She crossed her arms over her chest, narrowing her eyes at me.
“I never needed you to protect me from Ares. I had that handled.”
I rolled my eyes.
“Yeah, like you have it handled here? You’re delusional. Why the fuck would you hide yourself in a mortal body when you have the god of war gunning for your pussy like it’s some sort of prize to mount on his wall?”
She smirked at me.
“You underestimate me, Shemhazai. Even if he’d caught me in that park, he would only have one small part of me.”
I frowned. “What do you mean?”
I allowed my power to roll over hers, and I realized with a start that she was right. She was missing two huge gaping parts of her soul. Had she hidden multiple versions of herself here?
My mind whirled as I ran through all the people in Hecate’s life I had come to know during my time stalking her as Harper.
“Your two friends?”
She shook her head.
“No, my mother and the crone.”
Realization dawned on me. She had split herself into the three versions of the goddess.
The maiden, the mother, and the crone.
Astrid and her grandmother weren’t her family at all but other manifestations of herself.
That was why Sköll and Fenrir had been stationed as their ‘familiars’... for additional protection.
Fear rippled through me. Sköll and Fenrir weren’t guarding her other halves right now because Gabe and I had fuckingkidnappedthem.
Hecate seemed to come to the same conclusion I had, and her eyes widened.
“No, he’s not smart enough to have figured it out…” she whispered, though both of us were staring at each other with matching expressions of concern.
“You sure about that?” I hissed, already annoyed that her foolishness was going to further complicate my plans to rescue her dumbass.
She frowned, and I could nearlyseeher mind whirling with anxiety.
“The church… He was trying to get me to come to this new church that he said he and a partner were starting here in Salem… Willow attended one of the masses recently with those cunty bitches from her new job…”
She whirled to face Sköll and Fenrir.
“Why would Ares have any interest in a Christian church?”
I narrowed my eyes. “Whatchurch?Yahweh is incapacitated. Gabe and I nailed him to a cross. He’s being bled for his power as we speak. There’s no use for a new church… unless…”
“What’s the church called?” Gabe asked quietly, and Hecate glanced back at me, her face white.
“The Church of Seraphim.”
My whole body went cold. I schooled my face, refusing to let Gabe see how much the wordseraphimshook me to my fucking core.
Hecate turned wide eyes onto me. “You don’t think Ares is working with… No. There’s no way. He hasn’t left the Vatican in thousands of years. Why would he leave now? To comehereof all places?”
“Well, considering I crucified his fuckinggod,and he knew I would be here looking for you, I’m sure he made anexception,”I hissed.
