A Ferry of Bones & Gold (Soulbound Book 1) Read online

  Patrick’s ability to track and kill demons and monsters with ties to the preternatural world was a side effect of that childhood trauma. That little quirk in his magic had made him an asset to the Mage Corps and was the reason he had been assigned to a Special Operations Forces team. His hunting skills meant the Hellraisers’ mission success rate looked good on paper, but it did shit-all for Patrick’s personal health.

  Someone had propped the apartment door open with a potted plant. Patrick stepped inside, moving past the tiny kitchen to the living room and its bloody center of attraction. He was mindful of the numbered evidence tags scattered over the floor, making sure not to knock any over. He stopped near the once pristine white couch, staring down at the victim’s remains.

  Patrick wasn’t looking at a whole body, just pieces of it. The ceiling resembled a bloody Pollack painting, courtesy of the dead man’s eviscerated torso. The rib cage had been pried open like meaty butterfly wings, revealing a half-empty cavity that was missing a heart and three-quarters of the lungs. The soft skin of the abdomen was nothing but shreds, intestines spilling out of the lower part of the large, jagged hole in ropey, pinkish-gray knots.

  Strings of muscle clung to the raggedly broken bones jutting out of what remained of each arm. The victim’s legs were gnawed through at the thigh, the femur bones bitten clean through. Blood saturated the carpet and the nearby couch cushions, as if he’d been dragged off the couch to the floor. Fat bits of flesh were scattered across the floor around the body, but Patrick didn’t see any sign of the missing limbs or organs.

  Patrick would bet his entire next paycheck the guy had been eaten alive.

  Members of the Crime Scene Unit and a representative from the medical examiner’s office were carefully working around the body. The state of the victim made their job slightly more difficult than usual.

  “You told the next of kin they’re getting ashes back and not a body for a viewing, right? Did you burn all the other ones as well?” Patrick asked.

  “They all got cremated. Standard procedure for homicide cases under our purview. We’re not new at this,” Dwayne said, sounding vaguely irritated.

  Patrick knew most police forces didn’t like a federal agency coming in and stepping on their toes. The defensiveness wasn’t unusual. But he needed to play nice if he was going to get anywhere with this case. So he bit back the retort sitting on the tip of his tongue, mindful of Setsuna’s request, and focused on the dead instead of the living.

  “Anyone have a spare set of gloves?” he asked.

  “In the case,” a woman with CSU on the back of her jacket said.

  Patrick followed where she pointed and went to dig up a pair of latex gloves. Pulling them on, he approached the body and crouched down for a closer look at the victim’s face. The report he’d read on his MacBook during the short flight to New York had contained details about the dead that weren’t showing up in the press—yet.

  The waxy skin of the mutilated face was cold to the touch. He pulled down an eyelid to get a better look at what linked this murder to all the others. The astrological sign sliced into delicate skin had been done with such precision that Patrick doubted it was the work of the demon who had ripped the body apart.

  He touched a finger to the sign that represented the immortal god Ares, an uneasy feeling settling in his gut. In his experience, nothing good ever came from magic that called to the gods.

  Patrick couldn’t sense any magic left behind in the body itself. Whatever spell the signs had been a catalyst for, it was nearly gone now. The only trace of it left was the residual of hellish taint.

  “Are the signs the only things connecting the murders?” Patrick asked.

  “The current MO is half-eaten bodies and the signs. There aren’t any links we can find between the victims. There’s no consistency between their economic, religious, racial, or social backgrounds. We’ve only found bodies in Manhattan though,” Dwayne said.

  “Can you be certain they’ve only been found in Manhattan? Are they all locals?”

  “The PCB has jurisdiction in the five boroughs. We’ve looped in our affiliates outside New York City, but we haven’t received any calls from other departments, and we haven’t released critical details to the public,” Casale said.

  “Any sign of forced entry?”

  “None. Door was locked and so were all the windows except the one running the air-conditioning unit, but there’s no sign it was tampered with,” Allison said.

  “Poor guy’s wife is a nurse and came home after an overnight shift at New York-Presbyterian in Lower Manhattan. Found him like this,” Dwayne added. “She had a nervous breakdown, and EMTs removed her from the premises.”

  Patrick settled his weight back on his heels, still studying the body. “Hopefully not far. I’ll need to make sure she’s clean of magical residue before she can be let go. You said you ran off the local SOA agents previously working with you. What was their conclusion?”

  “Nothing helpful,” Casale said with a snort. “One witch suggested looking into hellhounds and maybe getting animal control to help with it.”

  Patrick rolled his eyes. “On a scale of one to bullshit, I call bullshit. Body looks like it got hit by a magical IED, not a rabid dog.”

  “You think that’s what happened? A magical IED?”

  “No. I guarantee the ME report for this victim will be the same as all the others in this case. No forced entry into the home. Body half eaten, and signs carved on their eyes.” Patrick stood up and stripped off his gloves, depositing them in a biohazard bin nearby before heading to where the other three stood. “Killings like this, especially with the signs, means these people were targeted for a specific reason.”

  Casale studied him with an unreadable look in his eyes. “You’re talking assassination.”

  Patrick shrugged. “Assassination, murder—both get you dead.”

  “That’s more than the other SOA agents gave us, Chief,” Allison said quietly.

  Which shouldn’t be the case, but Patrick was familiar with the rot hiding deep within the SOA that Setsuna and her predecessors hadn’t been able to completely carve out.

  Patrick crossed his arms over his chest, the jacket pulling against his shoulders with the motion. “I’ll need to see the full file on this case, not just the encrypted report you emailed my boss. I also need to make sure no one else is leaving with residual black magic in their souls. Who else has been in contact with the body?”

  “We’ll get you names,” Casale said with a grimace. He waved a hand at the crime scene and everything in it. “Give me your take on all of this.”

  “I don’t know what the signs relate to, but the chewing and rending and the magic? At the very least, you have a demon problem.”

  “Mayor will be thrilled,” Dwayne muttered.

  Casale let out a heavy sigh and pointed a finger at the two detectives. “Both of you are in charge until everyone clears out. I’m going downstairs to feed the press. That should give Special Agent Collins enough time to make sure everyone here won’t need to call a priest for last rites. Collins? You’re coming with me after my presser. We’re meeting with my favorite pair of eyes.”

  Dwayne glanced at Casale in surprise. “I thought your meeting with him was next week?”

  “I’m moving it up.”

  Patrick frowned. “Who are we visiting?”

  “Someone who might be able to shed some light on this mess, if we’re lucky.”

  “If you have local help outside the SOA, why haven’t you gone to them before this?”

  Casale gave him a hard smile before turning his back on the group and heading for the door. “The SOA is technically the cheaper option, and the City gets pissed when we go over budget with our overtime. Make sure my people are safe, Collins. Any of them get hurt, the next thing I’m sending your agency is a complaint.”

  Patrick barely refrained from rolling his eyes. Looked like the animosity between state and federal agencies was still
alive and kicking.

  “Right,” Patrick said, eyeing Allison and Dwayne. “Who wants me to check their soul first? I have to warn you, that spell hurts like a son of a bitch.”

  In unison, the two pointed at each other, silently volunteering their partner to go first.

  2

  Patrick spent an hour stripping souls of hellish taint. He knew what to look for, but his magic didn’t make the process easy on the recipient. The NYPD officers were more stoic about the process than the handful of neighboring tenants on the floor.

  What Patrick desperately needed—once he finished—was a cigarette to ease his nerves. He’d spent the drive from LaGuardia into Manhattan avidly hating the No Smoking sticker mocking him on the driver’s-side window. Patrick had carried more than one bad habit home with him from the front lines and hadn’t broken any of them yet. Truth be told, he hadn’t really tried. His VA-assigned therapist despaired of him ever making real progress some days.

  “You’ll need to get names of everyone living in the apartment building and get them cleansed later,” Patrick warned the PCB witch on duty.

  “We’ll handle it,” the officer replied. Etched onto her badge beneath her last name and badge number was a small pentacle, denoting her rank as a witch. What kind, Patrick had no idea, but she had magic, and that was all that mattered.

  With nothing more he could do, Patrick left the crime scene in favor of tailing Casale through the Manhattan streets. They ended up near the Flatiron Building, though their destination wasn’t that iconic structure.

  Patrick parked behind Casale’s unmarked police car in a loading zone outside an office building a few blocks south on Broadway. Its entrance was actually located on E. 21st Street, the building’s powerful protective wards glittering at the very edge of his vision. Patrick got out of his car, curious about a place that would spend a lot of money to set mage-level defensive wards on a public threshold.

  Casale looked over at him as he was about to shut the car door and shook his head. “Leave your jacket behind and hide your badge.”

  Patrick raised an eyebrow at that but did as he was told. He tossed his SOA jacket and sunglasses back in the car before tucking his badge underneath his T-shirt where it couldn’t be seen. He wasn’t leaving his sidearm or dagger behind.

  “Let’s go,” Casale said, already halfway to the building entrance.

  Patrick hurried to catch up. Crossing the warded threshold made his fingertips tingle, but the wards didn’t flare in warning to his presence. Patrick’s personal shields did what they were supposed to do and kept his tainted magic contained.

  He was glad to get out of the midday heat and into the cool, air-conditioned lobby though. Casale flashed his badge at the security guards on duty up front and spoke briefly with them to gain access to the building while Patrick skimmed the directory of companies residing at the address. There weren’t many.

  Casale headed for the elevator bank. When one of the security guards attempted to wave Patrick away from getting buzzed through the scan-card security gates, Casale said, “He’s with me.”

  The few people coming and going into the building were on the younger side, dressed casually like Patrick in jeans and T-shirts. He wasn’t wearing any of their expensive sneakers or designer wingtips, so his black, well-worn combat boots stood out a little more than usual. A security guard directed them to the appropriate elevator, keeping back a few stragglers who looked more curious than irritated about the delay.

  “Twenty-fifth floor,” Patrick said as the elevator doors closed, and it started to rise at a quick pace. “PreterWorld?”

  “We’re in the old heart of Silicon Alley. The company owns the building and rents out a couple of lower levels to other companies,” Casale explained.

  “Why are we here?”

  “Like I said. Meeting my favorite pair of eyes.”

  The elevator came to a stop and the doors opened up on a huge, mostly open-plan work floor. Sunlight streamed through the windows encircling all sides of the building, competing with the lights overhead. Long tables instead of cubicles offered up shared workspaces in conjunction with randomly placed coffee tables and comfortable chairs where people worked diligently on their MacBooks.

  Half the people working had headphones on as they listened to music, a few heads bobbing here and there to a beat no one else could hear. Patrick could see a pool table in one interior room that was clearly a gaming area, along with multiple flat-screen televisions. Despite the hour, a first-person shooting game competition was happening. A snack station full of junk food and healthy food in equal proportions, as well as coffee and beer, was being ransacked for an afternoon pick-me-up by no less than ten people.

  PreterWorld was the largest tech company originally catering to the social media habits of those born with magic or who belonged to the preternatural world and weren’t shy about sharing their identities. The social media platform, which incorporated status updates, photos, and video on a feed, initially had a cultlike following before more and more mundane users began wanting access.

  Patrick wasn’t a fan of social media. His hatred of sharing every last little detail stemmed from living a life of secrets. PreterWorld, and the notoriety and fame one could conceivably gain from it, had never been something he wanted. He had to give the tech CEO credit though. Patrick’s magic recognized most of the employees as magic users or someone who hailed from the preternatural world, which was a much higher percentage than most people ever hired.

  Casale ignored the curious eyes and strode forward. They bypassed a multimedia capable conference room on the way toward the corner office situated behind partially frosted glass walls that screamed CEO.

  Patrick tried to remember anything he could about the company’s owner and founder. Young, as most tech entrepreneurs were, and stupidly rich after the IPO went public. But it was Casale’s mention about eyes that finally triggered Patrick’s memory from a long-ago meeting with Setsuna during one of his shore leaves.

  There were a handful of god-touched people in the world he needed to steer clear of. Setsuna kept him updated on their whereabouts when she could. The general public might not know the CEO of PreterWorld was a seer, but the federal government did, and apparently so did Casale.

  Shit, Patrick thought.

  He kept his expression neutral, despite the desire to run beating at the back of his mind. He was aware of all the eyes on them as they walked the length of the company floor to Marek Taylor’s office. The whispers in the background weren’t as quiet as the gossipers thought they were.

  The tall, strikingly handsome Latino man who opened the office door wasn’t Marek, but someone, or rather, something else. Recognition burned briefly through Patrick’s magic beneath his shields with the specific spark that meant werecreature; he just didn’t know which kind.

  Werecreatures were native to Earth. They weren’t like demons who had to cross over from the many hells in existence or the fae who called the fringes of the veil home in a different plane. Way back in the murky annals of history, werecreatures used to be humans who changed into the sort of predatory animal you’d see in the wild—normal, fuzzy, liked to eat rabbits kind of werecreatures. They were feared and ostracized even worse back then when discovered by society, but those in power had seen an opportunity.

  A Roman mage had been ordered by his emperor to create an army of werewolves. Calling on the power of Lupa, the she-wolf who suckled Romulus and Remus, he tried to subvert what nature had wrought. His attempt at magical control backfired and resulted in the werevirus, one of the first recorded instances of magically created biological warfare introduced into society.

  The werevirus was an incurable disease made up of two substrains that caused those who were infected to change into monstrous beasts. Over time, the magic that still powered the werevirus allowed it to jump species, and the world had more than werewolves on its hands now. Born or bitten, werecreatures didn’t have easy lives.

  Patric
k didn’t know what beast the guy carried beneath his skin, but he knew the stranger had preternaturally enhanced strength and senses. Patrick’s personal shields kept the taint in his soul under control, with a side effect of dampening his power to the point most people could never tell he was a magic user. If they did, they never figured him for a mage. Werecreatures were always hit or miss though. Their sense of smell was just too damned good.

  “Leon,” Casale said in greeting.

  “Casale.”

  Leon carried himself with a confident manner that didn’t promise violence but did promise he’d end any fight someone else started. Patrick’s gaze flicked up and down Leon’s body, automatically checking for weapons and finding none. Not like the man needed one since he was a werecreature.

  Leon was handsome though, dark-haired and dark-eyed. He was the kind of guy Patrick had hoped to pick up in Maui while on vacation, someone who would be able to fuck him into oblivion. Pity his week of debauchery in paradise wasn’t happening.

  Leon’s gaze jumped from Casale to Patrick, brown eyes narrowing. “Who’s he?”

  “He’s new,” Casale said easily enough, coming to a stop in front of the doorway Leon was blocking.

  “What happened to Ramirez and Guthrie?”

  “Not your business. You mind letting us through?”

  Leon looked like he minded very much, but a voice from inside the office spoke up. “Let them in, Leon.”

  Leon scowled and stepped out of the way, allowing the pair to enter the spacious modern office. Marek Taylor—CEO, billionaire, and one of the United States’ few true god-touched seers—was in his late twenties, with stylishly cut brown hair and sharp hazel eyes that watched them with an eerie intensity.

  Patrick didn’t envy Marek’s position. Mages, especially combat mages, had a higher risk of dying on the job than other kinds of magic users based solely on the types of missions and cases they handled. Seers on the other hand, they went blind, their power increasing in strength with every color they lost until the only thing they could see was the future. Most went crazy after their slow slide into darkness and ended up dead, usually by way of suicide.