“Wait,” Jono called out.
Nadine paused in the doorway, looking back over her shoulder. Jono approached her and dug out the last Greek coin he’d left the flat with, the weight of it eerily heavy in his hand. He held it out to her, and the recognition in her eyes was tinged with surprise.
“I thought we used them all up last year?” she asked.
“Hermes left one with Patrick when he was in hospital. I didn’t want to leave it behind in case we could use it, but I can’t carry it with me when I shift.”
Nadine took the coin and placed it in a secured pouch on her belt. “I’ll keep it safe.”
Jono nodded. “I know you will.”
She was Patrick’s best friend, and he’d seen the shields she could hold back in Paris. Jono looked over his shoulder at everyone who remained. “Let’s go hold our territory.”
Nadine took the lead downstairs, mageglobes forming around her as she went. Members of Emma’s Tempest pack who hadn’t been upstairs joined them on the way down or were already waiting for them on the ground floor.
Ashanti peered through the side window by the door and let out a pleased hum. “It seems your request has already been granted, wolf.”
Jono came up behind her, squinting through the glass at the fog drifting through the street, the rain unable to dissipate it. His eyes widened at the sight that met him. “Nadine.”
“I see her,” she said, opening up the front door.
They stepped outside into the roar of a reactionary storm not even the veil could swallow whole. The wind and rain drenched Jono in seconds as they exited the building. Nadine hadn’t bothered with a personal shield to keep the rain out, conserving her energy. She didn’t immediately raise a larger one.
On the street, unbothered by the pouring rain, the Cailleach Bheur offered them a toothy smile, her single stormy eye unblinking in her forehead. “Medb has opened the hawthorn paths and the crossroads they cradle to all and sundry. Tír na nÓg is falling into Earth. The rest of Underhill will soon follow.”
“It won’t be the only world to do so,” Ashanti said from behind Jono.
Jono scowled. “Then we push it back. It had its time here. All your heavens and hells did. This world is ours now.”
The Cailleach Bheur rapped her staff against the pavement, ice expanding around where she stood. “Ethan would make it his.”
“It doesn’t belong to that bastard either.”
Shadows skittered through the fog along Fifth Avenue off to their left. Jono kept walking until he made it to the street where the Cailleach Bheur stood in a blanket of winter cold, attention on the threat coming their way. Emma and her pack spread out around him, some of them already shifting.
“We need to keep them here so they don’t go after Gerard in the veil. Let’s give them a fight,” Jono said.
The Cailleach Bheur turned to face the darkness of Central Park, the gray cloak she wore shifting around her naked body. She raised her staff high above her head before slamming it onto the ground. Thecrackthat echoed in the air from the impact set Jono’s teeth on edge, but it drew the attention of the creatures creeping through the fog.
The spine-chilling cries that cut through the air weren’t human at all.
The Cailleach Bheur pointed her staff in the direction of Central Park, letting winter loose. Ice exploded forward to cover the cars parked on the street and those left by the wayside after the electrical grid had died. It flowed like a tsunami from the Cailleach Bheur’s staff, crashing into the first group of spider-looking fae crawling toward them, freezing them where they stood. Their brethren not immediately affected crashed right through the ice statues, shattering them to pieces.
“Resetting my barrier ward to expand. I’ll be your rearguard,” Nadine called out.
Glittering violet-colored magic peeled away from Sage’s and Marek’s home, expanding outward. It burned brighter than usual against the grayness that had taken over the world, like a beacon the enemy couldn’t resist being drawn to.
Jono narrowed his eyes at the sound that reached his ears—the movement of hundreds of bodies in a tight space coming up behind the fae. Beneath the scent of winter, Jono could smell the dead.
The fog shifted, twisting around shadows that became an ugly mass of bones. The remnants of those who once resided beneath Paris slipped free of the veil, backed by fae from the Unseelie Court climbing out of the hawthorn path in Central Park.
“Keep them off our streets,” Jono called out before he started to shift.
The breaking of his body came easily to him, nerves switching off his ability to feel pain as the world shifted around him. Skin split, muscle tore, and bones twisted into new positions. The shift from human to wolf took less than a minute, but that was more than enough time for the zombies to halve the distance between them.
Ashanti landed in a crouch beside him when he finally stood on four feet instead of two. She smiled at him, the excitement in her scent that of a predator ready for the kill.
“It has been an age since we have hunted like this. Shall we, wolf?” Ashanti asked.
