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Instead of saving Kody, he ht her a little

Or was it? Had he let her die, his life wouldn’t be so coht very well be the death of hiht about it, thethis to be his future It wasn’t fair to see as co and to have no way to avert it That was the cruelest blow of all And the er 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 his worse

It killed the people he loved

The darkness sed hiain, 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 dae 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 extre

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 tiht He wouldto h whatever had sunk its fangs into him

Worse, Caleb saw the physical manifestation of the Malachai powers Nick’s skin flashed fro dee to red …

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

CHAPTER 15

"Do you really want to die?"

That question hung in Nick’shim In his dream, he looked out into a field and there he saw his future For the next two years, he’d be a laughingstock in school Everyone had seen hirandparents

The horror of his mother’s expression … The doubt in her eyes

And aited for him? More loss Either his mother or Kody And others A when the cost of it would be their lives?

If he were dead, there would be no reason for any of them to die That would stop it completely It would They would be free His father would no longer be after him to kill him

The pain that had lived inside him since the hour of his birth would end I’m so sick of it all And he was At fifteen, he felt like a battered old man Life was so hard Some days it seemed like the only purpose of it was to see just how hard it could kick him Ho it could make him sink It had needlessly slapped him senseless most days And for what?

Why did it have to be like this? Why did people have to be so mean for no reason whatsoever? Why did they have to attack? Bring someone down?

End it

You can control that much of your life

Suddenly, Gri black robe, his face barely visible from inside his cowl In his hand, he held a black knife that looked like a military KA-BAR Silently, he held it out to Nick

One cut

Onewould be over He would hurt no more

As Nick reached for the knife, he felt another presence beside him

"Don’t do it, Nick This isn’t you" Kody The sound of that sweet, soft voice reached out and touched him in places he didn’t fully understand She covered his hand with hers and then laced her fingers with his They were so soft as they slid against his skin

"Close your eyes," she breathed in his ear