“Something sweet.”
Jono was used to men and women coyly letting him decide their drinks over the years. When he was younger, he’d taken quite a few blokes home with him after closing if he liked their taste in alcohol and how they looked. They were usually the ones who didn’t care about his eyes and what the color meant, though occasionally Jono would fuck someone who only wanted him because he was a werecreature. These days, the only man in his bed was Patrick, and he preferred it that way.
Jono set about mixing up an appletini, never completely turning his back on the woman. She didn’t smell like magic beneath the corpse scent that lingered around her—but that could always be because he didn’t recognize her kind of magic.
Fae, Fenrir growled in the back of his mind.
Jono wasn’t surprised by that, considering what had attacked Patrick at the Wisteria home. The fae’s mastery of glamour was well recorded in history.
He set the empty shaker down on the work counter, fingers trailing against the edge where the trigger command for the defensive wards set into the bar’s wall had been burned into wood. Marek had gotten the federal government to pay for a mage to set strong defensive wards that anyone—even a mundane human—could trigger.
Jono knew they wouldn’t be enough against a soultaker, but Patrick had assured him the wards were strong enough to defend against a lot of threats, including the fae.
“Here you go,” Jono said, setting the drink down in front of her. She passed over a credit card, and Jono glanced at the name on it. He didn’t believe for a moment it was hers. “Do you want to open a tab?”
She picked up her glass and took a delicate sip of the sweet drink. “Why not?”
Jono half turned to deposit her credit card by the register and was about to go back to cleaning when the door to the bar was pushed open again. Five werecreatures entered, their bright amber eyes reflecting the low light of the bar with a metallic glint.
Jono was familiar with only one of them. The New York City god pack counted forty-seven members, a dozen less than the London god pack. They ranged in age, though all were werewolves. Estelle was a known purist that way and had exiled those who weren’t werewolves from the pack when she took over.
Theodore Davis was low in the ranks, a bruiser whose face looked like someone had disagreed with his features in a fight before he was infected with the werevirus, and the only recourse was modifying them with a punch. Pity that’s how he always looked—as ugly on the outside as he was on the inside.
Jono looked from the woman at the bar still sipping her drink to the werecreatures he doubted were there to check up on him like Nicholas.
This is going to get messy.
“You blokes here to drink?” Jono asked, watching as the five fanned out across the bar.
“Now why would we spend our hard-earned money at a place like this?” Theodore said.
Jono stared him down, noting the not so subtle shift of muscle beneath the other man’s dark clothing and the gloves he wore. Theodore hadn’t bothered with a winter coat, and neither had his fellow pack members. Their clothing looked old and worn—perfect for losing when one shifted form.
“Hey, lady,” the only woman in Theodore’s group said. “You should leave.”
The woman sighed and set down her drink. “I detest when food thinks it has the right to give me orders.”
Her words sent ice cascading down Jono’s spine. Theodore’s expression became uneasy. Jono took a step away from her, his back to the bar and its shelves full of liquor bottles. He flexed his hands, bones and muscles shifting to allow claws to form at the tips of his fingers in lieu of fingernails.
Jono split his attention between the two sets of adversaries, weighing his options. She watched him move with eyes that were no longer blue but a discomforting iridescent green. As he watched, her blonde hair lost its luster, the pale color disappearing into oily black strands that grew and grew until they tangled around her rapidly growing body.
Her glamour melted away, leaving behind something bitter, ugly, and unkind.
A spindly torso replaced her curves, rising up from a fat spider’s body covered in bristly hair. Eight spider legs extended outward from the bulbous arachnid body while human hands clawed at the wooden counter. Standing as tall as he was, with dark gray skin that faded to black spider legs, the only bit of brightness on it was its eyes.
Its hair moved on its own accord, lifting and sliding all around its body. Jono ducked when a heavy lock of hair cut through where he’d been standing, slamming through liquor bottles on a shelf behind him. Alcohol and glass shards exploded around him, drenching Jono in rum and vodka.
More of its hair lashed out at the other werecreatures in the bar. Theodore missed being stabbed through the chest by vaulting over the bar to duck behind the work area where Jono was. Trapped between the two, Jono focused on the more immediate threat.
“You have something of ours,” the fae hissed, its hair a writhing, living thing around its body. “You smell like it.”
“Fuck off,” Jono said as he reached up and slammed his hand against the edge of the bar—right over the command trigger. “And get thefuckout.”
The intent was all in the feeling and directed at the threat. The magic burned his hand, but Jono didn’t pull away. When he was younger, he would have, but being with Patrick had taught him that magic wasn’t always bad.
The protective wards flared around the bar, the walls burning with them. The fae shrieked with fury, lifting two front legs and slamming their hooked ends into the wooden counter, as if that would keep it from being tossed out.
Tempest was a public space; no threshold encircled it. The magic embedded in its walls filled the space, focusing on the threat Jono wanted dealt with first. A noise Jono felt more than heard filled the air, and the fae was lifted off the floor and carried out of the bar by magical means. The door crumpled when it hit, breaking apart from the weight of the fae.
