A Vigil in the Mourning (Soulbound Book 4)

by Hailey Turner

  Jono watched as Patrick leaned his entire bodyweight against his grip to pierce the encasement spell wrapped around Au Hall. White heavenly fire flared up around the dagger that burned bright. The spell wasn’t strong enough to stand against hundreds of prayers from all the gods of heaven, and it disintegrated with a crackling hiss. Magic peeled away from the door with a rainbow flash of color.

  “Clear?” Jono asked.

  “Yeah,” Patrick said.

  Jono reached for the handle and yanked it up, breaking the lock and shoving it open with preternatural strength. They stepped inside the restaurant, a blast of warm air hitting them all at once. Jono’s nose twitched with the stink of expensive perfume, cologne, and the sweat of way too many people in too warm of a place.

  A woman standing in the hostess area to greet new arrivals froze when she caught sight of them before rallying. “Au Hall is closed tonight for a private event. I’ll need to ask you to leave.”

  Patrick held up his badge again, not even looking at her. “This is my invitation.”

  He walked past her and into the restaurant proper, Au Hall packed with people despite the reactionary snowstorm raging outside. Jono stayed right by Patrick’s side, scanning the crowded restaurant. He wondered how many of the people who had bought seats for the fundraiser dinner had done so because they had no choice.

  Classical music poured from the surround sound speakers, white noise beneath the chatter of conversation. Dinner guests mingled between tables if they weren’t already seated. Everyone was dressed for a black-tie affair, and Jono would’ve felt underdressed if he gave a damn.

  “Do you see Thor?” Patrick asked, keeping his right hand angled behind his hip to hide his dagger.

  Jono scanned the first floor but couldn’t see the god. “No.”

  “Then let’s go upstairs.”

  “Do you have a plan for when we find him and whoever is playing at being Westberg?”

  “Adrenaline and hope for the best.”

  Wade snorted. “That’s not a plan.”

  “It’s a Patrick plan,” Jono muttered.

  A set of stairs along the wall led up to a balcony area that would’ve offered up a fantastic view of Grant Park and Lake Michigan on a clear day. Jono took the steps two at a time, keeping pace with Patrick. He ignored the heads turning to watch them and the way conversation became muted below.

  The commotion their group was causing by barging in on the fundraiser unannounced caught the attention of whatever was impersonating Westberg once they reached the landing. The balcony wasn’t as crowded—probably reserved for high-dollar donors—most of whom looked annoyed at their arrival.

  Half the guests up there were seated at their dinner tables. Others mingled in small groups. Jono caught sight of Thor immediately, the god towering over everyone else around him. The man standing next to Thor who wore Westberg’s skin locked eyes with Jono. Whoever it was didn’t hesitate to turn toward Thor—and run the god through with a wooden spear that flashed into existence in his hands.

  “No!” Brynhildr yelled.

  “That’s Gungnir, Odin’s spear,” Eir snarled, shoving past Jono. “The Allfather would never willingly give it up.”

  Silence reigned for a handful of seconds, the length of time it took for Thor to fall to his knees, obscured by the tables and people between them. Then everyone started screaming. Guests lurched away from the tables, clogging the narrow path between chairs, rushing for the stairs.

  Patrick swore and raced after the two valkyries. Jono went after him. Patrick didn’t care about manners or niceties, and neither did Jono. They shoved aside anyone who got in their way, intent on making it to where Thor had fallen.

  Then the crowd parted, tables flipping over as Patrick used magic to clear them a path across the balcony space. Plates and drinks went flying, sending food and alcohol into the panicking crowd around them. Brynhildr and Eir were golden blurs to Jono’s eyes, but they still weren’t quick enough to stop the man impersonating Westberg from planting his foot on Thor’s back and yanking free Odin’s spear.

  A spray of blood arched away from Thor, splattering the imposter’s face. Jono thought it was the smear of red that blurred his features—but then his face kept changing. The features shifted like so much clay, reforming into a sharply featured face that looked nothing like Westberg. Light brown hair framed eyes the color of rich earth, and the smile on his face was as cold as the snowstorm raging outside.

  Brynhildr touched her throat, her hand coming away with a spear that grew in size. “Loki. You have given your last betrayal.”

  “I think not,” the Norse trickster god said with a fierce grin.

  He spun Gungnir in his hands before swinging it around to block Brynhildr’s blow from her spear. The clash of the weapons made the air vibrate, bits of lightning sparking at the tip of Gungnir.

  “That can’t be good,” Wade said from behind them, sounding a little scared.

  Eir launched herself at Loki while Patrick dove for Thor. Jono swore, sticking with Patrick. The flash of Gungnir as Loki spun it had Jono launching himself at Patrick, taking his lover and Thor down to the floor as Odin’s spear let out a crackling bolt of lightning. It cut through the air in a split second, making every light bulb in the chandeliers hanging from the ceiling explode. The restaurant was plunged into a twilight darkness, only the recessed lighting high in the ceiling surviving.

  Loki swept the spear in an arc around him, forcing Brynhildr and Eir back onto the defensive. Jono rolled off Patrick, hands smearing in blood that had splattered onto the floor.

  “Eir!” Patrick yelled, his voice high and frantic as he pressed his hands over the hole in Thor’s chest. “Eir!”

  The god of thunder wasn’t moving.

  Let me in.

  Fenrir’s voice roared through Jono’s mind, and he didn’t fight it. For once, he let the wave of power drag him under without searching for the surface and fighting control. Fenrir sank into his body and soul, and Jono shifted from man to wolf so fast that he felt the pain of the shift this time—raw and furious, like he’d been skinned alive down to his bones.

  When Fenrir finally settled on all fours and blinked, it was with Jono’s eyes, and Loki was looking right at them. The glittering point of Gungnir was aimed their way, Loki’s hard smile a sliver of white behind the spark of lightning.

  “You are no son of mine, Fenrir,” Loki said.

  “Your faith is a lie, Father,” Fenrir ground out around the wolf fangs in Jono’s mouth.

  “Faith is all we have when our stories are not enough.”

  The floor-to-ceiling windows behind Loki exploded inward, shredding the shades and turning glass shards into shrapnel. Pale blue light enveloped them in a shield—Patrick’s magic keeping them safe amidst the storm. The glass shards bounced off the barrier, but everyone else wasn’t so lucky.

  Beyond Patrick’s magic, Jono watched alongside Fenrir as Loki pitched himself into the snow beyond Au Hall, his laughter swallowed by the reactionary storm. Brynhildr threw herself after him with a wild cry that made Jono want to lay his ears flat against his skull. Lightning flashed in the distance, followed by thunder so close it shook the building.

  Shook the ground.

  The air pressure dropped so suddenly Jono’s ears popped even in wolf form. The howling wind changed cadence in such a way that Jono wanted to run from it—because that wasn’t the wind anymore.

  Nature didn’t sound like the dead were screaming.

  “Eir!” Patrick yelled.

  The other valkyrie rocked to a halt halfway to the windows, her hands white-knuckling her spear. Then she swore, spinning on her feet. She returned to them, and Patrick lowered his shields just enough to let her through.

  Let me see, Jono demanded.

  Fenrir obligingly turned his head, and Jono stared at where Patrick kneeled beside Thor, both hands slick with blood, while Wade hovered over them. Eir folded to her knees beside them, face a stone mask in th
e low light.

  “The veil is tearing,” Eir said as she pushed Patrick’s hands aside. Jono watched as she dug her fingers into the ragged, gaping hole in Thor’s chest, her words ringing like a death knell between them all. “Niflheim is coming home to rest at the roots of the world tree.”

  19

  One of Patrick’s hands was covered in Thor’s blood. Patrick clutched his dagger in the other. He still almost shot Huginn and Muninn out of the air with a mageglobe when Odin’s ravens came flying through the shattered windows. The pair didn’t stop to aid them; instead they dived at the people on the stairs, their sharp beaks pecking at people’s skulls.

  “What the hell are they doing?” Wade asked, hands curled over his head as if to protect himself. “Are they hungry?”

  “For memories. They’ll take the thoughts and memories of what happened here tonight, and no one will be the wiser,” Eir said, white magic covering her fingers so bright Patrick couldn’t see them.

  More blood gushed through Patrick’s fingers from the hole in Thor’s chest. “Forgetting isn’t going to fix this mess. You said that’s Niflheim coming to shore?”

  The Norse realm of the dead was a threat no city or country could ever be prepared for. Patrick could fight the Dominion Sect with what power he had on hand until reinforcements arrived, but he sure as fuck couldn’t fight an entire hell without an army.

  Eir never took her eyes off Thor and the wound she was healing. “The Dominion Sect must have taken the tithes owed to Odin to break the veil. That is over a century’s worth of souls.”

  Which meant it was maybe enough power to cause the end of the world.

  “I’m not getting my yearly bonus,” Patrick said, lifting his hand out of the way of Eir’s so she had space to work. “You brought a hell to Chicago, and I know I joked about scratching the Bean, but I didn’t mean like this.”

  Thor suddenly heaved beneath Eir’s hands, spitting up blood. Patrick grabbed him by the shoulder and turned the god onto his side so Thor could better clear his airway. It gave Eir room to work on the wound in Thor’s back.

  “The veil can still be closed,” she said.

  “How?”

  “How else but by sacrifice?” Fenrir said through Jono’s wolf form.

  Eir glanced at Fenrir, her stormy eyes shining with magic. “Not with Thor and not with Odin. Not with any of us, wolf. This will not be our Ragnarök.”

  “I have not tasted Odin’s blood in an age, valkyrie. Perhaps it is time.”

  Eir moved so fast Patrick had no time to react. She spun her spear until the point came to rest right between Jono’s wolf-bright blue eyes. The spear never wavered even as she poured all her magic into Thor to heal him with her other hand.

  “You will not taste it here.”

  Fenrir moved his head and licked the spear point. “There is a price for everything. That has never changed.”

  “No one is paying anyone anything until we know what the fuck is going on,” Patrick snapped.

  “Uh,” Wade said, staring through Patrick’s shield in the direction of the broken windows. “Is that supposed to be there?”

  Patrick followed where he pointed, squinting at the pillar of light that burned bright even through the snow. It hadn’t been there earlier, and its presence didn’t promise anything good. Within the light was a twisted shape growing and reaching for the sky with impossible branches, hints of eternity blooming between its sprouting leaves.

  “It is Yggdrasil,” Thor said in a voice that sounded as if he’d swallowed nails. He got one arm underneath him and shoved himself up, blinking rapidly. “It is the world tree.”

  The living connection that tied the Nine Realms together ruled over by the Norse gods, a myth that wasn’t so forgotten if it was digging its roots deep into the earth of Millennium Park.

  “Fucking great,” Patrick said.

  “Careful,” Eir warned, her hand hovering over the barely closed wound in Thor’s back. “I am not done healing you.”

  Thor grunted as he sat up. “I am well enough to fight. Thank you, Eir.”

  Patrick eyed Thor’s blood-soaked button-down that had been white before Loki stabbed him in the back. “Sure you are.”

  A wound from a magical spear wasn’t enough to keep a god down. Thor got to his feet, stripped out of his suit jacket, and ripped the remains of his dress shirt off. Blood-streaked skin came into sight, the wound from the spear a slash of pink on his chest and back.

  Thor punched the air in front of him, and ball lightning erupted around his hand. Thunder ripped through Au Hall, the crackling burn of electricity so close it would’ve singed Patrick’s hair if he hadn’t scrambled to put some distance between them. Thor pulled Mjölnir from the ball lightning, gripping the hammer with bloodied fingers.

  Thor’s blue eyes were washed out to white, electricity crackling around him as he stared at the beacon that was the world tree. “They have taken the tithes.”

  “You gods need to get your shit together.” Patrick stood and shoved his dagger into its sheath before lowering his shield. He flinched away from the icy, howling wind that slammed into them now that he’d drawn down his defensive magic. “Chicago wouldn’t be under attack if Odin hadn’t been so fucking greedy.”

  “We have a right to live.”

  “Not at the expense of our world.”

  “This is how any story is made. By the destruction of another.”

  “Yeah? You and the rest of the goddamn Æsir can go fuck yourselves.”

  Thor didn’t respond to that. He merely turned his back on Patrick and ran for the edge of the building, throwing himself off it. Mjölnir was an arc of brightness that followed him down to the street. Fenrir snapped his teeth before racing after the god of thunder, the fall to earth easy to overcome for the wolf god. Patrick had to bite his tongue to keep from calling Jono back—because that wasn’t Jono in control.

  “What are we going to do?” Wade asked.

  Patrick grabbed him by the arm and hauled him toward the stairs. “I’m going to fight. You in or not?”

  “What kind of dumbass question is that?”

  “It’s a question, because I’m not going to force you to fight.”

  Wade gave him a stubborn look before beating Patrick down the stairs. “I’m not letting you fight alone. Pack doesn’t do that.”

  Wade used his strength to shove people aside without apology, making them a path to the exit. Patrick saw jewelry, money clips, and a couple of wallets find their way into Wade’s jacket pockets. He didn’t have the time to argue with Wade about stealing when they were heading into a fight. It wasn’t like he could pickpocket everyone at the fundraiser.

  The door they’d come in was a bottleneck. Patrick grabbed Wade by the collar of his jacket and hauled him toward the broken windows. The shades had been shredded, and people were lying on the floor or slumped over tables with shards of glass protruding from their bodies.

  They couldn’t stop to help and kept running. Patrick and Wade vaulted the bottom of the window frame, and Patrick nearly lost his footing when he landed on the other side. His boots skidded over icy, snow-covered cement, but he managed to stay upright.

  The deep revving of a motorcycle cut through the howling wind as a lone headlight shone through the dark. The motorcycle drove down the sidewalk on its own, back wheel skidding to the side so it faced Millennium Park rather than Au Hall.

  “That’s Töfrandi,” Wade said.

  Before Patrick could open his mouth and forbid Wade from going on a joyride, Eir landed beside them on the sidewalk, having thrown herself out the second-story window. Snow blew away from her landing, and she straightened up, spear still in hand. Patrick half ducked when Muninn and Huginn flew out of Au Hall over their heads and disappeared into the swirling snow.

  Patrick hadn’t seen any of the police who’d been monitoring the street barrier. He knew other SOA agents would be arriving soon because the Westberg mess wasn’t one he could hide. Dabrow
ski had been there in the morgue, and the last call Patrick had taken before he’d opted to ignore his phone was from the SAIC announcing he was sending out a Rapid Response Team to deal with whatever had taken Westberg’s place. Patrick hadn’t been able to pull rank, and Setsuna couldn’t tell a SAIC to stand down, not when this shit had happened.

  “We must get to the others,” Eir said.

  Patrick eyed the motorcycle, decided it wasn’t big enough for three people, and said, “Wade? Head for the park and shift.”

  “I’m gonna freeze my nuts off,” Wade protested.

  “You’re a fire dragon. You’ll be fine. Now get out there and shift, then find us.”

  Eir had already slung herself over the Harley Davidson, helmet nowhere to be seen. She gestured to the seat behind her. “Get on, Patrick.”

  “How come you get to ride Töfrandi and I don’t?” Wade demanded.

  “Because I’m not a dragon who can fly,” Patrick retorted.

  Wade muttered something under his breath Patrick couldn’t hear through the wind before he ran across the street, red scales pushing up through the skin on the back of his neck.

  Patrick hoped he’d catch up soon. He had a feeling they’d need some dragon flame for the fight ahead. He straddled the motorcycle, and the second he was settled behind Eir, Patrick found himself seeing the world through a complex glamour.

  For all that the valkyries rode motorcycles, the machines were winged horses beneath the projection of metal frames. Töfrandi was dove gray, mane and tail braided for war, and the stallion had large feathered wings that protruded outward from his body. His leather-and-metal body armor was etched with runes that helped keep the glamour in place and others Patrick thought might be for protection.

  The pegasus tossed his head, and Eir gathered up the reins with one hand. Töfrandi had no bit in his mouth, so Patrick assumed the reins were for the rider more than the pegasus.