All Souls Near & Nigh (Soulbound Book 2)

by Hailey Turner

  Jono clamped his jaws around as much of the jaguar’s skull as he could before rolling, dragging the beast with him. He kicked up with his hind paws, got claws in that soft belly, and raked them down the jaguar’s body with all the force he could muster.

  Blood and organs from the jaguar poured over his body as the beast shuddered in its death throes. Jono let go of the corpse, tasting blood, feeling it stick in his fur as he rolled to all four feet, the jaguar’s organs sliding off him to the platform. His ears filled with the screeching sound of an approaching train. Jono swung his head around, seeing that Sage had taken down two of the other jaguars and was cornering another. The last one made a run for the teenager standing too close to the platform edge with no hope of an easy escape.

  Jono howled a warning, but it was too late. The jaguar leaped toward the teenager, who had nowhere to go but onto the tracks right as the subway train entered the station. Jono moved without thinking, launching himself off the platform with a leap fueled by desperation. The train horn blasted a piercing warning note even as the train operator hit the brakes, the screech of metal melding with people’s screams from those still running for the exits on the platforms.

  This level of the Canal Street Subway Station was built with four tracks between the two platforms, steel pylons interspersed between them. No other trains were coming through, and Jono hoped his luck would hold.

  He slammed into the jaguar in midair and knocked the beast away from the sprawled teenager on the tracks. Jono twisted hard, his bulk making it difficult to land where he needed to—within reach of his dazed target. He carefully clamped his teeth around the teenager’s left shoulder, got as good a grip as he could, and leaped between two steel pylons for the closest set of empty tracks right as the train screeched past where they’d been lying.

  The tip of Jono’s tail whipped against the side of the subway train, a chunk of fur getting torn off, before his front paws hit the ground.

  Fuck, Jono thought with a giddy mental laugh, the roaring sound in his ears that of his heart beating and not Fenrir or the train that had finally come to an emergency stop.

  Sage roared, the sound worried, and Jono snarled back a wordless answer, keeping one paw on the teenager’s chest to keep him from trying to escape. Hands grabbed at his fur, tearing at it as the teen struggled to get free of Jono’s weight, ignoring the bloody gouges in his shoulder.

  “Let me go!” the teen gasped out, wide brown eyes so full of terror Jono didn’t think he even knew he’d been saved.

  Jono hesitated before he started to shift, needing to lean his weight on the teenager throughout the process because he kept trying to wriggle free. Jono’s body broke itself down into human skin, blood spattering on the dirty tracks around them and the teenager. Jono gripped the teenager with human hands, using his strength to keep the youth in check.

  The collar around the teen’s throat was made of silver, etched deep with wards that Jono couldn’t read. They glowed an ugly orange-red, and Jono made sure not to touch it. He leaned over the teen, blocking out as much of the world as he could.

  “Oi! You’re safe!” Jono said loudly, trying to be heard over the panicked breaths the teen couldn’t control. “You’re safe.”

  Kneeling naked on the subway tracks and covered in blood from the fight was probably not the best place to have a conversation. Jono glanced up, seeing the opposite platform was now empty. He knew the set of tracks they were on weren’t active at this hour, only during the weekday rush hour. The tracks by the opposite platform were definitely running trains though, and Jono didn’t want to risk fighting with the teen while another train barreled down on them again.

  Jono tightened his grip on the teenager, hauling them both to their feet. He wrapped his arms around the teen, wincing as bare feet slammed into his legs from frantic kicks.

  “I’m not going to hurt you—fuck!” Jono growled. “Would you get your sodding teeth out of my arm?”

  The teenager didn’t seem to hear him, clawing desperately at Jono’s arms with blunt human fingers, keening around the flesh he was biting into. Jono had to let go with his other arm and grab at the teenager’s dirty brown hair, yanking his head up with a firm tug. The bite wound on his arm would heal in moments.

  “Calm the fuck down,” Jono ordered, grimacing at the burn from silver against his chest as the collar rubbed against his skin.

  Jono kept talking as he half carried, half dragged the teenager down the tracks, fighting him the entire way. The train hadn’t reached the end of the platform, and there was space to walk around the front. The train operator lowered her side window and stuck her head out, face pale despite the frantic anger in her voice.

  “What the hell is going on?” she exclaimed.

  “Federal agent!” Patrick’s shout carried loudly through the air. “I want everyone off the subway train.”

  The train operator ducked back inside, slamming her window closed as Jono reached the front of the train, bare feet crunching over dirt and metal. He froze when he got eyes on the mess in the tracks that had once been a jaguar.

  The train should’ve torn the body to bits, shredding flesh beneath its heavy steel wheels. Instead, what lay scattered in front of the train was broken bits of obsidian glinting between the rails. Resting on a wooden tie was a red Santa Muerte idol with a black scythe and golden globe carried in each hand, larger than the sort they’d discovered in the Mustang. Its black painted eyes seemed to stare right at them.

  The teenager went rigid in his arms, breath coming so fast he couldn’t possibly get enough air in his lungs. Jono was afraid he’d pass out. “Patrick. I need you over here.”

  Footsteps pounded their way and Patrick skidded into view on the platform, dagger in one hand and mageglobe in the other. He’d lost his baseball cap somewhere in his mad dash here, face a little flushed from his run.

  Green eyes widened before narrowing, mouth twisting. “Motherfucker. Don’t move.”

  “Too right I’m not.”

  Jono waited as Patrick shielded the evidence lying on the tracks, still fighting to keep hold of the teenager. The wards that stretched through the kilometers of subway tunnels appeared up on the platform walls and along the tracks.

  “Wards don’t like what ran through here,” Patrick said.

  “Can’t imagine why.”

  “Okay.” Patrick shook sparks off his fingers. “You’re in the clear.”

  Jono crossed the tracks and leaped back up onto the platform, carrying the teenager with him. Patrick conjured up a second mageglobe and tossed it into the air between them. The washed-out blue sphere of magic pulsed twice before a ribbon of magic snaked away from it.

  “You can let him go now,” Patrick said once the binding ward had wrapped itself securely around the teenager’s body.

  Jono adjusted his grip, glad to get away from the silver collar pressing against his chest. He guided the teenager down to the platform and crouched down next to him. The burn the collar had left behind on Jono’s skin was tender and hot, stretching in an uncomfortable way as he steadied the teenager. Patrick grimaced at the sight of it before shrugging out of his leather jacket and handing it to Jono.

  “Here. Your extra set of clothes are back at the car, but this is the best cover I can give you right now,” Patrick said.

  “Should give it to—” Jono cut himself off, remembering at the last second not to use Sage’s name in public. He turned his head and stared down the platform at where Sage crouched, wrapped in one of Patrick’s shields to keep her safe from the police who were bound to show up soon.

  “The weretiger isn’t changing until we’re somewhere private,” Patrick said, going for gender-neutral terms to preserve Sage’s identity. “Keep his head still. I’m taking off the collar.”

  Jono moved to kneel behind the teenager, reaching around to grip his chin in one hand and hold his skull with the other. Patrick knelt beside them, dagger in hand as he tried to get the teenager to look at him.<
br />
  “Hey,” he said gently. “I’m Special Agent Patrick Collins with the SOA. I’m here to help, okay? So is Jono. He’s kind of like my criminal informant, only not.”

  Jono snorted. “Is that what I am now? What happened to your actual CI?”

  “They left the club.”

  “Tremaine still alive?”

  “For now.”

  Jono had more questions he wanted to ask, but the warning look Patrick shot him told him now wasn’t the time. Jono focused on keeping the teenager still as Patrick pressed the point of the dagger against the silver collar.

  No latch was visible, but the seam where it had been welded shut around the teen’s neck sat over his spine. Patrick ignored that area, instead cutting through a particular ward that reacted with a crackle of red energy that died beneath the magic the dagger wielded.

  The silver didn’t melt. Instead, it broke apart beneath the steady pressure of the dagger as it easily cut through the metal. The white glow of magic burned along the matte-black blade in response to the containment and binding spells in the collar. With a crackling hiss, the collar separated beneath the cut, and Jono was surprised to see no burn scars on the teen’s flesh as Patrick worked the collar off with steady hands. Once it was completely removed, Jono took a breath, expecting the scent of a werecreature.

  What he got was a lungful of air filled with hints of smoke.

  Patrick blinked rapidly for a couple of seconds at the teen before abruptly turning his head to the side. He squeezed his eyes shut, as if he were suddenly blinded.

  “Fucking hell,” Patrick said.

  “What?” Jono asked, body going tense, adrenaline pumping through his veins.

  “Kid’s not a werecreature. He’s a gods be damned dragon.”

  And wasn’t that a kick in the fucking teeth?

  8

  “I have the president of the MTA blowing up my line, a dozen wounded people being treated at hospitals, numerous vehicles ruined by werecreatures, the Manhattan Night Court demanding I arrest you for trespassing, and the press camped outside waiting for a statement. What the hell am I supposed to tell them?” Casale demanded.

  Patrick never looked away from where Wade Espinoza sat in Interview Room 1, staring right back at them through the two-way glass window as if he could see them when he shouldn’t be able to. He was a little difficult for Patrick to make out clearly because his aura was goddamn blinding.

  “He can hear you,” Patrick said.

  “Then ward the fucking room, Collins.”

  Patrick didn’t think he’d appreciate being told that wouldn’t work this time around.

  Casale’s anger was impossible for anyone to miss. The bull pen beyond the small observation room they were in had been tense ever since Casale stormed through it twenty minutes ago. The mess in the subway had taken hours to clean up, not to mention the time Patrick had spent at the hospital for Wade to get treated. Bringing him back here to the PCB hadn’t been his first choice, but protocol dictated it for the case.

  Patrick scratched at the side of his neck, careful not to drop the file with Wade’s limited juvenile arrest records and family records tucked under his arm. “He thinks he’s a werecreature.”

  Casale glared at Patrick, a vein throbbing in his forehead. “Are you going to stand there and tell me he isn’t?”

  In response, Patrick passed the file over to Casale, still staring at where Wade sat in the interview room. The teenager was nervously chewing on a thumbnail, wearing a pair of hospital scrubs and slippers. He’d been treated at New York-Presbyterian, Lower Manhattan for his ailments which had amounted to being underweight, underfed, dehydrated, and exhausted. Wade had been adamant he was a werecreature, but a standard blood-typing test hadn’t produced any signs of the werevirus.

  Dragons didn’t exist because of an infection.

  Once Patrick had removed the collar in the subway, Wade had started healing from his immediate physical injuries the same way a werecreature would. Except that was no werecreature sitting in the other room. Wade’s status didn’t seem to matter to Jono, who was treating the teenager like his responsibility.

  Jono had ransacked the vending machine for all his wallet was worth when they’d arrived at the PCB. The pile of empty wrappers from his haul lay in the center of the interview table, Wade having eaten his way through every last one. The three soda cans Jono had bought him were empty, crunched down to little aluminum balls by Wade. Currently, Jono was standing guard outside the door to Interview Room 1 in a set of purloined hospital scrubs.

  They’d taken Sage with them to the hospital in the back of a different ambulance because the bus had been large enough to accommodate her bulk. She’d shifted back to human form in the emergency room department’s werecreature unit under Jono’s watchful eye, been given scrubs by a nurse since the change had shredded her dress at the club, and left the premises the second Emma had arrived to whisk her home. Patrick had signed off on her leaving without being interviewed because it was his case and he knew where to find her.

  “I called SOA Director Setsuna Abuku to give her an update while at the hospital,” Patrick said, though he hadn’t mentioned Wade’s status to her. “We aren’t telling the press anything. I need time to work out a way to serve an arrest warrant on Tremaine. The SOA has its in-house lawyers working on that front right now.”

  “You went into the Crimson Diamond without a search warrant to begin with.”

  “I went with my CI.”

  “That doesn’t make this situation better.”

  Casale was right. It didn’t. But that was the least of Patrick’s problems at the moment. “The Manhattan Night Court is trafficking independent werecreatures for death fights as entertainment. Their club members get to bet big money on who wins and who dies.”

  “Yeah? That’s inadmissible now, Collins.”

  “We have Wade.”

  “The kid won’t talk. He hasn’t even asked for a lawyer yet.”

  “He’s eighteen years old. Legally an adult. We can question him.”

  “The kid,” Casale stressed, “isn’t fucking talking. Clammed up on you and every detective I’ve sent in there.”

  “Haven’t tried Jono yet.”

  “You just said he wasn’t a werecreature, so what good will it be to send in a god pack alpha?”

  “What good indeed?” a new voice asked.

  Recognition belatedly burned through Patrick’s magic, making the hair on the back of his neck stand up, as if he’d been shocked by a live wire.

  Patrick was getting real fucking tired of gods creeping up on him.

  He turned around, hand straying toward his dagger rather than his gun. The god standing in the doorway to the observation room was around Patrick’s height, but stockier, his skin a medium brown that came naturally and not from baking in the sun trying to get a tan. He wore khaki cargo pants and a navy blue polo shirt underneath an unzipped black windbreaker with the image of a gold badge screened over the left side of his chest.

  His real badge hung from a chain around his neck, glinting in the fluorescent light. The chain was tangled with a leather strip used as a choker to carry a string of miniature conch shells. A gun was holstered on his hip, and Patrick spotted a knife tucked into the man’s left combat boot. Short black hair was slicked away from his face, and his brown eyes seemed to look right through Patrick straight down to his tainted soul.

  The immortal had the same look as the god back at the Crimson Diamond who had crashed the party worse than Lucien. The similarities made Patrick want another goddamn exit out of the room. These immortals were not familiar to him at all.

  “And you are?” Casale asked with all the suspicion of a cop who didn’t want to cede any more jurisdiction.

  The immortal stepped inside, flashing a quick smile that showed off even white teeth. “DEA Special Agent Juan Delgado. I’m part of the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force.”

  “That’s a mouthful, and not in
the good way,” Patrick said, trying to move closer to Casale without making what he was doing obvious.

  “I’m working on the shine case the OCDETF has against Tremaine. I got word some hotshot federal agent might have ruined about two years’ worth of hard work for us.”

  “Yeah, that’d be me. What of it?”

  Juan—it was like calling oneself Mr. Smith with that name—stared him down for a long moment before smiling in that polite way federal agents did that was just plain mean. Patrick would know; he’d flashed that same smile plenty of times before.

  “This is the DEA’s case.”

  Patrick jerked his thumb over his shoulder at the two-way glass window separating them from Wade. “Kid says otherwise.”

  Tapping on the window had them all turning around to find Wade standing right there instead of sitting at the table. His wavy brown hair was in desperate need of a cut, and it flopped across his forehead, making him look even younger than he was. Wary brown eyes in a too-thin face easily tracked their positions through the two-way window.

  Patrick had to look away. Wade’s true self shining out of the teenager’s aura made his eyes water. Wade apparently lacked that thing called control, which made him stick out like the Welcome To Vegas sign in the middle of the desert.

  “I’m not a kid,” Wade said, voice coming through the speaker system in the room from the mic pickups on the other side of the glass.

  “Could’ve fooled me,” Casale said. He eyed Juan with the distrust of a state official used to getting overridden and not liking it one goddamn bit. “We already called in the SOA for this.”

  Juan shrugged. “My two years’ worth of evidence says the case is mine.”

  “Nope,” Patrick replied.

  Casale shook his head. “I’ll leave you two to argue this out while I get on a conference call with the commissioner. It’s one in the morning and he’s not happy. I’m not fucking happy.”

  Casale left and didn’t bother closing the door behind him. Before Patrick could focus on the immortal, Jono stepped through the doorway with a grim look on his face.