The lushness of trees and blooming flowers overrode the pack scent, clearing Jono’s lungs. The warm night air was like a soft blanket around them as they approached a long table set with plates, food dishes, and a dozen bottles of wine. All but five seats were taken, and those were located near the head of the table where Mireille and Gaspard sat. Rami claimed the empty seat to Gaspard’s right. Jono and Patrick took the seats by Rami while Sage and Wade sat beside Mireille.
It was a better second meeting than the one they’d had with the London god pack by far, but Jono still didn’t trust it would go easy.
“Bonsoir.” Mireille raised her wineglass at them, the smile on her face one of cool welcome. “You’ve left London quite a mess.”
“Wasn’t our mess to begin with.” Jono gestured at his pack. “You met Sage and Wade at Sacré-Cœur. I’d like to introduce you to Patrick, our co-leader.”
“Hey,” Patrick said, gaze sweeping the table. He was still in the suit he’d worn to his meeting, dagger secured to his belt at his lower back.
Gaspard blinked lazily at them. “America certainly does things backward by allowing magic users into packs.”
Jono shouldn’t have been surprised they’d done their due diligence, though he wondered who in the London god pack had told them. “We’ll abide by hospitality.”
“Good.” Mireille’s gaze slid toward Wade before returning to him. “We have decided you may have pass-through rights to our city, but keep out of our politics.”
“Might be a little hard to do,” Patrick said evenly. “I understand your preternatural community here has a missing-person problem. And by person, I mean a lot.”
The news had been surprising for all of a moment to Jono when Patrick and Nadine had returned from their long meeting with their French counterparts earlier in the evening. But then, considering the sacrifices Ethan always needed to power his spells, it seemed likely Ilya would need the same. Murder was overlooked in certain communities more than others.
Authorities didn’t care as much for those with a preternatural bent as they did mundane humans, and that held true no matter the country. Jono had lived it in two where he experienced that sort of discrimination, and now it seemed he could add France to the mix. Distrust between government authority and communities built by those who weren’t always welcomed in society rarely faded away.
Jono met Mireille’s gaze over her wineglass and stayed sat. “We’re in Paris hunting a necromancer. Perhaps you’ve heard of him. Bloke calls himself the Patriarch of Souls to the Orthodox Church of the Dead.”
The pack scent drifting on the night air became sharp with bitter fear. Jono took a sip of wine to clear the taste of it from the back of his throat.
“Since when do wolves hunt necromancers?” Gaspard asked.
“I’m not a wolf,” Sage said as she delicately cut into the steak she’d served herself. She didn’t state what she was and let their curiosity live a little longer.
“It’s my job,” Patrick said simply. “To take cases like these.”
Gaspard snorted. “You are not French. This is not your concern.”
“I’m still pack, and it’s a threat to mine. So.” Patrick reached for the platter of steaks and speared one with his fork, bringing it to his plate. “The French Ministry of Magical Affairs has their own reports, but they won’t contain everything. You’re the alphas of the Paris god pack. Whatever rumors are running through this city about a threat like that, I’m betting you know some of the underlying truth.”
“We aren’t here for your territory. All we’re asking for is a bit of help,” Jono said.
Silence settled over the dinner party for a long few minutes. Jono focused on eating, taking his time like everyone else because the French never rushed when it came to food. Only Wade was eating as if he didn’t know when his next meal would be, but Jono didn’t tell him to slow down.
“People have gone missing from the packs under our protection. We have not been able to track the one doing the murdering,” Gaspard finally said when the meat was half-gone on all the platters and the roasted potatoes had disappeared into Wade’s stomach.
“So you’ve found bodies?” Patrick asked.
“No.” Gaspard’s mouth twisted. “But we know that when our kind goes missing like this, in such numbers, we will not get them back.”
“What about your city’s graveyards? The Catacombs? Any disturbances there?”
Mireille shattered her wineglass with her grip. She stared at the wine spreading over the wooden tabletop and the glass shards clinging to her wet fingers. “Merde.”
Gaspard plucked the cloth napkin off his lap and used it to wipe her hand clean. When he finished, he pressed his lips to her palm for a lingering kiss. Mireille graced him with a smile that spoke of fondness without the cruelty Jono always saw in Estelle.
Mireille looked across the table at them, wolf-bright eyes practically glowing in the low light. “The Catacombs have been closed since winter. The government will not confirm it, but there is something that lives within the Mines of Paris. Even the cataphiles will no longer venture below. We’ve banned all packs from going near the known entrances.”
Jono shared a look with Patrick, having a whole, silent conversation with his lover in the span of seconds.
Patrick put down his knife. “We need to get into the Catacombs.”
20
“They said meet her here at 1700,” Patrick said, squinting down the street. It was still light out, sunset hours away at this time of the year. “She’s late.”
“By two minutes. Give it a little longer,” Jono said.
Patrick scowled, wanting to be on the move already. They’d been in Paris two days, summer solstice was tomorrow, and they still had no new leads. Getting the French Ministry of Magical Affairs to take the situation seriously when the United States couldn’t mention the Morrígan’s staff had resulted in a log jam of bureaucracy that had resulted in not much getting done outside meetings.
Nadine and Patrick had been relegated to the sidelines in those meetings. The senior agents Director Franklin had assigned to the case were the ones handling communications with their French counterparts. The French government knew Ilya was a problem and a threat, but they didn’t think he was in Paris. No one knew where the necromancer was, and that meant manpower to take him into custody was grounded until solid intelligence came through on a location.
By then, Patrick knew it would be too late.
Which was why he and his pack were standing on a corner outside a smoke shop in the hazy border between the 13th and 14th arrondissements, waiting for their contact to arrive.
During dinner last night, Gaspard and Mireille had promised to send them someone who could get them underground. The Paris god pack had refused to help beyond that, putting the safety of their packs over everything else. Patrick had thought that was shortsighted seeing as how the entire city was in danger, but he knew better than to argue.
When they’d received the call that morning for an early evening meeting, Patrick had wanted to argue for sooner. Time was running out like grains of sand in an hourglass, but their contact had been adamant about when and where she would meet them, and they’d been forced to agree to it. Considering the access they were after was illegal, Patrick could understand why their guide would want to meet at a later hour than midday, but it wasn’t easy to wait when he knew a threat was coming.
Patrick had spent most of Wednesday in one long meeting after another, understanding only some of what was said and relying on Nadine to act as his translator. When they’d finally left, no closer to convincing the Ministry of Magical Affairs to act now with little evidence, he and Nadine had split their duties for the mission.
Lucien had grudgingly followed them to Paris, his promise to Ashanti about keeping Patrick alive the only reason he’d gone. Nadine and Spencer were meeting with Lucien tonight after sunset at his Paris home to see if the master vampire could get any information out of
the Night Courts in Paris. They all had a long night ahead, and the tightness in Patrick’s shoulders wasn’t close to easing.
A slim woman crossed the street on the next red light, heading in their direction. She was dressed all in black, wore sturdy work boots, and carried a backpack. Her light brown hair was tied back in a sleek ponytail, and her makeup was minimal. The only accessory she wore was a pendant hanging around her throat carved from moonstone in the shape of a snake twisted into the infinity symbol.
“Jonothon?” she asked cautiously in a thick French accent. “Patrick?”
“That’s us,” Patrick said.
She beamed at them, looking impossibly young. “Bonsoir. I am Lisette. I was told by the loup-garou you needed access to the network?”
Patrick cupped his hand against his thigh, conjuring up a tiny mageglobe. He filled it with a silence ward, creating a bubble of quiet around them on the street. Lisette startled at the sudden absence of sound, hands rising to her ears.
“It’s a silence ward,” Patrick said.
“Ah. Good. We can speak freely then, oui?” At Patrick’s nod, her expression lost some of its cheerfulness. “The network is not safe. Were you not warned?”
“We understand it’s not safe, but we still need to go down there,” Jono said.
Lisette bit her bottom lip. “I can only take one of you.”
“We all go,” Sage said.
Lisette shook her head. “You are new to the network, and I can’t promise you safety. One, only. That is what I told the loup-garou.”
“Whatever lives in the Catacombs right now is a threat no matter how many people you bring down there,” Patrick said.
“I know the way. You do not.” Lisette made an agitated cutting motion with her hand. “One person, or we do not go.”
Patrick sighed and looked at Jono. “I’ll go.”
Jono blew out a breath. “You don’t know what’s down there.”
“Exactly. Which means I’m the one most capable of dealing with it. Space will be tight in the mines. Shifting might not be an option.”
Zombies or drekavacs or Peklabog himself—no matter the monster or god, Patrick’s magic and dagger were far more versatile to handle such a threat. His pack could only shift, and that had the threatening possibility of producing a cave-in, bringing city blocks down around their ears. Patrick could shield, but he couldn’t shield against something like that and hold it for hours on end. He wasn’t Nadine.
Jono stared at him, jaw working, eyes hidden behind his sunglasses despite the late hour. The sun was low in the sky, but not low enough for the sky to go dark in the east. This close to summer solstice and Patrick knew the sky would take its sweet time to show the stars.
Patrick stepped closer, putting his hand over Jono’s heart. His skin, burned from Srecha’s blessing, scraped against the soft fabric. He looked up at Jono, searching his face. “I’m going below. I need you to stay up here. I need you to follow me. You know how.”
Like he had last summer when Patrick had traded himself for a werecreature’s life, a plaything between gods before a trickster dragged him through the veil, high on shine and one breath away from death’s touch. Jono had found him when Patrick couldn’t even find his thoughts at the time.
Patrick trusted Jono to find him through anything except the veil. That was a barrier that made it almost impossible to track each other, but Patrick wouldn’t be going through the veil below.
He hoped.
Jono reached up and flattened his hand over Patrick’s. “I don’t like it.”
Patrick shrugged, saying nothing to that. Jono’s dislike wasn’t going to stop him from doing his job—it couldn’t. Too much was at stake for them to wait and do nothing. They’d chased the Morrígan’s staff across two continents already. They needed to find it, and soon, before Ethan bargained with Ilya or murdered the necromancer outright to get his hands on it.
He didn’t want to think what would happen to Hannah and her unborn child if that came to pass.
“I still need to go.” Patrick rose up to brush his lips over Jono’s. “I’ll come back.”
He still couldn’t bring himself to say what he felt in his heart—not yet—not with Ethan still out there. Patrick had learned hard lessons young about losing those you cared about, and the scars on his chest couldn’t match the ones in his memories. The only way this familial dispute and war of beliefs would end was with one of them dead.
Patrick wanted to spare Jono what pain he could in the face of an uncertain future.
He stepped back and turned to face Lisette. “I’ll go.”
Lisette nodded. “Follow me.”
Jono, Sage, and Wade stayed close as Lisette led them down unfamiliar streets. It wasn’t long until they were forced to separate as Patrick followed Lisette through a rusted door in a wall with the words Interdit d’entrer painted over it.
Patrick looked over his shoulder only once, seeing his pack watching worriedly before the door swung shut between them.
Lisette led him through the narrow space between buildings, through a hole in a fence, until they reached a railway line. Patrick’s boots crunched over gravel between the tracks as they walked toward the brick archway of a tunnel hunkered between towering apartment blocks.
Patrick could sense the protective wards that ran the length of the Metro and rail lines before they reached the entrance, pooling in that opening. Layers of old magic saturated the area, twisted and anchored to the tracks themselves before stretching into the tunnel walls.
They paused there, long enough for Lisette to pull two sets of chest-high green waders out of her backpack, along with a headlamp. She passed a set of waders to Patrick, who yanked them on over his boots and jeans, shrugging his arms through the shoulder straps. He hitched the belt tighter so they would fit better, wrinkling his nose at the musty smell of old water and mold coming from them. Lisette did the same, donning the headlamp.
“This way,” she said, gesturing for him to follow.
Magic glimmered at the edge of Patrick’s vision as they walked into shadows so deep even light from the emergency bulbs could barely penetrate it. Since Lisette didn’t turn on her headlamp yet or ask Patrick to light the way, he swallowed his offer of casting some witchlights to see by.
“What do you think is causing people to go missing down here?” Patrick asked quietly as they walked.
“Paris below has always been a different world. What the government believes is the problem could be anything. During World War Two, the Nazis tried to break the Resistance with ghouls and hellhounds. We fought back with magic and ghosts. Some say none of either side ever left the quarries.”
“You cataphiles aren’t the only ones who come down here. Have you run into any other groups?”
Lisette made a vaguely annoyed sound. “Only cataflics, as always. They use magic and concrete to seal the entrances, but Paris belongs to all its citizens, aboveground and below.”
Patrick frowned, thinking of Ilya and the Orthodox Church of the Dead who called Paris home after being forced from Odessa and the catacombs there. “No one else?”
“There are only bones down here, mon ami. All they do is sleep.”
He very much doubted that.
They walked, the tracks staying level until they started to rise on a slow incline. That’s when Lisette turned on her headlamp, the shine of it making Patrick flinch at the brightness. She drifted to one side of the tunnel, pointing at a hole in the ground with three layers of concentric circles dug around it and filled in with colorful pebbles.
“We’ll go through here,” Lisette said.
Patrick eyed the hole warily, sensing how the subway’s protective wards warped around the way underground. The wards weren’t broken but had been forcibly shunted aside to allow the hole to exist. That made the wards less stable over time and capable of breaking when people could least afford it, allowing for creatures at the edge of the preternatural world to slip through.
“Take the lead for now, and I’ll tell you what direction we’ll need to take once we’re underground,” Patrick said.
“How will you know?”
Patrick shrugged, not wanting to get into the specifics about his damaged magic. “Trust me. I’ll know.”
Lisette dropped down into darkness feet first, and Patrick could only follow. The landing jarred his knees, and he winced. He couldn’t see beyond where Lisette’s headlamp pointed, and he needed more light than that. Patrick pushed magic out of his soul, flicking witchlights off his fingertips to light the dark around him.
The limestone walls on either side of the tunnel they found themselves in were filled with graffiti—words and pictures and tags he couldn’t decipher. Sigils of spells and wards were spray-painted on the walls near the ceiling, but their magic had long since faded away. He knew their shapes though, and what they had been set down for—protection against all manner of things.
Lisette wasted no time in pitching herself down the tunnels, and since she was heading in the direction where the hellish taint was stronger, he let her go. Patrick stayed close on her heels, the route down twisting tunnels dry for a long while until it wasn’t. The dirt beneath his feet eventually turned to mud, then to water, and Patrick was glad for the waders she’d shoved into his hands aboveground.
The water got deeper and deeper until it hit his chest. The cold seeped through the waders and his clothes, making him shiver. The only thing that kept him warm was the soulbond, the tie to Jono a comforting link between them. Patrick could vaguely feel where Jono was above, but not knowing the Paris streets, he couldn’t begin to figure out their location on a map.
They kept walking until the water receded, but the smell stuck in Patrick’s nose. He kept his shields up, leaning into his magic and the damage in his soul that let him track the demons and monsters that called the shadows home.
On the Wings of War (Soulbound Book 5) Page 25