Jono nodded. “I heard.”
“So. Dead werejackal. You know one of those?”
“Not personally, but Sage might.”
“Then let’s hope she’s home.”
Jono held out his hand for the car keys. “I’ll drive.”
The Tempest pack home was located in an Art Deco building on Fifth Avenue in the Upper East Side. Marek had bought it when he became a billionaire overnight after PreterWorld, the social media company he founded and owned, went public. Marek shared the apartments within with Emma and Leon, Sage, and a couple other pack members. When Jono had first emigrated to New York City, Marek had put him up in a tiny studio walkup, but he’d spent a lot of his time here. These days, it was almost like a second home.
Jono parked the Mustang in front of the car park entrance since they weren’t staying long. The government plates it carried would keep the car from getting towed. Jono wrapped his arm around Patrick’s shoulders as they headed for the building’s entrance, holding him close. Patrick didn’t try to pull away, and Jono let out a quiet breath at the way the soulbond had finally stopped tugging at his awareness now that the mage was within reach.
Jono let them through the warded front door, and they took the lift inside up to the topmost flat that Marek and Sage called home. When it opened onto the small foyer, they were greeted by Emma. She was a petite Chinese American woman with thick black hair currently tied back in a long braid. She wore a cotton camisole and sleep shorts, feet bare as she waved at them. Jono had a feeling she’d put clothes on for Patrick’s sensibilities.
“Hey,” Emma said. “We’re all here. You hungry?”
“No,” Patrick replied.
“When was the last time you ate?” Jono wanted to know. Patrick hesitated, which was all the answer Jono needed. “Could do with some grub, Em.”
“With a pack of bottomless stomachs, that’s always available,” Emma said as she waved them inside. She didn’t ask about the fading bruises on Patrick’s face, but her slight frown told Jono she was worried.
Emma and Leon owned the flat below Marek’s. Not everyone who belonged to the Tempest pack resided in the building. None of them carried the god strain of the werevirus in their veins and preferred staying under the radar as much as they could. With Marek being a seer, sometimes staying anonymous was difficult, and distance was the only cure.
Marek and Sage were sat on the sofa in the family area of the open-plan flat. Leon was already in the kitchen down the way to make up a couple of plates. The first time Patrick had ever visited here, Emma had conducted hospitality with him, a ceremony of welcome to a person’s hearth and home.
Hospitality greetings were binding welcomes that protected a home from threats while a magic user was present. Tied to the threshold wrapped around the building, it was another layer of magical protection. Emma had deemed the traditional greeting unnecessary for Patrick after June, and he’d been welcomed with open arms ever since.
“Your texts said you wanted to talk, but you didn’t say about what,” Sage said once they’d sat down on the other sofa.
Jono eyed Patrick. “You didn’t tell her?”
“It’s not something I’m willing to leave an electronic trail on with an unsecured phone on her end,” Patrick retorted.
“That doesn’t sound good,” Leon said from the kitchen.
Patrick leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees, hands clasped loosely together between them. Jono studied his profile, taking in the tight line of his jaw as he clenched his teeth before blowing out a heavy breath.
“I got called in for another case with the PCB,” Patrick began. “You see the news tonight about a body in the subway?”
“I’ve been working on a demurrer ever since I got home. I haven’t seen any news,” Sage said.
“The three of us have been remotely overseeing back-end work on PreterWorld being handled out of our Silicon Valley office,” Marek added, waving a hand to encompass himself, Emma, and Leon.
Patrick met Sage’s gaze with a calmness that had Jono wondering how many bodies it took for someone to become inured to death. “A train operator saw a body in the Old City Hall subway station. He notified his bosses at the MTA, and they called in the PCB due to the wards. The SOA assigned me to the case. The victim was a teenager, partially shifted in the head, and the medical examiner’s office confirmed he was a werejackal.”
Sage never looked away from Patrick, never blinked. Her left hand slowly curled into a fist, knuckles turning white. “New York City has one werejackal pack in Brooklyn. As far as I know, they aren’t missing any members, and none of theirs have been exiled.”
“So he was independent?”
Sage’s lips pressed into a hard line, and Jono could smell the anger and distress pouring off her. “About six months ago, an independent werejackal went before the god pack asking for permission to approach local packs for possible placement. He only approached a few before word got around he wasn’t a good fit.”
“How so?”
“Too ready to fight. Too keen on power. Pack alphas would have been challenged by him the moment they accepted him into their pack.” Sage leaned forward, her gaze piercing. “He was still a teenager.”
Patrick nodded grimly. “Yeah, so is our victim.”
“Most of the other independents didn’t want anything to do with him. I was an independent like them for years before Emma offered me a place in her pack. They know to come to me when they feel they can’t go to the god pack.” Sage glanced over at Emma before her eyes flicked Jono’s way. “I’ve been hearing rumors over the last couple of months, but hearsay is just that without proof.”
Jono stiffened at her words, sitting up straighter. “I haven’t heard anything.”
Emma held up a hand as Leon finally came back over to them carrying two plates piled high with leftover pasta. Werecreatures burned through a lot of calories, and Emma made it a point to always have a full refrigerator.
“Can you ward the apartment for silence?” Emma asked Patrick.
In response, Patrick uncurled his hands, a mageglobe sparking into existence between his fingers. The same hint of static from the bar flowed across Jono’s ears, silence following in its wake.
“Silence ward is up,” Patrick said.
“What have you been keeping from me?” Jono wanted to know.
He was god pack, even if he had never held any territory. By virtue of the god strain of the werevirus running through his veins and the animal-god patron that had claws sunk deep in his soul, Jono had an obligation to the packs around him, even if he couldn’t act on his rank. He’d discreetly dispensed advice to those Emma sent his way, helping to quietly mediate lesser disputes that Estelle and Youssef never cared to handle with packs he could trust wouldn’t turn around and narc on him.
“You had a rough time of it in June,” Emma said, calmly meeting his gaze. “Anyone who asked, I said you needed some space.”
Jono clenched his hands into fists. “Em.”
“You were tortured, Jono. That’s not something you just shake off after a shift and a night’s rest. You had both the PCB and the SOA breathing down your neck wanting answers and interviews. You’d just made a pack with Patrick and you both needed time to adjust. I handled what I could with the packs.”
Jono didn’t much care to think about what he’d gone through at Ethan’s hand. Waking up from nightmares with Patrick by his side was loads better than waking up alone. “If there was a problem, you should’ve told me.”
Emma gave him a frustrated look. “What more could you have done?”
Jono opened his mouth—then closed it. He clenched his teeth, feeling the pressure in the hinge of his jaw. She was right, and he hated it. New York City wasn’t his territory. He wasn’t judge, jury, and executioner for the packs that called the five boroughs home. That was all Estelle and Youssef and the self-serving arseholes enforcing their orders.
Deep down, Jono knew he could do bett
er.
Patrick pointed at the plate of cooling food in front of him on the coffee table. “Eat.”
Patrick had practically inhaled his food and was already more than halfway finished. Jono picked up the plate because it would be rude not to.
“What’s going on with the independents?” Patrick asked.
Sage shifted on the sofa and tucked one foot underneath her. “Pack law commands any independent werecreature who comes to the city must go before the god pack to get permission to stay. Not everyone is granted that permission, and not all those who receive it stay. I’ve been hearing rumors that some independent werecreatures have gone missing.”
“You sure they didn’t just leave to go try their luck somewhere else?”
“Independents stick together. Doesn’t make us a pack, but it’s a safety thing. We usually tell someone what we’re doing,” Jono said.
“I got a few who say their friends never came home, or didn’t show up for work. Their calls are going unanswered, and no one has seen them or scented them in any pack territory,” Sage added.
Patrick viciously stabbed at a meatball. “Until now.”
“Yes.”
Patrick eyed the meatball on his fork before sighing heavily and setting his plate on the coffee table, apparently no longer hungry. “The victim had shine in his pocket. That information stays between us.”
The sound of ripping fabric had Jono looking over at where Emma sat on the armchair, peeling claws out of the expensive furniture. She didn’t seem to notice the damage she’d done.
“What?” she growled.
Jono’s anger matched hers, a vicious, ugly emotion he had to throttle back. No love was lost between vampires and werecreatures, and Jono had a hatred for them that went deeper than most. His infection by the werevirus was due to a dodgy blood transfusion at a hospital after an auto accident when he was seventeen. The Edgware Night Court had done a tidy little side business in blood procurement through the hospital, and safety standards hadn’t been kept up.
He’d come to terms with his lot in life years ago, but Jono’s opinion on vampires had remained the same—he bloody well hated them. Dealing with Lucien and his transient Night Court in June had only cemented that feeling.
“The treaties the god pack has with the Night Courts here mean we have pass-through rights in each other’s territories, but we don’t stay. It was a bloodbath in the middle of the last century during the Civil Rights era before City Hall worked out the treaties,” Leon said.
In a major metropolitan city, territory was measured by blocks, sometimes by a single address. The density of New York City meant all sorts of various monsters and creatures claimed territory that ran right up against each other. As with street gangs, sometimes fights broke out. Humanity hated when the preternatural world went to war, which was why laws targeting territory rights were so draconian.
Not that any of the groups affected by those laws ever strictly obeyed them.
“Well, the kid was either dealing or using, and either answer isn’t going to play well in the press or with the groups in question. If he was a mundane human, it would’ve been a nonissue,” Patrick said.
“He’s dead. I don’t consider that a nonissue,” Jono said flatly.
Patrick shrugged. “Drugs, as shitty as they are, aren’t a drop everything and eradicate now sort of problem. It’s a losing fight against supply and demand issues that will never go away. People die from overdoses every day. That’s not news. What is news is a dead werecreature in a place he shouldn’t be with possible evidence of contact with vampires.”
“He could’ve got shine from anywhere,” Sage said, playing devil’s advocate.
“Kid had burn marks around his neck that looked like they came from silver. The wound was the right size and shape for a collar. In my experience, that speaks of time spent in captivity.”
Jono got to his feet to prowl around the living area, unable to sit still any longer. He could feel Patrick’s eyes on him but was still too angry to speak.
“If I had my way,” Patrick said into the tense silence, “I’d dump whatever vampire killed the kid in the middle of a desert a couple of minutes before sunrise and wait for the party to start.”
“You sound confident the perpetrator is one of the undead,” Sage said.
“In my experience, nothing human dumps a werecreature in the middle of a hidden subway station wrapped in protective wards.”
“But you don’t have proof.”
“I’ll find some.”
Jono rested his hands on the back of the sofa Marek and Sage were sat on. He looked over their heads at Patrick, meeting his determined gaze head-on. He knew the lengths Patrick would go to close out a case—they were both living with the fallout of his stubbornness, after all.
“Estelle and Youssef should be told what’s going on.”
Jono growled, the sound ugly and mean. “Fuck that.”
Sage shrugged, turning to glare at him. “I said they should, not that we need to be the ones to do so. From a pack law standpoint, that’s what has to happen.”
“I’ll deal with them at some point but not tonight,” Patrick said.
“Too bad you can’t deal with Jono instead,” Emma said, chin tilted up in a defiant angle.
Jono dug his fingers into the cushions, mindful of his strength. Emma could destroy her own furniture all she liked, but Jono would feel terrible at making a mess of her home. “You know why, Em.”
“Yeah, well, they’re shitty alphas. You’d be better.”
Patrick arched an eyebrow at Jono but kept quiet. Jono’s mouth twisted and he let out a harsh breath. “A two-person pack won’t stand a chance in a challenge, mage or not. You know that.”
“My pack is not the only one who would follow you,” Emma said in a quiet, firm voice. “You know that.”
Jono closed his eyes, feeling the echo of Fenrir’s presence deep in his soul. No one other than Patrick knew of the immortal’s favor bestowed on him. He’d carried that secret with him out of London and abided by the rules Estelle and Youssef had laid down for him around Marek’s insistence. Moments like this made Jono wonder what would happen if he gave voice to a truth few believed in.
Fenrir’s voice rumbled through his mind, the sound like teeth gnashing against bone. War.
Jono opened his eyes, shaking off the voice of a god. “Not the time, Em.”
Emma stared him down before pointedly showing her throat in a submissive manner, a gesture she offered to no one else but Estelle and Youssef, and that only grudgingly. “When it arrives, you know where to find me.”
Jono dipped his head in acknowledgment. “We’ll let Pat sort out the god pack and keep you lot updated.”
“If you need someone to identify the dead, call me,” Sage said.
“I might take you up on that if the god pack pisses me off too much,” Patrick told her as he stood, the mageglobe hovering beside him still. “Thanks for dinner.”
“You’re always welcome here,” Leon told him, the sincerity in his voice a far cry from the initial antagonism that had colored their first few interactions.
The monthly pack dinner Patrick had been invited to in July had gone a long way toward getting the Tempest pack to be comfortable around him. Jono knew Patrick was still a bit standoffish, but that was to be expected from someone who lived with the secrets he carried. With Marek, Emma, Leon, and Sage, he was more himself.
Emma got up to hug them goodbye and walk them to the lift. She barely came up to Patrick’s chin in her bare feet, but size didn’t mean anything in the preternatural world.
“I don’t like this,” she said bluntly, not bothering to lower her voice since the silence ward was still up. “If it’s the Night Courts, we have a problem that Estelle and Youssef most likely won’t do anything about.”
Jono glanced at Patrick, catching the other man’s gaze. “We’ll get it sorted, Em.”
She nodded, her brown eyes flicking between the two
of them. “I mean it, Jono. We’d follow you.”
“Cheers, love.”
The mageglobe faded away and Jono assumed Patrick had removed the silence ward. Emma stepped back, letting the lift doors shut. Jono didn’t know what to say in the face of that pledge of loyalty. On the one hand, her faith in him was humbling. On the other hand, fracturing the packs in New York City would turn the werecreature community into a hellish, bloody mess.
Patrick didn’t seem in a conversational mood, and they made their way back to the car in silence. They were halfway to the Mustang when a scent rocked Jono to a halt, hand snapping out to grab for Patrick and hold him back. A burning ozone smell filled his nose, sharp and cutting.
A scent he only ever smelled around immortals.
“Smells like an immortal took a walkabout,” Jono said.
“Motherfucker,” Patrick spat out.
Protective wards were embedded in the Mustang. Jono had been there when Patrick had laid them down despite not having the greatest affinity for that kind of magic. The wards were minor, set to shield the vehicle if someone with magic tried to access it, and warn him of the attempt. Patrick should’ve been aware of the tampering. The fact that he apparently wasn’t made Jono hyperaware they were out in the open on the street.
“Stay here,” Patrick said.
Jono snorted. “Not bloody likely.”
Patrick opened his mouth to argue before abruptly shaking his head. “Sorry. Habit.”
The bitter scent emanating from Patrick grew stronger as his personal shields expanded around them both. Jono couldn’t see the movement of magic, but he could feel it, the way power skittered across his skin.
They approached the car together and Jono stayed right by Patrick’s side as he circled the Mustang. The ward runes flared up brightly at each corner and the doors before turning invisible again.
Patrick frowned. “The wards weren’t broken.”
Jono pulled the keys out of his pocket and hit the fob to unlock the door. “Someone still got inside. Can I open the door?”
All Souls Near & Nigh (Soulbound Book 2) Page 3