A Vigil in the Mourning (Soulbound #4) - Hailey Turner Page 0,114

tried to remember how to breathe.

South of them, in Millennium Park, the light of Yggdrasil went out, the world tree withering in the face of a broken spell. Hel’s push to regain a foothold on Earth with Ethan’s help was stopped in the only way it could have been.

By the sacrifice of a god.

21

Monday arrived with overcast skies, chilly weather, and enough snow on the streets the snowplows would be running nonstop for the next twenty-four-hours.

Millennium Park was an uprooted mess that looked like a bomb had gone off. The roads running close to the shore all needed to be repaved due to the dead having destroyed the asphalt. Climbing out of a hell was rough going, and the construction cost for the street repairs was going to be high, but not as high as the rebuild for Navy Pier.

Navy Pier had been utterly destroyed, the remnants of it a crumbled pile in Lake Michigan. Retrieval of the debris would have to wait for warmer weather because construction workers would be at risk for hypothermia if they tried working on it now. Not to mention the sheer logistics of cleansing numerous parks and miles of shoreline to eradicate the lingering traces of black magic and taint from hell before anyone could set foot in it.

Dabrowski hadn’t been exactly pleased with the results of Patrick managing the case, but considering the alternative, he’d let it slide. Dabrowski had just looked at where Patrick had been sitting in the back of an ambulance—stripped of his soaked clothes and wrapped in a foil blanket burning with heat charms—and shook his head.

“I said scratch the Bean and leave everything else alone, not the other way around,” Dabrowski had said.

“Pretty sure the Bean got scratched,” Patrick had replied.

“The Bean got struck by what looks like lightning and had a hole blown through it.”

“Oops?”

Probably not the best answer to give a SAIC after wrecking Chicago’s waterfront, but Patrick hadn’t cared. He’d survived, and figuring out the lies to spin started in that ambulance.

That had been hours ago though, and the thirty-minute break Patrick had taken under the watchful eyes of an EMS crew felt like days. Dealing with the aftermath of a breach in the veil meant he’d declined a ride to the nearest hospital but had taken one to his borrowed SUV parked on the street. It had miraculously escaped damage.

The clothes Jono and Wade had stashed in the trunk were gone—the pair having fled the scene with Naomi and Alejandro’s god pack—but Patrick’s had been there. He’d gotten dressed and gone back to work because that’s what an SOA agent did.

The national news was reporting on the Dominion Sect attack with a fervor Patrick usually attributed to sharks smelling blood in the water. The local Chicago news stations were focused on what had happened in Millennium Park, but they were also reporting on the news of the spellwork performed in Westberg’s Gold Coast property. Patrick gave it another day or so before some intrepid reporter linked the two incidents and every SOA agent in a one-hundred-mile radius was reduced to the tried-and-true no comment answer for everything.

Patrick gave it maybe an hour before reporters showed up in Wrigleyville, if they managed to get through the snowy streets.

“Ready?” Kelly asked as she and Benjamin approached where Patrick stood in front of yet another of Westberg’s personal properties.

Patrick had a raging headache, more bruises on his body than unmarked skin it felt like, and was so tired his eyes burned. But he’d been in this state too many times to count after a case or mission, and he was used to pressing on. It helped that he wasn’t hurt like he had been after the fight in Central Park last year. He hadn’t been the one to break the spell and close the veil—that had all been Odin’s doing this time around.

“Let’s go,” Patrick said.

As federal raids went, ransacking Westberg’s fourth property turned out to be more interesting than the last two. A federal judge had practically mass printed warrants for the SOA to raid Westberg’s homes, campaign office, and real estate corporate office once she’d reviewed the certified video of Westberg’s resurrection. Patrick had a feeling she’d also viewed some of the cell phone videos making the rounds on the internet.

Yggdrasil had been seen for miles, a beacon in that storm many people had taken pictures and videos of. The fight was the viral moment of the week, and Patrick was just grateful none of