A Vigil in the Mourning (Soulbound Book 4)

by Hailey Turner

  Patrick plugged the pawnshop address into the GPS on his phone before shoving the key into the ignition. The route was taking him to the New City neighborhood on the southwest side of the South Side district.

  “Great,” Patrick muttered.

  He was going to stand out, he wasn’t going to be welcomed, and he doubted anyone he met would be willing to talk.

  Chicago was a sprawled mess of a city where the divide of haves and have-nots wasn’t as starkly noticeable as in other metropolitan areas. Patrick could still pinpoint when the shift in neighborhoods happened. Buildings gradually turned from the gleaming skyscrapers of downtown to the tree-lined streets of the well-off, before thinning out to narrow brick buildings that had seen better days and dilapidated storefronts that still served a marginalized community.

  Patrick eventually made it to The People’s Pawn Shop, a small business bracketed on either side by a Dunkin’ Donuts and a corner store. The small parking lot was half-full, with the Dunkin’ Donuts doing more business than the other two. A handful of men hanging out by two low-riders watched him get out of the SUV. Patrick didn’t bother with a look-away ward on his gun or dagger, and the badge hanging from his neck was easy enough to make out.

  His face stung from the cold winter wind until he entered the pawnshop, passing through two sets of doors that helped keep heat in and the cold out during winter.

  A bell chimed overhead, and the hint of magic that washed over Patrick’s shields wasn’t human in the least. He shoved his sunglasses up onto his head, taking in the pawnshop. Glass display cases took up most of the floor, with shelves lining the three walls filled with items accessible only to employees. The windows up front were bare of items, the security bars on the outside made of iron and filled with magic.

  Patrick doubted the owner had a problem with break-ins, despite the neighborhood.

  A pair of Hispanic men in winter parkas, jeans, and boots looked up from whatever they were perusing in a glass case. The rapid conversation they had in Spanish ended with them heading for the exit, abandoning whatever they’d come to look at. The employee who had been helping them didn’t watch them go, his dark brown eyes focused on Patrick.

  The recognition burning through Patrick’s soul and magic was one he hadn’t felt in years, not since he was on the Hellraisers and they’d run a mission in the Kandahar mountains. Ifrits tended to prefer the countryside over the density of mortal cities, but beggars couldn’t be choosers in a rapidly developing world.

  “Long way from your ancestral home,” Patrick said in greeting as he walked forward.

  The ifrit smiled slightly and picked a tray filled with small idols and loose items off the glass countertop, returning it to the display case below. “Certainly more profitable.”

  “Yeah, I can see that. Is the owner in?”

  “You’re talking to him.”

  Patrick came to a stop in front of the ifrit, sizing the demon up. His fingers twitched with the urge to reach for his dagger. The ifrit looked human, with dark brown skin, black hair and beard, and a smile that wouldn’t look out of place on a car salesman selling secondhand vehicles. He wondered why Kelly hadn’t mentioned the owner was an ifrit, unless she didn’t know. Witches weren’t mages on the power scale, and most mages didn’t have Patrick’s unenviable ability to recognize and hunt the darker aspects of the preternatural world.

  Patrick looked away from the demon to take in some of the items for sale in the display cases before him and the shelves on the wall. Magic of varying power was embedded in some of the pieces, making them artifacts in their own right. Even more were nothing more than common, everyday items.

  The place looked legitimate, but the owner—by virtue of what he was—said it wasn’t.

  Patrick hooked a thumb around the chain his badge hung from and lifted it for the ifrit to see. The badge didn’t have his name, just his agent identification number on it. The less information he gave up here, the better. “I’m with the SOA. I’m here to ask you a few questions.”

  “Of course you are.” The ifrit smiled. “Words are fine. I deal in words all the time. But if you don’t have a warrant or subpoena for anything else, I’m afraid I can’t help you.”

  Patrick hummed thoughtfully before unsheathing his dagger and laying it down on the glass countertop. The ifrit froze, his smile becoming tacked on as he stared at the matte-black blade resting between them, all the power of the heavens and their many prayers capable of incinerating him with one little cut bound to the weapon.

  “I’m not from around here,” Patrick said mildly. “I know what you are, just like you know what this dagger can do to you. I’ll come back with a search warrant if need be, but you’re going to tell me the truth when you speak today.”

  Patrick kept his fingertips resting on the hilt of the dagger, his attention locked on the ifrit’s pale face. The demon leaned away from the counter a little, putting some distance between himself and the threat of death in the shape of sharp edges.

  “Ask your questions,” the ifrit spat out, the veins on his face pulsing fiery red, like lava, beneath his skin for a second before calming down.

  “People are selling you favors, but we both know that’s not what they’re actually giving you.”

  The ifrit licked his lips. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Patrick dug out his phone and unlocked it, finding the photo from earlier of the pawnshop slip. He turned the phone around so the ifrit could see the screen. “Don’t you?”

  Brown eyes flicked from the phone to Patrick’s face. “Favors are legal.”

  “Souls aren’t.”

  “I don’t see souls mentioned in the itemized line.”

  Patrick smiled thinly and put his phone away. “Of course you don’t. This favor someone sold to you. I want to see it.”

  “I can’t show you.”

  “I don’t need a warrant to see something I want to buy.”

  The ifrit shook his head. “It’s been bought already.”

  Patrick knew if he asked to see the records on who had purchased it, he’d be denied. That was information he’d need a warrant for, but getting one required probable cause, and the SOA didn’t have any they could use yet. It was up to Patrick to find it. Hearsay wouldn’t hold up in the courts after all.

  Patrick picked up his dagger and flipped it around with deft fingers, sliding it back into the sheath on his right thigh. The ifrit didn’t relax even after the weapon was put away, glaring at Patrick and keeping his distance.

  Patrick rapped his knuckles on the glass countertop. “See you around.”

  He left the pawnshop, feeling the ifrit’s gaze boring into his back on the way out. Once outside in the cold, Patrick didn’t lower his shields. The group with the low-riders was gone, but the car now parked in one of those spots carried its own set of problems.

  The black woman sitting behind the wheel wasn’t looking at him, but her phone. She might have been just another person running errands if his magic didn’t recognize her as a werecreature. There’d been one in the hotel lobby that morning, and one walking past the SOA field office when he’d arrived. He hadn’t seen one when he’d left, but it was looking more and more like Patrick was being followed, judging by the latest arrival.

  Patrick got into the SUV and started the engine. He backed out of the spot and headed for the street. He kept half his attention on the road and the rest on the rearview mirror. He wasn’t surprised in the least to see the black Chevrolet follow him onto the street ten seconds later.

  Patrick cast a silence ward in the SUV, static washing through the frame of the vehicle. He lifted his hips to get to his phone, glancing at the screen a couple of times in order to unlock it and call Wade.

  “Where are you?” Patrick said when Wade picked up.

  “Uh, why? Are you in trouble?” Wade asked.

  “Not yet, but I’m being followed.”

  “Werecreatures? I saw a couple this morning before I los
t them.”

  Patrick scowled and drummed his fingers against the steering wheel. “And you didn’t think you should go back to the hotel once you identified them?”

  Wade snorted. “The hotel doesn’t have good snacks. I’m at Target getting better ones.”

  “Of course you are.”

  “It’s not like I can’t tell what they are, and I’m good at ditching people in a crowd. I’m not being followed right now. Trust me, I’d know if I was.”

  “Get back to the hotel, Wade.”

  “After I get snacks. And maybe another hot dog.”

  “Wade.”

  “Food first, fight later, bye.”

  Wade ended the call, and Patrick swore. “Fucking teenagers.”

  Patrick shoved his worry aside, knowing Wade could fend for himself these days. Patrick and Jono had made sure he could. That didn’t stop Patrick from wishing Wade would listen.

  He didn’t know what was more annoying that morning: an uncooperative teenager or the werecreatures who kept following him around Chicago. When Patrick finally made it back to the hotel room for a late lunch and found Wade on the bed, surrounded by an overabundance of chips, candy, crackers, and other snacks, he decided it was teenagers.

  Wade shoved a handful of goldfish crackers into his mouth. “I’m not sharing.”

  Patrick rolled his eyes.

  Definitely teenagers.

  4

  Jono parked the Mustang in front of a cluster of red-bricked residential buildings in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Midwood. It was a couple blocks from the Q stop, but it was late enough and cold enough that Jono had opted to drive rather than take the subway.

  Leon opened the passenger-side door and took a deep breath. “I don’t smell anything out of the ordinary.”

  Jono finished texting Patrick an update before he got out of the car. He breathed in and got a lungful of icy winter air, the wind smelling like snow and the metal-and-smoke scent that permeated the New Rebels pack territory. Beneath it was the usual mix of urban street smells, but Leon was right. Jono couldn’t smell any trace of Estelle and Youssef’s New York City god pack.

  “It doesn’t mean they won’t show up,” Jono said.

  The door leading to the closest apartment building was pushed open and a man almost as tall as Jono stepped out. He was lankier though, with a friendly smile on his face.

  “Thanks for coming out,” Austin Capaldi said, sounding relieved as he approached the pair.

  “That’s what I’m here for, mate,” Jono replied as he and Leon stepped onto the sidewalk.

  Austin came to a stop in front of Jono and tilted his head to the side, showing throat in an act of submission that always looked easy for him when it was Jono standing in front of him. Jono had seen Austin show throat to Estelle and Youssef in the past, and it always looked like the DMZ between North and South Korea in physical form.

  Austin’s pack had come to them in early January, looking to switch alliances and ready to argue their case if Jono had any doubts. Not that there’d been any. Austin and his beta had come to Tempest one night, introduced his pack, managed to get two sentences into his request for protection before Jono had agreed to take them on.

  With fifteen werewolves in their pack, all of whom called Brooklyn home within three blocks of where they stood, the New Rebels might have been small in numbers, but they made up for it in connections. Austin originally hailed from Los Angeles and had followed his wife to New York City for her medical residency. He’d left behind his old pack whose alpha had been married to a member of the Los Angeles god pack.

  That two-hundred-member god pack was the largest in the United States, young in terms of years active, but not without power. Bringing Austin’s pack into Jono’s circle of protection meant they had an avenue of communication with the Los Angeles god pack, something Estelle and Youssef lacked.

  Most god packs tended to honor pass-through rights of visiting members from outside their territory. Estelle and Youssef’s rigid pack laws over the years had made entering New York City difficult for many. Whatever goodwill had existed before they came to power had definitely been squandered.

  The only god pack Jono had opened up communications with was the San Francisco god pack. That one was small, half their numbers made up of werecougars rather than werewolves, but he’d had to broker pass-through rights for Emma’s pack due to their work in the tech industry. Jono hadn’t reached out to the Los Angeles god pack yet, but he knew when the time came, Austin’s willingness to support Jono’s god pack would go a long way toward a good first impression.

  Still, Jono knew he’d have to make more of a stand, take on more of the packs within New York, for any of the other major god packs in the country to acknowledge his status. Until then, he would continue to care for the packs that came to him for help.

  Jono dropped his hand away from Austin’s throat. “Any sign of Nicholas tonight?”

  Austin shrugged. “Haven’t caught his scent or anyone else’s from their god pack.”

  “Your newest all right?”

  “Lira is a little rattled, but she gave as good as she got until we arrived to back her up. I told her she didn’t have to come tonight, but she insisted.”

  Behind him, a couple more werecreatures came out of the building, wearing light jackets like he and Jono were. Werecreatures ran hotter than mundane humans, and it was easy to forget they weren’t cold when they needed to act like it to keep their identities hidden.

  Lira Tran was a slender Vietnamese American woman in her early twenties. She didn’t look like she could bench-press a car, but looks were always deceiving. She smiled tentatively at Jono before showing throat.

  “Hey, love,” Jono said gently before scent-marking her. “Heard you had a bit of a rough go of it the other night.”

  “I’m okay,” Lira said.

  The handful of others who’d come to support their alpha showed Jono their throat, and he went through the ritual greeting quickly. Then he stepped back and nodded at Leon. “Keep watch here while we get their borders marked.”

  “Be careful around the playground,” Leon warned.

  “I know.” Jono gestured at Austin and the others as he started down the pavement. “Let’s go.”

  Patrick had joked once that werecreatures could just piss to mark their territories. Jono had smacked him in the face with a sofa pillow. Werecreatures marked territories by a pack member walking it daily and touching designated spots. It built up over time, creating a marker that surrounded a pack’s territory. The scent people carried—both their own and their pack scent—could only be tracked by someone with preternatural senses, and werecreatures were better at it than most.

  It was why pass-through rights existed, allowing someone to cross a territory that wasn’t theirs without retribution. Lately, Estelle and Youssef had taken to breaking through all marked territories of the packs Jono had laid claim to and assaulting the people under his protection. It was a challenge he refused to let slide, and he had a few ideas on how to handle it.

  “Where’s Patrick?” Austin asked.

  “Working,” Jono replied.

  He didn’t go into detail, and the others didn’t ask. Patrick co-led their pack, and any decisions Jono made, he knew Patrick would back him up.

  Austin pointed out the locations of his pack’s markers on the walk around their small territory: light posts, post boxes, certain bricks on building corners, a sewer grate, and more. Solid items that would rarely be moved or replaced were the best for carrying scent. Jono pressed his hand to every spot, overlaying his god pack scent into the territory claimed by the New Rebels.

  They were three-quarters finished when the wind picked up, carrying the faint hint on the breeze of something that smelled bitter and rotten. The bitterness reminded him a little bit of Patrick’s scent—a recognition that had Fenrir howling a warning that made Jono’s soul twist.

  Jono reacted on instinct, hauling Austin away from the manhole cove
r the other man was about to crouch next to and mark. “Scatter!”

  Preternatural speed meant none of them got hit by the four crossbow bolts that cut through the air, hitting asphalt and someone’s car instead of live bodies. The smell of silver and aconite hit Jono’s nose hard, making his eyes water. He shoved Austin behind a parked car on the other side of the street, in the opposite direction the bolts had come from.

  “What the fuck was that?” Austin hissed. “Who the fuck uses crossbows?”

  “You’d rather whoever the fuck they are use a gun instead?” Jono retorted.

  Austin made a face. “No.”

  Jono grimaced, not liking what the unusual choice of weapon meant. Crossbows weren’t normally most people’s first choice of a weapon in a fight against werecreatures, but they did the job of keeping the shooter out of the range of teeth and claws. In an urban environment, when people didn’t want to catch the attention of authorities, weapons other than guns were sometimes preferable. They made less noise and could be just as deadly.

  All Jono knew was that the people who used those sorts of weapons never saw his kind as anything other than monsters to be hunted. If the people shooting at them were hunters, then he needed to get Austin’s pack out of the line of fire and bring a proverbial gun to the fight.

  He knew just where to find one.

  “Go to your apartment building and get inside,” Jono ordered.

  “We’re not leaving you,” Austin told him.

  “Austin—”

  “No. This is my pack’s territory, and we’re going to fight for it.”

  Jono didn’t have time to argue. None of them did. “Then get to the playground and make some noise when you arrive.”

  Austin flexed his hands, claws replacing his fingernails. “What about you? I can’t smell whoever is out there.”

  Magic could go a long way toward hiding a person’s scent. Sage’s pendant necklace doubled as an artifact, and Patrick’s personal shields had been anchored by a goddess. Picking them out as anything but human in a crowd was impossible sometimes. What Austin didn’t know was that Jono had a connection to Fenrir, and he hoped the god was up to helping him out tonight.