Use the Force, Luke!
All of a sudden, he felt the warmth of his powers building inside him. The fire of it rushed through his blood, faster and faster. His vision darkened. His back burned as his wings began to push through the surface of his skin.
Don’t! He heard Nekoda’s voice in his head telling him not to morph. You can’t control it!
She was right and he knew it. He did lose a part of his soul to the darkness every time he accessed those powers he didn’t fully understand.
But… there were no people here. No one he loved that he could lose or accidentally hurt if he went Malachai.
Yeah, but he had no anchor here either. No one to pull him out of it or calm him down. The gods knew Livia wouldn’t do it. She didn’t care enough to.
If you don’t come back from the Malachai state, your mom and Caleb will die. As the full Malachai, you won’t care about getting them their cure.
If I don’t live through this attack, they won’t survive either.
There was that. Nick didn’t know what to do. He was terrified to use those powers and scared not to, especially since his strength was already starting to fail during the fighting. He wouldn’t last much longer in his human body.
Soon, they’d have him.
Maybe this was what Chronus and Tiamat had wanted. A full-blown Malachai. The nightmare beast that didn’t care who or what it destroyed. The one that fed on utter misery and destruction.
“Give in to your pain. Not your hatred.”
Nick froze at the unexpected deep, masculine voice behind him. That rumbling, thick, lilting brogue would be unintelligible if he wasn’t used to taking orders from the Celtic Dark-Hunter Talon. He was the only one who had an accent anywhere near what he’d just heard.
Turning, he saw the shadowed form of a man in the darkness. “Pardon?”
“You want control of your Malachai powers, boyo? Give in to the pain and anger. Never the hatred. Set it aside and let it go. Pain will strengthen you and empower you to do better. To be more than what you are. Your hatred will devour you, and swallow you whole if’n you let it. Give in to your pain. Not your bitter hatred.”
He made it sound so easy, but it wasn’t.
“I’m not sure I know how to do that.”
“Then you’ll become the Malachai you fear. You might as well let it go, and become him now. No need in getting your arse kicked any worse than what it is. Why endure the misery of it for another minute, eh?”
Nick cursed as one of the beasts kicked him hard in the ribs and another slashed him across the back. He cut one and stumbled away from the next before he sliced a new attacker.
Groaning in pain, he glared at his wise leprechaun tormenter. “Hey, Lucky Charms Legolas? In the meantime, could you hop your butt over here and help a brother out?”
“I wish. Sadly, I lack corporeal form. Like this, I can’t even bleed or spit on them.”
Livia hissed at the shadow. “Ignore him, Nick. He’s just a puck.”
“A what?”
“A púca.” She spat the term out as if it was the lowest life form ever created. “A will-o’-the-wisp. They’re worthless creatures who were damned and cursed by their gods.”
“Or a god of war tricked and trapped here by his own kinsmen who stole his powers after he was stupid enough to trust them.” The shadow moved closer to the battle. If he was offended by Livia’s attack, he gave no clue of it.
Nick groaned as one of the stone creatures hit him hard and sent him to the ground. He tried to rise, but the earth wrapped around his body and held him down. “Do you know how to fight them?” he asked the púca.
“Yes… If I had a real flesh-and-blood body, I could defeat them all.”
Grimacing and cursing in pain, Nick locked gazes with him as he had a radical idea. It might be crazy, but it was the only one he could think of. “Will you exchange forms with me long enough to take them out?”
The púca cocked a finely arched brow as if he wasn’t quite sure he’d heard those words. “You would trust me?”
“If you give me your word, yes.”
The púca pulled back and blinked in utter disbelief. “You’d accept me word?” he asked again.
“Yes.”
“Don’t do it, Nick! You can’t trust a puck! They’re liars and thieves. All of them! It’s what they do!”
Nick ignored her. “I will trust your honor until you give me a reason not to.”
The púca hesitated a moment longer before he inclined his head to him. “’Tis a pact then, Malachai, between us brothers. Let me in and I’ll ring their blessed bells, till they run weeping home.”
Using as little of his Malachai powers as was necessary, Nick swapped his soul with the puck’s.
One second, he was on the ground, getting the snot beaten out of him, and in the next, he was the one in the shadows.
Ah, yeah, it felt really good to have a body that wasn’t riddled with pain. He could finally draw a deep breath again and not wince or groan from it.