“Samhain is over. A balance is returning, and we must let it settle,” the Morrígan said.
She raised her staff toward the sky. The quartz crystal flashed like a lighthouse beacon, half blinding Jono for a second. When his vision cleared, he could only stare in disbelief at the battlefield around them.
Like a wave, the zombies fell, every soul powering the dead lifting free of their bone and rotting flesh prisons. Souls collided and twisted together in the air, becoming multiple rivers of light that flowed toward the Morrígan’s staff.
The sky beyond the buildings surrounding them grew brighter, a false dawn against the fading twilight. Streams of light flowed into the air as millions of souls throughout a veiled Manhattan answered the Morrígan’s summons. The shapeless manifestations of life lost streaked like shooting stars through the sky, with only one destination in mind—the staff.
The Morrígan stood as a silent witness to the dead she stole from the battlefield. Her staff absorbed every single soul that had given false life to the dead, the weapon growing brighter in her hand. Jono didn’t know how long it took for the Morrígan to lay the dead to rest, but it was far quicker than their efforts ever would have been.
When the last soul disappeared, the glow of the quartz crystal faded as well. The Morrígan lowered her staff, the dead cast aside, hopefully never to rise again on the streets of Manhattan.
“Now what?” Sage asked, having shifted back to human at some point as the Morrígan wielded her staff. Sage had an arm around Nadine’s waist, holding the mage up with easy strength.
The Morrígan smiled, an eerie, ancient weight to her gaze as she looked at them. “You live.”
The gods all faded from sight, letting the veil steal them away, but the fog of it didn’t linger. It recoiled away from where they stood, sliding past the buildings in front of them, wrapping around Yggdrasil and the roots of the world tree, prying it out of the here and now to some other time, some other place.
This wasn’t its world, not anymore.
The rain let up, dropping to a hazy sprinkle, as the clouds thinned out above. Sunlight touched the horizon in the east, driving back the dark, washing away the ghosts of the nightmare they’d survived.
Gerard’s voice rang through the dawn air like a clarion call. “Jono!”
He followed the sound, seeing Gerard jogging their way, Órlaith keeping pace with him on her steed.
“Communications are back up. Reed is coordinating with our forces in the other boroughs to bring them across the bridges and tunnels. We shouldn’t have any problems with the zombies, but I don’t know who else is left in the field from the other side,” Gerard said.
“Have you heard from Marek?” Sage asked sharply.
“Reed said to tell you he’s alive.” Gerard’s gaze swept the group, a frown settling on his face. “Where’s Patrick?”
“He went with Hermes,” Jono said.
The understanding in Gerard’s eyes was too close to pity for Jono to accept. He looked away, cognizant of the fact he was standing starkers in the street, but wasn’t about to go nick clothes off the dead how Wade had done.
“I want to find Marek,” Sage said.
Jono understood the quiet desperation in her voice only too well and nodded at her.
“Then we’ll do that,” Jono promised. “It’s over now.”
“No,” Gerard said quietly with a sureness that came from the long-lived. “It’s only the beginning.”
Jono tipped his head in Gerard’s direction, all his senses tuned to the absence where Patrick should be, and said nothing. The hollow ache in his chest was as much from loss as it was from the emptiness on the other side of the soulbond. He closed his eyes against it, trying to rally himself for the task ahead, choosing to believe in the promise Patrick had been telling him for months and months, as if he’d known how this would end.
I’ll come back.
Jono would hold Patrick to that vow, and he’d be waiting.
He opened his eyes and stared up Broadway, the Bifröst long since gone. But curving across the sky as the sun rose, pressed up against the last of the rain, was a rainbow spanning the width of Manhattan. It hung in the sky, as if nature herself was apologizing for what magic had wrought.
Jono let it guide him and what remained of his pack into the city they called home, stepping over bodies as they went, with the valkyries flying above to escort them Uptown.
31
“Eloise is here,”Sage said as she peered out the living room window at the street below the flat.
Jono came out of the kitchen, tea in hand, and took a sip. “She’s late.”
