Nick gave Tate an agitated stare. “Let’s go back to the Pokémon on his shoes, shall we? Dead giveaway. He wouldn’t even play D&D, ’cause he thought it was Satanic. He didn’t believe in anything paranormal.” Which was ironic when you thought about how many preternatural beings went to their high school. “He was the captain of the chess club and an A-plus student.”
Tate met Ash’s gaze. “Why would anyone think he’s a demon?”
Ash shrugged. “The world is insane, and you’re asking me for the reasoning of a psycho? I’m not a profiler.”
“But you are omniscient,” Tate reminded him.
“It, like my immortality, has its limitations. I can’t see everything, unfortunately.” Ash sighed. “Nick said this was the second boy found?”
“Yeah. There was a kid named Alistair Sloan found last night.”
They both looked over at Nick.
“Why y’all looking at me for? I don’t know him at all.”
Ash snorted. “You seem to know everyone else in town.”
“Well, I do get around.” Nick grinned.
Ash shook his head before he returned his attention to Tate. “This entire event isn’t adding up.”
Tate agreed. “Could be a zealot on a killing spree. Sometimes the weird crap is human. I know it doesn’t happen often in this town. But … every now and again, we do find humans being insane.”
Ash appeared less than convinced. “Maybe.”
Tate gestured over his shoulder. “I better get back to it. Let me know if you uncover something.”
“You, too.”
As soon as Tate was gone, Ash turned back to Nick. “Do me a favor.”
“Don’t lick your seat belt?”
Ash’s expression was total confusion. “Huh? Where did that randomness come from?”
“When I was a kid, I did that once in my aunt Mennie’s new car. Now every time I get in her car and she’s driving, she says do me a favor, and that’s what always follows after it. Sorry. Habit.”
“Okay. If your bizarre flashbacks are over, can I have your attention for a second?”
Nick straightened up. “Absolutely.”
“All right. Keep your eyes open, and don’t go anywhere alone until we figure out what’s happening and why someone is killing fourteen-year-old boys.”
“You got it.”
Ash started toward the body, then seemed to think better of it. “Let’s get you to Kyrian’s.”
“Fine with me.” He liked the idea of being safe and alive.
Ash waved to Tate to let him know they were leaving before he led Nick back to the gleaming black Porsche. Nick got in and buckled his seat belt while Ash started the car.
They didn’t speak at all while Ash took him the rest of the way to the Garden District, where row after row of antebellum homes paid tribute to and housed some of the wealthiest people in New Orleans.
Man, the size of Kyrian’s place never failed to impress him. It was one heck of a house. In the classical Greek revival style, it kind of reminded Nick of a wedding cake, what with the wraparound porches, the ornate flourishes, and white color. Ash opened the gate, then parked in front of the marble steps that led up to the front door.
Nick got out and headed up the stairs. When he started to ring the bell, Ash materialized beside him and pushed the door open.
He arched a brow at that. “Were you raised in a barn? You don’t just walk into someone’s house.”
Ash laughed. “I have an open invitation to enter whenever I’m here.”
“Yeah, but what if he’s naked or something?”
Ash led him into the foyer. “I’ve known Kyrian for over two thousand years, and I can honestly say that I have never once caught him naked in his living room.” The door closed behind them without Ash or Nick touching it—something that always unnerved Nick when Ash did it. “Besides, Rosa’s still here. I know he’s not walking around bare-assed with her on duty.”
“Oh yeah.” There was that.
As if she’d heard them come in, Rosa entered the hall from the direction of the kitchen. “Ah, Acheron, good to see you again.”
“Hola, Rosa. Is Kyrian upstairs still?”
“Sí.”
While Ash headed up, Nick went toward Rosa with a hopeful look on his face. “Do I smell something … sweet?”
She laughed. “You live on your stomach, mi’jo. Go, there are cookies waiting for you.”
Nick gave her a Roman salute. “Rosa, I am your eternal servant. So long as you feed me cookies, you may ask and I will do without any complaint.”
“Good. I have a list of your chores on the counter beside the plate.”
Ah, man … Nick bit back a whine. This was his job, and he wouldn’t complain. At least not to Rosa, maker of great food.
Kyrian was another matter. He was subject to the full whiny teenager moodiness.
Nick headed into the kitchen and grabbed a cookie before he glanced over his list. Chewing the cookie, he scratched at his chin.
1. Replace upstairs hall bathroom lightbulb.
2. Get online and research Ferragamo shoes, then e-mail someone named Kell to see if he could convert Ferragamos into weapons.
3. Order a replacement coat for the one that was torn. (See closet for coat.) Make sure it matches exactly.
4. Wash cars.
5. Take out trash for Rosa.
6. Most important, don’t bitch.
Hmmm …
“Rosa?”
She arched a brow as she came into the kitchen. “Sí?”
“How many cars does Kyrian own?”
She paused to consider it. “I believe there are six of them, but I don’t know for sure. I don’t go into the garage.”
Six. Kyrian wanted him to wash six? Was he out of his friggin’ mind? No way. That was too much. It’d take him all night.
Grumbling under his breath, Nick headed for the garage to see just how big these things were. In spite of what Kyrian thought, he wasn’t a slave. He had …
His thoughts scattered as he opened the door.
* * *
“You’re sure they’re not Daimon attacks?” Kyrian asked Acheron as he shrugged on his coat.
“Oh yeah. What I really hate is that one of the kids was killed on our watch. I don’t want that to happen again. So keep your eyes open tonight for predators other than Daimons.”
“Definitely. Speaking of demon spawn … where’s Nick?”
Ash shrugged. “He came in with me, and that was the last I paid attention to him.”
“Yeah, and I was fully expecting him to object to his list of assignments.” Kyrian paused to listen with his psychic hearing. He furrowed his brow as he heard nothing. “It’s too quiet. I better go make sure he’s not harassing Rosa. My luck, she’s put a choke hold on him and I’ll have to explain the bruising to his overly protective, paranoid mother.”
Acheron laughed. “Don’t worry, General. I’ll bail you out before dawn.”
“Thanks.” Leaving Acheron, Kyrian headed straight downstairs and searched for his pain, who never ceased to irritate him.
There was no sign of him.
Not even in Nick’s office. Where could he be?
Kyrian grimaced as he entered the kitchen. “Where’s Nick?” he asked Rosa, who was putting away dishes.
She wiped her hands on a white dishcloth before she answered. “He went out to the garage, and I’ve not seen him since.”
Strange. There was no sound of running water or any sign of the kid out there that he could hear.
A surge of panic seized him. Had the preternatural killer found the kid? Could Nick be lying dead out there, right now?
He rushed to the door and yanked it open, then froze at the last thing he expected to find.
Nick sat on the stairs, completely comatose. He stared straight ahead as if he’d been frozen in place.
“Nick? You all right?”
He didn’t respond.
Kyrian moved aro
und him until he stood in front of him. He snapped his fingers in front of Nick’s face. “Kid?”
Nick blinked before he met Kyrian’s gaze. “I’m not worthy,” he said in a breathless tone.
Baffled by his comment, Kyrian stared at him. “What?”
Nick gestured toward his cars. “Dude, that’s a Ferrari, Lamborghini, Bugatti, Alfa Romeo, Aston Martin, and Bentley. And I’m not talking the cheap models. Those are the top of the top of the top of the line, fully loaded. I swear, that’s real gold trim in the Bugatti. There’s more money in metal in here than my brain can even tabulate. Oh my God! I shouldn’t even be breathing the same air.”
Kyrian laughed at his awed tone. “It’s all right, Nick. I need you to clean them.”
“Are you out of your ever-loving mind? What if I scratch them?”
“You won’t.”
“Nah, I might. Those aren’t cars, Kyrian. Those are works of art. I’m talking serious modes of transportation.”
“I know, and I drive them all the time.”
“No, no, no, no, no. I can’t touch something so fine. I can’t.”
Kyrian cuffed him on the shoulder. “Yes, you can. They don’t bite, and they need to be washed.”
Nick let out a sound of appreciation. “I ought to be paying you for this.”
Kyrian snorted. “Then I’ll dock your pay.” He held his hand out to help Nick stand. “C’mon.”
Nick allowed him to pull him to his feet, but he was still intimidated by the cars around him. He’d never even thought to see one in real life, never mind touch it. These were sweet. “How much money you make, anyway?”
“Obviously a lot.”
“Dude, make me a Dark-Hunter.”
Something cold and painful flickered through Kyrian’s eyes. “Don’t even joke about that, Nick. You don’t ever want to become what I am. It all looks great from the outside, but two thousand years gets hard. All my family is long gone, and while I have my Dark-Hunter brethren and Acheron, it’s not the same. I’d give everything I have and then some if I could just see my parents one more time. Tell my dad that I’m sorry for things I said to him. Never, ever leave your mother after a fight. Whatever you do, don’t let the last words you say to her be hurtful.”
“You fought with your father?”
He nodded. “Acheron has a saying, and it’s so true. There are some things sorry can’t fix. Life is all about regrets. Don’t let those regrets be that you’ve hurt someone who really loves you. Keep those to a minimum. It’s bad enough when you have to carry them through a single lifetime. When you have to carry them through thousands, it’s brutal.”
He’d never thought of it that way. Still, he’d give anything to have an eternal life with this kind of wealth. Heck, he’d settle for having it for ten minutes.
“Don’t worry about getting to all the cars tonight. You can do the Lamborghini and then save the others for tomorrow. Just make sure you get the rest of the list done.”
“Will do.”
Kyrian inclined his head to him before he went back inside.
Nick walked down the three steps to get a closer look at the Bugatti. Yeah … that was a car. “I would hug you, but I don’t want to get my skin oils on your paint.”
But as Nick stared into the tinted window, he didn’t see the inside of the car. He saw something that looked more like a movie playing on it. Mesmerized, he stepped closer so that he could see it more clearly.
It was a battle in Kyrian’s house. He saw his boss with a woman who looked a lot like an older version of Tabitha Devereaux, only she had dark auburn hair and was dressed in a nightgown. There were fanged blond Daimons attacking them on the stairs. Kyrian was trying to keep them away from the woman who stood behind him on the landing with a sword.
There was another Dark-Hunter there. One he didn’t recognize. He wasn’t even sure how he knew it was a Dark-Hunter, and yet …
The stranger was beheaded by the Daimons.
He flinched at the horror and closed his eyes. When he opened them again, the scene had changed.
This time, he saw something far worse.…
He was the kid on the street who was lying dead while a hooded man absorbed some kind of energy that was spewing out his chest like a laser light show. But it was Nick’s eyes that haunted him most. They were solid black, like something out of a horror movie, and in his open hand, resting against his palm, was the diamond necklace that Nekoda always wore.…
Your destiny is shaped by choice, never by chance. Beware the decisions you make, no matter how small, for they will be your salvation …
Or your death.
CHAPTER 9
Nick lay low for several days as those visions haunted him. With Grim’s help, he was trying to hone his ability to see if he could get anything more or see more clearly. But it wasn’t easy. Much like with the perspicacity, it came and went on its own timetable, not his.
Bloody inconsiderate powers.
Grim kept promising that he’d be able to control them with practice.
He was much more optimistic than Nick was. Of course, he wasn’t the one hallucinating and spazzing.
For now, it was just another aggravation in a life that was already irritating. Puberty was bad enough with his body doing things he didn’t want it to do at inconvenient times. Now his mind was doing it, too. One minute he’d be fine; in the next he’d see someone “normal” shift into something not, or he’d have some psychedelic flash of an event to come.
It was getting so bad, his mom was starting with the drug inquisition again every time he had one around her. At this rate, she’d be after him with a specimen jar to pee in.
The only good news was that they hadn’t found any more kids slain by whatever had killed the other two.
And Nick wasn’t dead.
Yet.
But that came into question as he walked into his schoolyard to find Stone and his crew of crotch-sniffing sycophants waiting for him.
Great. Just what he needed. Another suspension. Any time Stone neared him, he went to the principal’s office, and it never went well for him. It was a given, like the golden shower that inevitably followed the lifting of a dog’s leg.
Sure enough, right as he neared the bottom step that led up to the door of the redbrick building, Stone, who was a huge brute of a knuckle-dragging Cro-Mag, stepped forward to block his path.
Stone crossed his beefy arms and looked down his nose at Nick. Something that really set his ire off.
“Not in the mood.” Jackweed. Nick refrained from the insult that really wanted to spill out and tried to brush past him. Always best to avoid a fight.
Too late. The rest of his merd (herd of morons), surrounded Nick. He felt his blood pressure rising even more as they did that we’re invading your personal space ’cause we’re dickheads maneuver. Nick ground his teeth, trying to hold his temper back.
Something that wasn’t helped when Stone shoved him.
“Someone’s been stealing our stuff out of the lockers, Gautier. Makes me think of only one person I know who’d be that desperate.” He raked a sneer over Nick’s tacky blue Hawaiian shirt that his mother made him wear and faded jeans. Both of which had been bought from Goodwill for the staggering price of a dollar each.
Nick snorted at Stone’s insult. “I don’t know. Word around the girls’ locker room is that all of you are so hard up, you were cruising the senior center, trying to find a prom date.”
Stone bellowed in rage. He started forward, only to have Caleb come out of nowhere to shove him back.
Dang, the demon could move. No wonder he was the star of the football team.
Then again, Caleb had an unfair advantage. Superhuman strength and centuries of soldier training.
Caleb sneered at Stone. “It’s too early in the day to have to wash blood out of my clothes, Blakemore. But I am willing to smell Tide if that’s what it takes to get you to act human.” A hysterical comment, given the fact that Stone was a werew
olf.
“What’s going on here?”
Nick stepped back as a huge bear of a man moved forward to break everyone apart.
He sneered at both of the combatants. “Stone? Caleb? Don’t you dare start fighting. I’ll make you run laps until you drop if you do. Last thing we need is for a player to get suspended. We’re already about to have to forfeit as it is. Right now, I can’t afford to lose even a single man. You hear me?”
Caleb held his hands up in surrender. “I wasn’t looking for trouble, but I’m not about to run either. You push me and I will push back.”
The coach shook his head. “Blakemore, get your girls and leave. Now.”
Curling his lip, Stone took off with his zoo crew of thugs following after him.
The coach narrowed his eyes on Nick. “Who are you?” Scum-sucking dog. He didn’t say those words, but his tone implied it.
Forcing himself not to say or do anything to get himself added to detention, he spoke carefully. “Nick Gautier.”
Recognition lit the coach’s deep blue eyes. He actually appeared impressed. “You were first-string running back last year. What happened?”
Nick shrugged. “Stone’s mouth happened. It needed to be closed, and I was a little too obliging to shut it.”
The coach scratched his chin. “Your file says you were kicked off the team for your attitude.”
“File’s wrong. I was kicked off the team for Stone’s attitude. Mine was just fine. Still is, to be honest.”
The man made a sound that might be a laugh. Or a growl. “You interested in playing again?”
Nick gestured to his arm that was in the sling. “Can’t. I’m still recovering. Doc doesn’t want me to do anything to stress it.” An excuse he was milking for everything it was worth. One that worked with his mother, but not so much on Kyrian, who was a pitiless taskmaster. Every time he said something, Kyrian always shot back with, “Boy, I’ve gutted men who whined less than you. Now, move it.”
And apparently, the coach was in the latter category, too. “Yeah, but I can add you to the roster. Even if you don’t play. You are a legitimate player. C’mon, Gautier. I need just three more jerseys, and we’re all set for the play-offs. Do it for the school, or if not that, do it for Malphas. He’s worked hard this year. You gonna deprive him of a championship game because of a minor injury?”
Chronicles of Nick 02 - Invincible Page 9