A Ferry of Bones & Gold (Soulbound Book 1), page 34
“You should never hold back in a fight.”
“I’ve lived without that part of me for years already. Hurting you just to tap a ley line isn’t something I’m willing to do.”
“Doesn’t hurt,” Jono said, staring at him with those bright eyes of his.
Patrick leaned forward to kiss him. “You’re such a fucking liar and I don’t even need enhanced senses to know that.”
Patrick kissed away Jono’s argument, drowning in the taste of him. Jono’s hands stroked down his back to grab him by the hips and pull him closer. Patrick didn’t know if the desperate need for closeness was driven by their newly bound souls or the exuberant realization that they’d survived the fight. Whatever drove them, it was a far cry better than searching for the bottom in a bottle of alcohol.
Only when his lungs ached with the need to breathe did Patrick tear his mouth from Jono’s, pressing their foreheads together.
“What happens now?” Jono asked into the quiet between them.
Patrick sighed, leaning backward a little and trying to ignore how uncomfortable his jeans were getting. “I’m being transferred to the New York City field office here, so you won’t have to move.”
Jono slid his hands beneath Patrick’s T-shirt, rucking it up a little as he sought out skin. “Bet Youssef and Estelle will be thrilled about that.”
“Do they have immortal patrons?”
Jono shrugged. “Maybe? Don’t really know. I’m not part of their god pack.”
“Great. That’s all we need,” Patrick muttered. “A fucking civil war in the werecreature community.”
Jono nipped at his mouth, stealing another kiss. “When does the transfer happen?”
“Setsuna gave me a month for the move. She even offered me a vacation.”
“So you’re not moving because of me?”
“I didn’t tell Setsuna about you.”
Jono eyed him thoughtfully. “But she knows?”
“About our bond? She suspects, but she made sure no one else would find out,” Patrick said carefully. “If someone discovers what I did to you, I will go to jail, Jono. I will be charged with destroying the essence of your soul, and that’s a capital crime right up there with murder.”
A soul, like a life, was sacred. The law was very clear on that, and as often as Patrick had bent the law to finish a case, he’d never outright broken it like this before.
“I’ve spent the past thirteen years without a pack. No one is taking you away from me,” Jono growled.
“I don’t know anything about how to be pack.”
“Neither do I. We’ll figure it out.”
Patrick looped his arms around Jono’s shoulders, drawing him forward. Jono went willingly, pressing his forehead to Patrick’s chest, right over the scars. He let out a shuddering sigh that made Patrick hold him tighter.
“I can’t sleep,” Jono said in a slow voice. “I’m so tired, but all I see is…”
He trailed off, but Patrick knew what lived in that silence. He knew the way nightmares could steal everything from a person—their sleep, their dreams, their sense of peace. Trying to go through the motions of acting normal after trauma would only make a person crazy over time. If there was anything years of one-on-one and group therapy had shown Patrick, it was that normal was relative, and you lived every day one day at a time.
He shifted, pulling away from Jono just long enough to get them both lying down on the couch. Jono wrapped his arms around Patrick’s torso, their legs tangling together. Patrick settled his chin on the top of Jono’s head, listening to him breathe.
Between them, the soulbond drew ever tighter.
It should have scared him, but if Jono was okay with it, then Patrick would learn to be as well.
What was one more debt, after all?
22
“You owe me a vacation.”
Patrick laughed in Nadine’s face. “I owe myself one first.”
“Should’ve taken your director’s offer to add it onto your moving timeline and costs.”
“Maybe.”
Nadine rifled through her purse, triple-checking that she had the appropriate documents in hand that would get her Browning 9mm through security. LaGuardia was crowded with returning business flyers on a Tuesday night. No one even looked twice at their goodbye in the terminal.
Setsuna had kept Nadine’s identity locked down at the request of the PIA in the aftermath. She was having a harder time keeping Patrick out of the spotlight, but that was the nature of the job.
Nadine’s carry-on luggage was a hardback case well-worn from travel, the handle sticking up in the locked position. The dove gray jacket of her pantsuit paired nicely with the pale pink blouse underneath. Her heels looked like they could murder a man, and Patrick’s feet ached just looking at them.
She’d dressed for a fight today in the face of several long meetings in New York City. Marek had bought her a couple new power suits to get her through the next few days as a thank-you for her help during the mess last week. Patrick didn’t envy the poor bastard back at the PIA headquarters in Washington, DC, tasked with Nadine’s in-person debrief tomorrow. She’d eat them alive.
Finding everything in order, Nadine settled her purse straps on her shoulder and tucked a bit of her loose brown hair behind an ear, papers and PIA badge in hand. “Call me when you make it to DC. I should still be stateside. We’ll get dinner.”
“This weekend, maybe. I need to pack up my apartment and call one of the vetted movers the agency uses.”
“You take a look at any apartments here yet?”
Patrick made a face. “I’m going to be spending half of my paycheck on rent alone. Let me mourn my bank account a little longer.”
“Soon as you pick a place, send me your address. I’ll mail you a housewarming gift from Paris.”
“Better be alcohol.”
“It’ll be something.”
Nadine reached out to adjust the collar of his button-down shirt. They’d both dressed up a little today in the face of meetings with city officials, NYPD brass, and the upper echelons of the SOA. Setsuna had returned to DC days ago but Priya was still in New York City helping the new SAIC get settled in the midst of the fallout from the case. Patrick didn’t envy Henry Ng that job at all.
Patrick looked at the departures board and checked the time. “You should get going. Security looks like it’s a mess, and you need to get your weapon cleared through.”
“I still have time.” Nadine smiled at him before leaning forward to kiss the air on either side of his cheeks. “Watch your back.”
“You too.”
“Good luck with your wolf.”
Patrick had to bite down on his denial that Jono wasn’t his wolf, because at this point, arguing was futile. “Thank you. For everything.”
She gave him a quick little salute and winked. “What are friends for?”
“Safe travels.”
Nadine inclined her head in silent acknowledgment before grabbing the handle of her luggage and walking off. She didn’t look back, and he didn’t expect her to. That’s not how their friendship worked. If they needed each other, they would be there for each other, no questions asked. Patrick crossed his arms over his chest and watched her leave.
The itch between his shoulder blades intensified.
“She is a fine warrior,” a deep voice that echoed like thunder said from behind him.
“Nadine saved a lot of lives overseas,” Patrick replied as he turned around. “She still does.”
“Loyalty is an admirable trait.”
Zeus stood in the midst of the airport crowd wearing a bespoke suit that probably cost at least five figures. The immortal looked better than he had during summer solstice, bound to a spellwork that came too close to undoing his godhead. Tall and broad-shouldered, with deeply tanned skin and black hair that glinted with strands of silver, Zeus’ presence burned against Patrick’s newly replenished magic, even through his shields.
The moment they locked eyes, the world froze, time coming to an impossible standstill. Patrick kept his heartbeat steady as he felt himself get pulled into the orbit of the immortal’s powerful, primordial magic.
Zeus was nothing like Hermes, with his quicksilver trickery. Nor was he like Persephone, with her deep connection to the earth and her ties to hell brought about by the magic inside six small pomegranate seeds. No, Zeus was nothing like the rest of the gods in his pantheon. His magic was as fierce and unpredictable as a storm, and just as destructive. The all-consuming power shining in his aura should have burned Patrick to his core, but it didn’t.
He had Hera to thank for that.
The goddess stood beside her husband, passport in hand and dark sunglasses perched on her aquiline nose. One hand curled over the crook of Zeus’ elbow in a possessive manner, as if she knew how close she had come to losing him and didn’t want to let him go.
“Patrick,” Hera said. “Did you enjoy the flowers I sent you?”
“Pretty sure the nurses did,” he said.
“They were meant for you.”
“I don’t like gifts from gods.”
“You seem to like the wolf just fine,” Zeus said.
Anger resonated in Patrick’s soul as he took those words to be a threat. “He wasn’t supposed to be anyone’s to give.”
“The Norse do what they like,” Hera said derisively. “As do we all.”
He didn’t want to talk about Jono with them. He’d prefer they kept their distance from the werewolf, but Patrick had a feeling that was wishful thinking at this point. “Leaving the country?”
“Taking a much-needed break,” Zeus replied.
The news had briefly reported on Malcolm Cirillo’s disappearance and reappearance, with supposedly no memory of where he’d been, before dropping the story in favor of the sacrificial murders. Sensationalism sold way better than a missing rich guy these days. Patrick had a feeling Hera might have cast a little magic, with the help of her coven, to get the local media to look the other way. In the grand scheme of things, he was fine with the news missing the link between the two stories. He had a feeling Zeus and Hera were as well.
“If you’re leaving, you didn’t need to tell me goodbye. Your kind doesn’t ever come around unless you want something,” Patrick said.
“We already have you.”
“Because Persephone couldn’t let me die.”
“We are not ones to cast aside a weapon when we find one,” Hera replied coolly.
“Takes a real shitty person to think a child should be turned into a weapon.”
Zeus raised an eyebrow. “We immortals have a different view of worth. We always have.”
He didn’t sound condescending; he didn’t sneer the words. Zeus spoke as if what he said was a factual truth, nothing more and nothing less. The god either didn’t care, or wasn’t aware, of how his words scraped Patrick raw somewhere deep inside, where the child he used to be still screamed in horror at what he’d witnessed and the adult he’d grown into mourned what he’d become.
“Must be hard,” Patrick said tightly. “Surviving the way you do. All of you too old to change, too set in your ways, and then you wonder why the world forgot about you over the years. You wonder why you need to beg what few followers you can find to pray for your lives.”
Zeus’ mouth ticked ever so slightly downward at the corners. “We have never been forgotten.”
“You just got relegated to a footnote in someone else’s story, give or take a millennia or two. See, that’s the thing about myths. They aren’t men and they aren’t legends. At their core, you’re just a bunch of tragedies and cautionary tales. You don’t grow old when you’re a myth, but that just means you don’t know how to let things go and die.”
Zeus’ gray-blue eyes filled with the fury of a storm that would never die. When the god finally deigned to respond, his words felt like a warning, like a calm before a storm rising high on the horizon.
“I see Persephone chose the right twin all those years ago.”
Patrick raised his chin in silent defiance, clenching his hands into fists. “I would’ve preferred she let us both die.”
Hera chuckled, the sound grating in Patrick’s ears. “There is power in bloodlines, and in twins. You know that, Patrick. You know where you come from. We gods had an opportunity, and we took it. That is why Persephone took you.”
“You know what Ashanti told me once?” Patrick said, thinking about the mother of all vampires and her implacable will. The way she refused to let him remain ignorant of his lot in life. “Immortality isn’t living. It’s merely surviving.”
Something ugly and dangerous flashed across Zeus’ eyes, like a lightning strike before he spoke. “Far be it from me to speak unkindly of the dead.”
Ashanti might be dead, but her children and her teachings lived on. Patrick might carry a blade made by heavenly power, but he carried the taint of hell in his soul and Ashanti’s words in his mind.
A weapon, no matter its shape, is still a weapon. So use it.
He and Jono would do all that they could to wield themselves before they let the gods control their lives.
In the end, it might kill them, but they’d die on their own terms.
Patrick blinked, and in that split second, Zeus and Hera disappeared. The world snapped back into motion, the noise of the crowd rushing back to fill his ears. Patrick shook his head to clear it and walked toward the exit.
“Fucking immortals,” he muttered under his breath.
Patrick made his way to the borrowed car from the SOA motor pool and drove back to Manhattan. It took over an hour for him to arrive at Tempest in evening traffic and an extra fifteen minutes after that to find a parking spot. He finally found one three blocks away. Locking the car, Patrick stepped onto the sidewalk, dodging a couple of tourists.
With the reactionary storm long since blown away, summer heat had returned with a vengeance. The muggy weather didn’t dissipate with sunset and Patrick’s button-down felt a little too warm, even with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. The tie he’d worn to his meetings had been tossed in the back seat the moment his day was over.
He waved hello at the bouncer when he arrived at the bar. Tempest had fully recovered from the attack the other week, the crowds having returned to fill up the space. Gone was the unease and fear from the first soultaker attack, replaced by laughter, loud conversation, and music. The glances thrown Patrick’s way this time were curious and respectful rather than hostile. People slid out of his way before he could even get out an excuse me as he made his way up to the bar proper.
The small group of people who were slowly creeping their way into the friends category, whether Patrick liked it or not, were waiting for him. Emma and Sage sat on two of the stools, a third empty between them, while Marek and Leon leaned in around them to chat with Jono, who was working on their drinks.
Patrick watched as Jono lifted his head, eyes searching out his own in the crowded bar. Whether by scent or heartbeat or through their soulbond, Jono could always find him. Patrick stepped closer, and Emma reached back without looking to grab his arm. She hauled him over to the empty stool, never once stopping to argue with Marek about a work-related project. Whatever their conversation was about had Jono rolling his eyes and sharing a commiserating look with Sage.
Patrick settled himself on the stool, leaning his elbows against the edge of the bar as he looked at Sage. “Do I want to know what they’re arguing about?’
Sage didn’t look up from reading work email on her phone, her glass of wine hovering near her mouth. Marek had a hand pressed to her lower back and her body was canted toward his. “It’s all code.”
“Crypto work?”
“No. Code as in coding. They’ve been arguing about a new update to PreterWorld since they got here.”
“I thought we weren’t going to talk about work tonight? I was promised a night of drinking.”
“I’m cutting you off at two drinks. You drove here and you fly tomorrow,” Jono reminded him.
Patrick drummed his fingers against the bar counter. “I can always move my flight back.”
Jono vigorously shook the drink shaker, and Patrick let himself get distracted by his muscular arms. “I will kick you out of bed and drive you there myself. Pick your first drink.”
“My usual.”
It felt strange that he had a usual here. Patrick had never had a local bar where he could go to drink that wasn’t near a base and catered to soldiers. He rarely hung out at the ones near his soon-to-be old apartment in Washington, DC, preferring the privacy of his home over any public space. That was changing, if only because Emma was adamant he not keep his distance, no matter what the New York City god pack preferred.
Patrick wondered if her opinion of him would change if she knew what he’d done to Jono. He and Jono were keeping what had happened to them a secret, and would for as long as they could. Patrick wasn’t sure how their soulbond would affect their lives going forward, but the less people who knew about it the safer they would be. Their little two-person pack wasn’t official, though they’d opted to share that news with Emma, Leon, Marek, and Sage, who’d only been happy for them.
If—when—the New York City god pack found out that Jono had formed a pack inside their territory, there would be hell to pay, but they’d pay it later.
Marek moved around Sage to stand between where Patrick and Emma sat when Jono set the glass of Macallan 15 Year Old whiskey in front of Patrick. He pointed at the glass. “Put your wallet away. That’s on the house.”
Patrick picked up the glass and tilted it in Marek’s direction in a silent toast before taking a sip. “Thanks.”
Jono set a salt-rimmed glass in front of Emma, the thin layer of fluffy egg white foam on top already slowly dissolving. “Patrick is right. Stop chatting about work, Em.”
Emma rolled her eyes and clamped her hand over Marek’s mouth before he could protest. “Fine.”
“Where’s my drink?” was Marek’s muffled question.
Jono handed an IPA to Leon and a shot of Bulliet to Marek. His own drink was a double pour of Redbreast, which he clacked against Patrick’s glass. “Cheers, mate.”
