“Then why didn’t you say that?”
Mark looked at Bubba. “Remind me to get him a word-of-the-day calendar.” Then he pinned Nick with a shaming stare over the back of the seat. “You need to up your vocabulary, boy. You can’t walk around letting people think you’re stupid.
Expand your horizons. Besides, it’s fun to cal people names they have to look up to realize they’ve been insulted.” Bubba laughed. “Yeah, that’s a twofer there. You get away with it and then they’re twice as mad when they realize how bad you real y insulted them. Especial y if they mistake it for a compliment when you say it and thank you for it.”
“And,” Caleb jumped in, “those insults keep you from getting grounded by your mom.”
You know, they al had very valid points.
“And best of al , it’l help you with your SATs,” Madaug said as he hung up the phone— he would think of that. He looked at Mark. “Eric and the zoo crew are heading to the store for supplies. Do y’al have enough stun guns for them?” Bubba bristled as if Madaug had insulted him. “Does a bear defecate rural y? What kind of question is that for someone who owns the biggest gun store in town? Of course I got plenty. I got enough Tasers to light up New York City and Boston just for giggles.”
Good, ’cause Nick had a feeling they might be needing them.
Ambrose grabbed the bookcase and slammed it to the ground, spil ing the ancient books he’d careful y col ected for centuries across the floor of his stygian office. It probably destroyed a few of them, but at this point, he real y didn’t care.
Rage burned through him with the power of a thousand suns so raw and potent that he could taste it.
“Why can’t I stop it?” he snarled. Why, with al the powers he’d mastered, al the elements he control ed, couldn’t he prevent a mere fourteen-year-old boy from being an idiot? No matter what he did, certain events kept unfolding.
And he wanted blood.
He felt a calm, soothing hand on his cheek, covering his bow-and-arrow mark that she’d given him during a time so long ago he should have no memory of it. Yet it was forever carved deep in his mind. More beautiful than any other, Artemis, goddess of the hunt, put al women to shame. Her long red hair flowed to her tiny waist, which was accentuated by the white Grecian gown she wore. “Shhh … You shouldn’t work yourself up to such a frizzy.”
His anger tripled. “The word is frenzy,” he corrected.
Because of the differences between the English he spoke and her native ancient Greek, she constantly screwed up sayings and col oquialisms.
“What are you doing here, Artemis?” he demanded.
“I’m trying to calm you down, love. You shouldn’t do this to yourself. It pains me to see you suffer like this.” And that dark power inside him wanted to strike out at her and make her beg for his mercy. It was an al -demanding power that was getting harder and harder to fight.
Soon there would be no way back from it. It would consume him and he would become his father. A mindless kil ing machine that lacked al compassion and humanity. A machine that wanted to end everything.
Kil everyone.
Ambrose stared at the wal , where he saw himself as a boy.
Nick Gautier had no idea how the random smal decisions he was making right now would turn him into the beast Ambrose had become.
I have to save myself.
More than that, he had to save the ones he loved. Before it was too late.
But how?
God, how could I have been so stupid, even at four teen? It was so hard to look back and see the faces of his friends and loved ones, especial y since he knew what would become of them if he didn’t alter history. It cut so deep that it alone was almost enough to make him insane.
How do I stop it?
Ambrose turned to Artemis. He hated her. She, like Acheron, had played a major role in turning him into the Malachai.
No, Nick, you did that to yourself.
But it was so much easier to blame them. They had made it so easy for him to make the wrong decisions. Decisions he was now trying to unmake before he lost the ability to care.
Sighing in frustration, he met Artemis’s gaze. The gaze of the woman who’d brought him back from the dead and unleashed his powers. Powers he was now trying to unlock earlier in his life. Had he possessed some of them as a kid, he could have saved the ones who were most important to him.
He could have saved his mom. …
Nick flinched as he forced that memory away and turned his thoughts to something he’d said to himself earlier. “Who is Nekoda?”
Artemis gave him a blank stare. “Never heard of him.”
“Her, Artie. It’s a girl.”
One of her perfect brows shot up as jealousy darkened her green eyes. “What kind of girl?”
“I don’t know. Nick knows her.”