He watched her come, ignoring the way Jono shifted closer to him, their arms brushing. He knew Jono didn’t trust her, but Patrick couldn’t find it in himself to doubt Ashanti’s intentions.
She came to a stop in front of him, reaching out to place cold fingers against his right cheek, ignoring the rumbling growl Jono let loose. Patrick didn’t try to pull away.
Ashanti was beautiful in a monstrous way, the truth of what she was buried beneath the veneer of humanity she carried in her dark skin. She was a goddess, the first of her kind, a legend kept alive in the memory of her children and those who worshipped at her altar. She was dust between the pages of history when she wasn’t made whole by prayers whispered in the dark.
But she was here now, after years of being gone, and Patrick was glad for that, even if no one in his pack could ever understand.
“You’re not sleeping,” Ashanti said.
“He sleeps fine,” Jono growled.
“Hm.” She gently scraped her sharp nails over Patrick’s jaw to rest against his throat for a second longer, pressing against his pulse, before drawing her hand back. “Has your joint task force any word on Ethan or the Dominion Sect?”
Patrick shook his head slowly. “Nothing concrete. The general consensus is that he’ll make his move in the Northeast somewhere. Here, or another city.”
Ashanti’s gaze never wavered from his. “If that is the case, Salem is a possibility.”
Patrick tried not to react, but he couldn’t quite stop the way his entire body twitched at that city’s name. “We know. The SOA has agents on the ground there.”
He was proud that his voice didn’t crack, that his shields held against the split-second panic that punched him in the gut. But Ashanti, along with Setsuna, had been there to greet him in Washington, DC, when he left Persephone’s hands years ago. She knew the horror he’d lived through in that city. Despite the years she’d spent as dust on the wind, her gaze cut right through him, reading him as easily as a book in some ways.
“If you go to Salem, watch your back.”
“You don’t have to worry about that. I’ll be with him,” Jono said.
A couple of vampires laughed. None of them were local, which meant they might not know about Fenrir. Either his pack’s exploits hadn’t traveled far enough, or the vampires present simply didn’t believe that Jono carried an animal-god patron in his soul.
Jono ignored the laughter, and Patrick did his best to do the same. They both knew their place, knew what needed to be done before the fighting really began. It was why they were clawing at their alliances, stacking up clandestine meetings like they were going out of style, trying to bring people in now before it was too late.
How it would be too late was still unknown. Patrick just knew they couldn’t afford to be caught flat-footed. That meant making deals with the devils they knew and paying whatever price needed to be paid.
“The Sluagh ride the storm line tracking across the Eastern Seaboard right now. They don’t discriminate on who they hunt,” Patrick said.
“The fae have never been very good at keeping their own in line,” Ashanti said with a faint hint of a smile. “Brigid likes to think she is in control, as does Medb. Their squabbles are cyclical.”
“Their squabbles are snatching people off the streets.”
“Time was you humans knew to stay inside after dark.” Ashanti spun on her bone hooks, the heavy fabric of her colorful skirt swishing around her legs. “Let the ones who wish to walk in the shadows risk their lives as they like. We all must feed. That, children, is why you are here. The fight ahead will require all our efforts.”
Patrick watched how the group of master vampires, all used to being in control and in power, couldn’t meet their mother’s gaze for long. He wondered what they saw when looking at her, what the pull was like when she called them to heel, if it was anything like the soulbond that tied him and Jono together.
In the end, they were all children taken to task and made to obey.
Ashanti gestured languidly in Patrick’s direction, never taking her eyes off the master vampires surrounding her. “Keep him alive at all costs. You and all those you have sired will live if he does.”
Patrick stared at Lucien, arching an eyebrow and putting every ounce ofsuck it, assholehe could summon into his gaze. Lucien’s eyes narrowed to slits, but he didn’t move.
“None of that,” Jono said, nudging Patrick with an elbow.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Patrick retorted, blinking a few times because there was no point in trying to win a staring contest with a vampire.
“Everything’s off the table once you pay your soul debt. You’ll still need to pass through my streets,” Lucien said.
“Ourstreets,” Jono shot back.
“The alliance will hold,” Ashanti said, cutting them both off. “It will end when I say it ends.”
Patrick could only nod at that declaration. The tentative peace between the Night Courts and the werecreature community would break at some point, either when hell burned on Earth or if they survived with the heavens as the victor.
