“Your father needs to find a new hobby,” Thor said. He picked up another apple and tossed it to Wade, who caught it easily. The teenager bit into it with a crunch that spoke of perfect ripeness.
“Thanks,” Wade said around the fruit.
“If Odin is the target, then we need to keep him safe,” Patrick said.
“The Allfather can take care of himself,” Thor replied.
Patrick opened his mouth to argue, but he was cut off by the sound of glass shattering as something bright and heavy and smelling of the hells was thrown inside the bar, lighting everything up like a supernova.
10
The scorching heat of a hellfire bomb was unforgettable, a nightmare that should have only been found in a war zone, not a bar in the middle of Chicago on a Friday night.
Patrick threw himself off the barstool and took Wade down to the floor with him. He ripped his shields out of his bones, expanding the protection around the both of them while Wade shrieked in his ears. Hellfire splattered against the shields, the overwhelming smell of sulfur making Patrick gag as the stuff slid down the magical barrier.
Hellfire was like metaphysical napalm, and Patrick didn’t want to be anywhere near it.
“What the fuck?” Wade yelled as the sprinklers went off, water sluicing over Patrick’s shields.
“You really think Odin can take care of himself when whoever is after him is lobbing hellfire bombs at you?” Patrick shouted at Thor, even though he couldn’t see the god through the rapidly encroaching smoke.
Warm hands grabbed him by the shoulders, shocking him with electricity, but they didn’t let go. “You need to get clear.”
Hinon’s voice rang in Patrick’s ears like thunder. When he looked at the god, it was like looking into the face of the sun. Huge wings the color of the sky in a Midwest storm arched away from the god’s shoulders, lightning snaking around each feather. Hinon’s aura was a halo of electricity that made Patrick’s eyes water and his skin become staticky though his clothes.
Hinon yanked Patrick to his feet, and Wade scrambled to keep up. The Haudenosaunee thunder god raised a wing between them and the crackling, deathly burn of the hellfire bomb. Patrick jerked free of his grip, conjuring up a mageglobe, the pale blue light at odds with the sickly hellfire shine around them. He grabbed Wade by the shoulder with one hand and pulled his dagger free with the other. Heavenly fire crackled around the matte-black blade, the prayers in its making reacting to the presence of the hells.
“Get outside!” Patrick yelled.
He glanced over his shoulder at where Thor had jumped the bar and was coming to the rescue of the handful of employees who had stayed behind to close up. One of the women was unconscious and looked badly burned as he picked her up off the floor.
Patrick strengthened his shields and filled his mageglobe with raw magic, ready to form any offensive spell he might need. He took point on the way out of the bar, leaving warmth for freezing cold and a shock wave spell that caused his shield to ripple and bend from the force of it. Patrick layered his shields, channeling magic through his soul to shore up a defense a goddess had anchored in his bones.
Every window in the bar shattered from the hit, glass flying everywhere. The building shook on its foundations but remained standing. Patrick thrust out his arm and sent his mageglobe careening forward to test boundaries. Raw magic exploded against the shield surrounding two SUVs on the street, both vehicles ready to drive away from the scene of the crime. That they hadn’t already meant trouble.
A handful of people stood on the street, magic sparking at their fingertips and in some of the focus circles drawn around their feet on the cold asphalt. Of the four magic users, the only one who mattered to Patrick was the man surrounded by a ring of red-black mageglobes, the concentric circles tattooed on his palms dripping blood.
“Isn’t that the same guy we fought on the Skellig Islands?” Wade asked.
Patrick spun the hilt of his dagger between his fingers, getting a better grip on the blade. “Yeah.”
“What if I eat him?”
“You know, I wouldn’t stop you, but you might get food poisoning.” Patrick raised his voice. “Hell of a way to knock, asshole.”
“I wasn’t sure you’d answer,” Zachary Myers replied.
The last time Patrick had seen Ethan’s right-hand acolyte, they’d been fighting over Órlaith’s life in Ireland. Back then, Patrick had support in the way of his entire pack and the Hellraisers. Here, in Chicago, all he had was Wade, but he couldn’t let a dragon loose in the Windy City. That was attention they couldn’t afford.
Which left Patrick backed into a corner, and he never liked being in that position.
“You dare defile a place of worship?” Thor shouted, his voice echoing through the air.
High above in the cloudy sky, thunder rumbled menacingly. The wind picked up, blowing bitterly cold and making Patrick’s lungs burn with every breath he took. Even as Thor called up a storm, the wind carried something else to them—the unforgettable scent of death.
“Really now, you used to have class,” a throaty voice called out as one of the SUV doors opened. “Is this what you have been reduced to, Thor? Finding prayers in a modern-day drinking hall? Drunken promises never amount to anything. I thought you would have learned that lesson after all these centuries.”
The goddess who appeared was as tall as Thor, her generous curves filling out the all-white pantsuit she wore, which seemed to be missing a blouse beneath the suit jacket. The gold chain necklaces that lay over her cleavage matched the color of her high heels. Long white hair was braided back in an intricate style, with the braids tied off at the
