Chapter 24

He was putting his shoes on when the cattle prod came out. One of the officers picked it up and held it out to Virgil.

"Don't forget your umbrella, Mr. Ward."

"Thanks, Cabal. I know it's not supposed to rain, but I believe in always being prepared."

"I hear you. Especially here in N'awlins. You never know when a downpour's going to hit. As I always say, you don't like the weather? Wait a minute."

Laughing, Virgil took the cattle prod and headed for the hallway.

Nick was aghast as Virgil disappeared from his sight without anyone saying anything about his weapon.

You know if I did that, they'd body slam me down and shoot me in the head for good measure.

Stunned by what he'd seen, Nick made his way back to the SUV where the others were waiting.

Bubba arched a brow at him. "That was quick." Nick buckled himself into his seat. "I mostly wanted to see if Virgil made it past security." Caleb looked smug, but didn't say anything. "And?" Mark asked.

"Don't ask me how, but he did. They didn't even see it. It was like the cattle prod was invisible or something." Bubba frowned. "How?"

Simi let out a peeved huff. "He's a vampire, demon, human people. Jeez, didn't any of you notice?"

Mark scoffed, "Most lawyers are. Ain't never met one yet what wasn't a bloodsucker or a soulsucker. Of course, in my case, they're all money suckers."

Caleb's phone started ringing. He picked it up and answered it. "Yeah?" He listened for a second, then said, "Wait. I'm putting you on speaker." He switched it on. "Now repeat what you just told me."

"What the hell's in this cattle prod? I about launched the kid through the wall."

Caleb snorted. "Not that part, Virgil. Move on."

"Okay, I shocked him and now's he's squalling like a girl, wanting his mommy. He says he has no idea of how he got here. I asked him about biting the kid and he has no idea what I'm talking about. Best of all, he's no longer trying to eat my brains, which have to be missing for me to agree to this. So to answer your experiment, I think it works."

Bubba looked skeptical. "Can we trust his report?"

"You do know I can hear you, right?" Virgil's tone was irritated.

"Yeah," Bubba drawled, "and I repeat, can we trust you?" "Well, since I don't have a dog in this fight, yeah. Why would I lie? Not that I'm not beyond those ethics. I fully believe in whatever lie will set me free. But in this case, I'm being honest. The kid's now clean. Listen for yourself...."

"I want to go home. Why am I here? I don't understand what happened...."

Caleb turned the speaker off. "Thanks, Virgil. I'll get the payment to you later." He paused, then looked at Mark and Bubba. "You guys need your cattle prod back?"

"Absolutely," Mark said. "We got some people to shock."

Caleb nodded, then spoke into the phone. "If you don't mind, please bring it back to us."

Virgil appeared before he could hang up the phone.

This time, Nick was the one who jumped as Bubba got out to return the cattle prod to the back of the SUV.

Virgil eyed Nick closely as he studied him through the truck window. "Don't I know you?"

Nick shook his head as a strange chill went over his body that made his skin crawl. Virgil definitely wasn't what he seemed. "I don't think so."

Caleb cleared his throat.

Virgil glanced over at him and something strange passed between them. When he turned his attention back to Nick, his look was guarded and cold. "Nice to meet you, Nick."

"How do you know my name?"

Virgil didn't answer. "I better get back. I have night court in an hour and don't want to miss it. My first case is a doozie: Some guy beat up another on Bourbon with a hot dog before he tried to kill his victim by drowning him in a puddle." He literally vanished.

Bubba turned around in the seat to stare at Caleb. "Interesting friend you got there."

"You have no idea."

Mark scratched at his ear. "We need to let Tabitha and crew know how to fight them."

Madaug fished his phone out and pressed the auto dial for his brother. "I'm on it."

Bubba pulled out of the parking space and headed back to the store. "All right, we have half the equation. We know we can turn them human again. But the question is, how are so many getting their hands on the game?"

Mark shook his head. "Someone else has to be disseminating it."

Nick scowled at the unfamiliar word. "Dis-a what?"

"Disseminating," Mark repeated. "It means distributing it."

"Then why didn't you say that?"

Mark looked at Bubba. "Remind me to get him a word-of-the-day calendar." Then he pinned Nick with a shaming stare over the back of the seat. "You need to up your vocabulary, boy. You can't walk around letting people think you're stupid. Expand your horizons. Besides, it's fun to call people names they have to look up to realize they've been insulted."

Bubba laughed. "Yeah, that's a twofer there. You get away with it and then they're twice as mad when they realize how bad you really insulted them. Especially if they mistake it for a compliment when you say it and thank you for it."

"And," Caleb jumped in, "those insults keep you from getting grounded by your mom."

You know, they all had veryvalid points.

"And best of all, it'll help you with your SATs," Madaug said as he hung up the phone—he would think of that. He looked at Mark. "Eric and the zoo crew are heading to the store for supplies. Do /all have enough stun guns for them?"

Bubba bristled as if Madaug had insulted him. "Does a bear defecate rurally? What kind of question is that for someone who owns the biggest gun store in town? Of course I got plenty. I got enough Tasers to light up New York City and Boston just for giggles."

Good, 'cause Nick had a feeling they might be needing them.

Ambrose grabbed the bookcase and slammed it to the ground, spilling the ancient books he'd carefully collected for centuries across the floor of his stygian office. It probably destroyed a few of them, but at this point, he really didn't care. Rage burned through him with the power of a thousand suns so raw and potent that he could taste it.

"Why can't I stop it?" he snarled. Why, with all the powers he'd mastered, all the elements he controlled, couldn't he prevent a mere fourteen-year-old boy from being an idiot? No matter what he did, certain events kept unfolding.

And he wanted blood.

He felt a calm, soothing hand on his cheek, covering his bow-and-arrow mark that she'd given him during a time so long ago he should have no memory of it. Yet it was forever carved deep in his mind. More beautiful than any other, Artemis, goddess of the hunt, put all women to shame. Her long red hair flowed to her tiny waist, which was accentuated by the white Grecian gown she wore. "Shhh ... You shouldn't work yourself up to such a frizzy."

His anger tripled. "The word is frenzy," he corrected. Because of the differences between the English he spoke and her native ancient Greek, she constantly screwed up sayings and colloquialisms.

"What are you doing here, Artemis?" he demanded.

"I'm trying to calm you down, love. You shouldn't do this to yourself. It pains me to see you suffer like this."

And that dark power inside him wanted to strike out at her and make her beg for his mercy. It was an all-demanding power that was getting harder and harder to fight.

Soon there would be no way back from it. It would consume him and he would become his father. A mindless killing machine that lacked all compassion and humanity. A machine that wanted to end everything.

Kill everyone.

Ambrose stared at the wall, where he saw himself as a boy. Nick Gautier had no idea how the random small decisions he was making right now would turn him into the beast Ambrose had become.

/ have to save myself.

More than that, he had to save the ones he loved. Before it was too late. But how?

God, howcould I have been so stupid, even at fourteen? It was so hard to look back and see the faces of his friends and loved ones, especially since he knew what would become of them if he didn't alter history. It cut so deep that it alone was almost enough to make him insane.

Howdo I stop it?

Ambrose turned to Artemis. He hated her. She, like Acheron, had played a major role in turning him into the Malachai.

No, Nick, you did that to yourself.

But it was so much easier to blame them. They had made it so easyfor him to make the wrong decisions. Decisions he was now trying to unmake before he lost the ability to care.

Sighing in frustration, he met Artemis's gaze. The gaze of the woman who'd brought him back from the dead and unleashed his powers. Powers he was now trying to unlock earlier in his life. Had he possessed some of them as a kid, he could have saved the ones who were most important to him.

He could have saved his mom....

Nick flinched as he forced that memory away and turned his thoughts to something he'd said to himself earlier. "Who is Nekoda?"

Artemis gave him a blank stare. "Never heard of him." "Her, Artie. It's a girl."

One of her perfect brows shot up as jealousy darkened her green eyes. "What kind of girl?"

"I don't know. Nick knows her."

"You are Nick." Her tone was testy.

"Exactly. How can / not know who she is?" How could he not have seen her as he looked back? For some reason, she was a complete ghost to him. No matter what power he used, he couldn't find this piece of his past. Even with certain aspects altered, he should still be able to hone in on her.

Yet he couldn't.

Why?

Artemis shrugged her thin shoulders. "You forgot her. It happens. You were human ... once."

But he wasn't human now. Now he was the type of creature he and Tabitha had once hunted and put down like a rabid animal. More than that, he was hungry.

Starving.

Artemis took a chance by being here with him. Every time he fed from her blood, he grew stronger and deadlier. It was getting harder and harder not to kill her with his powers and absorb hergodhood.

Harder to not destroy everyone and everything.

I wont do it.

Yes, you will. In time. You cant change what you are. Fight all you went. In the end, you are what you were bom to be and nothing will ever change that.

But he refused to believe it.

He stared at himself on the wall as the younger him innocently rode in the back of Bubba's SUV toward a destiny that had been carved in blood onto his heart. C'mon, Nick, dont let us down. I need you to be strong, kid.

Smart.

Most of all, he needed himself not to make the same mistakes. Some things, such as meeting Simi while he was young, were already changed.

But others ...

He ground his teeth as he saw the future as clearly as he saw his past.

Karnarsas, the final battle where he would command his father's army, was coming. And when it did, if he didn't change the past, he would destroy the rest of the people he loved....

All of them.

Nick got out of the SUV in front of Bubba's store and checked the time on his cell phone. Ooo, he was cutting it close. So much for food....

"Hey, guys? I need to be heading up to my mom's club before I get grounded." Again.

Mark, who was standing on the sidewalk, shot his head up in a gesture reminiscent of a spooked deer. "Hey, Bub? You catch a whiff of that?"

What? Had someone ripped one in the car?

Nick was just about to blame Caleb when Bubba froze. Two heartbeats later, he tossed keys at Nick. "Kids, get in the store. Now!"

He started to ask them what was up when he saw something that left him stunned. Zombies.

Not like the ones who were his converted classmates. These were the real thing. Flesh rotting. Bad smelling. Limb losing. Eye jelly oozing ...

Zombies.

And they were coming at them with speed a puma would envy. Madaug let out a yelp as he ran to the door. Nick and Caleb followed while Bubba and Mark pulled out two baseball bats from under the seats of the SUV in an act that strangely reminded him of Mary Poppins and her bag of goodies.

Simi came out of the SUV and acted like she was going to head for the zombies until Bubba caught her arm.

"Get inside with the boys, Simi."

She actually pouted. Nick could tell she wanted to argue, but with a curt nod, she ran to them.

Bubba cursed. "Tell me again why I put the flamethrower up in the store?" he asked Mark.

Mark hefted his bat over his shoulder. "I'm pretty sure the cops had something to do with that."

Bubba popped the first zombie to reach him in the head with his bat. "Well, the next time I decide to do something so stupid, remind me it's better to be in jail than dead."

"Hurry, Nick!" Madaug pushed up against him as Nick fumbled with the keys and lock.

Nick ground his teeth. It was hard to do this with only one hand. "I'm trying. Dang, Bubba. How many keys you got on this ring, anyway?" He'd already tried a dozen and not a one worked. He only had ten more to go.

"It's the one with the green rubber piece around it." Bubba knocked the head from the zombie closest to him. "Green." Strike two. "Rubber." Strike three. "Piece."

Caleb pulled the keys out of his hand so that he could open the door. "They're getting through, Nick. We gotta hurry."

"I knew I should have left that duck urine on!" Mark snapped. "That'll teach me to bathe when I know better."