There weren’t millions of vampires in the world to bring her back the way Santa Muerte’s worshippers had prayed her into life. The mother of all vampires might have been loved by her children, but love had never saved anyone before. Patrick had carried Ashanti’s ashes off the battlefield beneath his fingernails after the Thirty-Day War was over. She’d died a sacrifice beneath the desert sun, lost to magic and hellish heat, only existing in memory now.
And memory was a fickle beast, easily lost and forgotten.
Lucien did his best to keep the memory of his mother alive. His price back in February to aid their god pack with an alliance of every Night Court in the five boroughs had seemed insignificant at the time. Setting up altars in every home of the packs under their protection had taken a week to finalize, but everyone prayed to a lost goddess now. Looking at the small altar in Setsuna’s home, Patrick wondered what Lucien hoped to gain from it.
Patrick poured himself a glass of whiskey, carrying it with him back to the couch. He sat beside Setsuna and took a sip, not saying anything for a long few minutes. The silence that settled over them wasn’t easy, but he wasn’t going to break it.
“Ashanti is worth whatever we give her,” Setsuna finally said, sounding tired. “She always will be.”
Setsuna and Ashanti hadn’t been enemies during his formative years, when everything they each stood for meant they should be. Patrick had learned different lessons from each of them, but a few of Ashanti’s had cut deeper than all the others, sticking with him through the years. She’d been in favor of war over peace with humanity, but that was just the way of her making.
The mother of all vampires had been a goddess born in West Africa long before borders drawn on a map were even a concept. She’d taken the form of an Asanbosam vampire, and that was the skin she’d lived in, walking the earth on bone hooks sheathed in iron caps and smiling with iron teeth. Her final steps had taken her to Patrick, and she’d died in sunlight that had never burned her until that day.
He swallowed more whiskey, trying to stop thinking about one of his worst failures and the regret that came with it. It wasn’t the sort of prayer he wanted to place before the altar in Setsuna’s home.
“Director Franklin doesn’t seem thrilled about giving the invitation to Lucien,” Patrick said.
“Neither am I, but Lucien already has a vested interest in stopping Ethan and the Dominion Sect. I don’t trust Lucien, but I trust he’ll undermine Ethan first before he tries to undermine us.”
“The enemy of my enemy is my friend?”
Setsuna smiled slightly. “In this instance, yes.”
Patrick knew Setsuna wasn’t above getting her hands dirty if it meant the job got done. She’d done it last year when she’d given up whatever favors she owed Lucien to bring him to New York City. He hadn’t left Manhattan after dragging Patrick’s ass out of the fire, choosing instead to hide out in the shadows and steer clear of the authorities while raking in money at his club in Chelsea.
Despite the litigation the other New York City god pack was neck-deep in these days, they hadn’t yet disclosed to government officials the identity of the master vampire heading up the Manhattan Night Court. Patrick figured Estelle Walker and Youssef Khan were as good as dead if they ever opened their mouths on that subject. Some leverage wasn’t worth dying for.
Setsuna sighed and leaned back on the couch. Patrick glanced at the old grandfather clock in the corner, noting how late it was. The military aide who had driven them to Setsuna’s home was still parked out front, waiting to take Patrick back to his hotel.
“You need to fly out tomorrow,” Setsuna said.
Patrick frowned at her. “I still have a couple of meetings with senators scheduled. You set them up, remember?”
“Eloise Patterson is appearing before a subcommittee tomorrow to advocate for a stronger defense against the Dominion Sect.” Setsuna turned her head to look him in the eye. “You cannot be here.”
Patrick’s fingers tightened on his glass before he dropped his gaze, staring into the amber-colored liquid. After a moment, he nodded silently to that order.
Eloise Patterson was his grandmother on his mother’s side, and the high priestess of the Salem Coven. He only had dim memories of her from when he was a child, but he could never make any more. His ties to that side of his family had died in the basement of his childhood home, along with his mother, Clara Patterson.
To stay alive and free from the Dominion Sect’s grasp as he grew up under a different name meant Patrick could not reach back into his past and reconnect with what family he had left. Patrick had, for all intents and purposes, become an orphan after the courts sealed away his true identity and granted him a name change to ensure his protection.
No one in the Salem Coven knew he was alive. No one who had the power to interfere in his job as an SOA special agent knew he was Ethan’s son.
That secret had to remain buried if he was going to pay back his soul debt.
“Go home,” Setsuna said. “Get Lucien to agree to take the invitation on our behalf. I’ll make your excuses here.”
Patrick ran a hand down his face before bringing the glass of whiskey to his mouth and tipping its contents down his throat. It burned all the way to his stomach. He set the glass on the coffee table with a steady hand. “You don’t ask for much.”
Setsuna said nothing to that, merely got to her feet when he did. She didn’t reach for her cane because she didn’t need it for balance. The artifact was a weapon she could set aside behind the threshold of her home.
Setsuna walked Patrick to the front door, holding it open as he stepped outside onto the dark porch. “Patrick.”
He half turned to look back at her as the military aide in the town car on the street started the engine. “Yeah?”
“Good luck.”
They were outside the barriers of the silence ward and threshold wrapped around the walls of her home. Setsuna would never warn him to be careful of the threats dogging his heels, not out in the open like this. Patrick was thirty now, and had lived a life full of secrets and lies for the past twenty-two years. He’d learned to read between words spoken and stretched silences that were a language all their own.
