More invincible.
You are the Malachai. Those words whispered through his mind as images assaulted him. Images of him beating down his enemies. Of every bul y, every Stone and Mr. Peters in his life getting exactly what they deserved. Not death—that would be too kind for their special breed of brutality—something worse. Much, much worse.
They became him. They were the ones who were mocked and belittled and laughed at, and made to feel like they were less than nothing.
Each and every one of them. Every insult. Every snide comment and look. It was al returned to them tenfold.
They begged for mercy while he gave to them the same amount they’d given him in his life.
None whatsoever.
Take that, you scum-sucking snipes. Eat your words and your cruelty. May you drown in it and die.
“He’s ours now,” the mortent leader announced. “Not made by evil, but birthed by human cruelty.” She handed Nick a sword. “Now take your vengeance on the ones who’ve mocked you. Kil them and eat their brains.” Nick turned to Stone, whose eyes were large and fil ed with terror. Every nasty comment and insult he’d ever given Nick played through his head now. Right down to Stone getting him thrown off the team. To Stone trying to get him thrown out of school. …
Screaming in outrage, Nick ran at the pig so that he could gut him once and for al .
CHAPTER 18
Stone fel back in his cage, screaming like a four-year-old girl who’d lost her favorite toy as he held his arms up to protect himself and beg for his life.
Nick tasted vengeance and honestly …
It was sweet and satisfying.
But it wasn’t fil ing, no matter how much he wanted it to be.
In fact, it was hol ow and cold. Even though he tried to tel himself Stone deserved nothing but the humiliation he’d heaped onto others’ heads, that he deserved to die for what he’d done to other people, Nick couldn’t buy it.
He final y understood what Ambrose had tried to tel him about Mike, Tyree, and Alan.
I don’t want to be like Stone and the others.
To have no friends. No decency. To not be able to enjoy anything because he was too busy being jealous and petty over other people.
Stone was pathetic. He was weak.
Most of al , he wasn’t worth Nick damning himself for. In the end, nothing could be crueler than leaving Stone to live his putrid life of false friends and petty jealousies. Friends who didn’t real y like him. Who only wanted to use him for what they could get.
Yeah, that was hel on earth and he wanted no part of it.
While Nick could be happy wearing used clothes and living in squalor with his mother and Menyara, Stone couldn’t be happy in a mansion with every over-priced toy and gadget his parents could give him.
How could Nick ever envy or want that?
He doesn’t deserve to live. Think of al the others he’s tortured. The others he’ll torture in the future if you let him go.
Nick pressed the tip of his sword against Stone’s throat as Stone wet his pants and wept. And stil the voice in his head was unrelenting.
Spill the blood of your enemy and you will command armies. . . . You will be free.
No one will ever mock you again.
Ever.
He felt the cold hand of something evil on the nape of his neck, caressing him. “Do it,” a soft, gentle voice urged. “Make yourself strong enough to command the respect of everyone you meet. Then no one wil mock you ever again. You have to kil your enemies to have respect and be free of your past.” The mortent was right. The only way to be free was to kil his enemies and bury them deep.
But there was more than one way to slay them. Stone and his kind had already taken up too much of his past. Nick wasn’t about to give them his future too.
Al of a sudden, the dagger and book in his pocket heated up as something inside him was freed. Not by his hatred. Not by his need for revenge.
It was his sense of justice. A clarity of thought he’d never had before. He didn’t want the respect of people who weren’t worth wiping his nose on—people who weren’t worth the spat-out gum attached to the bottom of his worn-out shoes.
The only respect he wanted was from himself and the people who real y mattered in his life. The people who real y loved and cared about him.
That definitely wasn’t Stone or the mortents or any of the stuck-up snobs in his school or his principal.
It was from his mother and a bunch of Bourbon Street strippers who were raising him to be better. From people like Menyara, Liza, Bubba, and Kyrian.
Most of al , he wanted to be worth the respect and love of Nekoda.
“You got it.” Nick stepped back and turned on the mortents.
“My enemies aren’t the bul ies in my life.” Honestly, people like Stone had made him strong and he was thankful for that. He’d found strength in his pain. Strength of character and dignity.