“My lady appreciates the offerings I bring her more than you will ever know,” Tezcatlipoca said into his ear.
“Fuck you,” Patrick ground out, heart pounding in his chest.
The god’s laughter echoed eerily in the station, the twisted wards lining the subway entrance flaring up at the sound. “You’ll beg for it soon enough. Our sacrifices always do before Tremaine sucks the marrow from their bones.”
Patrick jerked away from the god’s presence but didn’t get far since Tremaine still had hold of him. The master vampire casually tossed him into the arms of the worshippers who had followed them down into the dark—Night Court vampires and Omacatl Cartel members whose religion revolved around death.
Even in Patrick’s drugged-up state, he still tried to fight them, but his body wasn’t cooperating. Shine burned through his veins, filling his eyes with the brightness of souls, need clawing painfully at his skin. The drug made him want things he never would outside the chemical changes in his brain.
He wanted the unholy darkness to snuff out the light, wanted hands on him that he’d sooner break if he could only stay focused. But the ability to think rationally was fracturing beneath the ache in his body that shine drew out of him.
Patrick was dragged to the altar laid out before the shrine. He tripped over bones, breaking some, sending others tumbling away from his feet. Two humans gripped his arms, the brightness of their souls almost overpowering his sight, especially the one to his left. The vampire ahead of them blotted out the candlelight, leading the way to the empty space at Santa Muerte’s feet. Marigold blossoms lined the area like funeral wreaths.
“No,” Patrick said, the word sticking to his teeth as he was forced down to the platform floor.
It smelled like blood, like flowers, and Patrick knew he would always associate this particular fear with the cloying floral scent tinged in iron filling his nose.
Two cartel members held him down at the wrists and shoulders, the bruising weight of their grip keeping him in place. His legs were wrenched apart with a strength he couldn’t break. Lying on his back, Patrick watched as Tremaine approached, bright sparks burning around that human-shaped darkness like some mirage or hallucination. He would never be any oasis Patrick would pray for.
“Is this how you killed the werecreatures you didn’t force to fight?” Patrick asked over the pounding drum beat of his heart.
“This is how we pray now that our mother has forsaken us,” Tremaine said, kneeling between Patrick’s legs.
Patrick choked out a bitter laugh, hands clenching weakly into fists. Tremaine didn’t know—couldn’t have known—that Ashanti was dead, but her absence had still been felt. In the void of her death, her children had gone searching for acceptance somewhere else.
Tremaine’s power of persuasion coiled in his mind, digging at the breaks in resistance shine had already created. “You want this.”
Some part of Patrick did, but the rest of him still fought. Cold hands rucked up his shirt, tearing at the button on his jeans. Patrick heaved against the hands pinning him down, trying to get away even as he ached to be touched by the darkness that promised a false respite. In the burning light that filled his eyes, the scythe swung down, held by a bony hand that wielded it with unearthly precision.
“I bring you a sacrifice, my love,” Tezcatlipoca said from the train tracks.
The tip of the blade came to rest right over Patrick’s heart, tearing his shirt and scratching at his scars. He blinked, staring in horror as the skull moved, teeth parting around a voice that sounded like the echo of prayers in a cold mausoleum.
“Worship me,” Santa Muerte said as Tremaine yanked Patrick’s jeans down around his thighs.
Through blood and sacrifice, eased by false desire—a lamb to the slaughter in a makeshift temple.
If Patrick worshipped anyone, it wasn’t death.
The hands gripping his left arm and shoulder shifted, the burning brightness of the man’s soul blocking out the shadows all around him. Patrick blinked, tasting blood as Tremaine’s cold fingers slipped beneath his underwear, sharp nails scraping against his cock.
In the center of that blinding light, all Patrick saw was a pair of ageless yellow eyes burning brighter than the sun.
The stranger was not a god Patrick knew.
Time stilled like it had on the street the other night, the god’s presence a counterpoint to the prayer Tremaine sought to make with Patrick’s body and soul.
“My cousin searches for you,” the god said right before he pushed Patrick through the platform and into the cold tangle of the veil, letting him fall away from the grasping hands of death.
13
Jono knewsomething was wrong even before the old Greek coin still embedded in Marek’s window exploded with magic. Power rushed through the apartment’s walls with awhooshthat made Jono’s ears pop. Wade jumped off the sofa in surprise, the bag of chips falling away from his hands.
“What thefuck?” Wade said, eyes wide and voice gone high-pitched with fear.
“Marek!” Jono yelled as he raced for the door.
Footsteps pounding down the upstairs hall told him Marek had left his office at a run. “I still can’t see a damn thing!”
