Patrick swallowed thickly, a fine tremble running through his hand that held the dagger. “Hannah.”
Despite being fraternal twins, they still shared certain traits: the same hair from their mother, the same eyes of their father. That was where the similarities ended. Where Patrick had lived a life under Setsuna’s distant care and Ashanti’s critical teachings, Hannah had only ever known the hell their father had put her through. Patrick couldn’t even begin to understand the life she’d lived that put such insanity into her green eyes.
In Cairo, Patrick had grieved for her, tried to reason with her, but there was no reasoning with madness. He knew that now. For so long, Patrick only had the ghost of her in his head, memories he couldn’t forget of a night that separated them forever. That horror had never left him, and it never would.
The hardest lesson Patrick had ever learned was the day he realized he had to give Hannah up as lost if he was going to survive their father’s cruel ambition.
Patrick knew now there was no saving those who could not be saved.
But it still hurt.
“You can’t hope to stand against us,” Hannah said.
Her voice reminded Patrick of Marek’s when the seer’s patron shared his body. Powerful, inhuman, but with a thread of the person whose body it was underneath. An echo of humanity that had yet to be snuffed out.
Magic seeped out of her aura, writhing around her body. Hannah’s magic and the godhead residing in her soul had long since become Ethan’s to control. She lived only for their father, and it was his words coming out of her mouth, his will calling magic through her soul.
Patrick’s twin sister was a living, breathing nightmare of a nexus.
Nothing more than a weapon.
“Hannah, please don’t make me go through you,” Patrick said, incapable of not begging. He couldn’t tell if the wetness in his eyes was rain or tears.
They should have grown up together. They should have been family. Instead, they were two pawns on opposite sides of a war driven by beliefs that weren’t theirs.
Three years ago Patrick hadn’t done enough in Cairo. He’d been too shell-shocked by his sister’s survival and his father’s attempt at harnessing a second godhead in the midst of hell on earth to do more than survive.
Patrick would always mourn what might have been when it came to his family. But this was where the grieving stopped. Tonight, he would pay his respects to the ghosts of all the things that made him andfight.
The magical attack Hannah levied at him blasted through where he’d stood. But Patrick was already moving, diving toward the next active concentric circle of the spellwork. He tumbled head over heels, mud sliding down his jacket and squelching against his skin as he rolled into the hell-tainted magic.
It seared through the damaged parts of his soul deep enough he thought he’d puke. Choking back bile, Patrick sliced the dagger through the earth and the circle of magic within reach. The backlash of the disruption tossed Patrick through the air toward the center of the spellwork instead of out of it. The throw caused him to miss dying beneath his sister’s second attack by a fraction of a second.
Patrick hit the ground hard, air punching out of his lungs with a heavy exhale. Ethan’s magic fluctuated all around him as Patrick forced himself to his feet. Hannah wrenched her arm around in a semicircle, screaming wordlessly as magic guided by Ethan lashed toward Patrick in a sickening bolt of power that made the air crackle and burn.
Patrick spun on his feet, the weight of the carbine dangling from his tactical vest nearly pulling him off balance. He raised the dagger to counter the attack, gritting his teeth against the heat that burned through his fingers.
The dagger point lit up like a star, a literal spiderweb of magic flaring out around him. The makeshift shield held back Hannah’s attack, hellish fire curling against the gods-created defense a mere arm’s length away.
For one moment, Patrick thought he might have stood a chance.
The bullet slamming into his left thigh disabused him of that thought.
The familiar flash-fire agony of hot metal parting flesh ripped through him. Patrick yelled in pain as his left leg collapsed beneath him. He went down hard on one knee, swearing harshly. He let go of his carbine and pressed his hand against the exit wound in his thigh, not caring about the filth he was probably contaminating the wound with. Bright red blood welled up between his fingers, the flow steady but not the death sentence quickness of a nicked femoral artery.
Patrick looked over his shoulder and blinked dazedly through the rain at where Hades stood between two concentric inner circles, a semiautomatic pistol gripped in one hand. Even as Patrick watched, Hades shifted the angle of the handgun, aiming for Patrick’s head.
“You will die here tonight as you should have when you were a child,” Hades promised.
Hades pulled the trigger, and Patrick knew there was no escaping that bullet.
Halfway between them, the bullet transformed into flower petals, the delicate plants ripped apart by the wind. Patrick’s breath caught in his throat, and all he smelled was spring.
“No,” Persephone said as she stepped out of the veil to stand between Patrick and Hades. “He will not.”
A hand wrapped around his other wrist, and Patrick’s attention jerked to where Hermes stood behind him, a grim smile on the immortal’s face. “This is certainly one way to stop running, Pattycakes.”
Hermes peeled the spiderweb shield off the point of the dagger, pressed his hands to the golden strands, and poured his magic into reflecting Hannah’s attack back at her. She was propelled backward by the blast, crashing outside the spellwork to land near a couple of soultakers.
