A Veiled & Hallowed Eve

by Hailey Turner

  Lucien didn’t hesitate to grab his hand and bring Patrick’s wrist to his mouth. His fangs sank into Patrick’s vein, tearing it wider as Nadine’s shield wavered around them. Lucien could walk in sunlight the same way Ashanti could. Daywalkers had a resistance to fire other vampires didn’t. Whatever form of hellfire Ethan had hit the master vampire with, Patrick hoped his blood was enough to disrupt the lingering effects and allow Lucien’s body time to heal.

  It couldn’t have been more than half a minute before Lucien took his fangs out of Patrick’s wrist. He felt light-headed in a way that would become a problem sooner rather than later, but he couldn’t worry about that now. Lucien gripped him by the collar of his jacket and hauled him to his feet. Nadine’s shield had cracks on the outer layer that no amount of patching would hold together for much longer, not with Ethan’s rage lighting up the fort around them.

  “Any time now!” Spencer yelled from the center of the pentagram.

  Patrick wrapped his bleeding arm around the infant and stumbled toward where Spencer knelt beside Hannah’s ravaged body. Nadine’s shield shrank around them as the attacks kept coming from Ethan and the few remaining magic users. Lucien stuck close, weapon raised, as he kept an eye on the threats outside Nadine’s shield.

  Patrick crashed to his knees beside his twin, staring at Spencer across the horrible, gaping wound in her middle. Spencer was pale-faced, magic crackling at his fingertips. Fatima leaped over Hannah’s bare legs and padded to Patrick’s side. Her front paws were warm through his wet jeans when she put them on his thighs. Leaning in, she started licking at the blood and other fluid coating the baby girl’s tiny feet.

  Patrick dropped his gaze to his niece, and his throat seized up when he saw her staring back at him with stormy blue eyes, the aura of a godhead settled in her skin, but draining fast. He juggled her in his arms until she was only cradled in his left despite his wound, the weight of her barely anything at all.

  Then he held up the dagger, the sharp tip hovering above his niece’s heart, and looked at Spencer. “Tell me where to cut.”

  Killing his father wouldn’t be enough to pay his debt. What he owed was a life for a life, and Macaria was all that Persephone had ever wanted back. But untangling a godhead couldn’t be done with mortal magic. That required a godly touch.

  Spencer leaned across Hannah’s body, gaze a little distant as he reached out one hand, looking not at Patrick but at the edges of souls Patrick knew he’d always been able to see. “I’ll show you.”

  Patrick didn’t fight his grip, letting Spencer guide his dagger through the air above his niece. As it moved, ragged threads of light peeled apart from the blade, the embodiment of souls unraveling after years of entrapment in a corrupt bond that should never have been made in the first place. Patrick stared down into his niece’s strange eyes and knew she’d never grow up as family.

  She’d only grow up to be worshipped.

  “I’m sorry, Macaria,” Patrick said around numb lips. “For everything.”

  This wasn’t where she should have ended up, reborn in a stolen newborn’s body, damaged in ways that should never have happened. Macaria and Hannah deserved a life not brutalized by Ethan’s arrogance and cruelty and base desire for something that could never belong to him.

  Patrick couldn’t undo the past, but he could try to build a future that wasn’t Ethan’s vision of hell. So he cut and cut and cut with Spencer’s help, frantically slicing through metaphysical scar tissue as Ethan screamed with fury, kept at bay past Nadine’s shields by a god who knew a thing or two about endings.

  “Patrick! I can’t hold it much longer!” Nadine yelled, her voice breaking from the strain of magical overload.

  “Keep going,” Patrick urged Spencer.

  The dagger passed over Macaria’s tiny head, a crown of light glittering softly over thin baby hair. Spencer guided the dagger closer to himself, following the connection to what was left of Hannah in a body gone cold and a mind long since lost to madness.

  Nadine’s sudden warning shout was full of agony. “Patrick!”

  Lucien grabbed Spencer by the back of his flak jacket and hauled him away from the blast radius, less quick than he normally would be. Patrick stayed where he was on his knees, cradling Macaria in one hand, his dagger raised in the other to ward off the oncoming attack. Ethan’s magic slammed against the golden shield of prayers that erupted from the matte-black blade, the force of the impact making Patrick’s arm go numb.

  He kept his grip, though, on both Macaria and his dagger.

  “This is what I was born for. How dare you take it from me!” Ethan spat out, eyes bright with a manic gleam.

  His voice had lost the echo that spoke of power. His aura was dimmer than it had been, the torn connection curling and fading at the edges. Patrick had separated what he could of the souls from the godhead, but he knew some still remained within Ethan.

  Magic still flowed into Ethan from the spellwork, coiling up his legs to wrap around his body. He’d never stop, Patrick knew. Greed was never satisfied, and Ethan wasn’t the god he’d hoped to become, but neither was he fully human, just a living mess of failed dreams that needed to die.

  The dagger in Patrick’s hands burned like a star, and he could hardly see where Ethan stood through the fire of it. Around them, the Dominion Sect magic users standing on the spellwork started to come out of their trance. Some of those recognized what was happening, and the magic being channeled into Ethan grew more precise, more controlled, as they offered him their strength.

  The golden shield remained where it was as Patrick moved his dagger until it pointed at the heart of Ethan’s power.

  “You don’t deserve mercy,” Patrick bit out, staring into Ethan’s eyes through the brightness. “But my sister does.”

  He’d never been able to reach her in Salem. He’d never been able to pull the trigger in Cairo. This time, he couldn’t afford to hesitate.

  This time, Patrick went for the killing blow because it was a kindness long overdue.

  He moved with a sureness that ached, aim true. When his dagger pierced Hannah’s heart, the world cracked to pieces.

  Heavenly fire exploded from the blade, streaking away from Hannah into the pentagram and the spellwork beyond. The rain seemed to slow in its descent, the wind lessening from a howl to a whisper. Everything froze, fate balanced on a precipice.

  Ethan’s scream was soundless in that void, the magic—the godhead—that could never be his slipping away forever. Because Patrick had come to this fight with two weapons that the gods had given him—the dagger and Jono.

  It was Jono who went for Ethan’s throat, the shine of Fenrir in his eyes, teeth all his own. Patrick saw a spray of red before Jono dragged Ethan to the ground. The earth shook with their landing, the rumble breaking through the stillness that had settled over everything.

  Cold gray fog exploded in the air, the veil covering everything until the only light that Patrick could see was the fire burning around the hilt of his dagger still buried in Hannah’s chest. He blinked at it, staring in disbelief at the faintest flicker of light drifting up from Hannah’s body. In that weak glow, all he could see was the damaged little girl inside the fractured woman she never got to become flickering in the shine of magic all around them.

  “She’ll need payment,” Hermes said as he stepped out of the veil into the courtyard, the fog parting around him. “The dead always do.”

  Patrick tipped his head back and stared at Hermes, Macaria squirming in his arms. “Hermes. Please. I can’t pay her way.”

  Hermes arched an eyebrow. “Can’t you?”

  Patrick opened his mouth to protest that he couldn’t, because he had nothing left to offer, but then realized that was a lie. With trembling fingers, Patrick dug into his pocket, biting his lip and hoping—praying, for once in his life—that he had what he needed.

  His fingers curled around the last gold coin, the one Hermes had left him on that hospital bed over a year ago
, and he pulled it free. The obal gleamed against his palm in the dim grayness of the veil, the weight of it impossible to measure.

  “Half a payment for half a soul,” Hermes said.

  Patrick reached out with a shaking hand and placed the coin between Hannah’s lips, slipping it past her teeth. Then he gripped the dagger and slid it free of her chest, throat tight as he got to his feet. He sheathed the blade, all the while staring at Hermes over his sister’s body and the remnants of her soul.

  “What now?” Patrick asked, voice cracking on the question.

  Hermes extended his hand, palm up, gaze unyielding. “You come with me.”

  “Patrick!”

  Jono’s voice echoed through the fog of the veil, and Patrick jerked at the sound of it, wanting to turn and find him.

  “Don’t look back,” Hermes said, the offer of his hand one more choice the gods were forcing Patrick to make. “You can never look back when you follow me like this.”

  Patrick knew he should ignore Jono’s cry, but he couldn’t. The soulbond tying them together meant that wasn’t possible on Earth, in the heavens, the hells, or, for once, here in the stretched-out emptiness of the veil bridging each world with the ghostly whispers of long-forgotten prayers.

  Footsteps sounded in the distance, getting closer. Then a hand—warm and familiar—grabbed his shoulder, fingers holding on tight, as if they would never let go.

  “Patrick,” Jono said raggedly. “Stay with me.”

  Patrick didn’t blink, his gaze locked on Hermes’ face, the god staring at him with that single hand outstretched, fingers beckoning. Hermes tilted his head to the side, faded dyed curls falling across his forehead. The veil was dim all around them, but Hermes’ aura washed everything out—everything but the baby Patrick carried in his arms and what was left of Hannah’s soul drifting between them like the faintest of witchlights.

  Patrick swallowed thickly, mouth dry like desert sand, chilled down to his bones. He licked his lips, felt Jono’s grip tighten until his muscles throbbed, and Patrick knew there was no choice here.

  There never had been and never would be.

  He’d lost that right years ago, a lifetime ago, when he was bleeding at Persephone’s feet as he begged her to save him. Because gods never gave anything for free, and Patrick’s life and soul had been forfeit when she closed the wound in his chest and held his soul debt in her hand.

  “Let me go,” Patrick said with numb lips. “Jono, please. You have to let me go.”

  When Jono spoke, the words came out as if Fenrir had shredded each syllable, but Patrick couldn’t hear the god in his lover’s voice at all. “Don’t. Don’t ask me to do that.”

  Patrick sucked in a breath that made his teeth hurt, and his lungs ached from the chill of it. “You can find me again. I need you to find me again.”

  “Patrick. Ethan is dead. He can’t hurt you anymore. Just stay.”

  Patrick squeezed his eyes shut, tears pricking at the corners, and when he opened them again, Hermes hadn’t disappeared like the god always had in the past. Patrick wanted so badly to turn around, to see Jono’s face, but he knew if he did that, he’d be digging their graves for eternity.

  “I love you, Jono,” Patrick said, the words tumbling from his mouth like a promise, like an anchor—a tether long enough to link them through the veil. “But I have to do this, so I need you to let me go.”

  Jono pressed up against him, body shockingly warm in the coldness of the veil. Patrick shuddered, head jerking a centimeter to the side before he caught himself. He blinked, still staring at Hermes and the offer the gods were giving him, written in his family’s blood.

  “Patrick.”

  He wanted to keep the way Jono said his name—like it was the most sacred sound between them—in his heart forever. He wanted everything they’d ever promised each other since the beginning. But he couldn’t have it, couldn’t keep it, without paying his soul debt first.

  “I’ll come back,” Patrick said, hoping it wasn’t a lie, knowing it could be. “I will. Find me when I do.”

  Jono buried his face against the curve of Patrick’s shoulder where it met his neck, breath hot against his skin. “You bloody fucking arsehole.”

  Patrick bit down hard on his bottom lip, tasting blood, shaking with the sheer physical need to turn around, hold on to Jono, and never let go. But doing that would mean he’d lose everything he’d fought for over the years, everything he’d ever wanted.

  Freedom from the gods.

  His life back.

  His soul.

  Because Patrick couldn’t live like this—at the mercy of gods—anymore. He only wanted to live for Jono and their pack, in a future not dictated by the Fates.

  He wanted to live, not just survive like the gods were doing in their endless stretch of immortality.

  Jono’s lips were warm when they brushed over Patrick’s temple, a featherlight kiss that branded him all the way down to his soul. Then Jono pried his hands off Patrick and stepped back. The coldness that took his place felt like winter, and Patrick shivered from the ache of it.

  “Say those words to my face when you come back to me,” Jono said from behind him, voice ragged and breaking, the heartache in it like a wound that would never mend.

  Hermes’ mouth ticked up at the corners as he wriggled his fingers. “Ready, Pattycakes?”

  Patrick reached for Hermes’ hand, holding on tight to the god, trying to remember how to breathe. He stepped over Hannah’s body, her soul drifting alongside him, and followed after Hermes deep into the veil, Macaria safe in his arms.

  He never looked back.

  30

  Jono stumbled out of the veil into the storm, feeling unmoored in a way he never thought he could. Patrick’s grief was thick in his nose and fading fast, his scent washing away from Jono’s hands by the rain still pouring down.

  “Jono!”

  Wade’s frantic voice reached him first before the teen careened out of the rapidly fading fog. Jono held out his hands to grab Wade by the shoulders before the teen could crash into him. “Whoa, mate. I’m right here.”

  Wade’s gold eyes darted back and forth, searching the space around them. “Where’s Patrick? Patrick!”

  Jono tightened his hold on Wade, fingers scraping over red scales pushing up across his shoulders. “He’s gone with Hermes.”

  “What do you mean he’s gone with Hermes? He’s supposed to stay with us!”

  Jono swallowed around the tightness in his throat, trying to focus past the screaming emptiness at the other end of the soulbond. Letting go of Patrick had been the hardest thing he’d ever done, but he knew why Patrick had asked it of him. Jono would carry whatever Patrick couldn’t if asked, but the soul debt would never be his to pay.

  “He’s gone to do his duty, but Pat will come back. He always does.”

  Wade stared at Jono with a painful, betrayed look on his face, mouth opening and closing on words he couldn’t say. Jono drew him into a sideways hug, rubbing at his back.

  “He’s grounded when he comes home,” Wade finally said in a small voice, face buried against Jono’s shoulder. “I can’t—he’s an idiot. Why couldn’t he wait for us? We’re pack.”

  “We are, and Pat knows that. But this was something he had to finish on his own.”

  Jono hated saying that, but all he could see was how Patrick had refused to turn around and face him in the veil, always willing to tear himself apart to save everyone else. Jono would do anything, give up everything, to follow after Patrick, but Fenrir hadn’t let him. Some things, the god had told him when Jono had let Patrick go, were always meant to be.

  This is how it begins, Fenrir reminded him.

  Fuck off, Jono snapped back.

  “I’m kicking Hermes in the balls when I see him next,” Wade said. He straightened up and pulled away, scrubbing a hand across his eyes.

  “Brilliant plan. I’m all for it.”

  Jono looked past Wade at the interior of the
old fort they still stood in. Ethan’s body was in pieces, scattered across the broken pentagram. Jono thought he could still feel the remnants of a soul and a godhead between his teeth. Hannah’s body lay at the center of the inactive spellwork, gold glittering between her slightly parted lips. Jono didn’t let his attention linger long on her because the world was still cracking to bits around them.

  “Sage!” Jono called out, staring across the way at where his dire was holding up Nadine.

  She turned her head to look at him, letting out a raspy roar, but didn’t move from her protective stance. The ground around them was scorched from dragon fire, half the Dominion Sect magic users nothing more than blackened bodies. Wade had killed a good number of them, and the remaining survivors didn’t appear to be too much of a threat from where they lay curled in fetal positions around the courtyard.

  “What’s wrong with them?” Jono asked.

  “Backlash,” Spencer said tiredly as he jogged over. “The spell broke, and the power had to go somewhere without Ethan to suck it all up.”

  “I could eat them,” Wade said with a hard glint in his eyes.

  Jono shook his head. “That isn’t justice.”

  “Sure it is.”

  “No.”

  “Fine. So what now?”

  “Now the world forgets.”

  The ghostly, echoing voice from above had Jono snapping his head back. He watched as Muninn and Huginn winged down in a spiral pattern to the courtyard, followed by hundreds of ravens and crows. The flock of corvids settled on the bodies, both living and dead, and began to peck at the skulls.

  Jono stared at the way Huginn’s beak passed through flesh and bone to come away with something held between the raven’s beak. “What is that?”

  “Memories,” Odin said from the fort’s entrance.

  Jono narrowed his eyes against the downpour as Odin walked toward them, Gungnir held in one hand, the weapon back with its rightful owner. “Of what?”

  Odin watched as his ravens accepted the memories from the other ravens and crows, his one good eye shining with the same glow. “We can make the world forget the path Ethan took to this travesty, but we did not want the world to forget a god. No mortal will ever know how Ethan and those that followed him and his ancestors came to this moment.”