Illusion: Chronicles of Nick by Sherrilyn Kenyon Page B

saintly mother’s reputation. An innocent soul who found humor at the worst of times and who held himself up with hard-won pride even when everyone else was relentlessly trying to knock you down. You have inside you a purity that is so rare. The capacity to love unconditionally and completely. In spite of what you are, and as unbelievable as it is, you are truly decent.”
    Swallowing hard, she wiped at her eyes. “Gah, it gets so confusing for me. I just can’t reconcile the creature I know you will become—the heartless beast I have battled—with the man you are, here and now.”
    Savitar handed her a tissue. “Life hammers us all. Too many times we become things we never thought we’d be. For many reasons.”
    Kody drew a ragged breath as Nick pulled her against him and held her.
    He buried his face in her hair and inhaled the sweet, precious scent. “But now that I know, Kody, I won’t hurt you. How could I?”
    She shook her head. “You don’t understand, Nick. When your blood takes over you, you won’t be able to stop. The Malachai will control you, not the other way around. If you could stop it, I wouldn’t be here. I’d be snatched back to my time to live out the life I should have had. But the mere fact that I continue to exist as a ghost says that you will ultimately kill me.”
    “I refuse to accept that.”
    She patted his chest. “You are ever a stubborn Cajun.”
    “Dat right, cher . Born on da bayou, with boudin in one hand and gumbo in the other, and riding a gator.”
    That succeeded in getting her to laugh. “You were born on Menyara’s couch and you hate those stereotypes.”
    “Yeah, but I am proud to be Cajun and I happily embrace my stereotype … sometimes.”
    Bubba shook his head. “It is so disconcerting to hear a stranger speaking out of my son’s body. Talking about things I know my boy has never seen or done. How are you coping with this?” he asked Kody.
    She straightened up in the seat. “I don’t see your son when I look at him, Michael. I see the lunatic I’m in love with. Blue eyes, dark hair, big ears, and a goofy grin ringed by dimples.”
    Nick gasped in indignation. “I don’t have big ears.”
    “Yeah, you do.” She reached up to touch one. “Not in this body, but the one at home … total Dumbo. You really don’t need your wings to fly. You could just wiggle the ears and catch a breeze.”
    He pretended to be wounded by her teasing. “Now that’s just cruel, woman.”
    With an innocent expression, she held her hands up to her ears and waved her fingers like wings.
    Savitar rolled his eyes. “You know what truly terrifies me, Michael?”
    “Very little?”
    “Well, yeah … that’s true. But for the moment, it’s the fact that the fate of the entire universe rests in their hands.” He shifted his gaze to Kody. “You really should do us all a favor and end him while you can.”
    She scoffed at words that seriously offended Nick. “Don’t take it to heart, hon. Savitar had a chance to kill you himself and instead, he taught you how to surf.”
    Savitar screwed his face up as if surfing was the most repugnant thing he could imagine. “Surf?”
    She nodded. “I asked you once why you didn’t kill Nick during the two years he spent with you on your island, and you know what you said?”
    “I’m an idiot?”
    “No,” she said with a laugh. “You told me it wasn’t your place or his time. That he still had good he needed to do and that if you’d killed him then, people you love would have suffered because Nick wouldn’t have been there to help them when they needed it. But what you didn’t say was what my father told me later. That in spite of all your denials and gruffness, you, like my father, carry hope. You curse it, but for whatever reason, no matter what the world does to you, you can’t let it go.”
    Savitar made a sound of ultimate disgust. “I take back what I said. Your father’s the idiot.”
    “No, he wasn’t. He was the