Patrick opened his mouth to argue, then thought better of it. He swallowed dryly, wishing he had some water. Looking around at their position—surrounded by zombies that kept relentlessly coming—he knew getting through millions of them was an impossible feat.
The Catacombs were the resting place of more than six million dead, to say nothing of the aboveground graveyards in Paris, church crypts, and monuments that doubled as tombs. The only way to stop the dead was to get the Morrígan’s staff. They couldn’t do that stuck where they were.
“How did you get here?” Patrick asked, looking at Lucien.
The master vampire peeled his lips back in an annoyed snarl. “Rooftops. The streets were impassible.”
“Any other Night Courts going to join the fight?”
Lucien shrugged. “They’ll protect their territory first.”
“Of course they will.”
“They’ll still fight, just not here,” Carmen said.
Lucien set the grenade launcher on the ground and took a moment to reload. “We can’t eat the dead, remember? The Night Courts here want Paris returned to the humans as much as you do.”
The French ministry magic users eyed Lucien and his vampires with more than a little trepidation, but at least no one attempted to challenge their presence. Patrick really didn’t want to have to explain his relationship with Lucien to foreign allies, and he knew this would get back to people who weren’t Setsuna. Before anyone could start asking questions, the earth trembled in a way Patrick didn’t like.
“Please tell me that’s more zombies and not an earthquake,” Spencer said as he scooped up Fatima into his arms.
“Look,” Wade said, yanking on Patrick’s arm to turn him around.
Patrick stared at where Wade pointed, right hand bypassing his rifle and straying to his dagger. The manhole cover behind them in the street between two abandoned cars vibrated in place for a few seconds before exploding upward, shattering from the force of its expulsion. Patrick expanded his personal shields to cover Wade, ensuring the teenager wasn’t hit by any stray shrapnel.
Every single magic user had a spell ready at their fingertips when a wooden pestle thrust itself up out of the dark hole and knocked against its edges to force it wider. The earth obeyed the silent command, and the hole expanded with a grating crunch.
“Hold fire!” Patrick yelled.
Nadine repeated the order in French as the sewer entrance finished expanding, providing more than enough room for Baba Yaga to rise up from below on her floating mortar made of bones. The skulls that decorated it still glowed like they had in the Catacombs, but at least none of them moved as if they carried souls within them. Her face was just as ugly as Patrick remembered though.
Someone—on the French side of the group, not the vampire side—retched loudly.
Baba Yaga banged the pestle against bone in an absentminded way, staring at the zombies clawing against Nadine’s shield. “Is not good for business.”
“Oh, you think?” Patrick couldn’t help but ask.
Baba Yaga looked down her large nose at him, mouth twisting disdainfully. “Below is empty. Will take you through.”
Spencer whistled. “Well, shit. The bastard emptied the Catacombs.”
Jono settled by Patrick’s side, growling softly. Patrick didn’t think twice about clenching his fingers around Jono’s fur. He remembered the map Lisette had pulled out of her backpack, knew how twisted and convoluted the Catacombs were.
“There’s no direct route from here to the Eiffel Tower,” he said.
“Will make way as far as can go,” Baba Yaga retorted.
“Not through the veil. There’s only what? Two hours left before midnight? It’s still summer solstice. We go through the veil and we risk Ilya completing whatever spell he’s trying to finalize tonight. We can’t afford to lose time like that.”
“Think I not know risk?” The mortar drifted closer to the ground so she could lean forward, resting the pestle against the asphalt. “Dead are Peklabog domain. Earth? Mine. Will make way.”
She banged the pestle against the ground for emphasis, cracking the asphalt. Patrick stared at the crack in the earth before sharing a long look with Jono, who only chuffed at him, incapable of human speech with a wolf’s mouth.
“What the hell?” Patrick said. “We’re fighting with Lucien. She can’t be any worse.”
The piece of bone that slammed into his hard helmet had Patrick looking over his shoulder, scowling at Lucien, who raised both middle fingers at him rather than rip out his throat. War always did make strange bedfellows.
“We don’t have a choice. Staying here is a losing battle,” Nadine said tiredly.
