Someone, grab me an inhaler and shove it in my mouth. Yeah, okay, he wasn’t asthmatic, but he was willing to learn and at this point, he definitely felt that bronchial burn.
“Oh no! Akri-Nicky! You okay? The Simi didn’t know it was her favorite blue-eyed demon boy when she hit him so hard so as to protect his precious akra-mama. Oh no!” Simi leaned over him with her red-and-black pigtails framing her adorable face as she slapped at his cheeks to revive him. “You still living and breathing and not broken? ’Cause if you not, can the Simi eat your dead, meaty remains? Please, please, please? Maybe some of them bones, too, ’cause the marrow can be quite tasty in its own right.”
Now, to a normal person, that might seem like an odd request. But to those a little behind on the schematics, there really wasn’t anything normal about Nick’s life or those in it. Being a Charonte demon, Simi had a fondness for human meat, but luckily for humanity, she wasn’t allowed to chow down on it without express permission of either the donor or her father. Which her main akri tended not to give her.
Thank goodness for that.
Nick stared up into her bright, friendly eyes. For all her bloodthirsty cravings, she was quite adorable, and loyal to a scary fault. Like a fluffy killer attack bunny.
Dressed in a short black-and-white skull tank dress, she wore a rose-lace hoodie over it. Her red-and-black-striped leggings matched her hair and she had on a pair of black and red floral Doc Martens.
“Sadly for you, I think I’m going to live, Simi,” he choked out with a wheeze. “You can stop slapping me now. I’ve already lost enough sense. Can’t afford to lose any more brain cells. I really really need my last three before I forget how to spell my name. It’s hard enough to pronounce.”
“Well, poo.” She sat back with an adorable pout. “Not poo that you’ll live, ’cause the Simi would probably miss you if you died, but poo that I’ll miss all that good old salty boy meat.” She poked at his ribs. “Though we needs be fattening you up some to make you really good eats. Hmmm.” She licked her lips as if imagining what he’d taste like basted in barbecue sauce – Simi’s prime condiment of choice.
Yeah. Okay. Not wanting to think about that, Nick pushed himself up to face Xev with a grimace. “Y’all could have warned me about the attack Simi you had on door duty.”
Xev shrugged nonchalantly. “I wasn’t completely sure it was you. Besides, she was a lot more gentle in her attack on you than I’d have been.” He swept a bitterly amused glance over Nick’s body. “With her, you’re still in one piece. So stop whining like a baby before I have Simi burp you.”
Crossing his arms over his chest, Xev inclined his head toward the bedroom. “Kody’s with your mother, who’s unconscious for some unknown reason. No matter what we try, we can’t seem to get Cherise to wake up again.”
“Could it be Tiamat? I saw her just before I came here.”
Xev went so still that for a moment, Nick thought everything had frozen again.
Until Xev blinked ever so slowly. “Nyria?”
Her features completely ashen, Kody came out of the room. “What did you call me?”
He ignored her question. “Tiamat is free.”
The color drained from her face, too. “What?” She looked to Nick for confirmation. “Are you sure?”
Nick nodded. “She was at Caleb’s. She thought I’d summoned her.”
“Did you?”
Should he be offended by the way she asked that? A part of him thought so, given that only an outright moron would do something that stupid. And while he’d been known to pull some award-winning acts of dumb, he’d never been quite that asleep at the wheel.
At least, not yet, that he knew of.
“I don’t make it a habit of summoning gods I don’t know, no offense. Especially not one I’ve never heard of before. I don’t even play those video games after what happened with Madaug. How slow on the uptake do I look, and don’t answer that. I have a very fragile male ego where you’re concerned.” Nick scowled as Xev carried his unconscious mother out of the bedroom and placed her on the couch, between them. “What are you doing, champ?”
“I am not letting her out of our sight. I will not be blamed for her harm, and I will allow no harm to come to her while she’s in my custody.” Xev placed a small round pillow beneath her head, then covered her with the pink crocheted blanket she kept tossed over the back of the couch, and took up a post at her feet, facing her with his right hand on her leg.
Okie-dokie, he was just a little paranoid.
And in that moment, the full weight of Xev’s true trauma hit Nick. The ancient ex-god was in the middle of an all-out panic attack. A bad one, too, by the looks of it. Kind of like Nick whenever his chemistry teacher sprang a pop quiz on him at school.
“Xev?”