On the Wings of War (Soulbound Book 5)

by Hailey Turner

  “He’s not allowed to leave until we get back to the flat,” Jono said, staring out the window at the passing buildings.

  They’d left Wade and Spencer in Nadine’s flat because no one was getting left alone today. Between everything that needed to get done, Jono felt incredibly shorthanded and outnumbered.

  Sometime later they reached the Louvre, the long gray buildings on the left abruptly turning into the Jardin des Tuileries. The stretch of greenery was filled with people, tourists and locals alike taking advantage of a warm summer day. Maxim drove through a maze of traffic, past a grand fountain, and eventually turned onto the Avenue des Champs-Élysées. Jono stared ahead, the wide avenue lined by trees and shops on both sides, crowded with people.

  The Arc de Triomphe came into view, rising over the traffic. They’d almost reached the roundabout when Maxime pulled over to the side of the road in a bus stop.

  “I will let Helene know you are here,” Maxime said, looking at his mobile rather than at them.

  “What does she look like?” Sage asked.

  He hummed, minimizing his text to show off the home screen and the picture of a woman that was the background. Jono memorized her face before following Sage out of the car.

  “Merci,” Jono said.

  Maxime didn’t say anything in response, merely drove off before anyone started honking at him. They hurried onto the sidewalk, Sage leading the way to the pedestrian tunnel that would take them under the famous roundabout to the center island. They moved easily through the crowd in the tunnel, bypassing the lines of people waiting to buy tickets from the kiosks to get to the top of the Arc de Triomphe.

  Human and not-so-human scents hit Jono’s nose, but none smelled threatening. That could’ve changed if he hadn’t been wearing his sunglasses to hide his eyes. God pack alpha werecreatures weren’t liked on the best of days, and he didn’t much care to deal with a frightened public, especially one that might not understand what he had to say.

  “There we go,” Sage muttered as they came upon the stairs leading up to the center island.

  They took the steps up at an easy pace, packed in on all sides by tourists eager to see the famous monument. They arrived aboveground in the center of the roundabout, the Arc de Triomphe rising above them. The island itself was crowded with people, the ever-moving traffic in the roundabout surrounding filled with the noise of engines, horns, and squealing brakes.

  Jono dialed up his senses as he looked around, standing taller than most of the people around them. He could see two separate Police Nationale vans parked on either side of the Arc de Triomphe. The police themselves wandered the area, along with men and women in military uniforms, the lot of them a heavily armed security presence that tourists gave a wide berth to.

  He remembered what Maxime smelled like, and it took only one circuit of the island to find Helene. He recognized her face and the underlying faint scent of Maxime she carried with her. She seemed to be scanning the area, as if looking for them. Her gaze drifted past them before refocusing on them as they approached her.

  “Bonjour,” Sage said with a friendly smile. “Are you Helene?”

  “Oui,” Helene said.

  “Maxime sent us. Is it possible to speak with you for a few minutes?”

  Her partner said something in French that caused anger to cut through her scent, though it never showed on her face. Helene ignored him before gesturing for them to follow her, putting distance between them and the other police, but not her duty to guard the monument.

  “Maxime said you had some questions. I’ll answer what I can, but I don’t know how much help I can be,” Helene said in a thick French accent. “I was demoted last year when word got out I was engaged to Maxime.”

  Jono had a vague idea what sort of insult her partner must have said to make her angry. “I’m sorry.”

  She shrugged. “What is it you need?”

  “Can you tell us if the police have done anything to prevent the Orthodox Church of the Dead from operating in Paris?” Sage asked.

  Helene frowned. “You are asking about the Catacomb rumors?”

  “We know you have missing and dead people, most of them from the preternatural world, but I’m sure there’s some mundane humans thrown in there as well. Your government wouldn’t have closed them off for so long if it was only werecreatures going missing.”

  “The Orthodox Church of the Dead is not welcome in Paris, but hunting down the perpetrators has not been a top priority.”

  “Because it was only werecreatures who were dying at first?” Jono guessed.

  “Oui. Some magic users as well, but the covens and families they came from had no political power. They were mostly from immigrant communities in the surrounding arrondissements. Only when some cataphiles and tourists went missing is when the government closed the Catacombs.”

  “You never found any of the missing?”

  “Non.”

  Jono remembered how Patrick had described the underground room filled with bodies and wondered if the police had even tried looking for the missing, or if they thought they could use the rumors to seal off the Catacombs to illegal entry for good.

  “Mireille and Gaspard said they banned all the packs from Catacomb entrances. Do you know where those are?” Sage asked.

  Helene shrugged. “I don’t know the locations, but they are everywhere in Paris. Hidden doors, manhole covers, holes in the Metro tunnels are mostly how the cataphiles get below.”

  “None you know of that the police have been monitoring more closely as of late?”

  “I don’t know. I am sorry.”

  Jono opened his mouth to tell her not to apologize when a deep, sonorous hum cut through the air. It sounded like a distant roar, making the nerves in his teeth ache. Helene gripped her rifle and called out to her partner, hurrying away from them.

  “What the hell is that?” Sage asked, turning quickly on her feet to get eyes on their area.

  “I don’t know, but it can’t be good,” Jono said.

  Everyone around them had stopped taking pictures and were now looking around in equal confusion. Some people had their mobiles up to record, but the general ease of the crowd was rapidly fading as the hum kept going, never rising or falling, remaining a continuous sound that buzzed in Jono’s ears.

  Over the tops of the trees and roofs of buildings surrounding the roundabout, Jono could just make out the very top of the Eiffel Tower in the distance.

  It glowed a sickly, malevolent ochre color.

  Jono pulled out his mobile and dialed Patrick, who picked up almost immediately.

  “Tell me you’re back at Nadine’s apartment,” Patrick said.

  “Finished that chat with the Paris god pack. Went to the Arc de Triomphe to speak to a policewoman married to one of their members. Got interrupted by that bloody noise. You should know the Eiffel Tower is covered in magic,” Jono said.

  “Fuck. We need to regroup. Head back to Nadine’s apartment. INTERPOL got a hit on Zachary Myers last night. He’s in Paris.”

  “Ethan?”

  “No hits, but we can’t rule out his presence.”

  Some of the police pushed through the crowd, heading toward the stairs that led to the tunnel, shouting orders in French and English. The crowd wasn’t moving very quickly, not yet starting to panic.

  That changed when magic rolled like a wave across Paris, pushing outward from the Eiffel Tower.

  The force of it bent the air like a mirage, pushing through buildings, trees, and people as if they didn’t exist. Jono grabbed Sage by the shoulder and braced them both against something they couldn’t outrun. The hit was like getting shocked by static electricity all over his body, making every single nerve in his body burn as if he were going to shift.

  Then it was gone, rolling past them out to the edge of the city. The scent that lingered in the air in its wake smelled more like rotten garbage than the air after a thunderstorm.

  Cars slammed into each other in the rounda
bout as they careened to a hard stop, their engines suddenly gone dead all at once. When Jono looked at his mobile, the screen was black. Sage held up her own, a grim slant to her mouth.

  “Dead,” she said.

  Jono tucked his now bricked mobile into his back pocket. “Patrick wants us to meet at the flat.”

  “I heard. We should—”

  A deep, heavy bang echoed through the air, coming from the ground under the Arc de Triomphe. Jono looked over at the area directly beneath the monument’s arches where ropes outlined the memorial inlaid on the floor above the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

  The sound came from the grave.

  The police had already turned their attention toward the noise, which hadn’t stopped and only gotten louder. Ochre-colored magic flickered to life over the memorial, setting fire to the flowers that surrounded the edge of it.

  People screamed, the crowd rushing toward the exit that would take them under the roundabout in a dangerous crush. Jono and Sage stayed put, staring at the grave.

  “You smell that?” Sage asked, nostrils flaring.

  Jono nodded. “Yeah.”

  Like garbage that had sat on the curb for weeks, meat gone rotten and moldy in the sun, the foul stench of something dead clung to the sluggish breeze.

  Magic, and not the good kind.

  The covering of the tomb exploded upward. Stone, metal, and dirt flew through the air, giving way. A skeleton dressed in a ragged uniform frayed from over a century of entombment clawed its way out of the grave, magic burning in its eye sockets.

  The police yelled a warning Jono couldn’t understand before they fired at the skeletal zombie exiting its grave. The bullets didn’t stop it, and the zombie lurched forward on old, time-worn leather boots.

  “We need to go,” Jono said, still staring at the zombie. “That won’t be the only sodding zombie we’ll have to deal with.”

  Sage turned on her feet. “No need to tell me twice.”

  Rather than head for the tunnel entrance where everyone else was pushing and shoving their way down the stairs, Jono and Sage ran for the edge of the concrete island. They threw themselves with preternatural speed into the stopped traffic surrounding the roundabout, racing to the other side.

  23

  “This is bullshit,” Patrick growled as he yanked the car door shut.

  Nadine shoved her key into the ignition of her car and started the engine. “We aren’t in our country. We can’t force them to listen to us and then do what we want.”

  “Just because they haven’t been able to locate Ilya doesn’t mean he’s gone.”

  “The ministry is aware of that.”

  “And I thought our government was a fucking headache.”

  Nadine pulled into the street, merging into the traffic that surrounded the Quai d'Orsay. They’d been stuck in emergency meetings at the Ministry of Magical Affairs since early morning after Patrick escaped the Catacombs. Maybe it was the lack of sleep from being awake for over twenty-four hours that was making him short-tempered, but dealing with politics today was more annoying than usual.

  They weren’t on US soil, and Patrick was acutely aware that he didn’t have the political backing or approval to operate how he normally would. If he got in a fight over here it would turn into a huge diplomatic mess he couldn’t afford to be in the middle of. Neither would he have Setsuna to cover for him and explain away his actions.

  This wasn’t like the Thirty-Day War, when countries banded together to fight back against the hells. Patrick wasn’t able to act under military orders, and he knew the French government would be incensed if he ruined any of their monuments.

  They drove east, heading toward the 8th arrondissement, where the Embassy of the United States was located. The PIA was currently running the Paris portion of the mission behind diplomatic walls, and they had another lunch meeting to attend despite the fact that Patrick wanted to be out hunting. Red tape and the restrictions it came with had never before seemed so terrible.

  “With the INTERPOL hit on Zachary, at least we have proof the Dominion Sect is in Paris,” Nadine said.

  “I don’t know if that makes this situation better or worse. It’s summer solstice, there’s a god of the underworld who guides souls waiting for his priest to deliver him a weapon that doesn’t belong to him, and we’re considering Ethan’s right-hand bastard a good thing?” Patrick rubbed at his eyes with one hand, breathing sharply through his clenched teeth. “I need a drink.”

  “There’s a flask in my glove compartment.”

  Patrick made a desperate sound in the back of his throat as he yanked open the glove compartment, ignoring the Browning there in favor of the small metal flask that would fit in almost any of Nadine’s designer purses.

  “Thanks,” Patrick muttered right before taking a swallow of good whiskey.

  “There are mints in my purse. Chew some before we get to the meeting.”

  “Work been that stressful for you lately?”

  “It’s been mostly you.”

  “That would hurt me if I cared.”

  Nadine smacked him in the chest, a smile tugging at her lips. “Asshole.”

  She turned left onto Pont Alexandre III, the low bridge spanning the Seine filled with cars. The golden statues on the pillars bracing each side of the bridge glittered in the sunlight. They were halfway across the span when a deep, sonorous hum ripped through the air, sounding out of place in the buzz of Paris streets.

  “What the fuck?” Patrick leaned forward to peer through the windshield, scanning their position on the bridge. “Are you hearing that?”

  “Yes. I don’t like it,” Nadine said, speeding up as much as she could as traffic continued to move across the bridge.

  Patrick’s phone buzzed in his pocket. He pulled it out, answering immediately after seeing Jono’s name flash across the screen. “Tell me you’re back at Nadine’s apartment.”

  Jono’s voice came across the line, deep and familiar, annoyance coloring his tone. “Finished that chat with the Paris god pack. Went to the Arc de Triomphe to speak to a policewoman married to one of their members. Got interrupted by that bloody noise. You should know the Eiffel Tower is covered in magic.”

  Patrick twisted around in his seat, rolling down the window so he could stick his head out and get eyes on the horizon. The Eiffel Tower rose in the sky behind them, painted a sickly, familiar ochre color that made cold sweat break out on his skin.

  “Fuck. We need to regroup. Head back to Nadine’s apartment. INTERPOL got a hit on Zachary Myers last night. He’s in Paris.”

  “Ethan?”

  “No hits, but we can’t rule out his presence.”

  Before Patrick could say anything else, they reached the other side of the bridge right as the magic surrounding the Eiffel Tower pulsed like a heartbeat before exploding outward.

  Nadine’s fingers curled over the collar of his suit jacket and yanked him back into the car. He almost cracked his head against the edge of the door, and then Patrick was back inside and Nadine’s shield snapped into place around the vehicle.

  The wave of magic rolled right over them, sending water from the Seine splashing into the air, curling over the edges of the high walls. The car’s engine sputtered and abruptly died. Nadine swore as she slammed on the brakes, expanding her shield outside the frame of the car. The vehicle behind them slammed into her shield rather than the backend of her car.

  Patrick stared at his phone and the blank screen it now showed. He tested the power button, but when nothing happened, he opened up the glove compartment, took out the Browning, and left his phone in its spot.

  “Phone lines are dead,” he said, checking the gun for bullets.

  “Going to bet everything electronic in Paris is down. Fucking magical EMP strike. That’s a military-grade combat spell, something Ilya doesn’t have an affinity for,” Nadine said, shoving open her door. She kicked off her high heels and got out of the car.

  “Zachary does.”
<
br />   “Give me my fucking gun.”

  Patrick made sure the safety was on before tossing it to her over the roof. “Is it even legal for you to carry it?”

  Nadine dislodged the clip and checked how many bullets she had, before slamming it back into place. “It is now.”

  “Next time Setsuna sends me out of the country, I’m bringing my tactical pistol.”

  Nadine took her keys, pried a knife out of her purse, and left everything else in the car. She used the knife to rip slits in her sheath dress on either side of her legs, giving herself more freedom of movement.

  Patrick squinted at the Eiffel Tower in the distance and the malevolent magic burning over it, trying to ignore the sick churning in his stomach. “I told Jono to meet us at your apartment.”

  “Then we’ll go there and regroup. We can’t fight in business casual, and I have weapons you can borrow.”

  “How far do we have to run?’

  “If we double-time it and don’t get waylaid? Maybe fifteen minutes.”

  Patrick shrugged out of his suit jacket and undid his tie, leaving both on the front passenger seat before slamming the door shut. “Then let’s go.”

  Nadine tossed the knife on the seat, shut the door, and set a ward that would keep the vehicle locked and safe against trespassers. Then they ran, ignoring everyone on the street getting out of their cars or trying to get the vehicles to start. They passed a couple of minor fender benders on the way, but no one seemed hurt.

  They dodged around people milling about in the street. More people streamed out of the Grand Palais and Petit Palais on either side of them as they ran.

  “How are your feet?” Patrick asked, because the asphalt had to be hot underfoot.

  “I have my skin shielded. Keep running,” Nadine huffed out.

  They reached the Avenue des Champs-Élysées a minute later, the traffic there at a standstill like it was behind them. People stood near cars that wouldn’t start, kept gesturing with phones that wouldn’t turn on, the agitation in the air clawing at Patrick’s nerves.

  They dodged between people and cars, the buzz of frantic, worried voices drifting on the breeze. The soulbond tugged sharply in his chest, and he looked to the left, the Arc de Triomphe a distant stone arch against the blue sky. The knowledge that Jono was close by would’ve made Patrick breathe easier if he had any room to spare in his lungs.