The Hunter

by Jessica Gunn

  The Hunter

  A Hunter Circles Novella

  Jessica Gunn

  Copyright © 2017 Jessica Gunn

  All rights reserved.

  Cover design by Victoria Cooper Art

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  Contents

  About The Hunter

  World Key

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  The Hunted: Hunter Circles Series Book One

  A Sneak Peek of The Hunted, Book One of the Hunter Circles Series

  The Hunted - Chapter One

  Also by Jessica Gunn

  About the Author

  ABOUT THE HUNTER

  A Hunter Circles Novella

  I’m Ben Hallen and three months ago, I was struck by lightning.

  When I wake up from a coma, I discover I now have the power to control that lightning. My cousin Rachel also developed powers on the same night. At first, neither of us is sure what to make of the situation. But as we dig deeper into the origin of these powers, we discover a whole other half of the world, one filled with demons and the Hunters who kill them.

  But that’s just the start. Ever since my coma, everything has been different and my powers are the least of my worries. Now my pregnant girlfriend is being stalked by a demon, and I’m starting to wonder if the lightning strike three months ago was more than just an accident…

  To be the first to know when Book One of the Hunter Circles Series releases, join my newsletter.

  Chapter 1

  The cloudy sky made visibility on the water easier thanks to the lack of sun glare, but the darkening skies hadn’t been in the weather forecast either. Vertical clouds climbed high into the sky, their darkened bases crawling along the horizon. Wind kicked up, spraying lake water into my eyes. I squeezed them shut and blinked rapidly, trying to clear the droplets.

  “Dude, stop spacing,” Michael, my cousin, taunted from the other end of our boat. He smirked, a smug look for someone who’d forgotten to fill the tank with gas. Because of him, we’d had to row our way across the lake instead of using the motor.

  For a second, my mind drifted back to days like this long ago, here at the lake with my sister and cousins. Back before my parents had left us.

  “I’m not spacing; you’re just not rowing as fast as I am,” I said, chest heaving as though I were running the last twenty yards to a touchdown. “Let’s go, man.”

  We rowed faster and before we knew it we were in the middle of the lake. Michael and I slowed the boat to a swift glide. This was a tradition, going out on the lake for Amanda’s birthday. Ever since Amanda’s and my parents had died years ago, I’d tried to help her celebrate her birthday rather than remember their horrific accident. And since she was the youngest of us four, or especially because of it, we’d kept up with this tradition, no matter how slightly childish it was to escape the world by coming out here.

  I glanced over at Amanda, whose bright grin spread from ear to ear. “Having fun?”

  She nodded enthusiastically. “Yes. Best birthday ever.” She grabbed a bag from the floor of the boat and reached inside for the cupcakes we’d brought with us. Sweet scents wafted out of the open bag, overpowering even the lake water. “Cake time?”

  “After that workout? Hell yes,” Michael said. “Hand ’em over.”

  Rachel, Michael’s sister, laughed, her chuckle contagious. Amanda handed out the four huge cupcakes with vibrant-colored frosting piled high. I grinned again and dug bright pink birthday candles and a lighter out of my pocket. Once everyone had a cupcake, I stuck six candles into Amanda’s and lit them.

  “Happy sixteenth birthday,” I said to her, raising my voice over a sudden rough bout of wind. The skies darkened further, clouds doubling and folding over each other. Not good. “Mom and Dad would be proud of the person you’re becoming.”

  Amanda smiled up at me through windblown blonde hair. “You think so?” Tears brimmed in her eyes, but she didn’t let them fall. The wound in her heart that our parents had left when they died had scabbed over years ago.

  I nodded and nudged her shin with my foot. “I know so. Now, blow out the candles before the wind does.”

  Wind whipped Amanda’s blonde hair everywhere as she cupped her hand around the candles and blew them out.

  Rachel wrapped an arm around Amanda’s shoulder and squeezed her close. “Happy birthday, kid. We’ll party for real back at the house tonight.”

  “Are you kidding me?” Amanda asked, her blue eyes shining. “This is all I need. Right here. The four of us.”

  I was about to respond, my mouth hanging open, when thunder cracked in the sky above us. Clouds swirled, billowing into the tall towers that accompanied thunderstorms. A chill coursed its way through me as every hair on my arm stood on end. “Shit.” It was like the air had become electrified.

  Michael’s gaze snapped to mine. “I thought the forecast was favorable.”

  A drop of water dripped onto the tip of my nose, then my leg, creating a dark blue spot on my jeans. “Me too.”

  Rachel peered up at the clouds, now closer to black than slate grey. “We should get going.”

  Amanda frowned. “We’ve only been here for a few minutes.”

  Another rumbling roar rolled across the horizon.

  “Doesn’t matter,” Michael said. He shoved the cupcake into his mouth and wolfed it down. With his now-free hands, he picked up his oar and started rowing. “We need to get in before the storm hits. Out here is the last place we want to be.”

  Amanda glanced down at her cupcake and began picking at it, eating it a small piece at a time.

  “Hey.” I squeezed her shoulder. “It’s just a storm. It’ll pass and then we can come back out, okay?” The last thing I wanted was for her to be sad on her birthday.

  Amanda nodded. “Okay.”

  I inhaled my own cupcake and helped Michael pick up the pace back toward shore. But no matter how fast we rowed, the skies seemed to darken impossibly quick. Lightning streaked across the horizon, followed two seconds later by a clap of thunder so loud, our boat shook.

  “Shit,” I said, slamming the oar into the water faster on each row. “Michael.”

  “I know,” he said, fear creeping across his eyes. If the thunder was this loud, that meant lightning was close enough to strike.

  We rowed faster as thunder and lightning shattered across the sky. Wind swept rain into our faces until the light drizzle had become a downpour. What if we didn’t make it back in time? Would we get hit? The lake wasn’t that deep if we capsized, but that wasn’t what worried me.

  If lightning struck the boat, would we all die?

  I swallowed down my racing thoughts and zeroed in on one thing, just like all my football coaches had taught me. One thing. One focus. One play.

  Get this boat to the shore. Now.

  We weren’t that far—just over a hundred yards. We could probably even run through the shallow water at the end. No, Ben. That’s how you get electrocuted. Duh.

  I rubbed my eyes on my forearm and kept rowing. A strike of lightning
hit my grandparents’ small pier, the one we’d jumped off of as kids. The wood cracked, exploding with the force of lightning. Pieces of wood sailed through the air, some landing on the sand and some in the water.

  “Ben!” Amanda shrieked.

  Seventy yards now. Not far at all. God, how did my running backs do this all game long? I’d never been so thankful to be the one throwing the football than I was right then.

  “We’re almost there,” I called over my shoulder. “We’ll make it, I promise.”

  As I said those words, the brightest, closest flash of lightning I’d ever witnessed came crashing out of the sky in slow motion. The streak of light snaked out from the clouds, corkscrewing jagged paths across the space between it and us, the scent of smoke and ozone trailing behind it. It was like we were squaring off on the line of scrimmage and the lightning strike had just jutted a finger at me, calling me out, trying to knock me off my game. I gritted my teeth as if I could outrun this, as if it were another player and I knew I could outplay him.

  But lightning wasn’t another quarterback. Lightning was a force of nature, and when the realization hit me that we were in its path and weren’t going to get away, when that awful pit in my stomach grew and dropped into the water below, leaving me breathless and petrified, I froze.

  This was it.

  This is how it ends.

  Lightning struck the boat. The sound of wood splitting and exploding filled my ears. Sharp pains in my legs and arms radiated outward from the impact of lightning or wood shrapnel or both. I wasn’t sure. My whole world went black, my body electrified, my mind and skin and very soul lighting afire, making me feel both alive and numb and dead all at the same time.

  Then I was flying, rain spattering my face before my body made an impact with the water. It sizzled around me like I’d been on fire or heated, but the electric feeling making me unable to open my eyes had stopped.

  But I couldn’t move, couldn’t stop the water around me from floating over my back and chest, above my ears, over my eyes and…

  The world sank into a watery, black, numb sleep.

  Chapter 2

  My lungs seized, moving water and bile from my chest to my mouth and out. Something gritty and wet chafed against my hands, my back. Sand. Wet clothes.

  What? What’s going on? What happened?

  I tried to open my eyes, but they didn’t budge. Tried again. Nothing. Again and again, but no light appeared, no images to fill in the blanks.

  Black was all I saw, a darkness so encompassing, I doubted I’d ever find my way out without a flashlight or guide.

  Slowly, sounds echoed in the distance, bouncing off unseen walls like sunlight. As if I was present in life but not in my mind, as if I were an entity floating, an observer who couldn’t see, only hear, as life went on around me.

  Someone or something touched my face and my hands and shoved at my chest. Pain burst through the black but only darkness stared back at me, though it lifted with every compression as consciousness seeped into my mind, black and numb.

  Another compression. Another slight lift in darkness, like adding white paint to black and seeing the first hint of grey.

  It radiated now on the horizon. A pale orange daybreak. A sign that I might find my way out of the darkness, if only I could move.

  “He’s breathing.”

  Obviously I was. I’d be dead if I weren’t.

  Dread shot through me, sent pinpricks of feeling into my feet. Had I died? Death was a lot darker than I thought it’d be. But it’d sure explain this paralysis of which I seemed to be a victim.

  “Ben! Ben, wake up!”

  That voice, that scared, terrified shrill scream. It sounded familiar, but I couldn’t place it. Years of memory and recognition were locked away, tucked somewhere behind this darkness.

  “Please, Ben.” They were crying now.

  Crying and crying. All night. Every night for the first two weeks of her life. It was an old memory, I sensed that. Years long past.

  Think Ben. Think.

  Then it came, a light roaring back to me through the void. My sister.

  “Ben!” Amanda screamed, clear as day.

  Suddenly, I felt her hand in mine, squeezing. Her shout shook my void prison, rattled me enough to force feeling into a single finger. I wiggled my pinkie, wrapping it around her hand the way she’d done to me when she was first born.

  I hung on as tightly as I could, swearing to myself that I wasn’t afraid of the dark. If Amanda was there, this darkness would end. Wouldn’t it?

  But as soon as that thought registered, the void swallowed me whole again.

  I waded through the darkness alone. Longer this time. Every now and then, something broke through. Amanda’s words. Orders about resuscitation or oxygen. Something about a lightning strike.

  Piecing together what was happening in the world without me didn’t come easily. I remembered the lake, but not what had happened after. And everytime I got close to figuring out how to fit two pieces of memory together, they both sifted through my fingers like sand.

  Sand.

  The pier—the explosion from the lightning strike! Was that what the voices in the dark were trying to say? Had I been struck by lightning?

  My mind poked the thought, tried to knead it into a form that made sense. Me. A lightning strike. How was I still alive? Barely was, by the sound of it. And why couldn’t I open my eyes?

  “He’s crashing again!” cried a voice from the void.

  I reached out around me, trying to feel for their body or form, to look for light on the horizon, but only an empty blackness without end enveloped me, fearsome in its vastness. Where the darkness began and ended was anyone’s guess. A coldness swept through my mind, leaving every part of me cold and hollow. Empty and alone except for my thoughts.

  “Clear!”

  A shock rocked me, shook the darkness like a blender, and in a single moment, I saw it all.

  The four of us on the rowboat, the lightning strike zapping me. All of us flying out into the air, crashing into the water. Rachel sinking, dropping through the murky water like a stone. Michael helping Amanda to a piece of flotsam before diving down after Rachel as I watched, unmoving but floating on the surface. Until my body sank. Until all consciousness was lost.

  “Try again. 300 volts. Clear!”

  Shadows swam in the darkness. There must have been light somewhere. Or I was nowhere. I didn’t know anymore. But the shadows haunted me, floating above my head like dark clouds in a nighttime sky.

  “A coma,” one of the shadows said. “It’s impossible to know the damage until he’s awake.”

  It’s bad. That was what I wanted to tell them. The damage from the lightning strike was so bad that not even the light giving life to these shadows was enough to pull me from the void I now rested in. A coma. But their voices still drifted through. No light, no touch, but sound. A steady beeping. The click from a pen. Sobs.

  “Ben,” someone cried. Amanda. “I’m here, Ben. Wake up. Please just wake up.”

  I’m here! I shouted, but my mouth didn’t move, the words barred from leaving my mind. I’m still here.

  “We need to get you checked out, miss.”

  “He’s my brother,” Amanda said, more loudly this time. “He’s all I have left. I’m not leaving him.”

  “I get that. But you must understand, he’s not going anywhere for a while,” said the doctor. Or nurse. They all sounded the same.

  The conversation volleyed back and forth. At some point, it stopped. All I heard, all I felt, was frustration.

  I was still here. Alive. Mentally present.

  But I couldn’t wake up. The void wouldn’t let me go.

  “…It’s been a week. They finally discharged me last night.”

  I startled. After Amanda had left, this was the first voice to break through the void since I’d fallen into it.

  At least it was another familiar one: my cousin Rachel. But she couldn’t hear me. No one ev
er did.

  “We should have turned back sooner,” Rachel said. She sobbed. “I know the storm wasn’t in the weather forecast. But as soon as those clouds rolled in…”

  There’s no way we could have known, I thought. And anyway, I blame myself.

  “We all could have died out there,” she continued, ignoring my words from the void. “Michael and Amanda checked out fine. But you… You need to wake up.”

  I’m trying. But no matter what I did or how far I ran into the void, no end came. There was no end to the darkness.

  But then something warm caressed me, a breeze in the night carrying a hint of sun. Fingers grabbed hold of my hand and squeezed.

  “If you can feel this or hear me, please, Ben, do something. Squeeze back. Open your eyes.”

  I shook the hand holding mine, but the motion slowed, like I was trying to shake hands with a massive giant. The movement was almost painful and yet I’d barely moved a millimeter.

  Rachel didn’t take her hand away. “It’s okay. I’ll keep visiting you. Every single day, all day, until you wake up. Our parents made Amanda go back to school, but…”

  She never spoke the last words of that sentence. I had a good feeling I knew what she was going to say.

  The doctors didn’t expect me to wake up.

  With every day that passed, more sensations made it past the wall around the void and into my mind. But there was no way to count how much time had passed with me pacing around in the darkness alone.

  Rachel visited often, holding my hand and not leaving my side. Sometimes she read me books, which normally I hated, but it made the void less lonely. Other times, she sat there, silent as she held my hand. Her presence became my only anchor to reality.