A Veiled & Hallowed Eve

by Hailey Turner

  She pressed her heels against her pegasus’ ribs, urging him into the sky. He vaulted into the air, wings flapping, and they flew through the rain to lead the charge against the Sluagh. Thor didn’t watch her go, hefting Mjölnir around to call forth lightning and send a bolt into the horde of zombies coming their way on the viaduct from Grand Central Station.

  “What is the plan?” Thor asked.

  “We walk amongst Ethan’s altar. We must find his sacrificial circle and destroy it,” Ashanti said.

  “Don’t destroy the city. We live here,” Wade protested.

  “It won’t matter if we do not win.”

  Fenrir growled agreement while Jono stared at where Sage was getting to her feet with an ease she hadn’t had before. The sickly paleness of her face was receding, and the pain that had saturated her scent was rapidly fading.

  Eir stood, glancing over her shoulder at Jono, the cat-eye makeup she wore staying put despite the storm. “I removed the spell prohibiting your dire from shifting.”

  “Thank you,” Marek said fervently, relief thick in his voice.

  Sage kept a hand on Marek, meeting Jono’s gaze. “He’s coming with us.”

  Jono wasn’t going to fight her on that request. There wasn’t anywhere safe in Manhattan right now. Marek’s status as a seer was something they couldn’t afford the other side to claim.

  An explosion sounded so close Jono’s ears rang like a bell had been struck right beside him. The Park Avenue Viaduct shook in a dangerous way, all the warning they got before it started to collapse underneath them. The shattering of asphalt, cement, and rebar rolled like a wave through where they stood.

  “Get clear!” Thor yelled, his voice booming like thunder through the air.

  Eir vaulted onto her pegasus, and Wade scrambled up behind her. Sage shoved Marek into Hinon’s arms before racing with preternatural speed toward the teetering edge of the viaduct. Fenrir reacted before Jono could, vaulting onto a car and using it to propel himself off the viaduct for the ground below.

  Leon landed a mere second after he did. Jono forced Fenrir to stay still long enough for Sage to get a good hold of his scruff before they ran from the collapsing viaduct. The ground shuddered beneath them from the impact, dust rising into the air despite the rain. He didn’t know if the cause of the collapse was their side or the Dominion Sect’s.

  They ended up by an abandoned barricade. It provided enough momentary shelter for Sage to shift without risk of getting shot at. Jono and Leon guarded her position while Hinon and Eir flew toward them with their charges.

  A mageglobe streaked through the air, causing Eir to veer sharply upward, the pegasus’ wings flapping hard to escape the attack. Wade’s startled yell was met with Sage’s weretiger roar, different from the howls of wolves.

  “War arrives,” Thor said, staring south down the street.

  Jono stared at the shifting fog and the figures marching through it—more hunters, along with Dominion Sect magic users led by a god carrying a short sword and round shield, a golden helm on his head. The rest of his clothes were modern tactical gear, though he carried no guns.

  “Cousins,” the new god said.

  “Ares,” Hinon said as he deposited Marek behind the barricade. “I’d heard you’d left your spine in DC.”

  Ares scraped the edge of his sword against his shield, creating a line of fiery sparks that scattered before him as the Greek god of war marched forward. “Rumors of my death have always been false. I have never been forgotten.”

  “A pity,” Thor rumbled.

  Eir swooped low, using her spear to knock aside another mageglobe. They escaped the edge of the magical explosion, and Wade flung himself off the pegasus’ back and to the ground beside Jono. Eir rose into the air, leaving for the battle in the sky above.

  Sage wedged herself between Jono and Leon, her weretiger form a welcome presence. She snarled a warning, the sound causing Ares to laugh.

  “You chose the wrong side in this fight,” Ares said.

  “You’re one to talk, asshole,” an achingly familiar voice called out.

  Jono’s entire body jerked, the soulbond snapping tight in his chest from close proximity after so long being still and quiet. He turned his head, following the tug on the soulbond the way a compass always pointed north.

  Stepping through the veil amidst the rubble of the Park Avenue Viaduct came Patrick, backed by Gerard and the Hellraisers, Kū, and the Night Marchers. He was covered in mud, but he was here and alive, and Jono howled a welcome that echoed like a warning to the other side on the storm-driven winds.

  24

  When they pushed through the veil onto a rubble-strewn Manhattan street, Patrick only had eyes for Jono and his pack. The sight of Sage in her weretiger form standing beside Jono and Wade soothed the quiet terror living in the back of his mind since he’d met Ashanti on the Brooklyn Bridge. In its place was a fierce pride for the people he considered family, tempered by a violent spike of hate for the enemy they faced off against.

  “Ares,” Gerard cried out as he slammed the butt of the Gáe Bulg against the ground. “You want to be gutted again that badly?”

  Ares came to a hard halt in the street as Patrick and his group closed the distance between themselves and where Jono and the others stood. Thor raised Mjölnir in a welcoming manner at them, lightning crackling along all sides of the hammer.

  “Cú Chulainn,” Ares snarled with a hint of wariness in his voice. “Come to die?”

  Gerard smiled with a sort of manic, murderous look in his silver eyes. “I think not.”

  “We fight for our memories, and you will be lost to time,” Thor warned Ares before swinging his arm forward. Lightning erupted from Mjölnir, aimed at the enemy.

  Patrick sank his awareness into the soulbond, the connection soothing his frayed nerves. He sent his awareness down below to the ley lines, not even trying for the barricaded nexus. The rivers of external power were choppy to the touch, reacting to the battle within the veil. Patrick still drew on one to power his magic as he ran to Jono’s side. He conjured a mageglobe as he raised a shield against the spelled bullets aimed their way.

  Wade intercepted him long enough to hug Patrick so hard his spine cracked when he was lifted off his feet. “Am I glad to see you!”

  Patrick hastily patted Wade on the shoulder, eyes still on Jono. “Me too. Feel free to set fire to anything you want.”

  “I plan on it.”

  Wade let Patrick go, and it was only two strides more before he could sink both hands into Jono’s scruff and press his forehead between Jono’s ears, breathing in the scent of him after too long apart. Jono leaned hard against him, causing Patrick’s feet to skid over the cracked ground.

  “I came back,” Patrick said, the words drowned out by gunfire.

  Jono shoved his nose against Patrick’s throat, licking at him. Patrick patted him on the head before straightening up and taking in the situation on the ground. The Dominion Sect and hunters had scattered for cover, while Ares held his ground against the advancing gods. Patrick hoped the god’s hubris left him bleeding out on the street badly enough not even prayers could save him.

  “I am pleased to see you’ve returned,” Ashanti said from behind him.

  Patrick looked over his shoulder at where the mother of all vampires crouched on a wrecked car, Marek’s head peeking over the roof from behind it. She looked monstrous in the dim twilight, but Patrick was incredibly glad to see her.

  “We cut Ethan off from the Salem nexus. He won’t be able to power his spell with external magic,” Patrick said.

  “He is still casting it. You must bleed so we can find him through your twin.”

  “Not here in the middle of the street,” Keith said as he planted himself beside Patrick to watch his six.

  Ashanti blinked slowly, her eyes difficult to make out in the shadows. “The Morgan Library. We will do the blood rite there. We can no longer afford to keep running blind.”

  Jono
growled his displeasure, but Patrick merely gave his fur a firm tug. They’d already argued over this, and Patrick had won. “Then let’s get everyone and move out. Where’s Mulroney?”

  “With the soulbreaker.”

  Keith let out a distracted, happy sound as he took potshots at zombies. “Dead Boy is in the field? I’d say great, but why are there so many zombies?”

  “They’re leftover from Paris,” Patrick said, pouring more magic into his shields that covered them.

  “That’s—” Keith broke off with a curse as his rifle clicked empty and he had to reload. “—a lot of zombies.”

  “We need to take back the Morrígan’s staff to get rid of them, but Andras has taken over Ilya.”

  Wade’s eyes got huge in his face. “Oh, that rat bastard. I’m going to eat him.”

  Patrick opened his mouth to tell Wade no but then thought better of it. “Go for it. Just don’t complain about the taste afterward.”

  Thunder crashed so loudly Patrick instinctively ducked his head. He stared at where Thor and Gerard had Ares pinned between them. The three gods fought each other amidst the rubble of the Park Avenue Viaduct with a viciousness that would’ve been deadly for a mortal.

  “Radios don’t work, so I don’t know how you want to spread the word to move out,” Keith said, weapon locked and loaded once more.

  “My children will gather those who need to come with us,” Ashanti said before flinging herself back into the fray.

  “That’s great, but where the fuck is this library?”

  “About five blocks away,” Wade said with the sureness of someone who’d been there before.

  Patrick shot him a look. “Wade.”

  “What? You can’t prove anything is missing from their collections.”

  “I’m sure we could if we checked your apartment.”

  Wade belched out a stream of fire at a drekavac crawling across the façade of the building they were backed up against, burning it to crispy bits of bone and ash. “Not if I clean it first.”

  Patrick decided the best way to win that argument was to fight zombies.

  It was easier.

  He conjured up some more mageglobes, filling them with strike spells, and sent them careening at the Dominion Sect magic users hunkered down behind concrete rubble and cars. Some of them had shields up, but a couple were in the midst of moving and got caught in the blast radius of Patrick’s combat spells.

  Even coming late to the fight, Patrick knew the area around Grand Central Station was a lost cause at this point. The soldiers and police he’d spotted upon arrival were pulling back, giving up ground. The mess of rubble they’d come out on top of and the pile behind them now surrounding Grand Central Station indicated a salt-and-burn type of approach he remembered from Cairo.

  Leave the enemy nothing.

  Ethan already wanted to rip the world apart, and here inside the veil, this was where Patrick’s side tore it up first. It was a lesson learned late during the Thirty-Day War, but they’d learned it.

  “Let’s go,” Patrick said, calling up more of his magic, powering it through the soulbond. “We have a wannabe god to kill.”

  They pushed forward with the help of the Night Marchers, the ghostly warriors going after the hunters and the demons riding their souls. Kū let out a furious war cry as he took aim at a particular group of Dominion Sect magic users working together on what Patrick thought was an earth-based spell. The last thing they needed was an earthquake.

  Jono never left his side, and Patrick was grateful for that down to his bones. Not knowing the status of his pack while he’d been trapped on the sacrificial spell in Salem had been a horror he never wanted to go through again.

  Sage and Leon guarded Marek while the Hellraisers ranged around them, picking off targets with spelled bullets. The screaming cries of the Sluagh and the crackling snap of lightning above was a continuous sound that became background noise as they fought their way down Park Avenue.

  Nadine arrived at some point, watched over by Einar and Irena as Lucien and Carmen gave orders to what remained of their Night Court. She took over shielding their group from Patrick, who was more than happy to hand off that task. She knocked a fist against his shoulder as she came up to his position, attention on the street ahead.

  “Glad to have you back,” Nadine said.

  Patrick aimed another mageglobe at an embedded group of hunters behind a cluster of abandoned cars at the intersection ahead. “Could’ve done without the world ending.”

  “You and me both.”

  Staggering through the fog behind the hunters came a horde of zombies. Patrick conjured up a couple of mageglobes and filled them with a strike spell. Before he could throw them at the hunters and zombies, a black-and-tawny blur streaked past them, slipping through Nadine’s shields as if they didn’t exist.

  Fatima let out a yowl that made Patrick wince, though it only served to make Wade twist around to face her direction with a quick smile. “Fatima!”

  The sound of someone landing heavily from a great height came from behind them. Patrick looked over his shoulder in time to see Spencer scramble out of Takoma’s hold to get both feet on the ground. Past Spencer, Patrick could see Emma skidding to a stop beside Leon, bumping noses in a quick greeting.

  “Oh, good. Gerard managed to save your ass,” Spencer said, a mageglobe already in hand.

  “Did you doubt him?” Patrick asked.

  “Never.”

  “What happened back there?”

  “Reed blew a bunch of bombs to bring down the Park Avenue Viaduct. The zombies will have to scatter now. Peklabog and Baba Yaga are feeding on the rest to give Reed’s forces time to get clear and make it to new positions.” Spencer blinked rapidly beneath his hard helmet, his gaze a little distant. “Maybe we should ask them to come up here and take point.”

  Patrick faced forward again, watching as Spencer’s magic rolled through the zombies, Fatima dancing through bones as she swallowed souls whole. “Break as many souls as you can for now. We’re heading for the Morgan Library.”

  The fight down to East Thirty-Seventh Street was a hard push through a line of demon-backed hunters, zombies, and dive-bombing Sluagh. Nadine’s shield held against spelled bullets while the Night Marchers targeted hunters. The valkyries and Hinon did their best to force the Sluagh back, and Patrick kept having to talk Wade down from shifting mass and joining the aerial battle.

  “You’ll bring a skyscraper down on us, and that’s the last thing we need,” Patrick shouted as they finally turned the corner on East Thirty-Seventh Street, breaking through a barricade held by hunters.

  “Ugh, fine,” Wade complained right before he spat dragon fire at a hunter’s face.

  The agonized scream was drowned out by Jono’s snarl as he nearly bit a hunter in half, the hole left behind in the body’s trunk bloody and spilling out organs. The negative light of a demon fleeing left Patrick blinking to clear his vision. When the hunter’s body started to rise off the street, called to fight by the Morrígan’s staff, Spencer put the soul to rest.

  The vampires covering Spencer were a mix of Lucien’s and Takoma’s Night Courts. With Peklabog and Baba Yaga having fucked off to wherever, Spencer was their heavy-hitter against the dead. If he went down, they’d be backed into a corner.

  The narrow street was lined on either side by apartment buildings, none with lights on, but all surrounded by enough magic it made the hair on the back of Patrick’s neck stand on end. The reason became apparent when several doors opened up down the length of the street and nearly two dozen magic users stepped out past their thresholds. Patrick mentally placed where they were and realized they’d reached a block where covens had promised defensive support.

  Lucien ejected the empty magazine from his carbine and reloaded in a swift motion. “Get to the library. Ashanti is waiting for you there.”

  She’d gone on ahead some time ago, and Patrick had lost sight of her in the fight. Jono stepped close, ducking
his massive wolf head low to shove at Patrick’s hip. The burning white of his eyes was a sure sign it wasn’t Jono urging him on but Fenrir.

  “I’m going,” Patrick snapped.

  The violet glow of Nadine’s magic created a dome over the two blocks. At either end of the street, thick brambles broke through the asphalt, shoving abandoned cars aside. The living wall was courtesy of Órlaith, still astride her steed and following in Gerard’s wake.

  Those were the only two immortals Patrick could see. He didn’t know where the others had gone off to; he only hoped they were still fighting.

  Wade threw himself over the hood of a car and landed next to Patrick. “The library’s entrance is on Madison Avenue.”

  Patrick really needed to check Wade’s apartment hoard when this was all over.

  It wasn’t a retreat so much as a hard-fought-for break in the battle. The coven magic users on this block were focused on defending both ends of the street. The Hellraisers, werecreatures, and most of the vampires and fae took time to deal with any wounded, reload their weapons, and rest.

  Patrick and his pack, Nadine, Spencer, Marek, Lucien, and Carmen double-timed it to the Morgan Library and Museum on Madison Avenue. The contemporary front of the building was situated between two buildings with older-style architecture. The floor-to-ceiling windows lining the ground floor had been shattered in one area. Patrick could see Ashanti standing amidst the broken glass inside.

  “I thought vampires couldn’t enter without permission?” Wade muttered.

  “It’s a public building,” Patrick said.

  Screams from the Sluagh made Patrick glance up, staring past Nadine’s shield. The spirits clawed at the magic only to be driven off by a trio of valkyries.

  “Let’s get this over with. I don’t want to hold this shield up forever if we have the rest of Manhattan to fight through,” Nadine said, striding inside the library.

  Glass crunched underfoot as they entered the building, the quiet hush of the place interrupted by the shrieks of the battle outside. Patrick cast witchlights into the air, and Nadine and Spencer did the same to help light the space. The lobby was done up in pale hardwood floors and darker wooden paneling for the walls interspaced in the entrance. Patrick could see a set of stairs just past the empty security desk.