A Ferry of Bones & Gold (Soulbound Book 1), page 13
Jono stuck close to his side, sunglasses on despite the hour. He looked ridiculous, but better to hide what he was within view of the media cameras than to give the impression the werecreature community might be linked to the murders when they weren’t involved.
“Stay close and do what I tell you,” Patrick said as he flashed his badge to a cop manning the perimeter. He ducked under the Police Line – Do Not Cross tape, then held it up for Jono to duck under. “And if you have to get sick, don’t get sick near the evidence.”
“Right. I’ll just ask for the loo,” Jono muttered. “Not my first time seeing a dead body.”
Considering how werecreatures sometimes handled territory disputes and other problems, Patrick wasn’t surprised to hear that. “I guarantee you’ve never seen one like this.”
Patrick and Jono entered the building, getting directed to the tenth floor where an apartment at the very end of the hallway was a hive of late-night activity. Recognition punched through his shields when they stepped off the elevator, sliding through the new damage in his soul.
What was it Casale said? Three bodies in a month and a half? Patrick thought to himself as they passed a pair of uniformed police officers. This brings the total up to nine.
This murder was far too close timing-wise to the last one. The perpetrator, whoever they were, was ramping up their killings. While Patrick had a pretty good idea why, he just didn’t know when anything would come of the attacks.
Casale was waiting for them in the living room, wearing a suit as if it were body armor. He nodded a greeting before pointing at Jono. “You stay out here and keep out of the way.”
Jono, who made a quiet gagging sound behind Patrick—most likely from the smell—was all for it. “Too right I will.”
“Bathroom is over there if you were stupid and ate breakfast.”
“At this hour it’d be more like a midnight snack,” Patrick said.
He approached one of the two bedrooms and paused in the entrance for a minute, taking in the crime scene with sharp eyes. Whoever she had once been, it was hard to see in the mutilated mess she’d become on her ruined bed. Her torso had been cracked open like a bloody butterfly, organs ripped out of the gaping hole and body chewed on like the last one.
Her left arm was missing up to her elbow with pieces of flesh scattered around the stump. Half her face had been eaten away, along with a good portion of her neck as well. Patrick could see the white vertebrae of her spine through the mess. Her legs were half-gone, stripped down to the bone in areas, as if the soultaker had peeled away flesh and muscle one layer at a time. Blood stained the bedding, having congealed beneath the body where it wasn’t splattered across the white wall and wooden frame of her bed.
CSU was already hard at work processing the scene. The room felt crowded even though only two of them were inside it. Patrick had a feeling it was the hellish taint pressing against his shields that made him uncomfortable.
Allison handed him a pair of latex gloves before he stepped inside the bedroom. She looked tired, and Patrick wondered if she’d even gone home last night. Dwayne appeared marginally better, but he had at least ten years on Allison of working shifts like this. He could probably power through on nothing more than a couple of coffees at this point in his career.
Patrick pulled on the gloves and carefully stepped around numbered evidence tags on the floor to reach the body. He prodded at the victim’s ruined face, pulling at her lashes to get a better look at the sign carved into her eyelids. Taurus this time, which called to Dionysus. Patrick had a feeling that god wouldn’t be playing poker in Atlantic City any time soon. If he was smart, Dionysus would have gotten the hell away from the Eastern Seaboard.
Wonder if Hermes has found the rest of the coins yet, Patrick thought.
“Time of death?” he asked.
“We’re still waiting on the ME,” Dwayne said.
“Who found her?”
“The roommate came home from a club and found the victim like this. She’s being seen to by EMS.”
“I’ll check her soul for any taint and let your on-call witch know. The residual is the same here as with the last body.”
Casale heaved out a sigh. “I’ll warn everyone they’re getting their souls scoured again.”
“Always fun,” Allison muttered from her spot by the door.
Patrick retreated from the body, carefully making his way out of the bedroom. He stripped off his gloves and deposited them in the portable biohazard bin CSU had put next to the door. “I’ll stick around until processing is done just in case.”
“You think the demon might make a reappearance?” Casale asked.
“The bar could be an outlier attack, but who knows. Better safe than sorry.”
Patrick spent the next two hours or so monitoring the scene and quietly tagging the people who would need to have their souls scrubbed of the taint by himself or one of the witches employed by the PCB. Jono stayed out of the way on the living room couch, attention on his phone. He did let Patrick know Marek was home and that nothing had tripped the barrier ward during a lull moment.
“That’s good, innit?” Jono asked, looking up from the string of text messages.
Patrick shrugged. “We’ll see.”
He wouldn’t put anything past Ethan and whoever else was aligned with the Dominion Sect helping to commit murder in this city. Patrick stayed until the body was wheeled out on a gurney in a black body bag, overseen by a PCB-affiliated witch. The body would be taken on a one-way trip to the ME’s warded incinerator. People who died by way of demons or black magic were always burned. Fire permanently cleansed anything, even the dead. There could be no burial for a body ruined by hell.
“This won’t look good in the press,” Casale said before they left the apartment.
“I know. Just keep them at bay,” Patrick replied.
“That’s going to be difficult after today considering we have two more bodies in less than a week. Talk of a serial killer is making everyone uneasy and the commissioner wants answers. So find me some.”
“He does know I took the case over, right? I’m not at his beck and call.”
Casale nodded. “He knows. That doesn’t change the fact we’re doing all the legwork for you.”
Patrick didn’t say anything to that, attributing Casale’s annoyance to the early-morning wake-up call they’d all been subjected to. He waved at Jono to follow him to the elevator while Casale coordinated with the PR representative out of DCPI on how best to handle the press down on the street. Jono kept his sunglasses on as they left the building. Outside, the sky was lightening from the encroaching sunrise.
Patrick pulled out his phone as they walked down the pavement toward his car. He scrolled through his contacts for Setsuna’s cell phone number, not her direct office line, and called her. It rang five times, but she didn’t pick up, the call going to voicemail.
His message was short and to the point. “Ninth body. Call me.”
“You’re going to get more bodies, won’t you?” Jono asked quietly as they ducked under the police tape.
“Yeah,” Patrick said, mouth twisting at that admission.
“How many more, you think?”
“I don’t know.”
He didn’t; not really. The number of people the Dominion Sect had sacrificed to the hells in order to call forth enough soultakers to rip open the veil at the start of the Thirty-Day War had never been finalized. A spell like that required a range of different magic, and the mages who had performed it were wanted all over the world.
That spell was finding its bones in New York City.
Somehow, Patrick needed to stop what was happening.
He pulled out his keys and unlocked the car with a push of a button when they were only a few feet away. Before he even lifted his thumb off the key fob, the car exploded.
Patrick felt it spark at the very edge of his awareness, a quicksilver heat that jerked him out of the calm city street to the uncertainty of the front lines he thought he’d left by the wayside three years ago. He grabbed blindly for a weapon he no longer carried, the weight of his rifle an absence only replaced in his nightmares. Patrick’s instinct to fight would never die.
You could take a soldier out of war, but you couldn’t take the war out of the soldier.
Even as he ripped his shields out of his body, hands grabbed him by the shoulders and hauled him backward with preternatural strength and speed. Patrick’s feet left the ground, partly from Jono’s efforts to get them clear and partly from the concussive force of the explosion ripping through the air. The scorching heat of hellfire burst outward from the car, licking at his shields as it sent a plume of toxic smoke into the sun-kissed sky. Glass and metal cut through the air like deadly shrapnel.
Jono’s preternatural speed got them meters away, just not completely in the clear. They crashed to the pavement two cars away from the epicenter of someone’s attempt to murder Patrick. Strong arms wrapped around his body as he landed on top of Jono rather than hard concrete. Jono grunted in his ear from the impact, holding him tightly as the leading edge of the hellfire explosion burned against Patrick’s shields.
Patrick thrust both his arms into the air, a mageglobe spinning rapidly in the space between his hands. In war, even seconds could be too long to guarantee survival, but the shield ward had already formed in his mind the moment his subconscious recognized what was happening. His personal shields would keep them safe, but everyone else on the street needed cover.
Patrick poured his magic into a tall, curved shield between the street and the hellfire raining down like metaphysical napalm. This defensive ward wasn’t one that came easily to him, but it formed and it held, and that was all that mattered.
Screams filled the air, cutting through the ringing in his ears. Jono shoved them both to a sitting position, one of his hands having slipped underneath Patrick’s shirt during their mad scramble to get clear. The heat emanating from Jono’s touch seared through Patrick even as all his concentration focused on the shield ward.
He dragged his magic higher, wider, covering the street around them and forcing it up the sides of buildings. Patrick put his magic between everyone and the terrifying destruction of a hellfire bomb usually only found in a war zone. He spread his fingers, palms pressed flat against the distant sky as he shored up the structure of the shield with as much magic as he could spare.
The shield wavered, not nearly as strong as he needed it to be, and he could feel his magic leaving his soul faster than usual. Patrick gritted his teeth and concentrated on holding it up the way he’d done countless times on the front lines—by ignoring the pain and pushing through his limitations as much as he could.
Because he had no other choice.
Patrick stared up at the sky around the rapidly spinning mageglobe framed between his hands as sizzling splatters of hellfire rained down on his shield ward. He drew back his own personal shields, letting it sink back beneath his skin. Jono made a sound in the back of his throat, his warm breath blowing across Patrick’s ear when he spoke.
“You carry your shields in your bones,” Jono said, making it a statement, not a question.
Patrick didn’t respond, too focused on the once clear sky now marred by black smoke rising high above the street. The acrid smell of it was something even his shields couldn’t keep out. He clenched his hands into fists, manipulating his magic to fold the edges of his shield over the burning, destroyed vehicles to contain the hellfire. Shields weren’t his strong suit, even back when he could tap a ley line, but he refused to let this one break.
“Collins!” Casale yelled, his voice cutting through the cries filling the air.
For a split second, Patrick could smell desert sand and the cloying scent of death. He could hear the steady burst of suppressive fire trying to clear him a way to the center of that death spell, Ashanti’s ashes still hot under his fingernails.
Patrick wrenched his mind out of memory and focused on the here and now.
“Clear!” he shouted back, forgetting that no one had called for his status, that this wasn’t a war zone, except for how it was.
Jono shifted behind him, and suddenly Patrick was being hauled to his feet by strong arms, held close against Jono’s solid body. He was reminded of the other night, how easily Jono had manhandled him so they could both get off. It was nice to know the other man could use his strength to keep them safe as well.
“What the fucking hell was that?” Jono asked.
Patrick dropped his arms a little, the mageglobe following his hands. He couldn’t quite choke back the ugly laughter that escaped his mouth. “Hell is right.”
Casale was suddenly by their sides, expression equal parts fearful and furious. Patrick belatedly realized he was still wrapped up in Jono’s arms and reluctantly stepped away from the taller man.
“Was that your car?” Casale demanded.
“Yeah. Something tells me we’re on their radar.”
“You think?” Casale said, staring at the vehicles the hellfire bomb had destroyed, still burning away behind Patrick’s shield covering the street. “Are you all right?”
No, Patrick thought. What he ended up saying was “Yes.”
He couldn’t afford to be anything else right now.
Jono stared at Patrick like he didn’t believe him at all, but he didn’t question Patrick’s state of mind. Which was fine with Patrick, because the only person he didn’t argue about his mental health with was his VA-assigned therapist. After today, Patrick figured he owed the man a call.
“Anyone else hurt?” Patrick asked.
“We’re clearing the area, but I don’t think so. You got your shield up in time,” Casale replied.
Patrick nodded, most of his attention still on the hellfire burning itself out beneath his shield, the warning as clear as sunlight.
The Dominion Sect knew he was in town.
9
“You can’t take me off the case,” Patrick argued. “I’m running it now.”
Casale pointed at the smoldering remains of the rental car and two squad cars. The vehicles were currently being doused by a witch with an affinity for water magic instead of the FDNY for security purposes. Casale had dispatched a couple of other PCB witches whose affinity with defensive wards were strong to work with the bomb squad on clearing the area.
“Someone just tried to kill you,” Casale said.
“They did a shitty job of it since I’m still breathing.”
Jono made a strangled noise in the back of his throat that both Patrick and Casale ignored.
“I take personal offense to someone targeting the people working my cases. I know I can’t take you off the case; I just need you safe. You’re no good to me dead, Collins.”
Casale had a point, even if Patrick didn’t like it. “This isn’t the first time I’ve survived a bomb scare.”
“That doesn’t make this situation better,” Jono interjected.
“I need you alive to finish this job, not dead in the street from another bomb. You are not handling the processing of this crime scene and are getting the hell out of sight of the media,” Casale told him.
Patrick resisted the urge to look over his shoulder at the cluster of news vans parked at the far end of the street, the cameras pointed their way.
“Fucking rats,” he muttered under his breath.
He really, truly hated dealing with the media.
Casale jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “Ramirez and Guthrie will drive you back to the PCB or wherever you’re staying.”
“PCB,” Patrick said. “I’m not done working.”
Just because someone had tried to murder him didn’t mean Patrick had time to take a break.
Minutes later, Patrick and Jono climbed into the back of Allison and Dwayne’s unmarked police car. He slouched in the seat after buckling up, leaning his head back. He ached, right down to his bones, a gritty, low-grade pain that stemmed from the shredded pieces of his soul and partially drained magic, courtesy of the soultaker. He needed a couple of days of uninterrupted rest to heal both problems, but at this rate, Patrick doubted he’d get any.
“Where’s Marek?” Patrick asked when they were halfway to the PCB.
“Home. He’s watching the morning news about the murder and the attack. Nothing has tripped your ward,” Jono said, looking up from his phone and the text messages on the screen.
Patrick closed his eyes. “He better stay there.”
Jono kept quiet in the face of that statement. The other man couldn’t speak for Marek, and Marek seemed to do whatever the hell he liked, no matter Patrick’s warnings. If Patrick had been born a seer, he wouldn’t have any faith in an immortal to keep himself safe and always one step ahead of danger.
Allison and Dwayne didn’t try to engage either of their passengers with conversation on the drive back to the PCB. This morning’s double whammy of murder and attempted murder had put people on edge. Patrick was thankful for the quiet, if only so he could think. The case was racking up bodies like a bookie accrued debts, and he’d almost been added to the mix.
What am I missing? Patrick thought.
The Dominion Sect had stolen souls in sacrifices to the gods. While New York City had a nexus pooled beneath its streets and subways, it didn’t have a relic of an altar to hold the structure of the spell in place. No pyramids, no shrine, no temple, no anything from the old world and the even older religions which shored up the lives of the immortals.
Patrick couldn’t get ahead of what he didn’t know, and he needed to.
“Come on,” Jono said when Allison and Dwayne dropped them off in front of the PCB. “Let’s find you some food.”
Patrick thought about arguing, but the sound of his stomach growling ended that fight before it began. “Fine.”
Midmorning on a Saturday downtown meant the usual weekday crowds had disappeared. Jono steered him to a deli that was still open one block away that served thick sandwiches, soups, and salads. The building it resided in was one of the older ones taking up space in the Manhattan skyline.
