Trying not to think about it, he sighed. “Have you found Adarian?”
Cam shook her head. “He’s a crafty bastard.”
Nay. He was a paranoid one. Much worse, in his opinion. Crafty could be outsmarted. Paranoid was much harder to overtake, as those bastards trusted none and saw danger in every passing shadow and fart. He should know. He’d been paranoid for centuries. It was why he was still alive. Not that that was a particularly good thing. After all, he’d be better off dead at this point.
Damn him for his paranoia.
And damn Adarian for his.
“We’ve got to trap him and clip their powers, Cam. They’re getting way too strong for us to corral. The balance is shifting fast to their favor.”
Her eyes darkened as she realized what he already knew. They were in trouble and their side was losing. The balance was ever a delicate thing. A certain amount of evil was necessary in the world to motivate humanity to be good and do what they should. They needed to fear the things waiting in the dark to feast on their souls.
It was good for them.
But too much of that evil, and they would be destroyed. It would overwhelm them.
Worse? It would overrun him and his sister and reshape the entire universe into a vast besmirched vacuous hole where demons would rule and they would all be enslaved to endless torment. He gave an involuntary shudder at the thought.
Having lived for centuries in a realm where his brother and sister had no restraint or anyone capable of reining them in, he was terrified of seeing that unleashed here. It was the last thing he wanted.
Although, with Adarian Malachai around to fight them, it could get entertaining. Provided one avoided the cross fire.
And raining body parts and entrails.
“So what are you thinking, little sister?”
Cam smiled. “I think we use the tools we have to snip the devil in the balls.”
He arched a brow at the last words he’d expected to hear her say. “Pardon?”
“We need to kill the Malachai before he raises the dead.”
Jaden’s blood ran cold as he finally understood what she was saying. “Lillith?”
She nodded. “Since he can’t locate Apollymi, that’s his answer. To bring back the mother of all monsters.”
“Can he do that?”
She shrugged. “Let’s just say I’ve no wish to find out.”
Neither did he. Because if Adarian brought back the original evil who’d first crawled into existence and she learned what they’d done to her, they’d all be dead in the next heartbeat.
Lillith was an unforgiving bitch that way, and he had the scars to prove it.
However, they did have one tiny problem. …
“You know we can’t kill the Malachai. Not until he has a son to replace him.” That was the sacred covenant they’d made thousands upon thousands of centuries ago to end their bitter blood feud with their siblings. “They” being the light powers and their siblings being the corrupted darkness that conceived the unholy Malachai army that had almost destroyed everyone on the planet.
The only way to bring about peace and ensure the safety of all was to put down all the demons with Malachai blood. Unfortunately, there’d been a tiny problem in that the Malachai leader, Monakribos, had been the son of their one sister. And Apollymi had refused to see her son dead.
Mothers tended to be unreasonable that way.
Like their sister, Lillith, she was petty and selfish, seeing only her own wants and desires, and not the greater good. Apollymi would have burned down the whole world to save her son.
So, they’d agreed to spare his life and to guarantee him one child to placate their sister-goddess. The sole catch being that only one Malachai could live at a time. Once the son grew in power, he was required to kill his father and replace him.
That was an unbreakable law that stuck in Apollymi’s craw to this day.
