Danai gave him a slight smile. “Not a ringing endorsement.”
Patrick shrugged, reaching for his seat belt to snap it into place. “I’m not the lawyer. I’ll do what you tell me to do.”
He’d learned enough from having Sage as their dire that letting the legal minds take the lead in situations like this was the only way to go sometimes.
They took Fifth Avenue, passing by a withered Central Park along the way to the US Attorney’s Office in Downtown Manhattan. Danai didn’t initiate any conversation. He wasn’t sure if that was because of the driver, or if she had all the information she needed for the upcoming meeting. Either way, Patrick was just along for the ride.
Until he wasn’t.
They put Central Park behind them in favor of the dense high-rises that made up the iron jungle of Manhattan. The light stayed green as they drove through the intersection of Fifth Avenue and Fifty-Second Street. The one-way traffic on the cross-street should have stopped.
It didn’t.
Patrick had been looking ahead for trouble when a streak of movement out of the corner of his eye caught his attention. The sound of an engine rumbled through the air, cutting through the noise of tires burning rubber against asphalt even as the recognition of hell filtered through his magic.
“Go!” Patrick snarled. He ripped his shields out from beneath his skin, casting them wide enough to cover Danai and her driver.
The driver hesitated, instincts honed for New York City traffic and not war. The hesitation lost them an easy escape.
The car on the cross-street T-boned their vehicle on the right side. Metal crunched and tore with an ear-piercing sound, the force of the crash sending their vehicle skidding across the intersection. The dark-tinted windows shattered on the right, glass clattering over Patrick’s shields. He looked out through the damaged window at the man behind the wheel of the other car, seeing a black-veined face with shadowy eyes staring back at him.
The hunter didn’t bother getting out of the car, merely pulled out a tactical pistol and started shooting. The bullets slammed against Patrick’s shields, sparks of pale blue magic flaring up at every impact point. He could feel the magic embedded in the projectiles—military-grade spells that would’ve broken through his shields if he hadn’t been trained to hold them up at a baseline defense to withstand the attack.
“What is happening?” Danai shouted, a thread of hysteria creeping into her usually calm voice.
“I think Ethan’s pissed I’m airing our family’s dirty laundry,” Patrick said.
He leaned forward far enough to yank his dagger free of its sheath, white-hot heavenly fire flickering around the matte-black blade. He sliced through his seat belt, then Danai’s, before leaning between the two front seats to free the driver. The man was white-faced with shock and still scrabbling for the door, unable to reach the handle through Patrick’s shields.
Outside on the surrounding street and sidewalks, pedestrians screamed as they ran for cover inside the surrounding luxury stores. A few were taking the risk to hunker down near those doors and windows, as well as the cars on the street that had come to a sudden stop, in order to record what was happening on their phones. Survival instincts were lacking in part of the populace, as far as Patrick could tell.
“If I get murdered in broad daylight, Jono is going to kill me,” Patrick muttered under his breath as he strengthened his shields.
The bullets had stopped, but only because the hunter was reloading. Patrick used that lull to conjure up a mageglobe, fill it with raw magic, and send it directly at the hunter. The resulting explosion engulfed the car in flames that couldn’t touch them through his shields.
“Get out of the car,” Patrick ordered.
He expanded his shields through the damaged frame of the vehicle, allowing Danai and the driver to exit on shaky legs. The driver tried to run for it and ended up slamming against Patrick’s shields with a groan.
Patrick grabbed him by the arm and turned him around. “You run now, you’re just going to die.”
“I don’t get paid for shit like this!” the man cried out.
“And the government stopped paying me to do this shit, but we’ll ignore that.”
Patrick looked back over his shoulder in time to see the explosion of negative light as the demon left its host in a swirl of incorporeal energy. The hunter himself was screaming his way out of the wrecked car, body encased in magefire.
“Oh god,” Danai said in a thready voice. “I think I’m going to be sick.”
Beyond the burning car and hunter, dark shapes blurred through the stalled cars in the street. Recognition was a punch through Patrick’s magic—werecreatures, and lots of them.
“No time for that,” Patrick told her, right as more gunfire opened up from the sidewalk, spelled bullets slamming into his shield.
He conjured up another mageglobe and tossed it at the god pack werecreatures coming their way. It exploded on the ground, rapidly expanding into another shield that curved between them through the intersection, latching onto the corners of the surrounding buildings on either side of the blocks. It wasn’t his best defense, but it would do for now.
Then he shoved the driver down Fifth Avenue, figuring Danai was the more levelheaded of the two and wouldn’t need to be led. “Run!”
“Where?” Danai asked, stumbling into a run in her high heels, tote bag slung over her shoulder. It was too hot to risk running barefoot on asphalt, so Patrick didn’t ask her to kick off her shoes.
