He had Hera to thank for that.
The goddess stood beside her husband, passport in hand and dark sunglasses perched on her aquiline nose. One hand curled over the crook of Zeus’ elbow in a possessive manner, as if she knew how close she had come to losing him and didn’t want to let him go.
“Patrick,” Hera said. “Did you enjoy the flowers I sent you?”
“Pretty sure the nurses did,” he said.
“They were meant for you.”
“I don’t like gifts from gods.”
“You seem to like the wolf just fine,” Zeus said.
Anger resonated in Patrick’s soul as he took those words to be a threat. “He wasn’t supposed to be anyone’s to give.”
“The Norse do what they like,” Hera said derisively. “As do we all.”
He didn’t want to talk about Jono with them. He’d prefer they kept their distance from the werewolf, but Patrick had a feeling that was wishful thinking at this point. “Leaving the country?”
“Taking a much-needed break,” Zeus replied.
The news had briefly reported on Malcolm Cirillo’s disappearance and reappearance, with supposedly no memory of where he’d been, before dropping the story in favor of the sacrificial murders. Sensationalism sold way better than a missing rich guy these days. Patrick had a feeling Hera might have cast a little magic, with the help of her coven, to get the local media to look the other way. In the grand scheme of things, he was fine with the news missing the link between the two stories. He had a feeling Zeus and Hera were as well.
“If you’re leaving, you didn’t need to tell me goodbye. Your kind doesn’t ever come around unless you want something,” Patrick said.
“We already have you.”
“Because Persephone couldn’t let me die.”
“We are not ones to cast aside a weapon when we find one,” Hera replied coolly.
“Takes a real shitty person to think a child should be turned into a weapon.”
Zeus raised an eyebrow. “We immortals have a different view of worth. We always have.”
He didn’t sound condescending; he didn’t sneer the words. Zeus spoke as if what he said was a factual truth, nothing more and nothing less. The god either didn’t care, or wasn’t aware, of how his words scraped Patrick raw somewhere deep inside, where the child he used to be still screamed in horror at what he’d witnessed and the adult he’d grown into mourned what he’d become.
“Must be hard,” Patrick said tightly. “Surviving the way you do. All of you too old to change, too set in your ways, and then you wonder why the world forgot about you over the years. You wonder why you need to beg what few followers you can find to pray for your lives.”
Zeus’ mouth ticked ever so slightly downward at the corners. “We have never been forgotten.”
“You just got relegated to a footnote in someone else’s story, give or take a millennia or two. See, that’s the thing about myths. They aren’t men and they aren’t legends. At their core, you’re just a bunch of tragedies and cautionary tales. You don’t grow old when you’re a myth, but that just means you don’t know how to let things go and die.”
Zeus’ gray-blue eyes filled with the fury of a storm that would never die. When the god finally deigned to respond, his words felt like a warning, like a calm before a storm rising high on the horizon.
“I see Persephone chose the right twin all those years ago.”
Patrick raised his chin in silent defiance, clenching his hands into fists. “I would’ve preferred she let us both die.”
Hera chuckled, the sound grating in Patrick’s ears. “There is power in bloodlines, and in twins. You know that, Patrick. You know where you come from. We gods had an opportunity, and we took it. That is why Persephone took you.”
“You know what Ashanti told me once?” Patrick said, thinking about the mother of all vampires and her implacable will. The way she refused to let him remain ignorant of his lot in life. “Immortality isn’t living. It’s merely surviving.”
Something ugly and dangerous flashed across Zeus’ eyes, like a lightning strike before he spoke. “Far be it from me to speak unkindly of the dead.”
Ashanti might be dead, but her children and her teachings lived on. Patrick might carry a blade made by heavenly power, but he carried the taint of hell in his soul and Ashanti’s words in his mind.
A weapon, no matter its shape, is still a weapon. So use it.
