A Vigil in the Mourning (Soulbound #4) - Hailey Turner Page 0,67
time?”
Patrick grimaced, mouth pressing into a hard white line. “Not just them.”
“Hel attempted to burn my altar down as a distraction while the Dominion Sect kidnapped the Allfather. I summoned the valkyries to aid us in his place,” a deep voice said from behind them. “Well met, Brynhildr.”
“Thor,” the valkyrie in charge replied. “I wish it was under better circumstances.”
Jono looked at the tall, broad-shouldered god who filled the charred doorway and had to bite back the instinctive growl that didn’t come from him. Jono focused on the god’s words through Fenrir’s annoyance. “Odin was taken?”
Patrick sighed. “Ethan is like a one-trick pony with this stupid shit of his. Let’s get out of the rain and behind some wards before we start talking.”
Jono ran a hand through his wet hair, shivering a little in the face of the cold wind howling over the street. Thor stepped aside and Jono followed Patrick into the scorched bar. He curled his lip at the smell of smoke and the bitterness of hell that stung his nose. Fenrir didn’t seem bothered by it at all, but then, if Hel was the one who had spearheaded the attack, this probably felt like home to the wolf right about now.
When Fenrir first started to speak to him and Jono realized he wasn’t going insane, he’d dived headfirst into Norse mythology. Dry and half-forgotten as it was, he knew those stories better than the others he’d started to learn once Patrick came into his life.
“Hel did this?” Jono asked. “The place is still standing. Is she just that weak or have bad aim?”
The bar, for all that it was badly scorched and had lost many tables, chairs, and barstools, was mostly intact. The strange animal antlers on the wall were dirtied by smoke but not charred. If Jono squinted, he could see rune lines carved into the walls, bits of magic crackling through them here and there like electric sparks. Considering which god owned this place, that wasn’t surprising.
Magic made Jono’s ears pop as someone set a ward around the place. It wasn’t Patrick, because Jono knew what his magic smelled like.
“Eir, I would have you see to the ones Hel harmed,” Thor said.
A young-looking valkyrie took a seat at the bar, her dark hair twisted around her head in a crown braid. She’d been the one with cat ears on her motorcycle helmet. Her gray eyes were ringed by black eyeliner that ended in a cat-eye flick.
“It’s what I’m here for,” Eir said. Her gaze flickered Jono’s way, and she nodded at him. “I can heal you, too, if you want.”
Patrick’s head snapped around, pinning Jono with a sharp, worried look. “What the fuck happened?”
Jono grimaced, figuring he was fine after Victoria’s potions. He hadn’t felt any symptoms for a while now. “Nothing.”
“It’s not nothing if Eir is offering to heal you.”
“Later, okay? Let’s deal with your problem first.”
Patrick gave him a look that promised a row later on. Jono inwardly winced but pressed on with the gathering at hand.
A thunderous boom high overhead outside rattled the plyboard nailed over the broken windows. A man who smelled like electricity sauntered into the bar a few seconds later, brushing rainwater off his beaded and fringed leather jacket and smelling of ozone.
“My favorite wing mates,” the man said with a pleased smile. “Any of you seen a serpent in the lake during your travels?”
“We came from the west, Hinon. Oniare would not be there,” a red-haired valkyrie with a pixie cut said.
“A pity. He makes for a good hunt, Skuld.”
The god joined them at the bar, taking the beer Thor offered him with a pleased smile on his face. The valkyries all received glasses of mead, Jono and Patrick declined anything but water, and Wade got an entire bowl full of strangely colored apples. He grabbed an apple in each hand and methodically started to eat them.
“They aren’t fae fruit as far as I know,” Patrick said with a shrug when Jono shot him a questioning look. “Not that the fae food he ate before did anything to him.”
Wade stared at them both and deliberately took a bite of one apple, chewing loudly.
Thor crossed his arms over his broad chest, his gaze sweeping over everyone assembled before him. “Dominion Sect mercenaries attacked the Allfather as he was leaving Au Hall and took him captive.”
“Have Muninn and Huginn found him yet?” Brynhildr asked.
Thor shook his head. “He is hidden from their power, and Heimdallr has not seen him.”