Deadly Trade- The Complete Series

by Jessica Gunn

  “I need a healer for him right away,” I said. “I can even bring him up there.”

  She nodded, backing away toward her computer. “Why didn’t you?”

  I gestured toward the craziness around us, the same chaos that’d been plaguing Headquarters since the first wave of Hunters had been poisoned with this new Ember witch toxin. Some Hunters sat in chairs with their teammates nearby, cradling their heads in their hands. Others paced, looking up at the ceiling at the end of every turn.

  “I wasn’t sure there’d be a free healer,” I told Lissandra. “And he was doing okay last night.”

  Her eyes narrowed for a brief moment, but she didn’t voice the question in them. “Hang on.”

  She disappeared. While she was gone, I eased Kian to the ground. His brow was slick with sweat and his body still shook as though he were cold or… In withdrawal? I supposed this was sort of what he’d looked like that night at Will’s and my old apartment in New York City after he’d accidentally ingested a ton of Demon’s Blood.

  I shook his shoulder. “Are you using again?”

  It was no use. His head was drooped, eyes shut. Kian was out.

  My chest tightened, frustration and desperation coiling between my ribs. I had no way to know if it were true, if Kian was really using Demon’s Blood again. Maybe this was a reaction to being injured and not seeking actual medical attention right away. Then the blame would truly be on me, and I’d live with that because it’d been mostly my choice not to leave Hunter’s Guild in case Mason stopped or followed us. It’d been my instincts that led us away from the Fire Circle’s help.

  Footsteps echoed close. I looked up to find Bria rushing down the hall. She was wearing red scrubs and although she had her hair tied back into a messy bun, it was loose. Dark circles hung under her eyes and a worried crease ran across her forehead.

  “What happened?” she asked as she knelt next to Kian.

  “An attack,” I said and pointed to his side. “Stab wound, plus a fever and—”

  She lifted his shirt and gasped when she saw the stitches. The area around his wound was inflamed and angry, swollen. Infection. “When did this happen?”

  “Last night,” I said. “Late. It’s a long story, but we went to Hunter’s Guild instead of Headquarters because we were afraid of bringing along an entourage.”

  Bria’s gaze turned to me, hard and narrowed. “That decision might cost him his life. We need to get him up to the Infirmary. Even if I heal him, he might need extra care. And I’m almost tapped out from all the Hunters coming here from area hospitals.”

  I gulped, my breath coming short. This is my fault.

  Bria touched a hand to me and used teleportante to bring us up two floors to the Infirmary inside Fire Circle Headquarters, right into an empty exam room. Bria paused only long enough to yell out for assistance down the hall before returning to Kian’s side.

  “Help me with his shirt,” she said as she put on latex gloves.

  I did, and between the two of us, we removed it without disturbing his wound too much.

  “You did this?” Bria asked as she ran gloved fingers over the stitches. She was probably trying to get an image in her head with her magik of how badly Kian had been injured.

  I nodded in small motions, quick and guilty. “Kian walked me through it. He’s done it to himself so many times before. I thought—”

  Kian’s body began convulsing on the table. His face paled as white as a ghost.

  “He’s seizing,” Bria said and reached an arm over him. “Help me.” She pinned Kian’s shoulders to the table while I grabbed his legs. “What else? Was there poison involved?”

  I shook my head. “No. We got into a fight, that’s all. One we nearly lost.”

  “Obviously,” she said, curt.

  I wasn’t sure how much of her anger was directed actually at me versus being unable to help Kian quick enough. But his convulsing had lessened for a moment.

  “There you go,” she said to him. “Now let’s get a better picture.”

  Even when Bria closed her eyes and started to work her magik, I still held Kian’s legs. As if that would be enough to ground him in this reality and not let him slip away. As if it’d be enough to anchor me so that I wouldn’t follow him into some kind of darkness. Maybe every bit of last night had been a bad decision, but I needed Kian. He’d become not only a friend, but much more.

  And it’s your fault he’s like this now.

  Even with magik, I couldn’t help those I cared for.

  “Shit,” Bria said as she suddenly pulled back from Kian. “You stupid son of a bitch.” She whipped around to a set of cabinets and withdrew a vial from one of them filled with a familiar liquid. “I can’t believe it.”

  I didn’t need to ask, even when Bria grabbed a syringe from a drawer and filled it with liquid from the vial.

  “How bad is it?” I asked.

  “Bad,” she said as she depressed the syringe. Liquid spurted out the top. Then she jabbed it directly into Kian’s neck. “I don’t know if he’s been using Demon’s Blood again recently—like yesterday, recently—or if this is his body reaching for it as a result of being used to healing fast because of it in the past, but this isn’t just a withdrawal.”

  As soon as the demonic poison was in Kian’s bloodstream, his shakes stopped and his breathing evened out.

  “Infection is absolutely in play here,” Bria said. She dropped the syringe on the counter, then righted herself by Kian’s bedside and hovered her hands above his wound. “That combined with the wound itself is bad enough. His body was reaching for something it was used to but no longer had. If you hadn’t made it here, he would have died, Ava.”

  I swallowed hard and shut my eyes. He would have died.

  Just another loss on my hands.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered.

  A soft light blue ether glowed from Bria’s hands. “Don’t apologize to me. Whatever happened last night, you should have come to Fire Circle Headquarters. My understanding is that most of the time, demons won’t follow us here.”

  “This one would have,” I said. “For what we found.”

  She frowned but didn’t take her eyes off Kian. “What do you mean?”

  A flash, a memory imprinted in my soul, zipped across my mind. Of running back to my team’s house with my old team right after our mission gone wrong. Right after we’d discovered Talon’s plans to turn Ember witches into demons, to force the transformation with poison instead of waiting for Autumn Fire to do it with magik. Jeremy’s decision to go home instead of to Fire Circle Headquarters was the same exact reasoning I’d always had for retreating to Hunter’s Guild instead of Headquarters.

  You don’t fuck with Talon. And if you do, you don’t lead them to everyone else.

  The location of Fire Circle Headquarters wasn’t by any means a secret. And it didn’t have protection magiks like the Guild.

  For thousands of years, Hunter Circles Headquarter buildings went untouched, just like, for a long time, Hunters didn’t go after the lairs of Old Ones. We didn’t go after Landshaft or other demon strongholds.

  Then, two years ago, everything had changed.

  “Ava?” Bria asked.

  “I’ll tell you when I tell Dacher,” I said, my voice low. “This is about to get so much worse than we could have known.”

  Dacher’s only response to my admittance of where Kian and I had been last night was several long blinks. Like it either hadn’t surprised him, or us going to Crimson was so much less insane compared to everything else going on at Headquarters that it simply didn’t matter.

  Ben, on the other hand, cursed and ran an angry hand through his hair. Krystin gave him a sidelong look of pleading. I’d both heard and seen the results of Ben’s short temper. Dacher had only called the two of them into this meeting because of Ben’s candidate status, and Krystin had been with him at the time.

  “Do the two of you want to be killed by Talon?” Ben forced his wo
rds out through gritted teeth. “Because if that’s the case, you can leave Headquarters if you want. Move out, get a new apartment away from the protection Headquarters offers.”

  “Ben,” Dacher warned.

  Ben shot him a glare before jolting, realizing his mistake. “Sir—”

  Dacher lifted a hand. “Just stop, Ben.”

  Kian lifted tired eyes to Dacher. Bria had mostly healed him, but he’d need a long, uninterrupted rest to fully recover. “We only went because we didn’t want to get anyone else involved or hurt. Which is the same reason I agreed with—and still support—Ava’s decision to stay at Hunter’s Guild overnight instead of risking Mason and his group following us here.”

  “Not that it matters,” Krystin said. “Darkness is getting braver and braver about coming onto Headquarters territory. Especially ours.”

  “It’s not even Darkness,” I said. “It’s Talon.”

  Krystin and Ben exchanged a look. She said, “It’s a byproduct of what Lady Azar was doing. Talon isn’t the first to show up here and attack. Lady Azar wasn’t even the first.”

  “Kinder had her own reasons,” Ben said.

  Krystin nodded. “But she’s the reason Lady Azar knew it could be done. And because she did and because until her death she led Landshaft, they’re all going to start testing our limits. Dacher, I’d suggest you let the other Circles know they need to up security.”

  “Mason didn’t follow us out of Hunter’s Guild this morning though,” Kian said. “He wasn’t even there.”

  “Which means he wouldn’t have followed us last night and that I almost got you killed for nothing,” I said. I’d traded the safety of Headquarters and all our injured and poisoned Hunters for Kian’s life.

  A dangerous path to walk.

  Brian and I had never gotten to that point when we’d dated. There was never a single moment where my duty to the Fire Circle was put in jeopardy because of my love for him. So maybe it wasn’t really love. Because within three months, I was willing to risk Headquarters for Kian.

  I glanced at him for a single moment. His attention wasn’t on me, so I had all the time in that moment to study him. This man that had once been my rival in Midnight’s fighting ring. Somehow, my unwanted partner had become so much more.

  “From the sound of what you found at Crimson,” Dacher said, “he and Talon are likely preparing for some sort of assault. Whether that’s the completion of their program ahead of Autumn Fire or an attack on the Circles as they once planned is anyone’s guess. But either way, we’ll need to be ready.”

  “It’s the former,” Krystin said, her unfocused eyes staring past Dacher to the wall behind him. For a moment, her eyes dropped to a safe behind his chair. Then she swallowed hard. “It’s got to be.”

  Ben’s expression faltered for a moment. “What do you mean?”

  Krystin blinked and looked to him, then Dacher. “Mason isn’t in charge, not of Talon, right? He might be heading up the Ember witch operation, but it’s Jerrick who’s calling the shots. And Jerrick used to be Lady Azar’s right-hand man in Shadow Crest. But he wasn’t at Alzan, or he’d have died in that battle.”

  “So?” Ben asked.

  “He’s using the same plan she did,” Krystin said. “Develop the poison, combine it with Autumn Fire to amass a massive army between Autumn Fire and All Hallows’ Eve, and then…” She shrugged.

  “Then what?” I asked.

  “Mason said their target was the Neuians,” Kian said.

  Ben shook his head. “But Talon’s initial target when your team got stuck in their crosshairs was the Fire Circle.”

  “It’s both,” Krystin said, her eyes growing wide. “They’re going to go after both the Fire Circle and the Neuians on All Hallows’ Eve, when magik is at its strongest. I have to tell Areus,” she said, making for the door. “Or Shawn does. Someone.”

  Ben reached out for her. “Krystin.”

  She shook her head. “No, Ben. It’s happening. If not now, soon. That war Karen warned us about. The big one. The final conflict. And it’s starting with Talon.” Krystin glanced at Dacher. “I need to go, sir. Maybe Areus and the Alzanian High Council have a solution we can use.”

  Dacher nodded grimly. “Fine. But don’t you dare work more magik than you need to get there.”

  “I’ll be careful.” Then Krystin was gone.

  I wasn’t entirely sure what had happened. The look the three of them shared held the weight of a million unsaid words. But when I glanced back to Dacher, his dark, fallen expression was more troubling than any I’d seen on him before.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “The Ether Head Circle is sending a containment team,” Dacher said. “We have long surpassed the number of Hunters we can take care of here. And every hour we come closer and closer to having to take in members of the general public who have been hit with the poison.”

  “What?” Kian hissed.

  Dacher nodded. “Some are magik-users who didn’t even know they had magik. Others are the people who ran into Veynix’s venom by accident. We’re doing the best we can, but the Ether Head Circle’s team will help transport Hunters to their infirmaries and containment areas.”

  “And create cover stories,” Kian guessed.

  “Yes, that too,” Dacher said. “If Talon wants to start the final conflict, they might just succeed. Except this time, when Darkness and the Hunter Circles are at full-out war with each other, it’s going to involve human civilians too.”

  My stomach dropped. “What do you mean?”

  Dacher sighed, defeated. “Thousands of years ago, when Darkness started the First War by taking out the Powers’ city of Alzan, the general public didn’t know about it. And they certainly didn’t have the technology to spread word if they did. Now…”

  Dacher shook his head. “If the normal world, the civilians, find out about Darkness and the Hunter Circles and magik, there’s no telling how they’ll react—even with Hydron’s partnership with the federal government. The war might be four-sided this time, human governments and military included.”

  Chapter 20

  “They know a massive war is coming and claim their hands are tied,” I said as I paced the distance between two opposite walls in the meeting room.

  Kian, Will, and I had taken up residence in one of the extra meeting spaces on the third floor over an hour ago. Dacher’s words had done nothing to settle any worries I had about what Kian and I had discovered at Crimson. The Ether Head Circle sending representatives was icing on the damn cake.

  “It might be for the best,” Will said, ever unaware of the full score of the war. Will had never been a Hunter until Veynix had returned three months ago. And even then, he’d been in recovery and unable to start his training period. He didn’t know, and his optimism because of it was almost inspiring.

  Almost.

  “How?” Kian asked. “I’m not saying rushing in headfirst is the best approach here, but if we let Darkness and Landshaft build their army, we’re just as screwed as we were before.”

  I nodded. “Kian’s right. The Fire Circle’s hesitation is what almost cost the Powers Alzan last year. If we’re going to stop the Trade, it needs to be now. Before whatever Dacher and the Ether Head Circle are afraid of happens.”

  Will sunk down into a seat and held his head in his hands. “Sounds like that’s already happened.”

  A knock sounded on the door. Will lifted his gaze as Brian swung the door open.

  “Hey,” he said. “I was told you guys were in here.”

  I scowled, but Will was the first to speak.

  “What the fuck do you want?” he asked.

  I winced at the sharp tone of Will’s voice. “Will.”

  He shook his head, then glared at Brian. “No. I thought you were okay before. I was okay with you dating my best friend. But then you go and play dead? Return like nothing happened?”

  Brian lifted his hands. “Not all of that was my choice.”

&nb
sp; Fair. That part was true.

  “And the stuff that was ‘your choice,’” Will said, air quoting him.

  Oh boy. He was entering big-brother mode. I laid a hand on Will’s arm. He froze under my touch, his body going rigid.

  “Cool it,” I said to him. “We’ve made our peace.”

  “Well, I haven’t.” Will’s jaw locked and his teeth gnashed together, grinding loudly. His fingertips began to glow with a dim red-orange ether.

  Brian’s expression hardened. “Then get on with it, Will. We have more important things to talk about.”

  I looked to Kian, who just sat in his chair, watching the scene unfold with an amused curl of his lips. He was enjoying this.

  “More important than Chris’s life?” Will spat. His use of my former name—well, nickname—sent chills scattering down my body. Had anyone else done it, I wasn’t sure how I’d react. But Will’s use of my former name only reminded me of the bad night. The night neither of us has spoken about since. “More important than her grief over you and Jeremy, Liz and Em? You’re a fucking coward, Brian. A coward and a bastard, and that’s all I have to say to you.”

  Will’s tone turned downright cold, but his body relaxed the more he spoke. When he finished, I slid a hand along his, interlocking our fingers so he knew I was there.

  “It’s okay, Will,” I said. “Thank you.”

  He turned to me, his glare softening into a look only best friends could share. “I’d do anything for you, you know that. More than this asshole ever did.”

  I gave Will a small smile. “I know.”

  “Can we move on now?” Brian asked, coming farther into the room.

  I winced. “Poor choice of words.”

  “No one’s ‘moving on,’” Will said. “Not until Talon is gone.”

  “They never will be,” Kian said, amusement gone from his eyes at Talon’s name. “Not unless something’s done about it.”

  “That’s why I’m here,” Brian said. “If I’m allowed to speak.”