Throwing his head back, he shouted out in agony. Why couldn’t he save her? With all the powers he had?
We are destruction …
The voice of the Malachai whispered through him. It was a thunderous, dark sound that he knew well. An amalgam of all his predecessors. Older than time, it reverberated through his entire being.
With it came that surge of power. Primal and raw. Nick forced it down. He didn’t want to go Malachai.
Not now.
He needed to stay rational and to figure this out. He couldn’t give in to the hatred. There was too much on the line. Too many that he cared about.
“I won’t let you tell me who I am,” he breathed. “I am Nick Gautier.” Tomorrow, he might become Ambrose Malachai. But it wouldn’t be today.
No. Not today.
Suddenly, his phone rang. Jumping, he answered it, no longer thinking it peculiar. Peculiar was becoming his new middle name.
However, that being said, what he did find shocking was to find Virgil Ward on the other end.
“You remember me, kid?”
“Um, yeah.”
As a blood-sucking attorney, literally, Virgil was a hard creature to forget. A little over six feet tall, he didn’t appear to be any older than sixteen or seventeen—Nick’s age when Virgil had been turned into a real vampire after a demon had bitten him. Now he spent eternity working night court for the damned and preternatural as part of the Laurens and Ward Law Firm in a posh downtown office.
Virgil was also the only one whose powers of persuasion and masking put Nick’s to shame. That boy could pull the wool over anyone’s eyes.
“Good. I just got off the phone with your mom and I’m going to walk you into the police station to see about this matter where they want to talk to you, and make sure you don’t hit lock-up, for reasons we all know. Where are you?”
“Do you know a guy named Takeshi?”
“As in the zeitjäger, kick-your-hide-sideways?”
“That’d be the one.”
“Very familiar. Still have the boot prints on my left cheek. You with him?”
“Affirmative.”
“Good lad. Safe place. I like it. Can you put him on the phone for me?”
Before Nick could answer, a strange buzzing started on the line. One that drowned out Virgil’s voice. His vision dimmed. Pain exploded through his head and left him in absolute agony.
What the heck?
He blinked in an effort to clear his vision. Yet all it did was make him queasy. Dizzier. The darkness lifted into a bright, searing light that made it even harder for him to see.
Tires squealed.
Before Nick could recover, something slammed into him and sent him careening through the air.
An instant later, he landed on the pavement and realized that he’d been struck by a car.
Unable to move, he lay in the street as his entire body throbbed. Voices assaulted him. He tried to get up and focus.
Everything was hazy and surreal.
You are mine, Malachai. And I will make you bleed …
