The very expensive wards Marek had paid to keep the bar intact against all manner of attacks were holding. How much longer was anyone’s guess.
“Bloody fuck,” Jono growled.
Patrick ripped his shields out from beneath his skin and expanded them to cover Jono. Together, they ran out of the bar, hellfire licking at his magic, the heat of it strong enough to make sweat form on his forehead even through his shields. Their feet hit the sidewalk in time to take another hellfire bomb head-on.
A man sat on a motorcycle, helmet on, a glass bottle held in one gloved hand, ugly hellfire burning in its depth. He threw it in their direction and didn’t wait to see it land before driving off, weaving through traffic. Patrick tapped a ley line through the soulbond, siphoning external magic through Jono’s soul and pouring it into a mageglobe already burning between his hands. He strengthened his shield, and the hellfire bomb exploded against that defensive barrier in a furious splatter of heat and magic.
Marek’s Maserati, parked out front of the bar, took the brunt of the attack this time. Paint and metal melted from the heat as Patrick manipulated his magic to entrap the hellfire bomb. It took most of his concentration, but he trusted Jono to watch his six for the handful of seconds he needed to initiate containment. Patrick’s mageglobe burned hot between his hands as he locked down the shield around the hellfire bomb.
“See if you can’t catch that asshole,” Patrick snarled.
Jono didn’t need to be told twice. He ran off like lightning, preternatural speed aiding him. Patrick focused on the hellfire, sweat sliding down his face as he reinforced his shields. He hoped someone with an affinity for defensive magic would come with the first responders.
“Cops have been called,” Sage said from behind him.
“Someone needs to take Wade home. He’s underage. Emma can’t afford to lose her liquor license.”
“You mean Jono can’t.”
Tempest provided Jono with a job, as was required for his green card status. Patrick was certain that if Tempest closed, Marek would hire Jono into PreterWorld, but the paperwork would be hell to clear him with a new visa. In the midst of a civil war, they couldn’t afford that kind of setback.
“Just make sure he’s safe.”
Sage nodded. “I’ll send him home with an escort.”
Wade didn’t protest Patrick’s order to get clear of the crime scene, although he looked like he wanted to. Sage stepped away while Patrick did his best to keep the hellfire contained, ugly smoke and sparking heat roiling against his magic. Shields weren’t his strong suit, but he’d done this sort of defensive work before when backed into a corner while with the Mage Corps. He’d done it last year when he first came to New York, and that memory left a knot in his gut.
Back then, the hellfire bomb in his car had been cast by Hades. Patrick knew it wasn’t Hades on that motorcycle, but whoever it had been had access to the same sort of power, which meant they had access to gods.
Patrick flexed his fingers, magic flickering at his fingertips as he sought to put out the hellfire bomb. Sirens screamed in the distance, the mixed sound that of the police and fire department. Patrick half turned, raising a shield between the building the bar was in and the hellfire licking at the structure. The second he shielded the hellfire stretched across the entrance, people started pouring out of Tempest, fleeing the scene.
“I sent Wade off with one of Emma’s pack members. They’ll take him to our apartment,” Sage said as she and Marek approached Patrick.
“That was my car,” Marek said, sounding equal parts pissed off and scared.
“That was my bar,” Emma growled as she popped up beside them.
Marek touched her elbow. “It’s still standing.”
A blur of motion down the street drew Patrick’s attention. The subtle tug in the soulbond told him it was Jono, who skidded to a halt in front of him an eye blink later. His clothes were torn in places, blood smeared across one forearm, but Patrick couldn’t see a wound. The furious expression on Jono’s face promised murder.
“Who was it?” Patrick asked.
Jono’s nostrils flared on an exhale, mouth twisting. “Nicholas. I got the bloody bastard off the motorcycle, but I couldn’t hold him. He had a demon in his soul.”
Patrick tried to ignore the way his heart beat faster. “It’s London all over again.”
Nicholas Kavanaugh was dire to the other god pack. Youssef didn’t have a trace of hell in his aura yesterday, but it seemed the same couldn’t be said for some of his pack members. It meant they’d have to counter demon-backed werewolves who weren’t shy about collateral damage. Patrick realized they’d reached the point where they wouldn’t be able to stay their hand any longer.
“We won’t let New York turn into that mess,” Jono said in a low, furious voice as the first police car turned the corner and sped down Avenue B.
4
The smell of hellfire hung heavy in the air, leaving a bitter aftertaste in the back of Jono’s throat where he sat inside the bar. The Crime Scene Unit out of the PCB was currently processing the front of the bar and the street outside. Patrick was working with the FDNY to put the hellfire out with the help of a witch with an affinity for water magic. Marek’s car was a complete and utter loss, but at least the bar had mostly withstood the attack.
“I paid half a million dollars for those wards. Worth every dollar,” Marek said as he watched CSU work.
Jono grunted his agreement, arms crossed tightly over his chest. Police milled in and out of the bar, checking in with the people processing the scene. Jono and the others had already given their statements, but he knew their night wasn’t over yet.
Leon was in the back room with the police, making copies of the security feed for that night. Emma and Sage were sitting beside Ronaldo on the floor near the stairs to the lower level. He’d been the one manning the door when the attack happened and had taken the brunt of the first hellfire bomb. He’d shifted to his wolf form to heal the burns, but even in wolf form he was wounded. It was taking multiple shifts in order to heal him, and he was exhausted. Sage had wisely taken a slew of pictures of Ronaldo’s injuries in the beginning and had promised to email them to the detectives assigned the case as evidence.
Paramedics with the FDNY were waiting off to the side, asking Emma and Sage quiet questions about Ronaldo’s physical state, but so far weren’t interfering. Jono half thought they weren’t getting closer because they didn’t want to get infected with the werevirus, despite being masked and gloved up.
A tall figure stepped through the bar’s entrance, Casale’s familiar scent hitting Jono’s nose. He was dressed in a suit rather than a uniform, the lingering hints of an evening meal drifting about him. Must’ve had a lot of garlic in the recipe.
“The PCB taking a statement from you twice in one day is not what I was expecting,” Casale said as he approached.
“Not how I wanted to spend my evening either. Or my morning, for that matter,” Jono said.
Casale came to a stop in front of where Jono leaned against the bar. Marek casually hiked himself up onto the closest barstool, making it clear he wasn’t going anywhere. Casale’s gaze flickered over to him, but he didn’t try to get Marek to leave.