chin toward the window. “That piercing screech torturing us? That’s the sound of the Šarru-Dara.” That was one of the seven demon generals who made up the ušumgallu. Each one was deadly on his own, but when the seven came together, they were invincible.

Not even the gods could stop them.

“The Blood King?” Zavid laughed nervously. “That’s not possible. Only the Malachai can summon together the ušumgallu and unleash his generals to attack.”

“Yeah, I know,” Caleb said, his voice laden with sarcasm. “But Nick’s father was killed in battle last night. Whenever the elder Malachai dies, his generals are summoned together from their prisons for one task … to end the world.”

“What?” Zavid breathed in disbelief. “Are you serious?”

Kody gave a subtle nod. “After the death of his wife and unborn child, the first Malachai arranged this as the final ‘up yours’ to the gods to ensure that if they broke their word and killed him, he’d take the world with him. Only his son, a full-fledged Malachai, can command the combined forces of the ušumgallu and send them back into their holes.”

Zavid went pale. “And if we don’t have a Malachai to stop them?”

Kody rubbed her hand over her face as she contemplated that nightmare. “The six demon generals will join forces and summon together their armies. Then they will cast down all the orders of this earth and rain hell itself upon all sentient beings for eternity. And no one, not even the gods, will be able to stop them.”

Caleb flashed a taunting grin at the Hel Hound. “Doesn’t it make you all warm and fuzzy? Just think what they’re going to do to us for fun and prizes.”

Zavid cursed under his breath. “We have to find the real Nick and stop this.” He looked at Kody. “How long do we have?”

“Till the new moon … roughly three days. At that time, the ušumgallu will unite and come into their own.”

Caleb let out a sound of disgust. “Even if we unbind Nick’s powers, there’s no way he can learn to control them in seventy-two hours.”

Kody refused to be daunted. She’d faced much worse odds … of course, she hadn’t really survived those, but still … They had no choice except to succeed. “Then we have to stop them before they’re freed and can summon their armies.”

“Where do we start?” Zavid asked.

“Absolutely no clue.” Kody glanced over at the unconscious Nick on the floor before she met Caleb’s gaze. “Did you happen to find out anything useful from our new friend before Cujo blasted him?”

“He’s from 2002 and as near as I could ascertain, he lives here in New Orleans and attends St. Richard’s.”

Her jaw dropped. “2002? Is he the same age as our Nick or older?”

Caleb used his powers to put Nick back into bed, then he buried Nick under the comforter. “He’s sixteen in his year, but apparently his reality is very different from our Nick’s. Unlike our favorite pain in the neck, this one is completely normal. As are his parents.”

Which made sense. While there were multiple dimensions and alternate realities, they were all bound by the laws of the Source. And those laws stipulated that only one Malachai could exist at one time, period, which was what had made her job so hard. Tracking down the one through time wasn’t easily done. Especially when he’d been hidden as carefully as Nick had.

Caleb sighed in disgust. “I don’t know about the two of you, but time travel isn’t one of my powers.” He looked at Zavid, who sank back to the floor.

The Hel Hound leaned his head back against the wall. “Same here. That is a very special and extremely guarded power. Only a tiny handful of species are allowed it. And Aamons aren’t one of them.”

Because the repercussions were dire. One misstep in time and the entire fabric of the universe could unravel. Even the gods tended to avoid time travel, and woe to any who willfully tampered with the time sequence. It was the most forbidden of all actions.

And the most heavily punished.

As with all things, any action taken caused an equal and opposite reaction. It was why she hadn’t killed Nick yet, even though she had every right to and had been ordered to see him dead. Why she was so careful about tampering with the lives around her. Hers was a sacred calling and it wasn’t one she took lightly.

Caleb narrowed his gaze on her. “What about you?”

“What about me, what?”

“Can you time travel?”

She intentionally didn’t answer his question. Instead, she turned her attention to Zavid. “What about your sister? She was working with Grim to bring Nick to him. Could she be behind this?”

By the shocked expression on Zavid’s face, she could tell he’d had no idea his sister had taken part in setting Nick up. The pain and grief in his bright lavender eyes seared her and made her ache that she’d caused him such bitter agony. It was a pain she was all too acquainted with.

His breathing ragged, Zavid shook his head. When he spoke, his voice was thick with raw, unshed tears. “My sister’s dead. She died a long time ago.”

Caleb’s eyes shone with his own sympathy for the Hel Hound. Like them, he’d lost everything that mattered to him, and it was hard to make it through the day, knowing you’d never see your loved ones again. “Grim must have resurrected her for some reason.”

His jaw slack, Zavid snapped his attention to Caleb. “You saw her?” There was so much agonized hope in those words that it brought tears to Kody’s eyes.

“I did. She was trying to free you from Hel.”

A single tear slid down his handsome cheek before he angrily wiped it away. “My sister was everything to me.”

Kody had to look away as unwanted memories flooded her with pain. She knew that tone of voice. Had heard it from her own overprotective brothers on more than one occasion. “She was younger?”

He nodded then wrapped his arms around himself as if he had a sudden chill. “I swore to my parents when they were killed that I’d never allow any harm to come to her.” He swallowed hard. “I failed them all.”

Caleb stepped closer to him with a pose that said he wanted blood from the ones who’d harmed a woman. A throwback to the day he’d lost the only woman he’d ever loved to the hands of his enemies. “What happened?”

A furious tic started in Zavid’s sculpted jaw. “She fell in love with an idiot, and when he ran afoul of Hel, she sold herself to the goddess to save him from his stupidity. Needless to say, it didn’t work out for either of them.”

Kody winced as she realized what had happened to the poor Aamon demon on the floor. “You went in her stead?”

He nodded. “I knew what slavery meant for our kind. I couldn’t let my sister do that. I knew she’d never survive it.”

And given the scars on his body, he was right. Nick had told her that the Norse gods had used Zavid for gladiatorial matches where they’d bled him to the brink of death. That they had dehumanized him to the point that he hadn’t even remembered his own name when Nick had met him.

They had called Zavid “Beast,” and a beast was what he’d become. All he’d known. Only Nick had seen through the feral hatred to the heart of the man.

Nick, alone, had saved Zavid when anyone else would have put their head down and kept going, leaving the Hel Hound to die. Especially after the way Zavid had attacked Nick and Caleb.