by Jessica Gunn
Krystin nodded as she backed away from the railing one slow step at a time. “Probably. But I don’t understand why. Hunter’s Guild is one of the very few neutral areas left in the world. Until tonight, Aloysius, ruler and creator of all demons, could have waltzed in for a drink and no one would have touched him.”
“And yet…” I turned my focus from the charred cuneiform mark on the floor to the scene at large. So much blood. Too much death. Sure, our team had just come off a mission that had resulted in demon deaths, but that was different. Wasn’t it? These demons and Hunters and witches, they thought they were safe here. They thought they had every right to be in this building.
And then someone, something, had come through and murdered them all.
I blinked, watching the area, and in the next moment, Jaffrin stood in the center of chaos’s remains. Avery’s team appeared behind him a heartbeat later. I closed my eyes and exhaled.
Most days, there wasn’t a ton about Jaffrin that I liked. I respected him and his role in the Fire Circle, sure. But he’d made a lot of bad calls, and now that we knew he’d jerked Krystin around for a good portion of her life, it didn’t endear me to him in the slightest. That said, just his presence, knowing someone with more authority than me had arrived, was worth its weight in gold.
I called out to him, “You can get a better view of the mark from upstairs.”
Jaffrin was dressed in his usual dark jeans and dark red suit jacket, but I could count on one hand how many times I’d ever seen him brandish his weapon. He held his own Fire Circle knife at his side, a bit more gold than ours, the fire emblem dancing along the handle. Sometimes I wondered if it was an illusion, or if these knives were enchanted by magik. Jaffrin clutched the handle, knuckles turning white.
Huh. If Jaffrin was worried enough to arm himself, but did so with a weapon, did that mean he didn’t have magik after all? We’d long assumed he did but never used it, but… Interesting.
I tucked that information away for later, when I could tell Krystin.
Jaffrin lifted a hand to his mouth, smoothing his fingers along the sides of his jaw. “This is…”
“Horrible,” Avery stated, turning with wide eyes, taking it all in. “What the hell happened here?”
“We don’t know,” I said. “Some sort of attack. We got the owners to safety. They needed immediate medical attention.”
“They’re the only survivors,” Krystin chimed in. “Everyone else is…” Tears spilled down her cheeks, and by the looks of her red, puffy eyes, they had been for a while. But with the lights out on most of the first floor and part of the second, I hadn’t gotten a close enough look.
“Krystin?” I asked, but even as her name crossed my lips, I realized what’d happened. Oh, god.
I spun, leaning over the banister to get a better view of the bar on the first floor. One of the building’s support beams had toppled over, splitting the bar area in two. A dark figure swathed in shadows lay beneath the beam. Drew, Krystin’s cousin. The man who’d given us the location of Shadow Crest’s hideout so we could rescue Riley.
“Krystin, I’m so sorry,” I said, turning back to her.
She stepped away and roughly wiped the tears from her face with the back of her hand. “No time,” she mumbled.
“How’d they even get in here?” Avery asked as he walked to a wall and placed his hand on it. “Isn’t Hunter’s Guild protected by magik?”
Jaffrin nodded, then shook his head slowly. “I… don’t feel them anymore. The protection magiks are gone.”
“Obviously,” Krystin snapped. “The owners said a single demon came in and tore through the place. Given the strength of those protection magiks and the fucking cuneiform on the floor, I’m betting it was an Old One. Someone very old and very powerful, and obviously, they’re either bored or have been playing the longest of long games.”
“But why?” Rachel asked.
“Question of the hour.” Jaffrin slipped his hand into his pocket, retrieved a small camera, and held it out to Avery, the leader of his flagship team. “Go up to the second floor and take a picture of the cuneiform. I’ll get someone to translate it ASAP.”
“Because that’ll be easy,” Krystin said. She winced, then bit her lip as if she realized she needed to hold her tongue.
Someone teleportanted in behind Jaffrin—Nate. His face paled upon landing and meeting Jaffrin’s gaze. “Sir.” To me, he said, “I don’t think he’s going to make it. The doctors didn’t look confident when I showed up in their ER. But I think his wife is going to be okay.”
Jaffrin frowned, not speaking for many long moments as the ten of us looked on, waiting for him to say something. An order. A retreat command. Anything. Finally, he lifted his gaze from the floor. “I need to call Hydron first, then the Ether Head Circle. Ben, was your team able to carry out your mission tonight?”
I nodded. “Yes, sir. They were sitting on a dharksa stash, which is probably why they were reluctant to leave. We took care of it.”
“Good. I want you to stay here until I can summon more teams to secure the area, as well as get in contact with the Ether Circle. They’ll be able to alert their contact in Darkness to the situation.”
Krystin coughed loudly. “Their contact?”
I had the same question but wasn’t about to voice it. I mean, it kind of made sense. Darkness was our sworn enemy, given that the Circles were a byproduct of the Powers, but this wasn’t 2,000 B.C.
“For matters such as these,” Jaffrin said slowly, “sometimes it is better to alert the enemy to another you might have in common. And since this person, whoever they were, killed without regard to moral affiliation, it’s safe to say that no one is safe.” Jaffrin glanced to me. “Once backup arrives, you’re to rest for the night, then return later tomorrow morning. If this is the first in a string of attacks, I’ll need your team in top shape.”
“Yes, sir,” I said.
Top shape when we’d only had a week to recover since our last run-in with a major demon didn’t seem possible. But Lady Azar seemed to be out of commission for now, thanks to Nate’s asanak, soul-cleaving move. She’d be unable to use her magik for a few weeks, according to Nate. Which also put her out of the running for attacking Hunter’s Guild.
I raked my hand through my hair, pausing to squeeze the back of my neck. “This is ridiculous.”
“Agreed,” Jaffrin said. “Let’s focus on moving forward and start getting this place cleaned up.”
Jaffrin walked off to make his calls, gesturing to Avery. He and his team took out their phones, turned on the flashlight apps, and began counting the dead. Which really was useless because the answer was horrifyingly simple: all of them. No one in here had made it out alive.
Even for a demon of Darkness, this was a new low. Death in a neutral area. Death without honor.
My fists balled, bile creeping up my throat. Whoever had done this was despicable.
I looked back to my team. Nate and Rachel had already begun helping Avery’s team, though I worried for Rachel. She shouldn’t have to see this. She would have never gotten close to this side of the world if I hadn’t told her about it. We would have just learned about our powers on our own and that would have been the end of it, rather than joining the Fire Circle.
Krystin climbed down the stairs and walked a few steps toward what used to be the bar. We’d been here a week ago, asking Drew for help. Joking about how working here was dangerous for him. And now…
Krystin stopped short of the bar, her shoulders shaking. “He should have left like I told him to.” She hadn’t turned her head, but she stood close enough to me that the words couldn’t have been for anyone else.
I joined her, ten feet from what used to be the countertop. Alcohol still dripped down the back wall where bottles had been smashed, glass shattered. Whiskey and tequila, rum and vodka—all of the scents blended together, stronger at this short distance. Strong enough to temporarily block out the coppery smell of blood and what sm
oke remained.
“He made his own choice.” I doubted that was what she wanted to hear, but it was the truth. Not that I was one to talk about having sane reactions when family was involved. “He knew the danger he’d placed himself in, both working here and helping us recover that information about Shadow Crest.”
“And look where it got him,” Krystin snapped, her fists white-knuckling. “I asked him for information and he ended up dead. It’s my fault and mine alone.”
“Hang on,” I said, placing a hand on her arm. “You don’t know that what happened here tonight has anything to do with Shadow Crest. In fact, I’m pretty sure we decided it doesn’t.”
Krystin tore her arm out of my grasp. “That doesn’t change the facts. I asked him to track them down, we defeated them, and now this.” Her voice broke on the last word and her lip began to tremble as tears spilled down her face again. “I need to call his wife. I need to—need—” Krystin shook her head violently and backpedaled from the bar, walking toward where the front door to Hunter’s Guild used to be, and slammed through the wall that remained.
Then she was gone.
I wished I could blame this, all of it, on being just another part of the job. But nothing in training prepared you for a massacre like this.
My gaze wandered back to the bar, to where Drew lay smashed beneath the support beam. I couldn’t free his body on my own, but there was one thing I could do.
I walked to the closest window and ripped off the curtain lining it. Then I trailed back to Drew’s body and covered him before saying a prayer to any gods that might be listening.
“Protect him. Protect us all.”
Chapter 4
Krystin
Sunlight poured in through our living room window, shining against my closed eyelids. The sun was warm despite the snow covering the ground outside. It’d started snowing in Boston while we’d been out at Hunter’s Guild overnight. Luckily, one didn’t need to shovel anything when one could teleport. Not that I was feeling up to it anyway.
Telling Drew’s wife, Alicia, about his death and about the Guild attack nearly broke me all over again. And after relating the tragedy multiple times, even as Jaffrin sent out his own briefing to the Fire Circle, it never got easier. The Hunter’s Guild attack hadn’t been directed solely at us, but both Hunters and demonkind alike.
Still, Drew’s death had been my own fault.
I’d come back to the house before long, unable to be around my mother and cousins. At least there was one small reprieve from all the death: I didn’t have the luxury of grieving when a small war might lie on the horizon.
I opened one eye and peered across the coffee table to my other half. Well, not really my other half. Not romantically. Shawn was my prophesied buddy with whom I’d somehow supposedly save the world.
Right. That wouldn’t be happening. Not as long as Shawn remained magik-less.
Nate sat on the other side, the three of us making an awkward triangle. I’d laid out some crystals on the table. Incense wafted up from my burner, though it did nothing to help clear my mind.
It’d only been a week since we’d attacked Shadow Crest and rescued Riley, and already something major had happened. Anyone who went on denying this war between good and evil, between Darkness and the Powers, was coming now deserved whatever they got. Because when neutral points like Hunter’s Guild fell, so did every single other rule in the book.
“You sure you don’t feel anything?” I asked Shawn, but the question was more for Nate. Nate was an ether-shaper, which meant he could feel most ether-based magiks. He was part of the reason Giyano’s twisted demon power hadn’t affected me as much as it could have, since Nate had pulled some of the dark ether out of me.
Not enough, though. My magik was still dark. Altered. Twisted. We just didn’t know how much.
“Nothing,” both Nate and Shawn answered at the same time.
I rolled my eyes, leaned back from the table, and crossed my arms. “This is useless. Are you sure they got it right?”
Shawn shrugged and plucked a crystal from the table. “That’s a question for Jaffrin. My life was perfectly normal until a few weeks ago.”
“Join the club.” Until a few weeks ago, I’d worked alone and enjoyed it. Then Jaffrin had assigned me to Ben’s team and everything had changed. Now here I sat, waiting for Shawn’s magik to show up and help us fulfill a stuffy, centuries-old prophecy.
Everything about Shawn was a mystery, even after a week. His dark hair and brown eyes, his fantastic way with weapons. But he couldn’t so much as make a poof of magik appear.
The Alzan prophecy is fairly clear: one Son and one Daughter of the Powers will rise up and, with their combined power, save the city of Alzan from the darkest of shadows. Which I’d taken to mean the cianza that was probably at the city’s center. Because destroying a city on its own didn’t make sense. Lady Azar clearly wanted it for something. Cianzas were power, and she’d need that power to overtake her brother, Ammon, and claim Darkness’s throne from her father, Aloysius.
And if Cianza Boston was strong enough to take out all of New England if it exploded… I could only imagine the plane-destroying effects of Cianza Alzan going buh-bye.
Then Lady Azar could start again, ruler of whatever was left after the destruction. Meanwhile, the rest of us just wanted to live.
“How’d you even meet up with the Fire Circle, anyway?” I was sure this had been covered at some point over the past week, but nothing about Shawn’s story added up.
“I was here looking at colleges and got attacked,” he said. “Avery’s team rescued me. That’s when Jaffrin figured out who I was, at least regarding the prophecy.”
My scalp was suddenly itchy, like my brain had a built-in bullshit detector. “But how? How did he know?”
“How did he know with you?” Shawn countered.
I looked to Nate. Is this guy for real?
Nate shrugged as if he’d heard my question—an impossible thing.
Thanks, man.
“My father was killed by Giyano, a former Shadow Crest member, when I was a baby,” I said. “Giyano had left them once. Then he helped us take down Lady Azar a week ago. I always assumed something that happened after my father died—since Giyano was involved—led them to believe I’m the Daughter of Alzan.”
Shawn’s brow furrowed. “So you don’t have it?”
“Have what?”
“The birthmark,” he said, like I should know what he was talking about.
He rolled up the sleeve of his shirt and pointed to a small dot on the inside of his elbow. It was larger than a normal freckle but pale. I’d have missed it if he hadn’t pointed it out.
“It’s two letters,” he said. “So small and unrecognizable that I’d missed it for most of my life. I asked my parents; they didn’t know. And my brothers didn’t have it, either. Then Jaffrin zeroed in on the birthmark within minutes of meeting me. Like he’d been checking every new Hunter for it his entire career.”
“That I believe,” Nate said.
I rolled up the sleeve of my cardigan and inspected the inside of my elbow. Just like I thought. “Nothing. Look.” I stood and moved to Shawn’s side of the coffee table. “I don’t have that birthmark.”
But there was a small scar. I closed my eyes. “What the hell. They hid it.”
“What?” Nate asked.
I squeezed my eyes shut as anger rose within me. “The birthmark. If I did have one, my mother or Jaffrin hid it. When I was six, I fell off a bike and rolled into some pricker bushes. I have some small scars on my legs from the accident. My mother told me this mark on my elbow was from that day.”
Idiot. I couldn’t believe I’d trusted her word. That I’d never questioned it when I’d doubted her plenty of other times, especially when she’d made me join a Fire Circle team that lived mere miles from Cianza Boston.
“That’s how Jaffrin knew, then,” Shawn said. “It identifies us.”
“Screw Jaffri
n. And screw this obvious, super shitty identifier. I mean, if Darkness knew…” But of course they did. That was why my mother had cut my birthmark off in the first place. “Fucking hell.”
Shawn’s mouth twisted into a wry smile. “I guess you two don’t get along?”
“No. Not at all. I hadn’t talked to her for a few weeks, but then she became the only person capable of saving Ben’s son.”
And that was the last either of us would speak of it. Shawn knew by now not to ask, not because Ben having a son was a huge secret, but because of Riley’s magik.
Riley had the Power, a rare type of magik that allowed its user to simultaneously house both ether-based magik and elemental-based magik at the same time. Thousands of years ago, hundreds of people had had this ability, probably as some sort of balancing act between good and evil. But both sides had hunted those individuals down until few remained.
Riley was the first recorded case in hundreds of years, and because of that, Jaffrin and Ben had decided it was better to hide the nature of Riley’s magik from everyone except our team.
“I’m glad she was able to help with Ben’s son,” Shawn said. “How’s Ben doing, by the way?”
Ben had decided to leave Riley with Sandra for their own good, but from what I could tell, he wrestled with his decision every day. “Not well. I can’t imagine how hard that is.”
“Me either,” Shawn said. “I try to imagine if it’d been my brothers Lady Azar had taken, how I’d react. What I’d do. It’s not pretty.”
“We’ve all lost someone to Shadow Crest,” Nate said. “Thanks to Giyano specifically, actually.”
Shawn fell silent, looking down at his hands. “Sounds like we should get him, then.”
Like it wasn’t already on my list. Too bad my magik craved his, called out for Giyano’s twisted demonic power like a siren. Whatever he’d done to me in Shadow Crest’s lair, it’d been enough to tint my magik dark. To make me want more. And that terrified me. I’d spent my whole life killing demons of Darkness. It’d been me or them for longer than I could remember.
