“You’re gonna get shot with that balaclava on your face,” Patrick said as he started forward.
“Then you better make sure we don’t,” Lucien replied.
Patrick conjured up a mageglobe, filling it with a look-away ward. He pushed his magic out of his soul, the familiar twisting sparks of the spell drifting all around them. It wouldn’t make them invisible, but it would hopefully keep anyone from thinking Lucien and his vampires were the enemy and shooting them on sight.
Patrick kept himself, Jono, and Sage, outside the spell, needing to be seen. Jono lengthened his stride to take point, his massive bulk clearing them a way through the crowd faster than Patrick could have on his own.
Up ahead, the windows lining the walls of Grand Central were completely dark, as if all the light inside had gone out. The pitch-blackness pressing against the glass didn’t look right. Patrick held his M4A1 carbine close against his body as he ran, yanking his SOA badge out from beneath the tactical vest he wore as he did so.
As they got closer, the crowd of commuters thinned out into lines of police. He raked his gaze over the officers working crowd control, trying to find Casale. Over the noise of people yelling, distant sirens and honking horns, the sharpcawof a raven sent a chill down his spine.
Patrick’s gaze snapped up, locking on the pair of ravens perched on top of the statue of Mercury above the Tiffany clock on the building’s façade. Larger than normal ravens, with wings half-spread, they looked right at him, rightthroughhim. Unlike with Tremaine, Patrick couldn’t keep Huginn and Muninn out of his mind.
They desire what only war should carry, the ravens said, their voices cracking open a headache in his brain.The dead will not rest.
“Collins!”
Casale’s shout had Patrick shaking his head hard to clear it. When he looked back at the statue, the ravens were gone. As warnings went, those two were damn unhelpful.
“Casale,” Patrick yelled back, flashing his badge at a couple of cops standing at the perimeter on the intersection to get by. “Is Grand Central evacuated?”
Casale stood at the southwest entrance into the terminal, a statue of an eagle with its wings spread situated above the doors. The shadows that Patrick could see through the doors pressed right up against the threshold, so black he couldn’t make out anything inside.
“We don’t know how many civilians are left inside,” Casale said in a tight voice, one hand gripping a radio. “Everything just went dark about five minutes ago. Anyone who goes in doesn’t come out, and radios go to static. MTA officials are still in the master control room, but we can’t reach them.”
“Trains are still running?”
Casale gave a grim nod. “Still running to offload their passengers into the nearest stations if possible.”
Patrick tightened his grip on his rifle before unclipping the strap from his tactical vest. “Take this. It’s only going to get in my way.”
He needed his hands free for what he was going to find inside Grand Central Terminal. After all, bullets wouldn’t kill a god.
Casale took the rifle with a dubious expression on his face. “What are you doing?”
“My job.”
“You aren’t going in there without backup.”
Patrick let his look-away ward drop as he unsheathed his dagger. Casale did a double take at Lucien and the others’ seemingly sudden appearance.
“I have my backup. I just need to know where the entrance to the M42 sub-basement is.”
Casale looked like he wanted to argue when Hermes slipped between two police officers and jogged over. He wore the same DEA uniform as before, and the smirk he directed at Casale made the PCB chief scowl at him.
“I’ll take them,” Hermes said, grabbing Patrick by the arm and hauling him down the sidewalk to the main entrance on East 42nd Street.
“You just don’t want your statue to get blown up,” Patrick said under his breath.
Hermes shrugged, though he didn’t let Patrick go, eliciting a warning growl from Jono. “They got my name wrong when they built it. Here. You’ll need this.”
Hermes took Patrick’s free hand and pressed a single Greek obal against his palm. Patrick curled his fingers around the gold coin, heart beating fast in his chest. “This feels all kinds of familiar.”
“The coin was taken from the seer’s home. It is the only one I am giving you.”
Patrick looked down at the coin and the massive amount of magic it carried in its tiny form—enough to power a barrier ward.
“Why?”
