An Echo in the Sorrow (Soulbound Book 6) Read online

  An Echo In The Sorrow

  Soulbound 6

  Hailey Turner

  ©2021 Hailey Turner

  All Rights Reserved

  Cover design by AngstyG LLC.

  Professional Beta Reading by Leslie Copeland: [email protected]

  Edited by One Love Editing

  Proofing by Lori Parks: [email protected]

  Proofing by Jenni Lea at LesCourt Author Services

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  Welcome to the Worlds of Hailey Turner

  Urban Fantasy

  Soulbound

  Science Fiction Romance

  Metahuman Files

  To Aimee Nicole Walker

  Thanks for loving the boys as much as I do,

  and for being a wonderful friend.

  Contents

  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

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  GLOSSARY

  Author’s Notes

  Connect with Hailey

  Other Works By Hailey Turner

  1

  Special Agent Patrick Collins crouched down and glared at the offending bag of chips hanging by a corner from the vending machine’s metal shelf. He smacked his fist against the glass, only half listening to what Sage Beacot, his god pack’s dire, had to say on the phone. The chips didn’t move.

  “You have the time off at the end of the month, right?” Sage asked.

  “For what?” Patrick asked as he hit the glass again, trying to shake the chips loose.

  “My wedding.”

  “Oh, yeah. I have that day off. I put in my request back in spring.”

  Sage and her fiancé, Marek Taylor, were due to get married at the end of August. The preparations for the event had steadily increased, and Patrick had done his level best to escape them whenever possible. Sage wasn’t a bridezilla by any stretch of the imagination, but she was meticulous when it came to details and expected everyone around her to be the same when it came to wedding decisions—whether making them or obeying them.

  “What do you keep hitting?”

  Patrick gripped the top edge of the vending machine and tried to shake it with one hand, which didn’t really work. “Break room vending machine ate my money and won’t give me my chips.”

  Sage laughed in his ear. “You sound like Wade.”

  “Unlike Wade, I’m not going to vandalize the damn thing.”

  “Are you sure about that?”

  Wade Espinoza was a nineteen-year-old fledgling fire dragon they’d rescued a year ago from vampires and brought into their god pack. Keeping him fed definitely put a dent in their pack tithes. He was known to buy out the snack aisle in Target on the regular when he wasn’t hoarding the latest shiny object to catch his eye.

  Patrick hit the vending machine one more time, and the bag of chips finally fell into the catch tray. “Ha! Got it.”

  “I’ll leave you to your lunch. Don’t forget you have a suit fitting tomorrow.”

  He retrieved his bag of chips. “I should be able to make that.”

  Someone cleared their throat behind him. “Collins?”

  Patrick straightened up and looked over his shoulder. The executive assistant to Henry Ng, the Supernatural Operations Agency’s Special Agent in Charge for New York, stood in the entrance to the break room on his work floor. Tiana Martin raised an eyebrow at him, and Patrick sighed. The fact that she’d come down to locate him rather than wait for him to get back to his office and return a voicemail or email didn’t bode well for the rest of his afternoon.

  “Uh, I may have to postpone that fitting,” Patrick said.

  Sage sighed. “We’ll work around you. But you will go to a fitting. I’ll talk to you later.”

  She ended the call, and Patrick shoved his phone into his back pocket. “What does the SAIC need?”

  “You,” Tiana said.

  Patrick looked down at his chips, knowing he wouldn’t get to eat them anytime soon. “Lead the way.”

  He followed her out of the break room and to the bank of elevators, taking the first one to arrive up to the thirtieth floor. Henry’s corner office was guarded by Tiana’s desk. Patrick discreetly left his bag of chips on her desk, intent on retrieving them afterward. He waited while she knocked on Henry’s door, then poked her head inside for a quick check-in with him.

  “I found Special Agent Collins,” Tiana said.

  “Let him in,” Henry replied.

  Patrick slipped past Tiana, who closed the door behind him with a quiet click. He crossed the office to stand in front of Henry’s wide wooden desk. The furniture was still the same as when Henry had taken over the office and SAIC position last summer, but there were a couple of new commendations hanging on the wall.

  “You wanted to see me, sir?” Patrick asked.

  Henry was a warlock in his late thirties who had an affinity for elemental magic. Pulled out of the San Francisco field office last year to head up the New York City one, he’d eased into the role well enough. Henry was stern but fair, and his loyalty was to the SOA, not the Dominion Sect like his predecessor. What’s more, he generally had no problem with how Patrick ran his cases, a position which had earned Henry SOA Director Setsuna Abuku’s backing in other areas of his job as SAIC.

  Henry gestured at the pair of leather chairs in front of his desk. “Take a seat.”

  Patrick sat, the cross-guards of his gods-given dagger pressing into the soft cushion. He wasn’t wearing a suit, despite being desk-bound since returning from Paris in early July. Henry had yet to remark on his break from business casual.

  The reason Patrick’s caseload had lightened considerably was due to the focus of the media into his actions in London and Paris. He and his pack had followed intelligence leads to London, where the Morrígan’s staff had been up for sale at the Auction of Curiosities and Exceptional Items. Lucien had been the one to go undercover at the request of the federal government and help retrieve the staff. In exchange, the master vampire had received a century of what basically constituted diplomatic immunity while within the United States.

  The trouble Lucien could cause in one hundred years made Patrick want to drink, but ultimately, it wasn’t his problem. He wasn’t the one who had signed off on the agreement, and he’d most likely be dead by the time Lucien’s future actions—whatever they might be—required intervention.

  But Lucien had gotten them into the auction, even if the master vampire hadn’t retrieved the Morrígan’s staff. It had subsequently been stolen in a fight where most of the auction attendees had ended up dead and then become the walking dead due to necromancy.

  Ilya Nazarov, a necromancer who was the Patriarch of Souls for the Orthodox Church of the Dead, had run off with it. Patrick and the others had followed Ilya to Paris, where the n
ecromancer had forsaken his position in the end, sacrificing the god he’d worshipped to the Morrígan’s staff’s hunger in order to raise millions of Parisian dead. Patrick still wasn’t sure if Peklabog’s godhead had managed to escape the sacrifice, even if his body had not, or if his worshippers would be enough to undo what Ilya had wrought.

  Again, not his problem.

  Ilya had ultimately emptied the Paris Catacombs and sent the walking dead to attack the City of Lights. Fighting zombies on summer solstice had been a nightmare, and only the blessing of a goddess of fate enabled them to stop Ilya.

  They’d won the fight but not the war, coming away with a broken-off piece of the Morrígan’s staff while Ilya got away with the rest of it and half an army of the undead. Ilya and his zombies had disappeared through the veil, carried away by the weapon’s magic to some allied hell most likely. His loyalty no longer resided with the god the Orthodox Church of the Dead had worshipped, but with the Dominion Sect and Patrick’s father, Ethan Greene.

  It was an alliance no government was happy about.

  Patrick clenched his left hand into a fist, remembering how Srecha’s blessing had burned him, though it didn’t compare to the way the Morrígan’s staff had hungered for his soul. Her blessing had turned into a prayer, one the Morrígan’s staff had answered with the resurrection of the mother of all vampires.

  The carved raven Patrick had broken off from it was currently hidden away in his nightstand drawer, along with the last Greek coin from the ones Hermes had given him last summer as payment for the dead. It wasn’t the best hiding spot by far, but both artifacts remained quiescent.

  Patrick hadn’t told anyone at the SOA the Morrígan’s staff was broken, nor that he’d kept a piece of it. Even with Setsuna in a position of power, Patrick didn’t trust the government to do right by what was, in all honesty, a weapon of mass destruction. He’d reported that breaking up Ilya’s spellcasting and magical support had been enough to put a stop to the zombie invasion.

  Putting into his report that he’d had help from the gods wouldn’t have been believed by the people handling the fallout. Gods might walk the earth, but their worshippers weren’t the ones in power these days. Patrick’s case report had been as detailed as he could afford it to be, but there were obvious gaps people were still arguing over in three countries.

  Setsuna had done her best to keep Patrick out of the political line of fire. On her orders, Henry had restricted Patrick to mostly desk duty since his return to the States last month. Desk duty was abhorrently boring, and Patrick was itching for work outside the walls of his office.

  “I know Setsuna wants you to remain within New York City and keep a low profile, but Casale asked for you specifically on the phone call I just got off of,” Henry said.

  Giovanni Casale, Chief of the NYPD Preternatural Crimes Bureau, was someone Patrick had worked closely with on several cases in the past. As far as relationships with local police went, he hadn’t yet burned that bridge.

  Patrick tried not to look eager about finally getting to leave the office. “What did he want?”

  “He’s currently at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Apparently there was a break-in over the weekend, but the museum director didn’t see fit to call the police until today.”

  “Why is Casale’s department involved if it’s a case about stolen art?”

  “Because the item in question was an artifact.”

  Patrick bit the inside of his cheek and swallowed a groan. He could’ve done without another missing magical item to track down. The Morrígan’s staff was enough of a headache.

  “What kind?”

  Henry shrugged. “Casale described it as part of a traveling exhibition but wouldn’t say more than that. If it didn’t have any magical properties, the case would’ve gone to the FBI. Since it is of a magical nature, he’s requesting some federal help. You, specifically. I told him you’d be there in thirty minutes. Someone will be waiting for you at the museum’s main entrance.”

  Patrick tried not to wince. Despite the low profile he’d been forced to take due to the zombie invasion in Paris, he hadn’t been able to stay out of Casale’s way when it came to pack politics.

  While in London, they’d confirmed demons were working with hunters to take over god packs and break their power. Without stable god packs to fight for the rights of werecreatures, the packs who looked to them for guidance would lose protection, opening them up to discrimination and quite possibly outright murder.

  Hunters allied with werecreatures was anathema, but werecreatures sharing their souls with demons was worse. It was a problem that had been growing in New York City since February when Estelle Walker and Youssef Khan, alphas of the rival god pack, had contracted with the Krossed Knights. Patrick had been in Chicago when the bounty on Jonothon de Vere was activated. Since then, they’d been fighting guerilla-style battles in all five boroughs as the civil war in the werecreature community spilled out of the shadows. The PCB wasn’t thrilled with any of that.

  Alliances with the fae and the Night Courts helped guard their territory borders, but Patrick knew they couldn’t rely on that support forever. Their god pack held half the city now, territory twisted like gerrymandered districts through Estelle and Youssef’s. Casale had warned Patrick last month rumors were reaching the police about his personal involvement.

  He doubted those rumors had died down.

  They’d played off Jono’s involvement in Europe as being one of Patrick’s criminal informants. The story was thin, but they were sticking to it. They all knew that wouldn’t be believed forever, especially if some enterprising reporter dug up their lease information.

  “I’ll leave now,” Patrick said, realizing he wouldn’t get a lunch.

  Henry pinned Patrick with a look. “If the case takes you out of the five boroughs, it will be reassigned.”

  Patrick bristled at that order. “It’s my case.”

  “And the director was clear on your current limitations.”

  Patrick had half a mind to call Setsuna and tell her to lift the restrictions, but he had a feeling she’d ignore his call. “Fine.”

  “Keep me updated. That’s an order, Collins.”

  Patrick nodded, knowing better than to antagonize someone who was in his corner. Henry had let him run his cases how he saw fit and backed him in moments other SAICs might not have. His predecessor definitely wouldn’t have. Henry’s loyalty was to the agency, but it helped that he believed in Setsuna’s quiet eradication of Dominion Sect supporters and sympathizers within the SOA.

  Patrick left the office and grabbed his chips off Tiana’s desk. He ate them quickly on the elevator ride down to the lobby, bypassing the floor his office was on completely. He left the SOA’s New York City field office with his dagger strapped to his right thigh, tactical pistol holstered to his right hip, and badge tucked away in his back pocket. The second he stepped beyond the warded walls and air-conditioned interior of the federal building, he was met by a wave of humid heat that had him sweating before he even finished crossing the street.

  Summer in New York City was as bad as the ones he’d lived through growing up in Washington, DC. They were both swamp-like in their own way, and no amount of cold charms in his clothing could fix that. It’s why his leather jacket had a permanent spot in the closet now until the weather cooled down.

  His Mustang was parked in the adjacent warded garage, in need of something more than a detail job from getting clawed by a werecreature over the driver’s-side door the other week. Patrick hadn’t had the time to get it seen to between work and pack problems.

  Getting behind the steering wheel, Patrick started the engine and then turned the air-conditioning on full blast. Sighing in relief at the coolness blasting him in the face, he pulled out and drove toward the exit, mentally mapping out his route. The Metropolitan Museum of Art was located at the edge of Central Park. Heading Uptown on Madison Avenue was going to take some time. Tourists were out in force, and Monday
traffic was always the worst in his opinion.

  Being the height of summer, one would think Central Park would be a riot of greenery. Driving past it on his way to the museum, Patrick noticed the trees didn’t seem as thick as they should for the season, and the flashes of lawn and bushes he caught glimpses of looked thin and brown. It looked as if autumn was coming early despite the hot weather.

  Sage and Marek had a view of Central Park from their home, and she’d commented on the change the other day, noticing it happening in other parks across the city as well when she went to meet with some of the packs under their protection. Nothing out of the ordinary on the magic front had come through the SOA regarding the flora change though. Local opinion seemed to think it might have been leftover damage from last summer, but Patrick wasn’t so sure. Central Park had looked fine in spring, and the wilting of the plants was more recent.

  The issue wasn’t one he could focus on right now though, not when he had a missing artifact to deal with. Patrick put it out of his mind and kept driving. The museum had its own parking garage, which was full, but a security spot was open on the ground floor when he finally arrived. Patrick claimed it, knowing the government plates on the Mustang would keep it from being towed.

  He scanned Fifth Avenue while he waited to cross, nothing out of the ordinary pricking his attention or magic. Patrick’s damaged soul and magic meant he could more easily track demons and monsters than other agents, but his magic made everyone who could sense it uncomfortable. The anchors for his personal shields had been set into his bones by Persephone, and they helped to hide what he was, letting him pass as a mundane human.