A Vigil in the Mourning (Soulbound Book 4)

by Hailey Turner

  “Let’s ride,” Eir said.

  Patrick held on tight to Eir as Töfrandi took off, racing across the street and heading for Millennium Park. The pegasus didn’t bother with park paths and barreled forward over the snow. He didn’t try to fly, the wind too strong at the moment to make an aerial assault a safe form of attack.

  Wade had no problem with the wind.

  His fledgling fire dragon form was a little bigger every month he put behind him these days. He still had years of growing ahead of him from what General Reed had hinted at, but Wade was doing fine so far now that he had consistent care. Wade’s burnished red scales reflected the light coming from Yggdrasil deeper in the park when he joined up with them. The fire he breathed at the ground ahead of them revealed a pack of hellhounds racing their way.

  “Keep going,” Patrick yelled as he freed one hand to conjure up a mageglobe.

  He filled it and the three others he formed with attack spells, leaning hard into the soulbond that tied him to Jono. Patrick reached for the ley lines running beneath Chicago, his magic anchored by Jono’s soul. Metaphysical power poured into him through the soulbond, powering his spells with a strength he couldn’t achieve on his own.

  Patrick sent the mageglobes spinning away from them in a defensive spiral. The magical grenades crashed into the hellhounds seeking to surround them. The ones Wade didn’t incinerate were blown apart or blown backward by Patrick’s attack, depending on how close they were to the impact site.

  The winter landscape of the park was barren, almost impossible to see anything through the snow and wind. Patrick’s heat charms in his leather jacket and clothes weren’t enough against a cold driven by a hell.

  Wade let out a furious roar followed by a burst of fire that highlighted his wedge head and long neck. More hellhounds were burned by dragon flame, clearing them a path farther into Millennium Park.

  Lightning crashed from the storm clouds to earth somewhere up ahead, and more followed.

  “I think that’s Thor!” Patrick yelled.

  Eir said nothing, and Töfrandi’s hooves ate up snowy ground. They passed a line of snow-covered, leafless trees and entered a courtyard with no cover. Wade watched their six, focusing on the hellhounds. Beyond the courtyard was a large pavilion whose metal latticework covering crackled with electricity drawn from lightning hits.

  They cleared the courtyard and were about to enter the pavilion area when Töfrandi abruptly reared up on his hind legs. Patrick was holding on to Eir by one hand but still lost his balance. He let her go rather than drag her with him. Patrick went flying, landing on his back in snow that cushioned his fall, but not by much. Snow slid beneath his shirt, freezing his skin before it melted.

  Patrick scrambled to his feet, calling up a handful of mageglobes. Outside the glamour, Patrick could no longer see Töfrandi’s true form. The front wheel of the motorcycle slammed back to the ground as Eir spun her spear to ward off the latest threat.

  The motorcycle drove backward to dodge the snakelike tail that whipped over three heads. Cerberus’ thick legs ended in monstrous claws that supported a barrel-chested body larger than the motorcycle. Blackened teeth in three mouths snapped at them, all three pairs of eyes on the valkyrie and her steed.

  Patrick yanked his dagger free, white heavenly fire burning around the matte-black blade. “Eir!”

  She was too close for him to cast a strike spell, so Patrick went with a blast of raw magic, pulling power from the ley lines. He didn’t know where Jono was, but the other man was close enough that Patrick had no problem drawing on external magic.

  That didn’t mean he had enough strength to challenge a god.

  Hellfire streaked toward him, melting snow during its passage. Patrick ripped his shields free, expanding them outward. They took the hit and his feet skidded over snow from the impact, bones aching from the force of it.

  Hellfire dripped away from Hades’ hand as the god came forward through the blowing snow. “Let’s not interfere, shall we?”

  “You know me,” Patrick ground out. “I live to piss people off.”

  In the distance, Yggdrasil’s branches were stretching beyond the pillar of light, shining with power. The ground jerked, rolling as if an earthquake had hit.

  I hope all those brick houses don’t come tumbling down.

  Hades smiled, his sharp-featured face cast in shadow from hellfire light. He opened his mouth to speak, but a bone-chilling howl cut through the wind, wiping the smile off Hades’ face.

  A dark shape streaked through the snow, bright blue eyes burning with white fire. Jono’s wolf form charged at Cerberus, Fenrir’s immortal control in every inch of his body. Cerberus howled a challenge with all three heads, but Fenrir never wavered.

  Jono’s werewolf form might be larger than the average werecreature, but he was dwarfed by Cerberus. It reminded Patrick of their fight at Inwood Hill Park last June, only this time Fenrir wasn’t hiding.

  Cerberus might be immortal, but he was no god, and Fenrir went for all three throats with fangs and claws.

  Hades thrust his hand at Fenrir, hellfire streaking through the air. Patrick split his shields, trying to protect Jono, but defensive magic was never where his strength had ever lay. Hades’ attack crashed through his shield, the hit reverberating through Patrick’s soul hard enough he fell to one knee.

  He reformed his shields around himself, heart pounding in his chest as he sought to get eyes on Jono. All he could see was flashes of dark fur in what dim light the park lamps gave off around them through the snowstorm.

  Red eyes came into view around them—hellhounds closing in. Eir was forced to split her attention between Hades and the hellhounds that went after Töfrandi. Patrick lashed out with a mageglobe, running toward Eir.

  He never made it.

  The world lit up like the after image of a nuclear blast, lightning crashing down to earth between them and Hades. Patrick’s shields burned with a heavenly power not of this earth as he was thrown to the ground once more. Eyes watering, Patrick squinted at the sky, sheet lightning making the clouds pulse with brightness.

  Great feathered wings the color of a storm shadowed the sky directly above them, lightning crackling along the shape of them as Hinon left heaven for earth. The Haudenosaunee thunder god crashed to the ground between them, his eyes burning like the sun, lightning trailing his pinion feathers and clenched tight in his hands.

  “Hello, cousin,” Hinon said, voice echoing like thunder.

  Hades turned his attention from Fenrir to Hinon and let hellfire fly.

  Patrick scrambled out of the way, running away from the clash of gods as he tried to make it back to Eir. The valkyrie’s spear was coated in blood, and bodies of hellhounds surrounded Töfrandi. Snow spun up from the wheels as she drove toward him, one arm outstretched for his. Patrick grasped her wrist, and he was flung over the seat with bruising strength. He passed through the glamour, finding himself astride the pegasus once again.

  “Hold fast!” Eir shouted.

  Patrick wrapped his arms around her waist and squeezed his knees into Töfrandi’s body. The pegasus launched into the sky with a powerful flap of his wings and a gravity-defying push of his hind legs.

  They were airborne, in a reactionary storm that did its best to knock them back down to earth.

  Töfrandi flew, buffeted by strong winds, but whatever magic lived in the immortal’s body gave the pegasus enough strength to fight the headwinds. They passed low over a stretch of road that bisected the park. Patrick could make out one or two cars stalled there and hoped no one had been killed considering they had hellhounds running amok.

  He looked over Eir’s shoulder at where Yggdrasil had torn through the veil. The sky above the world tree’s reaching branches was clear, like the eye in a hurricane. On the ground below, Patrick could make out flashes of lightning as Thor tore his way through the enemy, intent on reaching Yggdrasil. He could see, too, the spell the Dominion Sect had drawn over the earth to call fort
h Niflheim.

  Bolts of raw magic cut through the air like anti-aircraft missiles. Töfrandi banked hard, wings pumping fast to try to gain altitude. Eir let out a furious war cry as Töfrandi rose into the storm, getting out of range. Patrick blinked snow out of his eyes, fingers numb where they held on to Eir.

  “We need to get down there!” Patrick yelled.

  Eir didn’t respond, guiding Töfrandi with her hands and knees through the sky as wind, snow, and lightning ripped through the air around them. Patrick hated flying through clouds. He couldn’t see anything, and not knowing when or where a threat was coming from made his heart pound in his chest.

  It felt like forever before Töfrandi broke free of the clouds again, diving down over the shores of Lake Michigan. The Chicago skyline was to the left of them, and the vast blackness of Lake Michigan was to their right. Directly below Töfrandi’s hooves was a shore of corpses as far as the eye could see in the snowstorm.

  Patrick pointed at the writhing mass of the dead and the scattered bits of the veil tearing between them. “You want to explain that?”

  Eir peered at the ground, spear held tight in one hand. “Hel has brought forth Náströnd out of Niflheim.”

  Just what they needed—the leading edge of Hel crashing into Chicago, full of the damned and ready to fight. “We need to stop her!”

  “We must save the Allfather first.”

  Honestly, Patrick would let the greedy bastard rot if it meant Chicago would survive. Since that wasn’t a guarantee, he was back at square one.

  Saving the gods because they couldn’t save themselves.

  Still don’t get paid enough for this bullshit.

  The dark waters of Lake Michigan were broken by something darker and larger breaching the surface before diving back under. The dead at the shoreline didn’t seem to notice or care that some of them were turning out to be dinner for a lake monster.

  Something clawed at the back of Patrick’s mind, but he lost the thought when another pegasus dropped out of the clouds to their left, a valkyrie astride it with spear in hand. More and more valkyries slipped free of the clouds to flank Eir on their dive toward Yggdrasil and the shadow Patrick could see hanging from its glowing branches.

  All the stories Patrick knew of Odin’s making flashed through his mind—of the knowledge gained from sacrifice, an eye lost forever, and the right to rule engrained forever in his myth.

  But the Æsir had lost their presence on Earth, and Midgard had turned into something different and more modern, shaking free of the world tree into its own tale.

  Yet here Yggdrasil grew, with Niflheim clawing at its roots, the veil torn between two worlds in a way it never should have.

  Odin might hang from its branches once more, but it was the person who had tied the noose they needed to stop.

  As the valkyries dove toward earth, something buried deep in Patrick’s soul tugged hard, and he knew—he knew—what waited for them on the ground.

  Hannah.

  20

  “Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit!” Patrick chanted as Töfrandi dodged ground-to-air blasts of magic that seared the swirling snow around them.

  “Hold on!” Eir shouted.

  “Like I’m going to let go?”

  Patrick’s yell was whipped away by the wind, the snow-covered ground rising up to meet them—and with it, Hel.

  The goddess of death welcomed their approach with open arms and the ranks of Dominion Sect magic users taking aim at the valkyries. Her braided white hair whipped away from her face in the wind, and the power surrounding her was a malevolent force pulling at the corpses on the shore. Patrick knew his shields wouldn’t be enough to counter the combined magic rising up to meet them.

  Wade, however, had no problem with that.

  He came up from the other side of Yggdrasil, mouth open wide and dragon fire pouring out of his throat. The high heat seared past a huge, gnarled root of the world tree before burning through the rear ranks of the magic users. Wade wiped them all out, but the root remained whole.

  And Hel, well, she was an entirely different and difficult problem Wade had no hope of dealing with alone despite his resistance to magic. Luckily, he had air support coming in.

  “I’m getting off,” Patrick shouted. “Keep Hel away from me.”

  There were more gods than just Hel on the battlefield, but Patrick knew how to fight a multifront war. The ground rushed up to meet them, and Patrick pitched himself off Töfrandi, dagger in hand, mageglobes filled with magic, and the soulbond humming between him and Jono, wherever Jono might be on the battlefield.

  Patrick let loose a shock wave spell that sent half a dozen Dominion Sect magic users flying off their feet. Patrick kept his soul open to the soulbond, channeling external magic as if his life depended on it—because it did.

  And so did Odin’s.

  Patrick hit the ground and rolled with the impact. He crashed against a root, which was fine because it provided enough cover for the second it took to get his bearings. Then Patrick came up swinging, throwing combat magic at the enemy, holding on to his dagger with fingers that still had Thor’s dried blood on them.

  It was warm between Yggdrasil’s roots, and the branches seemed impossibly high overhead. As Patrick looked up at where Odin hung from the branches, all he could see was the vastness of space between each leaf, and all the stars of the universe cradled there in a rainbow of colors. He could’ve drowned in it, and would have if Heimdallr didn’t cover his eyes.

  “That bridge is not yours to see,” the god growled into his ear.

  Patrick jerked away, lowering his gaze to the ground so he didn’t lose himself. “Where the fuck have you been?”

  Heimdallr swung his sword around in time to behead a hellhound trying to sneak up on them. “Searching for the Allfather, like you.”

  “With your eyes, I figured you would’ve found him before they strung him up.”

  “The Fates on every side all play a wicked game of blindness.” Heimdallr’s gold teeth were a flash in his mouth when he smiled. “Your wolf sleeps and Fenrir rides his skin. Keep that one away from the Allfather.”

  The pull in the soulbond told Patrick that Jono was close—and the deeper, thinner connection tangled up in everything else was a warning he couldn’t ignore.

  “My sister is closing in. We need to get Odin cut down now.”

  Heimdallr’s gaze flickered over Patrick’s shoulder, mouth tightening into a grim line. “Hel is coming. Go. I will cover you.”

  Patrick spared a glance behind him in time to see the goddess rounding the massive trunk of the world tree. She’d foregone the suit in favor of an evening gown, probably for the fundraiser dinner, but had kicked off her heels at some point. Hel had shed whatever glamour kept people from looking too closely at her human face. Her face was young-looking, but her body was old, skin wrinkled and bruised rotten in places.

  The wind blowing over them brought the smell of death, and Patrick knew they were running out of time.

  Heimdallr moved past him, the god’s aura blazing, and Patrick turned away to save his eyes. He looked up at the distance between himself and the body hanging from the tree branch, careful not to stare at the eternity stretched out beyond them. Patrick shoved his dagger into its sheath and started climbing. He didn’t have any gear on him to help scale a tree of this size, but he’d scaled a sheer rock face once with nothing but his fingers because he had to.

  Patrick did a lot of things he hated because he had to.

  Patrick poured as much magic as he could into his personal shields as he climbed warm wood with bare, half-frozen fingers. Climbing made him a target the second he left the minimal safety of the space between Yggdrasil’s roots, and it didn’t take long for the enemy to spot him.

  Magic exploded around him like fireworks, the screams of the damned and valkyrie war cries echoing on the wind. Patrick tuned out what he could, but he couldn’t completely ignore the battle.

  A strike spell crashed
into his shields and erupted in the air around him. Bark exploded away from Yggdrasil, and Patrick’s ears popped from the pressure. He slid down the trunk, hands scraped raw over the tree bark before getting his feet back under him to stop his descent.

  “Fuck,” Patrick swore, forcing himself to ignore the throbbing in his hands from embedded wood and bleeding palms as he clung to Yggdrasil.

  He took in a shaky breath and kept climbing.

  When Patrick finally reached the branch overhead, he scrambled onto it, crouching low to make himself as small of a target as he could. They’d hung Odin from one of the lowest branches, but it was still many stories up from the ground. A fall from this height could be deadly.

  More magic seared through the canopy, crashing into Yggdrasil. Patrick ducked his head and kept his shields anchored as leaves fell around him. Something crashed through the canopy, and he barely missed getting hit by a larger branch that had been shorn off.

  The wood beneath his bleeding hands grew hot, and Patrick had to let go to keep his skin from burning. He pulled his dagger free and carefully moved down the length of the branch to where the rope was tied. He was halfway there when the faint connection he was doing his best to ignore tightened from close proximity.

  Patrick’s heat charms had been burning through their magic since he’d left the SUV. He kept meaning to recharge them. It wasn’t the weather that made him freeze, but the knowledge of who was behind him, balancing on a knife edge that doubled as a tree branch hanging over the world.

  For a moment, a memory flashed through Patrick’s mind—of them laughing as he chased Hannah through a kitchen that smelled like cookies into a warm backyard in the middle of summer. How he followed her to the tree house someone in his mother’s family had built for them.

  It was a blurred mess in his mind, time having faded the edges of that home and the features of his sister’s face when she’d been young and alive and not the starved thing watching him with a goddess’ tormented eyes.

  Patrick kept his balance on the branch, dagger clenched tight in one bleeding hand, as he stared at his twin while the battle raged beyond them.