Invincible by Sherrilyn Kenyon Page B

interrupted.
    Caleb jerked his chin at Nick. “What are you doing here?”
    “Bubba and Mark have me cleaning.”
    Caleb rolled his eyes. “Pah-lease.” He snapped his fingers, and everything went back to the way it’d been before the fighting.
    Nick gaped, impressed by his friend’s psychic demon powers. “Man, I’ve got to learn how to do that. But I should probably mention that this will out us faster than my using an arm that’s supposed to be injured.”
    Caleb grumbled before he returned the broken doors and enough of the damage that it would look like normal cleaning. “By the way, I got a strange call this morning.”
    “From?”
    “New football coach.”
    Nick scratched his chin at that news. “Dude, that was fast.”
    “Tell me about it. He said it was because of the state finals that the school called him up and offered him the job yesterday afternoon.”
    Nick let out a low whistle. They’d barely allowed the old coach to get booked for killing their principal before they’d hired his replacement. That was so cold. “What else did he say?”
    “He asked me if I knew you. Since we’re down about half the team due to the zombie attack, he needs replacement players.” Caleb inclined his head to Nick’s arm. “I told him you were injured and couldn’t play. He said at this point, he’d take a couple of benchwarmers just to fill out the roster and jerseys so that we wouldn’t have to forfeit the play-offs.”
    “I can definitely warm a bench. It’s what my mom says I’m best at anyway.”
    “What the—? How you get in here?”
    They both turned to see Bubba staring at them from the curtain.
    Caleb indicated Nick with his thumb. “Nick let me in.”
    “In how?” Bubba rushed to the doors to make sure they were still chained closed.
    “I squeezed in through the opening. I’m like a mouse. Doesn’t take much room for me.”
    Bubba gave him a suspicious grimace. “Don’t do that again. You could have broke something, and then your parents would have sued me.”
    “Sorry.”
    Bubba glanced around the cleaned-up store before turning his attention to Nick. “Good job, snotnose. Looks great in here.”
    “Caleb helped.”
    “Way to pitch in and get things done. Now, if I could get Mark to put down his phone and stop taking breaks, we’d be able to finish up before Oprah comes on.”
    Caleb exchanged an amused grin with Nick. “Bubba, what are you going to do when they cancel her show?”
    “Shut your mouth, boy. That’s sacrilege in this store. You talk like that, and I’ll toss you through the window like an old-timey hobo in a Western.”
    Caleb took a step back. “Given that I was almost roasted alive in your SUV last night, I don’t want any more injuries for a while if I can help it.”
    Bubba pointed at him. “Remember that.” Then he turned around and left them.
    Caleb shook his head. “That is the strangest man.”
    “Tell me about it.”
    When Caleb moved closer, the pendulum began to heat up. So much so that Nick hissed in pain. He pulled it out.
    Caleb’s eyes flashed to their bright yellow orange demon snake form. “Where did you get that?”
    A cold lump settled deep in Nick’s stomach as he contemplated what that reaction meant. “I was told it would protect me from evil. Why did it react to you, Caleb? What are you not telling me?”
    No sooner had he asked the question than he saw an image flash through his mind.
    It was a vision of Caleb killing him.

CHAPTER 5
     
    “What are you doing, Ambrose?”
    Ambrose moved away from his black scrying mirror that he’d been using to watch the past unfold in an entirely new direction. With the flick of his hand, he laid it down on his ornately carved black desk and covered it with a black silk cloth as he confronted the last being he wanted to deal with.
    Savitar.
    Born to be a fail-safe to the gods who might abuse their powers, Savitar was one of the very few creatures taller than Nick. Dressed in a pair of white