Lightning flashed through the sky above, shocking the air and illuminating the night. The clouds looked like a living thing writhing above New York City, beginning to spin in a way Patrick was all too familiar with. The veil was growing thinner, and they were running out of time. The damaged sacrificial spellwork thrummed with renewed vigor, but it felt wrong, as if the magic it contained was spinning out of control.
Ethan stared down at Patrick with the distance of a man who had never cared about his family, had only cared about the power they could ultimately give him. A wife whose pure soul was enough to help trap a forgotten immortal. A daughter he had bound himself to for life to further his own needs.
And a son who didn’t know how to fucking lie down and die.
“I have no use for you. I never did,” Ethan told him. Magic dripped like fire from his hands as he reached for Patrick’s heart to try to tear it out all over again.
“You keep trying for godhood,” Patrick spat out as he raised both hands over his chest, the dagger gleaming with magic-wrought prayers. “And you keep failing because you aren’t fuckingworthy.”
He sliced the dagger over the meat of his palm, cutting deep. Blood coursed down his hand and wrist, a waterfall of red that he slammed down onto the line of the hexagon making up the center of the pentagram. The impact rang like a bell in his head, a deafening sound that blocked everything else out.
Blood called to blood, and Patrick only had one command.
“Break!” he snarled, pouring all his will into the word.
He had no magic left, only what borrowed strength the dagger could give him. It was enough to crack the outline of the pentagram, the center of the spellwork breaking into pieces.
“No!” Ethan roared, forced to pour his magic into the spellwork rather than Patrick’s body, struggling to keep it together.
Patrick rolled away, digging deep for a strength that had gotten him through his life. He got his hands and one knee underneath him and started to crawl. Pieces of the pentagram floated in the air, strands of magic struggling to realign the shape of it. But the magic was too wild, the foundation too unstable, for it to be pieced back together quickly and correctly.
The acolytes at the center of the spellwork screamed as they died, their magic and souls sucked into the spell by Ethan’s need. The air felt heavy around him, pressure coming from above where the sky broke open from the backlash, the tear in the veil an ugly hole between all the hells and the mortal plane.
The pillars of light burned out one by one save for where Zeus stood, still tied to the spellwork, an anchor that needed to be set free. Patrick kept his focus on Jono, eyes flickering to the soultaker that could only follow its hunger.
That gaping maw split wide, all its jagged teeth glinting in the glow of magic. Desperation gave Patrick the push he needed to lunge at Jono and the demon intent on ripping out the other man’s soul.
The dagger cut through the soultaker’s skull with ease, but not before those sharp teeth sank into Jono’s shoulder. His scream filled Patrick’s ears, blood pouring down his torso. The black blade of the dagger turned white, heavenly fire burning through the soultaker’s body like an inferno. The demon turned to ash that mingled with the rain, dirty rivulets of water running down Jono’s torso, mixing with his blood.
The binding ward fell apart beneath the cut of the dagger. Patrick panted for breath, the crash of thunder directly above causing him to look up. A hellish red glow spread through the sky, and all he could sense in his damaged soul was hell.
“You must close it.”
His eyes snapped to Jono’s pale face, the voice of a god falling between them. Jono’s accent was gone, replaced by a different one that sounded like teeth ripping through bone.
“I can’t,” Patrick said desperately. “Closing a rift requires a nexus.”
He didn’t have that reach anymore, didn’t have the ability to channel external magic. Three years since that loss and his soul wound had never felt so crippling.
“You must.”
Patrick frantically shook his head as he pulled the silver stakes out of Jono’s shoulders one at a time. The wounds didn’t immediately close, the blackened chemical burns at the edges telling Patrick aconite was probably involved. Jono was still tied to the spell that Ethan was holding together, Zeus’ godhead a prize his father would do anything to gain—even if it meant letting hell reign on earth once more.
“Patrick.” Jono’s voice this time, without the ringing otherworldliness of a god in his tone. “This is where I’m meant to be.”
Here, in the middle of a maelstrom, a god pack alpha werewolf with ties to an immortal. Someone the Fates had thrown into Patrick’s path without giving either of them a choice in the matter.
“Jono,” Patrick said, his voice breaking on the other man’s name.
The magic all around them began to reform, the spellwork piecing itself together beneath Ethan’s focused will, backed by the Dominion Sect who served him.
They were running out of time.
“Save us.”
Patrick touched his bloody hand to Jono’s face, smearing red across too-cold skin, and pressed a hard kiss to cold lips. “Tell your god he fucking sucks at guiding you.”
Then he grabbed Jono’s right hand in his left, pressed it to the muddy ground, and drove his dagger through both their hands.
