Page 134 of On the Wings of War
They were seated around the table, dinner half-finished, when someone knocked on the front door. The threshold wrapped around the apartment didn’t register whoever was out there as a threat, but Patrick still froze in his chair.
“Are we expecting anyone tonight?” Patrick asked. It was closing in on 2300, and the only thing he had wanted to do after they finished dinner wassleep.
Jono got to his feet. “No.”
Patrick followed Jono to the door, hand straying to his dagger’s hilt. When Jono opened it, he couldn’t say he was surprised to see Einar standing on the landing. He was just more surprised it wasn’t Lucien or Carmen.
“Finally back in the country?” Patrick asked.
Einar stared at him with such intensity that Jono actually stepped between them.
“What do you want?” Jono demanded.
Patrick edged around Jono so he could see Einar. The vampire’s gaze tracked him and no one else.
“Lucien wants to see you,” Einar said.
“It’slate. Tell him the government isn’t backing out of the bargain they made with him. He’s got even more freedom now to be a fucking troublesome asshole. He doesn’t need to see me to confirm that,” Patrick said.
Einar never crossed the threshold—he’d never been invited to, and the building’s front door was technically public property, just not theirs—but he lifted his hand, and the sand that poured free of his fingers fell into the apartment as fine and light as ash.
Patrick stared at it, a chill coursing through his body so fast it caused his teeth to clack together. The only sound he could hear was the dull roar of his heartbeat in his ears.
“Patrick?”
Jono’s voice, his touch, pulled Patrick back to awareness. He barely recognized his own when he spoke. “There was sand on all the altars.”
On Setsuna’s, on their own, on every pack’s in their territory. When Jono had called about it days ago, Patrick had told him to leave it alone.
The call had come, he realized, the same day the nightmares had stopped.
Einar never blinked. “Shewants to see you.”
Patrick didn’t remember leaving the apartment. He didn’t remember the drive to Ginnungagap.
He only came back to himself when they stood in front of the door to the club, tongue numb, his hand held in Jono’s tight grip, while the smell of ozone drifted on the hot summer breeze.
“Patrick,” Jono said, staring at him with concerned eyes. “What’s going on? This doesn’t feel right.”
Maybe it didn’t for him, but for Patrick, it felt like waking up from a years-long nightmare.
Einar had opened the door, looking at him expectantly. Patrick pulled free of Jono and walked inside, hearing the sounds of active shelling and attack spells hitting the front lines beneath his ragged breathing. Every other blink brought a flash of desert sand across his sight, war-damaged city walls that flickered over the solid ones holding up Ginnungagap’s roof.
They came into a club filled with Lucien’s Night Court and the promise of prayers answered by the power of resurrection Patrick had held in one hand with a goddess’ blessing, just for a moment.
A figure turned away from Lucien: short and predatorily lean, with midnight-black skin and an aura leaking from the godhead she carried that burned Patrick’s eyes like the sun. The colorful skirt of her woven strapless gown shifted around muscular legs that ended in bone hooks sheathed in iron caps. Gold bands encircled her upper arms and wrists, bright against her dark skin, but it held nothing to the shine of life in her black eyes and the smile that stole across her face, revealing jagged iron teeth sharpened into fangs.
Patrick opened his mouth, the words clawing their way out of his throat like knives. “There was nothing left of you.”
“Oh, child,” Ashanti said. “Have you forgotten all I taught you? Prayers aren’tnothing. They are a weapon, just like you. The desert cradled the dust of me, as it always has in my history. My body was never gone, only waiting on faith to rebuild it. I was born of ash long ago, and I have died of ash many times, and I will always rise.”
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