Broken Angel (Book 1 in the Chronicles of a Supernatural Huntsman series)

by Shannon Lee Martin

  The schedule said to report to room 1273 at six o’clock in the evening on our second day of training. The clock on the wall in the mess hall read five fifty-two. I had no idea how far the room was, but my stomach twisted from a dreadful feeling that told me we wouldn’t make it. Holly, Atticus, Achilles, and I sped through the halls and followed the small plaques that pointed the direction to the various numbered rooms.

  After several turns and three backtracks, I was sure class had already started. None of us wore a watch, but it felt like we had been walking for over seven minutes. The door was closed when we found the room. It was made of solid wood with no window for us to peer inside. There was no telling if the instructor was already talking or not. Either way, we had to go in.

  Holly pushed the door open and every head turned to look. Ryker nudged his two buddies and they laughed quietly together. At least we knew we were in the right place. The instructor was nowhere to be found. The tension in my stomach released as I sat down on the foldable metal chair in the back row.

  When the door swung open, everyone’s heads turned again. Their jaws dropped. A strange man, like no one I had ever seen before, walked in. He had to duck his bald head to fit through the doorway. His muscular arms scraped the sides of the frame as he passed. He had a large body covered in black tribal ink that stood out like marker on a window. All he wore were black pants torn off at the knees. When he walked I swore I felt the floor shake.

  His enormous size wasn’t the only thing that made him stand out. It was his skin, which was a shade a blue I imagined electricity to look like—a mixture of cerulean and ice. But the longer I stared at him, wide-eyed, I noticed that it wasn’t his skin at all that made him such an odd color. It was what was underneath. Blue smoke was all his body seemed to contain. It swirled slowly under his translucent skin like a crystal ball.

  I couldn’t look away. What was he? Where did he come from? Was he our instructor or was he another evil being thrown into the room as a test, like the black dog had been? The last thought made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. I raised my hand to my necklace and twirled the wings between my fingers.

  “My name is Rashne. As you can tell I am not like you—I am Djin.” He had a thick accent and an inhumanly deep voice. He spoke slowly to stress every word that rolled off his blue tongue. “I am your Creatures and Beings instructor.”

  He paused and stared. Most of us didn’t dare move. We sat perfectly still in our cold metal chairs, waiting for his next words. The room was heavy with silence.

  “Let us begin, then,” he said as if satisfied with the mystified looks on our faces. “I would like you all to go around individually, stand up, and state your name, who your mentor is, and why you are here.” He looked over at the boy in the first row, one of Ryker’s loyal subjects.

  The boy used his thick hands to push himself up off the chair. Turning slightly toward the rest of us, his face was a complete blank. “Um, I’m Gordon Scott. My mentor is Gordon Scott…not me, my father.”

  A few of us chuckled. He really was thick, in more ways than one. His rounded stomach shook at he laughed along, though judging by the vacant look on his face he had no clue why.

  “And I’m here because I’m a descendant.” He sat back down with a proud smile on his face as if he had just recited the Gettysburg Address from memory.

  The next of Alexander’s followers shot up from his chair. His arms hung long at his side and, if I wasn’t mistaken, he was flexing them.

  “Lance Anders. My father’s Jamal Anders and I’m a descendant.”

  Holly snorted and leaned into me. “Oh, boy. Here we go,” she whispered.

  Ryker stood up, took a few steps toward the front, spun on his heel, and lifted his chin. “My name is Ryker Alexander. My father is Ignatius Alexander. You’ve probably heard of him from when he stopped the werewolf pack from terrorizing New York City in 1979. I’m a ninth generation descendant on my mother’s side and a twelfth generation descendant on my father’s side.”

  I was surprised he didn’t take a bow afterward. My eyes rolled so hard I thought they would pop out of their sockets. He sat down with an air of entitlement, one leg crossed over the other and a smirk on his angular face. It made me want to jump out of my chair and punch him in the nose. He didn’t lift so much as a finger or lose a ninety-year old grandma to earn his spot in the Chamber of Darkness. He probably never made a single sacrifice in his entire life.

  When it was Holly’s turn I smiled and looked up at her, but was slightly disappointed to hear her introduction was very similar to the others. The only difference was she said godmother instead of mother. My eyes fell as I shook my head.

  And then it was my turn.

  I took a breath, stood up, and saw everyone turn in their chairs to face me. “Hi, I’m Kamlyn Paige,” I said with a forced smile. “My mentor is Don Vander. He’s my neighbor back in Indiana.” There was judgmental snickers and whispering. I pushed forward. If I wanted them to respect me and understand why I was there, then I needed to be blunt. “I want to be a Huntsman because a demon murdered my son two weeks ago and I’m going to kill it.”

  The room was as quiet as a morgue. They all stared with their mouths hanging open. Holly turned to me with a sad and sympathetic face. Finally, I had gotten through to them. They all knew the price I paid to receive my spot in the Chamber.

  “So we’re all just supposed to take it easy on you because your kid died?”

  I didn’t have to look to know who said it. There was no one else as heartless as Ryker Alexander. Any chance he had at redeeming himself disappeared with those words.

  “You son of a—”

  “Good, that was good. Thank you, Miss Paige,” the instructor’s baritone voice interrupted.

  I sat back down in my chair harshly and folded my arms. My eyes locked on Ryker’s. He was smiling callously. I clenched my jaw and tightened my fists. His words wouldn’t be forgotten.

  The Djinn instructor walked up to where Ryker sat and towered over him. His arms folded across his chest. It was immensely intimidating on his massive frame. His ice-blue irises swirled with impatience.

  “If you ever talk to another one of my initiates like that again, I will have you banned from the Chamber for life,” he growled.

  The way Ryker sat slack in his chair with his arm draped over the back, I knew he hadn’t taken the threat seriously. “Yeah right. They’d never allow it. I’m twelfth generation, remember? I’m untouchable.”

  Rashne bent down and rested his hands on his knees so that his face was level with Ryker’s. His head was almost double in size. “I have been a member of the Chamber for almost six hundred years. Do not underestimate my leverage here, Mr. Alexander.”

  I couldn’t see his face, but Ryker’s posture stiffened and his head hung lower than usual. Inwardly, I was on my feet clapping and cheering. This was my favorite class by far and we hadn’t even learned anything yet. Any instructor that wasn’t in Ryker’s pocket was okay in my book—even if he was tall, blue, and somewhat terrifying to look at.

  “Listen up, all of you. This young woman here,” he pointed at me as he spoke in a booming voice. “She is not relying on nepotism to get her through training. She is the only one in this room with a valid reason for joining the Chamber and becoming a Huntsman. And I am willing to bet she will come out above the rest of you in the end. You people,” he sneered after his last word and paused. “You are going to have some hard lessons ahead of you. Mark my word.”

  It wasn’t the most cheerful way to start a class, but I was still on his side—and apparently he was on mine. Once Rashne turned his back Holly jabbed me in the ribs with her elbow. She smiled at me with all her teeth. Her green eyes sparkled as she laughed quietly.

  “Queen Kamlyn,” Achilles whispered and did an over-the-top seated bow.

  “Ruler of all the lowlifes,” Atticus mocked.

  I waved them off with a scowl as laughter danced on the tip of my t
ongue. “Oh, shut it,” I barked in a whisper.

  Ryker turned his head to see what all the laughing was about. We barely noticed as we whispered in our own exclusive group. All my worries about being behind everyone else in training lifted from my shoulders. Rashne’s words had a great impact on my state of mind. It was the first time I hadn’t felt lost since Danny left me.

  “We will start with the most basic of beings and the ways to get rid of them. It goes by many names—spirit, ghost, apparition—but don’t be fooled. They are all one and the same.”

  There was a loud puff of air from the front row. Ryker rolled his head back and pretended to snore. Rashne stopped and fixed the boy with a haunting glare. The muscles in his smoky arms rippled. Ryker and his two friends laughed as the rest of us looked on in anxious anticipation of another verbal thrashing.

  “Do you think this is all a joke, Mr. Alexander, Mr. Scott, Mr. Anders?”

  Ryker shrugged his shoulders while the other two sat rigid in their chairs.

  “Ghosts are child’s play. I’ve been banishing them since I was ten. We’re wasting our time just because some of us are new to this. We shouldn’t even be learning in the same class. It’s ridiculous,” Ryker ranted.

  “Child’s play as you say, Mr. Alexander, or not, there is always something new to learn, even in a subject one is thought to have mastered. Listen up and you may just learn something yourself.

  “These are troubling times for everyone. Alliances are shifting from the Light over to the Darkness more than we like to admit. Incidences like the one Miss Kamlyn had to go through are increasing in the human world at an alarming rate. It is our job as the Chamber of Darkness to protect, but we are slowly being overpowered. It is life and death out there every day now for Huntsmen. You can never be too prepared for the job at hand.”

  He ignored Ryker’s snarky comments for the rest of the few hours of class and continued on with his lesson about ghosts. Occasionally, I took in what he said, but mostly my mind was elsewhere. It wasn’t a great way to start the first lesson of the day, but I couldn’t control my wandering thoughts.

  His ominous words filled my head and wouldn’t leave. More unsuspecting mothers and fathers were losing their children as I sat there. More innocent children were having their lives stolen from them too early. It made my insides writhe. Determined now more than ever, I wanted to live up to Rashne’s words and be the best damn Huntsman they had ever seen.