“Maybe?” Ryan snaps. “You don’t know for sure? I can’t believe you are doing this. Let’s just fight him together like we did Adair …”
“No! If he finds out about you and Lena, you both will be dead for sure, and I am afraid he will force me to do it.” I say avoiding their eyes on me. “The more you all help me prepare, the better chance I have to get rid of him.”
“Prepare how?” Bo asks as we pull up to the farmhouse. I ignore his question and lead them into the house to show them instead. They all follow me in and look around taking notice of my father’s things, even noticing the pictures of all his children, from their birth to his own death.
Ryan picks up his own baby picture with a huff. “He wasn’t ignoring you on purpose Ryan. He was protecting you from being known.” I say, causing Lena to press her face into Brady’s chest. Ryan sets the picture down and looks over at me with a frustrated anger, a feeling I have felt many times over the last few days.
“So what do you need our help with again?” Ryan asks, I lead them into our father’s lab and flip the switch to turn everything on. “What the hell is this?”
“His lab. He was trying to become stronger.” Sitting in his chair, I sit back and feel the edges of the seat my father once sat in day after day. “He was preparing to kill Savage himself.”
“How?” Ryan looks at me with his arms raised in confusion.
“Learning to take the pain he projects, to overcome it, and to kill him,” I explain.
Lena gazes over the chair I am in, “Nick … no?” Lena looks closer at the equipment and the chair, “Oh fuck no! Are you insane? You’re going to kill yourself.”
“It didn’t kill him, it won’t kill me.” I say with only mild confidence.
“Nick! You don’t know how far he tried and how far he needed to get.” Ryan yells at me.
“It doesn’t matter.” Ryan stomps his feet fisting his hair and screaming at me. “Protest all you want, but I am doing this and after each time, I need you all to attack me.”
“Excuse me?” Brady asks. “Did I hear you right, or is my constant daydreaming of kicking your ass interfering with my reality?”
“You heard me right, after each level I get to I want you all to attack me and force me to learn how to regain my energy faster. I need you to motivate me.”
“Alright, so when do we get started?” Brady asks with enthusiasm until Lena glares at him. “I’m just kidding baby. I promise I won’t enjoy kicking your brother’s ass … much.”
Reluctantly they all agree to try, and so Eddy sets up the machines and Lena helps monitor me. The rest all back up against the wall across from me, fidgeting, shaking their heads and staring at me like I have lost my damn mind. They may be right, but I don’t have much of a choice. Eddy signals to me that he is ready and after a deep inhale I nod. Son of a bitch! I fight to keep screaming from the pain, so as not to scare them all off, but it becomes increasingly difficult. Once it’s over, Lena releases me and steps back, I motion towards the wall of awkwardness and even Brady hesitates. “Come on you fucking Pussys, do you want to kick my ass or do you want Savage to kill you?” It only takes a few more comments to push them to do what I asked. Lena calls them off and we go again, but neither her or Ryan are happy about it.
Lena decides to call for a break and I take the opportunity to pull Elijah to the side and ask him for a favor. “If this doesn’t work out, I need you to take care of my family. I need you to talk Ryan into leaving with Sam, force him if you have to. I also need you to take Kayla and the boys away from here.”
“What?”
“I see the way you look at her. You said yourself you should have had the family not me. You are wanting to leave and start a new life, then leave with my family and start a new life with them.” He backs up and looks at me as if I have lost my mind. “If I start working for Savage, I can’t have them in my life. I can’t have her see me become something else. As much as I hate to admit it, I know she would be happy with you.”
“You mean once I tie her up and drag her off kicking and screaming away from you? Oh yeah, I am sure we will live happily ever after.” I don’t change my determination and he knows me well enough to know I am not changing my mind. Elijah sighs closing his eyes, “I promise I will do everything that I can possibly do, to make sure they stay safe and happy, if and only if, you can’t.”
I hold out my hand to him, “Brothers for life?”
Elijah takes my hand, “Brothers for life – Nicky. Always.”
I return to the chair and wait to begin again to Ryan’s instant frustration. “Don’t start Ryan, just do what I ask, please.” Ryan shakes his head, refusing over and over until I grab him and force him to listen to me. “I have to do this Ryan. We have no other choice. I could do nothing against him, I couldn’t get off my knees to protect my own family. I have to protect them, no matter what. I have to do this so I can save them. So I can save you all. No matter what it does to me.”
“And what if time runs out and you have to work with him? What if you become him before we can finish preparing you to take him on? The man has no feelings, no soul. You said yourself, that you have felt the world from his point of view. How much will it take for him to change you, for him to force you to forget who you are?” Bo asks forcing me to think about the worst possibility.
“Who I am? I don’t know who I am.”
“I know who you are, and you’re not him. You don’t belong there Nick. As bad as I thought our father was, he had something about him that forced him to break from that world, and you have it to, I know it.”
“I don’t know if I do, Ryan, I am not sure how he broke free. Whatever it was, I hope I can find that same inner strength.”
“Well, maybe it isn’t so much about the inner strength, but some kind of magical cure. Maybe he stumbled onto something by accident,” Eddy suggests, trying to find hope where I don’t believe there is any.
“If there is, I hope we find it, otherwise, we are completely dependent on this idea working on its own and I am not sure I can build up that much rage to kill him and still come back as Nicholas Jayzon and not … The Devil’s Son.”
Epilogue
~Nick~
Savage walks into the room as all the masked guests applaud his noble entrance. My own body steadies itself waiting as the focus changes to me. I should be afraid, I should be fearing him, but as I walk up next to his side, I fear nothing, and I feel nothing. I slowly raise my head and feel the heat, the fire take over my body. The shadows within my eyes begin to swirl, and in an instant, I control them all. I control all of them, but a select few. Venom begins to flow through my veins and a sudden wrath overwhelms me, and I can see nothing, but the few.
“Kill them,” Savage says simply.
I concentrate and focus in on my targets. The first is my sister, her fearful eyes are no match for the rage that breaks her neck. My brother scrambles and tries to battle me, but in the end he is no match and I squeeze his heart to its end.
Brayden, my sickly son, cries and reaches out, a slight twinge within me stops me briefly. “Nick!” A distant voice calls out to me as my son takes his last breath. Nicky backs away from me and runs from me, or so I thought. My headstrong child steps in front of his mother and threatens to destroy me with everything he has. It’s a short battle that earns me some scars, but as I hold my oldest son’s life in my hands, my wife screams for him. “Nicky! Nick no! Stop! Stop Nick, stop! What has happened to you?” She cries and cries, and with each tear I hesitate. I realize I can do nothing more until she is gone. I drop my son and wrap my hands around her neck and meet her eyes perfectly. “Nick, please … stop. I love you.” She cries and I … tremble.
Gasping, I sit straight up in bed as the sweat from my body clings to me. My nightmare is my worst fear, but the solution it gives me is my best hope.
Kayla, she is my cure.
About the Author
Jennifer Loren graduated from Rochester Institute
of Technology with a Fine Arts Degree, specializing in Architecture and Design, and also obtained a second degree in Computer Design. She currently lives in Atlanta, Georgia with her German shepherd, Riley. In addition to the vastly popular, The Devil’s Eyes series, Ms Loren has successfully published Finding Ava and its sequel Reckless and the best selling short story, The Hand That Holds Mine.
Jennifer Loren, The Devil's Son
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