Infamous

CHAPTER 14

The look on his mother’s face would haunt him forever as the cop grabbed him and shoved him against the hood of his squad car, right in front of the school for everyone to see. Nick grimaced as the cops rudely frisked him, then cuffed his hands behind his back. Once he was secured, the biggest officer grabbed him by the hair and wrenched him off the car.

“Mama, I didn’t do it. I didn’t. I swear to God!”

“That’s what they all say.” The cop looked over at his partner. “Wouldn’t it be nice if, just once, they confessed and made our job easier?”

Tears glistened in his mother’s eyes. He could tell she wanted to believe him, but the doubt there …

How could she even think he’d do something like that? Even for a nanosecond. She’d been with him for fifteen years. How could she not know him better?

He did his best not to look at any of his classmates or the smirking faculty members who had no doubt he was guilty. That thought sickened him.

The only one who wasn’t judging him guilty was Kyrian. “Don’t worry, Nick. I’ll have you out of there as soon as you’re booked.”

Booked. That word slammed into him so hard that for a minute, he thought he’d vomit.

“Good luck with that,” the smaller officer scoffed. “With what we have on him, he’s not going anywhere until trial.”

What could they have on him? He hadn’t done anything. Heck, he’d only been out of the hospital since yesterday.

As they were placing him in the backseat, Caleb came running up to his mom. He frowned at her as she told him what was happening.

Caleb winced, then kicked the front bumper of the squad car.

“Hey!” the smaller cop snapped. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“What?” Caleb challenged. “I can’t touch your car?” He kicked it again.

“Boy, do you want to go to jail?” the taller officer asked.

“For what?” Caleb braced his foot against the front fender. “It’s a free country.”

“Not when you’re vandalizing state property it’s not.”

Caleb arched a defiant brow at him. “State property? My tax dollars bought this car then. Doesn’t that make it my property?”

“Oh, that’s it, you little punk.” The cop went for Caleb.

Caleb scoffed. “C’mon, really? What are you charging me with?”

“Vandalism.”

Caleb rolled his eyes, then shouted out to their classmates. “Come, see the violence inherent in the system! Help! I’m being repressed!”

“Get your ass in the car!” the cop snarled, his Yat accent coming out full force.

They put Caleb in on the other side.

Nick gaped at him. “What are you doing?”

Caleb glanced askance at the cops as they called in his arrest. “Where you go, I go, Gautier. And there’s no way you’re going into a jail without backup. You’re about to find out why Adarian lives in a prison.”

Nick wasn’t sure what to think of that, other than the fact his father was a mass murderer. “What do you mean?”

The cops opened the doors and got in.

There are some things that defy explanation—kind of like … you know, you. Not to mention your loco mindset when you did whatever it was that you did when you saved Kody, or why the color of the dryer lint always matches the color of your missing sock. He projected his answer to Nick’s mind. A Malachai in jail is definitely one of those inexplicable things.

Caleb turned his attention back to the police. “So what tort am I being held for again?”

They didn’t respond to Caleb. Instead the larger cop sighed irritably. “I hate the smart-mouthed kids the most.”

Caleb leaned forward in his seat. “So who’s the meanest person you’ve ever arrested?”

“What are you doing?” Nick gasped.

Caleb cracked an evil grin. “You have things you can’t resist doing. This is one that is a moral imperative to me.” Must rankle bullies.

You’re going to get jack-slapped.

Caleb frowned at him. Jack-slapped?

Slapped so hard you forget everything you know, i.e., you don’t know Jack … jack-slapped.

Caleb rolled his eyes.

Nick didn’t say anything else as he sat there, trying to figure out why they would think he’d raped someone when it was the most repugnant crime he could think of. Who had accused him?

And why?

When they got to the jail, they were gruffly hauled out of the car and into the building.

As soon as they stepped through the doorway, Nick saw a familiar face, but he wasn’t sure what to make of it.

Virgil Ward, attorney at law. And in Virgil’s case, blood-sucking attorney took on a whole new meaning, since he was also a vampire. His dark hair was short, but slightly shaggy. With it brushed back from his face, he didn’t appear much older than Nick or Caleb … to Nick, anyway. But Virgil managed to project a much older persona to everyone else. Those around him saw Virgil as someone in his midthirties. Dressed in a tailor-made, expensive black pinstriped suit and a pair of black Ferragamo shoes, he wore a dark purple shirt and a dark gray, purple, and black tie that had miniature skeleton bunny heads and crossed bones all over it.

“Gentlemen,” he said, inclining his head to the officers escorting them. “These are my clients. I trust you’ll take good care of them.”

The larger officer growled in frustration. “I should have known.… I suppose you want them put into the special holding section.”

“It would be prudent.”

The other officer growled again. “They’re not going to start eating each other or one of us, are they?”

Virgil laughed. “They’re not zombies, men. But one of them does have special dietary concerns you might want to note.”

The larger officer grumbled.

Virgil winked at Nick, then projected his thoughts to him. Don’t worry, kid. I know it’s your first time here. But we’re set up to deal with our special needs detainees.

Special needs? Dude, I don’t ride the short bus.

Good for you. ’Cause some days, I definitely do.

That was not comforting when coming out of the mouth of your attorney.

As they walked past a group of deadly-looking gangbangers, one of the bigger members lunged at Nick with a snarl as if he was going to attack him. The moment the man did, it sent an electrical charge through Nick. One that put all of his senses on high alert and made his heart race with gleeful expectation. Suddenly Nick saw and heard everything with a shocking clarity. And instead of cowering, he lunged at the gang member, wanting to taste his blood.

The man’s eyes widened, before he backed down.

Against his conscious will, Nick tried to break out of the policeman’s hold so that he could go back to the gangbanger.

Caleb cut him off. “Look at me, Nick.”

For several heartbeats, he couldn’t understand what Caleb had said.

“Nick!” he shouted.

That finally broke through the cloudy haze. “W-w-what?”

“Remember what I said about your father?”

Yeah … Nick felt it, too. Being around this many people who were corrupted by hatred and rage and violence, it was like being a wind-up toy that someone had snapped the spring in. His powers were fully charged and he felt more alive than he ever had. It was a heady concoction.

He looked at Caleb. “Do you get the same…” He wasn’t sure what to call it.

“Thrill? Not to the extent you do. That fun little nugget is unique to your species alone.”

And he was right. He totally got it now why his father stayed in prison. It was like breathing in fresh air and sunshine. Bad analogy since only an idiot would breathe in the foul body odor, urine, and vomit stench that permeated the building, but that was the closest example he could think of.

The cops took them to a special booking room that was reserved for Virgil’s clients. They were rudely searched, fingerprinted, and then photographed. Honestly, Nick wanted to cry as it brought back his one and only other arrest when he’d been a kid. And while they’d hauled him to the station in their car, they hadn’t “booked” him. It was so humiliating. He glanced over to Caleb as guilt stabbed him. He was the only reason Caleb was here.

God love Caleb for his loyalty.

Nick cringed as he looked down at the bright orange jumpsuit they’d forced him to change into. Heck, they’d even confiscated his shoelaces. “I’m sorry, Cale. I didn’t mean to get you into this.”

He shrugged. “Trust me, this is neither the worst nor the most humiliating thing I’ve ever gone through. And while we’re here, you should pray that this is the worst thing that ever happens to you.”

Point well taken. Still, it stung. While he hadn’t always been the best person and had done some questionable things, he’d never really thought he’d ever be arrested for real, with real felony charges that carried a hefty prison sentence if he was found guilty. That was the kind of thing that happened to people like his father and the scum his father ran with.

And now it had happened to him.

They were escorted to a room that had a single holding cell. Luckily, it was empty. The cops put them inside it, then had them hold their arms through the bars so that they could uncuff them. Once the cops were gone, Virgil came in to talk to them.

“Rape and theft, huh?”

“I didn’t do it.”

Virgil didn’t respond to his statement. “They claim they have you on surveillance.”

Nick shook his head. “It’s a lie. I didn’t do anything.”

Caleb leaned against the bars. “When did the alleged crimes occur?”

Virgil pulled out his PDA and opened a file. “The theft was late last night just before midnight at a jewelry store, where you took cash and a single necklace. And the rape occurred around 3 A.M. Where were you at those times?”

“Home. In bed.”

Virgil made a note. “You have any witnesses?”

“No. I was in bed alone.”

“Poor you. In more ways than one. Without someone to corroborate your whereabouts … and with them having photographic evidence…” Virgil grimaced. “Look me in the eyes, kid.”

Nick did.

After a minute, Virgil blinked, then made another note. “Okay, you’re telling the truth. By the way, Nick, you have the most screwed-up life. You’re either boring as all get out, or you’re about to die. There’s no middle ground with you. You might want to work on that.”

No kidding.

“So what do you think they’ll do to him?” Caleb asked.

“I wish I had a better answer for you, but … It all depends on who our judge is. We can have his mom say he was home. However, the prosecutor is going to say that kids slip out of their homes all the time without their parents knowing it. Nick has a bad record for violence at school.”

“Defending myself!”

“They won’t bring up the why,” Virgil said coldly, “only the fact that you’ve been in trouble, many times, for fighting at school. And that you were recently hospitalized for fighting.”

“I wasn’t fighting!”

Virgil arched a brow at him. “Given your record, do you think any judge or jury will buy the fact that you laid on the ground while someone hit you and you didn’t fight back?”

Nick winced. Another valid point. But … it was the truth.

“You should have filed a mugging report,” Virgil said under his breath.

Nick growled at him. “I didn’t want to get the kid into trouble.”

“No good deed goes unpunished. And for that, you might spend the rest of your life in prison. Go you.”

Nick refused to believe that. It couldn’t happen that way. It couldn’t. “I thought the law was all about getting to the truth?”

Virgil burst out laughing. “Stop watching Law and Order, kid. Courts don’t care about the truth. The only thing that matters is what you can prove. It’s not ‘innocent until proven guilty.’ It’s ‘I have an open case log thicker than the New Orleans and surrounding parishes phone books and I need to close some of them.’ So until you prove to me that I arrested the wrong person, you’re going to jail, buddy, and I’m closing at least one case this week.”

Nicks stomach heaved. That was not what he’d been raised believing. But if anyone knew how the legal system worked, it would be Virgil.

“I just want to go home.”

Vigil smiled sympathetically. “I know, Nick.” He checked his watch. “Let me go see if I can rush this along and get you a bail hearing tonight. In the event I can’t, or that you need something during daylight hours, let me give you my business partner’s card. His name is William Laurens and he’s one of the best litigators there is, second to me, of course.” After pulling out the card, he handed it to Nick.

Nick frowned as he read the card. “This says Bill Laurens, paralegal.”

“Ah crap, wrong card. Sorry. Have no idea why that’s still in my pocket. Bill’s my partner’s oldest son and he interned with us as a paralegal while he was in law school. He’s now one of our junior partners.” He handed Nick the correct card. “You could call Bill, but I’d rather you deal directly with either me or William.”

“All right.” Nick tucked the card into his pocket. “By the way, who called you?”

“Kyrian Hunter called William and William called me. Be grateful. Without notice, you’d have been taken through general procedures, which goes a whole lot slower, and they would have put you in a holding cell with some exceptionally fun people.”

“Believe me, I am grateful. Even if I am in here with an undesirable.” Nick glanced askance at Caleb.

Caleb made a noise of pain. “Next time, Gautier, you go alone.”

Virgil checked his watch again. “All right. You two sit tight for a few and let me go see if I can work some magic for you.” His gaze went to Caleb. “Kicking a police car? Really?”

Caleb shrugged. “Car offended me. It was sitting right where I wanted to stand. What would you do?”

“Made sure there was no surveillance, then sucked the cops blood dry, and blown the car up.”

Caleb laughed. “Hos-tile. I love it. You and me could be friends.” He glanced over to Nick. “As for why, I had to do something for them to lock me up with snot-nose, and I didn’t want it to be anything too serious since I would like to leave, sooner rather than later. I’ve got enough things hunting me. I really don’t need anything else.”

“I feel that pain myself, brother.” Virgil slid his PDA into his pocket. “I’ll see you two in a bit.” He started to leave, then stopped. “I know you, don’t I?” he asked Nick.

“About a year ago, you helped us out. We were with Bubba and Mark at the time.”

His eyes brightened with recall, then they widened with substantial interest. He pointed at Nick, but looked at Caleb. “He’s your Nick.”

Caleb saluted him. “You’re a little slow on the uptake tonight, Virg. You down a few pints?”

“Freshly fed and … we really have to get him out of here.” He practically ran out of the room.

Nick turned a probing stare to Caleb. “What aren’t you telling me?”

“The longer you stay in a place with concentrated malice, and let’s face it, this is a cesspit of malice, the more it’ll seep into you. Think of it like a tributary feeding a stream that turns into a river. The more you’re around it, the more it feeds the demon side of you. The more you’re likely to convert into the true Malachai.”

He would be like the monster who’d almost assaulted Kody. “Is that why my father attacked my mother?”

“What do you mean?”

Nick didn’t answer. Instead, he fell silent as memories went through him and he tried to make sense of it all. “I think my father loves my mother.”

Caleb scoffed. “That’s a delusion. Malachais are incapable of love.”

Nick scowled. “I’m not.”

“You haven’t been fully converted yet. You’re still an embryo.”

Not as much of an embryo as Caleb thought. But Nick wasn’t going to argue that right now.

Or let anyone know about the bargain he’d made.

“I disagree. You didn’t see his face when she was yelling at him. He was hurt by it. And he couldn’t have been that hurt if he didn’t care about her.” That was the first thing he’d learned in grade school. When someone insulted and yelled at you and you didn’t have feelings for them, it angered you. Made you want to hurt them. But when you loved someone and they attacked, it raised your level of hurt more than it raised your temper.

Caleb fell silent as he considered that. “You know, that actually explains a lot about you. And a lot about Adarian.”

“What do you mean?”

Caleb moved to sit on the cot underneath the bar-covered window. “Normally, a Malachai is born to parents who hate it. Both mother and father. The father because he knows if the child lives, he will die—most Malachai, including Adarian, murder their children as soon as they find out about them.”

“You mean I had siblings?”

“Yeah, and he killed every one of them. Except you … which never made sense to me. You, he wanted protected. And the mothers hate because of the way their children were conceived, the babies. Again, your mother is different in that she embraced you. So if what you’re saying is true, you are a Malachai conceived in love and nurtured. That, my friend, has never happened.”

“Which means I can love, right?”

Caleb’s gaze lost focus as he thought it over. “It means something. Not sure what. But…”

It gave Nick hope. Maybe he could avert his future and find a way to save them all.

Wishing he had an answer, Nick moved to the other cot, closer to the door.

“So, how did you save Kody, by the way?”

Nick cringed at the question, then hedged at the answer. “I took her to help.”

“And that would be…?”

“Someone who helped her.”

Caleb growled low in his throat. “I don’t want to play this game with you.”

But it wasn’t a game. It was serious business. Nick had made a pact that he knew he shouldn’t have. One Ambrose had thrown down a tantrum over when he’d learned about it.

“What have you done?” Ambrose had snarled in his face.

“What I had to.”

Ambrose had held his hands out like he was choking Nick. “A dog can’t serve two masters.”

“I’m not a dog.”

Ambrose curled his lip. “You’re so stupid. I knew I should have killed you.”

Nick had snorted. “Wow, that hurts me in my tender place. Nice to hear me say I wished myself dead. Love you, too.”

Ambrose shook his head. “You don’t understand. I made your mistake … later in life, but I did the same exact thing. I bound myself to my enemy and it did not work out well.”

“But we’re changing the future. Right? For all you know, I might have already fixed things.”

Ambrose had paused in the circle he was pacing around Nick’s room. “That’s where it gets tricky. There are things that will happen regardless of the actions we take.”

“Such as?”

“You meeting Kyrian and working for him. No matter what I’ve tried, that always happens. I can’t stop it. I can only change the events that lead up to it and the time in our life when it happens. That one moment of meeting him, however, is written in stone. But…” Ambrose squinted as he ruminated. When he spoke again, his voice was a full octave lower. “You might have found the answer for us.”

“What do you mean?”

“Why did you save Kody?”

Nick pressed his lips together as he debated telling him. But in the end, it wouldn’t matter. One way or another, Ambrose would learn the truth. “I love her.”

Ambrose sneered. “Love? You don’t even know the meaning of that word.”

“Oh yes, I do. Don’t you dare tell me I don’t.”

Ambrose shook his head. “You’re too young to understand it.”

“No, I’m not. I know what I feel and I know it’s real. I would die for her.”

“Then you’re even dumber than…” Ambrose paused as his eyes danced around. He closed the distance between them and smiled a smile that made Nick’s blood run cold. “We are destined to become a Dark-Hunter. That, too, I haven’t been able to avert. Until now, the catalyst has always been the death of our mother. But…”

Nick wasn’t sure he liked the sound of that word. “But what?”

“If you love another woman, a woman I’ve never known existed before, then maybe she’s the one who dies instead.”

Agony exploded inside him. “No! You’re wrong.”

“Think about it.” Ambrose jerked him into a tight hug. “You’re right, kid. You may have found the answer I’ve sought all these years. That has to be it. You love Kody enough to die for her. It only stands to reason that she’d be the one you lose to launch you into a DH.”

That was not what he wanted to hear. While Ambrose might enjoy the thought, it made Nick ill.

“I won’t let her die. I won’t.”

Anger turned Ambrose’s eyes a deep shade of red. “Listen to me, moron. Who would you rather bury? Your mother or your girlfriend? ’Cause I’m telling you right now, one of them is going to die horribly.”

“I won’t allow it.”

“You have no choice.” Ambrose had spat those words out coldly.

Now, Nick was feeling the truth of Ambrose’s prediction. By trying to keep Kody alive, he’d already screwed up. Badly.

And as he stared at the glass over the window, he saw images appear.

In one, he saw his mother in a chair inside a house he’d never been in before. Her lifeless eyes were wide open as he called out for her to wake up.

In the other, he saw an older version of Kody. Dressed in a white wedding gown, she lay in his arms, covered in blood. Her blood.

It’s your imagination. It had to be.

Yet inside, he knew the truth. Those were the two possible futures for him. Just like Ambrose had said. One of them would have to die.

He might not have saved Kody at all—only delayed her death. Ambrose had talked about rearranging time frames. He could change when things happened, but not the things that were destined to happen.

Instead of saving Kody, he might only have bought her a little more time. That’s better than nothing.

Or was it? Had he let her die, his life wouldn’t be so complicated. He’d have never made a bargain that might very well be the death of him.

The more he thought about it, the more he hated the Fates or Ambrose or whoever was causing this to be his future. It wasn’t fair to see what was coming and to have no way to avert it. That was the cruelest blow of all. And the more his anger built, the more his body temperature elevated.

“Nick?” There was a note of panic in Caleb’s voice. “What’s going on in your head?”

Sitting on his cot in their cell, Nick lost his ability to understand Caleb. Instead, all he could see, hear, or feel was his own anguish. It wrapped around him until it suffocated him. No matter what he did, it only made things worse.

It killed the people he loved.

The darkness swallowed him again, but this time it was inside and not outside his body. And it hurt so deep in his essence that he felt like his very soul was being flogged and flayed.

He was standing out on a ledge, looking down at a landscape that terrified him.

This was his life and he’d already ruined it. Fifteen and it was over. The damage done, and so deep that it couldn’t be unraveled.

“Nick!”

He ignored Caleb as his pain tripled. And in that one moment when it hurt the most, he had total clarity.

There was only one way to stop the pain. It was extreme, but …

If it worked, it would stop everything.

Don’t do this. It would destroy his mother.

She dies anyway. Or Kody would.

And he heard Kody’s precious voice in his head. We all make our own decisions.

It was time he made his. If the darkness wanted him, it could take him.

With one condition.

The answer had been here the whole time. This … this crap would end tonight. He would make sure of it.

“Nick!” Caleb shook him, trying to make him understand his voice. But he wasn’t getting through whatever had sunk its fangs into him.

Worse, Caleb saw the physical manifestation of the Malachai powers. Nick’s skin flashed from its human tawny shade to the swirling demon skin. His eyes from blue to orange to red …

If Caleb didn’t stop this, if he didn’t find a way to reach Nick before the demon swallowed him, all of them would die.