“Yeah, I know. I tried to warn him.”
“It is not your fault.”
“It’s not yours either.”
“I was speaking to the kitchen staff when he was taken. If I was there—”
“If you were there, you’d have been taken as well.” Patrick shook his head. “You think Ethan wouldn’t love to have you both? The more gods he can tie to a sacrificial spell, the better. Ethan’s people did a snatch and grab and got the fuck out of Dodge because that was the only way to get to Odin.”
“They should not have been able to contain him.”
“You guys might be taking tithes from politicians, and Thor might be accepting prayers as payment for his mead, but it’s nothing how it was in the past for you. That doesn’t give you power. It barely makes you something to remember. Ethan has Macaria and he’s got the entire Dominion Sect praying for him.”
Frigg folded her hands together on the table. “He is no god.”
“He’s trying to become one. He’s gotten close twice. Now he has Odin and is after the Morrígan’s staff, which might very well be in Chicago. I can’t see why they’d be here if it wasn’t.”
“It is not here.”
Patrick wasn’t sure if Frigg was speaking the truth, but he hoped she was. Dealing with a missing god needed to take priority right now. “What does it do?”
“Perhaps you should ask the goddess it belongs to.”
“Or you could just tell me now. Odin’s ravens were the ones who told me the staff was missing last year. You have to know something, even if it’s not part of your pantheon. Ethan is only after two things these days. Godheads I understand, but this one particular artifact is different. Why?”
“Do you know what war is like?” Frigg asked.
“I’ve fought a war. I know exactly what it’s like.”
“I live with war, and I love him despite the suffering he brings.” Frigg blinked, eyes flashing with power that made Patrick flinch. “You are asking the wrong question.”
“Then what is the right one?” Patrick wanted to know, trying to keep the frustration out of his voice even as he kept a neutral expression on his face. They still had an audience on the other side of the glass window.
“What kind of god does Ethan want to be?” Frigg unfolded her hands and turned them over one at a time, palms to the ceiling. “He has Macaria’s godhead, a child of one hell. He seeks the Morrígan’s staff, a war goddess’ weapon that raises the dead. An empty hell is a useless kingdom without followers. How many wars has Midgard seen? How many bones are buried in her dirt? How many restless souls do you think are out there? He who claims the dead can wage war on the living. You cannot become a god without first building your own myth, and to do that, you need the proper tools.”
Patrick thought nothing could be colder than the blizzard beginning to rage through Chicago, but Frigg’s words froze him down to his soul. They echoed Persephone’s, the warning she’d given him by the River Styx filtering up through his memories.
“The Dominion Sect has tried for centuries to break the veil between worlds and allow hell to reign on earth,” Patrick said slowly. “But that’s not what they really want, is it? Another pantheon’s hell is just a distraction. They never planned to give Earth up to any god of any hell out there. They never planned to share it. They want to make a brand-new one.”
Ethanwanted to.
Frigg smiled with a bitterness that stung like salt in a wound. “Are you ready for your world to become what Asgard is now? What all the gods’ homes are, whether in heaven or in hell? A story you hope someone will remember across the veil, in some other Earth that isn’t yours?”
Patrick opened his mouth to speak, words a mess on his tongue, when the world upended itself.
Pain ripped through his soul, an echo of the pulse that rippled through the ley lines passing deep beneath Chicago. For a second, everything whited out. Magic that wasn’t his burned the frayed edges of that long-forgotten tie to Hannah buried beneath the metaphysical scars he carried on his soul.
It was like the cemetery all over again, only worse.
Then the soulbond that tied him to Jono saturated his soul, blocking the old, worn-out connection like a wall that would never break. Patrick sucked in a shaky breath, blinking black spots from his vision as he stared up at the ceiling around Frigg’s head.
Patrick unstuck his tongue from the roof of his mouth. “What…thefuckwas that?”
“Someone drew too much power through a ley line,” Frigg said, her eyes flickering with white fire. “The nexus will need to be guarded.”
Patrick got an elbow underneath him and rolled to his side, feeling like his brain was about to leak out of his ears. “Fuck. That was backlash hitting the ley lines? Why did I feel it?”
He shouldn’t have been able to, and if Frigg had an answer, she kept it to herself. She helped Patrick to his feet with firm hands, and he felt the room spin in his stomach. Then a cool finger touched the center of his forehead, and a rush of energy flowed through him. This time it didn’t hurt, more like a balm that soothed the rubbed-raw edges of his soul.
