by Jessica Gunn
Table of Contents
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
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
The Traitor
Hunter Circles Series: Book Two
Jessica Gunn
Copyright © 2017 Jessica Gunn
All rights reserved.
Cover design by Deranged Doctor Design
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 Traitor
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
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
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World Key
Also by Jessica Gunn
About the Author
ABOUT THE TRAITOR
I’m Krystin Blackwood, and one week ago my father’s murderer courted me with dark magik.
I’m still dealing with the effects of Giyano’s power and no amount of demon hunting seems to get rid of it. Never mind that I’ve been tasked with training Shawn, the newest member of our team of Hunters and the other half to the Alzan prophecy.
But Boston has bigger problems. After an attack at Hunter’s Guild, a place of neutrality and peace in this war, leaves countless dead on both sides, no place in the city is safe. And the only clue to the perpetrator points directly at the Fire Circle’s most-wanted and most powerful criminal.
If my team can’t track them down, the demon might destroy the Fire Circle… and the entirety of Boston with it.
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Chapter 1
Ben
The demons in this area of town had been given one final warning: get out. Sure, the Fire Circle was led by an often-vague man, but he wasn’t inarticulate. Jaffrin had ordered the demons to move—end of story. Their den sat dangerously close to Cianza Boston, a geological magik point where forces of good and evil converged peacefully. Unless, of course, one side’s magik grew more powerful than the other and disrupted the balance. Now, it was up to us and the Fire Circle’s other teams of Hunters to keep the cianza from tilting.
“Let’s make this quick.” I pushed up my sleeves as my team and I crossed the street, then pulled out my knife from the sheath behind my back. “In and out; minimal chance for anyone to notice us.”
Rachel snorted. “More like you want to get back in time for the game.” My cousin glanced up at me with a smirk.
While it was true—football junkie, guilty as charged—that wasn’t my reason for hurrying us along tonight. Unlike the rest of my team, I had a second job assignment.
In the days since leaving my son, Riley, with his mother, Sandra, after retrieving him from Lady Azar’s clutches, I’d taken all the extra solo jobs Jaffrin had on his plate. It wasn’t normal and Jaffrin knew exactly what I was doing, and what I was trying to avoid—stagnation, even just a week of it—but he let me go anyway. Good thing, too, because after being home for longer than twelve hours without a patrol or solo Hunting job, I’d started getting on everyone’s nerves with my restlessness. One could only train for so long.
“Rachel’s right,” Krystin cut in, returning my thoughts to the task at hand. “I shouldn’t be this close to the cianza, guys. Neither should Shawn for that matter, magik or not. I’m surprised Jaffrin okayed this at all.”
“We weren’t supposed to be chasing these guys,” I said. “The demons were ordered to move out a week ago.” But one of our Hunters had caught them still in the area, hence our mission tonight.
When peaceful requests of removal went ignored, the Fire Circle had had no choice but to back it up with a show of power. And in this case, that meant Jaffrin had had to send us, one of the few teams that were made up of nearly all magik-users. And with my lightning, Krystin’s telekinesis, Rachel’s affinity for water, and Nate’s ether-shaper abilities, we could handle a lot.
“Is this something that happens often?” Shawn asked.
He was the newest member of our team. And, admittedly, I hadn’t been around enough to get to know him. Nate and Krystin had taken charge of training him after his graduation into the Hunter Circles last month. Avery’s team had reportedly found him nearly dead on Boston’s streets after a demon attack. And sometime during his training period thereafter, Jaffrin had discovered Shawn’s true destiny.
Shawn was the “other half” of the saviors listed in Alzan’s mysterious prophecy, Krystin being the first. Supposedly, two would come forth from the Powers to save the ancient city of Alzan should Darkness attack again, as they had thousands of years ago. And until Lady Azar had tried turning Riley into a living power conductor, I hadn’t believed the prophecy might be true. But Lady Azar’s vile desire to use Riley had proved that not only was the city real and in danger, but that Krystin and Shawn had very little time left to fulfill that prophecy.
Which first meant finding the magik Shawn was destined to have but evidently didn’t possess. Not even a single drop of his blood or spirit was magikal.
I nodded to Shawn as we approached the dark building, all cement on the first two floors with full glass windows rising to the roof above it. “Demons don’t like being told what to do at all, much less by Jaffrin.”
“Funny because neither do I,” Krystin said as she tugged out her three-piece sword and snapped it into place beneath the shadows cast by the skyscraper.
I shot her a look. “Ignore Krystin’s penchant for insubordination.”
Krystin barked a laugh. “Please, Sparky. Like you love Jaffrin any more than I do.”
Nate cleared his throat. He held up an open palm. Huh. His ether-shaping abilities must have been invisible. His magik had grown under Krystin’s tutelage over the past month. I knew it was Jaffrin’s directive she train us in the magikal arts since Nate was the only one who had received outside training, but I hadn’t realized how much she’d done until just now. Most ether-shapers, demons or not, couldn’t make the ether they wielded invisible, not totally.
“Think we should get a silent move on?” Nate asked.
“Seriously,” Rachel said, rolling her eyes. “At this rate, you’ll scare them away with your bickering.”
Bickering. It seemed that was the only way Krystin and I got along for any length of time, but it suited us well.
I took up position beside a side entrance to the buil
ding. The demon den would be somewhere inside, probably toward the center of the highest floor. Sure, they’d set up shop nearly on top of Cianza Boston, but they couldn’t have been stupid enough to stay where they might have a direct connection to it.
Shawn had nearly been killed by demons in a scenario similar to this not long ago—something about visiting Boston with college friends, getting lost, and being confronted by demons looking for a quick hit of human energy. I glanced over at him now, but he showed no signs of panic. Which was good. Because after Krystin’s intense addition to the team, I wasn’t sure I could deal with someone scared of demons.
I leaned against the brick wall. Cold stone bit through my layers of clothing. Damn winter. The cold seeped through everything. I cupped my right hand and called to my power, growing a ball of lightning so large, the sparks crackling around it reached up to my shoulders and face. The power didn’t hurt me, though. It was as if I’d become immune to lightning completely since the accident that had given me this power.
Touching my left hand to the door, I looked up at my team. “Ready to move?” They nodded, readying their Fire Circle blades and magik. “Then let’s get this over with. On three.”
I counted us down, and on my mark, I pressed my lightning hand to the exit door. The door snapped into a dozen pieces, wood and metal splintering with the smell of ozone, and shot into the building. I charged in after it, feet crushing splices of wood underneath them.
Shouts permeated the air as we rushed their first-floor nest. Idiots. I ran headlong into the first demon, grabbing him around the middle and tugging the big guy to the ground. He looked human, save for the burgundy color of his eyes and the magik lying within. The magik that’d twisted his soul dark and extended his lifetime.
Cinnamon scent wafted in the air around us, mixing with sweat and increasing moisture from Rachel’s attacks. She carried a special water canister backpack on her shoulders that contained water for her to draw from. And right now, that water had turned into ropes that strangled two female demons at once.
In my moment of distraction, the demon beneath my body had grabbed on to my shoulders and dug his fingers in roughly to try dislodging me. I grunted against his inhuman strength but held on long enough to call lightning to my fingertips and channel it into his skin. The demon’s eyes widened in pain as his body convulsed beneath mine.
A loud demon roar vibrated in my ears. I glanced over my shoulder. Another demon charged me—a woman this time—with a ring of cement rocks and dirt encircling her hand. Fantastic. An earth-elemental magik, essentially the direct opposite of mine.
I hopped off the demon below me, who was still convulsing, and summoned more lightning to my hand and into a sword shape this time. But as the woman and I rushed each other, something sent her flying abruptly from her path to me and into the nearest wall. A sickening sound of bones crunching beneath dead weight reached my ears and I cringed as I looked for the source of the attack. Friend or foe?
Ah, Krystin.
She danced with a few demons, her sword blade slicing through the air and into their bodies. Deep red blood seeped from her current target as he stumbled, dazed. She kicked him in the chest and against a pillar before reaching into her pocket and retrieving a cedo match. Krystin struck it against her pants and threw it onto the demon. His body immediately burned with a mauve wave of power, incinerating into cinders within seconds.
It confirmed what I already thought: these guys were powerful. Which was about the only reason I could think of why they’d disregarded Jaffrin’s multiple attempts at peaceful displacement.
I nodded a thank you at Krystin for the assist, but her eyes went wide. I turned back just in time to watch the woman launch off the wall, create a pillar of cement to use as a booster, and fly my way.
“Are you kidding me?” I hissed. I swiped a wide arc through the air with my hand, calling lightning to trail behind it, then rushed forward. If I managed to knock away the cement pillar—even a millimeter—she might lose it entirely.
I sent the lightning on its way, the electricity causing the hairs on my neck and arms to rise as it snapped across the distance between us. The demon woman watched the path, but her only move to stop it was to push faster.
My lightning hit and disconnected her from the pillar, but she jumped off and dove at me, a dagger in her hand. I knocked her arm away and took the brunt of the fall, unable to dodge, and we rolled with the impact. Over and over until our twisted forms slammed into something solid. All breath whooshed from my lungs as the impact wracked my entire body. Stars danced in my blackening vision, my head spinning. My arms and neck stung, like I’d been pricked a thousand times by needles.
The demon landed on top of me, and she wasted no time reeling back her arm and throwing her fist into my face. Pain exploded across my cheekbone, but I gritted my teeth and caught her second swing, pushed her arm away, and twisted to break free of her hold.
She tightened her grip. “Don’t think so. You’re starting to get infamous, Ben Hallen. Your thirst for hunting us will get you killed.” She reached back into the air, and dirt and rocks inside the warehouse snaked around her arm like armor.
Not good. So not good.
I summoned lightning again, reaching outside of myself for it, but… none came. My vision swirled with purples and blues, sifting into yellow before settling on an orange sunset background. I narrowed my eyes, trying to focus on the demon’s twisting visage in front of me, waiting for the impact of a rock fist.
Slowly, a hearty laugh broke through the sunset. The demon reached down with her hand over my chest. “How ironic,” she said, sprinkling something right in front of my face.
The dust and pebbles turned into raindrops on the way down, a constant rain that spread from her hand to somewhere above my head. Wetness coated my legs and back, which turned into large waves.
Floating. I was floating, a buoy in a giant lake. Overhead, the orange and yellow sunset danced across the crying sky as the water rose above my ears. I waved my arms, trying to right myself to swim away, but a heavy weight kept me firmly in place, sinking my body millimeter by millimeter down into the raging sea. A cinnamon scent wafted across the tops of the waves like a bright beacon.
Wait. Cinnamon?
Dharksa. I hadn’t taken it, but…
I stilled my attempts to swim and forced a deep breath in past my lips and into my lungs. Held it. Then let go. The sunset dimmed, the waves diminished some, and my eyes narrowed in on the woman before me.
“You drugged me,” I managed to say.
She barked a laugh and climbed off my body. Her words sifted through the remaining sunset in the distance. “You drugged yourself, falling with open wounds onto a jar of dharksa. Enjoy your trip, Hunter. It will be your last. I will not allow you to hunt our kind with abandon.”
The clarity slipped and the waves churned beneath me again, but my mind remained clear enough to realize she wasn’t talking about the routine patrols I did with my team. No, she meant all the extracurricular hunting I’d been doing on the down-low.
The demon woman brought a dagger down over my face, poising to strike. That was when her neck wildly snapped in an unnatural position, the loud crack of it breaking through the toxic illusions around me. The woman’s body crumpled like a wilted flower, pushing me down into the water.
Someone appeared, walking on the surface of the waves. Nate. My teammate.
“Get up,” he said as he reached down.
His hands encircled mine and yanked me to a standing position. On top of the waves. What in the hell?
“You’re on a dharksa trip,” Nate said to me, his eyes swimming into focus. “The best way to get through it is to let it happen, but we don’t have that luxury right now.”
I tried to talk, but my lips were swollen, my tongue too big, and the same lake water that once almost drowned me after I’d been struck by lightning now rose above my ankles. “This is a dharksa t-trip?”
His face sw
irled like an endless vortex, devoid of eyes and a mouth. I blinked heavily, my eyelids suddenly weighing a thousand pounds.
Why would anyone willingly take this crap?
“Just hold still,” came Nate’s response.
Warmth flooded my body, the sunset turning into a vibrant blue sky that darkened to a gray ceiling. My skin grew hot, burning until sweat poured out from seemingly every available pore. I wiped it from my upper lip, my forehand, my neck—everywhere—and when I pulled back my hand, it was covered in green liquid.
As my vision stopped twisting and turning, focusing on one thing became possible again. Green. I was sweating green?
Nate loosened his hold on my shoulders but didn’t back away. “Oh. Good. I wasn’t sure that would work.”
“Me sweating green was an accident?”
His expression hardened. “The demon knocked you into a giant ceramic jar of dharksa. A lot of it must have gotten into one of your cuts.” He looked me up and down. “You look like you stepped in a vat of slime.”
“Fantastic. How did you extract it from me?”
“Dharksa is basically magik,” Nate said. “A trippy one. I pushed it away from your body with my ether. The monks I trained with might have mentioned something about that in regards to healing, though I’ve never tried it before.”
The ether-shaper monks. Nate didn’t often talk much about his time with them. I’d long assumed some oath of secrecy was to blame.
“Thank you.” I clapped him on the shoulder, then turned to my team. Looks like they’d cleared out the rest of the nest despite the power of these demons. Which really only meant one thing: Jaffrin was right in using Krystin to force us to master our powers. With us, his “magikal insurance” plan for Boston would be a nice ace in the hole.
