“Mother?” Finley asked, head snapping around to stare at the imposter with wide eyes.
“I won’t ask again,” Patrick warned through clenched teeth.
The imposter smiled, the visage of his grandmother’s face melting away. Patrick never blinked, watching as the god shed Eloise’s figure for his own—tall and leanly muscled, wearing casual clothing more appropriate for a summer day than a stormy one. Eyes the color of rich earth stared at him from a sharply featured face, the smile on the god’s face more a sneer than anything else.
Patrick kept the dagger between them, ignoring the fearful shouts from the people around him. “Loki.”
The trickster god lifted a hand and lazily gestured with it. When Loki folded his fingers down toward his palm, they settled around the pole of Gungnir, Odin’s spear he’d stolen back in Chicago.
“I suppose I should thank you. You’ve saved me from having to spend another day in this stupid little town, pretending to worship my cousin,” Loki said.
Patrick tapped into a ley line through the soulbond and conjured up a mageglobe, filling it with a strike spell. It wouldn’t be enough against a god, but it might give him a second or two reprieve to dodge whatever came his way.
“What did you do with Eloise?” Patrick snarled.
Loki never stopped smiling. “That’s you asking again.”
He swung Odin’s spear down in an arc, magic crackling at the sharp tip. Patrick braced himself for the blow, the dagger taking the brunt of it in an explosion of heavenly fire, but he was still thrown backward by the force of Gungnir’s magic slamming into the combined prayers of hundreds of gods.
“Patrick!” Jono shouted.
The rest of Jono’s voice was drowned out by the storm Patrick was tossed into as he crashed through the pair of french glass doors that led to the first-level porch. He landed on his back, sliding over glass, head slamming against the wooden floorboards. Colored spots flashed over his eyes as the air was driven out of his lungs, ribs aching from the landing.
Patrick sucked in a breath through the pain and rolled to his feet, barely quick enough to get his dagger up to catch Odin’s spear on the small cross guards. He grunted at the blow, shoulders burning as he pressed his other forearm beneath his wrist to brace his position. He guided the mageglobe from the house and aimed it at Loki, but the god sent it flying over his shoulder and away from the building to explode harmlessly in the backyard.
Loki bore his impressive strength down, wielding a weapon that wasn’t his, eyes practically glowing. “Your grandmother has been our guest since you walked through these doors the other week. Blood calls to blood, and we still have yours. She never knew I wasn’t you.”
“Fuckyou,” Patrick snarled, the fear coursing through him icier than the rain that beat down on them, blown sideways by the wind.
A snarling howl rent the air like thunder as Fenrir in Jono’s wolf form lunged through the opening Patrick had made in the house. Loki’s head snapped up, expression twisting, before he yanked the spear up and vaulted over the porch railing for the ground below. Fenrir followed, passing right over Patrick in an impressive leap.
Patrick scrambled to his feet, his attention snagging on movement across the water that lapped at the property lines of Eloise’s home. The roiling mass breaking free of low-hanging clouds was a familiar sight he’d hoped to never meet again.
“Mulroney!” he shouted, throwing himself at the stairs leading to the ground. “Sluagh! I need shields around the house!”
He felt the snap of her shields reforming and expanding outward in his gut, her magic passing through him harmlessly as it encased the home in a military-grade defense. The rain cut off, leaving behind a cold that wasn’t all to do with the weather.
Patrick clamored down the stairs to the backyard, hearing Nadine’s pounding feet seconds behind him. He conjured up more mageglobes, pouring magic into their shape, laying down attack spells.
The vicious howling screams of the Sluagh echoed across the sky. Normally they’d only hunt at night, but the veil was thin, and the cloud coverage was so thick now that daylight was an afterthought.
Lightning flashed above from cloud to cloud before cutting through the air to stab at the water raging just beyond the shore. More and more bolts of lightning zapped the waves in front of the Sluagh. Thunder was a foundation-shaking noise around them, rivaling Fenrir’s snarl coming from Jono’s throat as the pair dodged Odin’s spear wielded by Loki on the muddy ground.
“Should’ve asked for a fucking carbine,” Nadine said, eyes on the sky, a mageglobe forming against one palm.
Too late to regret not having a long gun in hand. Despite the spelled bullets in their pistols, the weapons would be useless against a god and wouldn’t do much damage against a horde of the unforgiven dead. Patrick opened his mouth to speak but snapped it shut when half a dozen bolts of lightning touched Nadine’s shield, lighting up the backyard with an eerie electric glow. The smell of burning ozone drove out every other scent in the air.
Nadine swore. “Those fuckers are calling lightning to our location.”
“How long can you hold them off?” Patrick asked, attention caught between the fight on the ground and the oncoming threat.
Nadine flexed her fingers around her mageglobe, the shine in her eyes not a reflection of lightning but her magic when Patrick glanced at her. “With a god inside my defenses with us? I don’t know.”
Fenrir didn’t have Loki cornered, but he had the god distracted. Patrick could work on keeping the Sluagh at bay. “Just keep your shields up.”
A wave of lightning crackled over the shield in a wave of eye-watering electricity, the sound of thunder that followed like shells exploding in a battlefield. Patrick fought the urge to cover his ears as he lined up his mageglobes in front of him, pale blue spheres burning with attack spells.
“This fucking storm,” Nadine muttered through clenched teeth.
