Infamous Read Free Page B

friends.”
    “Alan, Tyree, and crew … that wasn’t betrayal, kid. Deep inside you knew who and what they were. What you were in for when you threw in with them. What to expect. You can’t fault a snake for biting you when it’s the very nature of the beast to do so.”
    Ambrose narrowed his gaze on him. “No, Nick. I’m talking real betrayal. The kind you don’t see coming. The kind that tackles you to the ground and kicks your teeth in, and forever ruins your life. The kind that stays with you for decades after it’s over. By the time you graduate, you’ll consider what Alan did to you a favor. It got you off the street at a time when you were headed in the wrong direction, and it made your mother’s dreams come true.”
    His mother.
    A bad feeling went through Nick as everything came together in his mind. As another realization groin kicked him. While Ambrose looked tired, he wasn’t that old. Probably not even as old as his friend Mark, and definitely not as old as his mother, who was only twenty-eight.
    In less than ten years, I’ll become a Dark-Hunter.…
    There was only one thing he could think of that would make him do something so drastic in that amount of time.
    “Mom dies, doesn’t she? That’s why you became a Dark-Hunter, isn’t it?”
    In that instant, Ambrose’s eyes changed from blue to the same black color as Kyrian’s. The wind blew his long coat out from his legs and swept his hair back from his face. A double bow and arrow—the mark of a Dark-Hunter—appeared on his cheek and his fangs flashed in the fading daylight.
    Dark-Hunters die in sunlight.
    But not Ambrose …
    How could he be outside and on the street when he shouldn’t be able to? How was he able to hide his Dark-Hunter traits?
    The wind sent a chill down Nick’s spine that he felt all the way to his soul.
    “Because of you, ” Ambrose sneered that word, “and your stupidity, your mother, Bubba, Mark, and … others close to you die horribly. That is the landscape we’re trying to repaint. And if you fail them this time, it’s over. For all of us.”

CHAPTER 1
    If banging your head against a brick wall burned a hundred and fifty calories an hour as they said it did, then Nick should be emaciated. ’Cause he’d been banging it so hard these last two days that he should have a concussion by now.
    “Mom, please…”
    “I said no and I meant it. You’re too young to date.”
    Fifteen? Really? Since when was fifteen too young to date? If he didn’t know better, he’d swear she was from the Dark Ages. Heck, for that matter, Kyrian was more open-minded and he really was from the Stone Age, or Iron Age, or one of those boring ages that they tried to force feed him in school.
    That man had actually dated in a chariot.…
    Nick had to stop himself from rolling his eyes—that was like throwing gas on a roaring fire while wearing kerosene soaked clothing when his mom was in this mood.
    I’m old enough to death match demons and zombies, stop the apocalypse, deal with Death on a daily basis, and hold down two jobs, but I can’t meet my girl for a movie .…
    Yeah, that made all the sense in the world.
    He sighed irritably. “I’m a year older than you were when you had me .”
    She narrowed those beady little blue eyes at him and lifted her chin to glare up at him. He still wasn’t used to looking down at his mom, who barely reached mid-chest on him these days.
    The fact that someone so incredibly tiny could cow him with nothing more than an arched brow didn’t sit well with him. But regardless of arguments and differences of opinion, he loved his mother and wouldn’t do anything to hurt her or her feelings.
    Which was how she cowed him with a single glance.…
    I’m such a wimp.
    “Precisely my point, Nicky. You see what kind of trouble you could get into? Are you ready to be a father at fifteen? No, I don’t think you are. You can’t even remember to take out the trash without me reminding you three times