Ginnungagap wasa void in the gloam surrounding them, swallowing up the spellwork Ethan’s side had cast. Under any other circumstance, Patrick knew Ginnungagap would be able to undo the magic, but this was a new god’s beginning. This was what the yawning abyss existed for—creation.
This was a story that had to be told.
“It cannot hold back the inevitable forever,” Fenrir said, eyes burning white in Jono’s wolf body.
Ashanti appeared on the other side of Fenrir, a hunger on her face as she looked at Andras in Ilya’s body. “Nothing in all the worlds is inevitable.”
“The Fates say otherwise,” Patrick said.
“I taught you better than to believe in their idea of absolutes.”
The crash of magic against Nadine’s shield was like grenades going off. The attack spells were aimed from Dominion Sect magic users, but the electric bite to the air spoke of something stronger being prepped for an attack. Nadine couldn’t shield them against gods, and he’d never ask her to do that.
“Adjust your main shield for a charge, then drop it when we meet the enemy, Mulroney,” Patrick said.
Nadine nodded silently, staring straight ahead. Down the line, Gerard spun theGáe Bulgin both hands, angled for an attack as vampires flung themselves forward to fill in gaps between werecreatures. Sage shouldered her way toward them to plant herself on Patrick’s other side.
Outside of the shield, Hinon took the sky to join the valkyries, his flight guarded by Wade, who burned to nothing a couple of spells aimed at the god. Patrick looked up at Wade through the glitter of Nadine’s magic.
“Stick to the outer edges of the fight. Don’t spit fire on any friendlies,” Patrick yelled at him.
Wade huffed out a puff of smoke in acknowledgment. This was as close quarters as things got, and they all had to be aware of that.
Gerard caught Patrick’s eye. “Ready?”
Patrick looked down the line on either side of him, letting his attention linger on Spencer, who was wedged protectively between his vampire guards. “Ready, Dead Boy?”
Spencer raised his hands, mageglobes flaring to life against his palms. “I got nothing better to do, Razzle Dazzle.”
“Then it’s go time.”
Nadine’s shield shrank down and folded outward, shoving back the zombies and demons that had already surged past Loki and Ares. Everyone on their side followed the push of her magic. Patrick tightened his grip on his dagger and let go of Jono, racing forward with his pack by his side and the gods at his back. Spencer peeled away, Fatima racing ahead, the green of his magic already dancing over zombies as he broke souls free to put the dead to rest.
Nadine’s shield was more malleable for a charge, keeping bullets out long enough for both sides to come together in a clash of bodies and magic and not a few blades. Patrick was eye to eye with a demon when Nadine’s shield abruptly disappeared, and everything went to hell.
Patrick had his dagger at the ready and slammed it into the demon’s chest. Claws sliced against his personal shield as the demon screeched in agony. Heavenly fired danced across the matte-black blade of his dagger, burning the demon to ash. Patrick yanked it out and flipped it around for a different grip, making it easier for him to stab a zombie in the head. Something glinted out of the corner of his eye, and Patrick ducked, missing getting his head taken off by a machete-wielding hunter by millimeters.
He threw a mageglobe filled with raw magic directly at the man’s face. The explosion was small in terms of size but still devastating. Patrick’s personal shields kept him from feeling the heat, but his magic blew off the man’s face nearly to the back of his skull. As the body fell to the ground, black smoke filtered out of the skin instead of a flash of negative light, the demon dying with its host.
Sage put herself between Patrick and a drekavac, savaging the fast-moving zombie with her powerful jaws. The second she brought one down, another took its place. Fenrir had taken Jono off to some other area of the fight, leaving Nadine to watch his six. Close quarters wasn’t his specialty, and it’d been years since Patrick had needed to fight like this, but he fell into a natural rhythm with Nadine that had them carving a bloody path forward step by brutal step.
Their side was effectively surrounded, with a never-ending wave of zombies and demons pressing against their front line. Patrick knew they couldn’t hold the line for long; it was suicidal to try. Which meant they had to take out the source.
“Anyone got eyes on Andras?” Patrick shouted over the noise of the fight.
He rammed his elbow into a hunter’s throat and gutted her with his dagger. She grappled at him until her last breath, black smoke escaping her mouth as the demon burned inside her fading soul.
“No,” Nadine grunted as she closed her fist over a mageglobe.
The shield she’d encased three hunters in shrank in seconds, crushing the victims as if an entire building had fallen on them. She withdrew her magic, and when Patrick followed after her, his feet slid through the remains of the hunters. The pieces of their bodies were too small to come together and rise again, but all the rest were fair game save those killed by way of Patrick’s dagger.
Wade spat dragon fire on the zombies rising behind them, trying to keep watch on their six. Dominion Sect spells were targeting him more and more though, and Patrick had half a mind to send Wade airborne to get him out of their reach. The teen was too hemmed in by buildings to maneuver easily, and sending flame down on the fight indiscriminately wasn’t an option.
But the dead and demons kept coming, and they weren’t any closer to crossing the intersection than they had been at the beginning of this fight. The burn in his soul was from overuse of magic, even with having the soulbond channeling most of it from the ley line through Jono. The stretched-out twilight of time had exhausted them all, and it wasn’t helping their side.
Which was probably what Ethan had been counting on all along. This was a war of attrition on steroids, but Patrick wasn’t willing to die on his knees.
“Someone get eyes on Andras!” Patrick yelled.
