She was too close for him to cast a strike spell, so Patrick went with a blast of raw magic, pulling power from the ley lines. He didn’t know where Jono was, but the other man was close enough that Patrick had no problem drawing on external magic.
That didn’t mean he had enough strength to challenge a god.
Hellfire streaked toward him, melting snow during its passage. Patrick ripped his shields free, expanding them outward. They took the hit and his feet skidded over snow from the impact, bones aching from the force of it.
Hellfire dripped away from Hades’ hand as the god came forward through the blowing snow. “Let’s not interfere, shall we?”
“You know me,” Patrick ground out. “I live to piss people off.”
In the distance, Yggdrasil’s branches were stretching beyond the pillar of light, shining with power. The ground jerked, rolling as if an earthquake had hit.
I hope all those brick houses don’t come tumbling down.
Hades smiled, his sharp-featured face cast in shadow from hellfire light. He opened his mouth to speak, but a bone-chilling howl cut through the wind, wiping the smile off Hades’ face.
A dark shape streaked through the snow, bright blue eyes burning with white fire. Jono’s wolf form charged at Cerberus, Fenrir’s immortal control in every inch of his body. Cerberus howled a challenge with all three heads, but Fenrir never wavered.
Jono’s werewolf form might be larger than the average werecreature, but he was dwarfed by Cerberus. It reminded Patrick of their fight at Inwood Hill Park last June, only this time Fenrir wasn’t hiding.
Cerberus might be immortal, but he was no god, and Fenrir went for all three throats with fangs and claws.
Hades thrust his hand at Fenrir, hellfire streaking through the air. Patrick split his shields, trying to protect Jono, but defensive magic was never where his strength had ever lay. Hades’ attack crashed through his shield, the hit reverberating through Patrick’s soul hard enough he fell to one knee.
He reformed his shields around himself, heart pounding in his chest as he sought to get eyes on Jono. All he could see was flashes of dark fur in what dim light the park lamps gave off around them through the snowstorm.
Red eyes came into view around them—hellhounds closing in. Eir was forced to split her attention between Hades and the hellhounds that went after Töfrandi. Patrick lashed out with a mageglobe, running toward Eir.
He never made it.
The world lit up like the after image of a nuclear blast, lightning crashing down to earth between them and Hades. Patrick’s shields burned with a heavenly power not of this earth as he was thrown to the ground once more. Eyes watering, Patrick squinted at the sky, sheet lightning making the clouds pulse with brightness.
Great feathered wings the color of a storm shadowed the sky directly above them, lightning crackling along the shape of them as Hinon left heaven for earth. The Haudenosaunee thunder god crashed to the ground between them, his eyes burning like the sun, lightning trailing his pinion feathers and clenched tight in his hands.
“Hello, cousin,” Hinon said, voice echoing like thunder.
Hades turned his attention from Fenrir to Hinon and let hellfire fly.
Patrick scrambled out of the way, running away from the clash of gods as he tried to make it back to Eir. The valkyrie’s spear was coated in blood, and bodies of hellhounds surrounded Töfrandi. Snow spun up from the wheels as she drove toward him, one arm outstretched for his. Patrick grasped her wrist, and he was flung over the seat with bruising strength. He passed through the glamour, finding himself astride the pegasus once again.
“Hold fast!” Eir shouted.
Patrick wrapped his arms around her waist and squeezed his knees into Töfrandi’s body. The pegasus launched into the sky with a powerful flap of his wings and a gravity-defying push of his hind legs.
They were airborne, in a reactionary storm that did its best to knock them back down to earth.
Töfrandi flew, buffeted by strong winds, but whatever magic lived in the immortal’s body gave the pegasus enough strength to fight the headwinds. They passed low over a stretch of road that bisected the park. Patrick could make out one or two cars stalled there and hoped no one had been killed considering they had hellhounds running amok.
He looked over Eir’s shoulder at where Yggdrasil had torn through the veil. The sky above the world tree’s reaching branches was clear, like the eye in a hurricane. On the ground below, Patrick could make out flashes of lightning as Thor tore his way through the enemy, intent on reaching Yggdrasil. He could see, too, the spell the Dominion Sect had drawn over the earth to call forth Niflheim.
Bolts of raw magic cut through the air like anti-aircraft missiles. Töfrandi banked hard, wings pumping fast to try to gain altitude. Eir let out a furious war cry as Töfrandi rose into the storm, getting out of range. Patrick blinked snow out of his eyes, fingers numb where they held on to Eir.
“We need to get down there!” Patrick yelled.
Eir didn’t respond, guiding Töfrandi with her hands and knees through the sky as wind, snow, and lightning ripped through the air around them. Patrick hated flying through clouds. He couldn’t see anything, and not knowing when or where a threat was coming from made his heart pound in his chest.
It felt like forever before Töfrandi broke free of the clouds again, diving down over the shores of Lake Michigan. The Chicago skyline was to the left of them, and the vast blackness of Lake Michigan was to their right. Directly below Töfrandi’s hooves was a shore of corpses as far as the eye could see in the snowstorm.
Patrick pointed at the writhing mass of the dead and the scattered bits of the veil tearing between them. “You want to explain that?”
Eir peered at the ground, spear held tight in one hand. “Hel has brought forth Náströnd out of Niflheim.”
Just what
