Patrick grabbed Jono by the arm as he stepped around the other man. “What the hell, Jono? Didn’t I say let me do the talking?”
Jono never took his eyes off Lucien. “Tell me this vampire isn’t who I think he is.”
“Let’s go with yes, judging by the expression on your face.”
Patrick put himself between Jono and Lucien with barely a second to spare before Lucien went toe-to-toe with him. At five feet ten, Lucien was an inch taller than Patrick and stronger and faster in all the ways that mattered outside magic. Patrick tilted his head back just enough to meet Lucien’s gaze, ignoring how his heart raced uncomfortably fast in his scarred chest.
Warm hands settled on his hips, strong fingers holding on tight. Jono pressed himself against Patrick’s back, a powerful presence that shouldn’t have made his dick twitch like it did, but Jono was fuckingdistracting.
Patrick really couldn’t afford to be distracted right now.
“Running with wolves these days. That’s new,” Lucien said.
His breath was cold where it blew over Patrick’s face, the smell of it like old copper. Patrick kept his hands at his side and resisted the urge to reach for his dagger.
“Not by choice,” Patrick replied.
“That’snotnew. Neither is the fact your current case will kill you.”
“Gonna dig me a grave?”
Lucien smiled, chapped lips cracking at the motion, but he didn’t bleed. “I don’t break my promises. Not like you.”
Patrick opened his mouth to argue, but the words never made it past his teeth. A cold hand wrapped around his throat the same instant the muzzle of a pistol pressed beneath his chin. Vampires had a speed matched by no one else in the preternatural world, a speed that gave birth to the stories that said they could fly.
A speed not even a werewolf could match.
“I wouldn’t,” Lucien said when Jono surged against Patrick’s body, reaching for the vampire. The shove of the weapon against Patrick’s jaw was enough to make Jono go immediately still. His wordless snarl was loud in Patrick’s ear, a heavy vibration through his ribs.
“Let him go,” Jono growled, his hands holding on to Patrick tight enough to bruise.
Lucien’s black eyes never blinked as he stared at Patrick. “No.”
Patrick swallowed against Lucien’s hard grip, still capable of breathing. That bit of leniency didn’t come out of the goodness of a heart that didn’t beat, but from a promise Lucien had made to Ashanti to keep Patrick alive.
Because of Ashanti, Lucien was still dogging Patrick’s steps when needed, even in sunlight. As one of the first immortals and a goddess in her own right, Ashanti’s rare ability to walk in sunlight and not be burned to ashes had manifested itself in only a handful of her direct descendants.
Ashanti had always been fiercely loved by her children. Most people didn’t know the mother of all vampires was dead because legends weren’t supposed to die. Funny how you could keep a story alive even after the subject was gone.
Patrick leaned into Lucien’s grip and the pistol, the pressure almost choking him. “I’m trying this new thing where I keep all my blood inside my body. Don’t ruin my winning streak, Lucien.”
Patrick was dimly aware of someone who wasn’t Jono swearing behind him, but most of his attention was focused on the vampire who literally held Patrick’s life in his hands.
Lucien’s grip tightened ever so slightly, and Patrick tried not to gag. “I haven’t missed working with you,” Lucien said in a low, hateful voice.
“You could’ve stayed where you were when Setsuna called, but you didn’t. You know what that tells me?” Patrick swallowed against the weight of the pistol against his body and the murderous promise in Lucien’s black eyes. “You’re going to fight with me, just like last time.”
“And is it like last time?”
Patrick didn’t blink. “No. Because we know what’s coming.”
“Just because you see it doesn’t mean you can stop it. Remember what it cost us when you couldn’t stand your fucking ground?”
Patrick flinched, thinking about Ashanti. About her Asanbosam stature that instilled so much fear in people. About her iron teeth and the bone hooks sheathed in steel caps that she’d walked the earth on for thousands and thousands of years. About the way she looked when she died, swallowed up by dry desert sand in an impossible sunburned heat, sacrificed to magic. How her body collapsed into ashes in the face of heavenly magic poured into the gods-made dagger she’d literally walked through hell to deliver to Patrick.
He hadn’t been able to save her, and Lucien would always,alwaysblame Patrick for his mother’s death.
“I’m sorry,” Patrick said for what felt like the thousandth time.
