PROLOGUE
Chaos
Chaos was bored.
Bored, bored, bored, bored, bored.
If he’d known signing his powers into the Book would mean centuries in the Void with nothing to do… Well, he wasn’t sure what he would have done, but fire probably would have been involved. Fire and screaming and maybe a dismemberment or two.
It had been bearable before, with the incubus to entertain him—or that big, fuddy-duddy warrior to annoy—but now KaiandNix had been summoned, and it was just too much.
Or make that too little.
Especially because Nightmare was refusing to play.
“Come on,” Chaos whined again. “Pretty please?”
Nightmare’s white eyes flashed in the darkness of the cave, their eerie glow the only sign that he was getting truly annoyed. “No. I gave you what you wished for yesterday. Leave me alone, little demon.”
Usually Chaos would have been pleased—he was one of the only demons capable of getting Nightmare to string more than two words together at a time, and that had been a whole sentence right there. But at the moment, he was too put out to glory in his triumph.
“But you’re always alone!” he cried out instead, stamping his foot on the dry, dusty ground, his tail lashing furiously behind him. “And it’s just the two of us, so that meansI’malways alone! It’s not fair.”
“It has been a day,” Nightmare pointed out in his low, creepy rasp. “Onedaysince Nix was summoned.”
That had Chaos pausing. “Really?” He nibbled on his lower lip, considering. “It feels like longer.”
Nightmare let out a low growl. His growls weren’t as rumbly grumbly as Kai’s, more like the tumbling of rocks than the roar of a lion. But they still managed to put a shiver down the spine. “Leave, or suffer the consequences.”
Oooh, consequences. Now he was talking. Maybe Nightmare would sic his shadow monsters on him and Chaos could try to set them on fire. It never worked—those things were barely corporeal—but it was fun to try, at least before they invaded his senses and tried to drive him to madness.
But suck it, shadow monsters—madness already ran in Chaos’s veins. What was a little dollop more?
Chaos pushed forward into Nightmare’s cave until the tall, lanky demon was visible beyond the glowing white eyes, his dark-gray skin blending in with the rock walls around him. Chaos put his hands on his hips, speaking deliberately. “I. Am. Bored.”
Quick as a whip, Nightmare’s hand lashed out, grabbing Chaos by the throat. Hard. Chaos grinned. See? Now they were having fun!
But then Nightmare’s talons punctured Chaos’s skin, and his grin fell.
Not the paralysis,damn it.
Nightmare used it to keep humans docile while he tormented them, which was hilarious to witness, but it wasn’t so funny when Chaos was the one getting paralyzed.
He tried to jerk back, but he could already feel Nightmare’s venom working through him.
No, no, no, no, no.
Nightmare pulled Chaos close by the throat until his gaunt face was looming over Chaos, his visage shifting back and forth between his usual demonic appearance and the skull-faced monstrosity he used when haunting humans’ bad dreams. “I warned you, Chaos,” he hissed. “I am not your friendly incubus, nor your ambivalent warrior. I am singular, and I tire of your antics.”
Chaos tried to respond, but his vocal cords were already frozen. He wished he could stick his tongue out at least. Why did Nightmare have to be such a jerk? Just because Chaos had been hounding him for hours without letting up, ignoring his many requests for silence, Nightmare thought he had the right to chastise him?
Unfair. Unfair andboring, which was even worse.
Nightmare tossed Chaos’s paralyzed body onto the cave floor—he didn’t even do it gently either—and stalked off into the shadows of the deeper caves.
Chaos was left alone, stiff as a board, with only his stupid thoughts for company.
Nightmare hadn’t even turned the portal on for Chaos to watch while he lay there.
