“Special Agent Patrick Collins. Line and location are not secure,” he said, answering the phone and resorting to driving one-handed as he did so.
“I hear your agency has filed documents under seal and got a warrant,” Quetzalcoatl said in greeting.
“How the hell did you find that out?” Patrick demanded.
“That doesn’t matter. I told you the case was mine. Do not enter Tremaine’s territory.”
“I have it on good authority Tremaine is killing werecreatures. I’m not leaving them there to die.”
“He’s sacrificing them. There’s a difference.”
Patrick hunched his shoulders, feeling the scar tissue stretch and pull on his chest. “Trust me, I know.”
“You don’t know what is waiting for you in that club, Patrick. You cannot face death alone.”
“If you’re talking about your brother, I’ll take my chances.”
“He is protecting death because he thinks he loves her. We have destroyed the world for less.”
“World is still turning, Quetz.”
“Mynameis Quetzalcoatl.”
“I haven’t forgotten,” Patrick said with a shrug the immortal couldn’t see. “Seems a lot of other people have.”
Immortality was a lonely existence, one Patrick would never want. The gods played at being mortal because they had no other choice in a world no longer big enough for all of them. Dwindling prayers and worship could grant them only so much power in the face of a handful of dominant religions that had no use for their stories.
Patrick wondered how the Dominion Sect planned to contain death herself. He’d say it was impossible, but he’d seen what had been done to his twin sister with his own eyes. Hannah carried a stolen godhead when she shouldn’t have been able to, what was left of her kept alive by prayers, the power residing in her soul siphoned off by Ethan and his followers.
“Do not serve the warrant,” Quetzalcoatl told him in a low voice filled with power that made Patrick’s teeth ache.
He shook it off. “You aren’t the god who owns my soul debt, and Hermes gave me a message, remember? If you want death separated from your brother, I’m going to have to piss off some gods first. Dragging Tezcatlipoca’s distributor into the light seems a good place to start. If doing so allows me to save some werecreatures, so much the better.”
Patrick ended the call before Quetzalcoatl could respond. Sage looked at him out of the corner of her eye. “Is that wise?”
“Pissing off gods?” Patrick lifted his hips to shove his phone back into his pocket. “Probably not, but I do it all the time. It’s bad for my health, but you do what you gotta do to get the job done.”
Sage blinked at him slowly before saying, “You make a good alpha.”
“I’m not an alpha anything.”
“You’re co-leading this pack. That technically makes you one.”
“I don’t know anything about leading a pack. Just ask Jono.”
“He does well in a pinch.”
Patrick braked for a red light, scratching idly at the nicotine patch on the underside of his arm. Jono wasn’t there to smack his hand away. “Are you saying that because he claimed you or because you mean it?”
Sage didn’t answer for two more blocks. When she finally spoke, her voice was thoughtful. “Jono has never liked how Estelle and Youssef have overseen the packs in New York City. I thought, in the beginning, it was because he was angry they wouldn’t take him in when he first moved here. I know now it’s because he’s a better man than they are. He cares.”
“Like a goddamn mother hen,” Patrick muttered.
Sage nodded. “Yes. You need that in an alpha. What’s more, you need that in a god pack. We don’t have it here. Not yet.”
Thenot yetshould’ve worried Patrick, but he was familiar with the way war crept up on people. It didn’t always announce itself with a bullet. If he’d been in Estelle and Youssef’s place, he’d have banned Jono from his territory the second the Brit touched down on American soil. They’d let the seeds of a rebellion fester in their territory for years and only had themselves to blame when it bloomed.
“I don’t know what Jono has planned, but I’ll back him,” Patrick said slowly.
