“I’m right here.”
The condescension in her tone went well with the frown on her face. Whoever was masquerading as his grandmother pulled off genteel annoyance frighteningly well.
Patrick got closer, dagger raised, heavenly fire burning along its edges. The imposter’s blue eyes flicked to the dagger for a single second, all the answer Patrick needed to know it was a god of hell standing before him, one with a penchant for shapeshifting.
He’d only had to deal with two of those in recent memory.
Patrick lunged around the corner of the table, ignoring the way Grant yelled and beat his fist against Nadine’s shield. The imposter flung themselves out of their seat with a fluidity no eighty-something-year-old woman would ever have. Patrick grabbed the chair and tossed it aside, clearing his way forward. He never took his eyes off Eloise’s figure as the imposter darted around the other end of table, so quick they were only a blur.
Nadine had segmented her shields to cover the Patterson family, and the imposter cut between them. Patrick moved so he stood opposite the enemy, shifting his weight to be ready to move in any direction.
“I see Zachary finally sent along our message,” the imposter said in a male voice laced through with amused mockery. The juxtaposition of it coming out of the shape of his grandmother’s mouth was jarring.
“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.”
“Fuck you,” 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.
“It’s reactionary,” Grant said from behind them on the stairs.
Patrick didn’t bother looking over his shoulder, gaze locked on the Sluagh, who had halved the distance between them. “No shit.”
“I can try to move the lightning away. I can’t do much about the rest of the storm though, not on my own.”
That did make Patrick finally look over his shoulder, surprised to see his uncle wasn’t the only one outside. Nearly everyone from inside was now lined up on the porch and stairs, magic at their fingertips. As much as Patrick appreciated their willingness to fight, none of them had combat training, and he couldn’t risk a multitude of spells going off all at once.
“Collins,” Nadine snapped.
Patrick pointed at Grant. “Weather magic only. If you can’t push the lightning away, then don’t drain yourself trying. The rest of you? Keep your shields up, and don’t cast a single fucking spell.”
“But—” Brittany protested.
Patrick cut her off. “None of you are trained for this, so stand the fuck down and don’t get in the way.”
Nadine never took her eyes off the threats in front of them. “Collins.”
Patrick faced forward again, command triggers tumbling through his mind as he cast his multitude of mageglobes toward the water. “Make me a hole, Mulroney.”
They’d done this many times before when they’d been on the same front lines, the same base, or when she was requisitioned for a mission with the Hellraisers. Twelve mageglobes streaked through her shields, followed by twelve more, filled with strike spells and shockwave spells.
The shrieking mass of the unforgiven dead that filled the ranks of the Sluagh scattered around his attack, but mageglobes weren’t bullets bound by a single trajectory. Patrick changed their course, chasing after clusters within the Sluagh before exploding in close proximity.
His magic erupted like fireworks, tearing through the air. Patrick couldn’t kill the dead; he could only hold them back. Right now, holding the line was all they could do while Fenrir and Jono kept Loki occupied so the trickster god didn’t damage Nadine’s shields.
Patrick and Nadine worked in concert, striving to keep the Sluagh at bay while the storm churned above them. No more lightning rained down on them, the lack attributed to his uncle’s magic. The change in air pressure and buzz of elemental magic scraped against his personal shields, but not in a bad way.
They could’ve maybe held the line against the Sluagh if Loki hadn’t landed a lucky strike along Jono’s right flank. The snarling howl that Fenrir let loose was drowned out by the explosion of magic that erupted from Gungnir’s spear tip. Loki spun the spear in a vicious arc that sent ancient magic crashing into Nadine’s shield.
Nadine could hold her shields against most human-made weapons—magical or otherwise—but a god’s weapon was something else entirely. Nadine crashed to her knees with a ragged scream, mageglobe splitting down the center and fading to nothing, the same way her shield did around them. The howling wind grew louder, bringing with it stinging cold rain that crashed against Patrick’s personal shield that he raised over himself and Nadine.
“Mulroney!” Patrick shouted, leveling a multitude of shockwave spells at the Sluagh to buy them some time.
She didn’t respond in words but in actions. Another mageglobe flared to life in front of her face—jagged and misshapen, but whole enough to do the job. Nadine was a combat mage like he’d been, and she knew she couldn’t quit unless she was buried six feet under.
Her shield started to piece itself back together, but some of the Sluagh got past her defenses. Patrick threw bursts of raw magic at them, drawing from the ley line to sustain the attack.
On the ground, Fenrir threw himself at Loki, who dodged easily enough, holding Gungnir between them in a threatening manner. The god pushed Fenrir back with another complicated spin of the spear before shifting his attention.
“You want your grandmother back?” Loki called out, voice nearly drowned out by the rumble of thunder and the shrieks of the Sluagh vying for prey. “Bring us the missing piece of the Morrígan’s staff. That is our price.”
It was a bitter payment because one life couldn’t be worth the world, but Patrick knew he had no choice but to make it. That was a truth Patrick had run from for years, mistakenly believing he could save his twin sister when there was no saving someone who was already dead in most people’s memory and where it mattered most—her soul.
Patrick conjured up a fusillade spell, ready to deploy it, when the ear-piercing war cries of a thousand voices rang through the air. Patrick held his spell while Nadine retracted her shield to shrink around them in a closer radius, leaving Fenrir in Jono’s body outside the defensive perimeter.
“Jono!” Patrick shouted.
The Sluagh were regrouping in the lull of no magical bombs going off, but instead of diving after Jono, they flew up.
Up to meet the Wild Hunt, led by Gwyn ap Nudd.
They came through the veil, an unearthly force that would not be denied their prey. The Sluagh screamed a challenge, one the Wild Hunt refused to let pass as the new arrivals approached with weapons held aloft and a war cry on their ghostly lips. When they crashed together in the sky, the air itself vibrated, lighting up the clouds with fae magic.
Patrick held on to his fusillade spell, command trigger at the ready, but didn’t let it loose now that the Sluagh were targeting someone else. Loki seemed to think the odds of two gods against one weren’t in his favor, and the trickster slipped through the veil before Fenrir could sink his teeth in the bastard.
Patrick spared Nadine a glance, who gave him a grim nod, blood trickling out of her nose, a sure physical sign of magical backlash.
“I’ll keep them safe. Go to Jono,” she said.
Nadine created a hole in her shield just wide enough for him to cross through, her magic sealing shut behind him once he passed. The wind and rain slammed into him again, the gale force nearly driving him back a step. Patrick ducked his head and ran to where Jono crouched near the shore at the far end of the unfenced yard.
Jono was in the midst of shifting to heal the wound Gungnir had inflicted on him, blood washing away beneath the pouring rain when Patrick reached him. The wound was still raw-looking in human form, bleeding sluggishly along his thigh.
“Need to shift again,” Jono got out through gritted teeth.
Patrick knelt beside him, keeping an eye on the fight above. “Do it. I’m not going anywhere.”
Jono was halfway through the shift back to wolf, more a mass of fur and skin twisting over breaking bone, when a handful of screaming Sluagh came rushing over the water toward them. Patrick stood, threw his mageglobe at the unforgiven dead, and released the fusillade spell.
The mageglobe acted as an anchor for the spell, the sustained attack forcing the Sluagh back. They scattered with inhuman shrieks, the ugly, ghostly creatures all teeth and claws as they tried to come back around. Patrick fed the spell magic, the soulbond pulled tight between him and Jono, the never-ending flashes from his mageglobe like a mini supernova burning over the water.
The Sluagh screamed their aggravation, circling around them like vultures, with more dropping from above to join the fight. The Wild Hunt shifted positions to hold the stragglers back, but one spirit got through, screeching as it targeted Patrick and Jono.
Not willing to let anyone be carried off and killed, Patrick raised his dagger, the heavenly white fire burning like a beacon around it. The Sluagh never changed trajectory, and Patrick layered his shield around them both even as he thrust his dagger through his defenses. The blade found a home in the incorporeal form of the Sluagh.
The spirit couldn’t die, but the prayers in the dagger could harm anything, no matter their state. It howled in agony as the magic in the dagger ripped it apart, burning the spirit down to nothing. Unlike with a soultaker, not even ash remained at the end, just the afterimage of its shape floating across Patrick’s vision.
When his vision cleared, Patrick saw the Wild Hunt chasing the Sluagh into the storm clouds, lightning leading the way.
15
“Bloody fucking gods,” Jono hissed out.
Patrick turned his back on the horizon, drawing down his magic. The fusillade spell cut off, the roar in the air that of the wind and not a battle. He let go of the soulbond, even if he didn’t lower his shields. Jono was back to human, Fenrir having helped speed up the shifts. The wound on his thigh was closed, but the bruised line marring his skin showed he wasn’t completely healed.
“Are you all right?” Patrick asked, offering him a hand up, ignoring the mud they were both caked in.
“I’ll be fine. Healing is happening, just slow because of
that sodding spear.”
Jono staggered to his feet, and Patrick checked him over for any other wounds. “You need clothes.”
“I have some in the Mustang’s boot.”
Patrick nodded. “We’ll—”
A shadow drifted over them, growing larger by the second. Patrick’s head snapped up, squinting against the rain pounding against his shield and blurring out the world. He didn’t loosen his grip on his dagger, even when he figured out who it was coming their way. The ghostly horse and its rider descending weren’t the enemy, but Patrick would never consider the god a friend.
The specter’s hooves touched the ground nearby, half the horse’s head more bone than rotten flesh in appearance. The empty eye sockets made for a strange gaze, but it paled in comparison to Gwyn ap Nudd’s attention.
The Welsh god urged his steed closer, his black eyes shot through with molten gold staring at them through the metal-and-leather helmet he wore. He carried a spear in his right hand, the metal at the point burning red orange, as if newly made.
“We’ve been chasing the Sluagh since they fled the Otherworld and made it past the veil,” Gwyn ap Nudd said.
“Did Medb send them?” Patrick asked.
“There is no whip that drives them this time, merely opportunity.”
“That’s just fucking great.”
Gwyn ap Nudd frowned, never blinking. “I was not aware you held a piece of the Morrígan’s staff.”
“No one ever asked.” Patrick turned his back on the god to check on everyone behind them, seeing Nadine was back on her feet. “I’m not giving it to you.”
“You cannot give it to Ethan or the gods of hell. It belongs to the Morrígan.”
Patrick clenched his teeth, not in the mood to listen to what gods had to say. “I’m well fucking aware of what’s at stake if I give the damn thing away.”
“As are we all. That is why I am here.”
Patrick looked back at the god, blinking against the bright shine of his cracked-open aura. Everything smelled too sharp in his nose right now after all the lightning strikes. “Not just to save our asses, I take it?”
A Veiled & Hallowed Eve Page 15
