Nadine drove up the West Drive, aiming for the North Meadow. That’s where the pull of hellish magic was strongest. It scraped through Patrick’s soul, the rawness of where his own magic once resided a stinging pain that translated to physical aches.

With the barrier ward down, Patrick could make out the distinctive sound of explosions ripping through the air beneath the roar of the storm. He braced his weapon against his side, the body of the M4A1 carbine angled outward in case he had to shoot. Nadine wasn’t slowing down, the single headlight of the motorcycle cutting through the darkness. All the streetlamps were burned out, the only light around them coming from the flash of lightning above and the thousands of illuminated windows in the buildings ringing Central Park.

They passed SOA agents who had crossed the barrier ward to hold defensive positions at the outer perimeter. Still others were running toward the fight. He could hear the chatter of everyone getting into position through his comms and tuned them out.

It took Nadine less than two minutes to traverse three-quarters of the park at top speed. She leaned right when they came to an area of the road with multiple pathways branching off in different directions. They took a path that ran adjacent to the 97th Street Transverse, wheels never losing traction.

Nadine slowed her speed as the trees thinned out, the North Meadow coming into view, the area lit up by hellish magic. Patrick took in the sight with a grim twist of his mouth.

The metal fence surrounding the grass and baseball fields had been destroyed in areas. Fiery red-orange spellwork spanned the grass in intricate lines and large concentric circles. The structure of the spell rose into the air by way of ten pillars of light that burned a clean, pure white. One space stood dark and empty, missing a pillar, while the last was filled by the solid shape of an unmoving man. In the center, nearly hidden by the glow from the spell, Patrick could just make out the kneeling form of a person.

A spell like this always required a final sacrifice on-site. His fingers tightened on the grip of his weapon as desperate hope bloomed in Patrick’s chest.

Jono could still be alive—but not for too much longer.

“Let’s get in the field, Mulroney!” Patrick shouted.

Scattered around the large sacrificial spell were Dominion Sect acolytes battling it out with vampires, werecreatures, and a handful of SOA agents who had finally reached the scene. The ground was pitted with small craters from spelled grenades and not a few bodies. Patrick hoped none of the dead belonged to their side.

Halfway between their position and the spellwork sat Lucien’s stolen BearCat like a hulking bulwark of safety. The armored vehicle had been fully outfitted with military grade weaponry sometime during Patrick’s absence from the mortal plane. Shield wards had been set into its metal framework, providing much-needed cover in the open area. Vampires were wielding assault weapons as well as artifacts against the magic users allied with the Dominion Sect on the front line.

“I’m going to owe him so many offensive spells for this,” Patrick said.

“He’s already called in an order of defensive wards from me.”

“Worth it if we survive this.”

Nadine braked to a slick halt on the pathway, the wheels sending small waves of water into the air. They scrambled off the motorcycle, weapons in hand. Nadine took point, keeping her shield wrapped around them while Patrick fell behind to cover her six. They cut through two engaged groups on either side of them, Nadine’s shield taking the brunt of a wayward attack.

Patrick scanned their surroundings, on heightened alert. Hell was the overriding sensation he could feel, and that could really only mean one thing aside from Ethan’s magic.

Demons had entered the fray.

They were running past one of the muddy baseball fields when something moved through the trees on the little hill behind them, a shadow within a shadow. Patrick twisted around on his feet as they ran, angling his weapon behind them. His night vision was shit with all the magic being thrown around, but the threat wasn’t a figment of his imagination.

“Soultakers on our six,” he said loudly to Nadine.

“Copy that,” she said. “I’ll notify command of the sighting.”

Patrick tuned her out on the comms and braced his rifle against his shoulder. The staggered rush of hunched-over bodies coming their way was an unholy problem of the worst kind. The six soultakers separated, moving in different directions. Two headed their way and Patrick started shooting, aiming a spray of automatic fire at the demons. The spelled bullets wouldn’t make a dent in their thick skin, but he just needed to hold them back long enough for Nadine and him to get behind the defensive lines where Lucien’s vampires were.

Vampires had no souls and couldn’t be fed upon by soultakers. In the final push through Cairo during the Thirty-Day War, those in command of magic users had relied on an uneasy alliance with several Night Courts to help defend against hell. It’s why, even though they hated each other, Patrick was glad Lucien had come.

A flash of orange in the darkness snagged Patrick’s attention. He took his finger off the trigger when his brain clocked the figure as friendly. The soultakers managed a couple more strides forward before Sage burst out of the tree line on four legs and streaked across the grass, a blur of orange and black, followed by three werewolves. In her weretiger form, she was a hulking, monstrous beast, larger than a wild tiger normally would be. Her size meant taking down the two soultakers at once was possible.

Sage slammed into the soultaker closest to her before leaping onto the back of the second one, driving it to the ground. The werewolves traveling with her focused on the demon she left for them. Her wide jaws wrapped around the back of its ugly, bulbous head. She bit down with inhuman strength and got a good grip. With a muffled snarl, Sage wrenched her own head up, the weight of her shifted form keeping the demon on the ground. She tore the soultaker’s head off with preternatural strength, the demon’s body going limp beneath her own.

Werecreatures could rip a soultaker limb from limb—Patrick had seen it happen before—they just had to be mindful of their souls. Nadine must have passed that warning along while he’d been in the Underworld.

With a disgusted growl, Sage flung the head aside. Some of the soultakers who’d been going after the nearest SOA agents started to regroup to deal with the werecreatures.

“That’s one way to kill them,” Nadine said.

“Remind me to never piss her off.”

They turned their backs on the fight Sage and the others had well in hand. Nadine and Patrick double-timed it to Lucien’s position, passing harmlessly through the wide shield wrapped around the BearCat.

Lucien didn’t stop reloading his M32 MGL grenade launcher as they approached, black eyes looking right at them. “You’re late.”

“I was in hell,” Patrick retorted.

“You think we aren’t?”

Patrick peered around the side of the BearCat at the sacrificial spellwork and the Dominion Sect magic users doing their damnedest to tear through Nadine’s shield. “Veil isn’t torn yet, so I’ll go with no.”

“Ethan is preparing to sacrifice your wolf, so maybe you’ll change your answer in a few minutes.”

Patrick’s gaze went unerringly to the hunched-over figure he could see kneeling in the center of that hellish circle some distance away. His heart skipped a painful beat in his chest. “Jono is alive?”

“For a given definition of alive,” Carmen said as she jumped off the roof of the BearCat. She carried an assault rifle and a machete, but both were her secondary weapons. Desire and mental persuasion were known to drive men and women mad on the battlefields when incubi and succubi deigned to fight.

Patrick just hoped Carmen pointed her powers away from their side.

“I need to get to Jono.”

“Ethan’s circle is warded by Zachary’s blood magic.”

“That’s a bad habit they picked up during the Thirty-Day War.” Patrick braced his weapon against his chest and pulled his dagger free of its sheath. Countless silvery words floated up from the depths of the matte-black blade, the magic of gods warm and steady in his hands. “I’m sure I can help break it.”

“Maybe you should wait until we have more SOA agents to back us up. Your magic isn’t replenished, and my specialty is defense, remember?” Nadine said.

Carmen made a face. “You had to call in the feds.”

“My vampires will be leaving the field without being arrested when this over. If any of your people try to stop mine, they won’t live to see dawn,” Lucien said coolly as he hiked the grenade launcher onto one shoulder.

Patrick waved off the threat in his voice. “Sure, sure. I told them you were my CI, but I didn’t use your name. Try and keep your face covered, and make a run for it when the fight is over.”

“Your planning skills still leave plenty to be desired.”

Lucien walked right up to the edge of the shield and pressed the barrel of the grenade launcher through Nadine’s magic. The hole opened up from the inside, sealing around the weapon. Lucien took aim and fired, the spelled-ballistic cutting through the enemy when it exploded in the midst of a group of Dominion Sect witches attempting to join their magic together.

Their bolstered shield broke apart beneath the strike spell layered over the ordnance, the same way their bodies did in the explosion.

“I don’t think the City is going to appreciate your attempt at relandscaping,” Patrick said.

“Do your fucking job before I rip out your throat.”

Easier said than done, despite their last-minute planning. They had breakwaters set into ley lines, a shield powered by magic borrowed from gods around Manhattan island, and New York City’s finest waiting to play cavalry on the streets outside Central Park. All of that would be meaningless if Ethan succeeded in murdering Jono and stealing Zeus’ godhead.

“Cover me,” Patrick ordered.

Nadine twisted her fingers in the air, a violet mageglobe spinning into shape against her palm. “I’ll wrap you in stealth with a shield and get you as far as I can.”

Tendrils of magic flowed over Patrick’s body, wrapping him in a muffled cloud. As in the Hamptons, it would quiet sound and hide him from sight, but with other mages in the field that knew what to look for, it wouldn’t hold for long.

“I’ll notify you when I reach the spellwork so you can drop your shield.” Patrick hefted up his dagger, the dark blade shining with magic. “I don’t want you caught in any backwash.”

“Understood.”

The shield rippled, providing just enough give in one spot for Patrick to pass through it without jeopardizing the structure of it. Nadine shored it up once he was clear, and Patrick started running. Around him spells were being flung with reckless abandon by both sides, magic crackling through the air. Soultakers were having a feast, even with vampires and werewolves acting as shock troops against that hellish assault.

Patrick kept his eyes on the spellwork and the handful of people standing within its circles. He had to dodge and weave his way through what had become a war zone in the middle of Central Park. Rather than take a direct approach, Patrick peeled off at an angle to get out of range of his side’s firepower.

Magic was all well and good in a fight, but when paired with military weapons, the upgrade was deadlier. Another one of Lucien’s grenades exploded off to his left, hitting against the shield that encased the spellwork. For a second, the shield became visible as Zachary’s magic reacted to the hit. Patrick noted its position and kept running.

He was halfway to the outermost circle of the spellwork when the rapidly pulsating magic reached another peak. Patrick dove for the muddy ground, his rifle sliding through the muck. His head and body throbbed from the impact—Persephone’s wards still hurt—but he ignored the pain. Nadine’s shields followed him down, settling close as the air became static-charged.

Like before, in Times Square, the magic erupted outward in a rolling wave of power, intent on crashing over Manhattan. This close to the epicenter, the explosion burned Patrick’s eyes even through his eyelids. His ears popped, body gone near-weightless in the wake of the explosion, even behind Nadine’s shields.

That’s a lot of power, Patrick thought bleakly.

But it took a lot of power to kill a god.

The world went silent for a long, painful moment before sound rushed back like a sonic boom. Patrick coughed against the internal pressure, scrambling back to his feet with jerky motions. His body ached, and the fight right now wasn’t helping the pain any.

The insidious glow of Ethan’s magic filled his eyes. What powered this spell was blood and souls, the stolen lives of decent, innocent people who had died terrible deaths. As in Salem and Cairo, those souls would act as a bridge for the godhead to travel—if Ethan succeeded in prying it out of Zeus’ soul.

Something Patrick had learned in the ensuing years, and which Ethan must have realized at some point as well, was that it took a god to kill a god.

Marek had the Norns.

Jono had his own patron, whoever that might be.

And Ethan had Jono imprisoned at the center of the sacrificial circle.

He’d failed all the times before this because Ethan carried no godhead in his soul, was no more a modern god than the myths who walked Earth in all their faded glory. His only success, if one could call it that—and Patrick never would—was he’d stolen Macaria’s godhead through sheer gods-be-damned luck. It only cost him the lives of his wife and daughter. Clara was dead, but Hannah was his power source these days, held in check by the prayers of the Dominion Sect. Ethan wasn’t a god, but he could almost wield power like one when needed.

All Patrick had was a gods-gifted dagger and a stubbornness that had been a thorn in everyone’s side since he was a child.

Weapons firing on either side of his position drew attention away from his location. Soultakers could sense magic in any form though, and a couple of the demons peeled away from protecting the shield, heading straight for Patrick.

Patrick got eyes on them right as a grenade exploded in their midst, knocking the demons to the ground. The ground shook from the impact, a spray of mud and chunks of grass rising into the air. Unfortunately, the demons seemed to be in one piece when the smoke cleared.

“Shit,” Patrick muttered under his breath.

Nadine’s stealth spell hadn’t been stripped by the magical buildup. Patrick was still unseen, but that was about to change. With a burst of speed, Patrick covered the distance between himself and the pillar of light in front of him. Magic spilled in sparks from the dagger he held, guiding him past magical landmines Dominion Sect magic users had set in the meadow. The traps were intricate and dense, becoming nearly unsurpassable in front of Zachary’s shield.

Patrick rocked to a halt, his muddy boots mere centimeters from the defensive magic in the ground protecting Ethan’s shot at godhood. He tapped his radio, accessing Channel One.

“Mulroney, drop your shield.”

Nadine’s magic disintegrated around him. Wind and rain instantly buffeted his body now that her shield was no longer protecting him. Patrick could feel the heat of Ethan’s magic even through the storm, hell a rancid taste in his mouth.

The shadow of a hand pressed against the inside of the pillar that stood on a radial line. The afterimage of a face came into view, mouth open in a soundless scream. The pretty face of a college student who would never fulfill her dreams stared out at him with horror in the remnants of her soul, most of her essence gone into the structure of the sacrificial spellwork.

Mud sucked at his feet, boots sinking into the earth. The storm raging above the City was like a monster. Here, at ground zero, there was no calm to be found. Only the roaring protest of Mother Nature as she railed against the upending of a balance at risk all over again. The fight was familiar, except for how it wasn’t.

This time, Patrick wasn’t standing in the ruins of a war-torn city. He wasn’t grieving the teacher who had taught him how to survive what the immortals demanded of him. Unlike before, Patrick knew what waited for him at the center.

Patrick stared hard at the soul trapped inside that prison as he flipped the dagger in his hand, getting a better grip. It wasn’t made to be thrown, but Patrick was out of options right now. He drew back his arm and snapped it forward, putting all his strength behind the throw, the blade disappearing beneath a fiery white light.

The dagger spun through the air and sliced through Zachary’s shield with a piercing sound that made Patrick want to cover his ears. Glittering cracks fractured the air in front of him, the damage from the hit cascading through the defensive wards and offensive spells layered on the ground around it.

Past the shield was the pillar, and the dagger didn’t stop.

“Shit!” Patrick yelled as he went to his knees and wrapped an arm over his head.

The dagger crashed through the pillar, and the column of magic dimmed, as did the radial line it stood on. Between one heartbeat and the next, it shattered.

White-hot light exploded outward, the raging wind catching most of the burning magical sparks and flinging them into the sky. The pushback from the explosion knocked Patrick over, hands sliding through the mud as he searched for purchase. He blinked rain out of his eyes, watching as the imprisoned soul found freedom. It twisted free of the anchoring magic, ghostly arms reaching skyward, the shape of who she once was dissipating into the storm.

The ground underneath him heaved as the magic powering the spellwork jolted from losing an anchor point, spinning unevenly through the pattern of the pentagram and circles. The radial line went black, dead, no more magic running through it.

A hand thrust itself past Patrick’s face, grabbing him by the collar of his jacket. “On your feet.”

Carmen hauled Patrick up with preternatural strength, the succubus covered in mud, holding her machete etched with runes in the other hand. She raised the machete, the sharp edge of the blade facing a nearby witch who’d turned their way. With a shout, the witch released an attack that spiraled through the air. Like a rock that waves crashed over, the magic set into the machete’s blade forced the attack aside. Flailing tendrils of magic stung Carmen’s arm, but the succubus didn’t seem bothered by the burning welts that showed up on her skin. They’d heal soon enough.

“Mulroney’s wards?” Patrick asked, spitting out mud.

“She’s still useful,” Carmen said with a sniff. Then she shoved him toward the sacrificial spellwork. “Get moving.”

Patrick nearly fell on his knees again but managed to stay upright. He could see his dagger shining in the mud between the outermost circle and the next. Breaking a complicated spell like this without his dagger in hand would be impossible. With Carmen watching his six, Patrick made a run for the gods-given weapon, feet sliding in the mud.

A wall of fire exploded out of thin air right as his fingers wrapped around the hilt. Patrick brought the dagger up in a wide arc, heavenly fire following in its wake. The gods-backed magic crashed against the spell aimed his way, breaking it apart. As the magic-driven flames died to nothing beneath the rain, Patrick got eyes on his attacker.

Rachel planted herself in the space between two concentric circles, one hand raised and carrying an athame. The silver blade glowed a sickly green from her magic. The former SOA Special Agent in Charge looked thinned out in the ghastly light surrounding them. Shadows stood out starkly under her eyes, anger twisting her face into an ugly expression. Patrick knew a thing or two about rage and how sometimes it was the only thing that could fuel a body.

He grabbed for his rifle hanging from his tactical vest, bracing the butt of it against his shoulder. The weapon was difficult to wield one-handed but not impossible to use. He pulled the trigger and held it down, hoping Rachel’s shields were shit.

They weren’t.

The spelled bullets ricocheted off her defenses, and Patrick groaned. “Betrayal isn’t how you do your civic duty!”

“You can’t stop us,” Rachel yelled, taking a step forward. Her athame trailed bright lines of magic in its wake as she drew a pentagram in the air before her. It wasn’t a mageglobe, but her magic’s focus was still obvious.

“Are you going to monologue at me?” Patrick asked incredulously. “I don’t got time for that bullshit.”

In answer, Rachel threw a bolt of raw magic that careened away from her pentagram focus. The attack was nothing like what a mage could produce, but without his magic, it was more than enough to wound him. While Patrick didn’t have his old team watching his six, he had a decent replacement.

“On your six,” Nadine snarled over his comms. “Duck!”

Patrick fell to his knees, keeping his dagger pointed at Rachel even as Nadine raised a shield around him. The attack exploded against the shield, violet light rippling around him. Patrick sucked in a deep breath, wincing at the sharp spike of pain in his ribs. It didn’t stop him from getting his feet back underneath him. He took a couple of steps back to the darkened radial line in the spellwork, Nadine’s shield following him.

Ethan’s magic pulsated wildly all around them. Patrick had damaged the spellwork just enough that the outermost circle was no longer stable. Even as he watched, the pillars slid down their radial lines to the next circle. The spellwork shifted, compensating for the damage. Patrick’s attention drifted toward the center where Dominion Sect acolytes surrounded Jono’s kneeling form.

He needed to be there, not dealing with Rachel.

An arm brushed against his, and Patrick wrenched his gaze away from his target. Nadine nodded at him, weapon braced against her shoulder as she sighted down the barrel at Rachel. Her mageglobe cast a washed-out violet glow across her face, expression calm despite the crazed fighting happening around them.

“Dead or alive?” Nadine asked calmly.

“Alive,” Patrick ground out. Movement out of the corner of his eye tugged at his attention, at his soul, but he didn’t look. Not yet. “We’ll need answers.”

“Acknowledged.” Brown eyes slid his way for a single instance, Nadine’s head tilting in the direction of the spellwork and the threat coming their way. “Your sister is the enemy now. Remember that, Collins.”

“I know.”

She nodded and advanced toward Rachel, who didn’t seem all that thrilled with facing off against a mage of Nadine’s caliber. Nadine dropped her shield from around Patrick as she sought to take down the witch. The rain returned, soaking him once again. Patrick slowly turned, the fight a distant noise all around him as he faced his past.

Walking down the blackened radial line, long red hair whipped away from her face by the wind, came his twin sister.

Hannah’s arms were held out to her side, hands moving through the air in undulating motions, as if she were skimming them over objects no one else could see. Her aura was broken wide open and shone like a dying star, washing out her skin with power her mortal body could barely contain. A body that was too thin, too broken, too human.

She might carry Macaria’s godhead in her soul, chained by prayers, but she was no god.

Patrick swallowed thickly, a fine tremble running through his hand that held the dagger. “Hannah.”

Despite being fraternal twins, they still shared certain traits: the same hair from their mother, the same eyes of their father. That was where the similarities ended. Where Patrick had lived a life under Setsuna’s distant care and Ashanti’s critical teachings, Hannah had only ever known the hell their father had put her through. Patrick couldn’t even begin to understand the life she’d lived that put such insanity into her green eyes.

In Cairo, Patrick had grieved for her, tried to reason with her, but there was no reasoning with madness. He knew that now. For so long, Patrick only had the ghost of her in his head, memories he couldn’t forget of a night that separated them forever. That horror had never left him, and it never would.

The hardest lesson Patrick had ever learned was the day he realized he had to give Hannah up as lost if he was going to survive their father’s cruel ambition.

Patrick knew now there was no saving those who could not be saved.

But it still hurt.

“You can’t hope to stand against us,” Hannah said.

Her voice reminded Patrick of Marek’s when the seer’s patron shared his body. Powerful, inhuman, but with a thread of the person whose body it was underneath. An echo of humanity that had yet to be snuffed out.

Magic seeped out of her aura, writhing around her body. Hannah’s magic and the godhead residing in her soul had long since become Ethan’s to control. She lived only for their father, and it was his words coming out of her mouth, his will calling magic through her soul.

Patrick’s twin sister was a living, breathing nightmare of a nexus.

Nothing more than a weapon.

“Hannah, please don’t make me go through you,” Patrick said, incapable of not begging. He couldn’t tell if the wetness in his eyes was rain or tears.

They should have grown up together. They should have been family. Instead, they were two pawns on opposite sides of a war driven by beliefs that weren’t theirs.

Three years ago Patrick hadn’t done enough in Cairo. He’d been too shell-shocked by his sister’s survival and his father’s attempt at harnessing a second godhead in the midst of hell on earth to do more than survive.

Patrick would always mourn what might have been when it came to his family. But this was where the grieving stopped. Tonight, he would pay his respects to the ghosts of all the things that made him and fight.

The magical attack Hannah levied at him blasted through where he’d stood. But Patrick was already moving, diving toward the next active concentric circle of the spellwork. He tumbled head over heels, mud sliding down his jacket and squelching against his skin as he rolled into the hell-tainted magic.

It seared through the damaged parts of his soul deep enough he thought he’d puke. Choking back bile, Patrick sliced the dagger through the earth and the circle of magic within reach. The backlash of the disruption tossed Patrick through the air toward the center of the spellwork instead of out of it. The throw caused him to miss dying beneath his sister’s second attack by a fraction of a second.

Patrick hit the ground hard, air punching out of his lungs with a heavy exhale. Ethan’s magic fluctuated all around him as Patrick forced himself to his feet. Hannah wrenched her arm around in a semicircle, screaming wordlessly as magic guided by Ethan lashed toward Patrick in a sickening bolt of power that made the air crackle and burn.

Patrick spun on his feet, the weight of the carbine dangling from his tactical vest nearly pulling him off balance. He raised the dagger to counter the attack, gritting his teeth against the heat that burned through his fingers.

The dagger point lit up like a star, a literal spiderweb of magic flaring out around him. The makeshift shield held back Hannah’s attack, hellish fire curling against the gods-created defense a mere arm’s length away.

For one moment, Patrick thought he might have stood a chance.

The bullet slamming into his left thigh disabused him of that thought.

The familiar flash-fire agony of hot metal parting flesh ripped through him. Patrick yelled in pain as his left leg collapsed beneath him. He went down hard on one knee, swearing harshly. He let go of his carbine and pressed his hand against the exit wound in his thigh, not caring about the filth he was probably contaminating the wound with. Bright red blood welled up between his fingers, the flow steady but not the death sentence quickness of a nicked femoral artery.

Patrick looked over his shoulder and blinked dazedly through the rain at where Hades stood between two concentric inner circles, a semiautomatic pistol gripped in one hand. Even as Patrick watched, Hades shifted the angle of the handgun, aiming for Patrick’s head.

“You will die here tonight as you should have when you were a child,” Hades promised.

Hades pulled the trigger, and Patrick knew there was no escaping that bullet.

Halfway between them, the bullet transformed into flower petals, the delicate plants ripped apart by the wind. Patrick’s breath caught in his throat, and all he smelled was spring.

“No,” Persephone said as she stepped out of the veil to stand between Patrick and Hades. “He will not.”

A hand wrapped around his other wrist, and Patrick’s attention jerked to where Hermes stood behind him, a grim smile on the immortal’s face. “This is certainly one way to stop running, Pattycakes.”

Hermes peeled the spiderweb shield off the point of the dagger, pressed his hands to the golden strands, and poured his magic into reflecting Hannah’s attack back at her. She was propelled backward by the blast, crashing outside the spellwork to land near a couple of soultakers.

“You shouldn’t be here,” Patrick said, clenching his teeth against the pain.

Hermes shrugged, helping Patrick to stand. “Here or elsewhere, your father’s power calls to us.”

“Then get the fuck out of the goddamn spellwork.”

Hermes watched as Hannah picked herself up off the muddy ground, power a sickening fire around her body. “I’ll keep her distracted.”

“Don’t get yourself killed.”

“Worried?” Hermes smiled, a brief flash of mirth in hell. “Don’t be. Hera has her coven praying for me.”

What little strength their prayers would give Hermes probably wouldn’t be enough to face off against Hannah.

“I don’t get paid enough for this,” Patrick said, mostly to himself.

“I don’t know. I think I compensated you just fine.” Hermes unhooked the carbine from Patrick’s vest and easily hefted it in one hand. “I’m going to borrow this.”

Hermes ran off to fight, heaven’s light shining in his other hand, a brighter, cleaner burn than what poured out of Hannah’s soul. Patrick wrenched himself around to face the center of the spellwork, unsurprised to see that Hades had yet to pull the trigger.

“Do not take his side, Persephone,” Hades pleaded.

“What would you have me do? Take yours?” she demanded.

“Yes, because it is the only way we will survive. The Dominion Sect will pray for us.”

“Is that what they promised you when they stole Macaria’s godhead?”

The weapon Hades held wavered before falling as he dropped his arm back down to his side. The god’s expression twisted. If he was human, Patrick would think Hades was grieving.

“They wanted you,” Hades said, his deep voice catching on the word. “I could not give them my heart.”

Persephone clenched her hands into fists. “So instead you gave them mine? Macaria may not be of my blood and essence, but I was her mother in all the ways that mattered. I would have rather you sacrificed me instead of her.”

She made a sweeping gesture with her arm, and the force she let loose knocked Hades off his feet. The god flew through the air and slammed back to earth outside the sacrificial circle. Persephone looked at Patrick, the fury in her gold-brown eyes tempered by regret.

“Stop Ethan before we lose Zeus the same way we lost Macaria,” she ordered.

Then Persephone strode toward her husband with all the life-affirming power of spring held in one clenched fist.

On his own, Patrick staggered toward the center of the spellwork, leaving the immortals to battle it out on their own for once. He had other things to worry about, like the fact that Ethan was close to ripping open the veil despite the damage done to the spellwork. Hell on earth would be more than enough of a distraction for Ethan to strip Zeus of his godhead.

Between the few acolytes left in the center, Patrick could see Jono’s battered, naked body where he was bound to the spellwork. A binding ward kept Jono from escaping while the silver stakes driven through each shoulder kept him from shifting. The skin ripped open around the spikes looked burned and infected. Behind him stood a soultaker, ugly maw open near his skull, the scene reminiscent of the vision Marek had seen last week.

“Motherfucker,” Patrick snarled.

Those fever-bright wolf eyes unerringly searched out Patrick. Jono spoke, but Patrick couldn’t hear what he said. The shape his lips formed could have been his name. Patrick crossed another circle, getting closer.

He almost made it, but almost didn’t count in war.

Patrick crossed the innermost circle that connected the points of the pentagram when magic slammed into him from behind, knocking him forward. The only reason the hit didn’t kill him was due to the durability charm set into his leather jacket. The charm burned out beneath the onslaught, but it lasted long enough to save Patrick’s life. He hit the ground hard with his shoulder, rolling with the motion to save his neck.

Patrick came to a stop, head spinning, still holding tight to his dagger. He rolled onto his side with a groan, getting an elbow beneath him as he tried to sit up. He missed seeing the boot that slammed into his face, but he definitely felt it.

Patrick pitched sideways, falling down into mud all over again with rain pouring into his eyes. Blackness ate away at the edge of his vision, mingling with the storm. His jaw throbbed from the kick, blood filling his mouth. He turned his head to the side, watching blearily as his past came back to haunt him.

Ethan looked exactly how he always did in Patrick’s nightmares. The sickening glow of his magic, bolstered by Macaria’s godhead, pulsed through his father’s aura. Patrick tried to move, to roll over, to get the fuck away, but his brain wasn’t working. Fear choked the breath from his lungs, and blood loss left him feeling dizzy.

Beneath all of that—the pain, the panic, the desperation—was the realization that this was not how he wanted it to end. He didn’t want to see another city ravaged by hell, or for Jono to end up like Hannah. Patrick didn’t want to lose any more of himself than he had already given to this war. He’d offered up all he was willing to since he was eight years old, and it stopped now.

Lightning flashed through the sky above, shocking the air and illuminating the night. The clouds looked like a living thing writhing above New York City, beginning to spin in a way Patrick was all too familiar with. The veil was growing thinner, and they were running out of time. The damaged sacrificial spellwork thrummed with renewed vigor, but it felt wrong, as if the magic it contained was spinning out of control.

Ethan stared down at Patrick with the distance of a man who had never cared about his family, had only cared about the power they could ultimately give him. A wife whose pure soul was enough to help trap a forgotten immortal. A daughter he had bound himself to for life to further his own needs.

And a son who didn’t know how to fucking lie down and die.

“I have no use for you. I never did,” Ethan told him. Magic dripped like fire from his hands as he reached for Patrick’s heart to try to tear it out all over again.

“You keep trying for godhood,” Patrick spat out as he raised both hands over his chest, the dagger gleaming with magic-wrought prayers. “And you keep failing because you aren’t fucking worthy.”

He sliced the dagger over the meat of his palm, cutting deep. Blood coursed down his hand and wrist, a waterfall of red that he slammed down onto the line of the hexagon making up the center of the pentagram. The impact rang like a bell in his head, a deafening sound that blocked everything else out.

Blood called to blood, and Patrick only had one command.

“Break!” he snarled, pouring all his will into the word.

He had no magic left, only what borrowed strength the dagger could give him. It was enough to crack the outline of the pentagram, the center of the spellwork breaking into pieces.

“No!” Ethan roared, forced to pour his magic into the spellwork rather than Patrick’s body, struggling to keep it together.

Patrick rolled away, digging deep for a strength that had gotten him through his life. He got his hands and one knee underneath him and started to crawl. Pieces of the pentagram floated in the air, strands of magic struggling to realign the shape of it. But the magic was too wild, the foundation too unstable, for it to be pieced back together quickly and correctly.

The acolytes at the center of the spellwork screamed as they died, their magic and souls sucked into the spell by Ethan’s need. The air felt heavy around him, pressure coming from above where the sky broke open from the backlash, the tear in the veil an ugly hole between all the hells and the mortal plane.

The pillars of light burned out one by one save for where Zeus stood, still tied to the spellwork, an anchor that needed to be set free. Patrick kept his focus on Jono, eyes flickering to the soultaker that could only follow its hunger.

That gaping maw split wide, all its jagged teeth glinting in the glow of magic. Desperation gave Patrick the push he needed to lunge at Jono and the demon intent on ripping out the other man’s soul.

The dagger cut through the soultaker’s skull with ease, but not before those sharp teeth sank into Jono’s shoulder. His scream filled Patrick’s ears, blood pouring down his torso. The black blade of the dagger turned white, heavenly fire burning through the soultaker’s body like an inferno. The demon turned to ash that mingled with the rain, dirty rivulets of water running down Jono’s torso, mixing with his blood.

The binding ward fell apart beneath the cut of the dagger. Patrick panted for breath, the crash of thunder directly above causing him to look up. A hellish red glow spread through the sky, and all he could sense in his damaged soul was hell.

“You must close it.”

His eyes snapped to Jono’s pale face, the voice of a god falling between them. Jono’s accent was gone, replaced by a different one that sounded like teeth ripping through bone.

“I can’t,” Patrick said desperately. “Closing a rift requires a nexus.”

He didn’t have that reach anymore, didn’t have the ability to channel external magic. Three years since that loss and his soul wound had never felt so crippling.

“You must.”

Patrick frantically shook his head as he pulled the silver stakes out of Jono’s shoulders one at a time. The wounds didn’t immediately close, the blackened chemical burns at the edges telling Patrick aconite was probably involved. Jono was still tied to the spell that Ethan was holding together, Zeus’ godhead a prize his father would do anything to gain—even if it meant letting hell reign on earth once more.

“Patrick.” Jono’s voice this time, without the ringing otherworldliness of a god in his tone. “This is where I’m meant to be.”

Here, in the middle of a maelstrom, a god pack alpha werewolf with ties to an immortal. Someone the Fates had thrown into Patrick’s path without giving either of them a choice in the matter.

“Jono,” Patrick said, his voice breaking on the other man’s name.

The magic all around them began to reform, the spellwork piecing itself together beneath Ethan’s focused will, backed by the Dominion Sect who served him.

They were running out of time.

“Save us.”

Patrick touched his bloody hand to Jono’s face, smearing red across too-cold skin, and pressed a hard kiss to cold lips. “Tell your god he fucking sucks at guiding you.”

Then he grabbed Jono’s right hand in his left, pressed it to the muddy ground, and drove his dagger through both their hands.

Pain ripped through Patrick’s arm, fingertips going numb. Magic exploded away from their joined hands, the dagger impossible to see within the star-bright glow. Patrick knew he screamed, but he couldn’t hear his own voice over the scalding rush of raw power pouring through his soul. It cut deep, ripping through metaphysical scars, and Patrick was certain the only reason his soul wasn’t torn out of his body was due to Persephone’s wards set in his bones.

The scarred channels of his soul broke open as something else—someone else—filled the space. Patrick stared into Jono’s strangely calm eyes as the magic set in the dagger tied their souls together through blood.

Exactly how Ethan had bound Hannah to him.

Like father, like son.

That sickening realization had Patrick reeling backward, but he couldn’t escape what was happening. All he could do was live through it, the bright wash of awareness he hadn’t felt in years pouring through him by way of Jono. Through Jono’s soul, Patrick could sense the nexus—filled with wild magic—far beneath the earth.

He could reach it.

Jono’s soul, bound to his, acted like a safety break for his magic. Patrick could feel how the connection between them could help him channel power without either of them burning out—Patrick because he was a mage with crippled magic and Jono because of a god’s favor.

Patrick fumbled for the dagger, weak fingers pulling it free. His mouth opened on a silent scream, pain lancing up his arm from the self-inflicted stab wound. Blood pooled in the wound it left behind before spilling between his fingers. Everything around him had taken on a new hue, and the colors spun sickeningly when Jono shoved him to the ground.

The shock-wave spell rolled over them but the leading edge of the attack broke against Jono’s shifting form, the magic between them dispelling it. He shouldn’t have been able to shift, not with aconite poisoning running through his veins, but Jono was a god pack alpha werewolf with ties to a god. He had reservoirs of strength few other werecreatures possessed.

Man changed to beast with a sickening crunch of bone and splitting of skin above Patrick’s body. One large paw the size of his head sank into the muddy ground near his ribs. Jono was so big in his wolf-form that he mostly blocked the rain from soaking Patrick’s body. That monstrous wolf head swung down toward him after the change, bright blue eyes meeting his.

Patrick lifted his bleeding hand and gently touched Jono’s cold snout. His shaking fingers slipped between sharp teeth. Magic crackled between them, the pull of the nexus impossible to resist through both their souls.

So Patrick didn’t.

He closed his eyes, reaching through Jono’s soul for something he hadn’t thought he’d ever touch again. Patrick’s soul stretched itself thin, but Jono’s kept him anchored as he sought to replenish his drained magic with the reservoir of power that lived beneath New York City.

It roiled far below the surface, destabilized by Ethan’s interference. Patrick could sense how the ley lines had been choked off from it, breakwaters initiated in those rivers of magic by SOA mages. The nexus itself was still viable, despite everything happening around them.

Patrick breathed in, and when he exhaled out, it was like being struck by lightning.

Magic poured through him—deep, wild magic that he bent to his will. Drawing on skills he’d left by the wayside when he never thought he’d have this again, Patrick manipulated the raw magic into something akin to a reverse lightning bolt. He opened his eyes and raised his other arm toward the sky, staring past the brightly burning dagger in his hand at the fury of hell twisting through the storm.

Patrick framed the spell in his mind, the same one he’d used in Cairo. He could see it forming in the world around him, the pattern crystal clear and sharp.

“Close.”

Magic exploded through them, guided by Patrick’s focused will. His spine arched, shoulders and heels pressing down into the mud as power crashed through the spellwork with devastating results. It raced through their souls and found release through the dagger, heaven’s fire guiding magic into the sky.

It hit the clouds, sinking into their black depths. The rain seemed to flow upward, into the sky, before falling back down to earth. The sonic boom of magic gone nova exploded in the sky, shining like the sun at high noon for one searing instant that momentarily blinded Patrick.

He blinked, colored spots dancing across his eyes before coalescing into stars in the night sky. A perfect circle had formed within the storm clouds above Central Park, the rain falling around them at the edges like a waterfall.

The veil had sealed shut, but what had come through while it was open would need to be dealt with in the future.

Patrick’s arm dropped to the ground, grip loosening on his now-quiescent dagger. His fingers slid free of Jono’s teeth as the werewolf collapsed to the empty ground beside him. The radial lines and circles of the sacrificial spellwork had shattered into a million glowing pieces that were fading away all around them.

At the head of the radial line once pointing true north, Zeus shook himself free of the magic that had bound him. His precisely tailored suit was ruined by the storm, graying hair wet and curling around a stern face. The king of the Greek gods looked unsettlingly human in that moment, which proved how close Ethan had come to succeeding this time around.

The god approached where Patrick and Jono lay with measured steps. Patrick watched him come—too numb, too cold, too drunk on magic to care about immortals and their games anymore.

Zeus knelt in the muck of an urban battlefield and touched a finger to Patrick’s forehead.

“Sleep,” Zeus said, his voice like the rumble of thunder in the storm high above.

Patrick closed his eyes and slept, but couldn’t escape his nightmares. They followed him relentlessly into his dreams.