Tiarnán tapped his cane against the floor, and magic flowed from the tip in a wave that washed through the apartment. Like a silence ward, but powered with fae magic, he created a bubble of privacy that told Patrick they weren’t going to like the problem that had brought him here.
Tiarnán folded both hands over the top of his cane, gaze sweeping the room. “Cernunnos is missing.”
Patrick blinked. “Come again? Wasn’t he in Dublin?”
“Yes. And now the Horned One is unaccounted for, yet the parks here in New York reek of his magic.”
While in London back in June, Patrick had met with Órlaith, the Summer Lady of the Seelie Court and granddaughter to the goddess Brigid. She’d been in Dublin, working with Cernunnos, though he hadn’t met the god at the time. Maybe he should have, if only so he knew what they were facing here.
“Are you asking us to help find him?” Jono asked.
Tiarnán opened his mouth to respond, but he never got a chance to reply. Marek made a noise that didn’t sound as if it came from a human throat—twisted, mangled, and riven with agony. Sage was on her feet in an instant, her warmth disappearing as she raced to her fiancé’s side. Patrick and Jono followed.
Leon got there first, cushioning Marek’s fall, holding his friend’s head in his lap while Marek arched against the magic coursing through his body. Ozone spiked in the air, and his hazel eyes were a searing white in his face. His face twisted in agony, fingers curled into claws against the floor, and the voice that came out of Marek’s mouth wasn’t hisorthe Norns’, but something else entirely unearthly.
Patrick clamped his hands over his ears, the sound so incredibly painful he thought his brain would bleed out of his ears and nose. The pressure in the air around them became an unbearable weight that drove him to his knees and tore the breath from his lungs so he couldn’t even scream.
“You face a hell you cannot outrun if what you sacrifice is not enough.”
The presence of whatever had spoken through Marek abruptly disappeared, leaving Patrick gasping for breath against the excruciating pain stabbing through his head. He leaned over, digging the heels of his hands against his eyes, trying to stop his optic nerves from wanting to burn out his vision. Vertigo made his stomach twist uncomfortably as bile slid up his throat and past his clenched teeth, out his nose, burning hot and acidic.
Someone rolled him to his side, onto his back, and the world shifted all around him, colors melting against the back of his eyelids. Hands tried to pull his away from his face, but Patrick knew if he opened his eyes, he’d go blind. It was a strange thought to have, but the instinct clawed at him in a way he refused to ignore.
He thought he heard someone shout his name, but he couldn’t be sure through the tinnitus echoing in his ears, as if he stood inside a huge bell while it rung. He took a breath, tasting bile, smelling it, when it was suddenly replaced by the scent of flowers and fresh grass. The richness of spring filled his lungs, chasing away the pain and the noise that echoed through his body like a furious thunderstorm. It left him weak-limbed and heavy-headed, breathing as if he’d run a marathon.
Slim, warm fingers pulled his hands away from his face with implacable strength. “Open your eyes.”
Patrick didn’t want to, but he could never disobey the goddess who owned his soul debt.
He forced his eyes open, seeing Persephone kneeling on the floor near his head, the dark curls of her hair falling gently around her freckled face as she leaned over him. Gold-brown eyes stared down at him, seeing straight through to the soul she owned inside of him. Patrick blinked, the colored spots floating across his vision fading until all he saw was the hint of her aura like a halo around her body.
“What?” Patrick croaked out, not wanting to move for maybe a decade. He didn’t think Sage would mind if he took up space on her floor. The cleaners could work around him.
“Human ears aren’t meant to hear an angel sing,” Persephone said.
Patrick blinked slowly, wondering if he misheard her. “Angels?”
The Greek goddess and queen of the Underworld smoothed her fingers over his forehead, taking away the lethargy that had seeped into his bones. “It seems the Choirs are finally taking notice of our war. Ashanti was right to reach out to me.”
“Shiva’s going to hate them,” Patrick slurred.
“Pat,” Jono growled. “Look at me.”
Patrick’s gaze strayed slowly away from Persephone’s face to where Jono knelt by his hip, one hand gripping his knee. When Patrick finally focused on him, Jono reached over to frame his face with one warm hand. Those wolf-bright blue eyes searched his before Jono let out a heavy sigh of relief, shoulders slumping.
“Let’s get you cleaned up,” Jono said.
Patrick swallowed, tasting bile, and made a face. His skin felt weirdly sensitive, and everything sounded muffled, despite Persephone’s healing. Patrick didn’t fight Jono’s pull, letting himself be guided to a sitting position. The world tipped in a way that should’ve made his stomach churn, but it didn’t.
Jono gently guided him to his feet, and Patrick leaned heavily against him. His shirt stank of acid, but the absence of pain was a curious blank spot throughout his body. Patrick moved his head to the side, still letting Jono’s shoulder hold him up. He spied Marek lying on the floor, head pillowed in Sage’s lap, white-faced and eyes closed, with Emma and Leon kneeling next to them.
“Marek?” Patrick asked, the syllables slow to leave his tongue.
Sage carefully smoothed aside Marek’s hair, not looking up. “The Norns put him to sleep for the moment. Persephone took away his pain.”
Her voice hitched with a hint of fear Patrick rarely heard their dire express. It made him want to dig deeper into what was going on, but Jono steered him away to the guest bathroom on their level. Patrick got sat on the toilet seat, divested of his filthy shirt, and wiped down with a warm washcloth.
“Here’s his clothes,” Wade said, holding a bundle of fabric in his arms where he stood in the doorway.
