Dawn of the Hunters

by Ryan Wieser

  Jessop reached out and took Jeco from her. She pulled him tightly into her chest and felt her heart race. He was heavier. His hair was longer. She was certain his smell was different. He shifted in his sleep, clinging to her as a child only clings to a parent. Jessop stroked his hair back and breathed him in. Her boy. She had her boy once again.

  She flicked her gaze to Octayn. “You have sons. You should have known better than to ever come near mine.”

  She blinked tears away. “I know.”

  She fell to her knees. Jessop knew the older woman was waiting for Jessop to kill her. But as Jessop let one hand fall to her hilt, she saw not Octayn before her, but Calis. In her mind, she saw her brothers; she saw their pain. They had seen their father die on the battlefield.

  Jessop stepped around Octayn, making her way out the door. She didn’t need to live with Octyan’s death on her hands. She turned into the corridor, holding Jeco tightly.

  “I had a daughter once too.”

  Octayn’s voice trailed after her. It froze Jessop for a moment. She could return. They could speak. They could lament a history long gone, a future tainted by mistakes they could not take back. They could forge some sort of life together, all of them, as a family. Suddenly, Jeco woke, and upon seeing her face, he did not shy away at her wounds but smiled brightly as he kissed and hugged her.

  “Mama,” he cried out, tightening his hold on her.

  “I have you, my love,” she whispered, kissing his head as she fought back the tears.

  Jessop walked on, leaving Octayn far behind her.

  Epilogue

  Jessop had done her best to shield Jeco from the charred remains of the battle, but he had seen many things he would remember for the rest of his life. There had been no real goodbye between her brothers and her, though the feeling that their lives had been gravely harmed by the actions of their parents seemed to resonate for them all. She had allowed them to take Hydo’s body.

  While many parts of their lives resumed according to plan, with Falco leading the Blade, Jeco beginning training, and Jessop even assuming a role as an instructor to the young Hunters, many things changed. Trax offered Korend’a a position leading the Kuroi, to take over the role that would have been rightfully his at the passing of his father. Korend’a had accepted, more than pleased to return to the land he once thought he’d never see again. Hode Avay, who would never fight again, had asked Falco if he could retire from the Blade, to live Beyond the Grey with Korend’a. Falco had let him go, making him the first Lord Protector to allow a Hunter to resign his post, and making Hode the first Hunter to willingly retire his blade.

  It had taken Falco many years to discover why Teck had felt as though he owed Jessop that day in battle. She had asked him about it after Teck’s burial and he had not known then. When he finally learned of the answer, he had told Jessop it was out of unfortunate circumstances that Teck had felt he needed to make amends with her

  “The mage who attacked you, when we were younger ...He was Teck’s kin.”

  Jessop was surprised at the information. She would have never held Teck responsible for the actions of his family. But she looked at all of their lives and realized how greatly they had all been impacted by the actions of those closest to them. She still wished the mage Hunter had survived, for she felt she had never had the opportunity to truly know him.

  The greatest change of all of them, perhaps, was Kohl. He had seemed content for many years with Mar’e. Perhaps it was a quiet contentment, living with Falco and Jessop’s friendship, but there had been days where he had seemed truly happy. It had seemed both sudden, but also unsurprising, the day he left. Mar’e had found Jessop in the early morning, appearing in her doorway with a parchment in her shaking hands. “He’s gone. He just left me.”

  When Jessop asked Falco if he would go find him, he shook his head. “He had to leave, Jessop.”

  “Why?”

  “Do you really not know?”

  Kohl had never proclaimed his love for her again after Haren’dul Daku, but he had sworn to her it would never falter. After Kohl left, she did not see him for many years, though she kept close tabs on him. She knew he had found his mother. Mar’e had returned to the Kuroi, to live Beyond the Grey once more.

  Jessop had retired the blade Kohl had made her, out of respect to both him and Falco. For the rest of her days, she would fight with Urdo’s sword. She used it to train her son, who moved with Fire and grace. Jeco had grown stronger and stronger. His abilities surpassed those of his parents well before his ten and fifth Partus. Not only did he have a masterful sword hand, but he was a Fire-Wielder with a beautiful grasp on Sentio.

  “We should reach out to them. I have cousins, cousins who are like me,” Jeco had argued to his parents on more than one occasion. Jessop had not told him, but she had spoken with Calis a handful of times, in their dreams, over the years. She didn’t know what the future held for them. She didn’t know if a few conversations were all they would ever have. In turn, Jessop didn’t know that Jeco had learned dream-travel in secret, when Taygen’s eldest, Kross, visited him in his sleeping hours.

  “Our parents did it all wrong, but we could do it better,” Jeco told Kross, walking through the Oredan palace in his cousin’s dream world.

  Kross turned to him, arching his brow over his shimmering green eyes. “You really think we could do it?”

  Jeco clapped him on the back, encouraging him. “Cousin! Just imagine it, if we joined territories, we would have a nation of Fire-Wielders, desert mages, and Hunters.”

  Kross slowly smiled. “Well, we are the next rightful rulers.”

  Jeco smiled back, igniting a golden flame around his body. “Exactly.”

  * * * *

  Jessop looked the girl over. Her name was Laar and she was young, with flaming red hair and large, dark eyes. She sat opposite Jessop, wedged between her parents, her arms crossed tightly over her chest. She and Falco had listened as the parents, farmers who had traveled days to reach Azgul, described the difficulties they were having with their daughter.

  The girl stood, angry. “You heard him, they’ve never trained a girl. This was a waste of time.”

  Jessop moved around Falco, standing directly in front of Laar. She studied the girl’s frame—she was a small, wiry thing. The parents had told them that she continued to get in fights in their village. Laar had slammed her hand on the table. “I’m defending other children!”

  Jessop liked her. She was young and she had an energy that those closest to her didn’t understand.

  “You really want to be a Hunter?”

  She nodded.

  “Answer me. Use your voice.”

  “Yes, I do. I don’t fight just to fight ...I fight so others don’t have to.”

  Jessop smiled at the girl’s response. She turned to Falco. “We’ve discussed this for a long time. She could be the first.”

  He smiled at her, slowly nodding his head in agreement. They had long ago decided they would train all who were willing, male or female, but they had found no families willing to send their daughters, and no women willing to volunteer to be the first students. He turned to the parents. “Jessop has insisted for some time that we begin to train women. It seems the day has come where we can finally make those wishes a reality.”

  Laar’s parents beamed as they stood to shake Falco’s hand and embrace Jessop. She hugged them both briefly, still, after all these years, disliking being touched by most. She wasn’t interested in the parents. She was interested in the girl. Jessop and Falco had changed many things about the way the Blade trained Hunters. The first change, of course, had been to remove the final rites—mentors would never harm their students as they had in the past. The second change had been to cease the elimination of personal ties—their students in the Blade all maintained relationships with their families, who visited regularly.

&
nbsp; Jessop knew she would need to get new clothes and smaller boots organized for Laar, the first female student of the Blade. “We can start today, if you’re ready.”

  Laar smiled at her, the excitement visible in her eyes. “Thank you.”

  Falco and Jessop escorted the family to a separate space, offering them a private room to say their goodbyes. As they made their way from the room, Jessop stopped, turning back to the parents. “Who told you to bring the girl to us?”

  It was Laar who answered. “A man from our village. Kohl O’Hanlon.”

  Jessop smiled as she took Falco’s hand in hers. They left the family, turning down the corridor to go make arrangements for the girl’s training to begin.

  Acknowledgments

  I would like to first thank my agent, Richard Curtis, who has been my patient and kind guide through this entire process. I could have never done it without you and I thank you wholeheartedly. I want to thank my husband and our child, for their patience, love, and support. I love you always. I would like to thank Grey, for always sitting with me. I love you. I also must thank Zorro and Big Duck, Bird, Eddie, Logo, his sister, and my mother for their support. I thank my grandparents for their love and their interest in my writing. And I thank Lara, my dearest friend, who has always supported my work. I love you all and I thank you for the role you have each played in the development of this trilogy. Finally, I would like to thank Martin Biro, James Abbate, and the entire Kensington Rebel Base team who have worked tirelessly on this series.

  If you enjoyed Dawn of the Hunters, be sure not to miss the first book in Ryan Wieser’s epic Hunters of Infinity series,

  The Hunters of Infinity have been protecting the Daharian galaxy for years, but there has never been a female Hunter—until now.

  In a seedy bar in the shadowy corners of Daharia, Jessop comes to the rescue of young Hunter Kohl O’Hanlon. Impressed by her remarkable sword-wielding skills, the Hunters invite her to their training facility, the Glass Blade, though not all are pleased with the intrusion. But they soon discover that Jessop learned to fight from the rogue leader of the Shadow City of Aranthol—and escaped. Now they want to use her intimate knowledge of their enemy to destroy him.

  As Jessop grows closer to this elite brotherhood, their leader succumbs to a mysterious ailment, and Kohl learns that Jessop is hiding dark secrets, raising suspicions about the enigmatic woman who saved his life. Has the Hunters’ security been breached—or do they have a traitor in their ranks?

  Allegiances will be questioned.

  Loyalties will be betrayed.

  Vengeance will be brutal.

  A Rebel Base Books e-book on sale now.

  CHAPTER 1

  The tavern was dark and quiet, barring the muted voices that filled the corners with whispers of quiet corruption and deceit. Hushed sounds traveled on thick smoke to the ceiling and her eyes trailed over the dimly lit corners and over the musty cloaked patrons. Dirty exchanges took place everywhere, too-young girls being offered coins and despair by corrupt travelers, whose lies traveled like fire across the alcohol on their lips. This wasn’t a typical bar, this dark, underground dwelling in the heart of Azgul where there were more shadows than light, more smoke than air. It was a seedy, unsafe locale where illegal exchanges could occur. A place favored by those in the city’s most important positions, for in this underground dwelling they could act as they truly wished.

  From where she sat, with her cloak draped low over her face, she could easily make out the group of Aren. They were more discreet than she had anticipated, but few could go unseen to her well-trained eyes. They were scattered about the bar, donning the civilian attire of common Azgul nomad passer-by. The Aren weren’t common travelers though; they were fatalistic believers who waited anxiously for a supposed impending end. A doom and darkness that would swallow the entire Daharian galaxy whole—their belief in some unimagined state of horror for the universe made her certain that not a man amongst them had ever laid eyes on Aranthol.

  She scanned the room, counting twelve of the zealots. Without their robes they appeared as normal men, barring their brand, which could be seen on the base of several of their necks. The tender nape of the neck was where all in Azgul had their brands. She knew that their mark was not well-known though, not as well-known as they would have liked it to be. Thinking of the brandings nearly had Jessop reaching for her own neck, certain she could almost feel the hot iron against her still. The smell of burning, blistering flesh unnaturally recoiling from heated metal filled her nostrils. She shivered at the putrid memory and forced it back to the depths of her mind, where she kept all her locked-away thoughts and all her darkness.

  Suddenly, the oddest sensation roused her, overcoming her senses. She could feel silk running across her skin, dragging her fine hairs on end, exciting her cells. The energy of the room had completely changed, thickening the air more than any smoke or liquor could do. She had only ever been around one other of her kind, and to feel the changing electromagnetic charge in the room without him present was as compelling to her as it was terrifying. The draw was a beast’s cry calling her in, feeding her need to find the one like her. It was a pull strong enough to grip her, strong enough to shoot adrenaline through her, to dilate her pupils and ready her muscles and tell her, without question, that Hunters were near.

  She closed her eyes and narrowed in on their presence. She could smell the faintest scent of grease on one of them; it had an acidic air to it—like the oil slick found in the Western corner of the city. She could hear his voice though he did not speak. She could see the diminutive smudge of black slick over his boot though she did not open her eyes. Her senses—so refined—ensured she could see most of him without ever glancing his way.

  And then she laid eyes on him.

  She found herself staring at a silver star-shaped scar, a twisted knot of marred flesh the size of a plum carved into his cheekbone. He had a mess of blond hair that he wore pulled back and dark eyes that he scanned the bar with. His frame was large but he held one shoulder slightly higher—due to recent injury, she imagined. As one of his large hands curled around a drink, the other rested comfortably against the hilt of his blade. His eyes trailed over the room and for a moment she wondered if he sensed her presence too. His gaze returned to his drink, and he smiled with half his mouth, allowing the star-shaped scar to pull and glisten. He was beautifully flawed.

  Her gaze fell to the man beside the young Hunter—an older man, another Hunter. The men dressed as she had expected. Their uniform consisted of black breeches and tunic, over which they wore a waist-length black leather vest, bound shut with the belt that carried their blade. The vest had their sigil imprinted over the heart. She watched as the older of the two pulled a stool out from the bar, slowly sitting as his well-trained eyes searched the corners of the establishment with practiced ease. His braid of silver hair rested down his back and as a rare flickering of light caught his face she saw his skin was mapped with the deep lines of worn scars. She had let her gaze hold him for less than a minute when she felt the whirring energy of his keen mind.

  His age made him more attuned to the presence of those like him. He turned in his seat, searching the room—he could sense her. But Jessop didn’t worry—he wouldn’t be looking for her; he would be searching for a man. Just to be sure, though, she forced her thoughts down, quieting her mind and turning her gaze away.

  She concentrated on her hand, on drumming her fingers on the table before her. She could feel her blood coursing, warm and rapid, through her veins, and her heart quickening, all for feeling the presence of those so like her so near. Her foot bounced against the floor, pumping adrenaline through her long legs. The silent room seemed to be getting louder and louder, she could hear her beating heart, swelling under her breast, her green eyes straining to stay down as anticipation welled inside her…

  Through her periphery she could make out the lone Are
n, moving swiftly towards the Hunters. He held a blade. He needed to be quick. Her beating heart was pulsing rhythmically, deafening her thoughts. Someone—a girl—seeing the knife, screamed, a shriek that set the room into motion. Jessop finally let herself look up. The Hunters moved quickly in the shadows, swift to unsheathe their weapons. The Aren formed their pack quickly; there were thirteen, not twelve. For a brief moment, she was surprised at how one could have passed under her sight. She threw her hood back, finally able to watch the scene unfold. As the zealots formed a semi-circle around the Hunters, backing them up against the bar, the tavern crumbled into pandemonium.

  The young girls cried with an adolescent fear that nearly overwhelmed Jessop. But she had learnt long ago how to ignore pain—hers and theirs. Her eyes stayed set on the Hunters as the travelers and girls and workers all fought for the exits. The dark space that had offered them such safety from prying eyes minutes before now offered them danger and isolation from help. Quick to come for pleasure and quick to escape pain—Jessop had many criticisms for those who came to be in this part of Azgul.

  The sound of a man dying refocused her attention. An Aren fell to the ground before the Hunters. Jessop watched the young fair one, his strong arm wielding his blade about him like an extension of himself. Something about his flesh appeared silvery to her, somehow reflective. She couldn’t quite make it out. He spun low and struck with ease. He was good. Despite his well-rehearsed steps, he was still exciting to watch. The older Hunter had his fight memorized, a veteran warrior with a trusted blade, faster than one would have prepared for—he was exactly as Jessop had expected.

  They were good—better than most she had ever seen. But there were simply too many Aren and she was uncertain what odds the Hunters, especially the young one, had fought against before. With every deflection and assault a new attack came down upon them. It seemed two against thirteen was an impossible fight for them to win without suffering serious harm.