“In that bed? With this audience? Hell no,” Patrick said.
“Suppose you’re right.” Jono ran a hand over the top of a crate. “How does the SOA feel about you palling around with Lucien? Him being a wanted fugitive and all.”
“Outside of the director, no one in the SOA is aware I know Lucien. Less than ten other people know about him, and more than half that number belongs to my old team in the Mage Corps. They all know how to keep a secret. Nadine and another PIA special agent out on the West Coast are the only other people who know, and I trust them.”
Jono rested his hip against the stack of crates and crossed his arms over his chest. “Were you lot all military?”
“Yeah.”
“No one will hear a word out of me.”
Patrick may have only known Jono for less than a week, but something told him the older man knew how to keep a promise. “I’d rather the SOA didn’t know anything about you at all.”
Jono raised one eyebrow. “Not keen on you hanging around with werecreatures?”
“Dealing with the supernatural and preternatural is part of the job. I don’t want the SOA to know about you because we’re still digging up Dominion Sect double agents within our ranks.”
“I’m not the one who needs looking after,” Jono said after a moment. “Pretty sure that’s you.”
Patrick sighed heavily and scratched the back of his head. “Normally my cases don’t have so many immortals running around.”
“Most people don’t have any running about because they don’t believe in them anymore.”
Patrick looked Jono in the eye when he said, “We’re not most people.”
Jono nodded slowly. “No, we aren’t.”
“So you’ll agree that since you’re a target you’ll keep Marek company here tonight?”
“Now I know you’re taking the piss,” Jono said, stepping closer. “Thought we had this plan of yours already sorted?”
“The plan consists of not dying. You’d accomplish that a lot better if you would—”
“I’m not leaving you.”
The conviction in Jono’s voice stopped Patrick’s argument cold. His mouth snapped shut, teeth clacking together. He didn’t know what to say in the face of Jono’s refusal to walk away. All he could think about was the way he’d lived his own life, bound by the needs of the gods he was indebted to, and what it had cost him over the years.
“Don’t let the Fates take control of your life, Jono. Marek doesn’t have a choice, but you do,” Patrick said quietly.
Jono reached out and trailed his fingers along the edge of Patrick’s jaw, his touch warm, like it always was. “Guess we’re just gonna have to murder the fuck out of the Dominion Sect bastards together, then, won’t we?”
While Patrick could get behind that any day, he knew war was never easy. “You know our chances are shit, right?”
“Can’t be much worse than waking up in hospital after a bad car crash with the werevirus running through your veins.”
“Didn’t take you for an optimist.”
“I can be with the right motivation.”
The filthy look Jono shot him made Patrick wish they were alone in his apartment with nothing to do tonight but fuck. Except there was a plan in the works that involved saving a city, and time wasn’t on their side. They needed to choke off the nexus, deny whatever mages the Dominion Sect put in the field an external power source, get to the center of the spell, and break it apart.
In other words, Patrick needed to stop thinking with his dick and start using his brain.
“Let’s get the go-bags put together,” he said.
The go-bags full of stolen weaponry were for Lucien’s vampires to use. The Tempest pack would shift into their animal forms once everyone was in position in Central Park tomorrow. The only problem was they didn’t knowwhenEthan would begin casting the spell. If it happened in daylight, Lucien’s vampires would be no help at all in the fight.
The NYPD was on alert, and the PCB had been notified that Central Park was the likely spell location. Patrick had argued with Casale about blocking access to the park. All that open green space was easier to fight in than an apartment building. It had taken pulling the federal card, but Patrick had gotten Casale to agree that they didn’t want the Dominion Sect to go to ground any more than they already had.
