A Veiled & Hallowed Eve

by Hailey Turner

  “Are we doing the blood rite here?” Wade asked.

  “It’s not defensible,” Spencer said.

  Jono and Sage shifted back to human, the sound of breaking bone and tearing skin loud in the confines of the lobby. The pair had no clothes to change into, but their nudity didn’t bother anyone. Jono didn’t care about the glass underfoot as he strode over to Patrick.

  Despite the mud still caked into his clothes and ground into his skin, despite the lingering foulness in his mouth from the spell he’d been subjected to, Patrick didn’t hesitate to drag Jono into a kiss. Patrick bit at his mouth, drawing him in with a desperate fervor that loosened every single muscle in his body.

  “You’re all right?” Jono asked once they parted, his grip like iron on Patrick’s shoulder and waist.

  His soul was a bruised mess from the Salem spell, he couldn’t shake off the ghostly reminder of bruises, and exhaustion pulled at him in a way he hadn’t felt since the Mage Corps. None of that mattered now that he was holding Jono in his arms.

  “I can fight,” Patrick said.

  Jono stroked the knuckles of one hand over Patrick’s cheek before cupping the back of his neck and tugging him forward to press a kiss to his forehead. “Don’t pull that shit again.”

  Patrick let out a ragged little laugh. “It worked.”

  “I don’t care.”

  He could hear the tired hints of anger from their last phone call in Jono’s voice, but it was nearly subsumed by relief. Patrick pressed his hand over Jono’s chest, feeling his heart beat steadily.

  “You know why I had to do it.”

  Jono’s expression twisted, his wolf-bright blue eyes never looking away from Patrick’s face. “That doesn’t mean I have to like it. You’ve given up enough for this world.”

  Patrick curled his fingers against warm skin, as if he could hold on and never let go. “You are my world, and I’d make that same choice every time if it could keep us safe and bring me back to you.”

  It wasn’t what he wanted to say, but it was what he could say, and Patrick let the words go rather than keep them behind his teeth. Offering himself up to take away one avenue of Ethan’s power to keep his pack safe would be worth it every time.

  Jono kissed him, hard and quick, holding him tight enough to bruise, before stepping back. “You’re mine as well. Don’t ever doubt it.”

  Patrick nodded before he looked to where Sage stood off to the side, her long wet hair draped over her bare breasts. He couldn’t see the wound in her gut that had sent her to the ICU, but her unmarked skin didn’t quite assuage his guilt.

  “I’m sorry I wasn’t there,” Patrick said, voice cracking a little.

  Sage stepped closer to hug him tightly, and Patrick hugged her back just as hard. “You weren’t the one gutted by a spelled and poisoned blade.”

  “I could’ve gone back. I should have.”

  Sage ruffled his hair with gentle fingers before loosening her hold. “You did what you had to do, like any good alpha would. I won’t ever blame you for that, so don’t blame yourself.”

  Patrick swallowed hard and nodded, because there was no use in telling her he’d feel guilty about that choice for years. Sage knew him well enough to know the guilt would stick with him.

  “Wade got us out of Bellevue, and we went looking for Jono. Eir healed me after she and the other valkyries arrived,” Sage explained.

  “If you are finished,” Ashanti called out, “come this way.”

  She curled her fingers at them in a command gesture before moving farther into the lobby, flanked by Lucien and Carmen.

  They walked through a glass-encased court filled with empty tables and chairs, the reactionary storm raging beyond the wall of windows. Glass rattled with a soft hum as thunder boomed above the library. They left it behind for a set of stairs and a hallway that led into a marble rotunda decorated with murals and plasterwork. The witchlights reflected off hints of gold before it all fell into shadow again as they entered the library itself.

  The walls were three levels high and packed with bookshelves behind metal wire barriers. Narrow catwalks circled the large room on the second and third levels, metal sliding ladders tucked into corners. The arched and painted ceiling reflected the light along gold-leaf edges. Books inside sealed glass display cases sat on either side of the entrance they’d come through. A pair of low-built, leather-covered benches sat near the unused fireplace.

  The smell of old paper filled the air, and the scratchy sensation of activated protective wards brushed against Patrick’s personal shields. Whatever preservation magic was in the room wasn’t tied to a threshold, but that didn’t mean it was welcoming.

  “What now?” Marek asked, taking a seat on one of the benches.

  Lucien unstrapped his Kevlar vest enough to reach beneath it and pull out the small, human-skin-bound book Patrick had taken from the Library of Congress. He passed it to his mother, and Ashanti took it with a nod.

  “Now Patrick bleeds,” Ashanti said.

  “How much?” he asked warily. “I’ve been drained enough lately.”

  Even with access to a ley line through the soulbond, Patrick’s magic was less than what it had been before lying on that spellwork in Salem. He really didn’t need to lose more than a pint of blood to whatever spell Ashanti was going to cast.

  “As much as the spell needs.”

  Patrick sighed and shrugged out of his leather jacket. It took some doing, with Jono needing to help on the final tug. Patrick’s shirt felt heavy from mud being ground into it after lying at the bottom of a grave.

  “What happened to you?” Wade asked.

  “They had me in a grave,” Patrick said, trying to wipe off streaks of mud on his bare arms, but it was a lost cause.

  Jono’s gaze became flinty. “They what?”

  Patrick shrugged. “Gerard found me in time, and I killed Zachary. So, you know, revenge was had.”

  “That fucker’s finally dead? Good riddance,” Nadine said.

  She let her assault rifle hang from the strap connected to her Kevlar vest and pried open a pocket on the front. She pulled out a gold coin and tossed it through the air to him. Patrick caught it with one hand, the ancient Greek obal shining beneath the witchlights.

  “I thought this was back home?” Patrick said, staring at the coin.

  “I brought it with me and had Nadine carry it while I was shifted. I thought you might need it,” Jono said.

  Patrick pocketed it. “I don’t think laying down a barrier using the cardinal points will work this time. We don’t have enough coins or time for that.”

  “It would be a useless endeavor. There is nothing that will stop the veil from carving out a new plane if Ethan wins,” Ashanti said.

  The spell book in her hand was opened near to the end, the spider-scrawl of the words and symbols written in faded blood. Patrick couldn’t read the language, nor did he recognize it. The lines flickered with magic, his soul recognizing the feel of it as dark and wrong. Blood magic wasn’t inherently evil, but the spells it powered usually were.

  He’d just gotten off one spellwork only to willingly put himself in the middle of another. If it was anyone else other than the people in this room asking, he’d probably think twice about it.

  Patrick sighed tiredly. “How do you want me?”

  Ashanti blinked, a strange glint to her black eyes that couldn’t be explained by the witchlights. “Here is fine. Give me your arm.”

  Patrick extended his left arm, fingers curled in a fist. Ashanti reached for him, sharp nails more like claws pricking the soft skin at the bend of his elbow. She stared at him, the godhead that sustained her crackling through her aura in a way no other vampire could ever duplicate. Her children were soulless beings, carrying a hole where their soul should have been, powered by blood magic that stemmed from Ashanti’s making.

  They were starved things craving the blood that sustained them, and Ashanti was their god as much as their mother. She was
his teacher, and if this was how he was to wield himself, then Patrick would do so with eyes wide open.

  “Do you give of yourself freely?” Ashanti asked, voice low and edged in power.

  “Yes,” Patrick said, tasting the truth of it on his tongue.

  He winced when Ashanti’s nails pierced his skin, slicing downward the same way Cernunnos’ had. Blood dripped down his arm and fell to the hardwood floor below with soft little splats. He could feel—something—in the air around them before Ashanti began speaking.

  It was a language he couldn’t understand, ancient in a way that called to the hindbrain terror of humanity’s ancestors, that gut instinct that warned of the horrors hidden in the dark. It pulled at his blood, at the tangled essence of who he was, gliding through every cell until it subsumed him down to his soul.

  His heart beat, and then it didn’t.

  Someone else’s beat in his chest instead.

  The tie to Hannah’s soul, buried beneath the soulbond and walled off by damage, was peeled open through the blood that tied them together. Patrick wanted to scream, but all the air in his lungs was locked up tight as his consciousness plunged into magical chaos.

  Focus, Ashanti told him somewhere in the roar of his mind.

  She guided him with a strength he couldn’t break free of. It took effort to ground himself, to find his center, and the only way he could was by leaning into the soulbond. It pulled tight between him and Jono, an anchor in the inferno that was eating through his veins.

  Find her for me.

  Ashanti’s voice in his mind was a command he couldn’t ignore, the whole of who he was tuned to the threadbare connection tying Patrick to his twin sister. Ashanti’s magic burned through him, the heat of it driving out the chill from fighting in the reactionary storm.

  Blood was iron, it was earth, it was life, and it was death. It could not be denied, and neither could Ashanti’s demands. Patrick let himself be used by her spell like a compass that would always point true north, only instead of finding Jono through his soulbond, he found Hannah through his blood and soul.

  Scattered flashes of buildings exploded across his vision as his consciousness was dragged through a blurred cityscape, the library disappearing to sight, replaced by empty streets and flashes of lightning. He could sense how Ethan’s spellwork gripped every skyscraper in Manhattan like the roots of the world tree anchored continents. It gripped him just the same, wrapped around every limb as rain fell onto his face, the ground cold beneath him, the wind white noise in his ears.

  In Hannah’s ears.

  The echo of where thoughts used to be in his sister’s mind was a cavernous void to his questing soul, the connection there ragged on her end with nothing left to anchor it. Their blood tie was all that was really left to bind them.

  For this, it was enough.

  Show me.

  Ashanti’s voice rolled through his thoughts with the power of a command trigger. Patrick could feel the distance between where he stood and where Hannah lay mapped out in his bones, the way it had always been so long ago when they were children.

  He remembered, now, how they’d always been able to find each other until that fateful night in Salem.

  When Patrick spoke, blood coated his teeth, was slick on his tongue, but the answer came easy, as sure as the iron holding up the altar of the city they stood in. “The Battery.”

  Ashanti pried her magic free of his skin, withdrew her nails from his arm, and licked his blood off her fingers. Jono pulled him back from that insidious edge in his mind, the soulbond anchoring him in his body rather than Hannah’s.

  Patrick wavered on his feet, light-headed from the spellwork unraveling from his body, blood still dripping down his arm. Jono held him close and allowed Patrick to lean on him.

  “I’ve got you,” Jono murmured into his ear.

  Patrick blinked spots out of his eyes, the witchlights burning his vision. He spat blood out of his mouth, breathing through the copper-penny taste of it. When he could see again, he met everyone’s gaze with dry eyes. “Let’s finish this.”

  If Ethan wanted a fight at the end of the world, Patrick would give it to him.

  25

  “Incoming!” someone yelled.

  Patrick threw his mageglobes at the onslaught of spells cutting through the air toward their front lines. The strike spells collided in midair and exploded with enough force to rip off some of the bare branches from the trees still standing in Union Square Park. It did nothing to stop some of the Sluagh from attempting another dive at where their side was dug in around the historic intersection.

  Nadine expanded her shields upward, the violet-colored barrier forcing the Sluagh back. It prevented the collected soldiers, police officers, and agents’ ability to shoot at the enemy. Patrick conjured up another set of mageglobes, powering them through the soulbond. Jono wasn’t within eyesight, but he was close by, waiting for Nadine’s shields to drop so he and Fenrir could rip apart more zombies.

  “We need to break through their line, but we’re losing ground,” Casale said from behind Patrick.

  “Half your people are running out of ammunition. You should send them to hole up with the covens,” Patrick said.

  Casale hefted a riot baton wrapped in barbed wire that had bits of rotten flesh stuck on the spikes. “They’re equipped enough to provide support for the forces fighting in the street.”

  A bright bolt of lightning slammed into the massed group ahead of them, sending bodies flying. Patrick squinted up at the sky, seeing Hinon’s winged outline against the clouds. He was flying low, but soon the Haudenosaunee thunder god was forced into the clouds by a screaming group of the Sluagh. Sheet lightning lit up the sky soon after, followed by thunder so loud it momentarily drowned out the sounds of the battlefield.

  War was chaos on the ground, and that was proven true once again amidst the latest battle. Patrick’s group had fought their way south after leaving the Morgan Library. Reed’s people had fallen back to join them, and they’d collected others along the way. Mixed in between all the uniforms were civilian magic users, werecreatures, fae, and other members of the supernatural community. Immortals and gods walked amongst them all, and Patrick hadn’t missed the wonderous looks cast at Thor and Hinon and the others. He had no doubt they’d come away with new worshippers when this was all over.

  Spencer elbowed his way between two soldiers, carrying Fatima in one arm. Takoma and a couple of other vampires were right behind, still playing bodyguard for him. “Collins! We have a problem.”

  “We have a lot of problems right now. You need to be more specific,” Patrick grunted as he flung another mageglobe through a hole Nadine made for him in her shield.

  “This one is coming up from behind. Zombies, and a lot of them. Vampires brought word, but Fatima can feel them as well. I’ll need some support to take them down.”

  “Anyone seen Peklabog or Baba Yaga?”

  “Not recently, but we haven’t been ranging out to the side streets.”

  “Subways?”

  Spencer scowled and let Fatima jump out of his arms. “Do I look like I have a death wish? That’s not all though. There were sightings of soultakers in the horde.”

  Patrick closed his eyes for a brief second. “Fuck. Okay, grab who you need to help you keep the zombies off our six.”

  “And the soultakers?”

  “I’ll get Wade.”

  Patrick turned away and ran down the line of fighters. Not having radios or cell phones to communicate made coordinating their attack difficult but not impossible. Wade was easy enough to find if only because the teen hadn’t gone far. He was crouched on the nearby pavilion’s roof, breathing fire at the Sluagh who kept targeting their allies on the ground. Nadine’s shield had retracted low enough that Wade was outside its safety radius now, and he hadn’t seemed to notice.

  “Wade! Get down here,” Patrick yelled.

  Wade snapped his mouth shut, smoke streaming out of his nose and from be
tween his lips. He threw himself off the roof and landed on the ground behind a group of soldiers keeping hunters pinned down near the barricades by the fountain. Red scales lined his jaw and throat, creeping outward from his hairline. His eyes were a molten gold, pupils slitted like a reptile’s.

  “What?” Wade asked.

  “We have zombies and soultakers coming from the direction of Uptown. I need you to shift mass and get ready to burn or eat them.”

  “I thought you didn’t want me to shift mass?”

  “There’s enough space in this area that you won’t risk damaging any buildings.”

  Union Square was wide open in terms of space, the intersection ringed by buildings, but Wade’s wingspan couldn’t touch them. In dragon form, he’d do a lot of damage against the enemy.

  If their group could break through here and stay on course, they could take Broadway down to the tip of Manhattan where the Battery was. Just thinking about how far they still had to go made Patrick’s head throb.

  Wade stripped out of his shirt and tossed it to Patrick. “Give my clothes to Marek. I’m not running around naked like everyone else.”

  Patrick peeled the shirt off his head. “No one cares.”

  “I care.”

  “Just shift.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Shift mass, don’t shift mass. Eat demons, don’t eat demons. You’re carrying my mouthwash next time we fight like this.”

  Wade got rid of the rest of his clothes, and Patrick backed up, yelling for everyone nearby to give Wade space. The pockets of fighters shifted position where they could, a few looking back curiously at them to get a sense of what was going on.

  Red scales pushed through the rest of Wade’s skin, the illusion of a human body disintegrating in the outward shift of mass. It wasn’t like how a werecreature changed shape, with a twisted body becoming something else. Wade’s dragon form expanded into the space around them in the blink of an eye, towering over their side of the fight.