“Didn’t take you long to get here.”
Spencer shook his head. “Órlaith came on Monday. We traveled through the veil to get here, and we lost time. What I’m trying to say is the fight this time is going to be worse than Cairo. The damage to the veil is worse. More threats are coming across. I don’t know if defending one location would be better or worse than staying on the move.”
“A sitting target is still a dead target eventually,” Jono said.
“You risk Cú Chulainn being unable to return with Patrick,” Ashanti warned from her crouched position on a damaged car roof.
Jono scowled at her. “You lot soulbound Patrick and I together. He’ll be able to find me, or I’ll find him, when he gets back to New York.”
“Are you certain of that when we stand within the veil’s boundaries?”
He wasn’t, but Jono was sure of Patrick’s promise to come back to him. Whether guided by Gerard or the soulbond, Patrick would find his way to them.
“Have a little faith in the bloke who’s cleaning up your messes.” Jono looked back at the werecreatures ranged around him, staring at him with steady gazes, at the fae warriors on steeds who hadn’t set foot on this earth in countless generations. “We’ll leave your barrier up for as long as possible as a distraction while we head downtown.”
“The fae are already gathering for an attack. I can sense their presence beyond the barrier,” Órlaith said.
“They are not the only things coming this way,” the Cailleach Bheur said.
“We won’t be here when they arrive. We’ll take Park Avenue south for as long as possible,” Jono said.
He turned around and started down the street, intent on putting distance between his group and what clawed at the other side of the barrier behind him. Emma’s pack followed him, walking between vehicles and shoving them aside to provide room for Órlaith and her group’s steeds to walk through.
Nadine and Spencer dodged around iced-over cars to join him on the sidewalk, Fatima trotting at Spencer’s heels. She let out a trill, causing Spencer to glance down at her.
“She wants to know where Wade is,” Spencer said.
Jono’s shoulders tightened. “With Sage at Bellevue. Hopefully safe.”
“Bellevue?”
“She was gutted by a hunter’s poisoned blade. She couldn’t shift. She was in hospital when the veil tore.”
Spencer looked stricken, pausing long enough to pick up Fatima and cradle the psychopomp in his arms. “Fuck. What about Patrick?”
“Being his usual self-sacrificing, idiotic self,” Nadine muttered.
Spencer winced, giving Jono a sympathetic look. “Oh, that’s never good.”
“He’s coming back,” Jono said, lengthening his stride.
Spencer nodded absent agreement, half his attention on Fatima as they walked. “She says there are more dead in this direction than at Central Park.”
Jono nodded and stopped long enough to shift back to wolf, body breaking and ripping to a different form. When he stood on four legs once again, Jono shook his head to settle his vision before leading the way to their next fight.
21
The grave was fillingwith water.
Patrick blinked slowly up at the stormy sky he could see far above where he lay at the bottom of the six-foot-deep grave, mind disconnected from a body he couldn’t move. There was no coffin beneath him, just cold mud soaking all the warmth out of him. He blinked again, lips pressed stubbornly shut against the rain, wondering if he’d burn up from the spell first or drown.
Zachary’s spellwork was extensive, the pentagram folded down into the grave with Patrick lying on its center. The ugly shade of his magic burned brighter than the lightning that Patrick could occasionally see flash across the sky. It wrapped around his body, cut through his skin to settle like poison in the burned remnants of the shield anchors carved into his bones.
He could feel the flow of magic draining out of the nexus below, flowing through a carved-out hole in the defenses his soul was helping to keep open. The tiny, lingering thread that tied him to his twin sister—what he’d felt back in Chicago and subsequently buried—had been forced wide open like an old broken dam.
He could sense through it the overload in Hannah’s soul, the way it flowed into her and through her to Ethan, the way it always must have. Patrick thought the burned-out channels in his damaged soul ached, but his pain was nothing compared to the raw agony that existed in the remnants of Hannah’s soul.
Being the center of the spellwork holding open a back door to the nexus meant his own soul was overloaded by Zachary’s magic, forcing his heart out of rhythm from time to time with every spike of power. If this was what Eloise had been put through since being captured, it was a wonder she was even alive. She wasn’t a mage, just blood kin recognized by the generational wards around the nexus, and really, that was all Ethan had ever needed for Zachary to work with.
