"Not demons, love. War. And we're not running. We're strategically taking the high ground so that we can hold him off until we find his weakness. Now get your things."
NICK JUMPED AS HE WALKED PAST A MIRROR and caught sight of himself. "Holy shit," he breathed. His skin was blood red and covered with ancient black symbols. But it was his face that held him paralyzed. His hair was black, streaked with red that came down into his face. Black lines cut across both his eyes and down his cheeks. His ebony eyes flashed red.
Stunned, he looked down to see his arms and hands were also red marked by black. "What the hell is going on?"
"It's your true form."
He turned to see Menyara, only he didn't see the older woman who'd raised him. Now she was taller than him and looked to be in her early twenties. She was dressed in a black halter top with tight black pants, her long hair swept up into a stylized ponytail.
"Who are you? Really?"
Menyara tossed him one of the two staves she held. "I've been known by many names over the centuries. But you would know me best by Ma'at."
Nick's heart skipped as he remembered the Egyptian goddess. She was the one who upheld the order of the universe. Goddess of justice and truth. Menyara had given him a statue of her on his seventh birthday.
"She will protect you from harm, Nicholas. Put her by your bed and no one will ever harm you while you sleep. She will watch over you. Always." He could still remember her telling him that.
Bitter anger swept though him. "For a goddess of truth, you've lied your ass off to me."
Menyara smiled. "Not lied, sweetie. I merely withheld a few facts from you and your mother. If it makes you feel better, I'm the reason Cherise was never suspicious of your Dark-Hunters. I kept her carefully shielded from all the paranormal events in her life. Just as I tried to do with you. But fate is a bitch who won't be denied. You were meant to ascend to your powers and not even mine could keep you sheltered forever."
"I would say thanks for keeping my mother blind to my extracurricular activities, but that's part of what got her killed." He tested the weight of the staff. "What am I supposed to do with this?"
She brought hers down across his face, forcing him to block the stroke with his staff. "You have to learn to fight."
"I was born fighting." This time, he barely countered her move before she hit his head.
"People, but not the powers who will come for you now." She swung at him again.
Nick blocked and twisted the staff from her grip. He smiled proudly as he disarmed her.
"Told you. I'm the best there ever was."
She snorted at his arrogance. "And I'm a goddess of truth, not of war. Beating me shows you can defeat an old woman. Nothing more. Don't get cocky."
Nick curled his lip. "You know, if you were going to shield me and my mother, you should have shielded us from poverty." Pain ripped through him as he remembered the defeated look on his mother's face every time she brushed her hand through his hair, then took the stage to strip her clothes off so that she could feed him. She'd once told him that the only reason she took him to work with her was to remind her why she had to do what she did. Otherwise she would have run for the door.
Guilt ate at him. It always had. He'd ruined his mother's life, and then his own stupidity had ended it. Menyara held her hand up and snatched the staff from his tight grip. She shoved him back into the wall with one end of it. He grimaced in pain as she dug the tip into his chest.
"That poverty is what made you human, boy. Without it or your mother, you would be exactly as your father."
"Bullshit!"
She opened her mouth to speak, then froze. An instant later, a blinding light flashed through the room. Nick hissed as it cut across him, burning his skin. Something ferocious slammed into him, lifting him up from the floor and pinning him to the ceiling. He tried to push himself away, but he felt like a roach under someone's foot as they pressed it against the floor.
Suddenly he hit the ground. Menyara ran to him as he groaned in pain. His ears buzzing, he tried to focus. Every part of him hurt. Until he looked up.
There across the room was Acheron, and he was fighting a man who bore the same stylized patterns on his skin that Nick had. Only where Nick's were red this man's symbols were black and where his were black the man's were red.
"Stay out of this, Atlantean," the demon thing snarled.
Acheron caught the blast sent toward him with his hand. "Menyara, get Nick out of here. Now!" Before Nick could protest, she wrapped herself around him and everything went black.
JARED CURSED AS THEY VANISHED. "WHAT ARE you doing?"
"I told you. I am honor-bound to keep him safe and so I will protect him with my life."
"Are you insane?"
Ash took a step back as the Sephiroth stopped fighting him. "I'm an Atlantean god, Jared. I swore to his mother that no one would ever harm him. You know what that means."