“Is there a problem?”
The voice came from behind Jono, and he had to force himself not to react. If he’d been in wolf form, his hackles would’ve raised. Jono kept his heartbeat steady as he turned around to face a man whose arrival he hadn’t heard or initially smelled in any degree. Judging by the flash of wariness in Patrick’s eyes, Jono wasn’t the only one who had missed the approach.
There was a reason for that.
The newcomer standing on the top step had long black hair shaved at the sides and tied back in a low ponytail at the nape of his neck. The white linen suit he wore stood out against his brown skin. He wore a gold signet-style ring with a large obsidian face that matched the obsidian studs he wore in each ear. His eyes were so dark a brown they looked black, like Lucien’s, but his teeth were human-looking when he smiled.
For all the man’s human appearance, Jono could smell the electric ozone scent no amount of magic could completely hide from him these days. He didn’t know if it was due to the soulbond tying him to Patrick and the soul debt the mage carried, or an ability Fenrir had gifted him for this fight against the Dominion Sect.
In the end, it didn’t matter. The nameless immortal was a threat Jono couldn’t ignore.
“The entertainment has arrived, Tremaine,” the god announced, gesturing toward the main floor below. His voice carried the heavy Spanish accent of someone where English was their second or even third language. Unlike the Greek gods Jono had stood before, this one didn’t bother to strip away his accent to blend in. “Shall we begin?”
“The drugfest orgy isn’t the star attraction?” Patrick asked no one in particular.
Movement out of the corner of his eyes made Jono turn his head. Sage stood and headed for the railing, sliding between the ranks of vampires without fear. The dress she wore was a muted charcoal, making her turquoise pendant stand out where it hung around her neck, the magic embedded in that artifact hiding what she truly was. The fae she’d accompanied watched her leave with an unreadable look on his face, but he made no move to stop her.
Then Jono’s preternatural hearing caught what had drawn Sage’s attention—the sound of a hoarse voice begging no.
Jono moved without thinking, leaving Patrick’s side in favor of getting eyes on what was happening below. Standing between him and the railing were vampires belonging to the Queens Night Court, and they didn’t seem inclined to move.
“I will go through you,” Jono promised darkly, voice coming out in a growl.
“Should’ve stayed home, wolf. Do your alphas know you’re in vampire territory, breaking the treaty?” a vampire sneered.
Jono kept moving, the shift fighting against his bones as he closed the distance between them. “Not my god pack. Not my treaty. You can fuck right off.”
The statement was one Jono refused to regret, even though he knew it would get back to Estelle and Youssef. They’d make his life hell for it, but he was utterly done with their shit.
The fae tapped the floor with his cane a single time. Despite the carpet beneath their feet, the sound it made upon contact was like shattering glass that made Jono’s ears hurt.
“The mediation is not over. This is still neutral ground. There will be no blood shed while I preside,” the fae announced.
His words fell on everyone like a weight. Jono wasn’t sure how high up in rank the fae must be, but it had to be pretty fucking high to get the vampires to reluctantly step aside at a single commanding look from Rajesh. Either that, or the threat of breaking a promise made to a possible fae lord was too expensive a mistake to make.
“I didn’t promise a fucking thing to anyone,” Jono said to the mismatched group at large as he stalked forward.
“And you complain about me rushing into things,” Patrick said from behind him.
Jono didn’t respond, having finally reached the railing where Sage stood. He gripped the railing in both hands and peered down below at the sudden commotion disrupting the vibe of the club. He took a breath, the scent of sex and drugs fading beneath the sudden spike of adrenaline and anticipation. Underneath all that was the sharp, stinging scent of terror.
Below on the marble dance floor, golden lines of magic flowed quickly across the area, forming not just a large circle, but an intricate, ancient design. Pictures appeared within the concentric circles of the casting, symbols and animals flaring into existence in four quadrants around a warrior’s face in the center. What would have been radial lines in a modern casting looking like sunbeam carvings on this one.
The fiery light finally settled into smooth lines that burned against the marble, a containment circle that two vampires tossed a crying, bloody teenager into.
A teenager who wore a collar around his neck.
Jono didn’t know he’d broken the railing until the metal cut into his hands, making him bleed.
The teenager sprawled onto the floor before quickly getting to his knees. The outermost circle rose high into the air, creating a transparent barrier he couldn’t break through, no matter how hard the teenager clawed at the magic.
The music gave way to a bright, peppy voice announcing, “Last call to place your bets on tonight’s special entertainment. Minimum buy-in is fifty grand. Will your champion win again in this fight to the death, or will your prayers be answered?”
In the circle that was a cage, across from where the teen huddled on his knees in torn and bloody clothes, dark gray fog drifted upward. From its depths erupted a black jaguar that Jono knew was no werecreature, not with that scent of a god cutting through the air.
“Is it true?” Sage asked, getting the words out through clenched teeth. “That you made no promises?”
“Not to Lucien,” Jono hedged, because he’d made promises to Patrick in many ways. They were bound together, but the promises Patrick made on his own didn’t bind Jono no matter the pack they had. He could see now why Patrick had stressed that fact back in Ginnungagap.
“You’re learning.”
“Learning what?”
“How to speak without losing pieces of yourself.” Sage looked at him, the rage in her eyes burning straight through to his own. “I can’t interfere.”
She was here at the behest of the Night Courts, in the capacity of the fae firm that employed her. Jono understood that. He also understood what Sage was asking him without saying a single bloody word.
Jono was a god pack alpha, and he’d be damned if he wouldn’t act like one.
Jono didn’t hesitate when he threw himself over the railing, the snarl escaping his mouth that of a wolf born of fury, Fenrir howling through his mind and soul.
7
Jono landed on both feet between the teenager and the jaguar, legs folding beneath him to absorb the force of impact. He stayed crouched in the center of the circle, one hand pressed against the floor. His fingers spread over the open mouth of the drawn face, the heat of magic burning against his skin.
Around him the crowd became more vocal. Jono would’ve ignored them all in favor of the threat right in front of him—except he saw a face he only remembered in his nightmares.
Jono had done his best to bury the memory of what Ethan Greene had put him through, but there had been others in that house somewhere in Manhattan. People he remembered in flashes and could never forget. The crowd was a blur of faces, but one stood out because the high, mocking sound of her laughter as she drank wine while he bled was embedded deep in Jono’s mind.
He saw her in the crowd before she slipped away, head ducked to hide her face, but she wasn’t quick enough, and he had a feeling she knew it.
She disappeared, and Jono let her because he had other things to worry about. His gaze snapped back to the jaguar, watching as it lashed its tail and bared its teeth in a snarl that cut into words.
“Do you wish to die?”
The voice of a god was never easy to hear, but Jono had spent nearly half his life listening to one. While some in the crowd clutched their heads in pain, Jono merely tippe
d his to the side, letting the words wash over him.
“That’s a dumb fucking question, mate,” Jono ground out before letting go of the bits that made up the human part of him these days.
The shift hit like a lorry, vicious in the way the wolf clawed its way out of his skin. For a single instant, Jono suffered through the agony that came with the shift from human to werewolf, fiery pain lighting up his brain and central nervous system to a point where it drowned out the world. Then it switched off, the werevirus blocking the pain so suddenly it left him momentarily light-headed.
It was long enough for his body to twist itself into something new.
Bones broke, a distant crunch Jono could feel as pressure but not pain. The world wavered at the edges, his eyesight shifting, still seeing in color but muted, picking up motion his human eyes couldn’t. His body grew, the clothes and shoes he’d worn to the club shredding as mass redistributed itself into the heavy bulk of his werewolf form.
Muscles grew and reattached as his center of gravity changed to incorporate moving on four legs instead of two. The itch of fur rolled over his skin in a wave, nose flaring as scents he couldn’t pick up even as a human with enhanced senses hit his brain with information Jono could easily make sense of after all these years.
The shift took less than a minute, but in that time, the jaguar wasn’t waiting for Jono to complete it. The godlike creature launched itself not at Jono but at the teenager cowering behind him. The teen smelled rank from blood, urine, and fear mixed in with the scent of foreign magic keeping the teen from shifting.
Jono tossed his monstrous head upward midshift, jaws opening wide to snap at the jaguar, catching a hindfoot between his teeth as they sharpened into fangs. Jono wrenched his head to the side and slammed the jaguar to the ground, biting down on the hindfoot with all the strength in his newly formed jaw.
Hot blood filled his mouth in a gush before he had to let go or risk losing an eye to sharp black claws. The jaguar roared, twisting out of reach with an unearthly speed that had Jono’s teeth snapping at air. He crouched lower, tracking the way the jaguar retreated to the outer circle to regroup.
Power flowed through Jono’s mind, claws digging into his thoughts as Fenrir used his eyes to see the mortal world. The double vision they shared brought with it the shining bright aura of a god spilling out of the jaguar, save for a dark spot that incorporated his left hind paw.
It is mortal, Fenrir said. A construct. Kill it.
The aura said otherwise, but Jono wasn’t one to question his patron. A head-on attack would put the teenage werecreature at risk of dying, so Jono stayed where he was despite Fenrir’s warning growl that echoed in his soul.
Piss off, Jono shot back. Let me concentrate.
His paws didn’t burn from the magic in the containment circle, not how his hand had while human. Fenrir’s power was pushing through his soul, sinking into his bones, filling his mind with a wrath that Jono found difficult to shake off.
Let me feast.
On the people in the club, in the streets beyond the iron-barred walls, on any immortal who fell beneath his teeth and claws—it was all Jono could think of in the early days of his infection. Fenrir was made for the end of the world, but that moment was not now, and Jono had learned to stand strong against an animal-god patron who would use him until nothing of himself remained if he let it happen.
No.
Vicious in his denial, Jono held tight to a new anchor that kept him tethered to his humanity—the soulbond. It pulled at him, a wound in his soul that would never close, would never let him go. It helped him keep his thoughts, keep his sanity, in order to fight as clearheaded as he could. But Jono needed more space than the containment circle gave him, and Patrick seemed to sense that through the soulbond. It was the only explanation for the dagger that landed between him and the jaguar, channeling the power of gods.
The matte-black blade sank centimeters into the marble, directly into the mouth of the center face that glowed. White fire erupted from the blade, carried by words in languages that Jono couldn’t read which drifted over the blade.
“I said I wouldn’t fight,” Jono heard Patrick say from the mezzanine. “I never said they wouldn’t interfere. There’s a fucking difference, Lucien.”
They being the gods of every heaven that had crafted the dagger which broke apart the containment circle in a burst of magic that nearly blinded Jono, even with Fenrir’s protection. The force of the blast upended people, vampires, and furniture. It shattered the chandelier directly above the fight area, raining crystal down on them. Jono shook it off as magic rebounded against the iron embedded in the walls and ceiling, crackling through everything electronic.
The Crimson Diamond was plunged into darkness, but Jono had no trouble seeing. Fenrir’s sight lit up the area for him in grays and shadows that turned night into a washed-out twilight. The jaguar had been flung back, out of the circle. With magic no longer a barrier, the teenaged werecreature Jono had sought to protect barreled toward the exit at a speed no human could match.
Jono howled a warning, but he couldn’t speak in this form, not unless he channeled Fenrir, and that was a card he had no intention of showing.
Not yet.
Jono pursued the teenager, but he wasn’t the only one. The jaguar was quick on its feet, despite only having three working ones at the moment. But what it lacked in its body, it more than made up for in its pack.
Jaguars in the wild were solitary. Here, driven by a god whose name Jono didn’t know, half a dozen more swarmed out of fog that appeared from nowhere.
“They’re crossing over from the veil!” Patrick yelled.
Jono heard him through the screams and cries of the crowd, everyone’s night of debauchery ruined for the better in his personal opinion. Jono’s night?
Just getting started.
He barreled through the crowd, using his size and speed to clear a pathway to the entrance the werecreature had already vanished through, the jaguars between them. His paws crunched the door lying broken on the ground as he launched himself through the open doorway.
Passing over the threshold brought with it the sounds of the city at night—honking horns, distant music, the chatter of people inside buildings and the screams of those on the street who didn’t expect a pack of jaguars and a god pack alpha werewolf on the hunt.
Jono knew Patrick wouldn’t be able to keep up with him, not at the speed Jono was running, four feet pounding against the pavement as he raced down Broadway, following the scent of a panicked teenager. But he knew Patrick would follow.
The jaguars swarmed ahead of him, wreaking havoc in the streets as they dodged into traffic, the pavement too narrow to contain them. They bounded on top of moving cars, and Jono had no choice but to follow them. He launched himself on top of the nearest taxi, denting the boot from his significant weight, trying to get eyes on his prey.
The car next to his juddered to a halt as Sage in her weretiger form slammed on top of the bonnet with a roar that shattered a windscreen or two. Jono shared a single look with her before they both raced forward again, a single goal in mind—rip the bloody jaguars to shreds before they killed an independent werecreature, or anyone else.
Jono’s fury fueled him in the chase down Broadway, cars, people, and buildings flashing by. Some of the screams sounded like people in pain, but Jono couldn’t stop and see if they were all right. All his focus was on the flash of blood-stained T-shirt he saw flit around the corner up ahead, followed by the jaguars.
Traffic was fucked, and Jono veered off the street for the pavement again now that it seemed the way was clear enough. Sage stayed right with him, her weretiger form smaller than his wolf but no less menacing. Muscles bunched and extended beneath her black and orange striped fur as they took the corner into the Canal Street Subway Station together. Their claws shattered the pavement when they dug in to move their bodies into the turn.
Jono saw people lying on the stairs, blood hot in his no
se, as he and Sage took flying leaps to the lower landing in order to clear the wounded. They careened down to the lower level, closing the distance between them and the jaguar pack.
Screams echoed in the underground ticketing area as the jaguars leaped over the fare gates. Jono and Sage followed in their wake, but the fare gates didn’t survive their way through. Both Jono and Sage were too large to easily fit through the entry made for humans—so they made room. Jono slammed through the nearest one, taking the brunt of the hit on his shoulders, head tucked low.
Metal screeched as the fare gates broke from the force of their passage, throwing off electric sparks from the damage as Jono and Sage crashed through to the other side. Jono fought for traction when his front paws hit the floor, claws digging in deep as he followed the scent of the teenager deeper into the subway.
Saturday night wasn’t rush hour, but there were still plenty of people in their way. Sage roared a warning that reverberated through the subway corridors. Jono hoped it was enough to make people get out of their fucking way as they raced to the lower level.
They closed the distance between them and their prey, Fenrir’s howl urging Jono on. Wards flared up along the subway walls, old magic making his nose prickle, but nothing impeded their way.
Jono put on a burst of speed and leaped forward, landing on the back of a jaguar right before it went down the final set of stairs to the platform. Jono dug his claws in deep and sank his teeth into the back of the animal’s neck as they tumbled uncontrollably down the stairs. Cement steps jarred his body on the way down, but Jono’s teeth finally found bone, and he wrenched his head to the side in a killing motion.
Vertebrae snapped, blood flooding his mouth as Jono broke the jaguar’s neck. The body went slack in his jaws and Jono let it go, already lashing out at the jaguar going for his jugular. Jono jerked backward, sinking into his wolf instincts and letting Fenrir guide him. He lashed out with his left paw, claws slicing over the jaguar’s shoulder before following with his teeth.
All Souls Near & Nigh (Soulbound Book 2) Page 10