All Souls Near & Nigh (Soulbound Book 2) Read online

  ALL SOULS NEAR & NIGH

  Soulbound II

  Hailey Turner

  © 2019 Hailey Turner

  All Rights Reserved

  Cover design by AngstyG.

  Professional Beta Reading by Leslie Copeland: [email protected]

  Edited by One Love Editing

  Proofing by Lori Parks: [email protected]

  Contents

  DISCLAIMER

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  GLOSSARY

  Author’s Notes

  Connect with Hailey

  Other Works By Hailey Turner

  To May Archer

  Salt bae for life.

  May the snark and cat love be with you always.

  DISCLAIMER

  This book contains a brief scene of on-page sexual assault.

  1

  Special Agent Patrick Collins winced as he clattered down the stairs of the Brooklyn Bridge-City Hall/Chambers Street subway entrance, the motion jarring his still-healing nose. The medical tape slapped over the bridge of it itched his skin, but he refrained from scratching at the annoyance.

  The passage down into the subway was packed with people from a delayed rush hour commute on a Wednesday night. Despite the crowd, everyone got out of his way when Patrick said, “Federal agent, coming through.”

  Patrick’s Supernatural Operations Agency badge hung from his neck, and his semiautomatic HK USP 9mm tactical pistol was holstered on his right hip. The gods-made dagger he never went anywhere without was securely strapped to his right thigh. Patrick had opted to leave his jacket with the agency lettering across the back in his car. August in New York City was too fucking hot to wear anything but short sleeves.

  Patrick had been upstate dealing with an incursion of Redcaps for the past week. He’d been looking forward to going home once he landed at LaGuardia. One call from Special Agent in Charge Henry Ng before he even deplaned and he’d been assigned an emergency case with the NYPD’s Preternatural Crimes Bureau. It was a familiar song and dance he was too tired to perform but didn’t have a choice.

  He raked a hand through his dark red hair as he made it to the fare gates and kept moving past the officer on guard duty. No one tried to stop him.

  At least this case is local.

  Since June, Patrick had called New York City home. The transfer from the national office to a field office had taken some getting used to. The majority of the cases he handled now came out of New York state, though he still got sent out on national ones if the need was great enough. Media focus aside, Patrick was enjoying how less chaotic his job was lately.

  Nothing about a dead body ruining a rush hour subway commute was enjoyable though.

  Detective Specialist Dwayne Guthrie waved Patrick over once he made it to the subway platform. “About damn time, Collins.”

  “Would’ve been here sooner, but traffic was terrible,” Patrick said.

  “Maybe you should look into getting some lights and sirens put into your car. Or convince the mayor he needs a better outreach program for troubled youth so shit like this doesn’t happen and we all get a night off for once. The dumbasses who sneak into the tunnels to tag turf keep getting eaten and it’s annoying.”

  Patrick jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “There were signs up by the gates. No feeding the trolls.”

  Dwayne rolled his eyes. “Do you think any of the fools selling shit on the corner actually read? And what happened to your face?”

  Patrick made an aborted motion to touch his face, his healing nose and bruised green eyes throbbing a little. “Went face-first into a tree. I took a potion before I got on the plane. I’ll be fine.”

  A witch’s brew was better than painkillers some days. The accelerated healing it could produce meant the swelling had gone down enough that Patrick could see out of both eyes, and the cartilage in his nose would mend straight in a couple of days rather than weeks. His head was still sore, not to mention the rest of his body, but ignoring the discomfort was second nature at this point.

  Patrick gazed around the crowded center platform of the station. Several uniformed police officers were keeping the area near them clear, but no trains were running on their side of the platform. Patrick tugged at the collar of his T-shirt, feeling sweat trickle down his spine. Summer in the city was a swamp-like hell of high heat and high humidity, especially down in the subway.

  “Where’s the body?” Patrick asked.

  “In the Old City Hall subway station,” Dwayne replied.

  “You’ve confirmed it’s not a suicide?”

  Dwayne nodded as he headed toward the end of the platform where a set of gated stairs were located, guarded by an officer. “You’ll see why. A train operator spotted the body when his train looped around. Victim wasn’t found on the tracks, but the MTA is holding the 6 line until we’re done processing the area for evidence. We’ve been waiting on you.”

  “Bet the commuters aren’t happy about that.”

  “Not my problem.”

  Patrick followed Dwayne off the platform and onto the subway tracks. The tunnel itself was dark, so Patrick called up a couple of witchlights to guide their way. Pale blue sparks erupted from his fingertips as he pushed magic out of his damaged soul, the illumination bouncing ahead of them. Casting the spell was harder than usual, but he chalked that up to the location.

  Patrick grimaced at the feel of the wards that lined the tunnel walls. Subways were built through swaths of the veil, which meant their construction had been done by both mundane and magical means. The magic protecting the subway system was old, extensive, and powerful, with the anchor points of the wards radiating out from Grand Central Terminal. The wards made casting magic difficult, but an innocuous spell to conjure light was doable.

  Minutes later, Patrick’s witchlights merged with the brightness put out by portable floodlights, and he let his magic fade away. He and Dwayne came out of the dark tunnel into a station that made it feel as if they were stepping back in time. The vaulted ceiling with its leaded glass skylights and chandeliers were part of a bygone era that seemed out of place in today’s modern world.

  The body on the platform ruined the retro atmosphere.

  Patrick lowered his personal shields, trying to get a read on the area, but his magic recognized no discernable threat. Members of the PCB’s Crime Scene Unit were diligently working on collecting evidence while PCB officers kept watch. Patrick spotted Dwayne’s partner, Detective Specialist Allison Ramirez, almost immediately. She waved them over, frowning at Patrick once they got closer.

  “I know the chief requested federal help for this, but I didn’t think we’d get to work with you again so soon,” Allison said. “You look like you went a couple of rounds in the boxing ring and lost.”

  Patrick shrugged. “Actually, I won. What do we got?”

  This was only the second time Patrick had been assigned to take over a case from the PCB. June had been a clusterfuck of epic proportions, but he’d come away from it having earned a little of Bureau Chief Giovanni Casale’s respect. The peopl
e under his command were less antagonistic when dealing with Patrick this time around, which he appreciated. Usually local police didn’t much like it when federal agencies took over their cases.

  Allison gestured at the body. “Victim’s state in death is similar to the murders in June, but they don’t seem related. No heavenly signs sliced on his eyes. Body was chewed on for dinner though. Considering the amount of demonic cases the PCB has wedged in its pipeline, I’m inclined to add this one to the list.”

  “The wards down here should’ve prevented any demonic incursion. Any magic user on the MTA’s payroll should know what to look for when it comes to damage while checking the lines.”

  “Maybe they missed something.”

  “It’s possible. Sometimes the damage doesn’t show right away and you get holes later on. The London Underground had a basilisk incursion about thirty years ago. Things ate their way through a weakened section at a switch point. Made a meal out of the morning commute.”

  “I read about that. Not a fun way to start your morning.”

  New York City had seen an increase in demon activity ever since the veil had torn over Central Park. Patrick had closed the hole between worlds at the end of that fight, but demons and monsters had still slipped through. It was possible the subway wards had taken some unnoticed damage.

  Since June, the homicide rate had gone up in the city, faith in the SOA’s ability to handle the problem was in the gutters, and Patrick was still the House Committee on Supernatural Oversight’s favorite whipping boy at the moment.

  Thinking about politics made Patrick want to drink.

  The kid lying dead on the subway platform was never going to learn the joys of the legal drinking age. He was your typical troublemaker because it was usually troublemakers who decided to ruin public property. Cans of spray paint were scattered over the platform, each one tagged with an evidence number. Strangely enough, there wasn’t any graffiti on the walls.

  “Maybe it’s a dump job,” Patrick said.

  “Hard to dump a body in the subway, especially in this spot. Access isn’t easy on tracks with trains running, even for MTA workers,” Dwayne pointed out.

  Patrick approached the body and the woman crouched down taking notes on a clipboard. He was mindful of the numbered evidence tags in the area and made sure not to knock any over. “We have a time of death yet?”

  “Sometime this morning, but it has to be verified back at the lab,” the woman said. Her jacket had Medical Examiner written across the back, and her brown hair was twisted into a messy bun at the base of her neck. The identification dangling around her neck had her photo ID and the name Catherine Margolin printed on it beneath the medical examiner’s logo.

  “No chance of getting a more accurate time frame?”

  Catherine shook her head, looking up at him. “Wards in the tunnel are messing with my equipment. Think you can stop the interference?”

  Patrick pulled out a pair of black nitrile gloves from her work case. “No. Anchored protective wards on this scale aren’t something you mess with. Besides, I don’t really have an affinity for defensive magic.”

  “Then you’re stuck waiting until I get back to the morgue for a more precise answer.”

  Magic users made up a quarter of the world’s population, but everyone born with magic had a different affinity. Patrick excelled in offensive spells, and the damage done to his soul as a child meant he was better at recognizing threats from all the hells than most other magic users. That unwanted talent had come in handy throughout his nine years in the Mage Corps under the US Department of the Preternatural, and the past three with the SOA, usually at the expense of his health.

  Crouching down, Patrick frowned at the corpse. “Trains were running during his time of death and all day today. The body would’ve been seen before now. It has to be a dump job.”

  Catherine waved her pen in the general vicinity of the crime scene. “Killed here or somewhere else, no one saw the victim until the train operator spotted the body. You’d be surprised at the things people don’t see.”

  “No, I wouldn’t. You already got your pictures?”

  “Lots. Feel free to poke around. The PCB is starting to bag up evidence. We were waiting on you before we bagged the body.”

  The victim was missing the left arm up to the elbow, and the left leg was barely hanging on at the knee. The right arm lay mangled about a meter away, as if tossed there. The tears weren’t clean, nor did they have the pulverized look to them that would’ve indicated being run over by a train before being laid out on the platform.

  His head looked strangely misshapen until Patrick realized it wasn’t damage, but most likely the body caught in the middle of a shift. He prodded at the stiff, cold lips, managing to get a look at the too-sharp, large teeth in the corpse’s mouth.

  “Werecreature,” Patrick said.

  Catherine nodded, still taking down notes. “Yeah. We’re going to need to bring a hazmat crew down here to clean up the crime scene. Judging by his eye color, he’s not god pack, so we can rule out that strain of the werevirus.”

  “Can’t rule out dealing with the god pack.”

  Patrick wished he could.

  The two strains of the werevirus had segregated the werecreature community into packs that were able to hide their status and god packs who couldn’t. Those infected with the god strain of the werevirus were visual scapegoats for society, and the New York City god pack was hostile to anyone who didn’t share their disease.

  In the past, god packs used to have a connection to their animal-god patrons, but those were a rarity these days. The only god pack alpha Patrick knew of with a patron was a man the Fates had thrown at him without either of their consents.

  Jonothon de Vere was an ex-pat Englishman, exiled from the London god pack and refused acceptance by the New York City god pack when he emigrated three years ago. The attraction between them upon first meeting two months ago had been purely physical. What Patrick felt for Jono now went deeper, though he wasn’t sure if he could trust his own emotions in that area.

  At the end of the fight in June, Patrick had unwittingly bound their souls together through the magic buried in the gods-given dagger he carried. The soulbond enabled Patrick to once again tap ley lines and nexuses by virtue of his newfound ability to channel his magic through Jono’s soul. He’d spent three years since the Thirty-Day War carrying a soul wound that prevented him from accessing such an integral part of his magic. Having that ability back was life altering. That it came at the expense of Jono’s autonomy meant Patrick had yet to do anything with his returned strength.

  The soulbond was illegal, despite the accidental creation of it. Messing with a person’s soul was a capital crime in the United States. Patrick couldn’t ask for help in breaking the soulbond without being arrested, so he and Jono had agreed to keep it a secret, the same way they’d kept their newly formed pack a secret from the New York City god pack.

  It was a good thing Patrick knew how to keep his mouth shut.

  But like any good federal agent, he was adept at speaking for the dead and getting justice for the crimes committed against them.

  The skin around the teenager’s throat was mottled with bruises that lined a strip of burn scars too uniform to be anything but intentional. Werecreatures were severely allergic to silver, and aconite poisoning could be lethal. Patrick traced his gloved fingers over the burn area, measuring the space with his fingers.

  It was just wide enough for the shape of a collar, which spoke of enslavement of some kind.

  “He put up a fight,” Catherine said.

  “Against who is the question,” Patrick said.

  “Werecreatures have enhanced strength. Whatever killed him would’ve had to have been stronger.”

  “A silver bullet to the heart is just as lethal as a fight for dominance. He’s got bruises, and werecreatures can heal those in seconds.”

  “Then he was killed before the bruises could disappear an
d before he could fully shift.” Catherine pointed at the arm lying some distance from them. “His hands have defensive wounds. He didn’t die easy.”

  “Nothing about his state in death suggests that. I’m going to need to know the werevirus strain he was infected with to figure out what pack he came from.”

  “I can type him once we get the body to the morgue and get you that confirmation tonight.”

  “Appreciate it.”

  “If you want to talk to the dead, we can call in the necromancer.”

  “I doubt a judge would sign off on a Resurrection Order for a murdered werecreature.”

  Necromancy was illegal in most countries. Calling back a soul gone to rest in order to raise the dead was anathema in most cultures. There were exceptions. Sometimes the government allowed a necromancer to work with strict government supervision, usually at the federal level or with a Preternatural Crimes Bureau in a major metropolitan area. Getting a Resurrection Order out of the courts was damned difficult most days.

  All they had was a body and no motive. Setting aside society’s inherent biases toward werecreatures, no judge would rubber stamp an order with that little evidence in hand.

  Patrick lifted up some of the stiff jean fabric out of the way to get a better look at the cavity ripped into the left thigh. The femur bone was intact, but the femoral artery had damage to it reminiscent of bite marks. The only creatures Patrick knew of who liked blood as much as flesh were vampires.

  “He had to have bled out somewhere else before getting dumped here,” Patrick said thoughtfully. That was a headache he really didn’t want to deal with.