No one came to the door.
Nick passed a grim stare to the women. “All right. I’m going in first. Simi, anything rears its head, barbecue it up.”
Rubbing her hands together, she smiled so wide it showed off her fangs. “Oh goody! The Simi knews there was a reason she loved her demon-boy!”
Not wanting to think about that, Nick took the knob in his hand and used his powers to unlock it. He opened it slowly, expecting snot-demons, hell-monkeys … who knew what to come flying at him.
But there was nothing in the foyer. Dark and quiet, the house seemed abandoned.
“Caleb? Vawn? Aeron? Xev? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?”
Snorting at his joke, Nashira jerked her chin toward the staircase. “Upstairs. I heard a groan.”
Nick bolted for the steps and took them two at a time. He didn’t slow until he reached Caleb’s upstairs study where he found them wounded and bleeding. “Oh my God!”
In his orange demon form, Caleb was flat on his back and lying with a blood-soaked cloth over his abdomen. “Not exactly the right entity.” Then, he groaned.
Aeron grimaced. “Be speaking for yourself, demon. When I lay me hands on the bloody knackers, I’ll be teaching them what it is to come at a war god unawares. Ain’t been hurt like this since the time I ran afoul of The Dagda.”
Vawn nodded in agreement as he drew a ragged breath. “They came upon us like a pack of jackals. So fast we ne’er saw them until they had us all bleeding.”
“Who were they?” Nick knelt beside Caleb while Kody checked on Aeron.
“Sephirii.”
Nick froze at the last word he expected out of Caleb’s mouth. “Pardon?”
Kody shook her head. “That’s impossible. They were all put down.”
Caleb pushed himself slowly to his feet to face her. His features were strained and earnest while he held his makeshift bandage against his ribs. “Yeah, I know. I was there. I saw them fall. But I also led my army against and for them for hundreds of years. Believe me, I know a Sephiroth sword when it cuts me.” He pulled the cloth away to show them the grisly wound on his stomach. “Nothing else looks like this, cuts as deep or burns half as much.”
Nick screwed his face up at the painful sight. “Bruh! There’s ladies present. Cover that!”
Kody ignored his outburst. “Jared is the only Sephiroth left and he’s imprisoned. His sword was destroyed when they enslaved him.”
“Yeah, I heard that lie, too.” Caleb pointed back at his wound. Then he threw his head back and let out a shout that practically shook his rafters. “Shadow! Get your rank, worthless carcass here. Now! Don’t you dare drag your ass or I’ll kick it every step from here to Avalon and back.”
“Sheez almighty, demon. What’s your dama—” the disembodied voice broke off as a man materialized in front of them and he saw Caleb’s wounds. “Oh … you really are damaged.”
About half a foot shorter than Nick, he appeared to be mid twenties, with hazel gray-blue eyes that held a storm inside them. The man’s hair was a strange shade. Neither light nor dark, it held strands of both and managed to fall between the two colors. And he wore it pulled back into a short, tight ponytail. The one good thing about him was that unlike Aeron, Kaziel and Vawn, his British accent was light, pleasant and easy to understand.
Caleb glared at the man as if he could rip his throat out. And the funny thing was, he didn’t react to Caleb’s venom at all. He was so cool about it, he practically bled icicles.
“So Shadow, explain to me how it is we were just attacked with Sephirii swords.”
Shadow blinked twice before he glanced around at each of them. Still so nonchalant that Nick admired his ability to show nothing. Dang, to have that amount of control over his emotions. He’d never get in to trouble for anything. “No idea.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“So, you’re telling me that you really destroyed every last one of them like you were instructed to do after the Primus Bellum?”
Only then did his facade crack. In fact, his expression was the same one Nick got whenever his mom asked if he was the one who’d forgotten to put the toilet seat down. Which she already knew the answer to since he was technically the only guy in the house—and Xev didn’t count because he was in the disguise of a cat and his mom didn’t know it. And well, the nasty buggar never forgot to put it down once he was finished. All that aside, Nick hated it whenever she pulled that crap with him, as it was grossly unfair. Although, to be honest, he’d tried to blame it on space aliens a couple of times.
And that had gone over about as well as Shadow’s next words. “Basically. I destroyed the vast majority of them. Yeah.”
Aeron cursed, then started for him, but Vawn caught him and held him back.
