As they walked onward, Nick considered his earlier fight with the stick and stone people, and the Hail Mary play he hadn’t had time to implement. Now that he had breathing room, perhaps it was time to do something he should have done a while ago.

He pulled out his grimoire that was filled with pages where he could consult the spirit that, like Aeron, had been trapped by another’s trickery.

Caleb and Kody had told him that there was no way to free Nashira from the book, but he’d been thinking about that a lot lately, and it seemed to him that if a Malachai had trapped the yōkai, a Malachai should be able to free her.

Just like Nick had done with Xev and Livia. Surely the book was just another type of dimensional prison like this one.

Right?

That made sense to him. If there was a way in, there had to be a way out. Yin to yang. That seemed to be the one definite rule of the universe.

But maybe they were right and he was wrong. There was still so much about being a Malachai he didn’t understand. So much about all this that he was absolutely clueless on. Most of the time, he felt like an infant trying to learn to walk.

Unlike the others who’d come before him, he hadn’t been raised by a demon mother or demon surrogate who’d instructed him from birth on his true nature. His burgeoning powers had been bound and hidden. Restricted.

He’d been weak and sickly, even for a human child.

Until Ambrose had told him about all this, he’d had no idea of his true birthright. No idea of this hidden world or of any innate preter ability.

He’d only known it existed for less than two years.

Two years. That was it. Until he’d been shot by guys he thought were his friends and saved by Kyrian and given a job, he’d had no idea about Dark-Hunters, Daimons, Were-Hunters, or anything else.

The concept of a Malachai was something he’d never dreamed about in even his most delusional Nintendo-Manga-infested state. It still blew his mind whenever he really thought about it.

So little time to adjust to it all and yet it seemed like eternity in some ways since the day he’d learned the truth. Like he’d always known it was there, somehow.

Maybe it was a form of Malachai instinct that had sensed it was there long before the truth had been revealed. The hidden world just below the surface of the human one. Always lurking in the shadows.

Watching him. Like that creature in the closet that all kids knew was there, yet it vanished whenever a parent opened the door to investigate the darkness.

Yeah, that dude was real, too.