A Vigil in the Mourning (Soulbound Book 4)

by Hailey Turner

  “Hinon, take my worshippers to safety,” Thor said, his blue eyes glowing white-hot in the glare of hellfire.

  Hinon snapped his wings close to his back, bits of lightning trailing across the ground like electric pinion feathers. “Keep your wits about you, cousin.”

  Hinon gathered the three women into his arms, holding them with ease. He spread his wings with a snap that nearly deafened Patrick. Thunder echoed in the air, a sound so deep Patrick felt it in his bones as Hinon flung himself into the sky on massive wings that trailed lightning in his wake.

  Patrick only watched him go for a second before his gaze snapped back to Zachary and the Dominion Sect mercenary magic users the mage had brought with him. Zachary watched him with a smile on his face Patrick didn’t like at fucking all.

  “Don’t leave my side, Wade,” Patrick said.

  “Wasn’t planning on it,” Wade replied, inching closer.

  Hel came to a stop halfway up the path leading to Eiketre’s entrance, hellfire curling around her body like serpents. “I offered you a better way than plying prayers out of the bottom of a glass, Thor. You declined.”

  “You want to bring Ragnarök to a world not ready for the end. The Allfather is the one who keeps us relevant in mortals’ memories. You will kill us all with the worship of new gods,” Thor said.

  Hel laughed, the sound dry and hollow, stolen by the storm winds rising over the city. “I offered you life, not this faithless existence you have resigned yourself to. You declined to join me.”

  “Death does not give a life, it only ever takes one.”

  A lightning bolt careened down from the sky in front of Thor, half blinding Patrick when it hit. Blinking rapidly, trying to clear his vision, Patrick stared at the charred, split ground in front of the god and the ball lightning that crackled and burned in the air between the two immortals.

  Thor reached for the ball lightning, fingers tearing into the electricity. They folded over a carved wooden handle that pushed through the electric sphere with ease. Drawn from the crackling, heated lightning, Mjölnir took shape in Thor’s fist, the ancient weapon filled with enough magic it could level mountains if he so chose.

  Since Chicago wasn’t anywhere close to a mountain range, Patrick hoped Thor wouldn’t level a skyscraper or two. That was property damage he really didn’t want to have to explain to the SOA.

  Mjölnir burned with the power of a god, but Hel wasn’t fazed by it in the least. The goddess spread her arms wide, hellfire dripping from her fingers. “You chose the wrong side, Thor. The past can’t keep us alive.”

  Thor strode forward. “The past is what makes us. I will take what is owed to me for the damage to my altar out of your skin.”

  “Oh, but yours isn’t the only altar I’ve come to ruin.”

  She thrust both hands toward them, hellfire exploding away from her fingers. Patrick grabbed Wade’s wrist and hauled them out of the way, hoping to all the gods his shields would hold. The hellfire crashed into the bar, doubling the conflagration already eating its way through Thor’s altar.

  “Enough of your desecration,” Thor snarled, raising Mjölnir high over his head.

  Hel ripped open the veil between them, gray fog spiraling out from the tear between worlds. “Odin will never see Valhalla again. My Hel is all he will ever know.”

  Thor hesitated in the face of that threat, the lightning cutting through the clouds above never striking earth. “What have you done?”

  “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

  As taunts went, it was enough to make Thor race after her through the veil, the tear sealing up behind him. It left Patrick and Wade to face off against the Dominion Sect while hellfire burned the bar to the ground.

  “I hear sirens,” Wade said.

  Patrick couldn’t hear a thing over the crackling roar of the fire, but Wade’s hearing was better than his. While they really needed the Chicago Fire Department on the scene, he didn’t want to risk the lives of first responders. Zachary, Patrick knew from previous experience, was all about collateral damage. Patrick didn’t need the Dominion Sect to take potshots at fire fighters.

  Patrick conjured up another mageglobe and filled it with a shock wave spell. He was hampered from casting higher-level offensive spells by the scars in his soul and his inability to tap a ley line, which would’ve come in real handy right about then. The shock wave spell was pushing his abilities, but he had no choice but to try.

  “Next time I decide to travel without Jono, tell me it’s a dumb fucking idea,” Patrick said.

  “It was a dumb fucking idea,” Wade agreed.

  Patrick released the shock wave spell, grabbed Wade by the wrist, and started running. The spell tore down what was left of the low, half-melted iron fence, knocking over parked cars and the SUVs in the street—thankfully not theirs, which was parked farther away. The first layer of Zachary’s shield was stripped away by the spell, the second one bending in places from the blow.

  Zachary’s affinity leaned toward blood magic, not offensive combat spells. He could cast them, but Patrick’s were better. It bought them time—mere seconds—but that was enough for Patrick to put distance between them in order to play bait.

  “That’s the wrong way!” Wade shouted over the rising wind.

  The first drops of cold rain splattered to the earth as Patrick conjured up another mageglobe and threw raw magic at the fence surrounding the Rosehill Cemetery. The blast ripped a hole in the fence, and Patrick dragged Wade through it with him right as what passed for a magical grenade crashed into his shields.

  Patrick grunted, feeling a layer in his shield crack, but they stayed up. He channeled more magic through his soul, strengthening his shields. He opted for a look-away ward over a brighter mageglobe, magic spinning away from his fingers in their wake before winking out.

  “Get us through the trees.”

  Wade’s eyesight was better than his. In the dark cemetery, Patrick needed to rely on Wade over his magic. Any light would give them away, and they needed to gain whatever bit of upper hand they could in the next few seconds.

  Wade twisted free of Patrick’s grip and tugged on the sleeve of his jacket. “Follow me.”

  Patrick let Wade guide him through the sparse trees that gave shade to mourners in the warmer months. In winter, their branches were bare, providing no cover from the rain beginning to pour down. Patrick shrank his shields, swearing when that didn’t help clear his vision as rain sluiced down the invisible barrier.

  Wade dragged them behind a larger tree, and Patrick pinned him to the trunk, making sure they were both hidden. When Wade opened his mouth, Patrick covered it, shaking his head. Wade got the hint and snapped his mouth shut. Patrick let him go, easing his head around the trunk just enough to try to get eyes on the enemy if they were approaching.

  Sheet lightning made the clouds above pulse with an inner light. The thunder that followed was loud and angry, coming directly overhead. Patrick squinted through the rain, trying to see through his shields at the shadows moving in the darkness. His night vision was shitty after being around hellfire.

  It was still good enough to see the spell casting going on and to recognize what it meant.

  “Shit!” Patrick ground out.

  Patrick grabbed Wade by the shoulders and yanked him to the wet ground, pouring enough magic into his shields that they flickered pale blue in the dark.

  The ensuing magical blast cut through the trees around them, incinerating them into ash. While he doubted the fire spell would hurt Wade, Patrick didn’t want to put him in the line of fire unnecessarily.

  “Should I shift?” Wade asked, his wide eyes reflecting the lightning above. This close and Patrick could see the reptilian slit of his pupils.

  “No. Just stay behind me.”

  Patrick rolled to his feet, coming up with a handful of mageglobes. He instinctively reached through the soulbond for Jono—and felt like someone tried to yank his spine out of his body. He grimaced, trying to
breathe through the pain of a stretched-too-thin soulbond.

  “You’re outmatched,” Zachary yelled, his own mageglobes circling his body in tight orbits.

  “Go fuck yourself,” Patrick yelled.

  He flung three mageglobes at the ones Zachary aimed at him, their magic meeting over a line of graves and exploding like fireworks that could kill. Beyond them, back on the street, the sickly hellfire light at the bar was joined by the flashing lights of the first fire truck to make it to the scene.

  “Uh, we might have a problem?” Wade said.

  “What?”

  Wade pointed in a different direction. “Werecreatures.”

  That was a problem Patrick hadn’t seen coming and one he could most definitely do without.

  He threw his next mageglobe at the ground, his magic burrowing deep enough to make it through the shields the sorcerer had erected around his fellow mercenaries. Patrick wasn’t sure they hadn’t shielded into the ground, but he found out soon enough when his mageglobe exploded within the magic dome that suddenly disappeared in a flash of light. The scream the man let out was ear-piercing and full of agony as his legs were blown off from the knees on down.

  Zachary took a step backward, away from the werewolf that landed between them out of the darkness. He knelt so he could drag his hand through the blood pouring out of the other man’s legs, writing out glowing sigils, and smiled.

  “All of you get clear!” Patrick yelled, pitching his voice to battlefield loudness to be heard over the storm and hoping to all the gods the werecreatures fucking listened.

  He raised his dagger instead of conjuring up another mageglobe, bracing his other hand behind the hilt. The blood spell that cut through the air was one he’d seen only during his time in the Mage Corps. It could pull a person’s blood out of their veins and drain them dry faster than a vampire. It killed in less than a minute, and Patrick couldn’t let it hit anyone but him.

  So he didn’t move.

  Patrick pushed his dagger through his shields, white heavenly fire exploding out of the matte-black blade when the blood spell hit. The prayers and magic that powered the gods-given dagger tore Zachary’s spell apart—and something else tugged at Patrick’s soul.

  It left him reeling, sent him staggering forward a step as his magic fluctuated in his soul. He nearly got sick when he realized what it meant.

  Who it meant.

  Because it wasn’t the soulbond he had with Jono, but something else. Some connection he’d thought had died in that basement in Salem all those years ago.

  Patrick pressed a shaking hand to his chest, fabric scraping over the scars there as what had once tied him to Hannah before Ethan severed it scratched at his soul.

  Twins knew each other, whether identical or not, and always would.

  No amount of magic or trauma would ever change that.

  The strike spell came out of nowhere, slamming into him with a strength that made the scars on his soul feel like they should bleed. Patrick’s shields wavered, then were ripped ragged through a blood connection that was always everyone’s forgotten back door into any spell.

  He should’ve remembered that.

  Patrick re-layered his shields as best he could, fighting the faint pull in his soul that sought to undermine his magic. The aftershocks of the spell made his skin burn, the rain slipping through his damaged shields not enough to cool it.

  “Patrick?” Wade yelled, sounding worried.

  Wind blew fog over the cemetery headstones as Hannah Greene walked toward them, slipping through the veil in the way only gods could. She looked mostly how she had back in June—starved to a thinness that looked painful. Hannah wasn’t dressed for the weather. She was barefoot and wearing a silk nightgown the rain had plastered to her pale skin. Her long red hair was tangled around her body in wet waves.

  Even from the distance between them, Hannah’s aura was cracked open like a dying star, shining with a burn to it that Patrick only ever saw in gods. Its power was muted though, twisted through with mortal ties that held in place. Patrick’s lungs locked up, panic making his heart beat so fast he could barely hear anything over the rushing sound of blood in his ears.

  Because if Hannah was here, Ethan couldn’t be far behind.

  “Shall I dig your grave?” Hannah asked, giving voice to Ethan’s wants. “There are plenty here to put you in.”

  The cadence to her voice matched Marek’s when the Norns spoke through him, or Jono when Fenrir took control. It was the voice of a trapped goddess having shredded his sister’s throat over the years.

  Patrick opened his mouth but couldn’t find any words, his thoughts tangled up in white noise in his head.

  He froze, when he couldn’t afford to.

  Wade, however, didn’t.

  A large red clawed foot slammed to the ground in front of Patrick as a wing swept down, blocking out everything. A roar that shook the ground shook Patrick out of his stupor as dragon fire burned through the rain and blood magic Zachary was casting.

  “No!” Zachary yelled over the noise.

  Scared yips and howls from the werecreatures who had shown up were joined by the surprised shouts of first responders beyond the cemetery fence. It was enough to force Patrick’s fractured focus into something whole.

  “I said don’t shift!” Patrick called out in a hoarse voice.

  The red wing moved and a wedge head with black horns snaked downward on a long neck. The golden eye with its reptilian pupil blinked at him before snorting out a disdainful puff of smoke and fire that charred the brown grass in front of Patrick’s feet.

  The fog started to dissipate beyond where Wade was crouched over Patrick. He tightened his shields and stepped around the dragon leg in his way, shoving his hand against Wade’s scaly head to get eyes on the enemy.

  The cemetery was empty where they had been.

  The absence of Hannah and Zachary left Patrick feeling sick to his stomach rather than relieved. His gaze swept the cemetery, seeing a multitude of wolf eyes reflecting back at him, none of which were the color of a god pack.

  “All of you need to get out of here. I’ll make sure the police know none of you were present,” Patrick said, not bothering to raise his voice. The werecreatures could hear him just fine.

  The werecreatures slinked off into the darkness as silently as they’d arrived. Patrick would figure out later what territory he and Wade had ended up in and apologize for ruining the pack’s Friday night.

  “Wade, shift back to human.”

  Patrick cast a look-away ward with cold fingers, aiming it toward the damaged cemetery fence. He couldn’t outright hide Wade since magic didn’t work on the teenager, but he could keep the first responders distracted while he dealt with the remaining Dominion Sect mercenaries.

  He approached where the mercenaries were sprawled on the cold, wet ground. Two of them were burned beyond recognition, their magic not enough to withstand a fire dragon’s rage. The third one whose legs Patrick had partially blown off had already bled out, the lingering stain of Zachary’s blood magic seeping into the body.

  Patrick knelt beside the dead and stared at the bodies for a long moment. Then he pulled out his cell phone with a shaking hand and called Jono. When the line picked up, he didn’t even wait for a hello.

  “I need you in Chicago.”

  11

  “Usually it’s your other half who makes my life difficult,” Chief of the NYPD’s Preternatural Crimes Bureau Giovanni Casale said.

  Jono eyed the folder Casale tossed onto the table in Interrogation Room One. “He’s a bit busy.”

  Neither Jono nor Patrick had confirmed their relationship with Casale. They weren’t obligated to, but Jono knew their privacy was bound to be challenged sooner rather than later now that he was actively laying claim to New York City. He wasn’t surprised Casale had picked up on their relationship though. The man was a cop, after all.

  Casale took a seat with a grunt. “I hear we have hunters in the city.�
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  “What makes you say that?”

  Casale flipped open the folder, revealing a crime scene photo of a body that looked like it had been crunched into the sidewalk. Jono didn’t flinch away from the bloody, destroyed mess the man had been reduced to.

  “I don’t like finding out about an active group of the Krossed Knights hunting in my city after the fact. A heads-up would’ve been nice,” Casale said, staring at him.

  “I don’t know what you’re on about. Didn’t think hunters rated your direct interference,” Jono replied.

  Casale raised a thick black eyebrow. “It’s not a serial killer like last summer, but these assholes tend to start wars between preternatural communities. Happened during my rookie year as a cop. It was a fucked-up time, and the homicide count made it into triple digits. Those deaths were the only ones we knew of, but there were plenty more I’m sure we never learned about. I don’t want a repeat of history.”

  Jono didn’t blink. “What makes you think that will happen?”

  “I have one dead hunter and more blood that was at the scene than came from a single body.” Casale leaned back in his seat and eyed Jono. “Word on the street is you’re looking to challenge Estelle and Youssef for the New York City god pack.”

  “I don’t hold with gossip.”

  “I think it’s less gossip and more truth these days. Those two have been trouble since they took over the pack some years back. I never could figure out why they let you stay.”

  Jono shrugged. “I had a good negotiator.”

  “One with good eyes,” Casale drawled.

  They both knew he was talking about Marek, but Jono didn’t say his friend’s name. “I’m not familiar with the Krossed Knights. They aren’t in England.”

  “I’d be surprised if you were. They come out of our south. You still have hunters where you come from though. Messy business no matter the country.”

  “They aren’t sanctioned.”

  Casale smiled grimly. “They never are.”

  Jono scratched at the shadow of a beard he hadn’t yet had time to shave off. “What do you want?”