Around them in the street and in the park, zombies rose and fell in a wave as Spencer’s magic and that of the Morrígan’s staff backed by Ilya’s fought for control of the dead. Hades hadn’t moved, and Patrick didn’t know how he’d get past the god to Andras.
Then Ashanti blurred to a stop beside Patrick, hands dripping blood, mouth red with it. She only had eyes for Hades, and the god’s attention shifted from Patrick to her, a stillness settling over his body.
“Still here, I see,” Hades said.
Ashanti stood as tall as her diminutive stature would let her, her godhead seeping out of her aura with far more intensity than the hellfire. Ozone hung heavy in the air, mixing with sulfur on Patrick’s tongue. When Ashanti stepped forward, her bone hooks snapped the spine of a skeleton, and she kicked it aside.
The mother of all vampires spread her arms, clothes a ruined mess, skin black like the night that hadn’t yet fallen. “I have always been here, long before you were ever prayed into existence, cousin. I, who walked this world first, chose my side. Therightside.”
“Kill them,” Andras ordered from behind Hades.
Patrick noticed how Andras’ attention was no longer on the battle but on Ashanti. The mother of all vampires had a hunger on her face when she looked at Andras that had her focusing like the predator she was. Patrick figured she wouldn’t be satiated by anything less than the Great Marquis of Hell.
“Choose. Now. Or be forgotten,” Ashanti said, her eyes on Andras, but her words were for Hades.
Hades didn’t move, not until Ashanti did, and even then, it wasn’t to fight her.
It wasn’t even to defend Andras.
The dagger that appeared in Hades’ hand and found its way to Ilya’s heart was unexpected in its violence as the Greek god found a different target. Patrick could see the way bone caved in, blood flowing from Ilya’s mouth like a waterfall. The black of his eyes became rimmed with negative light as Andras turned Ilya’s head to stare at Hades with incandescent rage, as all around them, the demons summoned from hell screamed their fury.
“Traitor,” Andras snarled, spitting blood with the word.
Hades pressed the blade deeper into Ilya’s chest, his expression almost serene in its viciousness. “Speaks the Fallen.”
Between one blink and the next, Ashanti found her way to Andras, clawed fingers digging into Ilya’s throat and peeling back layers of skin and muscle. Hades let go of the dagger while Andras tried to let go of the body the demon had inhabited. But Ashanti had her iron teeth in a vein and in the essence of the demon’s soul. That was a fight Patrick didn’t want to get in the middle of, but he had no choice.
Patrick threw himself across the hellfire, the heat almost suffocating, even through his shields. Ashanti was tangled up in Ilya’s body and Andras’ incorporeal presence, but it was the Morrígan’s staff that held all of Patrick’s attention.
Hades hadn’t reached for it, all his focus on watching Ashanti try to devour Andras. Patrick wasn’t wearing the sort of iron gauntlet Ilya had on. Neither did he have Srecha’s blessing burned into his palm. But he knew better than to touch the staff with his bare hand after what he’d gone through in Paris.
The next best thing was cutting off Ilya’s.
Patrick followed Ashanti and her prey down to the ground, dagger already cutting into the limb right above the iron gauntlet. The matte-black blade wasn’t a saw, but the prayers in its making made the edge sharper than anything had a right to be. It sliced through Ilya’s arm with sickening ease, severing it in seconds.
Blood poured out of the limb, sliding over Patrick’s hand and the hilt of the dagger. He grabbed the gauntleted wrist with his left hand and lurched away from the rapidly dying necromancer, getting to his feet. Andras was proving to be a formidable opponent even in an incorporeal form against Ashanti. Despite the way he’d fled from her in Central Park, he had no choice but to fight her now, not when she had her teeth in what passed for his soul.
Lightning exploded overhead—from Thor or Hinon, Patrick couldn’t tell. The spots that danced across his vision coalesced into something else. Flying through the ranks of demons, like black spots in an afterimage, were thousands and thousands of ravens and crows, their shriekingcawsa discordant sound to the cries of demons.
Ilya’s fingers were still wrapped around the staff; Patrick curled his own over the iron there to keep the staff in place. He was careful not to touch the notched wood, though he could sense the hunger, the near sentience, that existed in the weapon. It grated against his soul, as if it remembered him and the prayers he’d given it along with a blessing to bring Ashanti back.
But standing there at the edge of the world, Patrick didn’t have anything left to give up except the weapon in his hand. Breathing heavily, Patrick raised it over his head, the quartz crystal shining with magic, as all around him, the dead turned to look.
Patrick drew in a breath and let it out on a yell. “Morrígan! I call you to war!”
28
Jono was preparedto rip out all three of Cerberus’ throats, but he never got the chance.
Patrick’s cry reached his ears, and he backed away from the beast, wary when Cerberus didn’t immediately charge at him. The hellfire they’d escaped went out, and two of Cerberus’ heads turned toward its master. One kept its sinister red eyes locked on Jono, tail still lashing, but the beast stayed put.
Hades stood between Jono and Patrick, but the god wasn’t moving. Ashanti had Ilya’s body on the ground, her hunger a match even for the Great Marquis of Hell as they battled it out. She seemed impervious to the demons trying to dive at her, though they couldn’t seem to get close. Lightning flashed again, followed by thunder, and in that momentary illumination, Jono saw the sky full of thousands of wings that didn’t belong to demons.
Jono returned to where Patrick stood, holding the Morrígan’s staff aloft by a cut-off gauntleted hand. The weapon hummed with power, making the very air around it vibrate. Fenrir bit at Jono’s mind, the warning sharp.
War comes, Fenrir said.
With the god’s help, his vision sharpened, enabling Jono to see details in the twilight even his preternaturally enhanced sight wouldn’t be able to pick out. The ravens and crows that blotted out the sky in between demons swarmed together, coming down like the tip of a tornado seeking the earth. The wind howled all around them, the pitch of it like ghostly screams as it spun the demons away from the center of the fight.
