The Hunted: Hunter Circles Series Book One

by Jessica Gunn

Rachel cringed. “Let’s forget that espresso incident ever happened.”

  “Oh?” I said. “This sounds good.”

  “I was nine,” she admitted as our food came. The waiter passed out the plates, then left. “Someone should have hidden the espresso, but they didn’t.”

  “She ran around all hyper, destroying the house,” Ben said. “Then she tried feeding it to my sister.”

  “No,” she said. “No, I did give Amanda some. You don’t remember her freaking out?”

  He squinted, as though the memory was too far off on the horizon to remember clearly. “No, I guess not.”

  “Sounds a lot like the first time I drank,” I said. “Let us not speak of it.”

  Nate snorted, as if recounting his own terrible experience. “Agreed.”

  Dinner went on with more conversation and laughter than I would have thought possible the night I’d met them. We might even be becoming friends. But I’d never been good at making friends, never mind keeping them, so I didn’t want to invest too much into something that might be fleeting.

  Naturally, that’s when it all went wrong.

  As our waiter came by to clean up our plates, I glanced out the window. The sun had started setting a half hour ago, and now it dipped below the buildings in the area. Oranges and pinks traipsed across the sky with their last evening breaths. Below them, across the street and covered in a shadow of darkness, was a woman walking with her son—and three men trailing behind them.

  From this distance, there was no way to confirm their demonic status, but given we were in Salem and it was almost nighttime…

  I scooted my chair back and stood. “Might have something.” I dug into my pocket and withdrew a twenty to cover my bill. “I’m going to check it out.”

  Ben followed my gaze, locking on to the woman who might need help. Even if they weren’t demons, we were more than equipped to take down anyone looking to cause trouble. You know, until the cops showed up.

  “No, we all will.” He threw down the rest of the money for our bill. “Hope everyone was done.”

  We left the restaurant and crossed the street, swerving around groups of people and the street performers. As the night came in, the crowds had thinned, people going off to join ghost tours or return home. Not us. Nighttime was when our real work started.

  I kept eyes on the woman and her son the entire way, watching as they crossed block after block, then turned down an alleyway I knew contained a parking lot. The trio of potential demons followed them.

  “No one use their magik,” Ben said, as if reading my thoughts. “Let’s keep the knives put away too.”

  “Aye, aye.” I mock-saluted before picking up the pace to a brisk walk. We rounded the corner behind the pair right as the little boy cried out.

  Ben hauled past me. The trio of muggers—not demons, I realized, as they turned to me with regular-colored eyes and no demonic auras—spun on us. One drew a gun.

  “Stop right there,” he said. He stood barely five feet away.

  Ben lifted his hands in surrender. “Hey, we’re not going to hurt you.”

  “Back off!” the mugger shouted before pointing the weapon at the child. “All of you. Dump your pockets or it’s over.”

  His two friends looked at each other, then inched toward the parking lot. To escape. Hah. Some loyalty. They took a few steps, then broke into a sprint. By the time Rachel and Nate had joined us in the alleyway, the mugger was watching his friends run away.

  I took the opening and rushed the guy, knocking his arm up so that even when he fired the weapon, the bullet went off above both the kid’s head and his mother’s. I jammed my elbow up into the mugger’s face. Ben charged the guy and pushed him up against one of the brick walls.

  “Thank you,” the woman uttered, tugging her son back toward the crowded street for safety. “Oh god. Mason.” She knelt down to her son. “Are you okay?”

  “Yes, Mom,” he said. He nestled into her embrace. “They stopped them.”

  But then they both looked up at me and Ben with deep burgundy eyes.

  Chapter 14

  BEN

  I grabbed Krystin’s arm before she swung or reached for her knife. Whether out of pity for the boy or fear of what power these demons might wield, I wasn’t sure. But seeing a kid with demonic eyes froze my body four times over like I’d become part of an iceberg.

  “Don’t,” I told Krystin.

  Krystin tensed but otherwise didn’t move.

  “Thank you,” the boy said. “They were scary.”

  Hah. That’s rich. “You’re welcome.” I gestured behind my back, where the mother and her son couldn’t see, for Rachel and Nate to back off. There was no way we’d go after these two alone in a busy area. Even if it’d been our orders to patrol, to take out any demons, I didn’t know if I had it in me to take away a child’s life or to watch his eyes as his mother died.

  No. I definitely didn’t have it in me, not when Riley could just as easily be this kid, even with the age difference. But something nagged at me, some small bit of recognition or hope or… something. As much as I searched my brain for the answer, none came.

  Krystin stayed still, waiting for my move. I stepped back toward the main street. She followed.

  “That was kind of you,” the woman said, her eyes meeting mine. To her credit, she didn’t even drop her gaze to my waist to look for a Fire Circle knife. Still, she had to know. A group of twenty-somethings chasing down muggers in Salem alleyways right before All Hallows’ Eve wasn’t exactly normal.

  I nodded. “We’ll be on our way if you’re on yours.”

  The boy looked up at his mother, his dark red eyes shining, before turning to Krystin. “And thank you, too, Miss. It’s nice to see family.”

  Krystin’s hands clenched into fists. “We’re not family, kid. Not by a long shot.”

  “We better go,” the boy’s mother cut in, too quickly. Like she was covering up for the boy’s words. “Before we’re attacked again. Come along now, Mason.”

  I held on to Krystin with all I had, not speaking until the mother and her son were long out of view. Krystin’s jaw worked as she watched them go. Her lungs heaved deep breaths.

  “Who was that?” Rachel asked as she and Nate rejoined us in the alleyway. “Why’d he call you family?”

  “We’re not family,” Krystin said through gritted teeth.

  “Why did we let them go?” Nate asked.

  I turned on him. “Because unlike Darkness, we’re not monsters. We don’t kill children, demonic or not.”

  “He’s not a demon,” Krystin muttered. “She was, but not him. Not originally. Ember magik seeped off of him, all wild and uncontrollable. It’s a good thing we didn’t end up getting into a fight. I’m not sure that even with all of us we could have taken down an untrained, emotional Ember witch. God—what’s wrong with me? I didn’t even see their auras!”

  So that was what the kid had meant by family. They weren’t blood-related, but all witch lines came directly from the Powers. A family of sorts, I supposed. And out of the three lines, Ember witches were the most like demons, magik-wise.

  “What was she doing with an Ember witch?” Nate asked. “Demons don’t go around hoarding witches, last I checked.”

  “It could have been her son,” Rachel offered. “Nothing in the book says demons can’t have children.”

  Or that demon children can’t have human parents. The thought chilled me to the core. My lungs seized around the idea that Riley might have been turned into a demon. He was only a child!

  A gong rang in my head, so loud I couldn’t believe I hadn’t made the connection before. I looked down the alley, but the woman and her son were already gone. Probably via teleportante.

  “Dammit,” I hissed.

  “What?” Rachel asked.

  “That kid she was with. He’s on the Fire Circle’s missing persons board. Mason Whitmore. He was taken at age five.” He’d be twelve or so now. I should know. I’d spent
hours studying the board, looking at Riley’s picture. I’d just failed another one of those missing kids. “Son of a bitch.”

  “We should get out of here,” Krystin said. “We’ve got a long-ass drive ahead of us. Not to mention this is clearly some political hotbed of a mess right now. We of all people shouldn’t be here.” But I noticed her hands shaking at her sides. Whatever that encounter had been about, it’d done a number on Krystin. And why hadn’t she seen their auras?

  “It’s only like an hour ride,” Rachel said.

  But Krystin’s hands shook so badly, they looked like they might break off and fly away. She held one wrist with the other hand and placed them both behind her back. “I just need to get out of here. That kid gave me the creeps.”

  “Why?” I asked. “He’s a missing Fire Circle member.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know. It’s something about this place. This very spot, I think.” She paused, looking down at the ground, then up at the sky. “I’ve met Ember witches before. Trained with them even. But that Mason kid—he’s incredibly powerful, so much so that he didn’t freak out about the mugger. He knew he could have taken him out, but we’d done it for him. Even if we’d tried to save Mason from that demon, he might have fought us because of his love for his mom, and we wouldn’t have survived.” Krystin bent down and laid a hand on the pavement of the alleyway. “But there’s more.”

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  She glanced up at me. “I can’t explain it, but I feel attached to this place. Connected somehow, by someone or something. And that kid started it.”

  Oh, great. “Like you said, he’s a kid. A powerful one, sure. But a child nonetheless.”

  “I don’t think it really has to do with—” Krystin’s head snapped back, her eyes closed, and she stiffened. A few moments passed where nothing happened before she relaxed and opened her eyes again. They flashed white in the briefest of moments before returning to their normal color.

  “What just happened?” I asked.

  “Vision,” Krystin ground out. Her eyes narrowed, her brow furrowing. “I get them sometimes. It’s an inherited Blackwood trait. Turns out Lady Azar was a real bitch to her own people. That was awful.”

  “How?” I asked. “I mean, we know she’s a horrible person, but…”

  Rachel knelt beside her and rested a hand on her shoulder. “What did you see?”

  Krystin stood, shivering, and wrapped her arms around her middle. She shook her head. “Not now. Not here. Let’s go.”

  A bloodcurdling scream filled the cold alleyway, so loud and so high-pitched—and so familiar—that it ran a chill up my spine. It had come from Essex Street, where the musicians were. I turned toward it, searching out its source. But it couldn’t be, could it?

  No.

  It’d been a scream from another little boy. One I hadn’t heard since the day he’d been kidnapped.

  A scream that sounded like Riley’s.

  Chapter 15

  KRYSTIN

  The scream caught in my ears and turned my blood ice cold. A kid should never scream like that. No one should ever be hurt in any of the ways that might have caused that type of cry for help.

  Ben tore off into the road, the rest of us on his heels. “Riley!”

  “Ben, wait!” I called after him.

  He didn’t so much as throw up a middle finger in response or ask why I’d bother trying to stop him when his own flesh and blood was in trouble. He kept sprinting through the streets to follow the scream.

  A scream no one else seemed to hear except for us. That was the only explanation for why life went on as normal for seemingly every other tourist in the area. No one moved to intervene, to save a child from pain. No one even batted an eye.

  Trap, my mind sang. Obviously, it was a trap. But watching Ben run through the crowd, I realized there was no stopping him. I just had to be ready to fight when the ambush started.

  “Daddy, help!” the screams continued. “Save me!”

  “I’m coming!” Ben shouted back. That caught people’s attention.

  But… didn’t Ben say Riley was only a few weeks old when Shadow Crest had taken him? He wouldn’t have known any words, never mind remembered what his father sounded like.

  “Ben,” I called. “Wait a second. Think about this.”

  That time his middle finger did fly. Rachel caught up to me and shook her head. Looks like we’re going into whatever trap Shadow Crest has set for us.

  Eventually, we stopped outside a giant abandoned building on the edge of town. The sun had set completely now, shining against a wall of old, broken windows and missing stone bricks.

  I tugged out my phone from my pocket and turned on the flashlight app. “We go in slow. If we rush, they’ll just kill us.”

  “He’s in there,” Ben hissed. “I’m not—”

  Rachel placed herself between us and held her cousin’s face. “Think, Ben.” He shook his head, but she held her ground. “I know you don’t want to hear it, but this is one hundred percent a trap. If we rush in, if we get ourselves killed—what good will that do for Riley? How can he live in a world without his father?”

  “How can I live in a world without him?” Ben asked. He withdrew his Fire Circle knife and willed lightning to collect in his other hand. “Lights off, Krystin. We’re going in guns blazing.”

  I swallowed down my anger. In his place, knowing my kidnapped son was on the other side of this wall and utterly surrounded by demonic captors, I wasn’t sure I’d have been able to keep my cool, either. “Ben, please,” I tried again. “This is a stupid idea.”

  His eyes flared, nostrils blowing wide. “Then stay here. Either be a part of this team or don’t, Krystin. I don’t care.”

  “Yeah, obviously,” I hissed, getting in his face. Anything to make him see reason. “You’re about to charge us headfirst into an unknown situation. There could be a dozen Shadow Crest demons in there. I don’t know, maybe even Aloysius himself. Do you really want to risk that?”

  Ben sucked in several heaving breaths that dragged his shoulders up and down in the air, his face growing red and blotchy. “Yes. I fucking do. Now get out of my way.” Ben knocked us aside and shoved open the front door with his shoulder.

  Nate hurried behind. “I’m not letting him go in on his own.”

  I turned to Rachel, an eyebrow raised. She shrugged and stepped toward the door.

  “Really?” I asked her. “This is a trap.”

  “He’s my cousin,” she said. “I’m not leaving him behind.”

  “And he’s going to get us all killed.”

  She shook her head slowly. “Doesn’t matter. Family first.” She chased Nate and Ben into the building.

  Call me crazy. Blame it on my father dying early if you wanted. But what good was it to put family first if they were being used to lure you and three others to their certain deaths?

  Maybe I’d just never trusted anyone that much. Maybe I’d never loved anyone that much before. At least one of those was true.

  I followed them into the building. In a former life, it might have housed apartments or offices. I couldn’t tell in the darkness, illuminated only by Ben’s lightning-lantern up ahead. They moved slowly, Nate behind him holding up a glowing block of ether. I gripped my Fire Circle blade in my left hand, ready to fight but hoping to god we didn’t have to. Because the farther into the building we went, the deeper a sense of dread dug into my mind and body. My limbs grew sluggish, my mind foggy. Whatever was here—whoever was here—they were powerful. Which meant they had to, absolutely, be part of Shadow Crest.

  “Daddy!”

  The scream rang out through the otherwise dark, quiet building. Ben’s lightning created shadows that danced on the walls, keeping me perpetually on edge. Every single shadow looked like a demon, moved like that shadow-shifter from the other night.

  With every passing moment, I expected a demon to appear. None did. But Riley’s screams continued echoing througho
ut the space. We followed them up two flights of stairs and down a hall into an old office space still littered with cubicles and old computers.

  “Daddy!” shouted a happy voice. A happy Riley, who minutes ago, was screaming in terror. “Daddy, you’ve come to save me!”

  Ben whipped around, holding out his lightning-filled hand to light up the room. “Riley? Riley, where are you?”

  How does he remember you, Ben? Think!

  But Ben was all muscle and action and emotion—which worked fine on the football field. Except the world wasn’t a stadium and the fight between Good and Evil, between the Hunter Circles and Darkness’s Empire, wasn’t a game.

  “Daddy!”

  That time the cry came from the far corner. It was followed by a shrill laugh, a cackling that permeated the room and churned my stomach. I looked in the direction of the voice and saw dancing shadows. No, not shadows. A green and purple aura, whipping about and striking against walls. Ben’s lightning glinted off metal hanging just in front of it. A Shadow Crest pendant.

  “Ben, no!” I shouted as he approached the person. Only that was no person. “Don’t!”

  The small figure sprang up, laughing in Riley’s baby voice as if they’d strapped a speaker to their mouths. But no. Not a speaker. A voice-shaper. An ether magik user.

  They reached out and punched Ben in the chest. He soared over me and back into a filing cabinet.

  I jumped in and traded blows with the demon, adding power to each hit with my telekinesis. Blow for blow until we separated far enough for Nate to throw a block of ether between us. Its green-outlined form plowed into the voice-shaper demon and pinned them against a wall.

  I looked over my shoulder. Ben sat slumped against the upturned filing cabinet, out absolutely cold.

  Rachel stormed past me as Nate held the demon to the wall. “Where’s the real Riley?” she demanded, knife at his throat.

  The demon sputtered a laugh. “Not here, Hunter. Try again.”

  She wound her fist back and clocked him right in the nose. Blood spurted across his face as his head fell. She tapped Nate on the shoulder. “Let’s go. Drop him and get Ben.” Who was still unconscious. He couldn’t even stay awake long enough to hit his son’s attacker.