Jono half expected Fenrir to claw his way to control, but the god remained silent. Jono blinked, vision wavering for a second before it settled. Frigg smiled at him, the curve of her mouth secretive in a way Jono knew not to trust.
“So, what? Is he not dead?” Patrick asked suspiciously.
Frigg didn’t answer him, not right away. She turned to face the horizon again, lifting her chin. “We lost our tithes, but we did not lose the people who remembered us. You broke the connection. There is no weapon available to you that could break Odin’s godhead.”
“Except me,” Jono said.
“Fenrir chose his side,” Thor said without rancor.
“To stop Ethan. Doesn’t stop the furry bloke from following the path of your story to its bitter end.”
Thor’s smile was hard and cutting when he looked at Jono. “The day will come when we will be on opposite sides once more, but what happened here in Chicago was not that day.”
“That day may never come in this world we have all lost.” Hinon spread his wings. “Shall we, cousin?”
Thor nodded gravely, and Hinon launched himself into the sky without a word, huge wings flapping to keep him aloft. Frigg raised her right hand in a commanding gesture, and Heimdallr bowed to her in response. Then he and the valkyries tending to the boats pushed them into the water. Waves rippled away from the hulls as the boats floated away, leaving the shore behind. In the rippling wake of their passage, the water took on an oil-slick sheen to it, like a rainbow. The sheen overtook the boats, stretching toward the horizon in a line of multicolored light—a rainbow bridge to a heaven.
“What is that?” Wade asked quietly, sounding awed.
“The Bifröst,” Patrick told him.
In the recess of Jono’s mind, Fenrir howled in a mournful way.
Heimdallr and the valkyries with him stayed knee-deep in the cold water, watching the dead on their final passage. Brynhildr jammed her spear into the snow, twisting the pole until it could stand on its own. She took five steps forward, raised her bow, and nocked the arrow to the string. Fire erupted around the arrowhead, a flickering warmth Jono could feel from where he stood.
“Valkyries,” Brynhildr called out, her voice cracking through the air the way ice over water did in winter when too heavy a weight stood on it. “On my mark.”
Jono watched as the half circle of valkyries all raised their bows and took aim at the boats with a steadiness that never wavered. Patrick’s grip tightened in his, and Jono held on because he would never let go.
When Brynhildr’s count reached one, every valkyrie with a bow let loose their arrows. The burning arrows streaked through the dark sky, bringing fire to the boats and turning them into funeral pyres.
The boats drifted over the Bifröst that glowed beneath the waters of Lake Michigan, their fires growing. In the sky, Hinon followed their route, gliding low over the waters every now again, almost as if he were guarding their passage. Several of the valkyries on the beach mounted their steeds and joined Hinon in the sky.
“There is an edge to every world,” Frigg said into the quiet. “Here, on Midgard, this is one of ours, because this is one of the few places we are remembered.”
“Hinon isn’t of your pantheon. Lake Michigan belongs more to his pantheon than yours,” Patrick said.
“Our stories overlap in ways you could not understand. Hinon will ensure Oniare does not interfere with the dead. The valkyries will guide their sisters to Valhalla.”
“What of Odin?”
Frigg didn’t speak, merely looked up at the night sky that was no longer cloudy. Jono didn’t know when it had happened, but the sky over the beach was clear and full of stars. Jono watched as two black specks grew larger and larger, blotting out the starry sky until Huginn and Muninn landed in all their strange glory in front of their queen.
Frigg knelt and extended both hands to Odin’s ravens. Huginn and Muninn hopped closer to her, gently preening her hair with their beaks as she stroked their feathers. Frigg smiled at whatever they told her that Jono couldn’t hear.
“Odin lives,” Frigg said before straightening up.
Patrick stared at her. “I drove my dagger into his heart.”
“Yes, but you didn’t kill his memory. You merely broke the spell seeking to use him.”
“You just lit his boat on fire. I know what burning flesh smells like.”
“Odin does not burn, even if the valiant dead do. We gods lose our bodies and our lives only when we are forgotten here.”
“Your lives are myths. You’ve already lived your age in the past. That’s why you’re just stories to most people on Earth.”
“Midgard is the heart of the world tree, but sometimes our hearts ache to return home to Asgard.” Thor pointed at the horizon. “Look. The Allfather comes.”
Jono stared at the water and burning boats still drifting across the Bifröst to the edge of the world, lit by starshine. Some of those stars grew brighter, cutting through the sky like a ribbon of the Northern Lights. Jono’s eyes widened in surprise when he finally realized what he was looking at.
Odin’s godhead returning to the immortal vessel that housed it.
The boats never stopped gliding toward the edge of the world. When the shining brightness of what passed for a god’s soul reached the boat Odin’s body had lain in for the funeral, the fire there grew brighter. It flickered red, then orange, then a pure, shining white-gold before getting snuffed out by some unseen force.
Odin climbed out of the boat, standing tall on the Bifröst rather than sinking into Lake Michigan. The Allfather had been dressed in the finest suit money could buy, overlaid with a fur cloak that matched Frigg’s in style and color. The crown he wore was a simple twist of gold that burned like a halo. Heimdallr was the first to greet Odin when the Allfather stepped off the Bifröst and returned to earth. To Jono’s eyes, Odin looked exactly as he had when he’d swung from Yggdrasil’s branch, the pinnacle sacrifice that never truly happened.
“What,” Patrick said angrily, “the fuck?”
“Yeah, what he said,” Wade muttered, staring wide-eyed at Odin. “Weren’t you dead?”
Jono would’ve tried to ward off the argument he could sense was building, but Fenrir beat him to it by clawing back control when Jono least expected it. Odin smiled at them as he drew closer through the snow, his heterochromatic eyes never blinking.
“You have honed your weapon well, Fenrir Lokisson,” Odin said.
“A pity I could not hone my teeth in your skin, but I know what is at stake,” Fenrir said.
“If only your sister and father felt the same way.”
Patrick pulled free of Jono’s grip, and Fenrir let him. Jono wanted to haul him back, but couldn’t. Patrick stabbed a finger in Odin’s direction. “So, what? You gods just reappear if you’re killed like nothing happened?”
“It is not that simple.”
“Then simplify the fucking explanation,” Patrick snarled. “Because Ashanti sacrificed herself on this very same dagger and she’s still dead.”
“Her body turned to ash, and her godhead had nothing to return to. Her myth has never been one mortals have remembered well. Ashanti is worshipped amongst vampires, and they are not nearly enough to call her back. There is nothing to call her back to.”
Jono thought it was a pity Lucien wasn’t there to hear the derision in Odin’s voice. He honestly wouldn’t mind seeing what the master vampire might try to do to the god.
“We are remembered and have been for thousands of years,” Frigg said, not unkindly, but with a warning to her tone Jono knew Patrick wouldn’t heed. “What happened Sunday was not our end.”
“It could’ve been your end because your greed enabled Ethan to try his favorite spell again.”
Go back to sleep, Jono told Fenrir. I want my body back.
Fenrir sank back into his soul with a growling laugh, and Jono shook his head, trying to reorient himself back in his own body. Wade squinted at him before noddi
ng. “Oh, good. You’re back.”
Patrick looked over his shoulder at Jono, and Jono went to stand beside him so he wasn’t facing down the gods alone.
“If a godhead can return to you, what about Macaria?” Jono asked.
Patrick stiffened beside him. Jono reached for his hand without looking, interlocking their fingers together.
Odin’s gaze settled on Patrick. “He already knows the answer.”
Patrick wouldn’t look at anyone, staring off into the distance with a bleak look in his eyes. “There’s nothing left of Macaria’s vessel. That’s why her godhead is in Hannah’s body, but it already had Hannah’s soul in it.”
“Mortal bodies aren’t capable of carrying a godhead,” Thor said.
“Hannah is still alive.”
“Her body breathes. You can be alive but not living in this world.”
“Mortals can damage your bodies to steal a godhead. That’s what Ethan did with Macaria and what he’s tried every chance he gets when he finds you lot,” Jono pointed out.
“Ra during the Thirty-Day War. Zeus last summer. Now you,” Patrick said.
“Your father did so with the backing of the hells every time. Mortal power alone will never be enough,” Odin said.
“Your duty is to save Macaria. In saving her, you will save all of us,” Frigg said.
Patrick scowled. “I don’t know how you expect me to do that if she has no body to return to. Hannah’s wasn’t enough and still isn’t. That’s the entire reason Ethan bound himself to her.”
“You will find a way.” Frigg’s words carried a weight to them Jono didn’t like. She reached for Odin, placing her hand on his arm. “We should go, my love.”
“Leaving so soon?” Jono asked bitingly. “Not going to do anything about the mess you caused?”
“Aksel Sigfodr is someone I have ceased to be. We have worshippers in Oslo who call to us, and that is where we shall go,” Odin said.
Patrick snorted. “I guess dying is one way for you to get out of a RICO charge.”
The bitterness in Patrick’s voice had Jono wrapping his arm around Patrick’s waist. “Come on, Pat. Let’s go.”
The gods didn’t call them back as they turned to go, leaving the beach and the vigil for the dead behind them. The fog drifted back around them, and the clouds returned overhead. They walked in silence to the pedestrian tunnel that would take them back to the start of the Magnificent Mile.
“It’s not your fault,” Jono said, his breath coming out in white puffs beneath the street lights.
Patrick said nothing, but Jono could smell his guilt over every other scent drifting on the wind through Chicago. He tugged Patrick closer, holding on to him as they walked back to where they’d parked the car.
Patrick never pulled away. After everything they’d fought over and fought through the past few days, Jono would never take that closeness for granted, the same way he knew he’d never let Patrick walk away from him without a fight.
“I’m never flying commercial again,” Wade announced as he climbed into the back seat of the Escalade.
Sage looked over her shoulder at him, both hands resting on the steering wheel. “I take it you enjoyed your flight home on the private jet?”
“Jono let me put in a request for whatever food I wanted yesterday, and they had it all waiting for me when we got on board. I ate everything.”
“I’m sure you did.”
Jono got into the front passenger seat and hauled the door shut. “Thanks for picking us up.”
“Considering you still have a bounty on your head, you aren’t allowed to go anywhere alone. Besides, I took the morning off.” Sage took her foot off the brake and pulled away from the curb in the passenger pickup area of LaGuardia. “How much longer is Patrick staying in Chicago?”
Jono sighed. “At least another week. Maybe longer. He said he might have to make a stop in DC before coming home.”
Sage kept her eyes on the road and the interweaving mess of vehicles. “Did you find the Morrígan’s staff?”
“No, but Patrick located an invitation to a black market auction of artifacts that might lead to it.”
“Might isn’t helpful.”
“Medb did say she wouldn’t give up the staff unless the payment threshold was met. It’s still something.”
Sage made a face. “True. Did you tell Patrick about the hunters?”
“I did,” Jono said slowly.
“Are you sleeping on our couch?”
“No.”
“They argued,” Wade said from where he sat on one of the middle seats. “And then they made up by having sex on my bed.”
Jono rolled his eyes. “Oh, sod off. We didn’t have sex while you were in the room, and we got you your own hotel room after that.”
Sage glanced at Jono, arching an eyebrow. “So Patrick was angry?”
“You can say I told you so,” Jono said wryly. “I promise I won’t hold it against you.”
“I’ll wait until Marek and the rest are off from work. We can do it in surround sound for you at the dinner table tonight.”
“Great.”
Sage laughed. “You’re welcome.”
“Patrick was pissed, like you said he would be. But we talked through it, I apologized, and I promised not to keep things like that from him again.”
“Good.”
“I got us an alliance and recognition with the Chicago god pack. You have to admit I’m doing something right.”
“Maybe, but there’s always room for improvement.”
She said it with a teasing smile, and her scent was full of happiness and mirth. Jono shook his head, laughing a little. Sage was never mean-hearted about her teasing, but their pack’s sense of humor was built on a solid foundation of loving sarcasm and a bit of gallows humor. If she hadn’t needled him, he’d be worried.
“Lucien called the other night. He said he wanted to speak with you when you got back,” Sage said once they were on the highway heading toward the Queensboro Bridge.
“Did he say why?” Jono asked.
Sage shrugged. “No.”
“If he called rather than show up in person, it can’t be much of an emergency. It can wait.”
“You sure that’s wise?”
“We already brokered an alliance with him and the other Night Courts. We can’t jump every time he demands something from us. That’s going to put us in the weaker position and piss off Patrick.”
Sage smiled, a sense of calmness filtering through her scent. “Good. I’d hoped you’d say that.”
Her faith in him was something Jono would never take for granted. The moment he did, Jono knew he’d be no better than Estelle and Youssef. His job as the alpha of the New York City god pack was to fight to protect the packs under his care.
Jono was finally in a position where he could stand his ground, and he wasn’t moving one bloody inch.
23
“Do you see him? I don’t see him,” Wade said, standing on his tiptoes to try to see over the Wednesday afternoon crowd at the Arrivals area.
“Patrick’s plane landed ten minutes ago. Give it at least ten more before he even gets off,” Jono said.
“Marek should’ve let him use the private jet.”
“We don’t need that paper trail with the government.” Jono reached out to grab Wade by the collar of his jacket and reel him back in so he wasn’t in the way of the exit. “And keep your hands to yourself.”
Wade tugged free with a mock-scowl before he decided to pull a Pop-Tart packet out of his jacket pocket. Jono let him snack in peace and kept scanning the people coming through the Arrivals security gate.
It had been a week since he’d last laid eyes on Patrick, though they’d rung each other every night to check in. Jono was far more forthcoming than he had been the other week, realizing his mistake in keeping Patrick in the dark.
Closing out the Chicago case had turned into a right mess that had gone all the way up the chain in command of
the federal government. From what Jono understood through his chats with Patrick, Setsuna had been called in to privately brief the president. It was like New York last summer all over again with the domestic terrorist attack on home soil, and no one was pleased with that turn of events.
The Chicago mayoral election had happened yesterday. While Westberg’s name had remained on the ballot, his opponent in the other party had won by a decent showing. It wasn’t a landslide, and mail-in ballots were still being counted, but at least they wouldn’t have Loki in an urban seat of power. That thought was enough to give Jono a headache.
In New York, the PCB was still looking into the hunter death in vampire territory. Jono hadn’t interacted with the police since his interview, though he anticipated more scrutiny, especially now that Casale was aware of the god pack rivalry. Sage had assured him there were laws on the books that would cover his defense if the PCB pressed the hunter issue.
The soulbond, which had been stretched thin since Jono had left Patrick in Chicago, had settled into its normal weight in his soul once Patrick’s plane had landed. It tugged at Jono’s soul from close proximity sometime later, a warmth pooling in his chest.
“There he is!” Wade said.
Jono’s gaze latched onto the sight of Patrick slipping through the crowd, his dark red hair standing out. He looked tired, smelled tense, but he was the best thing Jono had laid eyes on all week once Patrick got within kissing distance.
“Hey,” Patrick muttered against Jono’s lips. “I thought you were picking me up at the curb?”
“Wade needed a walk,” Jono murmured before kissing him again.
“Hey!” Wade protested through a mouthful of Pop-Tart.
Patrick broke the kiss and laughed tiredly. He leaned into Jono with a sigh, and Jono rubbed his back with a firm hand. “Long couple of weeks.”
“I can take you home before I head to Tempest if you want,” Jono said.
Patrick shook his head, stepping back a little. Wade had grabbed his carry-on and was already heading toward the exit on his own. “No, it’s fine. I’ve been gone for almost two weeks. I should show my face again. Let people know I’m back.”
A Vigil in the Mourning (Soulbound Book 4) Page 31