On The Wings Of War: Soulbound V Read online

  On The Wings Of War

  Soulbound V

  Hailey Turner

  © 2020 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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  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

  GLOSSARY

  Author’s Notes

  Connect with Hailey

  Other Works By Hailey Turner

  To Leslie Copeland

  Because I literally could not do any of this without you.

  Thank you for being such a supportive and wonderful friend.

  1

  Special Agent Patrick Collins wasn’t fond of Washington, DC. He had a feeling the people he’d been dealing with for the past three days weren’t fond of him either. Patrick hadn’t missed the heat, humidity, fake smiles, or the political maneuverings. There was a reason he’d been part of the Rapid Response Division of the Supernatural Operations Agency before being transferred to New York City for a permanent posting—it got him out of this goddamn city.

  Patrick was a special agent and not a politician for a reason.

  “I hate ties,” Patrick said, tugging at the one wrapped around his neck. “I hate suits. Why couldn’t I have done all of these meetings remotely?”

  “Because you’ve done enough property damage earlier this year that it’s best to remind people you aren’t the enemy,” SOA Director Setsuna Abuku replied without looking at him as they continued down a corridor in the Pentagon. The military aide escorting them was doing a fine job of pretending not to hear a word they said.

  “Chicago was not my fault.”

  Setsuna finally deigned to look at him, arching one eyebrow. “The people of Chicago beg to differ.”

  “It was months ago. They should be over it by now.”

  Setsuna twisted her wrist so her cane smacked him in the shin, never breaking stride. “You know a city doesn’t easily recover from an attack like that.”

  Patrick scowled, knowing she was right. Niflheim had nearly burst through the veil after Yggdrasil had taken root in Grant Park, drawn by Odin’s near sacrifice and Hel’s sinister power. The mess that had happened in Chicago hadn’t been easy to clean up and contain politically. Spring had seen a host of congressional hearings arguing over the threat the Dominion Sect was to the country. The political talking heads in the media had kept the story alive, much to Patrick’s annoyance.

  As the head of a federal government agency, Setsuna had her finger on the pulse of politics targeting magic users and the preternatural communities across the country. She’d also spent considerable time and clout keeping Patrick in a job and out of the media spotlight over the past four years. Spring had seen her cashing in favors left and right to keep him from testifying in public, but he couldn’t get out of closed-door hearings. Patrick would probably be more grateful if it was anyone else looking out for him.

  They had a history and they had their differences, two things which ensured Patrick would never completely trust her. The gods had tasked Setsuna with keeping him hidden since he was eight years old. That entailed an identity change, ten years spent at an Academy, and nearly a decade honing his skills as a combat mage with the Mage Corps after graduating from the Citadel. She’d shepherded him down the only road he was allowed to walk with all the gentleness of a drill sergeant under orders.

  Setsuna had never been a mother figure to him; neither had she been a friend. She’d done her best, in her own way, to help keep him alive during the years she cleaned house in the SOA. Maybe someday Patrick would be grateful about that, but he carried a soul debt that dictated his life, and he would always feel, in some small way, that Setsuna was complicit in it.

  At the moment, Setsuna was still cleaning house. Last summer’s betrayal by Rachel Andrita had proven that Setsuna’s efforts to remove the Dominion Sect’s hidden influence from the SOA hadn’t been enough. That failure was why this meeting with those in charge of the joint task force concerning the Morrígan’s staff was happening at the Pentagon, after hours, and not written down on anyone’s itinerary.

  Patrick’s reason for returning to Washington, DC, was to meet with Setsuna and separately brief a select group of senators sitting on the Committee for Magical Enforcement, as well as the Joint Chiefs of Staff for the president. SOA Deputy Director Priya Kohli had joined him in those meetings, helping to bring everyone up to speed on the threat the Dominion Sect posed to the United States.

  Ethan Greene had been on everyone’s radar since it came to light he was the mastermind behind the Thirty-Day War. What most people didn’t know—or didn’t want to believe—was his true goal. Turning himself into a god was a lifelong mission of Ethan’s that had come with setbacks and successes over the years. He was getting closer to a reality none of them would survive if they didn’t stop him.

  Despite magic being accessible to roughly a quarter of the world’s population, humanity living beside the preternatural community, and dealing with monsters and demons, believing in gods was a step too far for most people. Myths still existed as stories people read about. Those who worshipped the gods that had come before the ones currently staking claim to humanity’s cumulative hearts and souls weren’t nearly as numerous as they once were.

  Religion, in all its varied forms, created blinders that many were happy to never remove. Politics aided that tunnel vision. Sometimes the ignorance of men was useful. Sometimes it was a fucking headache.

  Patrick’s ties to Ethan were buried deep in sealed court records and a past that was as much a nightmare as it was his reality. Stopping his father meant fulfilling his soul debt to Persephone, but the cost of doing so left Patrick waking up from nightmares more and more these days.

  The military aide escorting them through the Pentagon veered left, stopping in front of a door with wards etched in the center of it. He touched a finger to the middle of the concentric circles, waited for the flash of magic to subside, then pushed open the door.

  “The SOA director, sir,” the aide said before waving them inside.

  The layers of silence wards were a weight that pressed against Patrick’s shields as they entered the heavily protected conference room. The static of white noise buzzed in his ears for a few seconds before it faded to a background hum to his senses. The aide closed the door behind them, leaving them within the SCIF conference room.

  “Gentlemen,” Setsuna said, giving a perfunctory nod to the two people seated at the long table.

  “Director,” General Noah Reed rumbled. “Collins.”

  The three-
star Army general looked to be in his midfifties, though he was far, far older than that. A dragon hiding in human form who oversaw the US Department of the Preternatural, Reed had been the drive behind the formation of the joint task force. He was short and barrel-chested in appearance, salt-and-pepper hair cut to regulation length, and had a chain-smoking habit he used as a cover. Reed had no need for cigarettes and cigars when fire burned inside him. Patrick got a whiff of smoke coming off Reed as he pulled out a chair, the smell of sulfur impossible to miss in the small room.

  Preternatural Intelligence Agency Director Cornell Franklin was in his late forties, a tall African American man with close-cropped hair going white at the temples. A sorcerer who had come up in the PIA ranks over the years, Franklin had a no-nonsense demeanor that rivaled Setsuna’s. It was a trait that should’ve united them, but as with all federal agencies these days, they were rivals first and allies second when it came to intelligence. The SOA’s track record with Dominion Sect interference meant every other agency treated them with inherent suspicion and high walls.

  That wariness left the country vulnerable in a way no one liked. What had happened within the last year in New York City and Chicago was proof the status quo in the intelligence community could not continue. The Dominion Sect, and Ethan Greene’s desire for godhood, couldn’t be fought piecemeal anymore.

  The four of them were the only ones attending this meeting. Those others who’d been read into the mission were scattered around the country and the world, unable to join in, or barred from attending if they worked out of the national headquarters in the tristate area. Since Patrick was directly tied to this whole mess, Setsuna and Reed had wanted him present for the meeting. Franklin hadn’t fought his inclusion, but Patrick knew he wasn’t the other director’s favorite person, not after the tough spot he’d put PIA Special Agent Nadine Mulroney in a year ago.

  They’d declined an aide for record-keeping purposes because enough leaks had happened over the years that they couldn’t risk another one. Patrick figured it was for deniability purposes as well. The leaks issue was also the reason none of the others assigned to the joint task force had called in or scryed in—magical and electronic hacks were still a problem, and they couldn’t afford for this plan to get out.

  It’s why Setsuna kept cycling through burner numbers, and why Patrick’s own cell phone went through encrypted security checks every month. Precautions were expensive but necessary.

  Setsuna settled into her chosen seat, leaning her intricately carved rosewood cane that doubled as an artifact against the chair beside her. “It appears we are running out of time.”

  Reed leaned back in his chair and scratched at the edge of his jaw. “Indeed.”

  “We need to make a decision tonight on who best to sign over the invitation to. If we wait any longer, we’ll lose our window of opportunity.”

  Patrick chewed on his bottom lip, thinking about the invitation he’d left Chicago with back in February. It was technically evidence in a criminal case concerning the Westberg family, but also a vital clue to finding the Morrígan’s staff. The spelled invitation was their access to a black market auction the joint task force had finally managed to pinpoint a tentative location for. The break found through signals intelligence indicated it would go down in London within the month.

  Patrick was trying very hard not to think about traveling to his partner’s birthplace. When Jonothon de Vere had left London because of what Marek Taylor had promised him, the god pack there had exiled him. The pack politics involved in going back was enough to give Patrick an ulcer.

  Being separated by half a country back in February hadn’t been easy on the soulbond tying them together. Patrick didn’t want to know what going across the Atlantic Ocean would do to them if he had to go alone, but it was becoming glaringly obvious they would find out soon.

  “We need someone with criminal bona fides who won’t be questioned in the black market community,” Franklin said. “Forgive me, but your agent isn’t going to work.”

  “Neither will yours,” Setsuna replied.

  “I have a deep-cover agent who has the background needed to get this job done.”

  Patrick tried not to wince at the icy way both of them discarded him and Nadine as possibilities. “Special Agent Mulroney and I may not be able to go undercover, but we should still be on the field for this.”

  Franklin ignored him and turned to look at Reed. “General?”

  Reed’s brown-eyed gaze moved from Franklin to Patrick, impossible to read. Patrick instinctively sat up a little straighter. Four years out of the Mage Corps meant he might have lost the urge to salute, but he’d probably never give up the urge to stand at attention before his former commanding officer.

  “Collins is correct in that we need him on the field. He fought Ethan Greene at the end of the Thirty-Day War and knows how to counter that mage better than anyone in your agency, director,” Reed said to Franklin.

  Franklin raised a single finger, not looking at their side of the table. “He seems to be in the midst of every problem we’ve had with the Dominion Sect and Ethan Greene lately.”

  The unspoken accusation made Patrick clench his hands into fists beneath the table, but he kept his face expressionless. He knew the rumors that dogged him these days in the SOA about his track record with the Dominion Sect. They were starting to outpace the ones that followed him due to his ability to hunt demons and monsters because of a damaged soul.

  He’d been at ground zero for the past two attacks against the veil on domestic soil. That was a fact Patrick couldn’t escape, not when it was written down in the case files he’d handled. It wasn’t a surprise some people looked upon those incidents with suspicion. He ran his cases by the book when he could, but he couldn’t say no to the gods when they came around. What the gods wanted didn’t always mesh with his job.

  “I have the utmost faith in Collins,” Reed said, pulling a pack of cigarettes out of the inner pocket of his jacket. He tapped out a cigarette and a lighter that had been stuffed inside.

  Franklin’s disapproval was writ clear across his face. “The Pentagon has a no-smoking policy, General.”

  “I know.” Reed lit his cigarette before offering Patrick the pack. “Cigarette?”

  Patrick eyed the pack for a moment before he shook his head. “I quit last year.”

  Reed arched an eyebrow before chuckling, a curl of smoke escaping his lips. “At least one of us has.”

  It had taken boxes of nicotine patches, Jono’s unwavering support, and complaining to his VA assigned therapist about the lack of a crutch until he learned to not want it anymore. Patrick handled stress in better ways these days, usually at the hands of Jono while in bed.

  Patrick got up to get an empty glass from the credenza and set it near Reed to use as an ashtray. Franklin sighed deeply but didn’t say another word about Reed smoking in the conference room.

  “My agent is our only option,” Franklin said.

  “Can you be certain their deep cover will be believed amidst the criminals who will be at the auction?” Setsuna asked.

  “My agency knows how to do its job.”

  The silence that followed was filled with the implication the SOA did not. Patrick shifted in his seat and cleared his throat. “Is your agent someone who is known in the criminal underworld, with enough clout and money at their disposal, and who won’t be viewed as a plant or outright killed?”

  “We built them an identity they’ve inhabited for nearly a decade now. It will hold up,” Franklin said coolly.

  “They may hold up for your agency’s needs, but your agent is not going to work for this mission,” Setsuna said.

  “Then what, pray tell, is your suggestion?”

  “It’s mine, actually,” Patrick said.

  Franklin and Reed both looked at him. Reed took a hit off his cigarette before flicking ash into the glass.

  “Go on,” Reed said, waving his hand holding the cigarette at Patrick.
>
  “A deep-cover agent isn’t going to work here, no matter what identity you build. These are the kinds of people who will assume anyone they or their contemporaries don’t know is a threat. We risk them issuing new invites and rescheduling the auction if we send in an agent.”

  “What makes you think they haven’t done so already?” Franklin asked.

  “If they have, and your agency has no intelligence on that, then we’re back at square one,” Setsuna said mildly.

  Franklin leaned back in his seat and eyed her with a faint grimace. “Don’t place your mistakes in my house.”

  “I’m cleaning up what was in mine when I took over the directorship.”

  “And your agent is here by the grace of nepotism.”

  He wasn’t wrong, in a way, but it still rankled. Patrick swallowed against the knee-jerk response he wanted to spit out and forced himself to abide by the one Setsuna expected him to give.

  “I’m here because I have a job to do, and I get it done,” Patrick got out after unclenching his teeth. “Agents won’t work, even with a deep cover. Not for this. You need someone who has lived their entire life in the shadows, preferably a couple of centuries, at least.”

  “You think we haven’t vetted any of those options?” Franklin asked.

  “I’m pretty damn sure you don’t have the person I’m thinking of who will get us into that auction and get us a chance at taking back the staff.”

  “Then enlighten us.”

  Patrick dug his fingers into his thighs. “Lucien.”