A Vigil in the Mourning (Soulbound #4) - Hailey Turner Page 0,106
running amok.
He looked over Eir’s shoulder at where Yggdrasil had torn through the veil. The sky above the world tree’s reaching branches was clear, like the eye in a hurricane. On the ground below, Patrick could make out flashes of lightning as Thor tore his way through the enemy, intent on reaching Yggdrasil. He could see, too, the spell the Dominion Sect had drawn over the earth to call forth Niflheim.
Bolts of raw magic cut through the air like anti-aircraft missiles. Töfrandi banked hard, wings pumping fast to try to gain altitude. Eir let out a furious war cry as Töfrandi rose into the storm, getting out of range. Patrick blinked snow out of his eyes, fingers numb where they held on to Eir.
“We need to get down there!” Patrick yelled.
Eir didn’t respond, guiding Töfrandi with her hands and knees through the sky as wind, snow, and lightning ripped through the air around them. Patrick hated flying through clouds. He couldn’t see anything, and not knowing when or where a threat was coming from made his heart pound in his chest.
It felt like forever before Töfrandi broke free of the clouds again, diving down over the shores of Lake Michigan. The Chicago skyline was to the left of them, and the vast blackness of Lake Michigan was to their right. Directly below Töfrandi’s hooves was a shore of corpses as far as the eye could see in the snowstorm.
Patrick pointed at the writhing mass of the dead and the scattered bits of the veil tearing between them. “You want to explain that?”
Eir peered at the ground, spear held tight in one hand. “Hel has brought forth Náströnd out of Niflheim.”
Just what they needed—the leading edge of Hel crashing into Chicago, full of the damned and ready to fight. “We need to stop her!”
“We must save the Allfather first.”
Honestly, Patrick would let the greedy bastard rot if it meant Chicago would survive. Since that wasn’t a guarantee, he was back at square one.
Saving the gods because they couldn’t save themselves.
Still don’t get paid enough for this bullshit.
The dark waters of Lake Michigan were broken by something darker and larger breaching the surface before diving back under. The dead at the shoreline didn’t seem to notice or care that some of them were turning out to be dinner for a lake monster.
Something clawed at the back of Patrick’s mind, but he lost the thought when another pegasus dropped out of the clouds to their left, a valkyrie astride it with spear in hand. More and more valkyries slipped free of the clouds to flank Eir on their dive toward Yggdrasil and the shadow Patrick could see hanging from its glowing branches.
All the stories Patrick knew of Odin’s making flashed through his mind—of the knowledge gained from sacrifice, an eye lost forever, and the right to rule engrained forever in his myth.
But the Æsir had lost their presence on Earth, and Midgard had turned into something different and more modern, shaking free of the world tree into its own tale.
Yet here Yggdrasil grew, with Niflheim clawing at its roots, the veil torn between two worlds in a way it never should have.
Odin might hang from its branches once more, but it was the person who had tied the noose they needed to stop.
As the valkyries dove toward earth, something buried deep in Patrick’s soul tugged hard, and he knew—he knew—what waited for them on the ground.
Hannah.
20
“Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit!” Patrick chanted as Töfrandi dodged ground-to-air blasts of magic that seared the swirling snow around them.
“Hold on!” Eir shouted.
“Like I’m going to let go?”
Patrick’s yell was whipped away by the wind, the snow-covered ground rising up to meet them—and with it, Hel.
The goddess of death welcomed their approach with open arms and the ranks of Dominion Sect magic users taking aim at the valkyries. Her braided white hair whipped away from her face in the wind, and the power surrounding her was a malevolent force pulling at the corpses on the shore. Patrick knew his shields wouldn’t be enough to counter the combined magic rising up to meet them.
Wade, however, had no problem with that.
He came up from the other side of Yggdrasil, mouth open wide and dragon fire pouring out of his throat. The high heat seared past a huge, gnarled root of the world tree before burning through the rear ranks of the magic users. Wade wiped them all out, but the root remained whole.