Gritting his teeth, he lunged for the closest soultaker, sending his mageglobe at the other one. He dredged up his personal shield to block the whiplike tongue of the one closest to him from landing a blow. When the other soultaker ate his mageglobe, he felt the loss of magic like a skipped heartbeat in his chest.
Then his dagger found its target, burying itself in the black muscle of the soultaker’s malformed thigh. The crackle of heavenly fire incinerated the demon in seconds, and Patrick gasped for breath, twisting around and sliding his shield with him. He missed getting a soultaker’s teeth sinking into his skin by half a second, though his magic took the brunt of the demon’s hunger.
“I have one more for you!” Gerard yelled.
“Great,” Patrick muttered as he watched the soultaker on the other side of his shield bite its way through.
The drain of magic wasn’t something he could afford right then, but he was the only one with a weapon that could kill a soultaker. The exhaustion settling in his body had to be ignored for a little longer, but it made him slower than he liked.
As his shield went down, the soultaker pitched forward with a scream. Patrick jerked backward, never taking his eyes off the demon as it advanced. His hip slammed into a headstone, and Keith shouted a warning.
“Duck!” Keith yelled.
Patrick ducked, missing getting his head bitten off by a single second. His soul was a bruised mess, and the recognition of hell and black magic was everywhere in the graveyard, making it impossible to pinpoint the enemy’s position.
Facing off against a soultaker was a good way to die, and maybe Patrick’s luck would’ve run out. Except the veil was thin, and gods walked the earth once more, and Gerard never cared for letting the men under his command die.
TheGáe Bulgpierced the closest soultaker’s bulbous head, the weapon an incandescent line of light. The spearpoint protruded from the demon’s maw, its teeth trying desperately to bite it in half. It wasn’t dead, despite being on the receiving end of an attack that would kill anything else. Hell’s shock troops really were a pain in the ass to kill.
“Hurry up,” Gerard got out through clenched teeth. “Fucker is strong.”
Patrick stabbed the soultaker in the neck, wincing at the scream it let out before being abruptly cut off as its body disintegrated. The ringing in his ears didn’t go away even after its ashes got mixed into the muddy ground.
Patrick levered himself upright and tried to get eyes on the last soultaker—and went down beneath its weight. The metal-tearing screech of its voice nearly deafened him, and Patrick felt his personal shield give way beneath the demon’s teeth and never-dying hunger.
“Patrick!” Gerard yelled.
He couldn’t get leverage to twist around and stab the fucker, but Gerard solved that problem by using theGáe Bulgto batter the soultaker off Patrick. The spear was enough of a magical distraction that the soultaker followed it rather than trying to bite Patrick’s head off.
Getting an elbow underneath him, Patrick twisted onto his side and slammed the dagger into the demon’s hip. He flinched as the demon’s tongue dragged over the personal shield wrapped around his arm, its teeth snapping down around his elbow. Patrick’s shield wavered beneath its bite, but it only took seconds for the soultaker to burn to ash.
He didn’t have time to stop and breathe, not with a fight still happening around them. Gerard offered Patrick a hand up, and he took it. Staggering to his feet, Patrick turned to face where the Dominion Sect mages and hunters appeared to be on the defensive.
Walking their way came Ku, the Hawaiian god beheading a zombie with his shark-teeth-encrusted spear as he passed by a gravesite. “My Night Marchers tell me the demon summoned all the dead in Salem.”
“Of course he did,” Patrick muttered before coughing.
He scanned the cemetery turned battlefield, and his eyes widened when he saw who was running their way between a pair of Hellraisers.
“Patrick!” Madelyn called out, face white as a sheet, but the magic at her fingertips felt steady to his senses. Keeping pace beside her was Brittany.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” he exclaimed.
“Making sure the generational wards are down,” Brittany said.
Patrick conjured up a mageglobe, fighting to keep its shape intact before filling it with magic. He cast a shaky shield around their little group once his aunt and cousin made it over. “This isn’t a fight for civilians.”
“Salem is our home, and the nexus is our responsibility.”
“We brought Eloise home before coming to get you, Collins. Some of your family insisted on coming with us,” Gerard said.
Patrick glared at him. “You should’ve saidno.”
“They made a compelling argument about the spellwork.”
“Brittany and I are the next ones in line for control of the Salem Coven, and that includes the wards around the nexus. Eloise handed over the command triggers to us. Now that you’re clear of Ethan’s spellwork, we can take our family’s wards down. We had to make sure you were free first,” Madelyn said.
Gerard jerked his head in her direction. “See? Compelling argument.”
