A Vigil in the Mourning (Soulbound #4) - Hailey Turner Page 0,45
face open. Perhaps I should have cut her throat instead,” Lucien said.
“They hold grudges. They know you own the Manhattan Night Court. I wouldn’t put it past them informing the Krossed Knights of your presence in the city. Which means all your known businesses will come under scrutiny by the hunters, and quite possibly the government.”
“You think I’m unaware of that? The hunters in Brooklyn weren’t the first to enter my territory.”
“What happened to the ones that came before?”
Lucien laughed, the sound harsh and low beneath the music of the club, but Jono still heard him. “We ate them.”
“And the demons they shared their souls with?”
“I’m a vampire. We have no souls for the denizens of hell to lay claim to.”
“I’d say it’s a pity, but it’s not like that would change you much.”
“If you came here to ask for the same thing Estelle and Youssef offered Tremaine, you wasted your time.”
“I don’t think so. You made a promise to protect Patrick, remember? Acknowledging our god pack will help you keep your promise.”
“Don’t speak of things you know nothing about,” Lucien hissed, eyes narrowing.
Jono put both feet on the floor, staring Lucien down as Fenrir seeped through his soul in a way he remembered from Underhill and didn’t like but couldn’t fight. “You think I don’t know what happened during the Thirty-Day War?”
“You weren’t there.”
“Patrick was, same as you. Only he got to say goodbye to Ashanti and you never did.”
Distracted by the god clawing through his soul and the howls filling his mind louder than the club music, Jono never saw Lucien move. He only saw Sage, Emma, and Leon react to the threat at the last second, but they didn’t stand a chance in the face of Lucien’s fury.
Regret was always a bitter weight to carry, heavier than guilt some days.
Jono’s reflexes were a shade too slow to dodge Lucien when the master vampire launched himself across the table. Sage put herself between them, snarling with a voice that sounded more beast than human, but Lucien put her down with a vicious slice from one of his knives to her abdomen. Sage didn’t scream, merely tried to keep her guts from falling out as her rapid healing kicked in.
Emma tried to haul Jono out of the chair, but he wrenched free of her grip, nearly causing her to lose her balance as other vampires closed in. Leon fought to keep some of them at bay, but he wasn’t a match for them all.
Jono would apologize to his friends later for his decisions tonight.
The chair toppled backward from Lucien’s attack, crashing to the floor. When Lucien’s fingers wrapped around his throat, fingernails that felt like claws slicing through skin, Jono didn’t try to fight him. Lucien’s other hand dug into the half-healed knife wound, ripping it open all over again, fingers determined to break apart his ribs. Jono tilted his head back and let Fenrir speak, never looking away from Lucien’s murderous gaze.
“You should have asked for a different place to have this talk,” the god bit out around a laugh that sounded like breaking bones, Jono’s mouth shaping the words. “Ginnungagap is what birthed me and mine.”
Power burst through Jono’s soul, and the air became charged around them, the scent of burning ozone running across his tongue. Lucien’s fingers never loosened from around his throat, nor did they withdraw from the spaces between Jono’s ribs, as the veil tore open around them. The club, with its music and dance floor full of the living and undead, faded to nothing amidst gray fog.
The mundane world fell away in the face of a primordial void that was too vast for Jono to comprehend. It made him feel small and insignificant even as Fenrir basked in its presence.
“Jono!”
Sage’s voice echoed through the fog, as if coming from a great distance when he knew she should’ve been less than a meter away.
Don’t let them get lost, Jono told Fenrir.
Lucien hadn’t removed his hands from Jono’s body, but he paused in his attempt at murder. The fog drifting close to them wasn’t thick enough to obscure his face. The master vampire seemed more contemplative than afraid, and Jono could see, in that moment, how Lucien had survived the centuries when others of his kind had perished beneath the growth and spread of humanity.
Lucien never ran from any threat—he defeated it, or turned it into an opportunity to aid him.
“Here I thought you’d never show your face, Fenrir,” Lucien said in a silky voice.