CHAPTERTWENTY-SEVEN
Spencer woke up slowly,drifting through a cottony feeling that told him he was on some very good drugs. He cracked open one eye, peering muzzily up at a stark white ceiling, the metronome sound of a vitals monitor belting out his heart rate.
“Oh, good. You’re finally awake.”
Spencer pried his other eye open and let his head fall to the side so he could see the person who had spoken. “Mrgh.”
“Yeah, backlash sucks. Maybe next time, don’t try to bleed out on top of it.”
Patrick sat in the chair by his hospital bed, a long way from New York City, where he should have been. Spencer closed his eyes and opened them again with sideways vision to see the brightness of a magic user’s soul and the damage in the center from the soul wound Patrick had taken years ago. Twisting through it all were solid gold threads that spun out and away from him into the far distance, the soulbond pulled thin, but there.
Spencer blinked his sight back to normal and decided, nope, he wasn’t hallucinating the redhead sitting by his bedside. “Where’s your better half?”
“Holding down the fort in New York. I’m here as the SOA’s retained expert because I know more about the hells than they do.”
“What happened?” Spencer muttered around the desert in his mouth.
Patrick reached for the plastic cup on the nearby rolling tray, picked out a few ice chips with a spoon, and fed them to Spencer. “The good news is you stopped a Great Duke of Hell from getting a foothold in this world.”
“And the bad news?”
“The paperwork on that is going to last you at least a month.”
Spencer made a face, squinting up at the mostly empty bag of blood hanging from the nearby IV stand. “Transfusion?”
“Your second one. You lost a lot of blood when Takoma bit you. Wade told the SAIC here in Seattle it was the demon in control of Takoma at the time who did that before he could pry you two apart. Try to remember that for your own report.”
“Oh, fuck you.”
Patrick smirked at him, but the relief in his green eyes told Spencer just how dicey things must have been. “You’ve been out of it for over twenty-four hours. A couple of agents are on guard duty outside your room, but you aren’t under arrest or anything. The SOA is in the midst of tracking down and arresting the last few stragglers of the Cascade Coven, and the guards are just a safety precaution.”
“I’m still an agent?”
“Yeah, you still have a badge.”
The sheets over the lower half of him pulled taut as a weight landed between his legs, Fatima appearing out of thin air. She padded up the side of his bed to shove herself underneath his arm and rest her paws on his chest. Spencer petted her head, scratching between her ears. “Hey.”
She leaned into his touch with a pleased little chirp.Good. You are awake now.
Spencer smiled tiredly at her, slowly becoming aware of the absoluteachein his entire body that the drugs couldn’t quite keep at bay. His head had that stuffed-full feeling of some serious migraine meds, but despite the bruised feeling in his bones and the stretched-too-thin sensation of his magic, the worst pain radiated from the left side of his throat.
He raised a hand, settling his fingers carefully over the gauze patch taped to his skin. Even through the protective layer, the heat from the damage seeped through. “Takoma?”
“Alive, for a given definition of such, as far as I know,” Patrick said with a shrug. He leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees, peering at Spencer’s throat. “That’s going to scar. Something to do with blood magic, which we’re also blaming on this rogue coven and their pet demon.”
“Lots of lies to remember.”
“It’s either that or some very uncomfortable conversations with the director.”
Spencer dropped his hand on Fatima’s back, curling his fingers into her fur. “Lying, it is.”
“Knew you’d see it my way.”
Spencer let his eyes fall shut for a few seconds before blinking them open again. “The Ouroboros Mirror?”
“Completely destroyed, thanks to Wade. The government isn’t getting that artifact back for the Repository, but at least it’s out of everyone else’s hands.”
“Caitlin said her family created it with the help of Astaroth. They wanted to use it against Takoma.”
