They met Lucien, Carmen, and Ashanti on the ground floor of the club, all the lights on, and the mugginess from the heat an oppressive blanket that Jono barely acknowledged. Jono couldn’t be sure if the taste of ozone on his tongue was from Ashanti or Fenrir, because control was really only a passing thought right then. Fenrir was nothing but the fury of a world ending, after all, and Jono was more than willing to sink into it if it would help him find Patrick.
“Hades and Andras took Patrick, which means you’re going to help us get him back,” Jono said, glaring at Ashanti.
Lucien licked his lips clean of blood, the bite marks on Carmen’s neck only partway healed. It seemed the news had dragged Lucien out of whatever bed he slept in without even a first meal from his human servants.
“Thought that soulbond of yours allowed you to track him?” Lucien asked.
“Not when he’s past the veil.” Jono held up the spell book for Ashanti to see. “You can go past the veil. Take us through, and you can have this back.”
“You don’t know which hell or heaven they would have traveled through,” Ashanti said.
“I don’tcare. I’d be able to find him if I wasn’t here.”
“You don’t know that, and I will not expend energy on a failed endeavor.”
“Then what the bloody fucking worthareyou?” Jono snarled.
Lucien blurred toward him, and Jono would’ve taken any blow the master vampire aimed his way if only to get close enough to hurt the sodding bastard, but Wade didn’t let him.
Wade yanked Jono aside with brutal draconian strength to get in Lucien’s face, fire and smoke flickering between his teeth as red scales pushed through his skin like a wave.
“Don’t even think about it,” Wade snarled, the rumble in his voice that of something larger than the building they stood in could contain. “You lay a hand on him and I’ll bite it off.”
“Found your teeth, did you?” Lucien asked, standing toe to toe with the teenager.
“Always had them.”
Wade pointedly snapped his teeth at Lucien, the features of his face flattened and reptilian in a way they normally never were. A hint of his true self flickered around him along the blurred edges of his body for a single second, shadow lengthening to a size that wasn’t even close to human.
It wasn’t enough to get Lucien to back down, but Ashanti’s presence kept the pair at a stalemate. Jono thought that was the only reason Lucien didn’t antagonize Wade more.
“The spell book was to track where Patrick’s twin might be using his blood. I have no use for it now without him,” Ashanti said.
“Then I guess you won’t mind if Wade burns it?” Jono asked, holding the spell book out to Wade.
The teen swiped it with the ease drawn from a lifetime of thieving habits. He raised it to his mouth, leaning away from Lucien, and blew smoke on it in a threatening manner.
Ashanti’s black eyes narrowed, but she didn’t move from her position. “I have others.”
“Is that how you store your memories? In books so easily burned?”
“I collect many things and leave behind what I think mortals or others might find interesting.” Her mouth twitched into a faint smile. “You should ask yourself if what is written on those pages might be useful in a future you can’t see.”
“Say the word, Jono,” Wade said, blowing smoke over the pages, staring down Lucien with supreme teenage arrogance.
Jono didn’t know what was in the book, but he knew any hope of Patrick finding Ethan first through Hannah meant he couldn’t let Wade incinerate it. Ashanti seemed to understand he’d come to that conclusion, because she smiled in a way that made him want to claw her face.
“I can’t take you past the veil. My world is this world, and my children have never known another. Our heaven and our hell exist beneath the same sky you humans sleep under,” Ashanti said.
“You were dust,” Jono growled.
“And I will be dust yet again. It is how I exist.”
“If you let them have Patrick, you forfeit Earth to whatever hell Ethan will turn it into. What will you eat when he’s killed us all off? You lose no matter what if we don’t get Patrick back.”
“So little faith in the weapon I taught him to be.”
“He was a fuckingchild.”
