Instinct

  Nick frowned. "I don't understand."

  Xev swallowed hard before he spoke again. "Because of who we are and how we are born and raised, we tell ourselves that we need nothing. We want nothing. We are nothing. That we are despised creatures of darkness. And that's okay by us. We don't need or want the approval or acceptance of them." His gaze fell to the floor at Kody's feet. "But there is one thing that will always draw us out against our will, and make us weak."

  "The light," Kody breathed.

  He gave a subtle nod. "No one will ever take us in battle. We know how to fight against all odds. How to stand strong in any maelstrom. We know how to deal with insults. Cruelty. And viciousness. That is and will always be our mother's milk."

  Xev gestured toward Nick's unconscious mother. "Sadly, it's unexpected kindness that disarms us. A simple smile that throws us completely off guard. Innocent love that renders us defenseless and sends us to our knees. That's how they cripple and defeat us. Not with war. But with friendship."

  Kody shook her head. "Love is never a weakness."

  He laughed cruelly. "Your own mother would be the first to violently disagree with that statement, Nyria." His gaze went to Nick. "It's what killed your father, Malachai. It's what enslaved me and Caleb to our enemies, and it's what will kill us all in the end."

  Menyara snorted rudely. "How dare you speak to them of love when you know nothing of it."

  He twisted his lips into the cruel mockery of a smile. "Yes, I had all of you to thank for that, didn't I, Cam? You were all so kind and understanding of me when I was a boy, needing comfort and finding only the coldness of your rebuffs at best ... the backs of your hands at worst. Your harsh brutality tutored me well on the subject, until all I knew was the hatred that filled me full from tip to root."

  Guilt darkened her eyes before she looked away from Xev. "How could we ever trust you? You were suckled by evil incarnate."

  "Actually, my wet nurse was a she-fox warrior demon, who took pity on me when no one else would. Or so I'm told. My mother couldn't be bothered with my needs or feeding, as she couldn't have cared less if I lived or died once my father told her I should be left out to the elements, for he, a shining bastion of all-good and light, had no intention of ever claiming me as his son."

  He met Nick's gaze. "By the way, I lied earlier when I told you why I fought for the side I did. It wasn't to anger my mother. I truly never cared what she thought of me, one way or another. I betrayed the Malachai and my mother, and fought for the Kalosum, solely to keep faith with my wife. She was the only being I would never in my life disappoint. The only one I would bleed or die for."

  Menyara sneered at him. "You're lying! You never had a wife."

  But the anguish in his red-tinged, rust-colored eyes said that Xev spoke from his heart. No, that wasn't a lie. Even though Xev had told Nick himself that he'd never known love, Nick knew that look. Every instinct he possessed told him that Xev was being honest with him, right now. That was the same exact light Caleb had in his eyes whenever he spoke of his Lilliana.

  The same expression Kyrian had with Theone. Bubba with Melissa.

  That was true love. The kind people wrote sonnets and songs about. The kind that broke your heart and left it shattered for eternity.

  "What was her name?" Nick asked.

  Xev didn't pause or hesitate with his answer. And when he spoke, his voice softened with reverence, adding further proof that he was telling the truth. "Myone."

  Menyara shot to her feet. "Liar! Myone would have never had anything to do with one such as you! She was one of the purest souls I've ever known." Her anger made Nick wonder who Myone was, but this wasn't the time to ask.

  Xev met Menyara's gaze without flinching or backing down. "Do not dishonor her memory by speaking her name with your tainted tongue when you know nothing of her true beauty or character! You're just as delusional and hypocritical as my father. You think because you are born of light that you're somehow better and kinder than those who aren't, but you're not. It merely makes you more sanctimonious in your cruelty. Makes you feel entitled in your wrongful actions against others. But you're no better than my mother. If anything, you're worse, because you think your viciousness is justified against us."

  He drew a ragged breath, and turned back toward Simi, Kody, and Nick. "And that's why my wife and I had to keep our marriage a secret. Why we had to deny we ever had any kind of relationship at all, and why I had to let her go after only six months, to protect her from my enemies, including my own mother and father, who would have killed her to get back at me. They would never have left us in peace, never allowed her to retain her place of honor. Even though she would have never done anything to betray the Kalosum. None of them would have believed it. I couldn't afford for anyone to know that she held my heart. That I even had one. Good or bad. Light or dark. It mattered not. Had anyone ever learned the truth, we would have been destroyed. Just as Caleb was for daring to hope for a better life with his Lilliana. Just as Adarian was for loving you and your mother. For hoping Cherise could somehow see something more in him besides the monster he'd been born. Like us, he was a pathetic moth dragged against his will to a sweet, vibrant light he couldn't resist or understand. But one he knew he needed in order to live and feel warm."

  His gaze dropped to where Nick's hand was wrapped around Kody's. "They beguile us so with their precious ways. And for a moment's worth of warmth in a lifetime of coldness, we are burned and extinguished. Pathetic creatures from our cradles to our graves." He laughed bitterly. "We are ever helpless against them."

  For a full minute, Nick couldn't breathe as those bitter, heartfelt words and their implication hit him hard. Could it possibly be true?

  Could his mother truly be that innocent orphan who'd been conceived and sent by the Kalosum for no other purpose than to trap his father?

  "Mennie? Tell me you didn't do that to my mom."

  Closing her eyes, she turned her face away from him, letting him know that Xev was telling him the truth.

  Shattered by the revelations, Nick stepped away from Kody and Simi to approach the woman who'd helped bring him into this world. A woman he'd thought he could always trust. One who'd always promised him that she would never lie or be dishonest.

  Not for anything.

  When everyone else had turned their back on him and his mom, Menyara had always been there for them. She'd said it was because taking them in like family and helping them was the right thing to do. That she couldn't turn her back on them like everyone else and let them suffer. Not when they needed help.

  But she'd left out some seriously vital details.

  Sick to his stomach, Nick was quickly learning that Livia had been right. Everyone in his life had lied badly to him. Menyara had kept much, much more from him than just the secret of his father and birth.

  She'd hidden her real identity from them. Her real role in both their lives.

  His gaze went to his mother and he felt as sick as Caleb had been at school.

  How could Menyara do this to her? His mother had no idea she was adopted and had no idea who her real parents were. For that matter, he didn't really know, other than her father was a Sephiroth. That knowledge would kill her. She'd never, ever believe him if he tried to tell her.

  His head reeling, he scowled at Menyara. "Who's my real grandmother?"

  "It doesn't matter. She died three days after she gave your mother up for adoption, in a car wreck. As did your real grandfather, supposedly in another wreck before the birth. It's why the Gautiers never told her she was adopted. Why bother? With both birth parents dead, there was no reason to ever let Cherise know the truth. For all intents and purposes, the Gautiers are your grandparents. That's all you and your mother ever need to know. The truth would only hurt her."

  Maybe, but he was leaning toward Xev with this. His mother had a right to know. And it explained why her parents had been so quick to toss her out when she'd become pregnant as a teenager. The fact that her pare
nts had thrown her away like garbage had played a number on his mother's head. If she knew they weren't really her birth parents, that might make this better.

  But then again, it might not. If she found out the truth, she'd have two sets of parents who'd given her up. That might be a lot worse in her mind.

  Yeah, life was ever complicated. Ambrose had taught him that. And people didn't always react the way you expected them to. As Acheron so often said, emotions didn't have brains.

  And right now, his emotions were all over the place and were definitely not thinking clearly as he tried to make sense of all this.

  Which led him back to one other thing he wanted to clarify while Menyara felt the need to come clean with her lies. "Are you really the goddess Cam?"

  She nodded.

  Cam had been one of the original six primal gods who'd started the first great war of the immortals. A war that had almost ended the world and mankind. She and her siblings had been the ones who'd called for Nick's race to be put down like rabid dogs. All except his one ancestor.

  One cursed Malachai.

  One cursed Sephiroth.

  Tied together for eternity and doomed to fight one last battle that would eventually end the world.

  Now, if what Xev said was true, Mennie had used that last Sephiroth to impregnate Nick's grandmother and birth his own mother as a trap for his father, knowing his father wouldn't be able to resist her. Cherise was the yin to Adarian's yang. An innocent human with the blood of a Sephiroth. A human who had no knowledge of the inhuman creatures who shared this world with mankind.

  Unable to believe it, Nick glanced from Menyara to his mother. "You set my mother up?"

  "I'm so sorry, Nicholas."

  Stunned, he struggled to breathe as he again had that feeling of being out of sync with time. Of everything slowing down. "Is that why she's so pure of heart? So incorruptible and unwilling to believe in anything supernatural?"

  Mennie nodded. "For some reason, she can't see it and has an unreasonable reaction to it whenever we try to explain it to her. I tried to hint about it once when she was a girl and she reacted so violently that I erased it from her memory, and have kept her from anything to do with it ever since. She simply can't handle it."

  Now he understood why his mother had reacted so badly when Ambrose had tried to tell her the truth about the paranormal world around them. It must have triggered something inside her that had been unable to deal with the fact that she wasn't completely human. That she'd literally been so ill-conceived.

  Ambrose must not have ever experienced this moment where he learned the truth about her birth and his heritage.

  And maybe that was why his mother was unconscious now. Because she was part Sephiroth, whatever was infecting Caleb might be infecting her, too.

  Menyara sighed before she spoke again. "It's also why Cherise is incapable of seeing the evil in others. Why she's like a beacon that calls out to so many who need kindness. Acheron. Caleb. Kyrian. The Peltiers. Like all Sephirii, she's innately soothing and gentle to be around. A spiritual balm. Unless they're in battle and are defending what they love, the Sephirii can calm the most restless of souls."

  And that made him furious. Because of what they'd done to her, his mother had been attacked and thrown out of her home. As a teen, she'd been homeless and pregnant. Abandoned.

  Yes, Menyara had taken her in, but now that he knew the truth ...

  Nick wanted blood.

  He glared at Menyara. "How could you do that to my mother? You cost her everything!"

  "It wasn't supposed to happen the way it did, Nicholas. We had her hidden, in safety, we thought. She was given a good home, with a kind, loving family, who cared deeply for her. But her light burns so bright that it can't be disguised or denied. Somehow, she summoned Adarian before we were ready for it. He found her years before she was meant to find him." She reached out to brush the hair back from his face. "I am so sorry for the pain we caused you and Cherise. We never meant for that to happen. You have to believe me."

  Nick's gaze fell to his mother's unconscious body. She looked so young. And she was. Most women her age were just starting their families, not saddled with a teenager. "I'm not the one you should apologize to, Mennie. I'm not the one you hurt. You ruined her life."

  Worse than that, Mennie let him ruin it. And that was what hurt most of all.

  Menyara shook her head in denial. "She would be the first to disagree. You know that, Nicholas. That's what makes her so incredibly special. What gives us hope that you might be able to have a different outcome from the other Malachais before you. You are the only one since the firstborn who was raised by a mother who loves you. A Malachai who unites both the light and the dark. You do not have to strictly be a force of destruction. Because of your mother's love, you can choose to be a force for good, instead."

  Honestly? Right now, he wasn't thinking good, happy thoughts. He was all about doing harm to everyone who'd had a hand in setting his mom up for this life.

  But Menyara's words made him flinch as he remembered the sight of Ambrose earlier. His future self hadn't predicted a happy outcome by any means. He'd been on the brink of conversion. And his premonitions didn't give him a whole lot to look forward to, either.

  From the way things were looking, he was basically screwed. And there was no way to avert his destiny.

  Yeah, he was feeling pretty dang defeated.

  Lied to. Kicked in the stones.

  And extremely pissed off by all of this. "I don't even know you anymore, lady. Everything you've ever told me was a lie. And I do mean every single thing out of your mouth. Even your name. Now you expect me to believe this? To trust you? How can I trust you ever again?"

  "I'm still your aunt Mennie."

  Yeah, right. Was she?

  Was she Menyara, the Voodoo priestess and Creole midwife who delivered him, or the Egyptian goddess Ma'at, who was related to Kody? Or the ancient primal goddess Cam, related to Caleb and Xev?

  How could she just keep changing her identities and relationships like people discarded their socks? It completely boggled those last three brain cells that rattled around his head.

  "No. You're a stranger to me. Someone who used my mother for her own gain, and seriously hurt her, all the while telling her she could trust you." Nick dodged her hand as she reached to touch him. He wasn't in the mood for it. Too much was happening, too fast.

  Honestly, he didn't know whom to trust, at this point.

  Except himself. While he knew Ambrose wasn't exactly sane, he knew he'd never lie to himself. Especially not about his mother and her well-being. That was the only thing he could bank on for certain. Ambrose only wanted to save his mother.

  Everyone else, even Kody, could be lying to him, for all he really knew. He didn't want to be that jaded, but he had to face the fact that it could be true. Livia had been one hundred percent right.

  No one could be trusted.

  He didn't know what was what anymore. Everything and everyone around him seemed like a lie. His head spun from it all. Truthfully? He just wanted to feel grounded again. To have some kind of anchor he could count on that wouldn't leave him feeling lost and adrift.

  "Am I even Cajun?"

  Menyara laughed. "Yes, Nicholas. That you are. Your real grandmother was a true blue zydeco-playing backwoods Cajun that would have made you proud."

  Well, at least he still had that. Thank goodness. He wasn't sure he could have handled learning he was something weird like the grandson of millionaire mining tycoon.

  Thunder clapped and the lights blinked as they tried to come on.

  Sadly, the darkness returned and reminded him what he needed to do. "I have to find the Eye of Ananke to straighten this mess out. Has anyone heard of it?"

  Four pairs of eyes glanced around aimlessly and refused to meet his gaze, letting him know that as usual he, alone, was the idiot in the room. "What?"

  "Where did you hear that term?" Mennie asked.

  Nick
started not to answer her. He really didn't owe her any answers given how many lies she'd told him over the years. But at this point ...

  Why bother? He was worn out by the lies and tired of playing games. "Ambrose told me to find it."

  Mennie scowled. "Ambrose?"

  "Yeah. Future me. Apparently, centuries from now, after I get pimp-slapped with a Dark-Hunter bow on my face--really wish Artemis had chosen a better location on my body to mark me with that--and I'm on the brink of morphing into the full soulless Malachai who's bent on binge-punishing humanity, I eat a demon that has time-traveling abilities. Sad to say, they don't last long, and I just used the last of it to come here and tell me to get the Eye, and use it to reset whatever it is we screwed up." He glanced to Kody. "So what is this thing and where is it?"

  Giddy with excitement, Simi raised her hand. "Ooo, ooo, ooo, the Simi finally knows an answer! It in that scary, scary room, in that scary temple in the lowest level of Hades's domain. Least it used to be and I doubts anybody's moved it 'cause that ugly, snarly dogs thing with all them heads gets really nasty whenever someone goes down there. And them dragons and snake-headed people not real happy 'bout it neither."

  Kody nodded. "Uh, yeah, that would be correct. Cerberus and the gorgons can be a little territorial whenever someone ventures into Tartarus to disturb it."

  It was her turn to be gaped at.

  "What?" She blinked innocently. "I played hide-and-seek there as a kid. Uncle Hades holds great Halloween parties. But ... I can't exactly go waltzing in there right now as no one knows who I am, since I won't be born for another few hundred years."

  Menyara sighed. "I'm definitely not welcomed there. During my tenure as the Egyptian goddess Ma'at, my pantheon was at war with the Olympians. They would know the instant I stepped foot in their realm, and attack me full-on."

  Xev crossed his arms over his chest. "The one thing my childhood taught me was how to hide my powers and pass through realms where I wasn't wanted. It was how I was able to visit my wife undetected beneath the noses of the Sephirii, who were well trained to hunt and kill my kind."