“Rain isn’t going to make us miss this meeting,” Jono said.
Carmen tilted her head, long curly black hair falling around the horns of her kind that twisted over her skull. “Our guests await your presence.”
Patrick double-checked his personal shields as they followed Carmen deeper into Ginnungagap. The damage to his soul still let him feel the recognition that came when a slew of vampires was in one place. It wasn’t quite as bad as what demons from the hells left behind, but it still made him want a shower.
Wade shouldered his way over to Patrick’s left, which put Patrick between him and Jono. Wade’s eyes had lost their brown coloring and were now a molten gold, though no red scales pushed through his skin.
The dance floor was packed with clubgoers, and the lounges and booths scattered against the wall were filled to capacity as well. If Patrick had to guess, he’d say half the people in the club tonight were vampires, which was far more than the number in Lucien’s Night Court. Patrick knew Lucien didn’t like sharing territory, so the fact that so many strange vampires were in his club had all the marks of Ashanti.
Carmen slipped through the crowd of dancers, and they were forced to follow. Jono led the way, his presence clearing a path between vampires and their partners almost as well as Carmen. Patrick stayed on his heels, ignoring the assessing gazes turned their way, while Wade shifted position and took up the rear. They took the stairs up to the VIP mezzanine level, the crowd there smaller but far more dangerous.
Lucien sat on a low-backed couch, the seat beside him empty but soon taken by Carmen. Scattered in the area, taking up every available seat outside the main circle or leaning against the railing that overlooked the dance floor, were numerous master vampires that Patrick didn’t recognize and some he did, specifically, the ones claiming Night Courts within the five boroughs. The rest varied in appearance, but all of them had the bone-scraping feel of the undead, recognition slithering through his magic like poison.
Seated alone on a long, cushioned bench was Ashanti, her black eyes like holes in her dark face. The weight of her gaze settled heavily on Patrick as they joined the group. Ashanti gestured casually at the only empty spot, a smaller chaise situated between her spot and Lucien’s.
“Sit,” Ashanti ordered.
Jono and Patrick sat, while Wade took up position behind the chaise. Patrick glanced back at him, glad to have Wade watching their six. It meant he and Jono could focus on the conversation at hand. Patrick faced forward again, hyperaware of how the vampires around them shifted.
“New friends?” Patrick asked, staring at Lucien.
“I need no friends,” Lucien said, disdain curving his lips into a sneer that revealed sharp, jagged fangs.
“Enemies, then. It’s not like you’re running low on those.”
“You’re one to talk.”
“My children are enemies of no one in this club,” Ashanti said, cutting through their sniping.
Patrick’s fingers twitched, brushing against the gods-given dagger strapped to his right thigh. None of the master vampires save for Lucien had her eyes, but they’d hopefully listen better than he did.
“Good to know,” Jono said as he rested his elbows on his knees, glaring at everyone assembled. “But Lucien’s never been the type of bloke who likes sharing, least of all territory, so who did you invite?”
A couple of vampires bared their fangs at Jono’s less than respectful tone, but he didn’t appear put off by it. If he wanted to give attitude, Patrick would join him.
“You need an army to fight an army. I’m adding mine.” Ashanti inclined her head, her bloodred hair styled in Senegalese twists falling over her bare shoulders. “I’ve called home to me those who claim various cities across this country. More will arrive within the next week.”
Patrick’s gaze drifted over the vampires who stared back at him with faces as still and cold as marble. While he didn’t know any of them, he had a feeling they’d heard of him. Ashanti wasn’t one to gossip, only command, but Lucien never could keep his opinion to himself where Patrick was concerned.
Ashanti’s plan was similar to what he and Jono were doing within the werecreature community. While they had plenty of packs within New York City, they’d been leaning on their alliances to call in anyone who was willing to fight. They had more control over those werecreatures arriving due to Fenrir’s influence. They had no influence with these Night Courts beyond Ashanti’s personal desires.
A tall, broad-shouldered master vampire stepped away from the railing to approach the center circle they sat at. Ashanti’s gaze shifted to him instantly. He bowed his head in a respectful motion to her alone.
“Mother. You called, and we answered, but I would know what is in it for us to join with these two who have entirely too much government attention on them,” the vampire said.
The master vampire’s long black hair was pulled back in a single braid tied off with a strip of leather knotted with beads. The dark blue button-down he wore was embroidered around the pockets and collar with motifs that reminded Patrick of the Native American tribes that called the Pacific Northwest home. If that was truly the place the vampire hailed from, he’d traveled thousands of miles for a war.
“Survival,” Patrick said flatly. “You’ll starve if the demons take over the world with Ethan at their helm. That’s not a hell you’ll live long to see.”
The vampire turned to face him, lips peeling back over his fangs. “You think so little of us? We who have survived for hundreds, if not thousands, of years?”
Other vampires hissed their wordless support of his statement. Patrick rolled his eyes. “And those long-lived lives of yours are at risk of being cut short.”
“Takoma,” Ashanti said, her tone not changing, but it was enough to settle the masses.
The master vampire narrowed dark brown eyes at Patrick, as if contemplating the odds of successfully tearing out his throat with Jono sitting right there and Wade behind them. A flicker of fire burned in the air between Jono and Patrick, the heat warming his skin.
“Don’t even think about it,” Wade warned, sulfur drifting on the air.
Takoma’s eyes widened fractionally, but he held his ground. After a moment, he tipped his head in Ashanti’s direction again, deference in the motion. “Mother.”
Ashanti clacked her iron teeth at him, and Takoma stepped back to his original spot, face once again impassive. More than one pair of eyes were riveted on Wade, and Patrick would’ve been worried if he didn’t know that Wade was more than capable of taking care of himself these days.
“Patrick is right. Living in that hell will grant a true death I want none of you to have. Siding with the heavens was the lesser of two evils,” Ashanti said.
Patrick snorted. “Of course it was.”
Ashanti stood, the heavy colorful skirt she wore falling all the way to the floor to hide the curved, ironshod bone hooks that were what she walked on. None of the vampires moved, but their eyes tracked her as she approached where Patrick sat.
He watched her come, ignoring the way Jono shifted closer to him, their arms brushing. He knew Jono didn’t trust her, but Patrick couldn’t find it in himself to doubt Ashanti’s intentions.
She came to a stop in front of him, reaching out to place cold fingers against his right cheek, ignoring the rumbling growl Jono let loose. Patrick didn’t try to pull away.
Ashanti was beautiful in a monstrous way, the truth of what she was buried beneath the veneer of humanity she carried in her dark skin. She was a goddess, the first of her kind, a legend kept alive in the memory of her children and those who worshipped at her altar. She was dust between the pages of history when she wasn’t made whole by prayers whispered in the dark.
But she was here now, after years of being gone, and Patrick was glad for that, even if no one in his pack could ever understand.
“You’re not sleeping,” Ashanti said.
“He sleeps fine,” Jono growled.
“
Hm.” She gently scraped her sharp nails over Patrick’s jaw to rest against his throat for a second longer, pressing against his pulse, before drawing her hand back. “Has your joint task force any word on Ethan or the Dominion Sect?”
Patrick shook his head slowly. “Nothing concrete. The general consensus is that he’ll make his move in the Northeast somewhere. Here, or another city.”
Ashanti’s gaze never wavered from his. “If that is the case, Salem is a possibility.”
Patrick tried not to react, but he couldn’t quite stop the way his entire body twitched at that city’s name. “We know. The SOA has agents on the ground there.”
He was proud that his voice didn’t crack, that his shields held against the split-second panic that punched him in the gut. But Ashanti, along with Setsuna, had been there to greet him in Washington, DC, when he left Persephone’s hands years ago. She knew the horror he’d lived through in that city. Despite the years she’d spent as dust on the wind, her gaze cut right through him, reading him as easily as a book in some ways.
“If you go to Salem, watch your back.”
“You don’t have to worry about that. I’ll be with him,” Jono said.
A couple of vampires laughed. None of them were local, which meant they might not know about Fenrir. Either his pack’s exploits hadn’t traveled far enough, or the vampires present simply didn’t believe that Jono carried an animal-god patron in his soul.
Jono ignored the laughter, and Patrick did his best to do the same. They both knew their place, knew what needed to be done before the fighting really began. It was why they were clawing at their alliances, stacking up clandestine meetings like they were going out of style, trying to bring people in now before it was too late.
How it would be too late was still unknown. Patrick just knew they couldn’t afford to be caught flat-footed. That meant making deals with the devils they knew and paying whatever price needed to be paid.
“The Sluagh ride the storm line tracking across the Eastern Seaboard right now. They don’t discriminate on who they hunt,” Patrick said.
“The fae have never been very good at keeping their own in line,” Ashanti said with a faint hint of a smile. “Brigid likes to think she is in control, as does Medb. Their squabbles are cyclical.”
“Their squabbles are snatching people off the streets.”
“Time was you humans knew to stay inside after dark.” Ashanti spun on her bone hooks, the heavy fabric of her colorful skirt swishing around her legs. “Let the ones who wish to walk in the shadows risk their lives as they like. We all must feed. That, children, is why you are here. The fight ahead will require all our efforts.”
Patrick watched how the group of master vampires, all used to being in control and in power, couldn’t meet their mother’s gaze for long. He wondered what they saw when looking at her, what the pull was like when she called them to heel, if it was anything like the soulbond that tied him and Jono together.
In the end, they were all children taken to task and made to obey.
Ashanti gestured languidly in Patrick’s direction, never taking her eyes off the master vampires surrounding her. “Keep him alive at all costs. You and all those you have sired will live if he does.”
Patrick stared at Lucien, arching an eyebrow and putting every ounce of suck it, asshole he could summon into his gaze. Lucien’s eyes narrowed to slits, but he didn’t move.
“None of that,” Jono said, nudging Patrick with an elbow.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Patrick retorted, blinking a few times because there was no point in trying to win a staring contest with a vampire.
“Everything’s off the table once you pay your soul debt. You’ll still need to pass through my streets,” Lucien said.
“Our streets,” Jono shot back.
“The alliance will hold,” Ashanti said, cutting them both off. “It will end when I say it ends.”
Patrick could only nod at that declaration. The tentative peace between the Night Courts and the werecreature community would break at some point, either when hell burned on Earth or if they survived with the heavens as the victor.
Either way, Patrick could already feel the ghost of Lucien’s fangs on his throat.
“I’ll keep you updated with any new information the joint task force gives me,” Patrick promised.
“It’s the least you owe us,” Lucien said.
“Did I not just warn you about the Sluagh?”
“Bring better information next time. Preferably Ethan’s location. It shouldn’t be so difficult for you to find him. You’re his son, after all.”
“Fuck off,” Jono snapped.
Patrick looked at Ashanti, thinking about the book bound in human skin he’d smuggled out of the Library of Congress for her and the blood Cernunnos had stolen from him. “If you’re bringing your children here, is this where you think Ethan will show up and not Salem?”
That was his personal assumption, whether everyone agreed or not. Ashanti hummed as she turned to face them again, the sound something Patrick could feel in his bones beneath the bass beat of the music vibrating through the air. “Salem belongs to your mother’s family. New York City belongs to everyone.”
And all the gods they’d carried to this shore and the iron jungle of an altar built to worship them on.
Her words were a truth and a warning, one Patrick knew they couldn’t turn their backs on. “We’ll be ready.”
“Will you?”
Patrick stood, Ashanti’s gaze never leaving his face. “I never forgot what you taught me.”
That he was a weapon to be used, in whatever way he could wield himself.
She smiled. “Good.”
Jono got to his feet and wrapped his hand around Patrick’s elbow, pulling him toward the stairs. Wade stuck to them like a burr. “We’ll be in touch.”
They walked away from the master vampires and their goddess of a mother without losing a single drop of blood, leaving Ginnungagap behind in favor of the storm outside.
“We could do with less vampires,” Jono said on their hurried walk back to the Mustang.
“I could eat some for you,” Wade offered.
“Please don’t. You’ll whinge forever about the taste.”
“Could do with a vacation,” Patrick muttered.
Jono grabbed his hand, holding on tight. “After we win this fight, we’ll go on holiday. Somewhere warm.”
Patrick couldn’t bring himself to promise an unknown future, but he wanted to believe in it anyway.
6
The days leading up to Wednesday when Patrick got to face his past were hectic, full of pack business, long meetings at the SOA, and keeping a critical eye on the weather coming up over the Atlantic Ocean. Being busy should have kept his mind off the day he reunited with his grandmother for the first time since he was eight years old, but the nightmares waking him in the middle of the night proved otherwise. At least he hadn’t woken to find himself trying to choke Jono again.
Early Wednesday morning, Jono took the keys from Patrick’s hand and said, “I’m driving.”
It was a four-hour drive to Salem, Massachusetts. They left Manhattan behind them around 0700, heading northeast along the coast on Interstate 95 before cutting inland through Connecticut on Interstate 91. Once they were past Hartford and on Interstate 84, the cities and towns became outnumbered by large swaths of trees changing color, red and orange overtaking green.
If asked, Patrick would say he didn’t remember most of the drive at all.
They veered north around Boston some hours later, bypassing that city completely in favor of less traffic. Boston was never a city Patrick had been allowed to take cases in over the years when he was part of the SOA’s Rapid Response Division. Too close to Salem, to his family, to his past, for Setsuna to allow it once she was in charge.
He felt like a stranger here.
“You don’t have to do this,” Jono said when they approached Salem’s
city limits. “I can turn the car around right now, and we’ll be back in New York before evening rush hour starts.”
“I have to do this,” Patrick said through numb lips.
“Bollocks. No one is ordering you to reach out to them. You don’t know the Pattersons, and you don’t have to if you don’t want to.”
Patrick clenched his hands into fists over his thighs, trying not to chew his bottom lip to shreds. “I should. They’re my mother’s family. I’d like to think they’re nothing like Ethan, but I won’t know that until I meet them.”
“Have to wonder why Setsuna and Ashanti keep warning you off about them.”
Patrick shrugged one shoulder, keeping his eyes on the road as Jono slowed to the local speed limit. “My guess is because of Ethan. Eloise thought I was dead until I got arrested. She was supposed to.”
Because if they thought he was dead over the years, so would Ethan. That lie had been destroyed at the end of the Thirty-Day War, causing Ethan to focus on Patrick to the detriment of those around him. He was done running though, done letting Ethan dictate how he reacted. Standing his ground was always going to be a fight, but facing his past wasn’t easy.
Patrick thought maybe it should be. Except he realized, as Jono drove through the historic center of Salem, following the GPS route, that was a lie he’d told himself to get through the days leading up to this moment.
“Don’t park in front,” Patrick said when they finally turned down a street whose houses were built along the waterfront of a small inlet.
“I don’t think we’re allowed to park on the street,” Jono said, frowning at the narrow road they were on. Every vehicle they passed was parked in a driveway.
“Just do it.”
Jono stopped four houses down from the waterfront property Eloise called home. He turned the engine off, leaving them in the quiet, fading warmth of the Mustang. The clouds in New York seemed to have stretched all the way up here, as the day was overcast. It didn’t look like rain was in the forecast, but Patrick knew how quickly something like that could change with heavy magic in play.
A Veiled & Hallowed Eve Page 5