Caught his magic.
A man was walking toward them from the rear of the bar with a single-minded focus that screamedwrong. Patrick’s war-trained instincts rarely failed him when it mattered, and he moved without thinking.
Patrick lunged around Leon for Marek, getting a hand around the seer’s arm even as he unholstered his sidearm with the other. Patrick felt Leon’s hand come down with bruising strength on his shoulder right as the minor scanning spell wrapped around the barshattered, the sound of its destruction like distant ringing bells in his ears.
Patrick’s magic screamed a warning, recognition searing right through him in a momentary burn that set his nerves on fire. Even as Leon hauled him backward, Patrick yanked Marek forward, getting him out of the way of his weapon.
Patrick got two shots off at his target before Leon grabbed his wrist and wrenched his arm toward the ceiling. He hissed at the painful pull of muscles and lifted his finger off the trigger, eyes still on the man who was stillcoming at them.
“What thefuck?” Jono exclaimed in disbelief, teeth suddenly sharper in his mouth, muscles shifting against his bones.
The crowd panicked, scrambling away from the threat in their midst. Leon’s grip loosened just a little in surprise; that was all Patrick needed to get free. He twisted out of Leon’s hold, shifted his grip on Marek, and shoved the seer in Jono’s direction.
“Watch him,” Patrick snarled before bringing up his sidearm in a two-handed grip.
The spelled bullets hadn’t stopped the man—because he wasn’t a man.
Wasn’t even close to being human.
Gray light twisted away from the tears the bullet impacts on the body had caused, peeling back the glamour wrapped around what was hidden beneath. Its clothes disintegrated into smoke, revealing mottled, leathery gray skin split open around the joints, black bone sticking outward and tethered in place by slick muscle and knotted tendons. Razor-sharp claws jutted out from the stumps of its palms, clicking together as it moved.
The demon was humanoid in shape, a hunched-over bipedal that made Patrick’s heart crawl up his throat as the glamour fell away completely. He couldn’t look away from the stumpy torso with skin split over a thick ribcage and a head that had no eyes, no nose, nothing but a wide, gaping maw filled with rows of jagged teeth. A long, pointed tongue whipped out of its mouth with sickening prehensile strength.
Soultakers were hell’s version of a walking bottomless pit of hunger. They fed on souls and magic, eating a person alive to sustain their own presence on the mortal plane. Patrick had only ever fought them during the Thirty-Day War, and they were a goddamnnightmareto kill.
People screamed as they became aware of the demon’s presence. Everyone behind Patrick stampeded for the door, but there were plenty of people trapped behind where the demon stood.
“Emma!” Marek yelled, sounding frantic. “The pack!”
Patrick never took his eyes off the soultaker as he holstered his handgun. It wouldn’t do anything against a demon of this caliber. He’d learned that the hard way three years ago. Instead, he wrapped his fingers around the hilt of his dagger, yanking it free of its magicked sheath. The double-edged blade was pitch-black in color, a familiar weight in his hand that settled Patrick’s focus.
He dropped his shields, every last one of them, dragging his magic out of his soul in a crackling, fearsome rush the soultaker couldn’t resist. Patrick made a cutting motion with his left hand through the air. Half a dozen mageglobes exploded into existence, his magic burning fiery bright like the lure it was.
The soultaker opened its mouth andscreamed.
The sound was like breaking metal, making Patrick’s teeth vibrate in his jaw. The soultaker charged forward—but not at Patrick.
It went for Marek and Jono.
Patrick put himself in the demon’s path without a second thought because that’s what he’d been trained to do. He led with a searing blast of raw metaphysical energy tailored for close quarters that knocked the soultaker off its feet for a few seconds and charred a stool. He grunted as the soultaker snapped at the lingering traces of the blast, sucking down Patrick’s magic.
He spun up the next spell, magic burning bright through a mageglobe as he sent it careening to the floor. It exploded in a wave of magic that Patrick built up into a shield ward he knew wouldn’t be strong enough to imprison a soultaker. But something was better than nothing right now.
“Everyone get the fuck out!” he yelled, pitching his voice loud as if it were a battlefield and not a bar on a Thursday night in Manhattan. “Right fucking now!”
Even as he spoke, the soultaker was already eating a hole through his shield.
Patrick was a combat mage, not a witch, warlock, sorcerer, wizard, or any other kind of magic user. He’d been assigned to the Mage Corps and not the Caster Corps for a reason. His repertoire of spells and wards were heavy on the offense, whittled and honed to vicious precision in a long-running guerrilla war against the monsters hell and the Dominion Sect sent against the mundane world.
For all his skill and strength, his magic was only as strong as his soul—andonlyhis soul. According to some people, Patrick was a mage in name only these days. He’d lost the ability to tap into the ley lines running deep in the earth and channel their external power through his soul. That soul wound was a crippling one, but he’d learned to work around the damage it had inflicted with grinding stubbornness.
Patrick sacrificed another mageglobe to the shield, building up another layer as the soultaker ate its way through the first, pulling magic out of his soul with unrelenting bites.
Around him, everyone rushed for the door in a panic, most moving with preternatural speed. Emma and Leon were the only ones who movedawayfrom the exit, which made Patrick swear violently.
“What part ofget outdon’t you understand?” he yelled at them.
“We’re not leaving until our pack is safe,” Marek snapped from behind him.
