The question made sense in his head. Patrick was standing between an immortal feathered serpent and a dragon, both in human form, so it stood to reason they were linked somehow.
Quetzalcoatl’s gaze darted over Patrick’s shoulder at where Wade was probably still standing and eavesdropping. “I am not here for the fledgling.”
Or not.
“Then why are you here?”
“I am hunting my brother.”
“Your brother?” Jono asked, scowling. “Tall bloke, long hair, thick accent, has a shit slave business involving my kind? That brother?”
“And he likes cats,” Hermes said with a smirk. “Bigcats.”
“Not a winning argument, mate.”
Patrick ran both hands through his hair and linked them behind his skull so he didn’t punch someone. “Which brother is he?”
Quetzalcoatl crossed his arms over his chest. “Tezcatlipoca.”
The jaguars made sense now. Patrick remembered those animals had always been favored by that immortal. As a kid, Patrick had learned about the stories of gods how they were told in this day and age—written down as myths. But many of those myths were alive, having walked the Earth for thousands of years. Their power had waned through the millennia as their followers faded into history, driven by the rise of a more entrenched religion and the rediscovery of magic in the face of science.
If Patrick never had to deal with an angel of any choir, he’d consider himself lucky.
The day a god heard their name said for the last time was the day their immortality became a living grave. Gods needed to be remembered and worshipped in order to have power. He had a feeling Tezcatlipoca was gunning for a return of epic proportions.
“Is it too much to hope he’s the one leaving us creepy-ass gifts?” Patrick asked.
“I know what you speak of, but no, those are not his doing.”
Patrick scowled, letting his arms drop back down to his sides. “Then we’re done here. And by the way? The case is mine.”
Quetzalcoatl opened his mouth to argue, but Patrick made a slashing motion with his hand. The space between them was suddenly filled by Jono. He shouldn’t have looked intimidating in his borrowed hospital scrubs, but he did.
“Piss off,” Jono growled.
“Persephone owns a soul debt that says I can’t,” Hermes said with a smirk.
Jono eyed the messenger god with the contemplation of a predator figuring out which limb to tear off first. Hermes seemed amused, but Patrick thought he saw a surprising flash of wariness in those gold-brown eyes of his when the immortal looked at Jono.
In a fight between Hermes and Fenrir, Patrick’s money was on the wolf.
“We’re not done,” Quetzalcoatl said, staring at Patrick.
“It’s after oh-one-hundred in the morning. Yeah we fucking are,” Patrick retorted.
“Tezcatlipoca is in love with death,” Hermes told him. “We need you to break them up.”
Patrick thought about the Santa Muerte idols the case had accrued in less than a week. They paled in number to the ones worshipped by cartel members and civilian devotees throughout Mexico and in Mexican American communities. The warning was impossible to ignore.
If there was one thing death and the Aztec gods held sacred, it was human sacrifice.
“You gods need to get with the modern times when it comes to dating. Dead bodies don’t make good gifts.”
“My brother’s partnership with death is not one this world will survive,” Quetzalcoatl warned.
Patrick shook his head. “You think way too highly of your kind.”
“I have been trying to stop the spread of his new empire for years. The Omacatl Cartel should not have grown as large as it did.”
