An Echo in the Sorrow (Soulbound Book 6) Page 3

  He passed his clothes to one of the assistants, nostrils flaring slightly at the brief hint of attraction seeping through a couple of harsher scents. Better than fear, but that wasn’t saying much. Jono knew people were attracted to his body until they saw his eyes. Few people wanted him after that realization.

  Patrick had never been scared of him, and that had been as much an attention-getter as his cocky smirk had been across the bar counter. Their first meeting last year had been an unmitigated disaster in the face of a soultaker attack, but they’d sorted themselves out. These days, Jono couldn’t imagine his life without Patrick in it. Soulbond aside, they were never going to walk away from each other, and helping out with Sage and Marek’s wedding had got him thinking about his own future with Patrick. They were already bound to each other, having promised to never leave, but Jono wouldn’t mind seeing Patrick wearing a wedding band.

  Maybe it could happen someday in an unknown future where Patrick’s soul debt was paid and the war dogging their heels was over.

  Jono’s mouth quirked a bit as he stepped into the trousers an assistant handed him. Should probably look at rings first.

  The thought was an idle one, but nothing would come of it right now. Jono let it fade, focusing instead on being moved about by the designer to check the fit of the suit he finally had on. The charcoal-gray color was paired with a natural green tie and handkerchief tucked into the breast pocket to match the wedding colors. The style was sleek and classic, with little embellishments. The material was luxurious and didn’t itch his skin, the tailoring masterful, and the overall fit pretty much perfect for a wedding.

  Just not a fight.

  The private fitting room was located on the third floor, in a space designed to cater to rich clientele. The stairs leading up to their level had been roped off from the general public on the first floor. Multiple work areas and several private fitting rooms filled the space, and the door to theirs cracked open, the heartbeats behind it calm. Jono didn’t think anything of it until the aconite hit his nose, burning his eyes as he snapped his head around.

  “Get down!” he snarled.

  Jono didn’t wait for people to listen, knowing most people’s reactions were delayed if they didn’t outright panic immediately. He grabbed the two assistants nearest him and yanked them to the ground, lashing out with his leg to knock the designer’s feet out from under him with as gentle a blow as he could. Marek had already dropped to the floor while Leon had body tackled the people closest to him.

  Silver bullets dipped in aconite cut through the air where everyone had been standing. Jono rolled off the dais, already shifting, his brand-new designer suit tearing open at every seam. The flash of agony disappeared as the werevirus turned off pain receptors in his nerves for the shift. That didn’t stop his brain from processing the pressure of bones breaking and skin splitting as Jono shifted from human to wolf in seconds.

  He’d gotten faster in the last year, but he almost wasn’t fast enough. Two Krossed Knight hunters shoved their way into the private fitting room, dressed like upscale shoppers. Except they weren’t carrying money, but weapons, the pistols in their hands aimed unerringly at Jono.

  He didn’t hesitate to attack, charging forward with a snarl that made fear spike in the air around him. The hunters tightened their fingers on the triggers, but Jono was on them both before the silver bullets left the gun chambers. He clamped his jaws on one hunter’s right arm, teeth ripping through skin and shattering bone, swinging the man to the side to knock over his partner.

  The hunter screamed, a sound that was choked off by something else. The taste of sulfur exploded on Jono’s tongue, blood tainted with hints of hell, the same way the hunter’s soul was. The demon the man carried in his soul looked out of human eyes, black veins pulsing in his face.

  “You won’t win,” the demon hissed.

  Jono gutted the hunter from throat to navel with one deep swipe of his left forepaw even as he twisted his head to snap the hunter’s arm off at the elbow. This time the hunter broke through the demon’s control to scream in agony as Jono spat out his arm. Blood poured from the hunter’s ruined elbow even as his guts slipped through the ragged holes in his torso. He fell to his knees, blood trickling out of his mouth as the demon fled the dying body with a thunderous flash of negative light.

  Leon had engaged the second hunter, who had gotten back to his feet with supernatural speed. Leon’s wolf form was smaller than Jono’s but no less lethal in a fight. He’d bitten off the other hunter’s hand holding the gun, but the demon riding the hunter’s soul had pulled a silver-and-aconite-coated knife from his belt.

  Jono leaped on the man before the knife could find its target in Leon’s neck. His weight drove the hunter to the floor with a loud crash. The hunter swung his arm around, looking to sink the knife into Jono’s side, but Jono twisted around out of range. He kept one paw on the hunter’s head, pressing his weight onto the man’s skull in a threatening manner. He wouldn’t mind killing the bloke, but Jono had listened to Patrick whinge about leaving someone alive to question plenty of times.

  Another flash of negative light meant the demon riding that hunter’s soul chose to flee rather than attempt to fight. The smell of sulfur dissipated, fear and pain replacing it in Jono’s senses. He eased up on the pressure on the hunter’s skull, listening to him breathe wetly. The stump of his arm dragged through the spreading pool of blood beneath the bitten-off wrist. They’d need to tie the limb off so he didn’t bleed out.

  Jono tilted his head to the side, dialing up his hearing. He didn’t hear any calm heartbeats, only the frantic ones of people on lower and higher levels of the building panicking from the sound of gunshots. He didn’t take his eyes off the entrance to the private dressing room, the door riddled with bullet holes. The air smelled like blood and aconite, but not sulfur. The two hunters appeared to be the only threat.

  Leon knelt in front of Jono, back in human form, skin streaked with blood that thankfully wasn’t his. “I’ll deal with him. Shift back. The cops have been called. We don’t want them to shoot you on sight.”

  Jono moved off the hunter, and Leon took his place, keeping the man on the ground. Without a demon riding his soul, he was swearing and crying from the pain of losing a hand, shock most likely settling in.

  Jono shifted back to human, body twisting and breaking from four legs back to two. He shook his head to clear it, vision settling into normal human parameters. He crouched there for a moment between the two hunters, one dead and the other bleeding out, and tried to choke back the fury.

  “They tracked us,” Jono said.

  Leon nodded grimly. “Yeah. I need a belt if you want this one to live.”

  “Rather he didn’t.”

  “You know what your other half would say about that.” Leon paused. “Well. You know what he’d say if he wasn’t advocating murder.”

  “Fine. I’ll get you a bloody belt.” Jono craned his head around. “Marek? Are you all right?”

  The seer had knocked over the chaise lounge he’d been sitting on and had dragged two people behind it with him. He raised his head over the top, hazel eyes wide. “We’re fine. Are there any more hunters?”

  Jono got to his feet. “Not that I can hear or smell.”

  “Doesn’t mean more might not come.” Marek stood, gaze raking up and down Jono’s naked, bloody body. He made a face. “You ruined your wedding suit. Sage is going to be so mad.”

  “She’s going to be bloody pissed about the hunters.”

  “Well, yeah, that too, but you aren’t the one responsible for organizing a wedding.”

  “You have a wedding planner for that.”

  “And who do you think oversees the wedding planner?”

  Considering Sage ran herd over the pack the same way she ran her cases at Gentry & Thyme, Jono wasn’t surprised.

  “I need a belt,” Jono repeated.

  Marek immediately undid his and handed it over. “You need some clothes, to
o. Both of you do.”

  “I can…find you some,” Terry said hesitantly, looking a little glassy-eyed as he stared around his destroyed and bloodied fitting room.

  His assistants were all huddled on the floor crying, none of them moving. Jono tossed the belt to Leon, who used it to create a tourniquet around the hunter’s arm to stop the bleeding. He screamed when Leon tightened it down, and Leon growled a warning that sounded more wolf than human to Jono’s ears.

  The cops arrived a few minutes later. In that time before their arrival, Terry managed to locate a pair of trousers and shirts for both Jono and Leon from one of the adjacent workrooms. He’d even come up with a pair of shoes for each of them before he finally took a seat with his back to the room and started to shake.

  Jono couldn’t help him, not when faced with police entering the fitting room. He’d ordered Leon off the hunter and to stand with Marek behind him. Jono kept his hands loose to his sides as the police came in, weapons drawn, stepping around the dead hunter and the savaged one.

  “Hands where I can see them,” the first cop into the room barked out, his gun never moving from Jono’s chest.

  “They attacked us,” Marek said loudly before Jono could speak up. “I’m allocated personal protection by the United States government. My friends performed that function in lieu of a security detail.”

  The moments following the police officers’ arrival were tense and loud as the officers cleared the floor and called for an ambulance for the wounded hunter. Marek’s statement of federal protection was ignored by the police, and Jono allowed himself to be separated from the group and ordered up against the other wall. It wasn’t anything he hadn’t dealt with before, but the anger and embarrassment churning in his stomach was difficult to ignore.

  His eyes, along with the firsthand account from Terry and his assistants, eventually required the officers on the scene to radio the PCB and request their presence. The crime was preternatural in nature, and the NYPD as a whole was aware of the hunter problem in the city. Any crime that dealt with magic or the preternatural community was run through the PCB.

  Jono was glad for the change in officers because it meant people stopped pointing guns at him.

  The pair of detectives out of the PCB who arrived first managed to diffuse the tension in the fitting room between the other officers and everyone else. It wasn’t the first time Jono had dealt with the police after a hunter attack, but the dead body probably wasn’t helpful.

  “I’m told it was self-defense,” the older detective from the PCB said. His badge listed his last name as Sanderson.

  “My mates and I were here for our wedding suit fittings when the hunters attacked us. What was I supposed to do? Let the bloody arseholes shoot us?” Jono asked, not bothering to keep the anger out of his voice.

  “I wasn’t suggesting that. It’s clear they were the aggressors in this incident. It’s the why we’re after.”

  Jono glanced over at the body that was still on the ground. The hunter’s partner had already been taken off to a hospital with an officer in tow since he was under arrest. The body had yet to be removed because the ones to process the scene had arrived with the officers out of the PCB and weren’t done gathering evidence. He wished Patrick had come with them.

  “I’m the alpha of the New York City god pack. There’s your reason,” Jono said.

  “My understanding is there are two god packs.”

  “Mine is the only one that matters. Why do you think they keep trying to murder me?”

  “Is that what you think this was about?”

  Jono resisted the urge to roll his eyes. “Why else go where they weren’t supposed to be, armed to the bloody teeth, and open fire on innocent people?”

  “I don’t need your attitude when I’m trying to get all the facts.”

  Jono’s mobile started to ring from somewhere on the floor. He’d had it out on the side table before things all went to shit and was glad to discover it hadn’t been damaged. “That’s my mobile. Mind if I retrieve it?”

  “I still have questions for you.”

  Jono’s mobile didn’t stop ringing. Leon’s started up, then Marek’s. His shoulders tightened at the sound. The only reason people would be ringing them all at once would be because something was wrong.

  Marek was the one who finally got permission to answer his mobile, his status as a seer getting him cleared far faster than Jono or Leon. Jono dialed up his hearing in order to listen in on the conversation.

  “Sage, listen. We’re all right, but we were attacked by hunters, and we’re dealing with the police right now,” Marek said.

  “What?” Sage snapped loud enough Jono was sure the officer standing near Marek heard her.

  “We’re fine, I promise. We’re—”

  “I’ve received word five of the packs under our protection were attacked by hunters and other god pack members within the last thirty minutes. Several people are dead.”

  Marek froze, and he snapped his head around, gaze finding Jono’s unerringly. “Shit.”

  “Hey, are you listening?” Sanderson asked, breaking through Jono’s concentration.

  “Am I free to leave?” Jono asked, ignoring the question when the answer was obvious.

  “I still have some questions.”

  “Then can you hurry it up? There’s pack business I need to handle.”

  Sanderson tapped his pen against his little notebook. “I’ll take as long as I need to.”

  Jono ground his teeth and took a deep breath, knowing this was something he couldn’t walk away from. It rankled though, that the people he’d sworn to protect were hurting or dead, and he was stuck in a fashion store repeating his story for the third bloody time already.

  He knew better than to piss off the police though. All Jono could do was follow their orders and hope he didn’t get arrested for defending himself. The laws surrounding the preternatural community differed slightly when it came to situations like hunters, but Jono wasn’t a United States citizen. Getting charged with a federal crime would be a one-way ticket to deportation after serving whatever sentence was handed down.

  Jono wondered, as he went through the rigmarole of answering the officer’s questions, if that maybe wasn’t what Estelle and Youssef were ultimately after. It’d be easy for them to take back New York City if he was forced out of America.

  Years ago, Marek had promised him a future with a pack he’d never have found in England. These days, fate wasn’t set in stone, and Jono couldn’t be sure the future Marek had seen wasn’t changing.

  3

  Patrick banged his way into Tempest sometime after 1800, phone clutched in one hand as it had been for most of the day ever since getting the call about the attacks. He hadn’t been able to leave because he’d been working out of the SOA field office. The optics would look awful if the government discovered he’d turned his back on a case for personal reasons, despite those personal reasons making the news. Recusal couldn’t happen because the government didn’t know he was pack.

  Needing to hide his ties to the preternatural community was becoming more and more of a significant problem.

  The bar was way more crowded than it usually was on a Tuesday evening, but everyone got out of his way as soon as they realized he’d arrived. Patrick made a beeline for the stairs in the rear that led to the sublevel of the bar. He shoved his phone into his back pocket on the way down, not bothering with a silence ward. The bar was closed tonight to anyone who wasn’t pack. Everyone drinking upstairs had come with their alphas.

  The sublevel was opened up depending on the night and the crowd, or if there was a private event going on. Tonight, it was as packed as the main bar upstairs, with every alpha of the packs under their protection present for the meeting Jono had called. Tempest was technically neutral ground, but it was also the only public place big enough to hold the people who’d been summoned since he and Jono didn’t have access to the legacy territory and buildings currently held by the ot
her god pack.

  Like upstairs, people shifted aside so Patrick had a clear way to the table someone had pulled away from the wall to the center of the floor. Without the crowd in the way, Patrick spotted Jono immediately. He didn’t care about their audience when he finally made it to Jono’s side, framing the other man’s face with both hands. Patrick kissed him with a bruising intensity that didn’t do anything to ease the knot of fear in his chest.

  “I’m all right, love,” Jono said when Patrick broke the kiss. Patrick was glad to see he looked it, but the tightness around his mouth spoke of choked-down fury.

  “Not everyone else is,” Patrick said, taking the empty seat to Jono’s right. “Fuck. This was a coordinated attack.”

  “Aimed at the strongest packs under our protection. Two people are dead. One pack member each from the Monterossi pack and the Davenport pack,” Sage said.

  Her chair was between Marek and Emma, and Marek had his arm around her waist. Wade sat on the other side of Emma, even though technically he was too young to be allowed in the bar. With everything that had happened today, Patrick was fine with breaking the law to ensure Wade was safe. No one in their pack could afford to be alone right now.

  Patrick grimaced, reaching for Jono’s hand underneath the table. Jono’s grip was warm and firm, his thumb dragging over the back of Patrick’s hand. The press of his knee against Patrick’s was a solid reminder that he was alive.

  He’d been caught up at work with the missing artifact case when his phone had blown up from calls and texts from the alphas whose packs had been targeted. Then he’d gotten the update from Sage about the attack on Jono, and Patrick had very nearly put his fist through the wall of his office. Being unable to leave to check on Jono had been a special kind of hell.

  As co-leader of their pack, Patrick should’ve been there to help handle the aftermath of the attacks. His job as a federal agent tied his hands in ways that were becoming glaringly apparent as Estelle and Youssef stepped up their attacks on disputed pack territory.