With a yelp, she rushed to hide behind Nick so he could protect her from them. Not that he was much more than a flesh wall.
“What is this?” she whispered to him.
“We’re getting the cure for my mom and Caleb.”
She clutched at him. “What?” she asked in a hushed whisper.
“They” – he jerked his chin toward Chronus and Tiamat – “are giving us the chance to heal them.”
Biting her lip, she swallowed hard. “Are you sure we can trust them?”
“Not at all. But it’s the only chance they have. So, I’m taking it.”
“W-w-w-where are we going?” She’d barely finished asking the question before everything around them went pitch-black nasty. It was so dark, it hurt his eyes and made him see weird spots all around as his eyes struggled to see something out of the absolute nothingness.
When the light unexpectedly returned, Nick flinched in physical pain from it, and found himself in a dark, foggy forest, instead of the streets of New Orleans.
Moonlight cut through spooky trees with knobby knees and hanging moss and thick underbrush and thorns. He’d never seen anything quite like it. Not even Azmodea. Off in the distance, he heard the sound of numerous animals, including wolves. The stench of death, pine, and mistletoe hung heavy around them. It was so pungent, he could taste it.
“What is this place?”
Livia cursed under her breath before she answered him. “Agonia.”
“Aga-what?”
“Aga-nee-yah. It’s a hell realm, Nick. The one Xev was banished to centuries ago as punishment for betraying his people and killing Caleb’s wife.”
Oh…
Turning around slowly, Nick studied it with care and great curiosity. Other than being dark and a little damp and cold, the place held a strange ethereal beauty to it.
“It doesn’t look so bad.” Certainly not as horrible as he’d envisioned it from the way Xev acted about it. He’d expected it to be a blistering desert hell with no comforts at all.
But no sooner had that thought finished than the red crow let out a caw that sounded like a blood-curdling scream. The ground beneath his feet rose up to form a giant beast of a man out of absolutely nothing. One with serrated teeth and a massive stone eye in the center of his bulbous head.
An eye he rotated to glare down at them with. “Who are you? Why have you come here?”
Definitely not for a fun-filled Disney vacation.
Nick stepped back cautiously as he decided to take a clue from the one piece of ancient Greek lit he knew, and pulled an Odysseus on the creature. “Nobody.”
Unfortunately, Livia must not have ever read The Odyssey, as she ratted him out immediately. “You’re not Nobody, Nick!” She lifted her chin defiantly toward the giant. “He’s the Malachai! You better show him respect or else he’ll destroy you where you stand!”
Ah crap. Leave it to her to be honest for once.
And literal.
The giant gaped at them. “Malachai? Here?”
Before Nick could respond with anything more eloquent than a helpless shrug, the entire forest came alive and attacked.
CHAPTER 12
X
evikan became aware of his surroundings with a start. Sensing something was off about the room, he blinked and scowled until he met Kody’s equally confused gaze. His whole body was stiff as if he’d been in a fight.
Yet he hadn’t.
Had he?
Rolling his shoulders, he tried to make sense of what he felt and saw.
“Where’s Nick?” Kody asked him.
Oh yeah, that’s what’s missing. Nick had been right beside him a moment ago.
“I don’t know.”
Even Dagon looked baffled by it all.
“What happened?” Rubbing at his temple, Xev felt as if he’d sustained a stunning battle-blow to the head. Nothing had hit him this hard, with this amount of damage, since Caleb. That demon alone could rattle him like this.
Dagon went perfectly still, all of a sudden. “Do you smell that?”
“Smell what?” Kody asked.
But Xev knew that unique sickly-sweet stench the moment Dagon mentioned it. “Chronus.”
Dagon nodded slowly. “His keepers were here.”
Skimming the room as he turned a slow circle, Xev narrowed his gaze on the shadows. “Or still are.”
Kody frowned. “I don’t understand.”
“Neither do I,” Dagon breathed.
He met Xev’s gaze with eyes that betrayed his own concern that this was quickly escalating into something none of them wanted to live through again. “You think they took Nick for the Source?”
His stomach churned at the very thought of it. And yet… “Why else would the Malachai have vanished? They had to have taken him.”
But why?
That was the terrifying question.
If Chronus took possession of Nick, it couldn’t be good for anyone. Especially not for anyone in this room. The primal god of order didn’t involve himself lightly.
And whenever he did…
Tragic things happened for them all.