He raised his left hand toward Lucien’s face, canting his wrist back, the wound there splitting wider. “Take it freely.”
Lucien didn’t hesitate to grab his hand and bring Patrick’s wrist to his mouth. His fangs sank into Patrick’s vein, tearing it wider as Nadine’s shield wavered around them. Lucien could walk in sunlight the same way Ashanti could. Daywalkers had a resistance to fire other vampires didn’t. Whatever form of hellfire Ethan had hit the master vampire with, Patrick hoped his blood was enough to disrupt the lingering effects and allow Lucien’s body time to heal.
It couldn’t have been more than half a minute before Lucien took his fangs out of Patrick’s wrist. He felt light-headed in a way that would become a problem sooner rather than later, but he couldn’t worry about that now. Lucien gripped him by the collar of his jacket and hauled him to his feet. Nadine’s shield had cracks on the outer layer that no amount of patching would hold together for much longer, not with Ethan’s rage lighting up the fort around them.
“Any time now!” Spencer yelled from the center of the pentagram.
Patrick wrapped his bleeding arm around the infant and stumbled toward where Spencer knelt beside Hannah’s ravaged body. Nadine’s shield shrank around them as the attacks kept coming from Ethan and the few remaining magic users. Lucien stuck close, weapon raised, as he kept an eye on the threats outside Nadine’s shield.
Patrick crashed to his knees beside his twin, staring at Spencer across the horrible, gaping wound in her middle. Spencer was pale-faced, magic crackling at his fingertips. Fatima leaped over Hannah’s bare legs and padded to Patrick’s side. Her front paws were warm through his wet jeans when she put them on his thighs. Leaning in, she started licking at the blood and other fluid coating the baby girl’s tiny feet.
Patrick dropped his gaze to his niece, and his throat seized up when he saw her staring back at him with stormy blue eyes, the aura of a godhead settled in her skin, but draining fast. He juggled her in his arms until she was only cradled in his left despite his wound, the weight of her barely anything at all.
Then he held up the dagger, the sharp tip hovering above his niece’s heart, and looked at Spencer. “Tell me where to cut.”
Killing his father wouldn’t be enough to pay his debt. What he owed was a life for a life, and Macaria was all that Persephone had ever wanted back. But untangling a godhead couldn’t be done with mortal magic. That required a godly touch.
Spencer leaned across Hannah’s body, gaze a little distant as he reached out one hand, looking not at Patrick but at the edges of souls Patrick knew he’d always been able to see. “I’ll show you.”
Patrick didn’t fight his grip, letting Spencer guide his dagger through the air above his niece. As it moved, ragged threads of light peeled apart from the blade, the embodiment of souls unraveling after years of entrapment in a corrupt bond that should never have been made in the first place. Patrick stared down into his niece’s strange eyes and knew she’d never grow up as family.
She’d only grow up to be worshipped.
“I’m sorry, Macaria,” Patrick said around numb lips. “For everything.”
This wasn’t where she should have ended up, reborn in a stolen newborn’s body, damaged in ways that should never have happened. Macaria and Hannah deserved a life not brutalized by Ethan’s arrogance and cruelty and base desire for something that could never belong to him.
Patrick couldn’t undo the past, but he could try to build a future that wasn’t Ethan’s vision of hell. So he cut and cut andcutwith Spencer’s help, frantically slicing through metaphysical scar tissue as Ethan screamed with fury, kept at bay past Nadine’s shields by a god who knew a thing or two about endings.
“Patrick! I can’t hold it much longer!” Nadine yelled, her voice breaking from the strain of magical overload.
“Keep going,” Patrick urged Spencer.
The dagger passed over Macaria’s tiny head, a crown of light glittering softly over thin baby hair. Spencer guided the dagger closer to himself, following the connection to what was left of Hannah in a body gone cold and a mind long since lost to madness.
Nadine’s sudden warning shout was full of agony. “Patrick!”
Lucien grabbed Spencer by the back of his flak jacket and hauled him away from the blast radius, less quick than he normally would be. Patrick stayed where he was on his knees, cradling Macaria in one hand, his dagger raised in the other to ward off the oncoming attack. Ethan’s magic slammed against the golden shield of prayers that erupted from the matte-black blade, the force of the impact making Patrick’s arm go numb.
He kept his grip, though, on both Macaria and his dagger.
“This is what I was born for. Howdareyou take it from me!” Ethan spat out, eyes bright with a manic gleam.
His voice had lost the echo that spoke of power. His aura was dimmer than it had been, the torn connection curling and fading at the edges. Patrick had separated what he could of the souls from the godhead, but he knew some still remained within Ethan.
Magic still flowed into Ethan from the spellwork, coiling up his legs to wrap around his body. He’d never stop, Patrick knew. Greed was never satisfied, and Ethan wasn’t the god he’d hoped to become, but neither was he fully human, just a living mess of failed dreams that needed to die.
The dagger in Patrick’s hands burned like a star, and he could hardly see where Ethan stood through the fire of it. Around them, the Dominion Sect magic users standing on the spellwork started to come out of their trance. Some of those recognized what was happening, and the magic being channeled into Ethan grew more precise, more controlled, as they offered him their strength.
The golden shield remained where it was as Patrick moved his dagger until it pointed at the heart of Ethan’s power.
“You don’t deserve mercy,” Patrick bit out, staring into Ethan’s eyes through the brightness. “But my sister does.”
He’d never been able to reach her in Salem. He’d never been able to pull the trigger in Cairo. This time, he couldn’t afford to hesitate.
This time, Patrick went for the killing blow because it was a kindness long overdue.
He moved with a sureness that ached, aim true. When his dagger pierced Hannah’s heart, the world cracked to pieces.
