“That one has a god, maybe two, backing him, neither of which you’ve ever faced before. Sage won’t be enough as backup.”
“Way to show your faith in your brand-new pack member,” Patrick said with a hard snort.
Jono scowled. “Ourpack. And I know Sage can handle herself, but the two of you alone against a Night Court and gods are shit odds.”
“I’ve been dealing with gods for nearly three-quarters of my life. I have a better chance than you at getting out alive, and I won’t be leaving Sage behind. I won’t be leaving anyone we find in there behind.”
Jono wanted to argue—he had a god riding his soul, after all—but he wasn’t a combat mage. He hadn’t spent almost a decade on the front lines of the fight against the hells. He hadn’t sold his soul to survive.
Patrick, Jono knew, was the sort of bloke who would break off bits of himself first before letting someone else even get a scratch.
“I don’t trust Tremaine or Lucien,” Jono said into the tense quiet that had settled over the room.
Patrick grimaced. “Makes two of us. That’s why I need you to stay behind to keep Wade safe but also because one of us needs to be on the outside. If things go wrong, I know you’ll find me. I trustyou, Jono.”
His logic was sound, Jono just didn’t care for it. He’d rather be by Patrick’s side, in the thick of things. What he wanted wasn’t what he could allow himself to have. Not as the alpha of a pack that was more than just two people now. That realization was sobering, and Jono rubbed hard at his eyes. Part of being an alpha was knowing when to delegate. Jono had learned that through watching the packs he’d orbited over the years. He just never realized how hard it was to do.
“I’ll find you,” Jono promised, meaning it with everything he had.
Patrick smiled, the expression lopsided, but his shields had thinned out enough that Jono could smell the relief emanating from him. “I know you will.”
11
It tooktwenty-four hours to pry the facts out of Wade and submit them to the court for a warrant. Patrick ran the legal paperwork through the SOA rather than the PCB because the case had federal jurisdiction. Aside from that, the DEA had already reached out to the SOA about interference and the two legal sides were squabbling. At the end of the day, the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York didn’t fuck around when it came to prosecuting vampires and the warrant was issued.
The conflicts of interest were something Patrick was pretending didn’t exist.
The case the SOA was building against Tremaine was in the extremely early stages, but all evidence was being filed under seal. Patrick needed to protect Wade’s identity, but he also didn’t want to give Tremaine a heads-up. He didn’t know what kind of inroads the master vampire might have made within the legal community, but Patrick hoped they didn’t go too deep.
Getting the legal paperwork done meant Patrick couldn’t approach the Crimson Diamond until Tuesday night. He’d declined backup from the SOA and argued with SAIC Henry Ng over that decision. Normally, Patrick would never turn down investigative help for a search warrant, but he was going into a Night Court who held allegiances to a couple of immortals. That changed the playing field immensely, and not for the better.
Patrick refused to put the lives of people who didn’t know what they were heading into on the line like that. Vampires were one thing. Gods were something else entirely. It took a direct phone call from Setsuna to gloss over the friction between himself and Henry, but in the end, Patrick got his way. He was going in armed with his dagger, HK USP 9mm tactical pistol, and his magic, with Sage as support and one of Lucien’s vampires. That would have to be enough.
All his precautions weren’t enough to stop Jono from worrying.
“I still think this is a shit idea,” Jono said from the front passenger seat of the Mustang.
“I can think of ten off the top of my head that were worse,” Patrick replied as he turned off Madison Avenue. In the backseat, Wade snorted. The familiar crunch of snacks being eaten followed the sound.
Jono sighed. “No wonder why your old captain wanted to murder you half the time.”
“He did not. It was more like a quarter of the time.”
“Murder is still murder, Pat.”
“That’s debatable. What isn’t is your job tonight.”
“I’ll keep an eye on the kid. Just make sure Sage keeps her eyes on you.”
“Not a kid,” Wade muttered from the back seat.
Patrick ignored him. “You can tell her yourself if you want when we get to her place.”
“I already did when I rang her earlier,” Jono said.
Patrick made a face as he braked to a stop in front of the old Art Deco building Marek and the others called home, putting on his hazard lights. Lights shone through most of the windows, signaling the Tempest pack had holed up together for the night on Emma’s orders. Jono and Wade would be staying with them until Patrick returned because if shit went down, Jono would need a car and Wade would need to be protected. Emma’s pack was more than willing to fight for him, no matter what Estelle and Youssef had ordered.
That way led problems, but everyone had agreed they’d deal with it only when directly confronted by the god pack. Emma was adamant she wouldn’t be banning Sage from her home even if that technically meant she was letting Sage into the Tempest pack’s territory. Since Jono hadn’t stayed long enough to hash out territory passage, they were all operating under the general understanding that they could pass through without any issues.
