“Where’s Patrick?” Carmen asked.
Jono ignored the question. “Where’s Lucien?”
Carmen’s mouth curved in a too-knowing smile Jono didn’t care for. She curled her fingers at him, the varnish on her long nails the same color as her dress. “This way.”
She led them upstairs to a space that overlooked the main floor of the warehouse. The smaller bar up there was manned by a human servant, but the area was mostly empty. The only ones taking up seats were Lucien and several vampires from his personal Night Court that had become the Manhattan Night Court back in August.
The underlying quiet in the mezzanine area echoed strangely beneath the music—no heartbeats, no breaths, because vampires weren’t alive in the traditional sense. The undead didn’t need to breathe except for when they needed to speak.
Lucien’s gaze settled on Jono, the expression on his pale face seemingly carved from stone. He wasn’t dressed for the cold outside—ripped jeans, a gray T-shirt—and he wasn’t unarmed. He carried several knives on him, all of them smelling a bit like magic.
“Where’s Patrick?” Lucien demanded.
“Working a case,” Jono replied.
Lucien’s black eyes narrowed as Carmen went to sit on the low-backed leather sofa he’d claimed. “You smell like blood.”
Jono refused to acknowledge the half-healed wound over his ribs. “Must be your club. Should hire some cleaners to sort out the mess your Night Court makes of its meals.”
“The blood is coming from you.” Lucien kicked up a boot against the edge of the table between them, jostling the tall bottle of vodka situated in the ice bucket. “I hear you’re claiming territory that isn’t yours to take.”
Jono took a seat in a chair without asking for permission. None of the others with him sat down, merely circled his seat in a show of force and protection. “I have packs that live in every borough. I know you burned all existing contracts with Estelle and Youssef’s pack when you took over the Manhattan Night Court, but I figure we can come to an understanding.”
“I don’t make bargains. I don’t sign contracts. You’re asking for rights you’ll never get.”
Jono leaned back in the chair he’d chosen, lifting his left leg to rest his ankle on his right knee. “I know you love war more than you love Carmen, and I’m here to offer you one in exchange for an acknowledgment of border rights.”
Lucien’s expression never changed. “I make my own wars.”
“If you make one here, in New York City, the government will figure out you’re where you shouldn’t be. I’m offering to cover for you.”
“I’ve been doing this a long, long time, wolf. I’ve seen governments rise and fall. Human laws mean nothing to my kind.”
“They mean everything to everyone these days, whether you want to believe in them or not. They favor my kind more than yours, but I think we can come up with an agreement that will be worthwhile to us both.”
Lucien leaned forward, jagged teeth bared in a hard smile. “You seem to think I give a fuck about your pack problems. They don’t interest me.”
“Estelle and Youssef are partnering with the Krossed Knights. You know those hunters are allied with demons. What makes you think I’ll stay their only target?”
“Historically speaking, you won’t,” Sage said calmly from his right. “Your one and only meeting with Estelle and Youssef left a mark on them, Lucien.”
“I cut her face open. Perhaps I should have cut her throat instead,” Lucien said.
“They hold grudges. They know you own the Manhattan Night Court. I wouldn’t put it past them informing the Krossed Knights of your presence in the city. Which means all your known businesses will come under scrutiny by the hunters, and quite possibly the government.”
“You think I’m unaware of that? The hunters in Brooklyn weren’t the first to enter my territory.”
“What happened to the ones that came before?”
Lucien laughed, the sound harsh and low beneath the music of the club, but Jono still heard him. “We ate them.”
“And the demons they shared their souls with?”
“I’m a vampire. We have no souls for the denizens of hell to lay claim to.”
“I’d say it’s a pity, but it’s not like that would change you much.”
“If you came here to ask for the same thing Estelle and Youssef offered Tremaine, you wasted your time.”
“I don’t think so. You made a promise to protect Patrick, remember? Acknowledging our god pack will help you keep your promise.”
“Don’t speak of things you know nothing about,” Lucien hissed, eyes narrowing.
Jono put both feet on the floor, staring Lucien down as Fenrir seeped through his soul in a way he remembered from Underhill and didn’t like but couldn’t fight. “You think I don’t know what happened during the Thirty-Day War?”
“You weren’t there.”
“Patrick was, same as you. Only he got to say goodbye to Ashanti and you never did.”
Distracted by the god clawing through his soul and the howls filling his mind louder than the club music, Jono never saw Lucien move. He only saw Sage, Emma, and Leon react to the threat at the last second, but they didn’t stand a chance in the face of Lucien’s fury.
Regret was always a bitter weight to carry, heavier than guilt some days.
Jono’s reflexes were a shade too slow to dodge Lucien when the master vampire launched himself across the table. Sage put herself between them, snarling with a voice that sounded more beast than human, but Lucien put her down with a vicious slice from one of his knives to her abdomen. Sage didn’t scream, merely tried to keep her guts from falling out as her rapid healing kicked in.
Emma tried to haul Jono out of the chair, but he wrenched free of her grip, nearly causing her to lose her balance as other vampires closed in. Leon fought to keep some of them at bay, but he wasn’t a match for them all.
Jono would apologize to his friends later for his decisions tonight.
The chair toppled backward from Lucien’s attack, crashing to the floor. When Lucien’s fingers wrapped around his throat, fingernails that felt like claws slicing through skin, Jono didn’t try to fight him. Lucien’s other hand dug into the half-healed knife wound, ripping it open all over again, fingers determined to break apart his ribs. Jono tilted his head back and let Fenrir speak, never looking away from Lucien’s murderous gaze.
“You should have asked for a different place to have this talk,” the god bit out around a laugh that sounded like breaking bones, Jono’s mouth shaping the words. “Ginnungagap is what birthed me and mine.”
Power burst through Jono’s soul, and the air became charged around them, the scent of burning ozone running across his tongue. Lucien’s fingers never loosened from around his throat, nor did they withdraw from the spaces between Jono’s ribs, as the veil tore open around them. The club, with its music and dance floor full of the living and undead, faded to nothing amidst gray fog.
The mundane world fell away in the face of a primordial void that was too vast for Jono to comprehend. It made him feel small and insignificant even as Fenrir basked in its presence.
“Jono!”
Sage’s voice echoed through the fog, as if coming from a great distance when he knew she should’ve been less than a meter away.
Don’t let them get lost, Jono told Fenrir.
Lucien hadn’t removed his hands from Jono’s body, but he paused in his attempt at murder. The fog drifting close to them wasn’t thick enough to obscure his face. The master vampire seemed more contemplative than afraid, and Jono could see, in that moment, how Lucien had survived the centuries when others of his kind had perished beneath the growth and spread of humanity.
Lucien never ran from any threat—he defeated it, or turned it into an opportunity to aid him.
“Here I thought you’d never show your face, Fenrir,” Lucien said in a silky voice.
The god moved Jono’s hand, claws shiftin
g out of his fingers despite the distant sickly pain it caused him. They pressed threateningly against Lucien’s side. “Let us go.”
Maybe it was the threat from the god or the risk of being lost in the veil between worlds that had Lucien shoving himself off Jono. Either way, Lucien stood but didn’t offer Jono a helping hand. Jono disliked being a passenger in his own body, but considering it was Fenrir who had ripped open the veil, he had no choice. He watched through his own eyes as Fenrir stood as well, ignoring the blood staining Jono’s clothes. The parts of the wound not tainted from silver or aconite poison were already healing.
Fenrir threw back his head and howled with Jono’s voice, the sound an almost pulsating thing that pulled through the pack bonds tying him to the people Jono had come to Ginnungagap with.
The veil around them swirled and moved as dark shapes stumbled closer, materializing as Sage, Emma, and Leon. Jono couldn’t turn his head to look at them, but he could smell them, could hear their hearts beating. They were alive, and that was all Jono cared about.
“Jono, your eyes,” Emma said, staring at him in shock. “They’re glowing.”
Sage reached out with a bloody hand to grab Emma by the arm when the smaller woman would have stepped closer. “Don’t interfere.”
“If any of my Night Court are lost within the veil, you will find them and send them back to the mortal world, or this conversation you want will not happen,” Lucien threatened.
“I have no use for your children here. They remain where they are on the other side,” Fenrir said.
Lucien raised his hand to lick Jono’s blood off his fingers. “What do you want?”
“A bargain.”
“I bargain with no one.”
“You make promises with gods. You will make one with me and my chosen vessel.”
Lucien’s eyes never blinked, though his mouth curved up to reveal his jagged teeth in an angry snarl. “The only promise to a god I’ve ever made was to my mother.”
“You keep it in strange ways.”
“I keep it how she would see fit.” Lucien stepped forward, pure violence in every line of his body. “I’d break it if I could.”
Jono’s mouth twisted into a smile. “But you don’t.”
“Because I heeded my mother’s warnings about the threat of new gods backed by the hells. My kind can’t eat the dead.” Lucien flipped the knife in his other hand around to a better grip, tapping the blade against his thigh. “But I could eat you.”
“Isn’t this a cozy little get-together,” a new voice drawled. “Fenrir, you know better than to play with your food like this.”
Jono’s head turned fractionally to the right, just enough for him to see the figure that slipped free of the thick gray fog. Hermes smiled in a way that still made Jono want to punch the arrogance off his face. The messenger god’s curls were dyed a bright blue this time around, his ripped jeans and band T-shirt beneath the studded leather jacket worn-in and comfortable-looking.
“Hermes,” Fenrir said. “This does not concern you, cousin.”
“Oh, but it always concerns me when mortals get lost in the veil.”
“We are not lost.”
“You’re a few steps away from being eaten by that void of yours. I’d say you’re lost.” Hermes glanced around the group and arched an eyebrow. “Where’s Pattycakes?”
Punch him, Jono thought. Please.
Fenrir ignored him, the bastard.
“I am here. I am enough,” Fenrir said.
Hermes spread his hands and shrugged expansively. “If you say so.”
Lucien looked over at Hermes before focusing on Fenrir again. Jono tried to see if he had control back, but the weight of the god in his soul and mind was a pressure he couldn’t fight against.
“Your vessel’s problem with the Krossed Knights isn’t mine,” Lucien said.
“The fight between god packs will only get worse,” Fenrir said.
“Then show your favor.”
The god lifted Jono’s hand to wave aside those words. “My favor will be known, but not yet. Yours, however, will give them pause.”
“You don’t have it.”
“Oh, but we will.” Jono’s body stepped forward, guided by the god, and Lucien never gave any ground. “You who were turned by a goddess, who carries her direct blood in your veins, you will gain my prayers toward her memory.”
“No one remembers you enough for it to matter. Your prayers have no power here.”
Jono’s head tilted to the side, gaze drifting toward his pack and Emma’s before returning to Lucien. “If I was not prayed to, I would not be here as I am.”
“That’s not enough to make a bargain with me. That’s not enough to bring her back.”
“How certain of that are you?”
Lucien’s mouth twisted, black eyes like holes in his head against the gray fog surrounding them. “You, wolf, are not enough.”
“Fenrir is right, you know,” Hermes interrupted. “Faith comes in many forms. I had faith Ashanti would get the dagger to Patrick, and look what happened.”
“She died,” Lucien spat out, rounding on the messenger god. “Your fight stole our mother from us.”
Hermes stared him down, power flashing across his gold-brown eyes. “Ashanti was a willing sacrifice. She knew what was at stake. She knew what your temper would cost our side if she didn’t bind you with that promise to keep Patrick safe. Legitimizing their god pack only serves to keep your word.”
Lucien turned his head to glare at Jono and the god in control. “I won’t bargain with gods. Let me speak with your vessel.”
Fenrir withdrew through Jono’s consciousness far enough to give him back his voice. The god remained beneath his skin, in his soul, a burning presence that made Jono want to shift forms.
“Prayers in exchange for acknowledgment of territory rights. Is that what we’re agreeing to?” Jono asked, sounding like himself rather than Fenrir.
“I haven’t agreed to anything.”
“But you’re going to.”
Lucien smiled, his expression a twisted, monstrous thing. “You think because you carry a god’s favor you have the upper hand here? They gave you to Patrick as a weapon. You’re nothing but that to them.”
“Patrick doesn’t see me like that.”
“Patrick doesn’t matter. It’s what he needs to do that does.”
“Kill Ethan?”
“And the rot his father grew in the Dominion Sect. Stealing godheads was a dream before Ethan turned it into a reality.” Lucien stepped closer, eyes never blinking. “You get acknowledgment of your territory, and every last pack you rule over will pray to my mother, as will your god.”
“It took millions of followers to worship Santa Muerte into existence. You can’t possibly think we’ll be enough?”
Lucien said nothing to that, and Jono wondered what the vampire knew that he didn’t. Lucien trafficked in information the same way he trafficked in weapons, drugs, and people. Knowing something was worth its weight in gold some days.
“That’s my price,” Lucien said. “Take it or leave it.”
“Prayers for the damned in exchange for recognition of the living in the eyes of the enemy,” Fenrir said, clawing back control of Jono’s voice. “Done.”
“If we’re finished, let’s get away from your birthplace, Fenrir. I feel like it wants to eat me,” Hermes said.
Hermes passed between Jono and Lucien, a lazy smirk on his face. Fenrir receded from his soul, giving back control of his body. Jono shook his head hard, the deep silence making his ears ring.
Sage stepped closer, settling her hand on his arm. She peered up at him before giving a faint nod. “Good. You’re back. Let’s get out of here.”
Jono looked over her head at where Emma and Leon stood, both of them staring at him intensely with various degrees of shock and hurt in their eyes. Jono winced. Explaining what had happened wasn’t going to be easy. He doubted they’d forgive him immediately for keepin
g this particular secret after telling them he had nothing else to hide.
“Let’s go!” Hermes shouted through the fog, already just a dark shadow in the veil up ahead.
The five of them followed after the messenger god, the scent of ozone a trail they never deviated from. Traveling through the veil was difficult and rarely done by mortals, but gods slipped through more easily than most. Fenrir had taken them through the veil, but Hermes was the one to drag them back to the mortal world, pulling them out of the fog with determined hands.
When Hermes’ hand grabbed his, Jono tried not to flinch, letting the messenger god haul him back into Ginnungagap. The silence disappeared, replaced by the muffled quiet of an empty club, the music long since turned off. Bits of fog evaporated, his eyes adjusting to the structures of a building rather than the never-ending grayness of the space between worlds.
A blur of black and red was all the warning Jono got before Carmen stood before him and pressed a pistol to the underside of his jaw hard enough to make his teeth clack together.
“Bit dramatic, don’t you think?” Jono asked, knocking the barrel aside.
“If you ever take Lucien away like that again, they’ll never find your body,” Carmen promised, her face a mask of fury. She’d dropped her glamour, and the sexual desire she exuded was enough to make Jono’s nose itch.
“I wasn’t the one who took him.”
“Back off,” Sage said, appearing by his side in the mess of broken furniture Hermes had dropped them into.
Jono craned his head around, trying to see where the messenger god had gone, but Hermes seemed to have disappeared. Whether back through the veil or to explore the empty club, it was anyone’s guess.
“How much time did we lose?”
“It’s Friday morning,” Naheed said from her position by the stairs, the pistol in her hand pointed at the floor.
A Vigil in the Mourning (Soulbound Book 4) Page 12