Page 1 of Patron of Mercy

God Call

“There are secrets the gods don’t want you to know.” Lach was sitting in Hysteria at eleven in the morning talking to a woman behind the bar who’d hardly glanced up at him. She had yet to say a word.

He pulled his flintlock pistol out of the holster under his jacket and set it down flat on the glossy wood in front of him. “Can I have one of those?” he asked, waving at the clean bar rags. The linen guys had just dropped off a fresh batch at the back door.

She shrugged and tossed him one. From his pocket, he dug out a small tool kit and set to cleaning it. A pistol like his would last a lifetime if properly cared for, and Lach was long lived.

“Thanks. Anyway, like I was saying, there are immortal creatures all over the world. But what the gods won’t tell you is that if you kill one of them—”

Dionysus sidled up to him from somewhere in the back, leaning his forearms on the bar. “Cleo’s not listening to you,” he said, looking sidelong at Lach, a smirk on his full lips. Dionysus had a broad, frank face. The angle of his brow always held a hint of challenge, and the flicker of his black eyes promised a great deal of fun—or madness, depending on the day.

“Listen, Dio, I know you’re one of those pod-god sons of Zeus who want to keep us little folk down, but you’re telling me you don’t want Cleo here to achieve immortality? You don’t want her by your side, dusting your shot glasses forever?”

“I don’t want Cleo getting the wrong idea, go off and try to kill a Kere, and have her head ripped off her shoulders. Put the gun away, Lach. It’s not legal.”

“I have all my permits, Dionysus. Anyway, this is an antique.”

“There’s no open carry in DC, Lach. And I don’t give a damn if it is an antique. My bar, my rules.”

With a sigh, Lach wiped off the pistol’s barrel and tucked it away again. He’d won it off a man in a duel, after he’d shot the original owner square in the chest and walked away like the true badass he was.

“Not every immortal creature is Kere-level horrifying, you know,” Lach said. He had won his immortality in a foolish gambit to feed his family. After slaughtering one of Helios’s prized cattle back before paved roads were a thing, he’d stopped aging. Frankly, it’d taken him a while to notice, even with the weird looks he’d gotten from other villagers. “I think you’re hoarding resources. You know, that’sjustlike you one-percenters.”

Dionysus laughed aloud. “Too right.” He waved to Cleo. “What do you want?” he asked Lach.

“Double whiskey.”

“It’s eleven a.m.”

“Can I get a triple then? Long day ahead of me.”

“Not a chance.” Dionysus signed something to her, and Lach’s stomach sank as he watched the god’s fingers move.

“She really wasn’t listening.”

“She really wasn’t.” Dionysus barely contained his laughter. “I mean, she can read lips, but Cleo, like pretty much everyone else with sense, knows you are completely full of shit. Not worth the effort, really.”

Cleo smiled at him and shrugged. With a firm hand, Dionysus clapped his shoulder as she poured a whiskey for him and a water for Dionysus.

“How’d you even get in here?” Dionysus asked him once he’d taken a sip. “We’re closed. You do know how business hours work, right?”

Lach smirked. He had a habit of getting in places he wasn’t allowed—old temples, dragon hoards, closed nightclubs. “I came in the back door with the laundry guy.”

Dionysus stared at him. “Well, you haven’t changed a bit in the last decade.” It’d been that long since they’d seen each other. There was a lot of world to cover, and Lach preferred the open ocean to cities that grew too fast for him to keep up with. “What do you want?”

“Can you do that thing?” Lach asked. Dionysus cocked a brow. “You know, that thing you do. I need to get in touch with Hermes, and he’s not picking up his phone.”

“Ah, thething. Yes, of course.”

Dionysus stood, gave his chest a soft pound with his fist, and cleared his throat. “Hermes,” he said in a low, booming voice.

Ariadne, Dionysus’s wife, stuck her head out the office door. She had light brown skin and coal-dark eyes that swam with desire as she stared at her husband. “You sound like Morgan Freeman,” she said.

“Wouldn’t Morgan Freeman sound like him?” Lach asked. “Dio’s way older.”

“No,” Ariadne said.

“Definitely not. Respect to the master,” Dionysus agreed, kissing his fingers and holding them up.

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