On the Wings of War (Soulbound Book 5)

by Hailey Turner

  Then the dead started clawing their way out of the earth.

  A bony hand burst through ash to grab his ankle, yanking so hard Patrick felt something snap. Pain shot through his leg, and Patrick kept his mouth shut on a yell when he slammed to the ground. More hands burst through the earth, clawing at him, seeking to hold him down. He sank his dagger into the earth, and white heavenly fire burned a circle around him. The zombies around him turned to ash.

  He got one elbow beneath him before Spencer was there, helping him to his feet. “No lying down on the job, Razzle Dazzle.”

  “Shut up, Dead Boy,” Patrick grunted.

  He put weight on his foot because he had to, pain throbbing through the joint. It didn’t feel like a full break, but it definitely wasn’t comfortable. He forced himself into a run, clenching his teeth against the pain.

  Up ahead, through the flash of fire and magic and the dead clawing free of the ground, Patrick could see Ilya standing beneath the Eiffel Tower on the pavilion there. The high fencing that surrounded the Eiffel Tower had been melted beneath Wade’s attack, but the Orthodox Church of the Dead refused to be snuffed out.

  “I’ll clear you a way through,” Spencer said.

  Dark green magic burned over the ground like wildfire. The zombies pushing their way through shuddered as the souls animating the corpses were ripped free and put to rest. The bony hands, skulls, and rib cages stuck out like creepy garden decorations. Fatima guided the spirits home, a cold transition point between the living and the dead.

  Patrick hurled himself over red-hot, half-melted metal, landing on the other side with a pained grunt. The spell careening toward him would’ve been strong enough to pitch him back against the metal if not for Fenrir catching the mageglobe in Jono’s powerful jaws. The spell was crushed between his teeth, magic sputtering to nothing beneath the god’s power.

  Patrick shoved himself to his feet, sweat sliding down the back of his neck and forehead, staring at the circle of worshippers that surrounded Ilya up ahead. Some still stood, others had collapsed on the ground, but whatever shield they’d held up against Wade’s attack had finally broken.

  He didn’t see Zachary or any other magic users who might’ve been affiliated with the Dominion Sect. Either they’d cut and run, or would strike soon when Patrick’s side least expected it.

  Hellish power seeped out of the concentric circles that expanded away from where Ilya stood at the center, holding the Morrígan’s staff. The pulse of magic touched each leg of the Eiffel Tower, and the hum of the staff’s power made Patrick want to run.

  Beneath the sound of Wade’s roars, the heavy tread of the dead, and the hissing explosion of magic all around them came the furious shrieks of ravens and crows and the thunder of thousands of beating wings.

  Fenrir looked at him through Jono’s eyes, white fire burning where blue once existed. “Break it.”

  This spell wasn’t a tear in the veil, wasn’t ripping a hole to a forgotten hell, but there was only one way to end it. Fenrir turned to savage the nearest worshipper with vicious teeth, ignoring the screams that asked for mercy.

  Patrick could’ve told them gods never offered mercy.

  He pitched himself forward into the spaces between the concentric circles, gritting his teeth against the hellish magic seeking to suck his own dry. He kept his eyes on Ilya, the necromancer looking right at him over the top of the Morrígan’s staff the necromancer held in iron gauntlets.

  The quartz crystal trapped beneath the carved knotwork shone like a star, white fire that pulsed in time to the magic burning around his dagger’s matte-black blade.

  Patrick raised his dagger against the crashing wave of necromantic magic that erupted from the staff, carving a way through it with the only weapon he had. Every step he took between the concentric circles of magic was taken against a hurricane force that should’ve thrown him out of the spellcasting, and would have if not for his dagger.

  One weapon of the gods against another should’ve been even odds, but Patrick knew war was anything but predictable.

  Fenrir tore through the followers anchoring the spellcasting with a brutal ferocity that only left blood and bodies behind. Every death lessened the force trying to drive Patrick into the hands of the dead behind him. His left ankle kept wanting to buckle whenever he put weight on it, but he refused to go to his knees.

  This altar wasn’t one he would ever pray at.

  “Where is he!” Patrick shouted over the roar of magic and the supernatural wind spinning around them. “Where is Peklabog!”

  Ilya’s face was washed out by the light coming from the Morrígan’s staff, the quartz crystal a white hole of magic that threatened to blind Patrick.

  “I was made to serve a god,” Ilya snarled, his voice carrying on the wind.

  “Fuck your god! I was made for war.”

  Patrick crossed the inner circle, stumbling into the center of the spell. The icy coldness that suffused him made his breath puff out in a pale cloud.

  It glittered like a soul.

  The tug in his chest was like a hook behind his ribs, catching and pulling with inhuman strength. There wasn’t anything he could see, nothing for him to cut with his dagger. In the distance, Fenrir howled a warning he couldn’t listen to.

  Chilled down to his bones, the only warmth Patrick could feel was the line of heat across his left palm, Srecha’s blessing a kiss of fate he’d never wanted.

  Ilya raised the Morrígan’s staff over his head before slamming it down to the ground. Magic exploded away from it in a wave of power that rolled over Patrick like a tsunami. The only reason he didn’t drown was due to the hole his dagger carved through it as he planted his feet and refused to move.

  The necromantic magic flowed up the four legs of the Eiffel Tower, powering the dead. Patrick’s soul peeled apart at the edges, the Morrígan’s staff eating away at what didn’t belong to it. The soulbond tightened somewhere deep inside his chest, an anchor bracketed by Persephone’s soul debt carved deeper than the tie that linked him to Hannah.

  One step, then another, both arms stretched out in front of him, the dagger providing a shield and the blessing a promise.

  Ilya screamed a wordless challenge as ravens and crows flew beneath the arched legs of the Eiffel Tower, cawing their defiance.

  Patrick’s arms shook, his soul bleeding free at the edges of his aura, and there was a hunger in his gut that didn’t belong to him. Ilya raised the staff again, bringing it down like an axe on his enemy.

  Patrick caught it in his left hand, Srecha’s blessing burning like a brand. The first contact with that notched wood ripped a scream from his lips that shredded his throat until all he tasted was blood.

  Mortal flesh was never meant to touch a weapon like this.

  Patrick gripped the head of the staff despite the agony, fingers curling between the carved knotwork of the raven, skin burning from the bright magic emanating from the quartz crystal.

  Magic exploded around them, white-hot and catastrophically dangerous, not meant for mortals to touch. Death wasn’t Patrick’s affinity, wasn’t his kind of magic. It wasn’t his to own or control.

  Please.

  The word rattled through Patrick’s mind, the only command—the only prayer—he could stitch together in the face of a hunger that threatened to swallow him whole.

  What lived in the Morrígan’s staff—sentience of a sort, but nowhere close to human—burrowed deep into his brain, into his soul, carving him up like a vivisection done without anesthesia as it searched for what he wanted most.

  Forgiveness.

  Absolution.

  Resurrection of the dead and gone of past mistakes.

  Patrick couldn’t see Ilya’s face through the sun-bright burn of death magic that sought his soul. He was only aware of a cold that threatened to freeze him from the inside out as the staff unwound regret and guilt and want from the depths of memory.

  He thought of bone and blood and iron teeth stretched i
n a smile, the feel of ash beneath his fingernails, and a hideous desert heat of a hell Ethan never finished calling to Earth.

  He thought of demon’s claws in his chest, his sister’s screams, and his mother’s sightless eyes staring at him from the darkest corner of his mind as Macaria lost her freedom.

  A foreign awareness washed through him, distant and vast like the ocean, threatening to swallow him whole.

  Choose.

  Patrick had bled for many gods over the years, but he’d only ever prayed to one.

  And in the presence of gods and monsters and weapons of war, what was one man’s prayers worth?

  Nothing, he knew.

  Srecha’s blessing, however, was worth everything.

  Black dots ate through the brightness, melding together into a hazy distant figure Patrick had seen in a nightmare once—a woman wearing a hooded cloak made with a thousand black feathers, pale-skinned and starved-thin. She was nothing but a shadow in that light, but she still reached for him with fingers stained red with blood, grave dirt on her feet and the promise of death on her lips.

  Only it wasn’t his mother’s face staring back at him this time, but that of a goddess.

  And her staff—it hungered.

  Made of iron and earth, notched with the memory of the brittle dead, the Morrígan’s staff required a sacrifice for its power.

  It always had.

  Patrick squeezed his eyes shut, and when he opened them again, all he saw was Ilya’s face contorted in fury, stripped of the mantle that he’d carried as the Patriarch of Souls for the Orthodox Church of the Dead. Patrick knew the staff could raise the dead from a battlefield and graves, but the amount of zombies in Paris seemed astronomical. To guide that many spirits from beyond to earthly anchors required a godly touch.

  “You fed it Peklabog,” Patrick said through numb lips, tasting blood on his teeth.

  The man on the Salle du Drapeau’s altar in the Catacombs had been no man after all.

  “I’ve been promised a different way,” Ilya spat out. “I’ll pray to another.”

  Patrick pressed the dagger edge against the base of the raven’s feet on the staff, and the prayers in its making cut through the wood as if it were made of nothing.

  The raven broke free with a snap that could’ve caused an avalanche. Patrick curled his fingers tight around it, never letting go.

  He left Srecha’s blessing behind—payment for the prayer the staff drew out of his soul.

  Please, Patrick thought once more in the messy static of his mind as his soul ripped wider, tearing from his bones, barely knowing what he was asking for.

  Praying for.

  Magic exploded from the Morrígan’s staff, a shriek he couldn’t hear, only feel cutting through his skull. The force sent them flying apart. Patrick fell to the ground, the broken-off wooden raven clenched in one hand as the spell powering the summoning of the dead broke apart around him.

  He didn’t see where Ilya went.

  Looking up at the underside of the Eiffel Tower, Patrick watched the magic lighting it up fade into darkness. Then the only thing he could see was Jono’s wolf-bright blue eyes in a human face as the soulbond pulled tight between them, smoothing down the frayed edges of his battered soul with a permanency that made him choke.

  “Patrick!” Jono said, sounding faraway to Patrick’s ears.

  The hand framing his face burned, but it took Patrick several seconds to realize it was because he was so cold. His fingers spasmed, releasing his dagger and the piece of the Morrígan’s staff he’d managed to steal back in a moment he wasn’t sure was real.

  Jono’s face faded into shadow as the magic that had sustained the dead walking through Paris was siphoned away, leaving the city in darkness and the bones of its past falling lifeless to the ground.

  Above them, a murder of crows and an unkindness of ravens blotted out the vastness of the Eiffel Tower against the starry sky, their grievance echoing like bells at the midnight hour, calling an end to summer solstice.

  War does not rest.

  And oh, how she was fury born.

  28

  Jono scrubbed a hand over his face and sighed, staring tiredly at the electric kettle and willing the water to boil faster. The power in the 8th arrondissement had finally been turned back on, and he’d been dying for a cuppa for days already. He pressed a hand to his chest, absently drumming his fingers against his collarbone. Three days since summer solstice and everything was still a bloody mess, but at least Nadine had tea.

  Despite it being Sunday, Patrick and Nadine were meeting with the French government alongside several senior PIA agents and the United States Ambassador to France. To say what had happened in Paris was an international shitstorm was putting it mildly.

  The PIA’s warnings to their counterpart were seen as too little too late in the aftermath. France had known about Ilya and the Orthodox Church of the Dead being in Paris. What they hadn’t known about was the dangerous artifact the United States had refused to warn them about. Keeping the Morrígan’s staff a secret was still a priority, but it made placating allies difficult when governments refused to be honest with each other.

  All Jono cared about was that his passport wasn’t flagged and he’d still be able to fly home tomorrow with Sage and Wade. Patrick, unfortunately, was still required in Paris for political reasons. He’d been the one to break the spell, and French officials were alternating between being grateful and being angry.

  If Jono could carry Patrick onto the plane home, he would.

  “Is that coffee?” Spencer asked as he stumbled blearily into the kitchen. “Please tell me it’s coffee.”

  “Sorry, mate. Just tea. I can make you a cuppa if you like,” Jono said.

  Spencer groaned and set about digging through Nadine’s cupboards. “Urgh. You Brits and your tea.”

  Jono didn’t take offense, having come to the conclusion that Spencer lacked coherency until he’d drunk at least half a pot of coffee after waking up. Spencer still managed to get his coffee brewed even with his eyes half-closed.

  The kettle started to bubble and steam in earnest. When it clicked off, Jono poured the hot water into his mug and let it steep for a few minutes, watching Spencer stumble about the kitchen and holding up all sorts of different food for Fatima to choose from after the psychopomp strolled in and started yowling. She eventually decided on half a stale loaf of bread, running out of the kitchen with it in her mouth.

  “You know she’s going to get crumbs everywhere, right?” Jono said.

  Spencer let the kitchen island hold up his weight as he drank his coffee. “Nadine won’t mind.”

  Jono very much doubted that. “When do you leave?”

  “Tonight. Director Franklin wants me back in DC for debriefing tomorrow.”

  “But not Patrick?”

  Spencer shrugged. “French officials are apparently making noise about our government bringing me into their country without approval. Franklin wants me back before they try to arrest me.”

  Jono stared at him through the steam of his tea. “You and your magic were the main bloody reason we got to the Eiffel Tower in time to stop Ilya.”

  “True. Which is probably why the French government didn’t arrest me once they found out about my magic. Necromancy is illegal for a reason, as you just experienced.”

  “You aren’t a necromancer.”

  “Close enough by most legal standards.”

  Jono took a sip of his tea and grimaced. “Sorry.”

  “Eh, could be worse. I could’ve been born an actual necromancer and been put to death as soon as my magic manifested itself.”

  Spencer spoke about being executed the way some people spoke about what they might order for dinner—musing and unconcerned in a way.

  “Thanks for coming when Patrick asked.”

  Spencer looked at him from across the kitchen island, blue eyes clear and sharp when a moment ago he’d seemed half-asleep. “Patrick’s my friend. I might not have
been a Hellraiser, but I still fought with him when our missions crossed, and he’s one of the few people who didn’t flinch when he first met me. Having magic like mine doesn’t earn me many friends. I like to keep the ones I got.”

  “Smart.”

  “Yeah.” Spencer sipped at his coffee, squinting at Jono. “Which is why I’m going to tell you what I’m going to tell him once he gets back from being interrogated. Whatever that staff did to him when he touched it, it made your soulbond permanent.”

  Jono ran his tongue against the back of his teeth, thinking of that moment beneath the Eiffel Tower and the way his soul had been twisted so tight he’d thought his ribs would break in protest. “Thought it already was?”

  “Soulbonds can be severed. When I first arrived and saw your souls, the bond wasn’t tangled as deep as it is now. And when I say deep, I mean deep.” Spencer paused, grimacing. “I know the gods set it. I think, at this point, they’d be the only ones who could undo it.”

  “We aren’t going to ask them for any favors.”

  “Good plan.”

  “I’ll tell Patrick. No need for your goodbye to end with news like that.”

  “Bad?”

  Jono shook his head. “We both don’t mind the soulbond. We don’t want it removed.”

  “So, good news, then?”

  “Good enough.”

  Jono’s ears picked up on quiet footsteps, and then Sage padded into the kitchen on bare feet, mobile pressed to her ear and looking right at him.

  “Hold please,” she said in a crisp voice before muting the call. “Rami says Mireille and Gaspard want to speak with you.”

  Jono gulped down another burning swallow of tea. “On your mobile or mine?”

  “I have them standing by.”

  “I’m ready.”

  Sage got back on the line, and a couple of seconds later, she handed her mobile to him. Jono pressed it to his ear and leaned against the kitchen counter, staring out the open window at the sunlight outside .

  “Yeah?” he said, too tired to be polite.

  “Bonjour, Jonothon. One of the packs under our protection said you gave them aid during the zombie incursion. That you brought them to the ministry so they could continue to help the city with support,” Mireille said after only a brief pause, sounding as if she was on speaker.